« The MeatEater Podcast

Ep. 145: A Life of Service

2018-12-03 | 🔗

Missoula, MT- Steven Rinella talks with Idaho Department of Fish and Game Director Virgil Moore, the author and poet Chris Dombrowski, and Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew. Subjects Discussed: open season on pine squirrels in Idaho; Steve's Mexican roadkill bonefish encounter; managing deer for opportunity versus quality; the unfortunate reality of why Idaho's winter steelhead season has been closed; the ongoing fight around grizzly bear delisting; multi-state game and fish agencies working together; caribou flirting with the U.S. border and conservation triage; the surprising issues attached to public apathy; counting wildlife; legitimate and illegitimate gripes about fish and game agencies; preference points as a pyramid scheme; and more.

 

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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
me gas company you surely severely vote my gaze underwear can predict anything i've heard which start out have you just get right endured introduce yourself a great off forty but even says he the interesting thanks d i'm virgil morn directorate idaho fish and game its greatest job normal that's a top bears the top dog individual well i have you i asked but in our age and see the director oversees the operations of the entire agency in you in the crowning achievement of your career right as its past
of the new pines girls these well i want to say it's a crowning achievement ro corbeille yak couple years ago one of our commissioners just ass the question can we pine squirrels and all they are commonly known as red squirrels and be the answer was there hector wildlife he does why we're oh it's always been that way yeah this came up because we are talking about how last night we re in some pine squirrels forget and i was saying how everywhere that i've ever lived list pine girl a red squirrel a non protected non game species may know close season in right now bag limit and i would have never have guessed the idaho was an exception to that billy people are really get after me other common household past because if a scroll gets new attic is probably a pine squirrel
in the northern to your states they pray of a surprising thing is they pray snowshoe hair lefferts genoa now albert they did immortality story and snowshoe hairs in so the ones that went missing were found in pines grow mittens i got a body the watchman kill a bird one time with other predators yeah they like to kill they like to kill snowshoe hare leverage the like the debate birds out an s but also the pines there there stash is their mittens what everyone a column become unemployed food source in the winter for some birds and other wildlife cause they get into those stashes then you see grizzlies in the spring will come out and excavate them you'll pull them all out so you guys realize there's no season form and what kind of magic needs to happen you know it is not as easy as just waving want insane the seasons open
we had to go through a rulemaking to make them non protected first and then we had to go through the process of proposing a season getting public comment and then the commission approving it they just finally approved that at their last commission meeting so we will have a pine squirrel season it a bag limit and a ban on as you go of more extreme the other its eight per day twenty foreign possession and it's got an open season that'll be from august thirty a through march thirty first so now there's a closed period and that conforms with our open season for other rabbits and other small gained so so just for consistency reasons we kept all of that the uranium like small game what you guys have any regulations round and i don't imagine you have thriving populations of fox and gray squirrels
we do have thriving populations of fox and gray squirrels mostly in urban areas there is no protection on those une cones many of those that you will not get us there because there are not native the caterer non native non protected wildlife because most of them are in urban areas where discharge of firearms is prohibited and that we don't see much use of them although there are a few folks ah that that utilise not mean imo missouri native i was raised probably the first thing i killed was either a rabbit or a squirrel so one of the two had to be what i was shooting at exactly next virgil chris the christmas hanging out chris the old friend of mine who should you should come out of the show a lot more i two year my friends not a big podcast listener i want to show the mediator show all the time but my friend
listen to it all the time i told them when i was doing today this seriously are you kidding me are you an anti podcast listener no i'm not but it is still an old favourite rays of yours that you stole from frazier you know hushing or fishing is something i'd rather do than talk about so i'm not answer podcast i just i write a lot and i need when i'm done writing i need to get the word world you know had listened to silence right for sure you i memory and somewhere that we were saying you can appreciate music without appreciating silence is music is an interruption of silence share i bet john cage would love that right who's that allow us to act like i said ok i remember and all the squirrel house and favour meal that you made you remember that yeah man yeah we used to get after him right here in town here but lot you live abducent squirrels always at higher get no
in other ways before we go on that we out of state squirrel vineyard estates one aids we go home around plug your book ok well my last book is called body of water it's nonfiction book from greed additions about really that centres around a man in david pender was the first bahamian bone fishing guide he went to a grip on a small island called deep water key and nineteen fifty eight flurry in man named guilder a rich what may floridians man named gill drake actually bought an item from the crown the english ground called the boy a key and higher david tendered to excavate the mangroves from the island in overtime hired pender to be his first fishing goldfish guide in the bahamas so tender made about five dollars a day at the time and over the last
dear so years the bone fishing industry has become the crux of the eco term tourism industry in the bahamas so hundred fifty million dollars a year basically this little fish that we used to throw in two purina food by eggs has become the crooks of an eye the entire island economy really goldfish i ever saw in his way after balloonfish became what bone fish are the first one aerosols lie and dead inside the road mexico re donors either on him with the weird thing other guy sny was the first bone flow and the r day a body mind from hawaii send me a picture of just a classic grip and grin with a whole bunch of dead bonefish laner cause they make fish patties out they call oil they don't they catch wendy was a huge bone for my brother caught a big bonefish in one hundred feet of water hawaii right yeah so they don't look like they're like a flatfish there they act like there was a fish eat a bony ass fish
right i remember you discussion in and mediator the book about your first experience releasing these fish doesn't know farm offers dead one on the side of the road lay roadkill bone fish aha caught my first one's let him go meanwhile we like killed every other fish really didn't order was right right like fuel our journey to let bone fisco categories golden right we pull fish out but was at all eat it other let all old couple joanna been about fish you having boulders what was it like you said the boy in vine white flesh totally fine yet a pickup to quote you frazier again who i think by stole this from john mc feebly tomboy each row shed write me says catholic fixing a watch like picking me how should shit call the boundaries of the future you like this mainly want to get into part b i went down there
could i love was kind of fish it's cool book which maybe some something to dedicate a whole conversation about the book that tells the story about a fish that no one cares about becoming a fish that's like a billion dollar industry yet we should i'll come back any time i'm glad you're living in bozeman now i remember when you used to speaking of picking fish remember fishing for whitefish making does not wise talk not just oh yeah tedious but great recipe downward oh yes we have headsets up we're dead monitoring their does virgil bringing with them entourage yeah let's go had never a dive into where they were dive and all things fish these wild i've management yours but tell us the mediator crew virgil can you start out that i a thousand things to ask you one of the questions i want to ask you later once we get going is when you hear hunters
anglers tommy bad about fish and game what the most legitimate complaints of what are the least legitimate complaints by the want but that yeah but has noted that's common so dear deep to try to give a thing like what is the most legitimate complaint the found in your career and lifetime of service bank first it would be interesting to talk about where your department sort of ends a general you like the idaho right is your area of expertise but pray of enough exposure from all the other agencies to look like what where does the game commission in war its relationship to your department how do you move from london this is the sum is not well understood and it might be the basis for the conversation here
there really is my certainly our game commission idle fish and game commission is integral to our agency they are the policy and regulatory setting body for the department efficient game as director i set as the director of the idle department of fish and game also on non voting member of the eu of fish and game commission my other title is secretary of fish game and the in interfaces the department through the director and the commission idaho the act or serves at the pleasure of the commission said person board appointed by the governor a four staggered for your terms bacon be appointed the two terms confirm by the summit as if from other states in our committee nor shall as a director
appointed by a commission i do not have to go through that part of that political process with the legislature they do that and so that the firewall or the buffer there but the governor selects those commissioners in the committee the governments like the commissioners the commissioner's likes you direct and you have a term limb of two terms for the commissioners so they can serve to for your terms and then they term out the door act or has no turn on weekends that you keep going to go out o incapable and without a lifetime of point but now it's you serve at the pleasure and so at any time commissioners decide they want somebody new you ve got your walking pay how many commissioners either seven and that varies ok but they at the rules yes so for instance we talked about it and i don't want to put too much into this because it's pretty small issue pine squirrel season right
that has to go through the commission right correct but the commission draws so much of their information from the department apps because the commission's out do not game surveys now so that's where the department commission are linked in nineteen thirty eight the solution initiative in the state of idaho was approved by voters in the state that created the commission prior nineteen thirty eight we reform is an agency in eighteen ninety nine apartment efficient gaining prior to that the director appointed by the governor it was completely partisan and most of the standard of the spoils of war right and it was in many of the staff or non professional and it was very partisan structure decline of trying to recover l kurds trying to get hunting back and going in twenties and thirty's failed miserably because we didn't have that professional
force out there doing the survey work the initiative formed the commission and put commission in its possession of hiring the director and very specific role ass to each body and department access staff and managers of that public trust that's out there the commission is the the trust holder along with the legislature they are the ones that are responsible for how to howdah deal with that trust we just make recommendations and manage it per their direction so up until the time pine squirrels were protected that the direction they decided there's the the trust manager they wanted to do something different we said there's not a problem biologically they went on with the rules and so we in
act very closely with our commission who how often does the commission but has with the department like meaning presume these people in the commission who have an axe to grind right like because from different walks of life is it happens we don't see it a lot generally the commission tries to work as a team together but they are appointed to represent geographic areas at the state of israel they're pretty much they have a district and those that districts is very similar to our administrative regions so we can get seven of those and every so often you see a difference in the way that the commissioners themselves wanna go as after i manage the agency to make recommendations where we have a disconnect is if for some reason through public input somebody
once a season change but let me say here is that of sea and fewer and fewer dear right and then you look in your eye he actually is probably seen fewer and fewer dear i say this legitimate and as an individual i suspect that that's the case they are saying but our survey work we can we go now we killed more dear last year and that unit then we ve never killed before our survey information says that the buck though ratios in there are above policy and so you have that disconnect between you see on the spot you hunt what we see when we try to manage a large piece of real estate and so that goes to the commission they get we can put all the time like that we're in the middle of it right now was some dear setting stuff that's gone on get lately white tailed deer were were adopting a new white tailed your plan and in
process the question of do we know what we're talking about in this particular piece of real estate verses what the daddy is for game management units on a larger peaks and so the commission is in a situation where the biological information would suggest one thing what individual set are motivated to get involved in the decision making process show up at a public meeting safe bet it right and you know what there are probably not wrong about where their hunting what are they see their specific spot but what does that mean that that's the way it is everywhere and that's the kind of ah wisdom and balancing that the commission has to go through to sort through here the science as we're trying to present to you and here's the black input has some very input we can tell you all about this but i can say that what joe hunter overhear seas is incorrect and so
ap is where the beauty of the commission processes there there to balance out perhaps the scientific information that we provide them with somebody input from the public of what they desire as trust a users there the they're the ones who get the benefit of that public trust of wildlife we manage it the commission is a trusty for that and and so we go back and forth through that process constantly work with our commission ma the time ninety nine and ninety percent of what is out for public input we get good public input we get agreement with biological information it goes through just approved fishing regulations for three years fish management plan for six years at this last commission meeting two weeks ago took fifteen minutes
no descending anything it took a year more people powder there's a year of public and put to get to that point by the time we got to that point we didn't have any issues that's not through with our dear elk and other wildlife management issues we had no dissenting votes on pine squirrels so that one went pretty easy paper cool abides rural so far brings people together so ross bring people together but but white tailed there are a big thing right now tell me what cause there's a lot of them not a lot of em we're saying because away hunting occurs in idaho with the ability to move around we have a white tailed tag the late season why tail hot there that you have to decide what you're going to hunt during the early mule dear and general dear season or whether you want to hunt white tail and you get that wait till tag people prefer white i didn't
and and consequently they all go to these really neat spots and sold their seeing a lot more hunters so you're out their driving around or you go by and you see six camps in this you didn't see but one camp four or five years ago then you go out hunting and you don't see the deer immediately there is a problem and this is occurring in the clear water and several other units around that cup with loss of access on price lands crew it's this perception that hunting for me as good as it used to be and that perception is correct for that person if people are attributing this to forcing people to make this decision about what they want to hunt that's part of it they are also saying there's too many non residents and non residents can be both people from out of state as well as people like myself from boise common
up into their area to hunt and it's it's that social tension that comes with using a resource out there and as users you ve probably all seen them i know i do you see it whether your fishing or hunting i get away from it by think later in the season so i don't have to deal with it or i fear later in the season or during the the shoulder periods montana as an example has their shoulder hunting seasons that they use right now to try to distribute some of that we try to use our regulations to do that but it at some point we still have the the people saying something different then what our biological data so some of the the and all jump to your question what are the legitimate complaints cofre is that as something sure one of the writers rights for us i website pat durban did a piece for us about compare
success rates hunter success rates with surveys about hunter satisfies satisfaction is that basic oh just a really take something long and complex and make short as people just jelly not happy happy like you take a relative picture year to year by what was good hunting bad hunting and ask people to put a personal spin on the generally viewed as being more negative than it was one totally agree with totally ruined i dont our survey that we recently did on your lawyer and wait hunters ever is happy nah nah anonymously everybody's happy about it but most people are satisfied or very satisfying their based on the survey work we did it varies depending on the geography it varies on what thereafter
one of the things that we are in idaho by commission direction we're an opportunity state were all being able to hunt every year were all giving people the chance to get out there and to us conflict that we have to have the ability to hunt every year you're gonna have fewer older growth animals then you word if if you didn't well for that opportunity answer that is minutes on that article is on an opportunity state versus a on a quality state yeah like grab grab a huge feel ok and this is based on their public input down there and a large number of hunters there and different productivity chose years ago to go with a quality system produced a larger proportion of the herd as four point animals
idaho has already don't get me wrong it's just we manage the productivity of that heard so that we can utilise that productivity for as many hunters as possible whilst producing a pretty good number of four point animals whether their mule dear or white take without this too has been like some states are kind of split right the colorado's quality on the mule deer opportunity an elk re correct and and part of it has to do with the number of animals that are there in general are mule deer haven't been doing as well as our elk although in idaho with with some of the work we ve been doing as well as the easy winners we had in the better survival on funds army older are really up but has arrived here harvest is white tailing idaho the other phyllis those do up in the pay and handle and its cause we go out of an and people are turning onto uncas it tastes better now
my dad's that's my buyers i'll put it this way when my wife is not hunter but she is consumer and when i go hunting i generally get orders to what she prefers that i bring home and and a white tail are much higher on the list dennis thank you my dear she puts now i find them very flavorful i like flavoured they're both distinct indifferent and enjoy eating bobo would she puts it to take it she was away just keep tone i just get your own ticket and come out hunting with me but to all yes late lately i wanna get in your bio from belay a good piece of marriage vice on us listen to your spouse really bring home a white daughter they can ask question about so when you guys are prioritizing
you know initiative or or in you know the sat squirrel listing i mean are you thinking well that's gonna be an economic boom for stay i mean is the squirrel thing or i'm getting a little bit but how much are you prioritizing like revenue potential revenue over the resource or is it so i wish i had a whole gets no general funds ok our revenue is generated by predominantly licence sales as well as contract money and the excise tax on hunting and fishing equipment pitman robinson and any chance of what the contract woody kind that money is mitigation money like from bonneville power cooperate batteries for the mitigation of dams idaho power of
after i gashed you name it we get contract money to work with a b p a as an example we've got contract money to do sage grouse work for the fish and wildlife service but a lot of it most of it's mitigation money to operate hatcheries for hydropower advil the hydro power development impede if the fish movements and they gotta make up for that by running correct it's it's an interstate runs the hatcheries for we operate the hatcheries that they built for those facilities and and so that's a huh piece of our budget but as far as the discretionary funds that we get it's almost all licence money tiny bit often non game license plate cells we have a license plate system and that generates together about two million dollars that runs that non game program but we have in the state so your question about what do we do
do we take economics into consideration if it as a conservation issue where you should hunt or not hunt the answer is no but when you are looking at the way you conductor hump the way use you set seasons how you allocate those tags residents and non residents deaf only revenue is on the table was it as an item to take a look at by and large the commission isn't is concerned revenue as they are the social aspect of how this affects hunters in the field i give you an example in dive into this i mean the commission just recently steel had fishing in the state of israel and the economic effects
there are huge email i got emails from guys who are pissed off though hell i got alot it yeah but here you go more we had a public meeting last week and riggins now riggins is on the salmon river a very small community that has mostly natural resource based economy used to be timber that's gone now its hunting and fishing i mean and white motor rafting on the main salmon river the closure of a winner steel had fishery millions of dollars a community that is problem we're getting a third of their financial revenue from steel head fishing another third from chinook and the rest of it from other outdoor based recreation activities and so it it's a community like that hard over christmas gonna whose grinch here and i get it talked
the number humbly ask why the budget attire about what precipitated the closure none the people decided me and cannot now we we served with a notice of intent to be sued in about forty five days ago whose bringing the two hour was a group of five a fish advocacy groups and river groups that i felt like that the what we call me stock fishery one we fish on the hatchery fish these mitigation fish and there are wild listed steel head in the river with em felt that are fishery was harming those wild fish technically the price one as we don't have a permit to have that mixed stock fishery it expired in two thousand and ten federal agency responsible for that permit national marine fishery service
failed to issue that permit to us since two thousand ten we have submitted at every year we have complied with the terms of the permit but they have been working on other areas that were very important for permitting and i can get into the technicalities of that but the point is we are guilty of not having a permit so here we getting a notice noah or nationally fishery services go ahead and fish without the permit comply with the terms you submitted we don't have time to go through the process to give you that permit but we're not prosecuted under the endangered species hat dangerous species acts has a citizen's lawsuit feature in it that allows private citizens to sue somebody violating it that way i mean this has been going on for eight years and then we get this notice of intent to sue if you go to court and
found to be guilty i guess she would say or not in compliance then the stay has to pay all the legal fees of the plants and knowing we knew we felt it was not useful to go through a legal defence when we really didn't have the from trying to convince a judge and in all likelihood the plain of sort of ass the judge for an emergency closure while while while i sorted and in the end result would be we would he pang legal fees and we would have a close to your heads by closing the season we proposed from taking us to court so well the decision to open it back up is still with the commission the permit will done in march next spring we we did i tell you gotta get a black eye rise again i am and deservedly so now you there's over there we are
probably could have been a little more aggressive where seeing that this could happen but frankly i knew for well i've been director for eight years in the whole time i knew we ve been plan doing this and i felt because promoting fishery service wasn't gonna prosecutors we were ok i never thought about our conservation friends in these other entities taking us to court these fishing of these angler based groups we are a couple of them are angler based are groups a couple of them are river based groups the angler groups desiring more wild fish in that yeah they ve got a different agenda and i'll be honest with you part of the agenda they were willing to not suit us if we ready to go to know bait single barbarous hooks fly fishing only ban the usual votes so
they were trying to say this was a conservation issue but then they had this string of things that would have precluded most steel head anguish from going fishing just so that group could get out there the catch and release group basically the people of regions and that whole kind of valley there they upset most you guys were there are upset that we allowed this to get to where it is but at the public meeting we had last week going in the town there was a sign in all public meaning so and so play such and such a time and they had the name of one of these groups just a stronger said not welcome so yeah they're they're they're doing i have a meeting tomorrow with the board of one of these groups the season doesn't take affair
until december the seventh i think is when it closes so harbor man i know the symbolic a terrible date and about and we've got a little bit of time in here we're still negotiating we had a negotiated settlement two weeks ago and then when all of the plaintiffs left they they came back a day later and said no we're gonna back away from our agreement so i got a couple of quick questions first for chris you're here your fish guide yeah stray over to that country at all i do not know i had therefore downright now i grew up still having in michigan so we have these problems now we learn from but now i am i still lie in the bank or them down there i i've been those most of the winter right and so since i'm off the river in late october i'm hanging up the rise in the waiters and that jason the bird dog around but but you hear guys graven about all i didn't i didn't even know about it will tell you how much have been in the woods and last month so what are you know most of the mozilla
single mozilla fishing guides had over therefore for a good month and you know that a trailer overrun part right for sure its fascinating to me in and surprising to know likewise view virgil on this issue the average letter writer who writes in with a complaint was it you take all those people make a pool of them so forget the average take a pool of all the people who have written a letter of complaint handling of those individuals of if you had to guess what percentage those individuals would be able to articulate the issue to the extent that uses articulated it to me right now is it well understood or do you find and are you baffled by how not well understood it is i'm baffled by how not well there said it is we are pushing the envelope this closure only occurred lesson two weeks ago that it'll be
two weeks ago wednesday this coming wednesday and so were we're trying to get the word out there the four letters that i've been inundated with simply aren't accurate the misunderstanding that there is a conservation benefit to this closure is wrong there is a catch and release mortality on these listed steel head but that less than three percent of her billing maps of worst case that's what number there i know that's what we use in our permit and predict that three out of a hundred fish handled may die as a result that the and release fishery and that's the impact we will have on these wild fish why were catching and keeping hatchery fish and it's something all the states do humming washington has their permit in hand they got a couple years ago they got there first
the washington part of the snake river will stay open even though our will close because it's it's border water organ doesnt have their permit for this fishery but there can continue to fish because they didn't get sued and i saw it it's a very selective legal action was really could do to fish instead of oregon welcomed new fish outswell washington on the snake river portion our salmon river and clearwater rivers would be the ones that are predominantly affected by this as well as idaho licensed anglers who fish hells canyon the snake river portion but you could continue to fish by buying a washington licence that's the absurdity of some of this but the bottom line is the catching released fishery is not the issue here is partially a social issue this is partially an issue of these advocacy groups trying to make a point
that idaho isn't doing enough as state down river issues and so they're hitting us at home with a legal action on our sport fisheries and it really doesn't hurt the department it hurt the local communities read you mean you you gave that's what the airlines but some percentages but what's the what's the deal i wish the european union all the town of regions we ve done the economic evaluation and i'm gonna say the town of regions for this week fishery is a million and a half dollars of my numbers now that doesn't sound like a lot of money how about you will either not i mean there's less than a thousand people therein the where time there's probably have that someone has been so as to be a big joke jean valjean popular right it is a big deal clearwater or fino that area there get
hit hard and the outfitters and guides that rely on that and catered that i mean i got a heartfelt letter from a guide upon the clear water and he said cash couldn't come at worst time he goes make a lot of money during this period time but it's gonna cost me five thousand dollars in the next six weeks since gonna run my christmas with my kids i just almost give in to tears over something like that em it's like well dang should we have not closed it let it go to court for try to keep it open as long as possible we're still having that active discussion right now but the actions that appear to be just about the department and its management really are about people when the people who use the resource and the communities that benefit from those resources walk me through how you how you wound up where you are now
like were you aiming through your career in fish and wildlife to wind up in this position or does it never just kind of did what made sense i'm i'm by training i'm a fishery scientist i was worked fisheries biology undergraduate degrees and education i thought high school came to idaho worked on fish on steel it is a matter of fact that michelangelo backgrounds and our work on steel hadn't cut throat got on with the department to over forty years ago and worked on the south fork snake river am idaho on one cut throat trout in seventies and early eighties on a problem we were having there with declining numbers and size of fish got an opportunity to manage that fishery for seven years and that included that area that i was manager over included the henry's fork and the south work of snakes some of that greatest fishing country in well in the world maybe maybe montana
as close but we'll we'll give a sense while you're in montana i'll give them a little credit for having good fisheries and you can have the prize in hand as yours but the bottom line is then i just work my way up when i had an opportunity and various positions as state fish manager fishery research manager i was bureau chief over our communications programme for awhile fisheries chief i did don't morgan has director for a year went over there and learned a lot i consider it a now as a one year sabbatical to a different state and had opportunity come back tied a horse deputy director and turned into a directors jobs it's a really short bio when you get down to it is just a lot of different opportunities and jobs but it's all doing the same thing it's working with people manage their resources to provide what they want while having that foundation in arms
statement which has preserved protect perpetuate and manage for the benefit of the people that recent can only be used when its preserved protected and perpetuated and when it is used its primary uses hunting fishing and trapping that in code that form or agency that was given to us in nineteen thirty eight by the people of the state it was proved by seventy three percent of the people in the state in nineteen thirty eight lots of people said while agitated you and allows trash that was eighty some odd years i guess i was eighty years ago and it's no longer valid well two thousand twelve we had an initiative and thus we had a constitutional amendment the right to fish trap and in that amendment had the right codfish trap is held
to be a right for the people as a whole not individuals as much and the primary method of managing wildlife and the state of idaho was hunting fishing and traffic so if you gonna manage while my population should do it went hunting fishing and traffic approved by seventy five percent of fishing to public grandmother measurements bonds rioting right they want the public to do it that way by seventy five percent of the people in two thousand twelve now that isn't an endorsement of the nineteen thirty eight initiative move it forward so what we in idaho have is the benefit of knowing from up dissipation an election what it is the really big goals are and that may my job easy if you flip the card over i gave you on the back there is our mission statement that's in code that's the thing written out there and
it's three sentences though the back of everybody's card now it's on the back of mine i first but that's that's something i do so that i can cause whenever i doubt what's going on i just flip that over and read through it again it's like okay it's like everything i need to know is right there in idaho such views your limit in idaho when you get when you get an email and sobbed in the subject line is still had or the subject line is grizzly bears which will need more like how now exists like but a lot of time on these two great laying in inter species as a whole and those to adapt sage grouse and yeah that's occupied a fair amount of our time i will
take the steel had one any day week over currently bear that was the last person i am out of that we have have more biological we have it's less ah value laden relet to managing fish a wild steelhead is a phenomenal creature they are there's nothin nothin like i'm on the end of a fly rod in any kind of tackle they're just yeah they be cruising around out of the ocean over here that are from the one hand and a hatchery steelhead isn't far below that but this certainly to have had that creature in your hand but they're still generally not thought of as individuals thought of as a population as a run as a school that type as a good point man like up their part of a ride and consequently the emotional attachment to them doesn't go in the individual level with me
a foreigner birth big animals out bears wolves cougars dear and elk large lesser degree than the other ones you name rightly i guess you're doing it in order lying europeans our allowing parliament charismatic megaphone big charismatic critters and they come with a whole different set of values were people trade humanize those animals and their behaviour in council what like having a discussion about biology with folks who have that becomes way more difficult can use get out they go as far as you want you can go all the way back to nineteen seventy four whatever the hell it was or you can go back the last two or three years but sketch out where idaho sits where things stand right now do the grizzly one personalized that guy editorializing rwanda but it's like tell them there we should be celebrating the
cover a grisly sent the greater yellowstone ecosystem yes we should be ready to celebrate the de listing a grizzly bears her in the northern rocking in northern continental via just north of where we're out here and mozilla right now i know in love in the tri state area there we have an action grizzly bear population is properly managed we ve got exceeded the management goals with ants every scientific questions legal arena and two still have those bears on the list because of legal issues judicial issues to me undermines the whole benefit of the endangered species we always were that with the agency that's in charge of is it like the agency that oversees the population right now they're saying it should be delisted correct fish and wildlife service themselves believes it should be listed they're the ones who delisted it they
and told to release them until time is an answer these legal questions now we will get them delisted ok what it was last year whether it next year or three years out because population is secure nothing about answering these legal questions but this about whether population is secure not it is the fact that folks do not believe that the management tool of choice again going back to our constitutional amendment is hunting so when we have more barriers or problem bears choice is to have a hundred go out the care that versus having staff go out trap the bear and get rid of now we're going to have to do a combination but i would i prefer to use hunter who buys a licence and a tag to go out on his own time too
an animal and keep the population and check for the social needs of the community's around there then send one of my staff out there today the baron euthanize unceremoniously i believe that we have a lot more respect for that wildlife we interact with in that manner then we do with wildlife that we just euthanize in a manner to connect to cure that nuisance do you right now feel as though do as though the fight round grizzly bear dealers thing will want to being worse than what happened around walls or do you feel like it to follow that same pattern of you had like some stops and start yet some law suits but eventually wound up last least a idaho montana wyoming you wound up with dealers and wars and regulated hunting it is fundamentally different and will play out in a different way it's
i think it's fundamentally the same and i do think it'll play out in a similar manner but the can't hunting aspects of it is even larger if they so grizzly bears and it is with walls although its very large with with walls it's it's a very strong community of people out there who believe in their values and at the same time its it's part of where the frustration is because delisted wildlife normal while my four under the sovereign trust responsibilities of each individual state there are a lot of people that don't believe they're being heard their needs are being addressed by our commission and i can tell you there being hurt what what what
did you mean like what what what groups of people give you an example one of the things that we were told they wanted was a buffer around yellowstone park yeah so we wouldn't have a celebrity bear going outside of the boundary and getting shot and then running back into the park and so i get i get that has all the parts that big enough already needs to become and so the park we and they're saying will you ignored us when ask for that we didn't ignoring we took it into serious consideration and looked at it and said it was unmanageable today because grizzly bears can rome as much as sixteen twenty five miles outside the park and a wounded animal could go right back and whether it is a hundred yards from the border at the border or five miles out and it just was a terrible thing for us to address relative to that but they were heard was discussed
the decision to go the way they wanted it so they want a federal lies management of these species and under the endangered species act that sufficient while my service or its national marine fishery service for fission and penalties as for rum seals and see lions and they want to turn to when a federal as many species is possible so the state doesn't have the final say i believe a core that's a lot of what's going on here when when the dealers thing happened in bears were what i was proud to be temporarily delisted yet three states that were looking assuming management guy yet montana roaming and i don't want you might have had like three what would appear to me to be three very different responses this in the hunting question guy we're montana fixing the sort of sit out the hunting season
and i felt that that was kind of a lame move this is just me personally target and not virgil i'm not speaking for virgil in or the idaho fish and game or anyone just personally i thought was a lame move because our sowerby like i don't want the black i i don't want to be caught the controversy and see how a plays out with idaho now while we has kind of hosts more of that little of the population the bears those more anyone else there are pretty aggressive their time out twenty like your heart twenty four killed twenty four grizzly bears i do in a curious way came in where they're going to issue a tag that symbolic right it's balikh but that was are allocation so that i state plan that we all three of agreed to allocates the available mortality to this eight based on the size of the geography i don't want my has sixteen percent of that grizzly bear
and so we get a smaller portion of that available mortality to utilize also it wasn't just a symbolic no no no it wasn't like we want to do it but we don't really want to do it so we'll do our allocation was like one point four or one point five bears okay and you wanted to come in oh yeah how to i would have liked to our oda half a bear from montana why arming so that what too intent is occasionally i don't worry about it was like seven or eight and i think i may have been in the teens i dont remember but its inner media wyoming being largest montana the next and i hope the smallest almost those guys a lot we really invites now we really i will tell you that the the tri state working relations between montana wyoming arming and idaho are top notch we form that during the wolf listing things and we
continually have constant routine interactions but the other thing have to understand is was states is we dont all manage exactly the same to get the same output the way eyes structure our hunting seasons under though the ability may be done and then the way why arming or montana does it but it's under the same state sovereignty trying to provide for the needs of the people that they have and as long as it is about of the bounds of conservation theirs really nothing wrong with that it's the way you talk does trophy theirs nothing wrong with what you talk is doing with their trophy mule older job that's what they are to do there nothing wrong with idaho doing our management as opportunity that's what we chose to do the differences are actually great to have because
estate is an experiment in wildlife management above that conservation threshold that we can learn from each other or imagine if you have the sheriff ratio we share information all the time we have a group we call the western association of fish and wildlife agencies and that group we come together twice a year and interact with each other well i have a meeting coming up in early january and that's where i meet with montana and wyoming again to discuss grizzly bear issues and how to move forward where you i am a grizzly bear thing did you did you issue the tag we did issue the tag to educate the person anonymous i guess we all in the name is available about any other information about them and not by state law that at any rate they dare to call him up and i guess you saw the commission took action at the last commission meeting to rain check that
opportunity to that individual for next year because it was suspended by the u s fish and all my service once they were re listed they camp have directed sport mortality under usa does i dont have salvage requirements for bloggers meets elves requirements i meet the commission changed the meat retrieval portion of that war decade or so ago there are now and as i was guessing they weren't going to do a meet salvage requirement and grizzly bears no that is not part of the requirement and again that's some of the variation you get from among state someone told me how they were at a meeting and it was like a it was a public comment period and in some hunters were saying well you know we should do a were proposes idea of a meat salvage required right
in some of the people who are opposing the heart were sort of saying like i was term of looking for when you say don't like not in fact lies the word indulge now i've got it i'm looking for i don't know say like don't you know don't talk to me and calhoun was telling me this story and i can't remember the word they used for it but their colleagues don't do this phony symbolic thing to greenwash this correct theirs but that camera words he said that was you but they were so rather than this rather than of the opposition figures sing yes i oppose the hunt but there is gonna be one i agree that there should be a meat savage lukewarm they want to make sure it looked as bad as possible agreed i dunno cause that's going to confuse things too much i'd rather there wasn't because it's easier for us to bash it all right you know certainly one of the things that we need
as wildlife managers for you and as hunters on your behalf is that support for hunting that is for traditional consumptive purposes in the united states is very high survey that i saw presented that was present this last spring showed over seventy percent of the american public is supportive of traditional regulated hunting activities where consumption is part of it depending then on and that's it pretty stable we don't the wind support as huh if we just have to keep it part of what you're talking to steve is how do we regulate our own behaviour so we maintain support for that traditional hunting based activity that we so value
i believe that the use of a red squirrel where you described the meal you got off of it is in keeping was that traditional active that we know gives us a lot of support whether people hunt or not we do know from other surveys that when you label this trophy hunting all your out therefore is the trophy without consequently very confusing too it is very concerned but support from the public surveyed across the united states draw under the mid twenties and so the try hunters are trying to portray grizzly bear hunting as a trophy activity not a population management activity not in thing else am six as for them they turned the tables we have two as hunters take a look at how we interact with the while mice that we take the
almost spiritual aspect of both take life as well as the consumption weather it's the use of the fur or the meat or the bone in whatever manner we've got to take her and keep that front and center as we propose changes in hunting seasons and how we interact with our wildlife and fish for that matter so to wrap up on grizzlies if you look at a crystal ball it be dead on don't tell me what you want to be dead ass words are gonna wind up don't be delisted it'll take another year or two through the legal system will persist on that simply because the population itself is so strong i mean habitats occupied its actual i've told out and are and as long as we are able to de listed based on that distinct population segment that it was listed under four a yellowstone ecosystem
the same will be true for the northern continental divide takes in glacier national park that will get tee listed at some point as well other popular nations that we ve got like in the cell kirk's these little populations that are reliant on canada we don't believe will ever achieve the pie populations that are called for in the recovery plans because they're so small a nice yeah it's hard to picture it's hard to play the northern cascades which might might or might not have wanted it like at this very second right good example of that and so i'll i the greater yellowstone in the northern continental divide where maybe eight hundred maybe a thousand the other way yeah i mean i don't know what's in the northern continental divide but i think the fashionable guess is around one thousand and so the answer is yeah yeah there
nothing to be gained by not deed listing and there is a lot to be gained by doing that its success will be essay financial and human resources going and the eu s a process go away and we can put our efforts on some mouse it's more important and and get on with it and been my mike point about how you say has been used is it's it's being used to achieve other need it's just like this lawsuit over our steel head permit they're not soon us conservation purposes steel had their suing us to get other things that they haven't don't they ve been heard and am and that's a misuse of of hundred species that saddens me about seeing how the endangered species act is used often times in these big public battles becomes well something very different than what is supposed to be talking about
the conversations we're having around grizzlies right now we're not heavy conversation that was the populations were covered it's just that i know what i want people can look at it i know what i want really interested in the main question that governs that like pop population stability programme use component of the years as a tool to get what i want crack what i want is ideas you don't want some redneck shootin aggressively certainly their perspective on that i understand that we ve seen that social angst over large predator where a wildlife goes down tremendously when they have a ticket in their pocket a permit to kill that because the control shifted from if my life service to the hunter himself or herself as the case may be we sought with wolves
oh my gosh the annexed over wolves and the predation they were having on both livestock as well as wildlife was huge the number of letters we got from sportsmen was unbelievable soon as we opened the season and people can buy a permit one way down the walls were back extinct again right yet no now a naughty uncoil assuming we drop their numbers by a few hundred work wiping them off but it changed behavior lost it did change their behavior but we have reduced lived on livestock depredations and weave weave shifted their behaviour around they now understand what humans are and stay away we still have hotspot problems with wolf predation but most of it's on on our ungulates on our deer and elk it's not as much on livestock we we've really used hunting as well as directed a kill bye
our agency and its staff and a u s while my services to reduce that tremendously and we are making some inroads on elk management as well we're killing enough of them that all populations have jumped back up back up in some eric panting it'll get devastated it it did and it still has some holes i mean we've got twenty seven alkene alex's homes in the state and of that seven of march meeting objectives five of those are almost certainly the result of probation two of them a combination of that and other factors so we ve you ve changed that originally we were out i think eleven zones want meeting objectives and so we ve push that back down to a lower number and those are mostly back country on we can't enough hunters in there we don't have livestock in there so we don't have
while my services in their directly killing animals that are our request we're trying that in a low on just over the hill here where we sent by my services and there is an experiment to kill was to try to reduce their numbers to appoint wing see our populations combats gotten used while their services like the dalia it doesn't have to be egg does now now we we use them in fact i prefer to use their their cheaper and better rather than our staff are because got the right equipment and training to get in and get that take care of her to handle ban and we found that we can remove enough walls to get a response it's a garden weeding operation i mean a very productive they come back so i'll go back in there and what we need is to get enough hunters and trappers and there once more the numbers down to keep the numbers so you don't have to keep paying
a third entity or staff to go in there and do that and there we can get there in a place like the law or the middle fork of the salmon or the cell way and some of these really thick back country panhandle units is yet to be seen were working the trappers and the state to try to enhance their ability to get in there by changing some season structures bag limit trap checking limits like that working very closely to adjust those to try to here too better place with being able to use sport trapping as a means of control as well and i'm pretty excited about them we ve only been at this now for i guess eight nine years and we have only been out from underneath the umbrella efficient while my service we had a five year probationary period where we could do a lot of things so it really only been at this about three years
transom new stuff and you're going to see us continue to do that what do you think i end up happening in the northern great lakes this is like we're going like way outside of your purview but do you think that that there's light at the there is a bill in congress to de list wolves nation wide cross bored they're just done whether that stands a chance of getting through an assertive would you like a little too elastic yeah i'd all i know is in in in that particular area that's probably their best chance for deep listing because of the way the judicial order is is on them up there too little different but it's it's gonna be there out they dont have a population problem there
it's again they're tied up in this legal mess that they ate they can't get out in there it's around the question of distinct populations and i don't want to get like terribly inconvenient but there it was a bit again right like nit pick but it's like nitpicking little legal things and that they're not arguing about the main question right the main question being like are there enough wolves plenty of voices within that geography there's no there's no benefit derived of ear say that's where i think the question it's the it's the nuances of the endangered species act when somebody arguing over the definition of a distinct population segment or some the aspect of he s a there many attorneys are very good at arguing in a court of law and it's not what a great benefit to their pocket what probably are given that given the way their reimbursing there is there a number of scholarly articles on now
the reimbursement of of the legal people that are taking these suits at a cottage industry that i can i can imagine as a lawyer but at the same time it is their right to take those legal actions and that's just the way it is an untold congress decides to change something on that it's it's what we have oh well i don't want to blow that i don't want to be mistaken for someone who wants to blow the whole system up i just want it to all end i want to all in the way i wanted but not an adversarial to the process as long as i'm like its van right you appreciate the rules but this route inferiority so i d like to see it end up in a way that i want to end up i want to in another one until the other day when someone they did they officially verifying that mountain caribou came down montana right i mean and i'm still back with the grizzly that was on the golf course in stevensville if you heard about that too yeah i think you're right i think
i think they verified thinks of guys at foes up in the yeah yeah did violence on flirting with the board and i think they might have it might be lured him over it might be verified the one step foot contain what should be the first time since twenty or something but idaho right add the except for that now know enough about that's no how free cosette as if it's one that is packed up and straight a hundred miles but who has been the the state the law in lower forty i'll been these state where we have had over the last decades we ve had some number of caribou flooded with the border and if women have a care but the u s it was presumably who's gonna be one an idle in a population is sovereign it see what you're take is this like a big meaningful thing or is it one being that such kind of carnival of a little bit of our fleet
can you can't read too much into it that their now not there like gimme the mile high perspective on it for my standpoint this was almost preordained given the limitations of the habitat given the small low productivity of the of the herd and the fact that was reliable predominantly on canada with a few animals coming in the critical mass we needed of thirty two sixty animals we he achieved i think the mid thirty's number years gone and we'd gone downhill slide sense so i in a population of three or four not in fact canada has kind of come in and take those animals and remove their lives to put them in protective custody to try to preserve the genetics and use those animals to breed sumerian in a captive rearing and then reintroduce them at some other point to bolster the remaining population part of the problem was predation with
establishment of a wolves in that area in addition to the already existing cougar population that was there it took them over it was combination of factors and one point we are actually given permission canada for higher p come in and kill walls and northern idaho and they did that but that enough because it's not just wolves it was a combination of wolves probably black bears on on on the young ones well as cougar in there because their habitat is so small it was easy for the predators to pick on them and so this preordained from my standpoint steve it's also an appropriate action one of the things we export jack he's probably just basically saying we're done weak do any more we're gonna a this out
this is a situation where we did not know how to overcome limitations to that population we but those animals and put them into a captive rearing situation maybe we'll figure it out but we we decided that the use of resources for those few animals that were declining near extinction was not a good use of resources let's when the captive rearing game let's try to see if we can understand this in the future as we work more get better at managing other factors habitat predation what have you and then we and put the resources to managing something we know how to fix for some other species and that that idea of conservation triumph under usa a controversy was dickens there's vote i like myself to think it's the way you go we do it medically me that you'd put on something there are ya some of them you just say i dunno what to do
and no amount of money poured on it gonna make any difference because we don't know what to do what would a reasonable number of population be in that i can't tell you what the recovery plan was thank for the ita hope portion it was just around a hundred animals nerve flirt around a dozen the avenue a dozen right now and then i just went down to single digits atlanta was a time where they were either gonna go away on their own we take the few indeed as you by your way out of it now now there wasn't any way and to do it effectively and so the committee and show too often this opportunity in them they're out so that's that the idea that there are did we give up on him not totally but we recognize there was nothing more to be done right at this moment in time with our species we damn near got there was sockeye salmon
i was on the original soccer recovery came when we got down to one may lonesome larry came back one year we have for fish come back last year we had zero another year and then seven i mean that a four year span and that's a complete generation one zero four and seven bring forward learning populations i've saki salmon common backed redfish lake and idaho we took all those fish of their natural habitat put a man on hatchery an eagle idaho and expanded their genetics such that we did not go into what's called inbreeding depression we used every trick in the book and there were some really amazing tricks our staff used now worse ok millions of fish in their to try to build that population back up why we accept
and the population insufficient came from those fanatical may have bowed photos or whether it was yeah from those thirteen fish that we had dinner and right that's four five seven twelve fish that we had to work with we now have a full blown hatchery operating built with bp medication money and it was expensive but we didn't we start time trying to produce them an answer because the numbers were too small numerically we couldn't get over hurdle well you're different makes you can't go pull a hundred eggs otto caribou that troops truth not win now we get four thousand eggs out of a soccer and consequently it is a different came from that standpoint but my my point being as we have make some of these hard decisions at some point in time not
spend money certain ways or human resources as the case may be at them and move forward that's conservation trio's or we make those decisions versus everything's important we had a poor all the resources into it but there is not enough to take care of it when you of even at this gave a long time in this business right yeah and now you're in kind a pinnacle position when you look like these these tough decisions do doom imagine that there are on the wall that will haunt you or that you'll have a sort of legacy is the guy who think about that where do you feel like you saw sort of power of a process right if it wasn't you would be someone else and that person would probably end up doing the same thing or do you feel like you put like the personal like virgil more state i have been things that are going to affect future generations and they'll look back and be like that was the guy
certainly mess it all up or or conversely the guy that made a perfect wound up responsibility for the screw up because that's them it works but the successes are never that a single person there there always a group but the successes that i've been part of that are most proud of our four strong collaborators among all of the users out there that can it ray on how to move forward and that's that's a challenge given the divisions in society today but the close you get people to the resource on the ground easier it is for them to all focus on what they love saw it talking about trying to manage yellowstone cut throat its entire range ash it's a big area across several states but
talk about managing yellowstone cutthroat in the south fork of the snake i can bring osier together we sit down and form a collaborative done it on the clear water we ve done it in the why he's we done it on the company river we ve done it in montana with the blackfoot initiative the ones and i'm familiar with and that is the challenge is to find the right sizing of brain people together they care about that place that lando the and the races like the sort of the geographical geographic size that people can embrace sum of more massive like the wise it's a big geography but it's it's a resource people can embrace your mind around as they try to come up with solutions to containing lifestyle and why if resources and plant resources down there and the alliance initiative was a huge success and stuff and we ve
ranchers workin with conservation groups working with other ngos to to keep lifestyle on the ground because everybody cares about that sagebrush community down there we see it the clear water basin people care about that resource there in the lifestyle it has its heart takes a lot of work that's what i'm most proud of air three collaborative that i've ever been associated with that has been successful is because everybody came together with that common value and and it's really satisfying things and that isn't dependent on an individual them if that person leaves it has momentum of its own samuel asylum problems like if you look at that through general it just to like it as we approached on the micro level i think
the the management schemes for that level need to be the issues associated with the south fork of the snake and maintaining the spawning tributaries there and dealing with the rain trout integration are you to that area require localised work public by greater public giant the way why arming is doing at its different concerns geography is different the way yellowstone park is doing it is different and its own community up there with yellowstone cut throat montana has a slightly different approach on it but it's getting at the same thing and its its reliance on that now we have a tri state agreement on yellowstone cut throat that put in place in the eighties and said here's the things we all agree on our agenda common definitions and common management concepts we're gonna manage for purity of cut throat not purity is defined this way
and all by what proportion of integration is there and how we use those fish and transport em around we agreed on those basic concepts but then we went out these management things on a localised basis i'm curious about if i get interrupt something you said about the collaborative efforts i mean if you had a pin point something that made them work has been part of twenty collaboration that didn't work what we what would it usually some big controversy the one that i'm am i'm serious and sometimes we're right at the middle of it and that is where i take responsibility for being fought and i'll do this on behalf of my agency more than anything but you're the girl in the henry work drainage we ve got our progress for my own part one gets utah chubbs at that time the biomass and our ability to grow hatchery fish in there for sport fifa yet a back up and at one blow argonauts dogma ok
i mean some people know about this well ok well anyway we get competition between fish species and non game species like you torture which is an exotic were in their eating all of the zooplankton anne and food and tying it up in their bodies biomass i'm sorry i did get carried it also noticed like what the eu georgia was knows not tar job is a mental there's a great big men they got don't did there's a man i got in there behind her way through bait pockets and what have you but the bottom line is we have periodically gone in there and poison system with a poison called broken its exe crackdown about a route from south america and it
walks the oxygen uptake at the cellular level in the brain and they just die giuliani have done some south american fish poisoning that's where we learned it from the natives down there yeah i dunno i haven't done that i'd like i'm telling you what it's fascinating and anyway in the process of doing the one that i the one of these we drew island park reservoir way down we do that to limit the amount of poison to be put in the system and then detox as it flows out there and we usually closed the damn brought down dump the in and do all tributaries twiddle kyoto try to kill the chubbs closer gates on the dam and fill back up the process of trying to get the minimum pool possible to save money true the pool down so low a cut through the sediment that adult
up in the reservoir and all at sediments rushed into the henry's fork and herman ranch the fly fish in mecca down there and it accumulated terribly covered up all the habits and it did created some problems that create such a public outcry about the bureau reclamation and fish and game mismanaging this reservoir and having facts on the wild trout fishery in the henry what below that the henry's fork coalition formed up under the guidance of the henry's fork foundation as well as the local irrigators there that were upset and they formed one of the most successful collaborative we have today and included everybody else but it was an answer that that created that and if look around you ll find often there was an incident or an activity or were legal action that call
something that finally brought people either because they now we got a fix us though this does not happen again and that just one example henry fork watershed council forming up that was thirty years ago they had input from irrigators too there are big i want water and you boys nerve figure out efficient situation and tell it fast forward the dam was rebuilt hydro project was put on a few years later because of that collaborative the needs the fish and the irrigators were worked out among the collaborative and to the agencies so we could implement them as trusted managers for them and that's why it should be too often we get put in a position of why did you make that decision of implementing things that the community as a whole comes up with i see
our agency and our staff as catalyst if are possible catalyzing that kind of community interaction we can come up with these certainly out when the commission me me making some of these decisions by trying to get people the come together instead of us standing in the middle of the circle getting shot at by all sides because their dissatisfied with what we are proposing to try to balance everything out we're better were part of the circle and it comes up with an idea that some lamentable incomes answers or as much as you can now works until somebody doesn't concern when you get there tangents out there but it is by and large working very well it's where the focus is right now i am natural resource management of our public plans especially in the resources on those public glance you find areas where there is a lot of public apathy
in the surprises you by the lack input yes i'm always amazed on new issues that you think you're just gonna blow things up here will put a proposal for an idea out there we'll nothing will have public meeting or a workshop three people won't show up it does no big event right what i think what we're doing right here though with a pie cast what we can do with social media to try to get this information out on a broader sense because i'm old enough i still like to sit down have a cup of coffee and read my paper okay what i'm realizing now that my paper is only three pages long and if i'm going to really get any information i'm going to have to set down at least with my tablet and my cup of coffee and and read through that and if i've got a tablet than i can hotline can to the the next level of information if i desire and that might lead me then to some of these other discussion groups
information from folks like yourself that can i help us for we engage people in a day manner of community as we were forward with these thanks part of the reason these folks are here the two staff are to help us with that in terms of how do we get how do we do how do we communicate better i came during an era where we did a magazine and we had a tv show no one does magazines and idea that that's get the public rest of them in newspaper articles i mean it was all print or media driven under an analog system we need to end our transgressing getting into the digital stuff
the building wherein here right now is an example of that digital technology yeah we're at the or at the white the onyx world headquarters was just moved next door oh okay while we're at their annex the other thread the the annex one thing i was going to throw in there and you know you mentioned the apathy i've been to some of those meetings where two or three people in fact this summer i think i talked to you about this stuff the de you was doing on the upper clark fork and you know if you go down to the bar you go down to charlie bees everyone will talk about everybody every fishing guides got an opinion about it but i think some of that apathy is derived from the fire no one knows who really accountable for stubbornly tell a story about the reservoir getting drawn down and this massive i'm coming out i would imagine i don't know that this for a fact that that fishing community down there was pride on whose accountable for this whose whose megan up for
know this money that we're losing etc etc and i think some of that the comes out of the fact that people figure on the matter what things nuclear player right so far i think that that's true because you hear somebody these issues some of the ones we ve touched on today you hear people bottom and passionate about it but the if they open the mouth i'm like you know you're not equipped to talk about this brow just buy a handful of things you just said like you're behind you're not caught up yeah and i mean virgil you articulated that that was collaborating so well and it sounds like when those people come together there has to be some level of compromise in those different entities are collaborative manage by its nature is given take i mean it's but it also builds on relationships and under standing a core understanding that
mine need and value really isn't that much different example being the rancher has a piece of property but relies on the public sagebrush grasses to have his lifestyle his ranching lifestyle me he's got arrays bohemia's graze cattle arrive communist graze another glance rare and and the values that environment because its home he knows it as well as anybody because he's lived therefore maybe three or four generations in his family and we can't exclude their needs and be successful example being sage grouse sage need water for an important part of their brood rearing even in idaho with all the public lands we have which is sixty three percent federal another five percent of state i mean it's huge
almost all the waters on private land that's what was homestead it and so if you put a rancher out of business because you're saying you can't graze up here because of endangered species and pull their whole operation into their little piece of land that has all the water and they it began to feed their and utilise all the habitat up the sage grouse suffer in the long run because its disconnect we need the community now they get there what's good further heard is good for the bird is the cat phrase that we use now calls not condos right right and an that's exactly right we want these operational ranches out there that are part of the landscape and can be managed in in conjunction with the other resources we value they ve seen it in the past they know what can be done we ve seen it and so now it's just a matter of being sure we not restrict any of our activities
the point that everybody is gives up goes home and that's that's cool that's had that's thing i worried about all time think about one thing about wildlife issues is what happens when you create the damage it's done when you create a spotted owl despite our conversation round spot allow the spotted owl like ceased to be a bird and it became like is this symbol of something and it became a thing of animosity and it became a symbol of divisiveness then when you allow some of these conflicts to go to faster in strive for some compromise and like people coming to a mutual understanding of what they need to go haven't he's like these like wild fatalities in terms of like what the species stands for it is painful to watch it happen if you ve heard of a wolf rise beautiful
people want to have more people like when i hear that noise i think about like my needs napping listen to man and that's the only thing i'm hearing right there socks to see that happen to twelve i think the way they had that off is usually you these ways like like what you need but also giving room to other people to also live their lives and have their needs be met and it's like it's hard do i do not look at these issues that way when i was younger i looked at him in a very rigid way we're like i was right you were wrong and you were stupid i was real smart knows it then do you know the more you round a watch successes and failures around some stuff timor you realize man is never going to there are the attitude that's correct i we never got to the question what are some like big fit what an efficient gave great this game not they're talking about figured out like the the ones their legitimate right we want more big fish
that will be on holding out there's no bakers simplistically but certainly if the legitimate complaint you ask what the legitimate complaint is and it would be that we don't know everything about the spot you hunt don't you come to me and you said you know how many dear or what the dull ratio is an i'll timber creak of unit five i'm gonna go now but i can tell you what the backdoor ratio is in units three four and five overall from the combined survey work we ve done but no we don't know and it is a legitimate complaint that we have set management goals based on larger survey units this person it's coming
point is you don't know what you're talking about relative to timber creek cause i sat the same blind for twenty five years and i always see acts and this year i saw why and it's legitimate from the standpoint of what they see we talked about that earlier and why we're trying to do now is look different ways of censuses wildlife under standing what's out there go from a traditional site bay survey work where we have to see them count them kill them aside some whatever the case may be one thing that provides a different level of that i mean remote cameras is still kind of seeing but we can get a lot more of them out there i mean i just saw him bring an truckload a remote cameras and our office that we be stop sent out all the regions hundreds of these things that were put now
in matrix to try to get better understanding of what in timber creek as an example the verses just the larger units based on aerial flights were using her snags and scott analysis pulling dna out of these animals so that we track families we and tell you by looking at dna from wolf scat whether in that represent the family unit whether or not they were successful with getting a pair getting a brood off by giving proper sampling of pieces in part because we can type those are nobody today worth advanced peter analysis and the speed at which we can do things from when i started my career is i can't even fathom
i mean dna analysis is a good example we have the dna make up of every hatchery fish we stuck out an m it's it's amazing that we are parental based stock analysis you take a fish in the ocean i can take offense after a swab off of that fish and analysis and i can tell you which hatchery came out of them which female produced it and and that and i can do it darn near in a couple of days i mean it would have taken you months to pull something like that off before and not with that specificity but i got a lab full of people that are krink in this stuff out and it's gone on all over the place and and were advancing and trying to push the limit that's the science that's a science fiction almost of wildlife management as we move forward it does not eliminate the hands on stuff
trapping of animals to put collars on i'm so we can go in and assess how they died weather it was predation natural whatever better at that we still have a lot of that the fun stuff jumping out of a helicopter honour on a calf open welcome and wrestling to the ground catching fish in a trap and important tags on that's just fine handling wildlife is really a kick its got me into this business and learning from them but were were trying to get better at this and in a drone technology and infrared technology isn't quite area i mean these satellite collars we put on out now up to a satellite back down computer there instantly on a map and we can program to do it five minutes our every ten hours depending on what we want and were able to use that to help landowners understand where an l kurdish relative depredation on their hasty
and that's real time management while we track some stuff around so working toward tardiness telled i gotta go on from his blood that's the legitimate complaint we ve heard it we're working using technology and triumph put more resources into it fortunately in idaho our finances are secure for the time being we went through a low like everybody else when the economy tanked our revenues dropped by twenty five percent rule why you tied to the economy because people that's good question steve were tied to the economy because half of our licence revenue for non resident oscar but their only ten percent of our hunters and in the past so i want you to hear this half of our revenue are licensed revenue which is around forty four million dollars a year half of it
little over half of it comes from non resident hunters who comprise ten percent now we have a lot of non resident fisherman but the don't generate nearly the same money cause are buying one day presents it's it's a high volume low cost proud of the economy goes south people are like i can't i can't go to idaho hunting this year and we did not realize how sensitive it was we'd never seen it before but when the economy tanked in two thousand and nine we have a on non resident hunting permits in idaho it's thirteen thousand five hundred i'll tags fifteen thousand five hundred dear tax when though you're gone for gender hunting they're gone we never sold we ve never not sold those out up until two thousand and nine
good now can we always solemn out so half of our revenue was guaranteed that you did in ghana and we we did three things we raise the price of non resident fees so we didn't have to on resident r l kurds tank because a predation and other habitat related issues and the economy tank all three of those things combined over a four year period drive our revenues down by nine million dollars it was huge here who is huge and what we found is now non residents are elastic they're coming here the further analysis showed that was partially the perception that r l kurds had collapsed and it was worth it their part was portion of those people who stayed away were skilled trades folks construction construction got hit hardest those guys were selling their trucks to
the family they were they were not working because the housing market collapsed nan was the economy start coming up about a year behind that then people got over the provided creases and land we we discounted non resident products we marketed to them but the last two years we sold online or non resident product out again does this state keep track i'm sure they do but i know the montana guides and outfitters association just put out a reported at the door recreation industry in montana brings in lakes seven point one billion annually we have those numbers for hunting and fishing in idaho i believe the direct economic benefit is one point four billion for i don't has an economy of about sixty six billion so there gives you some sense of where it fits it's pretty sizeable number
and then wildlife viewing adds about another six hundred million to that's we're about a two billion dollar omg activity and the state on a while my based economic activity all out were based recreation is i think six billion yards it's at that six billion dollar figure so now just your ten percent of the economy of the state is outdoor based and a third of that based on what life so it's yeah yeah it's important and we can drill that down we've done the surveys if you want to know how much people what the economic benefits are of somebody fishing henry's lake and go to i'll pull information up until your may fish they cod how much minus how much money spent on groceries and housing weed that information from serve asian we can give it to me the commissioners will give local working group and especially its big so tell me
classification of gripe that you feel is illogical like what the thing you guys in your business people i got a fish and game and you like maybe just isn't fair to one is never listen you never listened to less you never do what i want them an end i get it but it's not a legitimate complaint given the amount of public input that are can see seeks the requirements for public input of a state agency are minimal i mean it like one public meeting before the commission makes decision cash we have dozens if not hundreds of public meetings over a year dance of regulation setting opportunities for input electronically and other ways so i dont consider those to be legitimate complaints because
there are so many opportunities what that might mean is i told my opinion and it wasn't reflected in what ultimately happened so the other one is you don't know what you're talking about in other words will do a survey by them a social survey that asked for steve you get a survey from us and i says are you satisfied with deer hunting would you be satisfied worth fewer large box but more hunting returning bunch of social science questions that we work with the university design and they go act and they go we don't believe any of this doesn't conform with my opinion was so we don't believe it ends and we see the same thing from deer and elk population surveys they go because they didn't see it we don't believe that
you do not know what you're talking about that is not a legitimate complaint we are a science based organisation weather its social science with its biological science stand on our science and i can tell you having been a leadership role in a state agency for over a decade and working nationally among my peers and other state agencies i can tell you that in the intermountain west we have some of the finest fish wildlife scientist in the world in idaho we know more about predation management and argument management than just about anybody in the work we're on top of the game and i'm proud of them do we have things we dont know absolutely do we have more to learn and work to do absolutely i dont say we don't know what we're no one just understand we don't know everything and we're still trying to get that so
that would be what i would consider the other thing that really bothers me that i consider is when people personalized interaction with department staff i dont like steve steve didn't approached me properly that very well could be and every complaint i get a negative interaction with staff is for we investigated and responded to and so i and up knowing that most of these are not legitimate in fact it's very seldom than i thought one time that i've spent investigating these over the last twenty years that you find it quite that's usually because the individual didn't get the outcome whether it was he got a citation where he got information he didn't want or whatever the case may be an all
certainly when you go back through an end the facts it's it's not there and that doesn't mean that the person didn't feel that way but that didn't actually happen that way it's one of the advantages of taper quarters and video camera it pretty much takes care of we i've actually seen people look at those and go oh i have no idea i did that they don't remember that part of it you know it's it's we have selective memory of humans and it's just the way it happens sometimes as a ban on what we miss readers will say anything you're dying to get into that we didn't get as well i will say one of the other things that i think is important and important to all you guys around the table is public access certainly in a public lance state we tend to think of it and take our public access but we also have a huge amount of private land
in a night all we had out of state person from texas commanded by up hundred thousand plus acres of timber lamp and immediately fenced end quote that all the public access where the for timber company had allowed pub access on it before was a huge eye opener two sportsmen and us to suddenly have lost a big chunk of a hunting unit that was very important folks and it caused us to really start thinking about how to we enhance our ability to protect these large corporate lands from being closed so that the pub can continue to enjoy the wildlife that they own that we manage for them on those lands as well so two years ago the legislature gave us some additional funds with a fee increase we ask for part of it
want to pay for depredation damaged if you increase mean the license in greek licence fee and creation as they what you do with that money what we're done and a part of it was to enhance what we call access yes it's a problem with had furlano lahti years but it was a bubble and along with three to four hundred thousand dollars most of a coming in from are lottery the game tag super hunt people would by those chances mouse funding our access programme now you pay money on every licence sold whether its hunting fishing it's five dollar fee portion of that five dollars about half of it goes into the access account now we're we've added about one point four million to that account so probably tripling what we ve got available for access yes that money goes toward making private lives be they corporate or just private deeded properties
public access to the right are eager to that land to hunt and fish or through land to get to public glance either way we can do at either way we have real success for upland bird hunting and stuff like that around the boise areas some of the southern part of the state we had a lot of success in the large corporate lands in the centre and and part of the state we also had a threat to statements statements are about four million are about two point four million acres and they were under threat of least four x subunits had some people saying i want a lease this state section that's next private land for explosives for hunting and fishing so far we ve been able to sidestep that but state law requires
the department of lands to generate maximum revenue for schools for the school trust fund is some guys willing to pay more than what the public right can pay we don't have any choice so we just signed an agreement with lands approved by the landlord and commission that use a portion of that access yes money we're paying weren't mental lands for all so ass to their lands on every bit of it for hunting fishing and wildlife base recreation so if preserved the opportunity now and demand the likelihood of an adverse exclusive use agreement on those lines that's gonna cost us about three thousand dollars a year do you feel all you guys are right now every year adding accessible acreage they got a net loss when it went off he considered
ah hope to announce shortly we have an agreement on private timberland that secure access to another million acres of of land in the next couple of weeks and that agreement we will in that game itself so we're using that additional money and we went out for proposals for what we call large corporate land handlers would you propose to us for a fee we could pay you to gain access for hunting and fishing to your large corporate lands we have those proposals were evaluating those proposals were very close to a
worrying to some of those proposals at this point in time that will add in excess of a million acres congratulations yeah i'm i'm really proud of that and the staff work that went into it i my hats off to our legislature for allowing that increase to be dedicated to that purpose as well but it's a big and i see that as giving us the annual finance more resources needed to secure this ended the future so i just wanted to get that in their steve that were that of all the things we hear from sportsmen even in a public state is access they want we're access or i lost my access which you said it's somebody down a private entity bought that for he acres a hundred and twenty are three sixty or whatever it is it's now posted it's it's important that were actually meeting here at the annex place because
this idea of where are you add and pass is very important private landowners are very sensitive to trespass how do you know there's some posting requirements but it's still in a big open state like this where you wander up one side of the mountain down the other and you come in on the backside and you walk up to a fence it's next to the road and it's posted and you didn't say anything when you came down the other side where is it your research once melded you know europe versus the landowners responsibility to post and we're moving that you have a high responsibility to know i agree and i know how there is some posting responsibilities of the private landowner on non agricultural land basically timber and range lamp but i think we're very quickly moving to the point where you gotta know where you're out all the time
near its your responsibility and not the land on urgent annoy the easier it is but again does everybody carry our a smartphone orgy ps around with them no most of us do that or avid but not everybody else does and so part of it is getting the mapping getting the information out there and again technology to do that and are certainly talking about letting people know that in idaho you go on our website we have a hunt planet you say i want to go hot white tailed dear and i want a hamlet in timber creating game i use my example again it will pay what the maps show you yet is an excellent spot is that is that is gives dry yeah right it looks better and it'll tell you the land ownership it'll tell you the regulations it'll tell you everything about that piece of land however you want to scale it to look at what can do in that area and
couple that with these machines and and some other third party software so you know where you're out all the time you're gonna go and and i still got i would have to say dozens that's probably hundreds of quiet maps there are followed up and in the under the ceiling on ice or canada the sea to my truck and i am i pull those things out and jam in my backpack i still carry a real compass with me because these are reliable the batteries go did you don't have access i the download that's all it was on resident so i still value paper maths i think this will have a role i agree and i think it's something that we as mentors hunters should be teaching them my if there's a last thing i want to say about idaho being the opportunity state and the need for us as hunters and anglers mentor people in
to teach them the ethics and responsible interaction with wildlife the respect for that wildlife live or dead that needs to be there as we utilise consumer well yeah i revel in the experiences around the campfire which we all do those are important proud to say that in idaho we have a thing called the passport if you're a hunter and you know somebody that's never hunted and then making no whether there a kid or an adult somebody moves into town and sees that you're a hunter i would really like to go up but they don't have hunter red or anything else you go down to the to the rice and splendor as a hunter you can sponsor that person and get a passport that is what the cost of three
we find a dollar seventy five then you can if you want to think directly via dear technical with it shoot birds for i love that year and then that there is no good together go to ninety one time opportunity the men are somebody but it's great it it gets this obstacle cash i'd really like to go with you but i dont have for delay get that for you now ready to go up again we came up against over thanks weekend weaker we're all gonna have dna giving family stuff we're all gonna have hot enemy not to do tat we start looking up he wouldn't have a tag be like this person licence died and this is the way you can do it if you had a movie that it now hunted before just they come down and get it and they gotta be company by a licence hunter that it me and you can take kids as young as eight that payment had a chance to read if you're a parent or
a guardian or whatever that word isn't idaho kick put dear what i re use of age they can small game and birds they can dear until there ten break off that's what that's what i thought yeah no just broke the silence but what else is undermined moment kind of on the opportunity theme i owe does trophy species weak only apply from one of them there three right you re you go sheep and moose were you around one that was the place that system and then just what are your general thoughts on cars that we really like it i mean i i liked the way this setup that you guys don't do the bonus points and preference points and all that to deal with that big mess and they put the once in a lifetime back in the once in a lifetime that's correct we
longer column trophy species there once in a lifetime again getting at that perceptual mean you can really never draw again not now for once in a lifetime example of that and the answer he i was brown and our commission has the authority to do bonus points they look at it about every five to six years it comes back up and every time we provide them the the information about what it means they always have backed away from it in idaho but you make a lot of money do bonds points from a financial standpoint i will tell you the last this came up about seven years ago when we were tanking financially it was looking pretty darn good to me as a director trying to figure out how to keep for deeper into the whole but it
a pyramid scheme from a sportsman standpoint i'll be honest with depending on which method you use are so many different ways to do it but if you keep getting opportunity to use your points if it goes up sequentially every year because more people are getting into it if create the pyramid scheme that those who get in first or near the bottom are okay but though come commander the bottom may have four five six years before they even get to that point depending on how many jam into it it may not go therefore some species and that what we look tat is for very hard to draw species bighorn sheep mountain goat you may not get their even with bonus points for europe both boys i'm going into the montana bighorn sheep draw this year
square i'm here not enough no gone with three hundred and forty four points and five lifetimes where the bonus points that i still run into sub one percent chance drawing the tag and that's what you get into is the squaring thing the other methods of trying to make sure everybody in there eventually gets one and but the commission has chosen are commission and this is back as far as five years ago when it first came up i remember i was fisheries guy at the time when i heard the first discussion with continue to give that presentation over the years to new commission says they come on the presentation is by the way online on our website so really ever want to look at it it has some gaming stuff in there that helps you understand how the various techniques work and what the end result is it does ok for moderate level controlled hans
what does that have under twenty one odds if it's less than five one aren't you don't need it anyway you're gonna get one in a couple years without that but in in intermediate range works really lead to guarantee if you'll stand there for three to five years she'll can attack on the higher than twenty the one it falls part in that part of the problem is where do you use it and how do you apply had relatives so our commission is just chosen to stay away from it but there's no guaranteed or stay like that no none whatsoever and active change overall are the constituents have this is where we have what i would consider a mobile group or hunters that moves around multiple states and hans we have a lot of our majority of our hunters just now
the folks who move around by other states like points because they can piling up in all the different states and they spend a lot of money accumulating that mine tags and whatever so they can accumulate there they seem to like that because they ve covered their board of the residence don't necessarily there there more place oriented with the way do things and i just want to know but they ve got it equal chance with everybody else and let her kid or grandkid has side equal chance like everybody else so yeah back to the once in a lifetime just kill the most last year my nice bull on the south fork of the snake drew day i drew a tag after seven years now it took me seven ers delicate time better right it doesn't work that way unfortunately seven years any drew i drew one killed a nice boy last year i'm done now
and put in for a cow tag if we ve got a population and is growing too fast we're gonna take some cows out that's it women i'm gonna move i'm done almost an idle i had a friend who drew she must be what friday the thirties right yeah i'd say early it'll be done you're just done so big horn sheep we have to species so you get one for each the desert bighorn and right rocky mountain bighorn so you can have two opportunities there but mountain one in your done he knows the terrible stay they made you can you can buy all points now whether in the banana so even though my kids are old enough to actually hunt i can get we're not gonna middle i got him all numbers biggest are by and they take their allowance or the decks your form by the bonus points someone there like twenty
don't kick of seventeen bonus points that's horrible i'll take advantage of it because it's there it's it's horrible guilty doing its work just a behavioral latest gains the system and blows it is because they are being managed let they should let people let me do stuff myself you're part of the problem you're going to go ahead and do it anyway yeah you're in this state like they assign so when you go to ale at that there's a good customer number your customer number is your day and then the number after is how many people with your birth they have so many when they were the ale s system came in out my ill as numbers number three meals a third guy with my birthday to get to apply for a number now they're assigning numbers of europe in the hundreds right but my little kids who are three five and eight i would did them ass numbers in there all number one
the swamp i without some i the game because noel with is nor with that birthday has gone down so they're gonna kill it i just can't decide how far i'm going to run with this but i do feel guilty about it now i might even not do i case decide well you'll get life may at some say it you have to do that with your grandchildren it comes as they get expense how right there's a multiplication question when you're when economy tanked and you're trying to figure out a way to get some more money the dedicated sales tax ever come up cause there's couple days have done very well with that we ve looked at it how gosh five years ago we did a thing called the wildlife summit and is trying to bring folks together talk about one life on a state wide basis and and outcome of that was trying to build understanding of the needs of all wildlife and that we worked
able to generate enough revenue take her the needs of the eighty percent of non and other wildlife that was out there a what i call a loose coffee cups of conservation groups after that was done we did a survey of the whole ones to see whether or not they would support an initiative that either dedicate a portion of the sales tax or support an increase the increase was less than fifty percent people just want willing to do that it was lightly over fifty percent of the folks were willing to sell port a dedicated portion of the existing sales ok so
well the the the folks that know the politics of initiatives and everything said that given where we were at in the political cycle with elections and everything else that that was not probably they could at the signatures to get it on the ballot but they weren't sure whether they would make it and it depends on whether or not you have an entity well funded that will oppose it if you don't have any well funded opposition you can run thanks through that we're getting at sales tax whether its and increase or a piece of the existing physician was gonna be huge yet and so that puts killer loose coffee clash folks backed away from that at this point in time for the state of ida hope the beautiful people missouri pulled it off they did and being a missouri and i was in college during the time that that stuff was going forward net took them
twelve years of trying different did well over me i tell the story like yours they rallied around right because when it passed it passes i mean quite unanimous but but it was a high support and and years it did they they want with a pop tax and a beer tax and failed on that they tried all kinds of things before they came up with some one eighth one percent sales tax increase which has been the gold standard florida does a real estate transfer tax every time a piece a real estate cells there's a piece of that feed in almost four you should pay when you buy a piece property while there's a little piece of land in there now it goes to the while my fun and that's working for them down there they went down when one thinks tanked but it went back up our concern iowa want with a similar sales tax system as missouri and arkansas
got theirs through iowa got there through but they didn't fund it so in on the mechanisms air but they didn't initiate it says most everybody that dips likes to hunt fish they just have a tip that i'm with you on that so that there is a solution though i don't want to leave this before i speak to a solution that's live in congress right now it's called restoring america's while my fact following a word it would take the on royalties from oil and gas and mining mining onshore and the onshore offshore its all of that royalties and and that royalty package is around twelve fourteen billion a year right now dedicate one point three billion of that end the pitman robertson fund a subset of it was a double the phone it would double the fun and it would
then that money would come back to the states based on the size of the state and the population very similar to the way we do pr for hunting which is a number hunting licences and the size of the state comes the state to manage a very familiar mechanism for the south to get financial resources to manage all while by that's a reallocation is that a new tax nets as reallocation of of a fund it is the fund that the land and water conservation fund taps two right now and so there is legislation our own senator russian state abide with sponsoring it on the senate site it's at over one hundred co sponsors on the house side right now they've got good bipartisan support it does the the house supporters and one hundred and five and it's split almost equally down the middle close bunch sponsorship on the senate site i'm not sure of that sponsors the four i'm familiar with a bipartisan so sir
the senate which different than the house on that stuff anyway so we're hoping that they'll get to get a major hearing on this we ve had some smaller hearings it's moving forward i what's it was classified as a moon shot to get through this congress with between the time they adjourn in december but it's still live and senator russia's trying to get a hearing going on it this would be huge first like i to home if we got allocation would be on the fifteen to seventeen million dollars annually so you and i'll take that our total to eat d j p r allocation is about that much so it the the
wildlife diversity nongame program on the same footing and allows us to have the resources to manage all wildlife populations the fear lotta hunters and anglers fear loss of control of their commissions and departments man ass yours and and not a legitimate fear but i go back to my home state of missouri and see what happened there i mean they pumped hunt and ten million dollars a year into their budget it's the majority of their budget they got about another sixty million i thank and licence sales other money in their thereabout twice ass big budget wisest state of idaho with with what they ve got back there but hunting and fishing is better and stronger there now as a result of having that
collaborative of all users in things done and so when you look at the case histories of states have had this additional money florida being the other example honey fishing there is action a booming if those additional resources it will mean some changes and in how we go about interacting with the public on allocation of budget but certainly idle thanks to be feared it's to be managed i have respect but i understand how i understand the viewpoint of people being leery about new voices right sitting around the table new voices at the table and i get that still think that is better than to go with the money and in ill play the game however you need to play it but to put to go with the extra funding and then sort the rest out after the fact or at least go into it with the right kind of mind frame and while our track
record but where we have financial resources and focus if there's a sensitive species out there i can keep off the list or an get em off the list with that kind of financial resources i know we can do it because we ve done it and now and i'm i would be anxious to see that pulled off we'll see again it's a moonshot but it's live and it's moving forward we've been two years moving us forward the group that put it together was a group called the blue ribbon panel and i'm johnny morris from bass pro now cabello two was the culture along with governor of a former governor frieden for all from wyoming and most everybody on that panel were ngos and private business it wasn't it government folks they're the ones and looked at this and said yeah and that their first recommendation was this one point three billion that's where we focused the second
is increasing our relevancy to all people about my life management money goes a long way to helping that but certainly how do we as hunters and anglers show that the use of hunting fishing and trapping for wildlife management is relevant to everybody i think that's a big part of the challenge that we have in the future is hunters and anguish to maintain relevancy we ve got the support we ve got that mid seventy support for traditional hunting even higher for fishing we're just gonna hang onto it and we do it by doing what we know what's hunters and anguish we are conservation is first and we lead the way with our own actions and activities to get the stuff them final thoughts gross man a virgil school meals arise fantastic virgil fur department of interior
something right half a day means dc a great place i've learned a tough one they are going to ask you maybe with some so you're says yes programme is efficient game the only state the in charge of curing more public access we have the ita home department of and recreation then has responsibility for trail access for both motorized and foot travel and we were very closely with them they also have responsibility for some boating access we have our own boating access programme they have theirs counties have some responsibility because they get a piece of the dj angle johnson funds but as far
as ah and based hunting and fishing and trapping worry it right the others are directed at more generalised recreation or motorized or power boat recreation in that particular case and compared to what were put on the table financially it's a very small piece of it seems like and i in montana as well the public the economy better so much from yes our public landed that in more entities should be putting chips on the table to procure i think some of the ngos are huge player sir rocky mountain help foundation has they do atone for they do and may they ve been very cooperative collaborative there
money to bring to the table that match with anything you ve got and a mule dear foundation to a lesser degree as is part of that those are the two primary players trout unlimited does some four stream access for free for fishing and we ve got some some other players in there but i dont want to dismiss some of those ngos that have been very focused and effective particularly came out and help with their initiative to get access through private land to public lamb they ve been able to really i do some good things are thank you thank you we did it we did a deep dive me a lot of fun i enjoy this stuff fresh eggs to dingle johnson
you got it all give me some more time will give you more you own a heavy bag how long are you retiring right i am i'll i'll be retiring in january to come back for big shit talk and says i can i can better yet i'll come over and i dunno if this stuff works on the back of a jet boat while wonder if trolling for steelhead we can we can plug it all into an inverter and we'll make this stuff work and live fish and we can do a live fish and she did alive ice fishing show one time i can do that too i've got a place on cascade reservoir and we can scoot right out on the ice and kept some of those trophy perch that we ve got their yellow yellow perch i saw i'm going well versed were pushing eighteen inches eighteen and a half we met and it states still got to three year classes in there that are grown into that so it's a fish in us
story i gotta get this right now they are like while i these things are huge i mean now fourteen and sixteen and perch our routine their yeah you catch three of those new got dinner that's great it is it was great
stay tuned in thank you good thinking
Transcript generated on 2023-03-14.