00:00:10
Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Col’s Week in Review with Ryan cal Calaan.
00:00:18
Speaker 2: Here’s Cal.
00:00:21
Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Cal’s Week Interview, or Cal the While, as we’re calling all things these days. Good friend of mine, Ted Cook with the North American Grouse Partnership. Ted and I have known each other for a long time. In fact, he’s been on this podcast, but in a very reserved capacity, and he generously gave the big spotlight that he deserves to a bunch of ranchers that are part of the Lesser Prairie Chicken land Owner Alliance. Ted is a return hired and endangered species biologist. He is the current CEO of North American Grouse Partnership. Correct yes, yes, yeah, And we shot this out a little bit online the other week. North Dakota has officially announced that the greater sage grouse is The headline said extinct, but it would be extirpated, would be the more.
00:01:35
Speaker 2: That’s the better word. Yeah, extinct, it’s like final everywhere. This has just gone from this part of the range.
00:01:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it’s they’re the greater sage grouse is an amazing bird. I love it. I grew up hunting that bird. I hunt them every season and they’re just like another example of conservation. Isn’t convenient because they need a specific habitat to proliferate. Really they can hang on, but they don’t do well without old growth sagebrush.
00:02:12
Speaker 2: Right yep, and the lack of tall structures. Just healthy sage rush habitat, that’s all. It’s simple, healthy sagebrush habitat.
00:02:20
Speaker 1: Yeah. So that’s why Ted Cook is on and we’re going to talk about not only the greater sage grouse, but we’ll probably get into some other gallinaceous species. And the only reason I know that word galinacious is from teb So so if that’s not reason for spotlight enough, I don’t know what it is. How we’re sage grouse doing.
00:02:49
Speaker 2: Well, you know? So I’ll start with this framing cal of the nine prairie grouse populations present in North America historically, six of them are either extinct or recognized under the Endangered Species Act, and the other three are declining. So greater sage grouse are among the three are declining, along with sharp tailed grouse and greater prairie chickens. The other six you know, heath hens are extinct. That’s the eastern prairie grouse that’s been extinct for a century at waters. Prairie chickens Texas Coast are functionally extinct in the wild, trying to reintroduce, and you’ve got greater you have two populations of lesser prairie chickens, you have two smaller populations of sage grouse, and they’re all either listed or candidates for are listing under the Endangered Species Act. And so prairie grouse in general are in decline, have been declining. And perhaps your listeners already know that grasslands in which all these prairie grouse, including sage grouse depend on. Grasslands are the most threatened ecosystem on the continent and then the world. And it’s the mission of the North American Grouse Partnership to try to highlight this fact and use these charismatic galinacious birds as you say, that’s the you of these chickens, turkeys, quailed, their gallinasous birds are the ground oriented birds to use the prairie grouse. And so that’s greater prairie chickens, lesser prairie chickens, sharp tailed grouse, sage grouse, those are the kind of the four species groups of prairie grouse. The North Mary Grouse Partnership is trying to feature these prairie grouse species, highlight their plight, and issue our call for action to stop and reverse the losses of grasslands the most threatened ecosystem, so greater stage grouse among that, they’re just on that downward trend along with everything else.
00:04:34
Speaker 1: Now, some of my listeners are going to know this already, but we just talked about greater sage grouse needing the sage brush. So why are you saying grasslands? Yes, great question.
00:04:48
Speaker 2: So the sagebrush ecosystem is more precisely referred to as the sage brush step ecosystem. Step. Now, that’s step spelled step pe and step with the extra P in the extra e means grass land, so it’s sagebrush grass land. And so then you know sharp tail grouse and other prairie grouse a lot of places where sharptail grass exists, they can actually coexist with some shrub component in there with sage grouse. Uniquely, they are sage brush obligates. But rare is it that you will find a sage brush, particularly in areas with sage grouse that’s taller than say three or four feet high. If you get structures eight feet tall or taller, that begins to become a turnoff for prairie grouse. They do not do well around tall structures. They’ve evolved to avoid tall structures because tall structures are where raptors purge to hunt them. And so sage grouse kind of fall onto that moniker of prairie grouse because it’s sage brush step sage rush grass land ecosystem, and the sage brush isn’t much taller than the grass around it. But yeah, stage grouse are really unique in the prairie grouse world in that there they can exist without that low sage component in their grassland habitat.
00:06:07
Speaker 1: So I guess why have we seen the not extirpation, but the extinction of these other grouse species.
00:06:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, the other grouse populations as we call them. It’s you know, biology is actually a lot messier than you think. You know, what’s the species, what’s the subspecies, what’s the population? And so a lot of times population is determined by how we manage them. Other times it’s determined more by genetic or other biochemical differences. Other times it’s determined by differences in habitat. But at the nine populations, heathens became extinct, and to a significant degree because of overhunting settlers settled on the East coast Man they were a convenient chicken to eat for dinner. And the last one was last seen. The last male was seen strutting by itself for the last two years of its life on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, the last bastion of heathens. And then you get Atwater’s Perry chickens along the Texas Gulf Coast. And that’s all the rest of the piagraphs cal It’s habitat loss and fragmentation, and so Atwater’s Perry chickens and all the Leicester Prairie chickens now the Southwestern Great Plains recently listed under the Endangered Species Act, all habitat loss and fragmentation.
00:07:28
Speaker 1: And do you want to just explain fragmentation? You know, I can explain some of this stuff, I promise, But my golden rule is, once you get a biologist talking about their thing, it’s best to just let them roll.
00:07:43
Speaker 2: So fragmentation, you know a lot of us who love to hunt fish know this when we think about you know, mule deer or pronghorn migrations right just you know, a subdivision in the wrong spot, or you know, a deer proof fence in the wrong spot can massively disrupt fragment habitat for those large mammals. Same exact thing for prairie grouse. You put a power line corridors through a swath of good looking prairie grouse habitat, and those prairie grouse see that as an enormous obstacle to get past. You put a highway underneath that, it’s gotten even worse. And then you till some of that range land and you convert into a farm ground using some of the eggs subsidies that pay you to do it, even if you never get a crop off of it, and that’s it. That fragments habitat. That habitat is fragmented, you know, for a long time to come.
00:08:36
Speaker 1: So fragmentation, right can be anything from a new housing subdivision would be like a big example. But in the case of these prairie birds where they are predisposed to avoid, we’re talking hundreds of thousands of years of predator evasion have taught them to avoid tall st ructures. It can be something as simple as people planning the wrong type of trees or a power line corridor, you know, which we can fix things like that a lot easier than we can some of the other forms of development. Yeah, and then on the habitat loss side of things, we’re typically seeing what agricultural changes moving from grazing to row crop.
00:09:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s right. And so egg and energy development are the two big ones across the range of the various prairie grouse species. And yeah, the big one is And I didn’t even realize this until I started working with the ranchers the last protecal lander alliance. But what happens is US Department of Bag offers subsidies to landowners to break out their grasslands, turn them into tilled farmland, and they get paid the full value of that crop for that year, even if they never pull off a crop. And so if you’re a rancher, you’re faced with make and say, you know whatever, one hundred bucks an acre selling cows or one hundred and fifty bucks an acre guaranteed payment from the federal government if you break out your grand and ground and try to farm it, whether you ever pull off a crop or not. I mean, what would most of us do. Would you want to get paid one hundred dollars an acre to do more work or one hundred and fifty dollars an acre to well, you know, we would pick the one hundred fifty dollars an acre. Whether it’s more or less work depends on the circumstance.
00:10:40
Speaker 1: Well, sure, yeah, I understand that part of it. But how do you reconcile the fact that the Endangered Species Act is also largely handled at the federal level. So isn’t the ESA talking to the Department of Agriculture.
00:11:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that’s a great question. So in the air in the one place, I guess, now, to two places where we have prairie grouse species listed to the Endandered Species Act, don’t those prohibitions prohibitions against take of endangered species prevent those programs from being implemented. And the short answer is yes, they would if the fact set caused it to be so. But prairie growths are notoriously difficult to find and monitor, and they move around to different places at different times of the year, and so and all of this is private land, private Rangeland and so if a rancher says, you know, I want to break out those hundred acres over here and get paid to farm it, it’s pretty difficult to develop a fact set around there and have evidence and then have the federal government have the temerity to try to prosecute that landowner to prevent them from converting to farmland. That’s the reality is that’s just not happening right now, that kind of prohibition.
00:12:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, And why would it ever need to get to prosecution.
00:12:13
Speaker 2: Well, because there’s lots of contradictory policies in the federal government that go on being implemented side by side forever. And so for the Department of Interior to persuade the Department of Agriculture to not offer those subsidies in certain areas because of prairie gross seems untenable to me, because then those ranchers in those areas that want to break out their ranch land are going to say, what are you talking about? Why can’t I do this? I’m not harming chickens when I do this. You can’t prove that, you know, pay me to be a farmer instead of a rancher. So that’s the conflicting policies. There’s not a natural fit to have one policy talked to.
00:12:53
Speaker 1: The other and have them work it out, which is why it seems like something you could work out. Well, yeah, what’s the hurdle here? Yeah, so, and in fact you can.
00:13:07
Speaker 2: And this is the leadership that Lesser pratickal Land Alliance wants to provide. So what they’re saying because some of our less Praticklenar Alliance members, one of them, in particularly, he earns ten thousand acres. Five thousand of that is in farming. Five thousand of that is in ranching. That’s permanently conserved for lesser prairie chickens. The reason that five thousand is permanently conserved is because when his neighbors and other business people approached him and said, hey, we can break out another three thousand of your remaining five thousand acres of grassland and turn that into farm ground. You can double your money overnight. That rancher said, thanks, but no thanks. I want to stay a rancher. I know I could sell out, I know I could make more money, but I really want to keep this as ranch land. And part of the reason why is He is one of the most passionate archery, deer and antelope punters you will ever meet in your life. He gets it, he gets it right, and he loves Leicester prairie chickens, and he feels it’s his responsibility to steward lesser prairie chickens, and he patiently sought out opportunities to sell a conservation easement on his land to a conservation buyer to permanently protect the five thousand acres for chickens. But it shouldn’t have to be that hard. It shouldn’t take an exceptional rancher like that, who loves hunting and loves lesser prairie chickens to spend fifteen years of his life trying to save ranching and chickens on his land. We need to make it easier than that. And so what the Lester pur Checking Land our Alliance proposes is to do just that, to just agricultural policy, to not only make it easier to break down to become a farmer, to make it easier to stay a rancher, to get paid to be a rancher, and provide the whole wealth of ecosystem services that come along with healthy range lands.
00:14:48
Speaker 1: And that is there’s no balance, right. It’s like you can get paid one hundred and fifty dollars to fimat or you can get paid less to keep it in grazing.
00:15:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so you know ranching say it pays one hundred buck and I’m throwing these numbers out, but say ranching pays one hundred bucks an acre to sell your cows one hundred and fifty bucks an acre guaranteed if you break it out and try to harm, even if you’re not successful. Our proposal is to say, look look at all the ecosystem services that come along with these healthy range lands, clean water, clean air, more water, healthy soils, healthy vegetation, healthy wildlife populations, carbon storage, and the massive roots of these grassland ecosystems. These are all values that Americans want to keep and they want to pay for. In fact, we appropriate billions of dollars a year for the express purpose of paying for these values. Yet it’s not going on the grounds sufficiently in the right places to stop and reverse the loss of grasslands. And so the list Perrie Chicken Lander Alliance is very specifically identified forty two counties, and the methods by which the public is invited to pay them for these ecosystem services to make up the difference between one hundred dollars an acre and one hundred and fifty dollars an acre. Then at least a rancher could say, do I want to get paid one hundred and fifty dollars an acre to break out into farm ground? Or I do want to get paid one hundred and fifty dollars an acre to grow cows and provide ecosystem services together combined, which will get me one hundred and fifty dollars an acre. That’s the magic that we’re pursuing, giving the public the opportunity to pay that extra fifty bucks an acre to keep it in rangeland and keep lesser perry chickens and keep mule deer, and keep pronghorn.
00:16:32
Speaker 1: Keep pollinators, keep the tolerance, Yes, keep co assistance, all that good stuff. Yeah, yeah, this is a little bit of a tangent. But over here in the Shields Valley just north of Livingston, Montana, new golf course going in, or it’s already in, and all sorts of lawsuits around it because they’re watering it. It’ll so you got to keep the sod and the greens watered, and it is the basically the furthest western huntable population of greater sage grouse in the state. And as far as I know, they’re not a golf course bird.
00:17:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s right.
00:17:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really ticks me off. Like I said, it’s tangent. We don’t need to need to dwell on that. Maybe I just need to go over there and cut those flags on the green down a little shorter.
00:17:35
Speaker 2: But if it’s another great example, here’s where it’s not a tangent cow. Lesser prairie chickens became listed under the Endangered Species Act on our watch. On Hunter’s Watch eleven years ago, you could hunt lesser prairie chickens. Today they’re listed under the Endangered Species Act. And you know we’re you know, talking about are going to be talking about, you know, sage grouse in North Dakota. And I was just talking to Jesse Cole, who North Dakota Game and Fish supervises the program that did the counts that failed to detect any mechs on the mails on the leck of this spring. Jesse made the comment to me just before I got on this program, cal that what really he’s seen this coming for a long time. He’s not that surprised. What really concerns him is that thirty to fifty years from now, sharp tail grouse will be following sage rouse in North Dakota if current trends continue. That should scare the crap out of every one of your listeners. And it’s because of the things that you just talked about there, you know, north of Livingstone, and US hunters are letting these things happen day after day, year after year because there’s no one alarm. It’s the boiling the frog thing, right where if you know, put a frog in a pot of water, turn on the heat, it’ll die. If you throw in a pot of hot water, it’ll immediately jump out. Well, the frog’s been sitting in cool water, and that water’s getting pretty warm now when it comes to grasslands and prairie grouse. And so that story that you tell is yet another example of where we as hunters, and we as Americans, not just US hunters, but where some more, at some point we have to find the opportunity to wake up and stand up and say no, we need to save these places.
00:19:10
Speaker 1: And I know people don’t like to think of it in terms of a resource. Right, But if you do, you have a really unbelievable public resource in these huntable species. And in order to have huntable species, as we just talked about, there’s all these ecosystem benefits that come along with making sure those huntable species are there, that’s right. And you balance that with the fact that there’s a couple of landowners that are going to make a ton of money with a golf course for a very very exclusive experience for a handful of people, in comparison to the folks that could be out walking around and spending gas money and food money in small towns pursuing gallinaceous birds. So in which like I don’t have an answer to right other than talking about this stuff that I know and feel so strongly is such an amazing thing, resource, whatever you want to call it. Having those experiences in my life have certainly benefited me, I feel. But when we talk about North Dakota and this recent article that came out in The Green Wire proclaiming that the sage grouse is extinct from North Dakota part of its native range, what happens specifically in North.
00:21:00
Speaker 2: Dakota habitat loss and fragmentation.
00:21:07
Speaker 1: In the form of anything different.
00:21:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the two biggest drivers I was talking with Jesse Color again North Dakota, game and fish egg and energy development, which is the same thing in the southwestern right plains everywhere else, and specifically he talked about breaking out farm ground using farm Bill’s subsidies. He also talked about ranchers developing or improving range lands by chaining or burning sagebrush so there’s more grass for the cows to eat. And then energy development. They’ve got a lot of oil and gas there in North Dakota, a lot of energy transmission going on as well. I’m sure they’ve got renewables I don’t.
00:21:42
Speaker 1: Know, right, some more more vertical structures, but also a lot more traffic out there servicing that’s right, wells and pumps and highways and fence lines, yeah, even fence lines. You know, all those things are wear and tear on grassland loving species. And it’s not just sage grouse I mentioned. You know, Western Kansas mule deer are really in sharp decline. You know, we already have a listed population of pronghorn in the US in Arizona listed under the Endangered Species Act. How long is it going to be before we list pronghorn somewhere and say in the southwestern Great Plains or in the northern Great Plains, or wherever else some scientists finds a genetically distinct population.
00:22:24
Speaker 2: They’re all in decline. Right as grasslands go, so go pronghorn, so go mule deer.
00:22:31
Speaker 1: California has got an endangered population of pronghorn as well.
00:22:38
Speaker 2: That I think you might be right. Yeah, and so and you know here again Jesse cull ours words to me in North Dakota this a while ago. You know, sage grouse. He’s disappointed about sharp tail grouse. Thirty to fifty years from now. He’s scared for Yeah, we should all be scared. We should all, we should.
00:22:56
Speaker 1: And you know, sage grouse to me are an incredible, very special bird. I think there’s probably a greater population of birders that are in love with the sage grouse than hunters that that are in love with the sage grouse. Because folks who grew up in sage grouse country were told while in the womb that you couldn’t eat a sage grouse. But the truth be told, Yeah, greater sage grouse ties are about the best eaten gallinaceous bird meat there is. In my opinion, they’re fantastic and huge. They’re also, you know, an incredible bird for getting somebody their first double.
00:23:47
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:23:47
Speaker 1: If you’re shooting an over and under your side by side because they just don’t move.
00:23:51
Speaker 2: Fast, that’s right, you have time.
00:23:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it is. It’s one of those things where were it a light clicks on in somebody’s head where they’re like, oh my gosh, this is actually possible. I can flush a bird, I can identify it, I can get the safety off, I can shoot it, and then I can look for the next bird and get it too. And then that really does apply to all the faster birds and more challenging birds. And you know, I’m sure a lot of people are like, why the hell are you talking about hunting birds that you’re you’ve already talked about is extirpated from states and endangered. And you know the reason is is because somehow, some way we need to aside. I’d like you to provide the biological reason, but the social reason I’m providing is somehow, some way we need people to be invested in this bird. And the more invested they are, the more easily we can activate them to stand up for these big charismatic birds and then to jump over to the sharp tail grouse. The reason I brought up how few people relatively hunting appreciate the greater sage growse. Well, there’s probably one hundred times the amount of people who spend big money and travel thousands of miles to hunt sharp tails with their fancy pointing dogs.
00:25:41
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and another terrific upland bird. It is a fantastic upland bird. Yeah, they’re not a lot faster than sage grouse. I’ll tell you that they’re faster, but not a lot.
00:25:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s just a smaller target. Yeah, and those people need to stand up right now too, because by and large it’s the same habitat. Yeah, you can hunt the brushy stuff as you mentioned for sharp tales, but they’re not going to stick around if all there is is plowed fields and hedgerows. They need that, they need that grassland.
00:26:27
Speaker 2: Step Yep, that’s right.
00:26:31
Speaker 1: So what is it? What’s the biological answer to hunting these populations?
00:26:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, so hunting is not a threat to most species managed for hunting today. You know, one of the most famous examples is the trajectory of snow goose populations in North America over the last twenty thirty years. I mean, they’ve fluctuated wildly from low to extremely high, back down to kind of low again, and hunting is zero percent influence on those mass fluctuations. And the same thing as said for prairie gause populations. Very different circumstance from waterfowl. But the reason we continue to lose prairie grouse populations is habitat loss and fragmentation that has nothing to do with hunting. In fact, the more people we can get to hunt and be interested in hunting, the more people we have to advocate to keep those remaining habitats. Now, now here’s the thing that’s really tricky for most prairie grouse. Sage grouse are a little bit of an exception, but I’ll use lesher prairie chickens as the example. Over ninety percent of remaining lesser prairie chicken habitat is on private range lands. It’s on private ground managed for grazing. And here’s the kicker. Ranching pays less than any other form of land use. That’s why grasslands are the most threatened ecosystem on the continent. Of the world and why lush preire chingins are all listed under the essay because somebody can knock on their door and say farm land, solar, wind, oil and gas transmission subdivision blah blah blah. Right, and and so hunting just doesn’t hold a candle to the massive negative impacts of all those different competing forms of development. And in fact, hunters are neat must be. Hunters must be a part of the solution. And if we hunters are not a part of the solution, we will not save prairie goes. I feel that it’s that clear, it’s that strong, it’s that direct. If we don’t stand up for what we love, who will? Yeah?
00:28:37
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, and it’s just anytime, you know, I’ll be driving back over to South Dakota this late fall, early winter is what’s on the books right now, and I guarantee you I’ll see folks installing drain.
00:28:55
Speaker 2: Tile and that’s right.
00:28:57
Speaker 1: And you know, things that we just cannot get back, those intermittent wetlands that all of a sudden disappear.
00:29:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that they need that water, they need those wet edges, They need a whole bunch of little wet edges, and that’s exactly what farmers tile first. Yes, that’s right.
00:29:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, So what does you know the rank and file American have to say about something as big as the farm bill, especially what you’re talking about, which is trying to get another program or or I know, you know, we’ve talked about the North American Grasslands Conservation Act, something that big into existence.
00:29:52
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this is where Ted’s weird thinking gets feed. So we have lots of incredible conservation groups out there, Peasants Forever, National Wildlife Federation who are leading the charge on Farmville policies and policy changes that have been and are really important. We’ve got National Wildlife Federation really providing excellent leadership on North American Grassans Conservation Act. And by the way, North Americ Gross Partnership supports all these things. But the tact that we have taken, given the fact that we’ve recently admitted lesser prairie chickens to the emergency room of conservation by listing them under the Endangerous Species Act, as we said, you know what, let’s go ask the people who actually own the land if they care, and if they say they care, let’s ask them what they need and now we have the Lesser Prairie Chicken Landowner Alliance, which is a bunch of very caring, visionary, passionate landowners who love wildlife and who love lesser Prairie chickens. And some of them even loved to hunt, as I said, And so we asked them, and you know what, the first thing they said. The LPCLA started a little over three years agow first call, we said, They said, you know what, Ted, Nobody’s ever asked us before what we want. And they said, here’s what we don’t want. We don’t want subsidies, we don’t want cost share, we don’t want incentives. And that’s all what the Farm Bill is all about. And these are people that know, because not only are some of our ranchers, some of them are also farmers that participate in those subsidy programs. But it’s not the way they want to make a living. They don’t want a subsidy. They know they’ve got values on their land that all Americans want and want to pay for, including these valuable ecosystem services clean air, clean water, healthy soils, wildlife. They would love to save an endangered species, they just can’t afford to pay for it. Out of their own pocket, and they simply want to offer the American public the opportunity to pay for that alongside of growing beef and feeding Americans, which is the real reason they’re on that land in the first place. And so that’s the difference in this tact. It’s not the North American Grouse Partnership going to Congress or the administ Trump administration saying hey, let’s do this, let’s do that. We’re supporting these landowners gathering their own voice and doing it. And here’s the real parallel to the hunters and anglers. You’ve got to kick out of this, your listeners. Will ranchers became ranchers because they’d rather be out on the land amongst animals and not around people. How about us hunters and anglers, right, I mean, we like to hunt and fish because we like to go out in the woods by ourselves instead of being around people. Same principle. Right. Well, to try to get these landowners, these ranchers, to say, hey, put on your best cowboy hat and pair of jeans and let’s fly to Washington, DC and talk to some people. That is anathema to these individuals. And it is a long, slow process. Now they want to do it. They want to be empowered to do it. The North American Grouse Partnership and this Retired and Endangered Species biologists you’re talking to you right now, cal is trying to figure out how to do with it. And we’re getting terrifics from wonderful humans like Maryland Vettor with Pheasants Forever and and folks with Nationalwideffederate Nation Conservancy. But we’re right in the middle of this journey right now, empowering these people who actually own the land and participate in the programs to say what they need to save grasslands in prairie grass and and and it’s to get paid fair market value for the ecosystem services that they’ve been giving away for generations on their lands.
00:33:26
Speaker 1: I all the meetings I had on on the hill in d C a few months ago, I would just say, hey, I got a real easy one for you. I’m like, you ever heard of the Lesser Prairie Chicken Land Owner Alliance? You ever heard of grazing land. I’m like, here’s a bunch of conservative folks by and large, Yeah, that really needs some help. Give them, give them a reason to stay in business, you know, And it’s one of those things that helping on the private side of the fans is the biggest part of the solution puzzle that we have with a lot of these species.
00:34:13
Speaker 2: And a lot of these states. That’s right, that’s right. And you know recent Appropriations bill included increased funding for VPA hip right, that’s voluntary public access habotat improvement for states to pay for more access to these private lands for hunters. Yep. And let’s pair that up with long term permanent conservation that keeps ranchers ranching while continuing to grow an endangered species and mule deer and quail and everything else. I mean, this isn’t that hard, and it’s not even that expensive, and we don’t even need a new pile of money to do it. We just need to take the dollars we’re already putting towards these programs and spend them in a more strategic and focused area. So the losers might be, say, people closer to Kansas City who really don’t have much left on their property in terms of wildlfe, and the winners are these people on remote ranches in the western part of Kansas, for example, who can sustain these last best places in our grass land ecosystems.
00:35:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I know on the state level, you know, Kansas was working on some language that would you know, make sure that those public access to private land dollars were spent in a more strategic way by making sure there’s good habitat yes on the properties before providing those access dollars to a property there where occasionally an animal might pass through.
00:35:39
Speaker 2: That’s right, and.
00:35:44
Speaker 1: I think you know, probably a base level solution here is people just need to pay attention and be involved.
00:35:50
Speaker 2: Right, That’s right, That’s right. And in the bottom line is again, you know, if if ninety percent of the habit of the land is privately owned, let’s ask these people, do you care? And if so, how can we help you help us? That’s the strategy the North American House Partnership is taking. And that’s what it’s you know, when you say pay attention, call that’s the thing that’s I don’t know, it just hasn’t been part of the conservation communities thinking to stand behind the private landowner to conserve I think when hunters and anglers think of private land, they think of owning a parcel of the sake and hunter fish on it. They don’t think of supporting some private landowner out there to provide the habitat to support the species that they love. And it’s and I get it. I mean that’s it’s a bit of a new paradigm, but it’s also immediately logical, I think and foreseeable that this is if we’re going to save the most threatened ecosystem on the continent and then the world, that’s what it’s going to take. Either that or we buy it all up. And I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
00:36:53
Speaker 1: No, And you know, there’s so many competing interests on on you know, both private and public ground, but you know, like the location of wind farms and solar and to me speaking, you know clearly and frankly, some of this is the result of people does not wanting to do the hard work. Okay, it’s all that land, the same old thing of like, well all that public lands not doing anything, Why don’t we just stick it out there?
00:37:30
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, no, and we unfortunately we do have public land parcels in here. Those can become part of the equation. But yeah, it’s if we’re going to save the most threatened ecosystem of the continent, it requires a new paradigm. It requires partnering with the people who own it and who want to save it as well, finding those people who want to save it alongside the rest of us people who care, and then agreeing on how we can become partners to do so. That’s all.
00:37:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you’re not talking about the big scary government overreach scenario, right.
00:38:06
Speaker 2: This is all povoluntary participation. That’s right. We’re not gonna nobody’s going to make any landowner do anything they don’t want to do. But that’s why it’s really important to find those landowners who really care and who want the same outcomes as we conservationists want. I mean, that’s really where the magic begins, finding those landowners that care just like us.
00:38:26
Speaker 1: And folks who are listening. You got to be reminded, right, there’s you know, in my mind, somewhere around we’ll call it upper five hundred million acres of huntable federally managed public land in the US we always say six hundred and forty million, but be a little more objective at stuff that you can actually hunt. It’s lower and land set aside, specifically specifically for agriculture in the United States are just under two billion acres.
00:38:59
Speaker 2: So I didn’t know that.
00:39:01
Speaker 1: If and don’t ever let this be separated into an either or yeah type of conversation.
00:39:11
Speaker 2: We got to get past that.
00:39:12
Speaker 1: We got to grow up and be adults and understand that if we really want it, nothing’s got to be in either or. But one side of the fence is going to facilitate the other side of the fence, and vice versa. But we got to fight to make it happen.
00:39:32
Speaker 2: So cal, that’s a great number. I’m going to highlight that five hundred million public huntable public land acres, two billion acres dedicated.
00:39:41
Speaker 1: To ag Yeah, I would over yeah.
00:39:46
Speaker 2: Okay, And so why wouldn’t we then turn to these lands that already harbor so many of the species that we love to hunt for and fish for, and work with the people who own the land to figure out how to conserve it long term and provide access.
00:40:02
Speaker 1: All right, sorry, Ted, let me let me let’s I just found my notes here again. Okay, this is where I was going with this. Three hundred and forty million people in the United States. Let’s say there’s five hundred and ninety million huntable acres under federal management, right, so that is by to fall open to three hundred and forty million people in the United States, right, so you know it’s that’s roughly person every let’s say like one acre and change. Yeah, and then there agriculture specifically privately held one point one nine billion acres, okay, right, so basically elbow yeah. But the public estate is.
00:41:06
Speaker 2: So yeah. So if we’ve got double uh, you know, the amount of private land and it harbors all these species that we love to pursue and that we value in other ways, then you know, why wouldn’t we find new and important ways to partner with those who actually own the lands and the habitats about how to sustain that?
00:41:27
Speaker 1: Yep, yep, because there’s threats to all of the above.
00:41:34
Speaker 2: Obvious, that’s right, and it’s I tell you, it’s a funny thing we have. We were a couple of ranchers in North Texas are on the Less Bridging Atlanta Alliance. If you met them off the street, you’d think they’re the crustiest, most anti government, you know, hardcore North Texas ranchers you could ever see you walk off the pages of a of a book. They are a couple of the most hard core environmentalists when it comes to trying to keep wind energy from taking the last lesser prairie chickens in their county. They are desperate for help to save lesser prairie chickens. And it’s not just about the chickens. It’s about their ranching and about all the other wildlife. And it’s about the chickens too. Their hearts are as green as some of the greenest environmentals you ever met. It’s beautiful. It makes you want to cry. And if we can’t find ways to identify these awesome humans that have the special privilege of owning these lands and support them, we’re not doing right by our children’s children. We’re not doing all we can do to make sure our children’s children have access to these resources. We’ve got to forge these new pathways in these new partnerships.
00:42:47
Speaker 1: And it’s a low hanging fruit, right, like these people are voluntarily wanting to do it. Yes, if we can’t help them, we’re basically giving up exactly.
00:43:00
Speaker 2: Our interests are so aligned it’s hilarious. Yeah, So when wouldn’t we know that at first?
00:43:07
Speaker 1: Where are we on the North American Grasslands Conservation I Act?
00:43:12
Speaker 2: Oh, a little bit stalled out, you know, Congress has headed a recess here in a couple of weeks, but we’ve made a lot of good progress. I think we’ve gotten a couple of co sponsors on either side of the aisle in Cali. Let’s see, I’m trying to think of the last call I participated in on that. So I would say, in the bigger picture sense, we continue to make steady progress, and we’re getting closer and closer to the kind of support you’d eventually want to see for a bill like this. And this is going to be one of those kinds of bills that’s obviously going to be many years in the making, as it’s already been a couple of years. But the champions of it, you know, National Wildlife Federation, Peasants Forever and others can continue to take steps every day, and then partner groups like the North American Grouse Partnership, we occasionally weigh in where we can to try to continue to build support for that. So still a ways away, but we’re closer than we’ve been before.
00:44:07
Speaker 1: And the nuts and bolts of that one is a huge part of what we’re talking about right It’s finding that way to facilitate the stewardship of these grasslands through kind of a sister model to the North American Wetlands Conservation Act, which is basically the only thing out there aside from a few state programs that are helping people make the right decision when it comes to draining that intermittent wetland or keeping it producing as is.
00:44:48
Speaker 2: That’s right. And they do it by buying conservation, you know, by paying money. Again, these are private lands. These people trying to figure out how much how they can how they can best make money off these lands. One of the ways they can make money is by selling conservation. A lot of people want to do that, a lot of people really care. And you said it, right, cal, I mean, this is North America Grasslands Act model out to North American Wetlands Conservation Act. And then some people ask, well, you got all these farm bill programs under USDA, and then you got the Wetlands Act and soon to be Grasslands Act under the Apartment of the Interior. Why two different departments? Why why can’t they all just be one? And here’s the answer. Under farm bill programs on the US Department of Agriculture, those programs are designed to help producers while helping conservation, but under the Department of the Interior with the North American Wetlands Act and the Grasslands Act, those programs are designed to help conservation while helping the producer, right different priority. One starts with the producer tries to affect conservation, the other one starts with conservation reaches out to the producer, and that co mingling of priorities across the landscape has really done well for conserving wetlands on the northern plains, and we’d like to see that for grasslands everywhere.
00:46:04
Speaker 1: And Ted, do you have any resources you could point people to for seeing some of these birds, like when it’s dancing season, when they’re out on the les and folks just want to see how charismatic these critters are. Do you have any resources you could point them to there?
00:46:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, so on the Grounds Partners dot org website, we have some resources the individual state wildlife management agencies. I think we’ll have resources as well. For lesser prairie chickens. There’s actually a guy does a commercial operation and I can’t say the name of his operation right now, but I think if you looked up lesser prairie chicken viewing, you’d pretty quickly find an opportunity to do that, and it’s on one of our lesser period tickle Land Alliance’s ranches where he’s got blinds built on a couple of LECs. It’s really a great operation. They do a great job. And then I’m not sure if there are other birding tours for example, I’m thinking sage grouse call and I’m not sure if you know, But so you can start with our website. You can go to the state agency websites, and then you can do a search online for things specifically like lesser prairie chickens and you’ll find specific opportunities there.
00:47:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think American prairie here in Montana has some pretty fantastic opportunities.
00:47:27
Speaker 2: That would be a great resource, good good catch, yeah.
00:47:29
Speaker 1: Yeah for the greater sage grouse. And then sharpdals do a great little dance too. They’re pretty darn fun.
00:47:36
Speaker 2: Boy And for anybody listening, if you have not seen a prairie grouse dance or boom and it’s kind of different. I mean, sharptiales really do this hilarious little foot stomp and dance, whereas male sage grouse like are knocking you over with a cannon. Yes, but both of them are the displays of the males. And it is really to see a bunch of males on a lec and to watch those females casually sproll through like they’re walking down the middle of a bar checking out all the guys, you know, deciding who they’re gonna let’s talk to them. It’s a it’s a it’s a it’s a moving experience.
00:48:10
Speaker 1: It’s it’s awesome, absolutely, And then that’d be a great step if you really want to understand, hopefully some of the passion that you heard today around these super cool birds. And then if you want to get involved and help out, which I’ll certainly be calling on you to do, whether you like it or not. How do folks figure out that step? Ted, where’s their best points of contact?
00:48:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, so look up North American grass Lands Conservation Act, figure out how to get involved supporting that, and then Grouse Partners dot org. Please become a member of the North American Grouse Partnership. We think that we’re building the model that is going to save the day for grasslands by empowering ranchers to say what they need to get paid fair market value. For Ecosys some services will continue to raise beef for all Americans and saving an endangered species. And once we get that model built in the Southwestern Great Plains, we’re going to export it elsewhere so that Jesse Kolar in North Dakota no longer has to worry about losing sharp tail grouse in North Dakota in thirty to fifty years.
00:49:22
Speaker 1: Through North American Grouse Partnership. Pheasants Forever, quail forever. You know.
00:49:27
Speaker 2: Pheasants Forever, by the way, is another. They are the leader in so many ways in upland bird conservation.
00:49:35
Speaker 1: So absolutely thank you Cal and TRCP b Ah. We all will absolutely be pointing people towards the Grasslands North American Grasslands Conservation Act. But if you feel like doing some reading up on your own and lobbying on your own, you’re you’re absolutely welcome to do so. It takes as a phone callar and name now tell people that this is something that you want to see make happen for all your own reasons and maybe some of the reasons that you’re heard here today, and like Ted said, become a member North American Grasslands or I’m sorry that partnership North American grouse partnership. I think I still you guys some money. I know, I do. I got to get that’s right, that’s right. Yeah, yeah.
00:50:25
Speaker 2: And in terms of taking action, I think ask your congress person or Senator, Hey, I understand grasslands are the most threatened ecosystem on the continent of the world. What are you doing to help save them? Even just a simple email like that. It’s not actionable now, but what that’s going to do. It’s going to set you up so that when I’m back on your podcast here in a few months and the landowners are making their big push cow that your members can can listen to this and reach out specifically and directly to support the request for partnership coming from the landowners themselves.
00:51:03
Speaker 1: That’s great advice. You know what, Ted, I’d want to wrap this up because they want to keep it short. But we’re ignoring one very obvious question that we have to hit here is can we put sage grouse back? Are they gone from North Dakota for good?
00:51:18
Speaker 2: So sage grouse could make their way back to North Dakota if the habitat was sufficient to support them and it was connected to already occupied habitat but I’ll tell you cal restoring galinaceous birds through reintroduction it is. How do I want to say it. I don’t want to say it’s impossible. I don’t want to say it’s never been done. It’s extremely difficult. And the reason is all these birds. You get a dozen to twenty birds on a leck, and you need multiple lecks, and you need multiple females attending all these lecks, and then they all have to have sex, and the female will have to go lay their eggs and raise their young. And if you bring a bunch of birds into a new habitat and dump them out on the ground, it’s extremely hard to create a meta population out of thin air like that and expect them to be successful, to expect them to know where to go to lack, know where to go to nest, where to go to feed their young brood, you know, in wet meadows along wetlands. So the best that we can hope for is to save habitats that are connected to already occupied habitats and have them play bumper pool as they recolonize. But the fact is that the habitat in orth to go to for sage grouse is so degraded that it would take a lot of work to turn that habitat around and grow a bunch of new sagebrush habitat before you could then hope to bring sage grouse back.
00:52:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, because how easy is it to grow a sage brush?
00:52:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s and I don’t know if that hard, but it takes decades, right, so the time is not convenient. Yeah, that’s the hard part. And then keeping that land set aside for sage brush for decades so that you can wait a couple of decades after that for the grouse to get the memo and to show up. So it’s a it’s a tough state of affairs. It’s not like putting a group of big horn sheep matt back in the mountain range. It does not like that at all. Yeah, not that that’s easy, but but.
00:53:26
Speaker 1: There’s imprinted learned behavior.
00:53:29
Speaker 2: Specific to that habitat.
00:53:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, specific to that habitat, and a lot of birds are going to die trying to figure out where to go.
00:53:39
Speaker 2: That’s right, Yeah, that’s right.
00:53:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s it’s tough. Habitat habitat, habitat gang that’s right, ted, So awesome to have you on if folks have questions for Tad, Please let me know ask c a l that’s asked Cal at the meeteater dot com. We’ll have Ted back on to answer him, or I’ll get your pointed in the right direction, or we’ll answer him right here on this show. That’s all I got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening and Ted, thanks again for coming on.
00:54:19
Speaker 2: Thank you Cal. Thank you for your passion for Grasslands too. I don’t know if people know that, Miquel, You’ve been a real champion and you continue to be and I know you’ll you’ll do more in the future. Thank you for everything.
00:54:29
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, buddy, As you know, I’m happy to be out here doing my part. But all it is is my part. Doesn’t matter how big the platform or how loud you yell, it’s never going to be one person getting the stuff done.
00:54:43
Speaker 2: So that’s right.
00:54:45
Speaker 1: Thanks again everybody. I’ll talk to you next week.
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