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Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Col’s Week in Review with Ryan col Klaian. Here’s CAP. A lot of time when we cover grizzly bear deterrence on the show, we get sucked in by the high tech stuff, especially in Japan Ai facial recognition, bear spray squirting drones, solar powered robot, wolves with glowing red eyes, that kind of thing. So it’s refreshing when people come up with their own low tech DIY solutions. At the top of the list is eighty year old Kazuko Takahashi, a woman living in Yawata Prefecture, one of the northernmost parts of mainland Japan, and a bear encounter hotspot. According to the excellent bear tracking website kumamapp dot com, Yawat has had two hundred and seventy bear conflict incidents just in the past thirty days. Boy, I guarantee you I’m saying iwa te wrong. Not sure where my accent’s coming from, but I’m doing my best. Just Montana kids sitting here. In Kazuko’s case, the bear conflict started as these things off and do with a yappy dog late last month, around dusk, her shiba enu began barking in the backyard, and when she looked out the window, she saw a brown bear chasing the dog around the house. Instead of letting her pooch fend for itself, Kazuko used a long lint roller mop as a cane to stand up from her chair, opened her sliding glass doors and called the dog inside, But she only had time to close the screen door before the bear came bursting through it into her living room. According to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, Kazuko stood her ground, waved the lint roller, spread her arms to take up the maximum out of space, and shouted, hey, don’t mess with me. The bear spooked and took off through the open door. It’s possible that the bruin realized he could technically qualify as a giant piece of lint and didn’t want to get rolled up and thrown away. Kazuko told reporters that she’s not planning to change your lifestyle after the incident, other than keeping her shiba enu inside most of the time and on a leash when she takes him out for walks. But maybe she can trade notes with our own Giannis ptell Us, who wants whacked a grizz with nothing more than a hiking poll. Just think of what could happen if they joined forces. This week, we’ve got legislation, regulation, legal tests of the cra and so much more. But first, I’m going to tell you about my week. And my week was the Boy and the puppies first camping trip, celebrated our nation’s independence. Night one, we made it to Randa Williams house, where we grilled salmon and pork ribs, then camped in their yard, which was a good test run of how three humans and three dogs would live in a twelve foot camper. The next morning, we hit the road and we tried to go to a spot that I swear to you we always had to ourselves when I was a kid. It was packed full of people, which is why I never go to lakes. Lakes are just big people attract. So then we pivoted to another spot and came across what I would describe as gut wrenching and god awful seasonal mega mansion development at a scale that I just didn’t think existed yet here in my home state. This is stuff that was once prime grazing ground for beef and wild critters. And I know this has been going on for a while, I just had personally not seen it. Huge homes on the edges of may meadows, sometimes right in the middle, brutally visible from all angles, and in my opinion, actively devaluing the landscape, the very thing the occasional occupants presumably came for. So now I’m trying to keep my happy face on for the fam. Now I get sucked down into deep depressive thoughts and feelings, and instead of heading towards an easily accessible area where I’m sure is going to be equally destroyed, because I’m now convinced that everything is horrible and people a fide. So I jerked the wheel down an old two track that was in horrible condition back when I was in high school, and with every deep pothole and spine jarring rock, my spirits returned just a little bit, just a little. The baby boy was bouncing like a popcorn kernel little hot pan amongst Mom and the dogs in the back seat. We creaked and groaned and seesawed and yeehawed just a few measly miles into the timber and parked in the first opening we could find declared that camp I was still on guard and waiting for more spoilage of my childhood playground. But the road was wonderfully absent of people, and the old iron tinged creek wonderfully much the same as when I first explored it back in high school, which, if you need to know, is nearing thirty years ago. I used to make the drive up here in a nineteen eighty three Chevy Celebrity, all brown inside, all brown outside, a sedan that smelled of someone’s grandma, but had trunk space for all manner out door gear. The edges of the creek certainly owed more human traffic than I remembered, but I didn’t see a soul. I got some fish on the line in between diaper changes and feedings, wild high country cutthroat trout, not many, as the creek’s too high and old and cold and sterile for a big population, And the big fish had the same feeling of age, the type that upon cupping a hook jawed male, that sagging skin melts between your fingers, and instead of thinking of fish filets in a hot pan, you have visions of the old folks home of transparent loose skin, things that make you feel mortal and uneasy, not get your stomach rumbling and thinking back on it was the feeling of the old folks home that kept us from overfishing this spot in high school. It was special. It wasn’t tricky, but we had reverence for the old fish in obscure places we could call our own. On this particular trip, when mom took a snooze, I strapped the boy to my chest, dropped fly boxes into the diaper along with breast milk and a backup bottle of formula and a pile of diapers. We hoofed it fast through the blowdown, having to double back often to help the puppy through and over and under the tumbled lodge pole. It was evening and we scraped through the brush at a log jam turned beaver dam and caught the only two fish we saw. Rising in my mind, a big evening vision of working my way methodically up this stretch creeped into my head. Then the boy blew up like a late July storm. Big noises from both ends were ripping, and it came on with not much warning. So instead of working at fishing, I worked at fatherhood rapid changing diapers while keeping the horse flies and mosquitoes at bay, feeding through all the breast milk and the formula, and thinking it’s only about a mile back to the road, but it’s going to be a long mile. I also got to think about why this spot exists and still holds the wonderful opportunity the same stretch provided in my youth, Considering that now it’s in close proximity to a pop up Jackson Hole or aspen or deer valley type of vibe what I would call destruction of country that started out perfect. This place is in wilderness. It has a road that gets out close enough, but you must have the drive to explore on foot beyond the road to get to this spot. It’s a place in its natural state. We have not tried to quote improve it like the Front Country calamity. We drove through, obviously with a small puppy and a month old infant on my chest. It’s not an extreme feat, just another version and means of access. It’s not a grand adventure, but for me it was an incredibly impactful reminder of my wilderness and why wilderness matters, Why are roadless areas matter, and why wilderness study areas matter. I couldn’t see it very clearly in my high school days or when I was really making a living guiding in wilderness areas, but I see it now. Eventually these places which if you were to combine WSAs inventory roadless and designated wilderness, that’s less than a third of our shared public lands. Somewhere in that like, twenty six percent of our six hundred and forty ish million acres are managed under the WSAA designated wilderness in inventory roadless designations, So two thirds of our six hundred and forty ish million acres will see some form of serious change development through changes in travel management plans, changes in administration priorities i e. Critical minerals or renewable energy. It’s gonna happen, sometimes dramatically, sometimes not. And I can’t help but think, don’t we owe it to ourselves to steward the less than a third in such a way that preserves these opportunities, not for us or the baby boys generation or foreign administration, but in perpetuity. Let’s allow young kids to take a crack at an old fish. Help me out, as well as the amazing staff at Backcountry Hunters and anglers by becoming a member today, we need you. Moving on to the Farm Bill. What a lot of folks would understand as the largest conservation package that any country passes. That is the Farm Bill, and why I think it’s inadequately named anyway. The House version of the Farm Bill has passed the House, the Senate version has been introduced by Old John Boozman of Arkansas, and now the Senate and the House are debating how to get this thing passed. The last Farm Bill passed back in twenty eighteen and it expired in twenty twenty three. Since then, short term extensions have continued many key programs, but that approach lets things slip through the cracks and prevents farmers who count on the bills programs from planning ahead. Certain parts of the new draft farm Bill would carry on programs that have been cornerstones of wildlife manage since the nineteen fifties, like the Conservation Reserve Program CRP. CRP compensates farmers when they take land out of egg production and manage it, typically for native grasses. Oftentimes the stuff can still be haid and grazed under specific management guidelines. This updated Farm Bill would increase payments to farmers for their acreage for the first time since the nineteen eighties, help pay for habitat improvements like prescribed burns and fun things like fencing and water infrastructure. As one micro example of why the Farm Bill needs to be constantly updated. Back in twenty eighteen, virtual fencing where animals wearing collars receive noise in electronic stimulus deterrence from crossing boundaries wasn’t widely used because it was so expensive and it was not covered in the previous bill. But now those systems have become very cost effective, and if you can corral herd effectively without any physical barrier, the benefits to wildlife migrations are enormous. This draft bill would incentivize the technology for the first time entirely. New pieces of policy would also be added, like a forest conservation easement program in a state conservation assistance program. A great deep dive on the whole bill by Dak Collins is available over at outdoor Life. Go check it out there. A House version of the bill passed back in April. Like I said, so the future may be bright for the Senate version. Let’s encourage these folks to hash it out get something done here. Jumping over to Oregon, a new lawsuit filed has the potential to overturn every existing management plan on federal public land across the country, every timber or mining lease, every ski resort permit, every hunting or fishing management plan, every wind or solar farm. The tremor that could cause this avalanche is the Congressional Review Act, which we’ve covered here many, many times is the CRA. Over the past few months, we’ve covered the Congressional Review Act. It’s the policy tool that Republican lawmakers have used to open up the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and the headwaters of the Boundary Waters to resource extraction. But the cr it is actually an old law established back in nineteen ninety six. How it’s being used today is what’s new or novel. Originally, the CRA required new regulations issued by federal agencies to come before Congress before they went into effect. Congress had sixty working days to review each regulation and could take a simple majority vote about whether to revoke it. This was an extremely rare occurrence until twenty seventeen. It was used exactly once. When Trump took office, however, the rules started getting used much more often than last year. The administration expanded it even further by arguing that public land management plans were subject to the same review because they quote unquote prescribed policy in the same way that regulations do. Even more creatively, they argued that the sixty day CRA clock began not when the management plan had been implemented, but instead whenever a lawmaker queried a particular plan. That’s how Congress voted to overturn the management plans for the Boundary Waters and Artic National Wildlife Refuge, as well as other protected land in Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming. And I should say like protected land, that’s kind of like a pretty broad term. Here in Montana, we were talking about the Powder River Country, which had a previous resource management plan. North Dakota same thing, Wyoming, same thing. That resource management plan provided lots of things in play for the extractive industries and had other things not in play, but at the same time not completely off the table either because you just need a new resource management plan. Hopefully that makes sense. But as we mentioned a couple weeks ago, the use of the CIRA puts every other management plan up in the air, and this week an anti logging group called Cascadia Wild Lance is turning this use of the CRA to its advantage. The organization filed a complaint claiming that a timber project on Blm Land in western Oregon is in fact illegal. The logging operation was approved through a manage plan in twenty sixteen, but Cascadia argues that if all management plans prescribe policy and can therefore be reviewed and revoked by Congress under the CRA, then this particular management plan technically never went into effect because it was never submitted to Congress for review. That would make the logging operation de facto illegal. This is a seemingly credible interpretation following from the Trump administration’s use of the CRA. If Cascadia were to win, it would be open season on all other diligently thought out multiple use plans across the country, including those overseeing wildlife, which animal rights groups exist to target. Even worse, the CRA stipulates that once a regulation is thrown out, it can’t be reissued in the same form. That would mean a more or less permanent wrench thrown in the works. We still have a ways to go on this one. We’re not talking about imminent disaster yet, but this is what comes from monkey around with the rules. We’ll keep you up to date on this one. Jumping over to Vermont, bit of good news from up north, where the Vermont Supreme Court has upheld trapping and coyote hunting rights after a challenge by animal rights groups. Several years ago, the Vermont state legislature required the Department of Fish and Wildlife to establish best management practices for fur bearer trapping, as well as regulations for pursuing coyotes with dogs. The department did so according to the established protocols, including significant public comment as soon as the rules were issued. For animal rights groups immediately sued, arguing that portions of the rags that defined control of dog and what exactly constituted public trail violated the legislative intent of the state’s game laws. They also challenged setback exemptions for traps laden water and ice. A lower court denied these suits, stating that the rules were in fact consistent with the laws on the books and followed safe hunting and trapping practices. This month, the state’s Supreme Court upheld that decision, writing in part of its opinion that the animal rights groups had mischaracterized what state law requires to advance their argument. This ruling leaves hunting and trapping alone in the Green Mountain state, and after what we’ve seen in Colorado, Oregon and elsewhere, that’s cause for at least a little celebration. Moving on to the crime desk, a number of startling poaching cases came out in the last couple of weeks, and I bet hearing about them will make your blood boil. And Oregon officials busted what they’re calling a serial poacher, which is like a serial killer, but of the wildlife variety. So you may eventually hear this guy on the Meat Eater Managing editor Jordan Siller’s awesome podcast, Blood Trails, which if you have not listened to this, it’s great. Where true crime meets the great outdoors is how I describe it. Anyhow. According to Oregon State Police, forty eight year old former corrections officer Christopher Mattson pled guilty to numerous wildlife and firearm related charges, including three counts of the unlawful take of buck deer, three counts of the unlawful take of black bears, and the unlawful take of mule deer. The original charges that Mattson faced included even more charges involving antlerless elk game birds, hunting outside illegal hours, borrowing big game tags, and more. When agreeing to a plea deal, the prosecutor often agrees to drop some of the charges, which is likely the case in this instance. Still, Madson received serious retribution, including twenty four months of probation, a lifetime hunting ban, three hundred hours of community service forfeiture of firearms and property seized, and over one hundred and fourteen thousand dollars in fines. It’s a good thing they got this guy, though he made a serious toll on the public trust. Jay Hall, Oregon Department of Justice Wildlife Anti Poaching Resource prosecutor, said Matson’s case is quote one of the highest damage amounts done to Oregon wildlife by any singular actor. This is another example of serial poaching, which rises to the level of felony conduct based solely on the repeated poaching conduct and impact of one individual on Oregon’s game animals. Over in Indiana, Warden’s nabbed a twenty eight year old suspect poacher who is now facing over one hundred wildlife related crimes. State officials say that the Clark County Sheriff’s Department deputies and Warden’s set a roadblock on the morning of December eighteen after receiving complaints about gunshots fired. They stopped Woodrow Snyder and discovered several dead deer, as well as several guns that were discarded along the roadway. And June, Snyder was taken into custody after search warrants turned up additional evidence, which reportedly revealed that Snyder and several associates had illegally taken more than thirty deer in the twenty twenty five season alone. He faces charges for the obstruction of justice, illegal sale of wildlife, unlawful take of deer, jackliding, and more. As it stands, he could face massive restitution fines if convicted on all of those charges. The last poaching case we’ve got for you is a bit more complicated. Prosecutors say that nearly forty hunters who thought they’d bought a dream moose hunt in Alaska were taken advantage of through an illegal guiding scheme. According to court documents, Michael McHale beans started advertising trophy moose hunts on the lower Yukon River area in twenty twenty one. Despite lacking the state licenses to act as a guide or transporter, multiple groups of potential clients put down deposits and in some cases paid in full before arriving in rural Alaska, only for Bean to cancel the hunts at the last minute and pocket the cash. In one case, three hunters arrived and Bean tried to cancel the hunt, but they tracked him down and he illegally assisted the hunters in hunting moose despite not being licensed to do so. All in all, he collected more than fifty nine thousand dollars in deposits and advanced payments. He pled guilty to wire fraud and Laciact violations related to illegal guiding, and was sentenced to pay sixty four thousand dollars in restitution and served three years in federal prison. That sentence will be tacked onto one. Bean is already serving thirty years in state prison for felony sexual assault and second ual abuse of a miner. His absolutely horrific behavior aside. This case is a reminder for folks to verify the licenses and check references on outfitters for bucket List trips before putting down any money, particularly as internet scams are proliferating. After all, you don’t want your bucket list moose hunt to turn into nothing more than a hill of beans. Eh. Eh. Moving on to bid a legislative news in the home state, local outfitters and advocates are pushing for a new piece of legislation that would protect significant habitat in western Montana. The River Runs Through It proposal is named after Norman McLain’s seminal novella A River Runs Through It, which is set in the same region. The proposal would add land to the Bob Marshall and Scapegoat wilderness areas and designate additional public land as forest restoration areas, recreation areas, and conservation management areas. It would also create a new wilderness area in the Nevada Mountains. In total, would add around one hundred and thirty thousand acres of new wilderness designations, protecting key habitats and migration corridors for big game animals such as elk and mule deer. The proposal has the support of multiple user groups as it would also create new snowmobiling opportunities near the town of Sely Lake, as well as required the Forest Service to prioritize timber thinning and other active forest management protocols throughout the Seely Lake Ranger District. The proposal is still in the early stages, but it’s worth keeping an eye on and starting to drum up support for a proactive measure like this. Just so you know, backcountry hunters and anglers myself included. I was in there that week. We met down with Congressman Ryan Zinki’s team and discussed this one the last time we were back in DC. It’s definitely something BHA is supporting and working to find that good old fashioned bipartisan support on the hill. Moving on to another policy hit, the US Forest Service is revising its management plan for over five million acres of public land across northeast Oregon and southeast Washington. The Blue Mountain Forest Plan revision will impact hunters, anglers, laggers, ranchers, and other user groups of the malhir Wallawa, Whitman, and Umatilla National Forests. The revision process has been twenty years in the making and it will impact some of the best habitat and public hunting grounds in the region. Of particular interest in the plan are elk security and road density standards, or the lack thereof in the current draft Environmental impact statement. Those regulations have guided the forest management there for the past twenty years and are particularly important for elk, which are known to consistently move away from areas with high motorized use. US Forest Service will open public comment on this revision soon, and conservation groups are urging folks to speak up. Head over to our friends at the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership TRCP dotorg for a good breakdown of the situation. That’s all I got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening, and remember to write in to ask cl that’s ask Cal at the Meat your dot com. Let us know what’s going on in your neck the woods. You know we appreciate it. I’ll talk to you next week. That’s the boy. It’s been strapped my chest here this whole time. M
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