S2, Ep 40: Chris Wood of Trout Unlimited

EPISODE SUMMARY

Guest: Chris Wood - President and CEO at Trout Unlimited (Arlington, Virginia)

In this episode: Conservation leader Chris Wood shares TU's organizational response to COVID-19 and provides an in-depth update on the 15-year campaign to protect Bristol Bay from the proposed Pebble Mine. Topics include collaborative stewardship approaches to conservation, the ecological and economic significance of Bristol Bay's salmon fisheries and the importance of grassroots advocacy for protecting coldwater resources.

Key fishing techniques covered: • Saltwater fishing for flounder and weakfish in New Jersey • Salmon fishing in Alaska's Bristol Bay watershed • Striper and shad fishing on the Potomac River • Blue catfish, walleye and smallmouth bass tactics • Rainbow trout fishing in Bristol Bay's world-class waters

Location focus: Bristol Bay Alaska (Kvichak and Nushagak rivers), Potomac River, Jersey Shore, Idaho wilderness areas, Montana's Smith River

Target species: Sockeye salmon, Chinook/King salmon, rainbow trout, stripers, American shad, blue catfish, walleye, smallmouth bass, brook trout, flounder, weakfish

Equipment discussed: Orvis Green Mountain series starter rod, Zug bug pattern, various salmon flies

Key questions answered: • Why is Bristol Bay worth protecting? • How does TU approach collaborative conservation? • What is the current status of the Pebble Mine permitting process? • How can anglers take action to protect Bristol Bay? • What role do salmon play in ecosystem health?

Best for: All level anglers interested in conservation advocacy, Bristol Bay protection, organizational leadership during crisis, collaborative approaches to natural resource management and salmon ecology

**Marvin Cash (00:04):**
Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly. And on this episode, I'm joined by Chris Wood, President and CEO of Trout Unlimited. Chris shares his passion for the outdoors, TU's response to COVID-19, as well as a refresher on the almost 15-year struggle to protect Bristol Bay.

Before we move on to the interview, though, just a couple of housekeeping items. If you like the podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review in the podcatcher of your choice. It would really help us out.

And a shout out to this episode's sponsor. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Ascent Fly Fishing. Peter and his team are passionate about our fly fishing community, whether it's helping you be more productive on the water or making sure their team members can meet their daily needs. Let the folks at Ascent use the best science to put together a box of affordable, high quality flies for your next outing. Visit them online today at www.ascentflyfishing.com, and if you use the code ARTICULATE10, all caps, all one word, the number 10, you can get 10% off your entire order.

Now on to our interview. Well, Chris, welcome to The Articulate Fly.

**Chris Wood (01:11):**
It is a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

**Marvin Cash (01:13):**
Yeah, I really appreciate you making time for me, particularly during these trying times. And we have a tradition on The Articulate Fly. I always ask all of my guests to share their earliest fishing memory.

**Chris Wood (01:24):**
Oh, wow. So that's an easy one for me. My earliest fishing memory is down the Jersey Shore with my father and my grandfather. We used to rent a boat. They used to rent wooden rowboats there at a place called Ernie's Boathouse. So Ernie's Boats. And we would go, dad would make salami sandwiches and we would go out and fish for flounder and weak fish if we were lucky. Sea robins, Cape May crackers, basically whatever would take a hold of the hook. And I tell you what, salami sandwiches have never tasted so good being cut with a bait knife before.

**Marvin Cash (02:10):**
That's awesome. And when did you move to the dark side of fly fishing?

**Chris Wood (02:14):**
That happened in college. I didn't really grow up like a lot of folks who may be listeners. I didn't actually grow up fishing, notwithstanding our trips down the shore in the summer. Ours was very much a football, basketball, baseball household for my three brothers and I. My dad was a big athlete in his day.

And I got to college and I really took up spin fishing in earnest for fresh water and loved it. And I became a big brother in the Big Brother Little Brother program. And I had a little brother that really wanted to get into fly fishing. This is sort of a big brother, little brother version of this super cool program called the Mayfly Project. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, but it's this awesome project where people are using fly fishing as a mentoring tool to help foster kids. And Jess Westbrook and his spouse founded that. And it's a really awesome experience.

And anyway, many years before they came up with that cool idea, that's how I ended up getting into fly fishing because I had a little brother who wanted to get into it. And mom and dad bought me an Orvis Green Mountain series starter rod kit. And the rest is history.

**Marvin Cash (03:51):**
Yeah, that's awesome. So you were almost a fly fishing mentor before you were mentored in fly fishing. As your journey progressed, who are some of the folks that kind of helped you develop as a fly angler?

**Chris Wood (04:02):**
So it's funny you ask this because when I first became CEO of Trout Unlimited, I made my obligatory visit to Orvis and I got to meet this guy, Tom Rosenbauer, right? And so when I was starting fly fishing in 1988 or whatever, 87, my Bible was the Orvis Guide to Fly Fishing. And I would read the book written by Tom Rosenbauer and it made everything seem so easy. And that experience was belied by the reality of what was happening on the stream for me.

I didn't catch my first trout until probably my 10th outing. And this is the truth. I was on a Zug bug. I caught the fish on a Zug bug that was trailing behind me as I tried to untie a knot from my fishing line. Not the leader, but a Gordian knot that I tied in my fishing line. But Tom certainly was, it's been an honor to get to meet him and get to know him since I've taken this job.

But some of the early ones were maybe the most important was a guy by the name of Bill Sargent. He worked in the, I worked in food services as a job in college in Vermont. And Bill was, he was from Middlebury, Vermont, and he also worked in food services. That was his full time job. And he kind of took me under his wing and taught me how to tie flies. Used to take me fishing, kind of told me some of the secret spots that only the locals knew. I think 25 years after the fact or more, I can reveal that now without Bill getting in trouble.

But then along the way, I've just been privileged to meet just so many great people, including people at TU. We have some phenomenal anglers here at Trout Unlimited, people like Steve Trafton and Scott Yates, Kirk Dieter. There's just a whole bunch of them.

It's interesting in this job because everyone assumes I'm a good angler, and I'm not. I'm like the most earnest angler you'll probably ever meet, but I'm pretty average. And so I pick up things almost every time I fish from the people I fish with because they're typically better anglers than I am.

**Marvin Cash (06:27):**
Yeah, that's really neat. No, I have that same experience, particularly the longer I do The Articulate Fly. I get to spend time with better and better anglers, and I become very self-conscious about, for exactly that exact same reason. And people always say, dude, you're crazy. And I was like, they're like, just relax and fish. And so that's a life lesson, I guess, there too.

But so, it's really neat. I know you didn't start out at TU, you've been there a while. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey from graduating at Middlebury to how you ended up being the president and CEO of Trout Unlimited?

**Chris Wood (07:03):**
Yeah, I mean, it's a long story, but I won't tell you the long version. I'll give you the brief version. So what happened, I went to Middlebury. And after I graduated, I was putting my liberal arts degree to good use, bartending, coaching high school football and making ice cream in New Jersey, where I grew up.

And my buddy Mick Kelly invited me to go to Alaska with him, where he was out putting his liberal arts degree to equally good use, bartending in Homer, Alaska, while living on the Homer Spit, which is a spit of beach they have out there.

And so we went out there and one day Mick invited me to take his VW rabbit and go drive down to the Kenai Peninsula to fish the Anchor River for salmon. And I had heard about salmon growing up, but I didn't know anything about their life history. And I mean, I didn't know anything about their life history.

So I ended up getting to the beach around six o'clock, I parked on the beach where the Anchor entered the salt water. And I made my camp and had a can of Dinty Moore beef stew. And I decided to knock off early. And I went to bed and I woke up about, I don't know, five hours later with the tide lapping into my tent.

So in New Jersey, we have 18 inch tides, maybe two foot tides. They have 10 foot tides in Alaska. So the real problem was not the wet sleeping bag. It was the fact that the VW rabbit was parked in front of the tent.

So the next day, I didn't get out on the water until late in the afternoon and three cans of gum out, which I used to clean Mick's engine thoroughly. And I got the car started again, had it towed off the beach.

And I started walking up the Anchor River at like four in the afternoon. And as I'm walking up, I began to see all these dead and dying fish, half in the water, half out. I remember taking my Green Mountain Series 7-weight and poking the end of, taking the rod tip and poking one of these fish and watching it slither off into the water, more dead than alive.

And I distinctly remember thinking, the way that only a recent college graduate from New Jersey, who's totally clueless about the life history of salmon, I remember thinking, I can't believe this. I grew up my whole life in New Jersey. I never left other than to go to college. And I get to Alaska. And clearly what had happened here was that somewhere upstream, a train fell off a trestle and dumped a bunch of acid into the river and killed all these fish. And so these fish, their jaws are deformed and they're all, they've got all these spots on them.

And I walked up the river a little further and there was a guy standing in a pool casting and I was watching him and he was watching me watch him. And after a while, he looked over his shoulder and he says, what are you looking at? And I said to him, aren't you worried about whatever killed all these fish getting on you? And he looked at me like I was crazy. And he said, dude, these are salmon. This is part of the deal. They die. And I was like, uh-huh, sure they do.

And so I never, to this day, I have yet to step foot in the Anchor River. I went back to the VW Rabbit, which may as well have had a new engine at that point. I drove it to the Anchorage Public Library. I got a book out on salmon. And I've discovered that this is true, that these fish have this incredible life history where they return, sometimes in the case of like the Yukon, a thousand miles to the very river they were born to have sex one time before they die. And then their bodies provide the nutrients that keep that whole system intact.

And I was just completely blown away by this. And that night I wrote a letter of resignation from the ice cream factory. I found out on Monday I didn't need to write the letter of resignation. I got back home, and Monday morning I'm sitting at my dad's kitchen table in New Jersey. And dad comes downstairs, and he says what every father should say to a recent college graduate who is at their kitchen table at 9 o'clock on a Monday morning. He says, why the hell aren't you at work?

And I said, Dad, I quit. I quit the ice cream job and I stayed coaching, but I quit the bartending job. And he says, well, what are you going to do?

And so as it turns out, and this is the truth, that morning in the New York Times above the fold, there was a picture of a guy kneeling next to a lake. And the caption read, it saddens me that I work at a lake that's named for a fish that doesn't return anymore. And that was the year that one sockeye salmon, the WAGs called them Lonesome Larry, made it back to Redfish Lake to spawn.

This fish traveled 800 miles. It climbed 8,000 feet in elevation, never feeding once. It traversed eight separate dams, avoided thousands of predators, including us, only to return to its natal, in this case, they spawn in lakes, its natal lake. And no other sockeye salmon made it back that year.

And I said to my dad, I said, Dad, what I'm going to do is I'm going to save the salmon. And I won't share with you what my father's response was. He's a very colorful man from Newark, New Jersey. But that story was the beginning of it all.

And I tell you the whole thing because I feel that way every day I go to work at Trout Unlimited. Not that I'm going to save the salmon, but that all of us, through our collective efforts, will eventually help to save the salmon.

And so anyway, what happened is I ended up going out and working for the Student Conservation Association for the U.S. Forest Service in Idaho. We were doing research on salmon watersheds, looking at the effects of development on salmon. I published a paper while I was out there in the American Fisheries Society. I moved back to D.C., quite honestly, for a girl that I was dating at the time, but then ended up getting a job with the Bureau of Land Management. I met a guy there when I was out in Idaho. I worked with a guy named Louie who told me I needed to meet his uncle Mike, who did policy work back in D.C. for the BLM.

And so that turned out to be Mike Dombeck, who later became the director of the BLM and is the only man or woman to have ever led both the BLM and then later the U.S. Forest Service. And I followed Mike over to the Forest Service, where we both worked on a number of things. But the biggest thing was the so-called roadless rule, which protected 58 and a half million acres of some of the most important fish and wildlife habitat in the country.

And then after that ended in 2000, what I wanted to do was to find a place where I could go to create an analog to the environmental community, except for hunters and anglers. So part of my job at the Forest Service was to take all the meetings that Mike, the chief, didn't want to take. And that was just about all of the meetings.

And so since we were involved in this very controversial rulemaking, I met with all the regulated industries, oil and gas people, coal people, timber guys. And I met with all the enviros, the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, NRDC, et cetera. The one constituency we never heard from were hunters and anglers.

And so what I wanted to do was to try to go somewhere, find an organization where we could create a movement similar to that of the environmental community, but instead comprised of people who hunted and fished. And that's essentially what we've done over here at Trout Unlimited.

**Marvin Cash (15:23):**
Yeah, that's a really great story. And I almost hate to jump to the next question because it brings us to the absolute right here and now. We're recording this at the end of March, and obviously all of us are being impacted by COVID-19. And we had this interview scheduled for quite a while. And so as I was kind of putting my head around kind of what to talk about, obviously it's timely for you to share with us, the actions that Trout Unlimited is taking to protect its professionals as well as its volunteers.

**Chris Wood (15:50):**
Yeah, well, thanks for asking that. It's a crazy time we're living in. We have, last week we were one of the first to shut down all of our offices around the country. We have everyone working from home. They're still working, still maintaining, we're still productive, but we're working from home. We also canceled all of our travel. We canceled all of our chapter meetings. We canceled all. So we have 400 chapters that are spread all around the country, each of whom meet at least once a month. And so we canceled those meetings.

Spring is a big fundraising time for our chapters. They have a lot of banquets and such. We had to cancel all of those. So we're taking the steps that we need to take to try to keep our people safe. We're doing the appropriate amount of social distancing that the experts are recommending. And we're trying to do our best to make sure that our incredible staff and our awesome volunteers are all safe and protected and not putting themselves at risk or putting other people at risk, frankly.

A lot of our members are in that demographic that could really be harmed by this terrible virus. And so we're doing the best we can to keep everybody safe and healthy and productive.

**Marvin Cash (17:14):**
Got it. And I'll drop, I know you've put a message out on your blog and I'll make sure to link to that in the show notes. Do you have any specific advice? I know you have the chapters, you've got the professional staff, but you've also got under your umbrella, literally individual members as anglers, as well as your TU businesses. Is there any specific advice you want to share for those folks?

**Chris Wood (17:40):**
The advice is don't take advice from people like me. Listen to the experts at the CDC on that blog that you're going to link to. I've got a link to the CDC page. I've been checking it every day. I think a lot of this is common sense, maintain what they call social distancing, keeping a distance of six feet away from everyone.

We were going to have a meeting today here with AFTA, the American Fly Fishing and Tackle Association. They were coming back because TU and AFTA are going to be winding up a whole big campaign together. And we had to cancel that because it involved travel for folks.

Just be cautious. Be careful. We're going to get past this. We've dealt with things that are worse than this before. We'll be fine. But everyone just needs to take it seriously and not put themselves or other people, frankly, which is really the important thing. Don't put other people in harm's way. You might be fine. Most of us can probably handle flu like symptoms. But there are many among us who can't. And so I think it's we all have sort of a collective obligation to do the best we can to diminish the risk of transmission of this terrible virus.

**Marvin Cash (18:59):**
Yeah, really good advice, Chris. And is the TU website going to be the best place to kind of stay up to date with what you guys are doing on kind of, I guess, all fronts TU related to COVID-19?

**Chris Wood (19:13):**
Totally. Yeah, we're doing, again, we're not trying to pretend that we're experts in this. We are not. Don't listen to your neighbor, Harry, unless Harry happens to be an epidemiologist about what to do. I would go right to the experts, go right to the state and federal agencies, the epidemiologists who know what they're talking about.

But what you'll find a lot of on our website is we're using social media right now, for example, as a way to bring people together. We've got tying sessions every night, online tying sessions where people can sort of get together on Instagram or Facebook and tie together. We're doing all we can to sort of, we're talking about having a town hall meeting with me and Beverly Smith, who's our great volunteer operations director to allow people to connect and ask questions of leadership virtually because we can't be together in person right now.

But yeah, the website tu.org is a great place to go and find at least a virtual community if we can't all be together as we wish we could right now.

**Marvin Cash (20:22):**
No, absolutely. And of course, I'll put a link to the website as well as to your social media feeds in the show notes. And you touched on this a little bit earlier. We've seen, we may not have had a pandemic in the United States before, but we've certainly had disruptions like September 11th and the Great Recession. How do you, obviously it's important to take care of yourself, take care of your family, take care of your community. How do you juggle that with keeping people focused on TU's Coldwater Conservation Mission?

**Chris Wood (20:53):**
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, it's, I think it would be easy to say, trout fishing, even conservation, when I weigh the significance of COVID-19 versus TU's mission. Not so significant for TU. And I think that's exactly the wrong reaction, because the fact is that right now, we're not doing a lot of our field operations. We're not having a lot of the community building events that we would typically be doing at this time of year. But we will though. That's, I think that's just a little ways off for us until the social distancing is eased.

But when you think about the efforts that we make to protect rivers and streams and the lands that surround them. And last year we protected about 400, 500 miles of rivers and stream around the country, that's not simply making fishing better for people. It's actually demonstrating that we're not a desperate people, that we have enough wisdom to protect and leave behind for our kids and their kids a significant chunk of God's creation.

When we go out and reconnect and restore these river systems, we're not simply making it easier for fish to move in response to a changing climate, we're actually protecting downstream communities from the effects of flooding by allowing rivers to get up and into their floodplains.

When we do all that restoration work that we do, and last year we did over a thousand miles of stream and river restoration around the country, we're creating literally thousands of high-paying family wage jobs.

So I think when you're in a crisis like this, it's easy to look at Trout Unlimited as something that's incidental or not vital. And I actually think it's just the opposite. When I think about the work that we do to get kids into the out of doors or to help veterans to heal through fly fishing and through time on the water, and most importantly, by becoming a part of our chapter network, we're building community. And I think that work, that work of helping to recover the natural resilience of our rivers and streams and building community across the nation is probably some of the most important work that we could be doing as a country right now.

**Marvin Cash (23:18):**
Yeah, that's really true. And can you, obviously we're still digesting this and we're probably in about the third or fourth inning of this entire process. Do you have any feel for, I think you pretty clearly stated the challenge and the importance of, I guess what I would say, maintaining an appropriate level of focus on the mission. Do you have a feel for kind of how COVID-19 is going to impact TU on a short-term basis and on a long-term basis with respect to its mission?

**Chris Wood (23:50):**
So right now, my focus is keeping our volunteers safe, keeping our employees whole. We've basically told our employees to take sick leave if they have COVID-19 related reasons for not working, whether that's they're sick, God forbid, or a loved one is sick, God forbid, or a child is home from school, more likely, because all the schools are closed.

So they're all charging the sick leave. And if even if they don't have that leave accumulated, we're going to take care of them. And then we will, we're going to lean on some of these bills that Congress is passing if this continues on into the later spring and in the summer.

The good news is that nowadays, with the, I mean, we all sort of curse technology as a bane, right? But it's also a boon, right? I mean, it's not as difficult to work remotely. And I'm not underestimating how difficult it is for some people, especially those who are taking care of people who are sick, or have small children. But technology allows us to be more remote.

And it's interesting, years ago, we made a decision as an organization that we were going to maintain a relatively small headquarters office. So we only have like 25 people back in our headquarters office in Arlington, Virginia. But we have another 250 that are spread all around the country, most of whom are working from remote offices.

So hopefully the level of productivity will continue. But it's just important to remember that the first and most important priority is to just make sure you stay healthy and to keep those around you healthy by making smart decisions about social distancing. Wash your hands a lot. Listen to what all the experts say. And we'll get through this. We'll weather the storm.

**Marvin Cash (25:43):**
Absolutely. And one last COVID-19 question, then we'll move on to something different, interesting, but different. It's early on, but are you kind of seeing, you've mentioned like, for example, you're doing nightly tying sessions and you may have a virtual town hall meeting. Any thoughts about, as you see kind of opportunities growing out of COVID-19 about how the angling community can change the way that it interacts with its members and interact more effectively and get better connection or different connection?

**Chris Wood (26:15):**
It's a great question. I mean, I think a lot of it has to do with using technology to connect. It's interesting, most of us have been cursing technology as disconnecting us, right, from families, from conversations, from things that bring people together, right, because technology can get in the way of those stupid little iPhones or computers.

Well, now I think we have an opportunity to really practice how technology can actually bring us together, help connect us. And so we'll take the lessons from that. I probably travel half time and I've had to cancel a number of trips that I otherwise would have been on right now. And as I think about it now, some of those I wish I really could have gone to, the Orvis rendezvous in Roanoke, Virginia, was canceled and I was going to be their conservation speaker. I would have loved to have done that.

There's a small chapter in West Virginia, the Sal Font chapter, that is really focused on, Sal Font, meaning Savalinus Fontanalis Brooktrout, the Latin name for Brooktrout. They're really focused on conservation and recovering Brooktrout. And I was going to be their banquet speaker. I would have loved to have been with them.

But there's a lot we can do on the phone. There's a lot we can do through video conferencing. There's a lot we can do through Microsoft Teams or Skype or whatever. So I think we're going to take a lot of lessons from that. I think we'll come out of this fine. Even if we maybe use technology a little bit more to our advantage in terms of creating community.

**Marvin Cash (27:50):**
Yeah. It's funny you say that. I have similar and I've had similar conversations around technology before. I love it and like the flexibility that it gives you, but I always tell people that you have to make a really deliberate decision and it's hard to do, right? It's like eating Doritos, about whether you're going to let the technology serve you or enslave you. And the example I use with my teenage boys. I always say, look, it's not inherently bad. It's like a shovel. I can either use it to dig a hole and do something constructive or I can hit someone on the head. And that's my choice. Right.

**Chris Wood (28:24):**
I love that's great. That's a great analogy.

**Marvin Cash (28:27):**
So yeah, I think it's been very interesting to see people kind of wrestle with the technology component. And as we kind of move on, one of the things that I'm working on in The Articulate Fly is a series of interviews with stakeholders in the Bristol Bay area to help people hear the stories. Because as you and I have talked about offline, TU has been involved in the projects to protect Bristol Bay for well over a decade. And I think we're entering our 15th year. Yeah, yeah. Right.

And so part of it is, how do you move past email blasts? And it's not in Kansas. So it's not like everybody has an equal opportunity to get there. And so I thought it would be helpful to kind of lay the groundwork for some of that upcoming work for you to help us kind of reset the baseline at a very basic level. Where is Bristol Bay? And why are groups like TU interested in what happens there?

**Chris Wood (29:24):**
Yeah, that's great. I'm happy to do that, Marv. So Bristol Bay is in southwest Alaska. It's a landscape that's about the size of Ohio, except only 7,000 people live there. It's a completely undeveloped, pristine landscape. There are seven rivers that drain into Bristol Bay itself. And two of them are called the Kvichak and the Nushagak. And the Nushagak is among the finest producers of Chinook or King salmon in the world. And the Kvichak every year produces about half of all of the world's wild sockeye salmon.

Let me say that again. One river produces half of all of the world's wild sockeye salmon. It is obscene how productive these rivers are. And it is precisely in the headwaters of those two rivers that a Canadian mining company has proposed to build a massive open pit gold, silver and copper mine.

It would require an earthen tailings dam to hold back the toxic tailings that would be created by the mine. And don't forget that this is in a highly seismically active area. It is, if you could think of the worst place to put a mine than Bristol Bay, in fact, I would challenge any of your listeners to name one place other than maybe the Vatican that would be worse to build this kind of a mine than Bristol Bay. It is an obscenely bad idea. It is an obscenely greedy idea.

And the other thing I should mention is that it's probably the finest native rainbow trout fishery in the world. It's a place where you can catch 30-inch rainbows, not steelhead. These are rainbows that move out of Lake Iliamna and follow the salmon. It's just, it's like no place on earth.

And so we have been hard at work working with the Alaska native villagers up there who are adamantly opposed to this mine, working with the native corporations, working with the commercial fishermen. The outdoor industry has been fantastic on this issue. They've been unified in their opposition to the mine.

And it's going to, we thought we had it beaten in 2016. EPA had gone through a lengthy process that would have resulted in the protection of Bristol Bay, but there was an election and the Trump administration essentially chose to settle a lawsuit in favor of the proponents of the mine and they allowed the permitting process to proceed.

And we are in the midst of, we litigated a step that the administration took to lift the Obama administration's proposed protections. We're in the midst of that litigation right now. We feel good about our chances. And in the meantime, the permitting process goes on. And we and our allies are working very hard to make sure that Bristol Bay, the Pebble Mine is in fact never permitted.

**Marvin Cash (32:34):**
Got it. And can you help put a little bit, I guess, of detail kind of around, we've got the high level concern, but maybe talk us through kind of what's at risk from an economic perspective, from an ecological perspective and a cultural perspective if the mine moves forward?

**Chris Wood (32:51):**
Yeah, so these salmon fisheries in particular have been counted on for a millennia by the Alaska Native villagers up there. They're wholly dependent on this resource. But it's not just a subsistence resource. I mean, you're talking about a multibillion-dollar fishery that provides 17,000 jobs every year. And all we have to do to maintain that kind of economic impact in that region is have the wisdom to leave it the hell alone.

It's really the salmon resource could not be more culturally, economically or socially significant in that area. And it's not just to that area. As I pointed out, you're talking about nearly half of the world's wild sockeye salmon from the Kvichak. So this isn't just about the effects on those Alaska Native villagers or even on southwest Alaska. This is a world-class resource.

And it's important that everybody take note. And you can go to tu.org or standup.tu.org. And we make it easy for you to make your voice heard there by letting your elected leaders know, letting the state of Alaska know that Bristol Bay is the wrong place to build a massive open pit mine.

**Marvin Cash (34:19):**
Yeah, and I know, and you touched on this briefly with your story about getting flooded out of your tent. I think what a lot of people don't understand from an ecological perspective is it's not really just fishing, because those salmon, when they return and die, literally are the nutrient conveyor belt for the entire ecosystem in those headwaters.

**Chris Wood (34:41):**
That's it. That's exactly right. They are bringing back the nutrients that the entire system, the bears, the eagles, the animals, everything depends on. And but it's especially the people. It's the people too. And that's what makes this so challenging.

Most of the conservation that's happened in the history of the state of Alaska, it's fairly brief history has been forced on it by the outside, by the U.S. Congress, typically or historically. And what's energizing and motivating about what's happening in Bristol Bay today is that this campaign to save Bristol Bay, it is built in, made in and led by Native Alaskans. And that's why ultimately I think we're going to prevail because woe to the politician who isn't willing to listen to the will of the people. And the will of the people in the state of Alaska is pretty darn clear. They don't want that stinking mine built there.

**Marvin Cash (35:44):**
Yeah, that's really interesting. And I wanted to kind of shift focus just a little bit to kind of TU's collaborative process. So I know traditionally, TU has worked really hard to have a process where all stakeholders are involved and works really hard not to be viewed as anti-development. And I was curious, we can talk a little bit about Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay, but I thought it would be interesting for our listeners to hear about some of the win-win outcomes you've been able to achieve on other kind of mineral and timber and water projects that TU's been involved with.

**Chris Wood (36:18):**
Oh, it's too many to mention. It's our way of doing business. We actually have a term for it. We call it collaborative stewardship. So I mentioned cutting my teeth on the roadless rule, which protected the Forest Service. We ended up protecting 58 and a half million acres. And that was awesome. But make no mistake about it. That was something we kind of drove that through. It wasn't very, there was a ton of public input, but it wasn't exactly all that collaborative in the grand scheme of things.

A few years after that, when President Bush was elected, the Bush administration tried to get, they decided to give the states the option of rewriting that roadless rule as they saw fit. And so I became part of a group about 13 of us I think helping the state of Idaho to come up with a roadless rule.

And when we first started, we were at each other's throats. These are sort of competing interests. The livestock guys were there. The off-road vehicle people were there. The timber people. The counties, et cetera.

And a strange thing happened over a period of like two years. We started, we started celebrating the births of each other's children. I remember when my second child, Casey was born, Jim Riley, who was one of the, he was a timber representative. He showed up at our house one night with a logging truck for Casey with a note that said, Hey, it was like a small, like a model logging truck with logs on the back. And he said, Hey Casey, because I know your dad won't show you if you want to really drive a logging truck someday and be a real man, come give me a call.

And we started having dinner with one another and we became friends over time. And I began to understand what the needs of the timber industry were. And they began to understand why a fish and wildlife advocate cared so much about protecting those backcountry areas. And we began to advocate for one another.

And so we ended up creating a different rule in the state of Idaho. Idaho has its own roadless rule. It protects 8.9 million acres. And I would wager that it's even stronger than the rule that we did in 2001. In 2009, they did the Idaho rule. 2001, we did the big roadless rule. And I think the Idaho rule is stronger.

And you tell me which rule is going to last longer, the one that the people of Idaho participated in developing or the one that the Forest Service dropped on everybody from Independence Avenue in Washington, D.C.? And that's basically the model that we employ around the country.

We work with mining companies to clean up abandoned mines. We work with the agricultural community to come up with innovative ways to ensure that irrigators can get their water in a way that doesn't dry up western rivers. We are constantly looking for collaborative solutions. We basically call it applying common sense to common problems for the common good.

**Marvin Cash (39:27):**
Yeah, it's really interesting, too, because that is a very labor intensive and emotionally expensive approach to get things done. Right. But it's effective.

**Chris Wood (39:37):**
Well, yeah, I mean, it's not just effective, it's durable, right? I mean, it is a truism that the conservation that is most local is going to be the most durable. And that's what we try to do. There's a lot of environmental groups that try to parachute in from the coastal cities and tell people in rural America what to do.

What we do is we hire people from rural America who understand the needs of farmers and irrigators and ranchers, timber companies, et cetera. And then within that, the construct of maintaining healthy ecosystems and recovering healthy ecosystems, we try to figure out how to produce the goods and services that those people are looking for.

And you know what? Generally, we can do it. Generally we can do it. Now there's going to be times when you get some greed heads who want to go and do a stupid thing like build a mine in the headwaters of Bristol Bay or build a mine in the headwaters of the Smith in Montana and collaborations can only go so far right?

We tried to talk to those guys. We tried to work with them in Montana, we didn't get anywhere. So we're looking at all of our options, including litigation. But our typical course of action is not to litigate. We like to try to work problems out with people.

**Marvin Cash (41:00):**
Got it. And is, I guess, kind of the disconnect that you're having on the Smith River issue similar to your experience with the Pebble Mine Partnership? Is that kind of why your collaborative stewardship approach is just not getting traction with them?

**Chris Wood (41:13):**
Yeah, I mean, in some cases, we just have these, our mining laws in this country are fairly antiquated. And just because someone has the legal right to access an area for minerals, it doesn't mean it's the smart thing to do. And we'll never surprise anyone with litigation. There'll have been, if you ever read about Trout Unlimited litigating an issue, you can be certain there have been many, many hours, many days of conversation that preceded that litigation where we essentially couldn't come to a consensus.

But I do think that generally that's the better way to go. The more support that we can build for conservation, particularly in rural communities, the more durable conservation will be over time. And that's the name of the game.

**Marvin Cash (42:14):**
Got it. And kind of amplifying that durability concept and being local, why should people that don't live in Alaska be interested, involved in the Bristol Bay process?

**Chris Wood (42:27):**
Well, again, because there's really no place on earth like it. It's like some of the founders of the original authors of the Wilderness Act said, wilderness matters even if you never once stepped foot in it. Wilderness is quite literally the anvil upon which the character of this nation was hammered out as we migrated westward. And it's important that we know that there are places like Bristol Bay that we have had the wisdom to just leave the hell alone.

I mean, think about this for a second. We have spent $17 or $18 billion to try to recover Colombian Snake River salmon. $17 to $18 billion. It is the single least successful restoration in the history of mankind. And all we have to do to keep that fish factory that is Bristol Bay intact is leave it alone.

**Marvin Cash (43:31):**
Wow. Yeah, it's interesting. When you were talking, it made me think about the first time I drove through Yellowstone from Gardner and saw the waterfall and sort of had that feeling that maybe we were getting some things right in this country.

**Chris Wood (43:45):**
Yeah, yeah. No, we've done, to be clear, we've done a lot of good in this country, right? The network of public lands that we have in this country are the envy of the world. We have some, notwithstanding some recent diminishments of our water quality regulations, we have some of the best environmental laws and most protective environmental laws in the country. We have done a lot right as a nation. We have a lot to be proud of.

But as the nation continues to urbanize and as in 20 years, the demographers are projecting that we're going to be a majority minority country, it's just more important than ever that we're getting out into rural communities, into urban communities, that we're working with people of color, that we're expanding the tent for conservation, that we're broadening the base of people who care about these issues that we're talking about because if we don't do that, if that next generation coming along, brown, yellow, green, white, whatever color they are, if they don't care about the stuff that we've done, they'll let those roadless areas go. They'll let the Wilderness Act be compromised. They'll let water quality laws be weakened. And that would be a travesty.

**Marvin Cash (45:05):**
Yeah. And interesting too, right? Because even though we've talked about the Bristol Bay Pebble Mine process going on for almost 15 years, we're sort of at an inflection point in 2020. Can you share with our listeners why 2020 is going to be such an important year for Bristol Bay?

**Chris Wood (45:15):**
Well, I mean, there's that permit that I mentioned, they have to get a permit from the Corps of Engineers to allow the mine plan to go forward. And there's an election. It was because of an election that the proposed protections from the EPA were lifted.

And this election offers tremendous opportunity, and it offers opportunity for two reasons. Number one, it could be that there's a new administration that our job is to convince they should take a different approach, a more protective approach of Bristol Bay, or our job is to help this administration realize it is folly. It is a fool's errand to build this mine in the headquarters of Bristol Bay, to industrialize that landscape and forever ruin it would be just a fool's errand.

And our job is to convince this administration of that and to help them become heroes among sportsmen and women by putting Bristol Bay off limits to development. There's a lot of people who want to say, oh, the Republicans took over and they did the wrong thing right away. And that's just wrongheaded. And it's lazy. It's lazy thinking.

Our job as conservation advocates, whether you pull the D bar or the R bar, is to make conservation bipartisan and to help this administration understand that sportsmen and women, that outdoor retailers all over the country will celebrate them if they do the right thing with Bristol Bay. That's the job we have in front of us. And we have between now and 2020 to do so.

**Marvin Cash (46:48):**
Yeah, that's a lot of wood to chop for sure. Can you help? We don't want to need to do the whole 15 years. So I kind of thought as I was preparing for this interview, could you kind of walk our listeners through everything that's kind of transpired? I guess my understanding is in late 2017, Pebble Mine Partnership applied for their first federal permit kind of as a result of this change in political posture. Can you kind of walk folks through kind of what has happened since they filed that initial permit to kind of crystallize for them kind of where we are today?

**Chris Wood (47:27):**
Yeah. So they, after 15 years, mind you, they finally filed their permit. And it was only because part of that legal settlement that I mentioned said they had to get a permit in by a certain period of time. They still don't have an investor for the mine. I mean, it would require a massive investment of capital to build this mine. And they don't have that investor right now.

But they're in what they call a 404C permitting process, which means they have to get a permit from the Corps of Engineers and the EPA. Their EIS process has been delayed, I believe. But to be honest with you, I don't know exactly where we stand in the administrative proceedings at this point. But I know that there's a fairly good distance to go before they can actually file their permit.

**Marvin Cash (48:16):**
Got it. And just for our listeners, EIS, I think, is the Army Corps Engineers environmental impact statement?

**Chris Wood (48:21):**
I'm sorry about that. Yes, of course. That's the underlying analysis that they will use to justify their permit. They came up with a draft environmental impact statement, which the EPA of this administration filed 100 and something pages of negative comments. And the Fish and Wildlife Service also did a great job, and they raised a ton of objections.

So they've got a big job in front of them to demonstrate that they can do this in a way that doesn't damage that fishery. Even with a favorable political tailwind at this moment, they still have a really big job in front of them.

**Marvin Cash (49:01):**
Got it. And you've mentioned that Alaskans are opposed and Americans outside of Alaska are opposed. Can you kind of give us a little bit more detail around the coalition that TU has helped assemble to speak on behalf of Bristol Bay?

**Chris Wood (49:20):**
Yeah, it's a really diverse and varied coalition, and it starts with the people who live in those Bristol Bay villages up there, the Alaska Native villages, places like King Salmon and Igiugig, and all of those people who have for hundreds of years relied on those fish coming back. It starts with them.

It expands out to the multibillion dollar commercial fishing industry, which provides 17,000 jobs every year fishing those salmon in Bristol Bay. And then the networks extend to the whole sort of people who rely on that landscape for outdoor pursuits, whether they're lodge owners or other outdoor related industries.

And then, as I mentioned earlier, the associations like AFTA, the American Fly Fishing Tackle Association and other industry, outdoor industry groups like Patagonia and Orvis and some of these other companies have been phenomenal in terms of their support of stopping the Pebble Mine. The network is wide and it's deep.

I think the risk we have is that we're in the 15th year of this. I mean, you can only hold people's attention for so long. But conservation is a long game. And there are some landscapes that are worth fighting a long time for. And Bristol Bay is one of them.

**Marvin Cash (50:57):**
Yeah. And if you want to take action and you live in Alaska, what can you do?

**Chris Wood (51:02):**
So as I mentioned earlier, you can go to standup.tu.org. And there is a way it reads where you're accessing the Internet from, and it will give you all of your local officials that you can contact. If you know the governor, call the governor personally. If you know the president of the United States or know someone who knows him, call the president. But I mean, I'm kind of joking, but a little bit.

But this is an endless pressure, endlessly applied deal. And we can't give up the fight just because it's taken a long time. This is one that it's worth our very last breath.

**Marvin Cash (51:42):**
Got it. And is that the same place that you would send folks that live outside of Alaska and the other 49 states if they want to take action?

**Chris Wood (51:49):**
Yep. It's a one-stop shop.

**Marvin Cash (51:51):**
Got it. Well, I'll drop a link to that in the show notes. And as this thing progresses, what's the best place for people to stay up to date with what's going on in Bristol Bay?

**Chris Wood (52:03):**
Yeah, you know, access our website, tu.org. We've got all kinds of information up there.

**Marvin Cash (52:09):**
And on a more positive note, I've seen some of your social media posts. Can you share some of your recent social distancing experiences on the water?

**Chris Wood (52:19):**
Oh, yeah, yeah. So I hope I'm not getting anybody in trouble with this one. So I love to fish on the Potomac River. And we have a tremendous shad run that starts around now. And following the shad are really big stripers that come up and eat the shad. They're coming up from Chesapeake Bay.

And I have been practicing appropriate forms of social distancing, staying at least six feet away from friends while fishing in the morning for some of these big stripers and shad. And then we also often catch like a giant blue catfish or a walleye or a smallmouth. And it's a great way to start the morning.

I would frankly be doing it even if I wasn't practicing social distancing. My practice this time of the year is to get out on the Potomac for a couple hours at daybreak. And then I'm typically in the office before nine. So, yeah, I've been chasing big stripers.

**Marvin Cash (53:22):**
Well, that's great. Any other silver linings you want to share with folks in these really unusual times we're in?

**Chris Wood (53:28):**
I mean, just the opportunity to be close to the people you love, right? I mean, that's, there's no, there is no silver lining. I said this the other day to the TU family. There's no silver lining to this tragedy. There really isn't one. But if there was, it would be that we have more time to spend with our kids, with our spouses, with our loved ones and more time to connect to them.

I've started lifting weights with my eighth grader in the morning. And I will tell you, he is a beast. He said to my wife the other day, Dad's lost a lot of strength in the past two years. But we lift every morning. And we do that in the basement of the house. And so far, everybody's healthy. And like with all your listeners, I hope everybody stays that way.

**Marvin Cash (54:26):**
Yeah, that's good stuff. Nothing quite like the honesty of a teenager for sure.

**Chris Wood (54:30):**
No, and he didn't tell me. He told my spouse, which is probably wise.

**Marvin Cash (54:33):**
Yes. So before I let you hop, why don't you let folks know where they can find TU on the internet and learn more about the organization and get involved?

**Chris Wood (54:43):**
You go to www.tu.org. And we've got a lot of great content up there now. If you're a fly fisher, please become a member of Trout Unlimited. I don't want to have to shame you into doing this, but it's a great organization. We do more to make fishing better than any other organization in the country.

And if you go to tu.org, you'll see all kinds of cool social media content, blogs, et cetera, that you can check out. There's videos, information. I'm looking at the front page right now on the fight over the Smith mine. There's a piece here on how to avoid a collision loop when you're Spey casting.

Because the NCAA was canceled, we've got a fly tying showdown going on right now, sort of like bracketology, just involving fly tying. So check it out. It's chock full of good content. And I think your listeners will enjoy it.

**Marvin Cash (55:39):**
That's great. And Chris, I really appreciate you spending some time with me this afternoon.

**Chris Wood (55:44):**
Yeah, man, this is truly my pleasure.

**Marvin Cash (55:46):**
Thanks again.

**Chris Wood (55:48):**
Okay, talk to you soon.

**Marvin Cash (55:50):**
Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Again, a shout out to this episode's sponsor, our friends at Ascent Fly Fishing. Remember to check them out at www.ascentflyfishing.com. And if you use the code ARTICULATE10, all caps, all one word, the number 10, you'll get 10% off of your order.

Stay safe out there. Tight lines, everybody.