S8, Ep 66: The Roadless Rule Debate: Chris Wood on Protecting America's Wild Spaces and What You Can Do

Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly. On this episode, Trout Unlimited's Chris Wood returns to the podcast.We had this interview scheduled for a while to discuss the Roadless Rule, but within the last two weeks, there's a new sense of urgency. On August 18th, the US Forestry Service filed a proposed rule to rescind the Roadless Rule in its entirety. The comment period ends on September 21st.Join me as Chris shares the history of the rule, shares why it's important to all Americans, not just hunters and anglers, and debunks popular misconceptions around it. Chris also shares next steps and how you can make your voice heard.I think you're really going to enjoy this one, but before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items. If you like the podcast, please tell a friend and subscribe and leave us a rating and review in the podcast app of your choice.In the age of AI, it's more important than ever, and it really helps us out. And finally, a shout out to our sponsor. TroutRoutes.We all know streams and rivers are getting crowded, and chances are you're not the only one at your local access point. Get away from the crowds and busy gravel lots by using TroutRoutes Pro.With over 350,000 access points mapped across 50,000 trout streams and much more, TroutRoutes has all the data you need to help you find angling opportunities that others will overlook. Up your game and download the app today.Use code ArtFly20 ArtFly20 all one word for 20% off of your TroutRoutes Pro membership at maps.troutroutes.com now on to our interview. Well, Chris, welcome back to The Articulate Fly.

It's great to be here, man. Thanks for having me again.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. And you know, before we get to the serious business of the Roadless Rule, you know, I got to ask you, how's your summer been?And have you got any, like, super awesome fishing trips you want to share with us?

Yeah, you know, I had a varied summer of fishing. Of course, I fished the Potomac routinely almost every week.But I, I had a fun day on a couple of little spring creeks, Anderson and Depuys in Montana. It was tied to our, our annual, our we had a board meeting there.And then I actually with my kids and I did some fishing in Ocracoke, North Carolina. You know, off little kayaks. We were fishing the Pamlico Sound.Didn't hook up with any big redfish this time, but it's one of the more, as you probably know, one of the more beautiful places on the planet. You know, 13, 14 miles of national seashore, you know, you can look up and down the beach and not see a soul. It's amazing.

Yeah, it's neat.You know, I, my, I have family from eastern North Carolina and we didn't spend a lot of time at Ocracoke, but we definitely spent a lot of time on the North Carolina coast. So it's a. Yeah, Very, very special place to me.

Yes. Yeah, it's super cool.

And it.

In it. We hit it last year or maybe two years ago. Casey, my middle child. Casey and I.And you know, I remember, you know, you drift apart on the kayaks a little bit, but, you know, we were kind of staying close enough that I could see when he caught something or when I caught something. And at one point I saw his rod doubled over and I was like, you know, what do you got there?And he said, I have no idea what it is, but it's the biggest fish I've ever caught. It was a giant redfish.

Yeah. Yeah. That's absolutely awesome.And you know, it's kind of funny, we were talking before we started recording that we've had this on the calendar for a while because you were a super busy man, Right. So you're just traveling everywhere.I mean, I saw you last week up in Madison, Wisconsin at OWAA and, you know, we're going to talk about the Roadless rule, but there's kind of a new sense of urgency that's kind of transpired within probably, I don't know, the last week to 10 days.And so, you know, as we kind of jump off into this, you want to kind of let folks, if they don't know what the Roadless rule is and kind of why everybody's so agitated about it right now on social media.

Yeah. So the Roadless rule has been in effect for the past 25 years.It protects 58 and a half million acres of some of the finest fish and wildlife habitat on the planet. And it.The Department of Agriculture has proposed rescinding the rule, removing the rule and allowing for road construction and other forms of development in these backcountry areas. And, you know, I, I have a. A personal invested interest in this issue.I cut my teeth on it many moons ago, but it really is almost the classic definition of a solution in search of a problem. These areas are well managed, they're well maintained, at least as well maintained as any other portion of the national forest system.And I just, I don't know why they're they're doing this, but we only have a limited amount of time until September 21st to make our voices heard.And it's going to be really important, particularly that hunters and anglers weigh in on this and, and let the administration know that we don't want to see the protections of the roadless rule removed.

Yeah, absolutely. And we'll get into more detail on that a little bit later on.But there's also, obviously, because, you know, Congress is basically on vacation, right, for the summer. They try to not stay in D.C. in August.

Marvin, Congress has been on vacation for about seven years.

Well, I won't take that bait, but there's a parallel kind of legislative attack on the roadless rule as well. You want to let folks know kind of about that and kind of where that one was.

That one was really infuriating. There was a bipartisan forest health fire bill that had broad support.And the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, a man by the name of Senator Mike Lee, introduced a poison pill amendment that will ultimately kill that bipartisan bill at a time when we need to be taking action to help treat forests that are fire dependent but have had fire excluded from them for a hundred years.And he basically put a, a provision in that bipartisan bill that would eliminate the roadless rule and make it illegal for a future administration to repromulgate. Big word there. It's a $2 word. But to basically redo the roadless rule.And as a result of that, every Democrat voted against and independents who caucus with the Democrats voted against the bipartisan bill that they otherwise would have supported and effectively killed that bill.

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, that's kind of a new technique.We're seeing where things are being repealed and then they're trying to block them ever coming back ever again.

Right, that's right. Yeah.

Yeah, we've seen that. The Boundary Waters topic for another podcast.

Yes, that's right.

But, you know, before we go a little bit deeper into the roadless rule, you know, can you give us. Because I think people enjoy recreating in the outdoors, but a lot of them aren't really familiar with kind of our public lands history and heritage.So can you kind of give us the 30,000 foot view there?

Yeah, I mean, America's public lands are the envy of the world.The public lands that are managed by the Bureau of Land management and the U.S. forest Service, which is what we're talking about in the case of roadless areas. You know, these are, these are basically the backyard of the little guy.They ensure that we'll never have to beg or borrow or steal to hunt or fish or just to find solace in nature. They're open to all Americans as a birthright. You know, they're. They're literally the envy of the world.And for most of us, it's all the land we're ever going to own. And it's not uncommon that we get these episodic attacks on public lands.There was one 18 months ago, hunters and anglers were instrumental in beating it back. It would have allowed for the. It would have mandated the sale of 2 to 3 million acres of land.And just to be clear, you know, it's not going to be people like you and I that end up buying that land.The land that's going to be sold is going to be the land along the water, and then it's going to be fenced off and posted, and no one will be able to fish or hunt there.And I just think it's really imperative that really all outdoor enthusiasts, but especially those of us who fish and hunt, because I think we have an almost visceral connection with land and water because of that hunting and fishing experience.It's really just imperative that we make sure that when these boneheaded proposals come up every couple years to sell off public lands, that we oppose them. And.And while this one isn't quite as offensive as an outright sale of public lands, the rescission of the roadless rule is one of those examples where it's just going to be really, really important that we stand up and make our voices heard.

Yeah, it's interesting. I think I was watching the news this weekend, and they're now kind of rumblings of some kind of land swap in Yosemite, right?

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I haven't gotten to the bottom of that one yet. But I mean, Yosemite, really.I mean, it's, you know, at least have the decency to pick some obscure, you know, little park or monument that no one's ever heard of. But Yosemite, what's going to be next, Grand Canyon? You know, the sequoias.

Yeah. You know, and so you touched on this earlier.You know, you really were at ground zero, Right, for the roadless rule in 2001 and back when we were both a lot younger and probably didn't have gray hair.

That's right, I had hair.

Yeah.And, you know, and the funny thing is, you know, I think you've explained it before, like you were involved because you had to take the meetings that the head of your agency didn't want to take. Right. So that probably what brought you to the table, probably in your, like, late 20s, early 30s.

That's right.

You want to talk to us about, just so we understand kind of what that process looked. Looked like and kind of what it was to be there kind of at the beginning.Because, I mean, you literally understand, you know, that it's been in place for 25 years. I think we've had, what, six presidential administrations.

Yeah. That's been three Democrats and three Republicans that have this.And then this rule has withstood 12 separate lawsuits and, you know, one at every turn. Yeah. So it's a. It's a really. It's an interesting story, Marvin.So back in the day in 1997, Mike Dombeck, who had moved over from being the director of the BLM to the Forest Service to become the chief, basically the head of the agency, he and I went from BLM to the Forest Service, and I was his policy and communications guy.And, you know, the big problem we faced immediately upon walking inside the door was that the agency had this $8.5 billion maintenance backlog on its 370,000 mile road system. And so, you know, we thought, well, we've got to solve this. And Congress came within a single vote of eliminating the Forest Service's roads budget.And they did it as a surrogate.This is back when there were a lot of moderate Republicans, but it was moderate Republicans in the House were very clear that that amendment was a surrogate to get the agency to stop trying to build roads into roadless areas. And so we were faced with this huge maintenance backlog. And so we basically took a timeout. We put a pause on the.On the construction of new roads for 18 months across the National Forest system. And, you know, we thought this was just a really fundamentally conservative approach to managing lands.Why would we allow for the construction of new roads into these remote backcountry areas when we can't afford to take care of the ones we have? It just didn't make sense to us. And so, so we did this 18 month moratorium.We ended up developing something creatively, I say that derisively, creatively, called the Rhodes rule.And in the midst of developing that Roadless Rule, we realized, I think much as this is much the case today too, we were trying to solve the wrong problem. And most Americans don't care about their public lands. They don't care about right sizing or rationalizing a road system.They don't even really care about roads unless the roads aren't well maintained enough so that they and their families can use them.What they care about public lands for are their sense of beauty and naturalness and a sense of awe and wonder that they inspire in all of us who get to recreate on them. And roadless areas are the best of what's left of those lands. The best.And we realized that that was the problem we needed to solve for, was actually protecting those 58 and a half million acres. And this is a little bit inside baseball, but I'll share it with you. That was the.So that the rationale for the roadless rule started with an economic argument. It then it moved into a social argument, meaning that we should keep these places intact. I mean, it's not like they're going anywhere, right?We're just leaving options open for future generations. It's the definition of a conservative approach. But the.What I don't think we thought about at the time, but it became apparent later on, was the Forest Service was in its, like, seventh or eighth year of this harrowing transition that it went through. So basically, from 1960 all the way to 1989, they cut between 9 and 12 billion board feet of timber a year, without fail.And much of the agency's identity after World War II was wrapped up in this idea of, you know, being road engineers who could put a road into anywhere and being able to harvest timber or sell timber to be harvested. And that's how the agency saw its worth and its value.And, you know, then there was this furtive little owl called the northern spotted owl, who was listed as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Salmon and steelhead were beginning to get listed under the Endangered Species Act.All these species had the same reliance on these old forests, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. And basically, because of lawsuits and litigation, the timber sale program just got shut down.And there was a judge, Judge Dwyer, who basically enjoined the timber sale program, stopped it. And he, he said in his ruling, I've never forgotten this. I was just a kid when I read it. I think I was still in school.He said that the Forest Service had demonstrated a reckless disregard for the law in. In promoting these. These timber sales into old growth roadless areas. And. And so then it shut down.And the agency, ever since 1989, has typically harvested around two and a half billion board feet of timber. So from 12 to two and a half billion.And just for by way of reference for your listeners, you know, you need about 30 to 35,000 board feet for a, you know, a moderately sized house. So the agency's now 1997, 1998, it's in its eighth, ninth year of transition, a little bit rudderless. And what the roadless rule.And again, this is more inside baseball. Probably I shouldn't even have gone here.But what the roadless rule helped to do was to reestablish the conservation identity, the sense of conservation leadership coming from the Forest Service.Because with the northern spotted owl and the salmon crisis in the Northwest, conservation was imposed on the Forest Service from the outside, from lawsuits, from litigation, from the executive branch. It was not driven from inside the agency.And yet the roadless rule, that one was made in the Forest Service, it was created by Forest Service employees. We came up with the idea for it, we did the environmental analysis that made it bulletproof for 25 years to 12 different sets of litigation.And I really think that the unfortunate reality about what's happening today with its rescission is just like way back when, 25 years ago when we realized we were trying to solve the wrong problem. I think they're trying to solve the wrong problem again.The problem they ought to be focused on is not how to get into these back, these remote backcountry areas that have typically low timber values. They're typically high and you know, they're in high elevation areas, often with erosive soils.So, you know, and so they, I don't know why we're arguing about building roads that will fall off the landscape, roads we can't already take care of so that we lose the American taxpayers money on money losing timber sales. Like that's not the argument we want to have right now.The argument we want to have is how do we make investments in thinning and doing hazardous fuels treatments around communities of people that live in these fire dependent forests that have been bereft of fire now for over a hundred years. That's the, that's the debate we should be having. And instead, I frankly think we're wasting our time on this, this question of roadless areas.

Yeah, it's interesting too, because I, you know, in hearing you talk in Madison, you know, you know, obviously, like, let's put aside, you know, fire as a management technique. You're like, well, this is about wildfires.They're like, well, I'm not in favor of wildfires, but I think a lot of people, you know, that's kind of in the, that's the Instagram packaging, for lack of a better word. Right?Yeah, but I, but I Think it was interesting to hear you tell us of all of the, you know, even extractive activities that are currently permitted and actually are taking place on roadless lands. I thought maybe if you could kind of expound on that, that'd be super helpful.

Yeah. Yeah.I mean, one of the arguments that you get, and this is what we talked about in Madison at the Outdoor Writers Conference, is that this is de facto wilderness, and only Congress can designate wilderness, as your listeners may know. And yet in roadless areas, you can ride off road vehicles. You can't ride off road vehicles in designated wilderness areas.In fact, 33% of all of the motorized trails across the 12 Western states are found in roadless areas. You can develop. You can drill for oil and gas in roadless areas. You can't do that in wilderness. In the state of Utah alone, I think it's.There's 83,000 acres of leased roadless areas for oil and gas leasing. You can graze cows in roadless areas.In four states alone, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming, and Utah, they have 15 million acres of grazing allotments found within inventoried roadless areas. You can mine in roadless areas, and you can even build a road to that mine if you have a valid existing right.And so the notion that these are de facto wilderness areas, it's just wrong. And the other. The other argument you'll hear, it's the Instagram comment you just made, was, you know, well, we can't do forest health treatments.We can't do forest management. We can't do the kind of thinning that needs to be done in these roadless areas. That's a canard. That's just not true.So there are roadless areas contain 21% of the tree cover on the National Forest system, and yet 34% of the total fuels management activities across the National Forests have occurred in roadless areas. And in fact, there's a. I'll share a quote with you that came from a research paper a few years ago from the Forest Service itself.This is their own data. The quote is, agency management records show that a lack of roads has not stopped fire prevention measures.Fuel management activities in roadless areas have actually been more numerous on a per square kilometer basis than elsewhere in the National Forest system. And so what we were trying to do back then was to build a tool that had flexibility. You know what we didn't need, we didn't need roads.We didn't need roads to accomplish our ecological objectives. In fact, they run contrary to almost every ecological objective. And to be clear, One thing I will say, Marvin, is that we did allow.There's an exception in the roadless rule, and we do allow roads to be constructed in the event of an emergency, such as a fire.

Yeah. And it was interesting, too.I remember you telling us in, in Wisconsin that, you know, most of the forest fires are actually within about a half a mile of roads. Right.

So, yeah, it's, it's, it's. So 85% of all the fires on the national forest are started by people, and about 80% of those are within a.They're started within half a mile of a road. So the only thing that more roads translates to is more fire.

Yeah. And it's. And it's interesting, too. Right?So if, if we, if you kind of like, we know you're a proponent, like, you don't need to fully repeal the rule, but, you know, if you were k for a day and you could get Congress to come together and get the agencies together, are there any kind of improvements or tweaks you would like to see made to the rule that would make it better from your perspective?

Well, I mean, that's another legitimate question. Right. I mean, I'm not so arrogant as to suggest that the roadless rule was carried down from the mountain by Moses.It may be that there was something that we've learned in the past 25 years that we didn't anticipate. I don't know what it is, Marvin. I really don't. But that's a good conversation to have. But that's not the conversation we're having.Instead, it's this sort of blanket rescission. It's a blanket elimination of the protections of the rule. I just think it's really unfortunate.And in the meantime, what's going to happen is this is going to distract from what really needs to happen in the national forests, and that's that aggressive thinning around communities of people to help prevent horrific and tragic, unnaturally intense wildfires.

Yeah.And to let folks know kind of what that process would look like if it was looking for tweaks, would be a much more deliberate, iterative commenting process.

Right, that's it.

That would not be a, you know, 30 day, 21 business day comment period. It would be probably two or three iterations of rulemaking. Right?

Yeah, that's right. They would, you know, say, hey, it's been, you know, frankly, it's what the. It's kind of what the Bush administration did.You know, they, they basically said, well, you know, rather than doing a wholesale reversal of the rule we're going to let the states determine how to manage roadless areas within their boundaries. And that's why this rescission only applies to 44 million acres.Because the states of Idaho and Colorado followed through on the offer of the Bush administration and they created their own roadless rules. And we were, I was personally, and we were intimately tu, was intimately involved in the development of those rules.That was a more iterative approach. That was something that allowed people to think. And you know, New Mexico petitioned, I think North Carolina even petitioned to do a rulemaking.California petitioned to do a rulemaking. All those states eventually dropped out as the roadless rule kept winning in court.They basically didn't see the need then to develop their own rules. But the states of Idaho and Colorado, they made their own rules and, and they've worked great for them.That to me would be a more sensible approach than this sort of ham handed, you know, take a meat cleaver to the whole thing approach that's going on right now.

Yeah, and it would be helpful. Like I do want you to share with us, you know, cause you've got very concrete habitat needs that, that are supportive for hunters and anglers.But to me, you know, one of my takeaways, you know, from this year's conference and last year's as well, is that we need to get a broader coalition of people involved on these issues.

Yeah, that's right.

And so it would be great if you could talk about some of the great habitat work that were, I guess with the work the habitats do in these roadless areas for, for fish and game.But also too, to me, the, you know, what I'm particularly interested in is, you know, how do we get people that don't hunt and fish to care about this at all?

Well, that's right. I mean, again, that's, that's why I, I talk about the public lands being the backyard of the little guy. I happen to be a hunter and an angler.That's a passion of mine. But even if you don't hunt or fish, if you just enjoy clean drinking water, roadless areas supply drinking water for more than 40 million Americans.If you just care about stewarding God's creation. Even though roadless areas represent 2% of the American landscape, they harbor 25% of our endangered species.But if you hunt or fish, these places are the game. So in Wyoming, for example, you are 10 times more likely to bag an elk in a roadless area than you are in other parts of the state.In Idaho, you've got the Longest center fire rifle seasons, and you can hunt a rifle during the rut in roadless areas.In states like Utah, 99% of the roadless areas on the national forest have been designated by the state as crucial or critical habitat for mule deer, and 87% are for elk. And from a fisheries perspective, I could.We could spend the rest of our time just coming up with statistics like this, but 70% of all Colorado greenback cutthroat trout have their habitat in roadless areas. All of the five species of Pacific salmon and steelhead number six.70% Of their habit in the Tongass National Forest, our largest national forest, are found in roadless areas. 75% Of the Chinook and steelhead habitat in Idaho for those species are found in roadless areas.68% Of all the bull trout habitat in Idaho is found in roadless areas. And I could go on and on. They're, they're just, they're desperately important from a habitat perspective.And because as every angler knows, if, if it's good habitat, the fishing is probably going to be pretty good, too.

Yeah. And the other thing too is, you know, you can match the, the number of miles, but, you know, there's, there's no replacement for contiguous habitat.Right.

That's it. That's it. That's right. I mean, that's. And what does a road do? A road breaks up contiguous habitat. A road is the ultimate fragmenter of habitat.If, if, if.If you're a brook trout fisherman and you like to fish the blue lines or just like to get up in the head country, the fishing gets better the further away you are from the road. It's a rule. And, and it's even, it's even more that way from a big game perspective, other than with whitetails.Whitetails, they like the openings, but mule deer and elk, they don't like the openings. They want to be as far away from those possible.

Yeah, it's interesting, you know, so we're lucky that we have green areas and state parks around Charlotte, but they're islands.And so, you know, the thing that's amazing to me, having been lucky enough to kind of grow up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge in Virginia, as you go hike these trails and you're like, there's no wildlife. You don't even hear any birds.And it's just because it's so chopped up, it's just like, well, yeah, we've got, you know, however many acres here, but it doesn't connect anything. And it's in the middle of A high density urban area.So I think some people kind of miss the point that like, it's really valuable to have millions of acres that aren't broken apart.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right.And they're the sources of the cold, clean water for the larger rivers downstream that, you know, we all love to fish, like the Gallatin. I mean, all these great rivers, they're all dependent places like, you know, West Virginia.I know the last time I fished before COVID was on the Pisgah National Forest.And they've got some roadless areas that provide great, great cooling water for lower elevation streams that have wonderful wild brown trout and rainbow trout in them. So it's, it's really that, that the, the way that roads cut up the landscape and provide vectors for invasive species.I mean, this is going to sound elitist, but even, even for people, like, it's good to have certain areas where we don't have too many people driving vehicles because that means there'll be more wildlife there.These are the places of refuge for wildlife where they can literally, you know, summer, you know, find summer habitat when it gets really warm, if you're elk or, or deer. But it's, it's just a refuge to be away from all of the roads and all the people.So it's, it's just imperative that we keep those places on the landscape.

Yeah. It was actually interesting when you were telling me that the backlog was $8 billion in 2001 on road maintenance.I was actually like, well, the government's done a pretty good job because it's only 10.8 billion now, right?

Yeah. I mean, so yeah, what they would tell you is, so it was $8.5 billion 25 years ago.They would tell you that the maintenance backlog on the road system today is about 7 billion.But it's still, we're talking billions of dollars, like the agency's entire budget for a year to pay a 30,000 employees and to manage all those lands for us. It's 5 billion. So it's more than the agency's entire budget. The maintenance backlog on the existing road system.

Yeah, I mean, and I hike on those roads and I know why they need to be fixed. Right.Because, you know, unless you have a jacked up Jeep and you don't mind like, you know, you know, getting your chainsaw out and kind of clearing their way, you're going to have a hard time. And I mean, I would just think just the expense of bringing people in to just fix like deeply Rutted and like, really, really messed up roads.I mean, the ones I hike on in Virginia and North Carolina to get to places to fish are a mess.

Yeah, I mean, I, I can't remember the statistic. I was talking to Under Secretary Boren. He's the person in, the political appointee in charge of the Forest Service.We were out looking at some Trout Unlimited restoration work on the Yankee Fork of the Salmon in Idaho. I think he told me that the highest the agency has ever gotten to is maintaining 25% of its trails. 25%. That's the high mark.Why are we having this conversation about building roads into roadless areas when we know we can't take care of them? It just doesn't make any sense to me.

I have a theory, but we can talk about that when I come see in D.C. this fall, maybe. But, you know, it's an interesting thing, too, because I think people don't think about the next step.You rescind the roadless rule, and now management gets pushed down. Right. So it's at the plan level.And, you know, people probably need a little bit of help maybe connecting the dots about, you know, if the agencies were understaffed before, in the last 18 months, they're even more understaffed. So why don't you talk about kind of what that administrative landscape would look like? So you're understaffed staff, but now you have even more work.Give people kind of a feel for kind of that scope as well.

Yeah, I mean, this is. I had lunch with a former Forest Service employee that we hired to run our nascent tribal program. Those agencies have been hollowed out.I mean, so what happened is the people, the most experienced people at the top, they were all given that fork in the road choice to make. You know, basically, you can retire and take some money, or we're probably going to eliminate your job.And so we, we lost the, the most experienced people. And then what they said was, well, we're going to get rid of the probationary employees as well.So the probationary employees are made up of two categories of people. Either younger people who have just begun their federal career, or they're people. They're the, they're the hard chargers who are getting promoted.And so when you get promoted in the federal government, you're. You're in probate, probationary status, they call it for a year. And so, so they got rid of all the most experienced people.They got rid of the youngest people, and then they got rid of the hard chargers who were in probationary Status and, you know, it.Of all these policy issues that, you know, we deal with, and, you know, there's politics in everything we do, and there's a pendulum, and you hear people talk about that, you can fix most of that stuff. I'm really worried about fixing these agencies.I don't, My kids don't want to be public servants at this point, you know, and when I was their age, it was a great. That was a. I mean, I. Look, I wanted to. And I, I. When I worked at the Forest Service, I worked for the BLM before that.I didn't know a single employee who didn't take that job because they wanted to make the world a better place. They all wanted to make the world a better place, and I don't think anybody's going to want to work for them anymore. And so.So this whole idea of pushing these decisions down to the forest level sounds good on paper. That's exactly where we were 25 years ago. All these decisions were made at the local level, and every single roadless sale was litigated.Every single one of them. They were wildly controversial. They took years and years to accomplish because people didn't want them.And now we're going to ask these local managers who don't have the support they used to have to take on the intensely controversial notion of building roads and roadless areas.And, I mean, the good news is, Marvin, that I think the resource professionals at the Forest Service are probably the ones who want to build roads and roadless areas the least. You know, they. This is a different agency than it was a quarter a century ago. They're.They're well past that transitionary period that I was talking about to begin the interview. They're, you know, these folks are. They're leaders in forest research. They're. They're leaders in wildland fire management.They're absolutely exceptional partners in terms of doing watershed scale restoration. So I don't think there's a big appetite inside the Forest Service to. To build a bunch of roads and roadless areas, which is the good news to me.

Yeah. And, you know, shifting gears a little bit, I mean, the roadless debate is just one of many. Right.So there's been a overarching push in the last, say, 24 to plus months to basically open up and repurpose public lands. And so I was wondering if you could kind of put that in context for our listeners, because, I mean, you see it every day, right?You've probably got a map in your office with, like, big, big pens in it. About what's going on, but kind of let people know, you know, we've got boundary waters, we've got the roadless rule.There are other things, too, but put in a broader context and also kind of talk about what's driving this. Right?

Yeah. You know, I can't get inside the heads of other people, so I. I can't. I don't understand it. It. It doesn't make sense to me.Part of the reason that we were excited to work with the Bush administration on the Idaho rule in the Colorado road this rule was because we knew we had the better arguments, you know, and usually logic prevails. I think the difference here is that these aren't. I don't think we're.And there was a substantive policy debate back then 25 years ago about where should decisions be made about national forests. And where we came out was generally at the most local level possible. But eventually.But periodically, leadership has to be asserted on issues of national importance. And roadless was one of those. And so we assert. We asserted that. That leadership and created the roadless rule.Right now, I don't think this is so much about policy debates as it is. There's just a philosophical belief, I think in some corners that we need to promote a deregulatory agenda, that regulations are just bad.And look, I'll be the first to tell you, there's a lot of government regulations that are silly, but the roadless rule ain't one of them. And there's absolutely no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.But I think that's the broader issue that's happening, is that there are just certain people who have this deregulatory bent, and they're pushing a deregulatory agenda, and this one got swept up into it.

Yeah, it's an interesting thing. I mean, it's kind of, as our politics have gotten divided, it's almost like the framing gets divided as well. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

And so, you know, it's an interesting thing because, I mean, you're raising boys, I'm raising boys. You know, I always tell them that all the hard work is in the middle.

Yeah, yeah.

Right. And so, you know, it's an interesting thing where we've gotten into a world where we can't have an intelligent conversation.You'd even get to the point where we agree to disagree because it's an interesting thing. Right. So I'm a econ guy. Right.So if you talk about the tragedy of the commons and all these things, like markets are super efficient at Allocating resources, but they're not perfect.

Right.

And so to me it's like you need to have maybe a better process. Right. To be more thoughtful and maybe that's the direction. But yeah, it's an interesting thing where it's like all regulations can't be bad.You can be, as a matter of fact, you can be have a deregulatory bent and still think that all regulations aren't bad. Right?

Yeah. You know, I'll give you a great example.This Idaho roadless rule that I'm, that I, we've been talking about, we developed that in, it was completed in 2009. And there were many in the environmental community who are really unhappy with Trout Unlimited because we were a fulsome participant.The Bush administration created a council of, I think it was 13 of us, the Roadless Area Conservation National Advisory Committee. And I was on this thing, RACNAC. And you know, as you can imagine, it wasn't exactly a level playing field. It was kind of stacked against us.You know, the conservation interests, hunting and fishing interests weren't over represented, trust me.But by the end of that process that took years, we were all friends because you know, and what happened in the beginning was every single nano change, every minor, minor change to the roadless rule that was being proposed, I would fight it, every change. And what happened by the end was I was an advocate for the timber guys and I was trying to better understand the arguments of the off road vehicle.The Blue Ribbon coalition was a part of it.I was trying to understand the arguments of the ski areas and trying to figure out, well, how do we work to meet their needs but still protect the integrity of what we're trying to do. And then they started doing the same thing and we, we would all go to one another's homes for. I'm still in touch with them.We would go to one another's homes for dinners.I remember when, when Casey, who I mentioned earlier was born, my middle child, Jim Riley, who was the timber representative on this rack knack thing, he showed up at the, he just left it on the front porch one night. He left a little logging truck with logs in it, you know, little pieces of wood. And he said, dear Casey, I still have the note.Dear Casey, let me know if you ever want to learn how to be a real man. I'll take you out into the Idaho woods. Love your friend Jim.And you know, I mean, so that's why it's unfortunate that rather than having a nuanced conversation about like what are your needs like, who is it that's interested in being able to build roads into roadless areas and how do we think about what it is they're trying to accomplish and still protect the integrity of this concept of keeping wild spaces intact? But that's not going to happen now, unfortunately.

But I mean, it kind of is a great segue into my next question, which is, you know, you hope you can keep the hunters and anglers on board and sometimes that's a duration. Right. And we've had that conversation, for example, in the context of Bristol Bay, like, how many times can you ring the bell? Right, yeah.But I do think, you know, I think it's probably a good thing if we could move towards a world where we could have those constructive conversations.But I think there's also a need to have a different communication strategy that reaches outside of the typical silos because we've got bigger challenges than we've historically had.And I was kind of curious, do you kind of have some thoughts because you might talk about this maybe internally at TU, about like, how do we kind of broaden the tent and how do we change the messaging to maybe either come up with a new messaging strategy or expand our current messaging strategy to kind of get more people into the fold to care about these issues that we care about?

Yeah, I mean, we're, we're, you know, we talk about hunters and anglers because there's 55 million of them. But if you're talking about fly anglers, it's probably closer to seven, you know, who, you know, are, you know, regular anglers.So we're constantly in the business of broadening the message. So, you know, just to take our business model, the Trout Unlimited, we, we do three basic conservation things at tu.We protect high quality habitat often found in high elevation areas like these roadless areas, because they're the sources of our coldest, cleanest water. We, we reconnect those high elevation habitats to lower elevation habitats so that fish can move in response to flood, fire and drought.And then we engage in watershed scale restoration where and historically the most biologically productive portion of the landscape were the lower elevation areas. But those are the places we develop first. So we do restoration.That protect, reconnect, restore frame is a great frame for protecting trout, for recovering trout and salmon populations. But it also, the protect piece helps to lower water filtration costs for downstream communities.The reconnect piece, by allowing a river to reconnect to its floodplain, you help to minimize the damage of the next flood on that downstream community. And that restore piece provides tens of thousands of high paying family wage jobs to people in rural communities across America.So that's how we try to talk about our work that second way. Yeah, it's great for fish and it happens to be a perfect climate change adaptation model. Right.We're helping these watersheds to become more resilient to the effects of a changing climate. But the reality is that there aren't enough of us who care about trout and salmon or fly fishing for them, or fishing for them generally.And so we try to talk about the benefits of our work in that broader societal context.

Yeah, and we are, I mean, to say we're on the clock is kind of crazy. So we're literally recording this. The last day of August. Comment deadline is what, September 21st for the roadless rule?

Yeah, September 21st.You, if you, if you know, it's better if you can, like, you know, I caught my first brook trout in a native brook trout in a roadless area, the Bread Loaf roadless area in the Green Mountain National Forest. I shot my first bull elk in a roadless area outside of or adjacent to the Frank Church River Of No Return Wilderness.If you could personalize your comment or even just talk about the value of these places to you and your family, even if you don't go to them, just knowing that they exist and the psychic value that that provides to you, that would be great. But you can go to tu.org and we make it really easy to comment. Please share that with your friends and family.You know, as they, as they used to say about voting in Chicago back in the day, vote early, vote often.

Yeah, I wouldn't say, you know, it's an interesting thing too because everybody's busy, but you need to make time.And I would say one thing that, you know, I will kind of share one of my hacks on that as I usually, I almost never directly just pass through the email message that you guys populate, but I always write a paragraph that says, my name's Marvin Cash and I vote my conservation and outdoor values. Right.

Love it. I love it. What a great line. I am totally stealing that.

Oh, well, I'll license it to you in perpetuity on a royalty free basis. But I think it's important. I think it's important.I mean, one of the things that I've been kind of noodling on and got to talk with folks in Madison is, you know, we've got to elevate these issues so that people vote their values. Right? You know, like when you Go. And you either you go vote. Like, if this isn't the way you like it, you need.Are you willing to send the message to your politicians and your elected officials that that's going to basically get you out of office?

Yeah, that's exactly right.

So that's a. That's an easy hack. And I would imagine too, like, I know. Cause Mark sent me, Mark Taylor sent me the page that you guys have on road list.I'll put that in the show. Not. But those are kind of two easy ways.And then I also know too, that, you know, it's a challenging time for a lot of people economically, a lot of stress. We're getting ready to get into a pretty contentious midterm. I think we're about 60 days out.

Yeah.

A lot of people. And I think a lot of the reasons that we see a lot of frustration is I think people are feeling a loss of agency.And so, you know, how do you kind of say, okay, one more petition. Let's get out there. Let's go do whatever it is we think we need to do?I mean, what are your suggestions for folks to kind of keep putting their shoulder to the stone?

You know, I'm a bit more of an optimist on this stuff than most, and maybe I've just become inured over the years. But, you know, these are not the king's lands, right? In England, they had the. I think it was king.I think it was King William had the king's forest where only the king and his noblemen could hunt. And that's not what these lands are. These are our lands. Like, these are part of our birthright as Americans. And if.If there was a oil and gas company that.And I don't mean to pick on the oil and gas guys, but if they came and they said, hey, we're going to drill a well on your land, you would say, well, the hell you are. That's my land. We should have the exact same reaction here. That's my land. It is managed for us in trust by public servants who serve the public us.And so this one should strike a little closer to home for folks, because it is our land. But I hear you, Marvin. I'm struggling to answer the lack of agency. The thing I would say here is by not engaging, you lose agency.If you're not telling your elected leaders, this is unacceptable to me, you lose agency. If you're not letting our public servants know that this is not what you expect them to be working on, you're losing agency.And so the way to ensure that you don't lose agency is to engage in this process. And the one thing I'll put out there is we secured one point. There were 1.6 million public comments back 25 years ago. I'd like to double that.That would set a new record.And I think that would demonstrate the passion that Americans have whether they hunt or fish, whether they ever hike in these lands or not, but the passion they have for these backcountry areas. And it will also set the stage for reversing what's done here, if need be, in a different administration.

Yeah, I was just going to say like, super important to comment. Right? Go to bha, comment, comment through tu, wherever you can find it. Comment, pick up the telephone, call your senators and representatives.But I would also say even if this comment period doesn't go well, and even if you say, well, we're going to wait for a change in administration, there are other processes. Like, I have to believe that there's going to be a fair amount of litigation around the administrative rulem making process.

Oh yeah, you can, you can almost bet. I mean, if they're, what are those things called where you can bet on anything?You know, you can bet on whether or not a bird's gonna fly into your window. And you know, this is one, it's almost a guarantee. This will, this will be litigated, I promise.

Yeah. And so it'll give us opportunities to bring you back multiple times. Hopefully we get this thing knocked out early on and we don't have to do that.But before I let you go, because I don't want to minimize all the other work you do at tu. I'm sure you've got some other super cool things that you'd love to let our folks know about before I let you get back to your afternoon DC routine.

Yeah, man, there's a couple of really cool things. You know, I'm really for about 20, you know, you.I may have said this to you before, Marvin, but you know, one of the things that's cool and frustrating about conservation is that it's a long game. And you know, 25 years ago when I. So I'll tell you next. Let's see. Nice. See, it's 8:31 today. In 21 days, I will celebrate my 25th anniversary at TU.Shocking.And I remember 25 years ago, we started something called the North Coast Coho Project, where we were working on old, I think they were old LP lands, old Louisiana Pacific Timberlands, working with companies like Campbell Timberland and a Couple other timber companies to basically do ironically, road obliteration along this coastal habitat for coho and steelhead. And we had a record number of coho come back this year. 30,000. More than 30,000 coho came back. That is, after 25 years we've removed. I can't remember.There's a, it's a giant number. It's like 90 cubic tons of sediment from entering the system by unzipping these roads. I'm really psyched about that. That work continues. We, we.The Nature Conservancy deserves a big round of applause for their help in securing an agreement to buy the Kennebec dams in, in Maine. So the, the reason that this is important is above these four dams is a, a watershed called the Sandy.And it's really prime Atlantic salmon potential Atlantic salmon habitat. And TU played a key role there.And this was done through this complicated process called the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission relicensing process. So these dams have to be relicensed to comply with contemporary environmental laws every 30, 40 years or so.And as, as part of that process, you know, we managed to engage the Fish and Wildlife Service and, and basically continuing the operation of the dams became prohibitively expensive for the landowner or for the, for the power company. And so they agreed to sell them.And so now we have a chance to bring back Atlantic salmon in the lower 48, which would just be, or I shouldn't say lower 48 in the United States, which would just be amazing. I think I was thinking about Canada as our another state, but I don't mean to go there. I don't want to go there.So there's all kinds of work like that that's happening around the country. This year alone, we will probably restore over a thousand miles of river.And this policy stuff is complicated and the relationship building is tough, but it is immensely gratifying that you can actually see in places like the driftless area where we've done over 250 miles in 24 years of restoration. Pre restoration. On a typical driftless stream, you see 1 to 200 fish per mile. Post restoration, you see 1 to 2000 fish per mile.And so, you know, and, and that's kind of the beauty of Tu, right? It's this ying and the yang of tu. There's a ton of groups that do advocacy.You can go to the Wilderness Society, bha, nwa, National Wildlife Federation, all of them will have action alerts about roadless, as does tu.And then there's a ton of other groups that do on the ground habitat Restoration great organizations like D Ducks Unlimited, National Wild Turkey Federation, Pheasants Forever awesome organizations. And TU does that, too. There's one organization that does both, and that's Trout Unlimited.And what we try to do is leverage the goodwill that's created by quite literally making the world a better place in thousands of communities across America to engage those people in advocacy. And so that's the stuff that keeps me excited, coming to work every morning.

Yeah. Well, congratulations on 25 years. It's kind of amazing you said that. And, I mean, I'm kind of waking up to the fact that I'm getting older.I was like, gosh, I remember when Charles was still writing the letter in Trout magazine. Right. So I was like, Charles Gauvin?

Yeah. One of my mentors. Yes. Great man. And I was just talking to him the other day.

Yeah. And I was like, holy cow, has that been 25 years?

No, no, no. That's only been. So I started at TU 25 years ago. I became CEO in February of 2010.

Yeah. I got 10 years of my life back.

If only it were that easy.

Yeah. I'll have to schedule these podcasts more often. Before I let you.Before I let you go, you want to let folks know kind of how to stay in touch, get involved, where to find you on social, and all that kind of good stuff.

Yeah, man. So I'm easy to reach. I, I. If you reach out to me, I promise you.It may take me a day or two, especially if I'm traveling, but I'll get back in touch with you. I'm at cwood@tu.org check us out at tu.org. We've got great social channels on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn. I'm active on all those pages, too.So, yeah, just. I mean, one of the great joys of my job, frankly, are the people I get to both work with here at tu, but also the people who support the mission.And I'd love to hear from you anytime.

Absolutely. Well, listen, Chris, I'm sure we'll be talking soon, and I really appreciate you making some time for me this afternoon.

Thanks, Marvin. It was great to be here.

Take care. Well, folks, we hope you enjoyed the interview as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you.Don't forget to check out the links to all this episode's sponsors in the show Notes. Tight lines, everybody.