Dry Side Dispatch • October 9th • Duane Lucia

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hello. [00:00:03] Speaker B: Go ahead, Dusty. [00:00:05] Speaker A: We never know who's going to do what on this thing. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Dry side Dispatch. Brought you by HSI Water. And we are fortunate today to have a guest with us that I've been efforting since the spring to try to get on. And unfortunately, he's been playing with fire, and so he's been busy. We have Dwayne Lucia here with the U.S. fish and Wildlife Services here, and. And Dwayne's been a long time in the wildlife landscape throughout here. Did you start with Texas Parks and Wildlife? [00:00:35] Speaker C: Actually, first job was with Texas Tech. Second job, Texas A and M research as a research wildlife research assistant. And then Texas Parks and Wildlife, then [00:00:47] Speaker A: Texas, then he's made the rounds. [00:00:48] Speaker C: And then U.S. fish and Wildlife. [00:00:50] Speaker B: He has made the rounds. Is there anybody left? [00:00:53] Speaker C: No. No. I'm eligible for retirement. Whatever the bad email outcomes that will be. Yesterday was my last day. [00:01:02] Speaker A: I was wondering about that because I was like, going, he's been doing it for long. Like, every metric I can figure, he's bound to be about ready to, you know, where he can retire. [00:01:10] Speaker C: I just enjoy it. I don't know what else I'd do. I watched my dad melt into a sofa and die after he retired. And I was like, I don't want to do that. I love my job, so keep doing it, right? [00:01:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:01:22] Speaker C: If it's fun, keep doing it. [00:01:24] Speaker A: Well, I mean, you know when I joke about you playing with fire, but you've actually been playing with putting out fires. [00:01:28] Speaker C: I've done both. We've done both this summer. [00:01:32] Speaker A: But this has been a. A fun fire year. [00:01:35] Speaker C: I don't know about fun. [00:01:38] Speaker B: Busy, busy. [00:01:39] Speaker C: Very busy. Yeah. And I missed one. One assignment I didn't go on because I ended up kind of taking care of some stuff for my day job. [00:01:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:01:52] Speaker C: And then I ended up going down to Fredericksburg for another fire assignment. So I was supposed to go to California mid September. [00:02:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:02] Speaker C: And. And our team went. I was. I was already kind of hooked up in Fredericksburg. [00:02:07] Speaker B: So can you tell us some about what the state's plan is for fire prevention [00:02:15] Speaker C: for. For this state? Because I. When you say states, I've been in. [00:02:20] Speaker B: Oh, you've been in. [00:02:21] Speaker C: I've been in nine states this summer. [00:02:23] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. [00:02:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:02:25] Speaker C: Nine states. [00:02:26] Speaker A: So. [00:02:26] Speaker B: No, particularly Texas. Western Texas. [00:02:28] Speaker C: So Texas plan is their. Their staffing even though we got rain, what, two weeks ago? [00:02:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:02:38] Speaker C: Ample amounts of rain. They're staffing. Like we're gonna still have a fire season. [00:02:41] Speaker B: Okay. Are we doing do we have some kind of plan for prevention or is it all response staffing? [00:02:46] Speaker C: No, no, no. There's. There's. There's money out there for fuel reduction stuff. Prescribed fire. There's money out there for fuel reduction, brush mulching management. There's money out there for invasive species removal, which is a big thing. Yes, right now. And there's also some money out there for some restoration, planting from some of the other wildfires. You know, so if you're. If your property got impacted by a wildfire, they have money, the Forest Service has money to help recover some of them. [00:03:19] Speaker B: Yeah, we've been looking at. I have a friend that is south of here, and he. And I've been looking at. Trying to. Trying to figure out how to put together some type of job development program. So we have. We have. The organization I'm with. We have a collaboration with NASA. So we're looking at doing some kind of job development that would include some stem stuff with NASA, plus brush control. You know, in some of these rural places where you could take juniors and seniors, give them some training, have them graduate with a few certifications, and then go into, like, another junior college kind of level class. [00:03:55] Speaker C: Like a trade school. Prep trades. [00:03:57] Speaker B: A prep trade school. Yes, exactly. Especially in the. Where these fires have been happening and, you know, to do some prevention and help the community around there. [00:04:08] Speaker C: Yeah, interesting. [00:04:09] Speaker B: Yep. [00:04:10] Speaker C: Interesting. [00:04:11] Speaker B: So, yeah. [00:04:12] Speaker A: So [00:04:14] Speaker C: as you. As we all know, because of our past and AG and all that, we're at the whim of the government of when the funds are good, when the funds are bad. [00:04:22] Speaker B: Right. [00:04:24] Speaker C: The state has allocated a lot of funding for fire prevention, fire suppression. The feds have got a lot of money. And the feds in the same breath. The feds have kind of morphed. They've got two factions of fire. USDA Forest Service, fire, and then Department of Interior, which was Fish and Wildlife, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service. There's somebody else, and I apologize. I can't remember. They've all been sucked into one agency, a super fire agency called Wildland Fire Service. [00:05:05] Speaker B: Okay. [00:05:07] Speaker C: Probably. Probably. Guessing in the next three to five years, the USDA Forest Service fire people will get sucked into that super agency too, I'm guessing. [00:05:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:05:18] Speaker C: I wish I could. [00:05:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:05:20] Speaker C: Hedge my bet on that. But it reduces a lot of the redundancy. It reduces a lot of red tape. It reduces a lot of who's in charge. [00:05:30] Speaker B: Yes. And the siloedness of a lot of these. [00:05:32] Speaker C: Bingo. Bingo. Yeah. [00:05:34] Speaker A: So [00:05:36] Speaker C: we're kind of on this weird evolution or funnelization of, hey, maybe this is going to work now. It might not work. Good. We, this was our first season with fire response with the two mega agencies doing fire. And, and it did. It was, it wasn't as clunky as I thought it would be. It was clunky, but yeah, it's always clunky, right? [00:05:58] Speaker B: It's always clunk. You know what we've worked with West Texas A and M has AmeriCorps programs and are you familiar with AmeriCorps? So people listening don't know. It's like started by Kennedy, similar to a piece the Peace Corps, but it's, it's subsidized volunteers that really, I, I think they really work for non profits. And to me, it's a way for the government to get some things done without agencies having to pay for it and employ people and all those kind [00:06:31] Speaker C: of things will miss. No, I know that. [00:06:36] Speaker B: Well, there it's. But theirs is a capacity building program. So there's, there's all kinds of different programs. Right. And a lot of them are conservation type programs. So my son did one, one stint, one year and they did trail management and you know, cleaned up trails and that kind of stuff. In fact, he told me a couple weeks ago, he's like, I was on that trail hiking this last week because he lives in Colorado, so. But the one out of WT is a capacity building program for nonprofits. It's a wonderful program. But I've wondered like, can we create some kind of specific AmeriCorps program for this jobs Corps program to get kids out, train them, get them out on the land, help help landowners get things, you know, restored and back into condition and you know, and using NASA to like identify those areas and then train those kids to do that kind of stuff through an AmeriCorps program where they can actually be getting, you know, paid an educational stipend and all those kind of things? [00:07:34] Speaker C: I, I think that's, I think that's doable. I'm gonna move this over because. [00:07:38] Speaker B: Yep, yep. [00:07:39] Speaker A: Wherever you need to. [00:07:40] Speaker C: Huh? [00:07:40] Speaker A: You can move it wherever you need to. [00:07:42] Speaker C: Well, I could do like you and drift out of the camera shot. [00:07:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:45] Speaker C: Be around the corner. [00:07:46] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:07:49] Speaker C: In, in. There are kind of break offs of that. We have, we have a company called ace and not the ACE Spray company, which I like them too. But ACE is where we get a lot of, a lot of kind of AmeriCorps people. [00:08:06] Speaker B: Okay. [00:08:07] Speaker C: They go out and they, they treat exotics, they do trail maintenance Stuff, and it kind of gives them a leg in. It's very much like the Peace Corps thing. [00:08:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:15] Speaker C: Gets them exposed to it. They find out real fast. I don't want to. I don't want to be here because you got to sleep in the woods. You got to do your bathroom breaks in the woods. Some people just don't cut them for that. But you want to do that. You want to do that early in your career, not late in your career. Figuring that out. [00:08:30] Speaker B: Yes. [00:08:31] Speaker C: So we've got those programs going on like that, and I believe they're all contract programs. They're contract programs because we were looking at doing a big exotic removal of salt cedar along the Brazos, and we were talking about bringing ace crews in, and I was like, oh, my goodness. You know, we're talking about from the upper. The watershed, starting here in Lubbock and going all the way down to pk. I was like, we. No, we can't do this. The infrastructure can't handle this. [00:09:03] Speaker B: Right. Right. [00:09:04] Speaker C: So we backed up, punted a year, and then figured out, okay, here's another way to do it. I'm struggling. The same thing. We had the big Smokehouse Creek fire that ran across the panhandle. [00:09:18] Speaker B: Didn't get any FEMA money. [00:09:20] Speaker C: We did get fema. [00:09:21] Speaker B: You did? [00:09:22] Speaker C: FEMA money was there. It was. It was all for suppression activity. [00:09:27] Speaker B: Okay. [00:09:28] Speaker C: That's every. Every fire pretty much is funded by FEMA one way or another. [00:09:32] Speaker B: Is that right? [00:09:32] Speaker A: Okay. [00:09:32] Speaker B: But there was no FEMA for property loss, I think, is what. [00:09:36] Speaker C: No. [00:09:36] Speaker B: Right. Because it didn't reach the threshold of whatever it is. It has to be so many millions in loss before they come in and. [00:09:43] Speaker C: Right. [00:09:44] Speaker B: Start doing that. [00:09:44] Speaker C: And I don't. I don't even know about that, but I don't. We call them F mags in the fire business. It's a FEMA FEMA grant. [00:09:53] Speaker B: Okay. [00:09:53] Speaker C: That pays for all the suppression. The airplanes flying, the helicopters flying, people blowing tires out, ruining, you know, stuff daily. But what we were. We were trying to put together was, okay, we went through the Canadian river watershed. Basically. Burned. [00:10:10] Speaker B: Yes. Right. [00:10:11] Speaker C: Pretty. Pretty severe burn. We wiped out, I don't know, 70 miles of cottonwoods. Cottonwood galleries. [00:10:23] Speaker B: And that's heartbreaking. [00:10:25] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah, it is. So I said, hey, let's. Let's look at replanting cottonwood trees. [00:10:30] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:10:31] Speaker C: Well, and I do my day job. I do a lot of this. I go cut a bunch of poles, we stick them in the mud, we walk away. And 50% of them work. 50% don't work. So I started meeting with landowners and I'm like, well, you know, we got all these cottonwood galleries that's been just decimated by fire. Some might survive. We don't know, some won't. But we need to start. And I. What I was going to do was recruit the West Texas A and M Wildlife Society and the Texas Tech Wildlife Society. They were going to be my worker bees. And the landowners were going to put them up and feed them. We were going to cut cottonwood poles and just be like, Johnny Apples. [00:11:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:14] Speaker C: Run up. [00:11:14] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh, I love that. [00:11:16] Speaker C: But recovery. And the biggest thing about cottonwood poles is it'll work. But cows love to eat them and deer love to eat them. So as soon as those. And what I found is I. I've been very successful with my cottonwood restoration projects on the southern part of the Great Plains, the northern part. Just about the time we get them all leafed out, we get a late freeze and they don't have enough energy to rebound. [00:11:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:43] Speaker C: So I was looking at ways to slow down that bud break. [00:11:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:48] Speaker C: I called a couple of refrigerated warehouses and I was like, hey, I want to. I want to store some stuff in your deal. And they're like, oh, yeah. You know, you pay by the square foot. And the guy goes, what are you gonna put in there? And I said, cottonwood poles. And he goes, what's that? And I said, you just cut broomstick size pieces of cottonwood, stick them in water and soak them. And he goes, no, this is food grade storage only. And I said, well, that beaver food. And he goes, nope, it's not gonna work. So we MacGyvered a little bit. We put some away in one of our refuge barns thinking, okay, it'll be cool. And it did. It bought us enough time, but it didn't buy us enough. So we've got another project that we're gonna. We're gonna hook an air conditioner. This is where the red. [00:12:30] Speaker A: How cold does it need to be? [00:12:31] Speaker C: Well, it just, you know, this winter when we got to 80 degrees, the barn warmed up. [00:12:38] Speaker B: Yes. Right. [00:12:39] Speaker C: We just need it dark and cold. [00:12:41] Speaker A: I know a couple of places that have got dark and cold that they store, you know, the same kind of plants. You know, grapevines come as dormant. They come as dormant cuttings and stuff like that. They store them in that. That they have. [00:12:55] Speaker C: Would they have room for three or four tubs? Because we're. We. Well, at first we were like, okay, we just did one trial. We put one Tub inside the barn, one tub outside the barn. And, and that was our, our trial. Once we get this perfected, we're talking about 5,000 poles. Yeah, 5,000 poles in a drinking tub can hold about 200, I think. [00:13:22] Speaker B: I think you could do that. I think that I know even like some places where there's, you know, there's people here that are storing wine barrels and you know what I mean, what [00:13:31] Speaker C: we did, we rednecked a whole lot. We, we got to the barn, we hung up some big cotton module tarps, the old fashioned ones, not the plastic ones. And we put a window air conditioner in there and we just turned it on, said, let's see how cold we can get it. [00:13:46] Speaker A: I have when in a former life, I put together the first custom pressure facility in the state of Texas. Yeah. And we built cold room in it. And we actually put. [00:13:55] Speaker B: These are enormous rooms. [00:13:57] Speaker A: Fox blocks. You know what fox? It's an insulated concrete form. Well, they built the new dorms across from the old Covenant Hospital. [00:14:04] Speaker C: Right, right, right. I watched that going up. [00:14:06] Speaker A: And so we built it out of that, put a window unit in it and jerry rigged the thermostat on it so you could run it below what it's supposed to run and we could get it down below freezing in that thing. But there's. I mean, there's a lot. There's at least two facilities that I know of that'll have space. [00:14:23] Speaker B: I think, I really think we could help you with that. [00:14:26] Speaker C: So. So the, the other, the other part of this assignment. Yes, if that's what we're going to call it, is we need. We don't want to cut poles and haul them someplace 300 miles away. [00:14:39] Speaker B: Right. [00:14:40] Speaker C: And store them. And then we got to pick them back up and move them back up to the ranch. We need them somewhat there. That's why we were thinking you need them closer there. If we could get them in barns. Every rancher's got a barn. [00:14:50] Speaker B: But you know, even I think you could probably find somebody that has like even a refrigerated like cargo. [00:14:59] Speaker C: So we thought about reefer trucks. We did think about reefer trucks. [00:15:02] Speaker B: And I know where you might could. [00:15:04] Speaker C: And that. And that's. That's a possibility. [00:15:06] Speaker A: But biggest thing about those is they use a lot of six dollar diesel. [00:15:12] Speaker C: Even if it's red. Even if it's red diesel. Yeah. [00:15:15] Speaker A: It' $6. [00:15:16] Speaker C: I know. Yeah. No matter what color we make it. But what, what happened? And, and thank goodness it did because at first I thought, oh man. Now's the time to strike these. All these ranchers I'd met with were going to defer grazing. [00:15:30] Speaker A: Oh. [00:15:30] Speaker C: Because they're recoverable. We got, we got abundance of rainfall. [00:15:35] Speaker A: Yeah, right. [00:15:35] Speaker C: You can't tell there was a fire that went through there other than seeing these cottonwood skeletons. [00:15:39] Speaker A: It is so weird because, you know, you look at, you look at like drought maps and you look at that, you hear people talk like, I was just read a, a quail report from that quail forever put out today. Actually, it wasn't today. I read it today and they were talking about, oh, it's dry. And I'm like, when it's, you know, they didn't get rain here and like. Well, a lot of people got rain at just the right time for everything to work out really well. And you're painting with a broad brush on it because everybody talks about, oh, it's just, it's been so hot and dry and it's been so hot and dry. Yeah. Well, I was up and up through that area not that long after it happened, you know, because it happened. And then within. Was it like two weeks or something like that? They got their first drain. Three weeks within three weeks they got their first drain. [00:16:18] Speaker C: After. [00:16:19] Speaker A: I think I was there probably two weeks after that first rain. And I'm not going. I can tell it rained because it's really, really green. [00:16:26] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:16:26] Speaker A: And there's, you know. Well, they reset. [00:16:28] Speaker C: They ended up, started grazing at the tail end of the growing season. [00:16:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:16:33] Speaker C: Fresh green growth. So that kind of, that kind of delayed everything. [00:16:39] Speaker B: Yes. [00:16:40] Speaker C: Now. So, so now the project I'm envisioning is still working with a landowner, still working with the college kids to one teach them how to work. Because college kids don't know how to work. And I'm not trying to bang, bang on college kids, but they don't. [00:16:54] Speaker A: I can't just hear somebody saying, okay, Boomer. [00:17:00] Speaker C: And whatever we do, we always have to solve for X. Because you never know when you're going to get stuck. You never know when you're going to have a blowout. [00:17:06] Speaker B: Yes. [00:17:07] Speaker C: Those are unexpected things that happen in the wildlife world all the time. [00:17:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And that is such, that's such an important gift and a skill to skill [00:17:18] Speaker C: set that you, I mean, it is [00:17:19] Speaker B: like when you're like, I can't, you know, just in the business we said we do land and mineral management. You know what I mean? You can't just hit a roadblock. [00:17:32] Speaker C: No. [00:17:32] Speaker B: And say, oh, can't keep going. [00:17:33] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:17:34] Speaker B: Oh, no, there's an answer yeah, the answer is there. And we have to figure out. That is our job is to find the answer, and the answer is there somewhere. [00:17:46] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:17:47] Speaker B: You know, and that. That is just a muscle. I think that everybody needs to strengthen. [00:17:53] Speaker C: No, I, I actually. We were doing a lot of pre chicken work out out in the sand out west in Yoakum and Terry county and Cochrane county. And the technicians would come out there and I would literally go get the truck stuck on purpose. [00:18:08] Speaker B: Oh, wow. So they could figure out how to get it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you know how to do that when you're not there. [00:18:16] Speaker C: It's gonna happen. [00:18:16] Speaker A: If you were a technician for Dwayne, you now have really good reason to hate me. [00:18:21] Speaker C: And you probably still have grassburst stuck in your back in bedroom. [00:18:24] Speaker B: Okay, so I want to know what. Where is this project? Is it your cottonwood project? Are you still going to move it forward? [00:18:32] Speaker C: Yes. [00:18:33] Speaker B: Okay. Yes. [00:18:35] Speaker C: We're. Again, I'm not going to fail by planting early because it's just disheartening. You work your tail off to get all these cottonwood poles cut, put them in water, and then you put them out there, man. They break, bud. And the leaves are out there and you're like, all right. And then here comes a 25 degree morning. [00:18:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:58] Speaker C: Just zaps them. [00:18:59] Speaker A: Hey, listen, as a grape grower, I can. [00:19:02] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Fans. [00:19:04] Speaker A: We don't have to be two times this year. [00:19:06] Speaker B: Yeah. So. But. But the next year, by the next spring, you feel like they'll be rooted enough that they can withstand a frost. [00:19:14] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. If we can get them past the first freeze, they'll pretty. Well, they'll pretty. [00:19:20] Speaker B: So you'll still. You're still going to run this with your. The way you planned it, with your landowners hosting these? I think this is amazing. [00:19:27] Speaker C: The Texas Forest Service. Kind of small world. I'm down here working out at a fire base in Fredericksburg, and there was a Texas Forest Service female employee there, and we were talking, and she said, so, what's your day job? And I said, well, I'm a wildlife biologist, blah, blah, blah. And I do this. And I said. She said, well, did you help on Smokehouse Creek? And I said, no, not really. I said, I'm tied to a southwestern team. I said, but I'm working in the Smokehouse Creek footprint doing this. And she just. She kind of gave me the look, and I go, what's the matter? And she goes, you're the guy. I said, I don't know how I'm supposed to take. How am I. The guy. She goes, you're the guy that's wanting to plant 5,000 trees. And I said, I'm that guy. She goes, I want to help you. [00:20:17] Speaker B: I feel the same way. I'm like, what can we do? Yes. [00:20:20] Speaker C: So. So, yeah, that's there. We've got. We've got places to cut trees. We got places. We got. I think we got people to plant trees. We just need to get them past that vulnerable stage. And I've been. My son, he lives up in Canyon, so I've been using him as kind of a, hey, let's put some trees in his front yard. [00:20:39] Speaker B: Good idea. [00:20:40] Speaker C: And we hang gator bags on them and all that. And we have. I don't know. I. I've been. I've been beat four or five times by mother Nature. We're used to that in the ag world. But what do we do? We get it the next day. We're like, we'll win this time. [00:20:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:56] Speaker A: But we are the definition of insanity. [00:20:59] Speaker C: 100. [00:21:00] Speaker A: Well, James, I don't want to go off of fire. Actually want to go on to fire. [00:21:04] Speaker C: Okay. [00:21:05] Speaker A: Okay. So, you know, when you look at it from a wildlife standpoint, not, you know, any specific, but the whole ecology of the. Of a zone in there, and you're going into, like, a lot of the fires, like the. What is it? The Jack fire that was in Palo Pinto County. [00:21:23] Speaker C: Ross. [00:21:24] Speaker A: Ross. [00:21:24] Speaker C: Ross fire. [00:21:25] Speaker A: I said Jack. It was Jack county. That was over there, but it burned into Jack County. Burned into Jack County. The Ross fire. Okay. In that area, you've got a whole bunch of. Was eastern red cedar, red red berry [00:21:36] Speaker C: juniper, and a little bit of ash juniper. [00:21:38] Speaker A: Okay. So I. They all look the same to my. In. [00:21:43] Speaker C: In. The locals call them cedar, but there's. There's three cedars that. That predominantly occur in Texas. [00:21:51] Speaker A: Right. [00:21:51] Speaker C: Red berry juniper, ash juniper, or blueberry juniper. [00:21:55] Speaker A: Right. [00:21:56] Speaker C: And then eastern red and eastern red [00:21:57] Speaker A: cedar is the only one that's native, isn't it? [00:21:59] Speaker C: No, all three of them are native. [00:22:02] Speaker A: Are they all three native? [00:22:03] Speaker C: All three of them are native. [00:22:04] Speaker A: Well, I was doing some. I was doing some looking back on this, on the hill country is actually what I was looking at, because it was not long after you had a phone conversation with you, and we were trying to get you on, and you were getting shipped off to Fredericksburg to stage. And I said, thinking about the fires down there, and I said, what did it look like? You know, pre European? Well, like, for example, my great grandfather moved my grandmother and her sibling, her siblings, from Wimberley to post because he didn't want him to marry cedar cutters. [00:22:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:34] Speaker A: And they were poor as church mouse. I mean, so, I mean, so how bad do you have? But anyway. Yeah. And so they moved him up there. I was like, okay, well, obviously there were cedar down there. Well, when you look at what was actually down there, it was a, it was an oak savannah, right. With, with, with cedar breaks in it. And they were controlled by fire, by naturally occurring fires. And when Europeans came in, we quit, we all sudden, fire bad. You know, and that's, you know, you look at, you take the general American out here and you say, oh, there's a wildfire and they're. Oh, fire bad. Yeah, put it out, put it out. Well, when you look at what that did and how it changed everything to where, you know, the watershed of the encroachment came in. [00:23:17] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:23:17] Speaker A: I mean, it's great if you're a robin, but even too, but even. It's too thick for robins, even. [00:23:22] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:23:22] Speaker A: You know, and it's, you know, of course, obviously, my being the quail guy, it decimates quail. I mean, they're not good. But it's so bad, they call it the Green Glacier. [00:23:32] Speaker C: Exactly. [00:23:32] Speaker A: And so the Green Glacier is encroaching through a lot of it of the, the prairie land in the Central. Central, Central state, the Midwest. [00:23:42] Speaker C: Yes. [00:23:43] Speaker A: And it is. That is like the original prairies in, in the Midwest. Where's the most, where more, there's more diversity in them than there is in, like the rainforest. [00:23:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:23:58] Speaker A: Okay. It's an unbelievable amount of diversity and it is the fastest disappearing. Yes, it is what they call them. [00:24:05] Speaker B: It's the most, it's the most ecosystem on the most endangered ecosystem. [00:24:09] Speaker C: Grassland, grassland biome grassland, birds, grassland, plants. And so getting invaded every day. [00:24:16] Speaker A: So when I look at, when I look at fire, I'm not going, oh, I hope it doesn't burn anybody's house down. And burns a couple hundred thousand acres of cedar. And that's a horrible. I mean, you know, that's, you know, that's a, that's. It probably sounds way, way worse than what I'm thinking. I'm like, I hope nobody gets hurt. Hope it doesn't really do anything bad. But what that, that reset, that can go on with a fire. But with the age of a lot of these cedars that you've got now and junipers that you've got now, they're, they're large. How hard, how hot does a fire have to be to get rid of Something that's that. [00:24:50] Speaker C: Okay. So the three. The three. And there. There's more than three cedar trees. [00:24:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:56] Speaker C: In Texas, because I was on a property up outside of Kittaquay. Deep, deep canyons. And it had. It had one seeded juniper, which is really not supposed to be here, but it's here. And it also had alligator juniper, which is a. We're right on the edge of. Alligator juniper shows up a lot in the Davis Mountain transpacos area. But of the three common ones that we know of, eastern redcedar, red berry juniper and ash juniper or blueberry. Two of those are non sprouters. Eastern red cedar and ash. [00:25:29] Speaker A: Okay. [00:25:29] Speaker C: Hill country juniper. No sprout. No. You burn it, it's dead. [00:25:33] Speaker A: Okay. [00:25:34] Speaker C: Eastern red cedar, Oklahoma, Kansas. The invasion. You burn it, it's dead. Red berry juniper. You burn it, you cut it off, it comes back. Early in my career, Parks and Wildlife, we were capturing the bison herd that's up at Caprock Canyon State Park. [00:25:55] Speaker B: Yep. [00:25:55] Speaker C: Up on the JA Ranch. Kind of a bucket. Cool bucket thing for your career. But I enjoyed more of looking at Goodnight's safe. And he had a big vault room. [00:26:07] Speaker B: Yes. [00:26:08] Speaker C: Looking through the ledger of how I gave Quanah Parker three bison photographs. There's no brush there. Yeah, there's no brush there. [00:26:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:18] Speaker C: Because of those fires, those cleansing fires. Now, it occurred on the rims, but even on the rims it wasn't much because on a good year they would grow a lot of grass, it penetrate the rim and push that cedar back. I am still working with that same family, the Bivins. We're still fighting juniper. We're still using fire as a tool to do it. Yeah, he. Golly. Maybe in 1999, we taught all of the northern panhandle prescribed fire. [00:26:53] Speaker A: Yeah, He. [00:26:56] Speaker C: He's hooked on it. Yeah. [00:26:57] Speaker B: But there's still a lot of resistance in that area, isn't there? [00:27:00] Speaker C: No, no. [00:27:00] Speaker B: Well, yeah, because wasn't there. Like, I'm just. This is. This is what I've heard through the grapevine. Like there was a fire out there, prescribed fire, and it got out of control and then it was like a bad deal. And then, of course. And then everybody's like, no, I'm not gonna do that here. [00:27:15] Speaker C: Right. Yeah. And. And I know exactly who that was and I know where it was. And yeah, you have prescribed fire, but the rest of the story is maybe they shouldn't have been burning that day. Or maybe the. [00:27:30] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. Something. They made a mistake. Some kind of mistake, maybe. [00:27:34] Speaker C: You know, again, that fire, however it starts Whether it's a tire blowing out or somebody welding or lightning strike, you just hope nobody gets hurt. Nobody loses their house. We can rebuild fences. Grass grows back. [00:27:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:49] Speaker C: Our juniper grows back. But these guys, they have taken fire to the next level. They. They are burning all the time. Yeah, they're burning. They're dropping stuff out of their helicopters to burn. [00:28:02] Speaker A: Holy cow. [00:28:03] Speaker B: Up in, up like in the Canadian. Up in that area. [00:28:06] Speaker C: They're, they're on the western side. So they're, they're right by Palo Duro. [00:28:10] Speaker B: Okay. All right. [00:28:11] Speaker C: The Canadian side there. We. We've got, we've got to do some healing over there. Yeah, we've got to do some healing. There's been some fires over there that. Unattended fires that have got. [00:28:24] Speaker A: That I had, you know, I had the opportunity to work with you on a. Well, basically it was a show and tell, basically what we did up at Matador at the Wildlife Magma up there. [00:28:34] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:28:34] Speaker A: And fire. [00:28:35] Speaker C: Fire field day. [00:28:36] Speaker A: The fire field day. Right. And I will tell you right now, anybody's listening that's even remotely curious. Keep an eye peeled for when the next fire field day is. Go to it. Yeah, it's very cool. Very educational. Watching that fire burn. That day was, it was. You know, I'm, I'm a, I'm a proponent of it. Of prescribed fires anyway, going in even before then, you know, I didn't get to do mine this year just out of an abundance of caution and, and so. But it's still on my list to do. [00:29:06] Speaker C: I mean I walked on my list to do. [00:29:08] Speaker A: I walked through my quail cover yesterday and I'm not going. This is ridiculously thick sand drop seed I'm going to get rid of, you know, so. But it's, you know, but it's, it's there and it's going to happen, you know, and you've got to make, you got to. It's kind of one of those. Make hay while the sun shines. When you get the conditions right, you've got to be ready to do something. But watching how the that was. Was coordinated and how what went into the planning of that fire and even though it was just a small 80 acres or something like that. Yeah. 47 acre block and how it was done and how it was set up and the protect the measure they did. And honestly I was like thinking, well, there's no way they can do it. It's too windy. And the guy then said, okay, it's too windy to do what wanted to do. We're going to do it this other way. That'll prevent the wind from being an issue. Yeah, we changed the ignition pattern, started, did a bigger back burn on that stuff, to put it, you know, so you already had your fire break, increased your fire break with, you know, by blackening that soil in through there. And then you did the rest of the burn, and it was gone and over with. And I would have, you know, it, that when looking at that and researching, doing the prescribed burn, I was planning on doing it always it amazed me, the wind requirements to do it. Like, don't do it above this, but don't do it below this. Right. Because, you know, you don't want it to sit there and just smoke, just burn. And. [00:30:27] Speaker C: Well, the other. The other thing. And so when I worked for A and M Research, they hired me because they were getting out of the herbicide business. They hired me because they were going to start doing fire research. And I'd been doing fire stuff at Tech. And I remember we were at a Range Society for Range Management meeting, and the two professors at A and M were like, hey, we're wanting to do this. And I remember the department chair at Texas Tech goes, that guy right over there is graduating in December. He'll be right in time for a fire season. And I'd been burning underneath. This guy wrote the book on prescribed fire, Dr. Henry Wright. So that's kind of how I got my first professional job. But I went over there and they pulled out a calendar and they said, okay, we're going to burn on this day, this day, this day, this day, this day. And I said, and I don't know if I can see this on the radio. You're not God. You can't dictate what the weather is. Yeah, but throw your calendar away. Whenever we start getting a weather forecast, I'll tell you what days we're going to burn. [00:31:28] Speaker A: Right? [00:31:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:31:28] Speaker A: And I had. I had the pleasure of working with Nolan, talking to who's now with Texas Parks and Wildlife, and he was with quail forever at that time. And that was the funny thing about it, was he was like, okay, here's where we're going to put. Here's the date that you need to be for sure ready for, but I'm not going to guarantee we're going to burn it that day. He said, I'll let you know. I'll talk to you 10 days beforehand, and I'll talk to you, you know, like five days beforehand. And then every day leading up to that. [00:31:52] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [00:31:53] Speaker A: And. But that's the Day that I'm hung on everybody being there. And it worked. I mean it, you know, it was just, you know, in May, it was just so dry. It was just miserably dry up here. But the ironic thing about it is that we were gonna do it that day because they were calling for rain that afternoon. And I'm like, yeah, okay. You know, I had conversation with you and I was like, okay. You know, I want to be a, I want to be an example, not a cautionary tale in this thing. I don't want to, you know, black and fire. Of course, in turn, if anybody knows what Tarry county is like, it's like if you have a hundred acres of contiguous or, you know, 200 acres of contiguous grass, it's a, it's a pretty big thing. There's, you know, there's a lot of CRP out there, but it's, you know, not a lot of, it's bunched together, particularly where I am. It's mostly cotton fields and stuff. But. And so like there's like one direction the wind can blow. That scares me on that. But so we went, so we put it off. And that afternoon it rained. And that from that afternoon that we're going to do that, which was the end of May till the, till the end of June, I got five and a half inches of rain and not one bit of it fell more than like an inch. I think was my biggest rain. I think most of them were like 3/4 to half beautiful. Everything turned green. It was incredible. Of course it worked out. I mean, it worked out great because it wasn't mission critical that I get it done that year, but it gave all the, all the quail chicks that were hatching a lot of green to feed off insects. And so it worked out great, had a great hatch. But you know that the thought and planning that goes into a prescribed burn versus what everybody foresees as a wildfire, you know, the west is one of [00:33:31] Speaker C: them is playing the other one's reaction. [00:33:32] Speaker A: Yeah. And you know, and it's. I think if we, as if, if as a group, a collective group, we would embrace the judicious, judicious use of fire, we would have fewer, just massive blow ups. Yeah. [00:33:49] Speaker C: In, in, in. We call those fuel reduction fires. And, and that's great. And we do that. But the, the, the, the, the great example would be the Ross fire. That fire over by possum kingdom. It's 90,000 acre fire through a bunch of juniper. Will it burn again? Yeah, it'll burn again. Will it burn Next year it could, but it's only going to be grass. It's not going to be this highly volatile. [00:34:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:17] Speaker C: Bush. [00:34:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:18] Speaker C: So fuel reduction stuff works great. And we used to have fuel reduction funds that we. Hey, we're going to burn this. But in grasslands, these things pop right back. I mean, Smokehouse Creek. Yeah, we, we literally like, oh crap. We could be fighting this fire the same spot again this year because it responded. [00:34:36] Speaker B: But we don't have funds for that type of thing. [00:34:38] Speaker A: There. [00:34:39] Speaker C: There are again with this super, with the super super super agency. There are funds now dedicated for, okay, WUI interface fuel reduction. But you know, to go out to dusties and do a fuel reduction burn. No. To burn on the southwest side of Canyon. Yes. Because there's a wooing. Right. [00:35:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:35:07] Speaker C: And it's, it's, it's a numbers game. How many, how, how many houses are we gonna, are we gonna make survivable if we do this fuel reduction? [00:35:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:18] Speaker C: And a great example was, right. Right before I got sent to Ruidoso, they had a bunch of lightning strikes up in the panhandle around Umbarger Canyon. I literally, that night drove up there and because I was talking to our guys and they're like, okay, what do we need? And I was like, I talked to the fire boss. The way the wind's blowing, it's going to miss our property. It's going to dump into a wheat field. We should be kind of corralling this thing up. Okay, well, we're gonna go ahead and send some engines. They'll be here at 2 in the morning. I was like, okay, I'm leaving to go to. I think I was going to Capitan. Yeah, I was going to Capitan for that fire over there. I'm leaving in the morning. So they're on their own. That fire now you drive by and all you can see as far as the scar is the dozer line where it comes to the interstate. And it, it impacted houses and canyon. [00:36:15] Speaker B: Yes. [00:36:16] Speaker C: If it, if it caught on fire again this year, right now, it would impact houses and canyon. Yes. We didn't change the fuel load. We changed the structure. The fuel load's still there. We changed the structure of fuels around Possum Kingdom because we got all those juniper out. Fuels are still there. The fine fuels, the grasses, the forbs, they're still there. The heavy woody stuff that's flammable, throwing stuff, helping it grow and increase, they're gone. They'll be back in five years, 10 years. [00:36:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And that thing, I mean, you know The US Is so large, and there's such an area that's got a. That has a relatively large woody fuel load in it that. You know, I don't know how you'd ever. [00:36:56] Speaker C: And I didn't say this, but some of those fires that we were sending airplanes to outside of Rock Springs, kind of the same thing. I hope nobody's there, but this is going to do that country a world of good. [00:37:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:08] Speaker C: Especially knowing that we got a super El Nino coming. [00:37:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:10] Speaker C: Well, it's gonna make it better. [00:37:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:12] Speaker C: And that's just gonna be better. [00:37:13] Speaker A: And that's the thing about it from a wildlife standpoint, that early successional growth after. After fire is amazing, it seems like [00:37:20] Speaker B: to me, you know, if we could be more strategic. And so one of. One of the things that we're going to do in the spring is we're going to do a project with Douglas Tolson down at Sonora. [00:37:33] Speaker C: Doug worked with me at A. M. Okay. [00:37:35] Speaker B: Okay. [00:37:36] Speaker C: He just retired. [00:37:37] Speaker B: He did. He's starting a foundation. [00:37:38] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:37:39] Speaker B: And I'm so excited. We're. So. [00:37:41] Speaker C: We're putting together sing for you. [00:37:43] Speaker B: What? [00:37:43] Speaker C: Oh, he's a singing fool. [00:37:45] Speaker B: No. [00:37:45] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:37:46] Speaker B: Did not even. [00:37:47] Speaker C: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. He could sit at a campfire with a guitar and break hearts. [00:37:52] Speaker B: What. [00:37:54] Speaker C: He's probably gonna hate me for a life. [00:37:56] Speaker B: He is going to. He's going to. I'm going to send him this recording. So. But we're gonna work with NASA on looking at mapping, like fuel loads all through that area, so. Well, who's doing it? Do you know? [00:38:11] Speaker A: I was told the fire. I was told the WHO was the forestry service in Texas looks watches satellites for fire. [00:38:18] Speaker B: Yes, they do. [00:38:19] Speaker C: They have a detection thing. But. But she's. I think you're talking about looking at potential. [00:38:25] Speaker B: Their particular satellite imagery for predicting. [00:38:29] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:38:30] Speaker B: Where things are going. Because he's saying he's. It's not. He's not seeing it there. Like, he doesn't know where that's being done. So we. I'll put you guys together. [00:38:38] Speaker C: Huh. [00:38:38] Speaker B: Y' all need to. Y' all need that. We need to have a conversation. [00:38:41] Speaker C: So. So there. There's some. Some databases already. I mean, I use them to. To do brush management work where I'm like, okay, the canopy's this. [00:38:51] Speaker B: Right. [00:38:51] Speaker C: We need to start thinking about doing this or you're going to lose everything. [00:38:54] Speaker B: Right. It. Right. Yeah. [00:38:56] Speaker C: Yeah. And it. Even some of the chemical companies now are doing that. They're going, oh, if we. If we spray for this two years from now, you can Increase your stocking. [00:39:06] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. [00:39:06] Speaker C: I mean, so that, that technology's there and we're using it. [00:39:10] Speaker B: It is, yeah, it's there. [00:39:11] Speaker C: So the, the, the fire aspect of it though, we have detectability. We know where lightning strikes are, we know where drought is, we know what fire, the fuel moistures are. So whenever we have like a dry light and storm pop through a forest, we'll send up planes and they'll start flying transects looking for smoke and, and we even use infrared to, hey, here's an, here's a lat long. [00:39:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:39:40] Speaker C: Put a helicopter and a couple of guys. [00:39:42] Speaker B: Yes. [00:39:43] Speaker C: That can repel down and go find this. [00:39:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. I've seen that. I've been to the forestry headquarters at A and M. It's like looking at like it's NASA. It's seriously, it's like, yeah, Houston, we have a problem kind of thing. You know what I mean? Like, I was, when I walked in, I was like, this is what I think it looks like at a launch. [00:40:02] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:40:03] Speaker B: Yes. [00:40:03] Speaker C: Like when we go to a fire, we, we, our team does that. We bring everything with us. We do. We're not augured in, in a brick building. We're in a tent, a big yurt with a bunch of computers and a bunch of really smart scientists people. [00:40:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:40:19] Speaker C: That are going, oh yeah, here's the fuel load and here's the shaded part of the mountain and it's not going to burn as intense here and the soil severity is not going to be as bad here because it's burned through at night instead of during the day. [00:40:30] Speaker B: It's just, it's, it's, it's amazing. [00:40:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:40:33] Speaker C: Yeah. I could geek out on that all day long. I don't though. I, I still try to get fire on the ground. [00:40:39] Speaker B: Yeah. That's what I, well, I, I, I, I wish that I understood more of it. I'm, I'm slowly walking through like doing some like NASA education and stuff so I can understand remote sensing better. [00:40:50] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:40:50] Speaker B: You know. [00:40:51] Speaker C: Yeah. I, I do enough of it to be dangerous and kind of set up my projects. [00:40:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:40:55] Speaker C: But the rest of it's just a Bic lighter. [00:40:58] Speaker B: And sometimes I just say I can, I can answer any question a second grader has. [00:41:02] Speaker C: We, we call them pocket pants because they got big pockets on the sides where you can stuff a bunch of crap in them in a yellow shirt. And that makes me happy. That's, that's when I'm in my, my zero. [00:41:11] Speaker B: You just want a lot of fires. [00:41:12] Speaker A: I did, but I'm telling you, though, it is the most amazing process to watch. To go from, you know, watching all the work that goes into starting of doing a prescribed fire to get it, you know, to get a. A burn plan, Bill. And while everything you got to do on that side as a landowner and then having people come in to help you do the burn, you know, of course, I'm not lighting a fire myself. It makes me. I mean, I burned two brush piles. I called the sheriff's department, made sure we weren't in a burn brand, said, I'm burning it. And then I took a tandem disc and plowed like 50 yards around it, you know, and, you know, it was. Had green weeds all around it. And then, you know, I waited until it was just the right amount of wind and then burned it. And I was like, oh, don't win. Don't change window, because there's no way it could go anywhere. And it still makes me nervous. I'm the kind of guy that gets, you know, Dolan sin rays, they used to have when you burn it. I used to get nervous lighting those. [00:42:01] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:42:01] Speaker A: You know, so I mean, I'm just a nervous. [00:42:04] Speaker C: It's a science. It's an art and a science. It really is, you know, And I always tell people, hey, you don't. You don't go into the winter going, I need to burn this. You need to think about that two years down the road because you. Okay, I need to move the cows over here to build the fuel load. [00:42:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:21] Speaker C: I went and burned my first consultant job. We burned for the spade ranches. And we were down there, right outside of Possum Kingdom. And we went down there, and we weren't getting the junipers to light. They weren't the fuel moisture, and the leaves were too high. And I just told the guy, I said, we're gonna stop until we. We need it drier. And he said something, and I said, anybody can burn your grass. I want to kill your brush. Yeah, I want to kill your brush. That's your problem. You can grow grass. Anybody can burn the grass. So that's the deal. But, you know, the wind being the. You know, everybody's like, oh, it's too windy. I'd rather have windy than no wind. [00:43:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:06] Speaker C: Because what happens days that there's light wind, that fire makes its own wind. [00:43:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:11] Speaker C: And then you have no control over it. But at least if the weather guy, you're like, you're 50, 50 right on rain, you're 50, 50 right on temperature. But you're always right on wind. [00:43:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:21] Speaker C: Our guys are. [00:43:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:22] Speaker C: In the southern Iplane. They know the wind's going to blow and it's going to blow this much. And from this direction, we can bank on. [00:43:28] Speaker A: And you can bank on. That's that, you know, getting that it's. It's weird to think it. That, you know, it's weird for me to ever think about not blow, not burning on a calm day. [00:43:38] Speaker C: Oh, I know. [00:43:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Because it's just. It's just not something that happens. [00:43:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:42] Speaker A: Well, I burned. When I burned those wood, those. It was great old grapevines. I'd pulled up and I had two pretty good sized piles. I was burning them, and I was standing there with my father. We were watching it, and I'd look at it, and I was like, you know, that flame is going straight up and the smoke is going straight. There is no wind at all. [00:44:00] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:44:00] Speaker A: I'm like. And I'm like, this is the first time in a year I can say, hey, there's absolutely no wind out here. You know, but it's. It's, you know, that's amazing. But, you know, you see the mindset of so many people. You, like, us, watch YouTube videos. These people hiking, and they walk through a burn score and like, oh, it's so terrible. Get all these trees. No, that's. I'm like, I'm sitting there thinking, oh, man, that's great. [00:44:20] Speaker C: I get. I get y' all don't even want to be around me on the news because 5,000 acres destroyed. And I'm like, no, we finally got to wipe it clean, and now we can do it right. [00:44:31] Speaker B: You know, you said a while ago about, like, you don't just decide, like, tomorrow I'm going to burn or this needs to burn. I think it's. It's hard to imagine, like, for people, how much management goes into a really good cattle operation. Yeah, it is. It is years. [00:44:51] Speaker C: Those guys are thinking. Two years away. [00:44:53] Speaker B: Yes. [00:44:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:54] Speaker B: Yes. [00:44:55] Speaker C: If everything's right. [00:44:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:44:57] Speaker C: And if everything's wrong, they're thinking, five years away. [00:45:01] Speaker B: Yes. [00:45:01] Speaker C: What are we gonna do? [00:45:02] Speaker B: Yes. [00:45:03] Speaker A: I always say, you know, I always say I make a plan so I know where I want to get, where I want to end up. I don't make a plan, so. So that I'll do everything in that. When. Exactly when it's there. But if, you know, my plan is okay. I want to burn, you know, this fourth of the place, and I want to burn this, you know, on my schedule. And I just know, hey, when the conditions are right, something's got to burn. [00:45:27] Speaker B: Well, yeah. And I think about, you know, people, we're. I don't, I never hear anybody like individually like complain about the price of beef. Like just people. [00:45:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:45:37] Speaker B: I hear it on the news. The price of beef is. We're still eating beef. We're all going and getting beef. [00:45:44] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:45:45] Speaker B: And. But we are not raising enough of it. [00:45:47] Speaker C: Exactly. [00:45:48] Speaker B: We do not have enough of it. And then you look at like the ag market right now. What do we need? We need beef. [00:45:56] Speaker C: We need breeders. [00:45:57] Speaker B: We do. And we need land that's being well managed, that can, can withstand droughts and we can figure out how to build herds, you know. [00:46:08] Speaker A: Well, and that's the thing about, is this, you know, our, this country is built very well for, for having a large, large acre ranches. Okay. It is not built well for small acre ranches because if you're. The carrying capacity is low. [00:46:24] Speaker C: Right, right. [00:46:25] Speaker A: But our pasture, I mean our native. Historically the native grass that we had did well to carry a cattle herd or a, you know, a buffalo herd. You know, something like that in the way that they did. They grazed it. They, you know, moving through, grazing it and moving through. Well, a lot of the new grazing techniques where they do the rotational grazing stuff very well. Basically it's designed to mimic. [00:46:48] Speaker C: Right, that's mimic a rotation. [00:46:49] Speaker A: Yeah. So you're mimicking rotation. And you know, in a lot of the, the prairie regions that grazing, what, what that grazing does when you go, you go behind them and you're looking like, oh, this just looks terrible. Well, but the next shower and it's not, it's not a rain. I'm not. The next shower, water goes, water goes in where it's supposed to. All of a sudden you've got forbs coming back up the grass. I mean the, what I, what, what I used to get hung up on was, you know, I think of grass. I think of like your grass and your lawn where you go and you like. If I'm not putting an inch and a half in my Bermuda grass lawn every in the summer looks like it looks like hammered, you know, and so. But native grasses are not that way. The root depth on some of those things is astronaut. I think the root depth on, on little bluestem is like seven, eight foot, something like that. [00:47:40] Speaker C: So, so here I, I do, I've got a, I've got a couple slides and one of them talks about fire frequency. How, how much fire is supposed to be repeated pre European man. And in our part of the world where we're at right now, before European man got here and said, oh, fire's bad, and fire was bad, but also fences were bad because fences now contain animals. And we learn the art of overgrazing. And now we got to unlearn that art because overgrazing stops fire. So where we're at right now, this stuff, this dirt that we call the Southern High Plains is supposed to burn every three to five years. The citizens of Texas and Oklahoma and Kansas don't want that. They. They freak out. [00:48:36] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's. That is. That's a cultural problem that we need to start addressing, you know, and I think that that's a big part of any kind of change that you want to see come about. It has to. You got to start educating people. But it has to be, in a way. [00:48:50] Speaker C: And we're trying to do that because of, like. Like what he. Dusty, said about the Green glacier. Why we're not burning fast enough. [00:49:00] Speaker B: Right. [00:49:01] Speaker C: We're. We're losing ground. Every year we. We put out. I mean, my. My FMO, my fire management officer, his goal is to burn 35,000 acres in year, and if he can't get 35,000, he's apologizing to us. He goes, I failed you. [00:49:19] Speaker B: Wow. [00:49:20] Speaker C: Even. Even that we're losing ground because the. The glacier just keeps coming. [00:49:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:49:26] Speaker C: And we can't get it with. With shredders or dish mulchers or whatever. And fire right now, we get lucky. You know, there was a big fire, I don't know, three years ago, northern Oklahoma into Kansas. He pushed a hole in the glacier. [00:49:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:43] Speaker C: Punched a hole. [00:49:45] Speaker A: Well, you know what's funny is that I was actually listening to a podcast never interviewing a wildlife biologist. Oklahoma wildlife biologist, and he was talking about. No, I'll take that back. The gentleman that was being interviewed is friends with the wildlife biologists for the area of Oklahoma. And he talked. He actually talked about that and talked about the quail's response to that. And he said, we're looking at the best quail years that's been happened since the 80s. Well, yeah, because it's. Because that's part of it, don't you think? [00:50:12] Speaker B: Is. Is how it's being reported. And sometimes I think it's just as important to start figuring out who to educate in the media as anything. Not just the media, because, like, sometimes I think we think we're educating people when we're talking to the choir, and I'm like, no, we need to be talking to people that aren't in our circle who already know all of this. [00:50:32] Speaker C: My wife and kids, we're driving down the road and they go, man, it looks like a good burn. It's a wildfire. They're like, that's a good burn. [00:50:42] Speaker B: Yes. [00:50:43] Speaker C: But they. They know that it's going to respond and it's respond positive. Everything that we have in our part of the world was designed for fire. Everything we have mesquite was designed for fire. [00:50:55] Speaker B: It's amazing. [00:50:56] Speaker C: As much as we hate it, it was designed for fire. [00:50:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:51:00] Speaker C: Well, it's great. [00:51:01] Speaker B: That's what they found out about the redwoods. You know, we nearly lost an entire. [00:51:07] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:51:07] Speaker B: Oh my goodness. And I just think about it. I think. I can't imagine. I always say, like when I saw the redwoods, I was like, this is why people come environmentalist is they come and stand under a redwood. And if I lived in California and saw these redwoods so often, like I would. That's something. [00:51:24] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:51:24] Speaker B: I can understand feeling, wanting to protect that. [00:51:27] Speaker C: So. So our. To start off our season this year, we went to. We went to. I drew a blank. Capitan. [00:51:42] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:51:42] Speaker C: Right outside. That fire was caused by an airplane crash. [00:51:46] Speaker B: Yes. [00:51:47] Speaker C: Four medevac. [00:51:49] Speaker B: Yes. Yes. [00:51:50] Speaker C: Flew into a mountain. They brought our team in because we need to get the bodies off the ground. We need to get the investigators in. We need to put the fire out. [00:51:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:58] Speaker C: So our team came in, we did that. That was in May. That was even before the normal fire season started a couple weeks early. But that, that area, it evolved with fire. [00:52:17] Speaker B: So how do you. So we, you know, of course everybody around here goes to Ridosa and my husband's family has a. A condo there. And what can you do when there's a fire? Like there's were fires there and the flooding. Yeah, that's afterward. I mean, I mean the fires in redos have been just. [00:52:34] Speaker C: So those were stand replacing fires that were catastrophic. So they changed the soil properties. [00:52:40] Speaker B: Properties. [00:52:40] Speaker C: They basically turned that ground into glass. Yeah. The water went in. It just ran off. [00:52:45] Speaker B: Yes. [00:52:46] Speaker C: You just gotta let that. That's just a time. Time heals that scarce. As much as we don't want to hear about that. Time heals us. [00:52:53] Speaker B: Yeah. So are there things to do that can prevent those type of. [00:52:58] Speaker C: So we have been kind of tasked as. Hey, let's build some. They call them shaded fuel breaks. We know the tendency, we know the history of where fires are. Let's start building these shaded fuel breaks. That gives us something to anchor off of to work. [00:53:17] Speaker B: What does that mean, a shaded. [00:53:18] Speaker C: So instead of going in there just Clear cutting. [00:53:20] Speaker B: Yes. [00:53:21] Speaker C: We change that timber stand from 90 trees per acre to 20 trees per acre. [00:53:29] Speaker B: Yes. [00:53:29] Speaker C: It's still pretty to look at. [00:53:31] Speaker B: Right. [00:53:31] Speaker C: It's a heck of a lot prettier to look at than what Ruidoso forests look like now, which are just grassland hills. [00:53:38] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, I noticed this last time. I've been watching over there as you go towards Alto, going, those trees aren't going to come back, I don't think [00:53:48] Speaker C: here it's going to take no, like, [00:53:50] Speaker B: there's not any, like little babies. [00:53:52] Speaker C: My granddaughters will never eat a lunch under those trees like we did. [00:53:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:53:58] Speaker C: Their grandchildren might. [00:54:00] Speaker B: Yeah. But it, it's going to take that long. [00:54:03] Speaker C: It needs managed fire in there. In the great example you look at, you look at the U.S. forest Service. Then there's that property line. And who's on the south of that? The Mescalero Apaches. [00:54:16] Speaker A: Okay. [00:54:16] Speaker C: Their forest is healthy because they're burning and they're cutting. They're harvesting wood, whether fuel wood or timber. And they're managing their resources. But we're over here loving to death because of some dad gum spotted owl or. And I'm right, probably gonna get in trouble for. [00:54:36] Speaker B: But, but it's so true though, because, [00:54:38] Speaker C: you know, we've loved it to death. [00:54:40] Speaker B: We say like in the conservation nonprofit that I run, we look at all ecosystems connected. [00:54:48] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:54:49] Speaker B: But we look at it through a lens of people, planet profit. Like all three of those things positively impacted is sustainability. And when you, when you can't balance the needs of nature and the needs of people, you shouldn't be doing what you're doing. [00:55:08] Speaker C: It gets out of whack. [00:55:09] Speaker B: Somebody else needs to come in and figure it out. [00:55:11] Speaker C: Look what happened. It's basically like we clear cut. [00:55:15] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely, is what it looks like. [00:55:17] Speaker C: And where did those, where does those owls at now? They're not there. [00:55:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:55:22] Speaker C: But they're on the mescal. [00:55:23] Speaker B: Right. [00:55:24] Speaker C: Because they've been managing. [00:55:25] Speaker B: Yes, yes. And you know, which makes me think, like, I think a lot of times people's think that, well, we just let nature run its course and nature just does what nature is going to do. But even what you're saying, it's a cool idea. [00:55:39] Speaker C: But we've. [00:55:40] Speaker B: Right. [00:55:40] Speaker C: We got too much history in this already. We've packed our suitcase full of dirty clothes. [00:55:45] Speaker B: Well, and that's such a really good point. But also too, what you know is like pre European is that. That wasn't the case. Yeah, it wasn't the case. The Native Americans were here managing lighting [00:55:56] Speaker A: fires and going away. [00:55:59] Speaker C: What this was, I mean, this was a, this was a deal where it said, oh, all fires will be put out by 10am the following day. [00:56:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:56:08] Speaker C: So you, you wouldn't put them out. All we did was just to accumulate more fuel. Instead of having these light cleansing fires, now we have these stand replacements. [00:56:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And there's a big difference between a, you know, like, you know, what we're talking about is a prescribed burn, which is more of the light cleansing fire than a stand replacement. [00:56:25] Speaker C: And if you, if you look right now on the map and there's, there's maps out there of all the prescribed fire that's going on right now in forest. In the national Forest Service, they're chock full. Those guys are working their tail off right now, putting fire on the ground, getting it ready for next year's fire season. [00:56:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:56:45] Speaker B: That's amazing. [00:56:46] Speaker A: That's the thing. [00:56:47] Speaker C: But they're behind the eight ball. They. We got handcuffed several years ago and said, oh, no, no, no, can't do it. Yeah, we spent more time. [00:56:56] Speaker B: Well, which is really why you have what you've seen in California, just the massive destruction of property. Because stand replacement, it was not being managed. [00:57:06] Speaker A: I mean, that's. And that's an unfortunate. And that's, that's a lesson that everybody needs to learn, but too few people will. [00:57:13] Speaker C: And it's not just forest. It's. It's everything. Everything. [00:57:17] Speaker A: That's one of the things that, you know, we joke about it almost every time we have a guest on is we talk about it. Seemed like every topic that we get into, when you start looking at it, it's actually more complex than a 30 second sound bite. [00:57:28] Speaker C: Hey, if it was simple, we'd all do this. [00:57:30] Speaker A: That's right. Yeah, exactly. [00:57:31] Speaker C: I mean, I went to war with salt cedar. Very, very invasive. [00:57:38] Speaker B: Oh, we know all about salt cedar. [00:57:39] Speaker C: Do you, do you know where it came from? [00:57:41] Speaker B: No, I don't know that, but. I know, I know. But it looks like when you get [00:57:45] Speaker C: rid of it, the government planted it. [00:57:46] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. Was it a windbreak? [00:57:49] Speaker C: No plant. [00:57:49] Speaker B: What was it? [00:57:50] Speaker C: It was streamside erosion control. And it works really good. [00:57:55] Speaker A: Yeah, it does. [00:57:56] Speaker C: It works really good. But now those braided prairies and streams that we were supposed to have in the Southern great plain. [00:58:01] Speaker B: Yes. [00:58:02] Speaker C: They're channelized. [00:58:03] Speaker B: Yes. [00:58:04] Speaker C: So. Well, I know my first project during COVID I had a landowner. Covid was so stupid with all of our rules of engagement that had a lander called. He goes, hey, can you help me kill Salt cedar. And I said, physically, yes. Monetarily, yes, and I'll be there tomorrow. Then he called back. He goes, well, my neighbor wants some help, too. And I said, all right. We ended up having a big barn full of people because we weren't allowed to go inside. And I did a complete watershed of salt soda eradication. [00:58:36] Speaker B: See, that's what needs to happen where you are. You need this happen all through that watershed. That lost straw. [00:58:40] Speaker C: The lost straw watershed. [00:58:41] Speaker B: All of that needs to happen. And I know that there are people in there that would do it. I mean, yeah, we would participate. [00:58:47] Speaker C: And you know what we call it? [00:58:48] Speaker A: What's that? [00:58:48] Speaker C: How to get rid of feral hog habitat. Because that's all that lives in that crate. [00:58:52] Speaker B: Oh, my God. [00:58:54] Speaker A: What's funny is, I had. I had my word. Three years ago, they were so. They were as tall as salt citrus. [00:59:00] Speaker B: Yes. [00:59:00] Speaker A: And I had a guy come in, he had one big skid turn and just, like, chopped it down and mulched it, basically, which didn't. It killed a surprising number of them. I was actually very shocked. But somebody's like, oh, you shouldn't do that. And I going, I can't spray them. [00:59:16] Speaker C: Yeah. I'm like, they're like, we have helicopters that fly over. [00:59:19] Speaker A: Well, but I've got a vineyard that's, you know, 150 yards north. [00:59:21] Speaker C: You know what? Those guys. Those guys. I. I know about your vineyards because I've been around your vineyards. Long time ago. Those guys, Shoot, I let them fly in my backyard. They are that good. [00:59:35] Speaker B: They're that accurate. [00:59:36] Speaker C: The very first time we were on the Pecos river, and. And one of their guys said, sir, what is that? And the guy goes, it's a 4x Stetson, silver belly hat. And he goes, let me borrow it. He puts it down on the ground, and he goes, if one drop gets on that, I'll buy you five of them. And that helicopter came by, and I went, oh, this is. And he picks it up. He goes, yeah, sorry, you get your old hat back. [01:00:02] Speaker A: But they're that accurate with the technology [01:00:05] Speaker C: we have now with GPS and all that? [01:00:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:00:08] Speaker C: And the drones. Now the drones. [01:00:09] Speaker B: Oh, the drones. [01:00:10] Speaker C: You know, so the drone does the strategic bombing next to your vineyard, and then the helicopter kind of does the big swath. [01:00:17] Speaker A: Well, the amazing thing about it was when I. When he shredded, I asked him, I said, hey. He got through with it, and it took him about three days, I guess, to get it done. It was only like nine acres, and it took him three days, but it was super Thick. I said, what? I said, what you see in there? He said, I run out one owl, two rabbits. And I said, you didn't see any pigs or deer or anything like that? He said, there was not even a game trail in that. It was so thick. [01:00:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:00:42] Speaker A: And I calculated how much water use they had. I looked up. I don't remember what it is now, but I could come. I could. Those. That 10 acres of salt cedar was using enough water to cover the entire 50 acres of vineyard 15 foot deep every year. [01:00:58] Speaker C: So that's. [01:00:58] Speaker A: That's how much water. [01:01:00] Speaker C: That's the headwaters of the Concho. [01:01:04] Speaker A: I couldn't even begin to guess. I couldn't even begin. I think. I think it actually peters out. [01:01:09] Speaker C: No, but. But every piece of dirt. [01:01:12] Speaker B: I think it's Colorado. [01:01:13] Speaker C: I think it is. [01:01:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Every piece of dirt, it's Colorado. [01:01:16] Speaker C: Yokum Dunes. [01:01:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:01:18] Speaker C: Yokum Dunes is separated by sulfur draw. [01:01:23] Speaker A: I think so for draw. [01:01:24] Speaker C: That is the break. Everything to the north of that goes Brazes. Everything south goes. [01:01:29] Speaker A: That's the kind of Colorado. [01:01:30] Speaker C: But that's how I. I determine killing salt cedar. [01:01:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:01:35] Speaker C: In the Brazos. Good for the fish. We got two endangered fish in the Brazos. And I'll spend money all day long killing. [01:01:42] Speaker A: Well, salt cedars are to me. [01:01:44] Speaker C: And now I don't care. I just hate salt cedars. [01:01:46] Speaker A: Well, I mean, I'm the same. [01:01:48] Speaker C: Sounds like I got a project at Lost Draw now. [01:01:50] Speaker A: I'm the same on that thing. I just want it. I mean, I want it dead. [01:01:54] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:01:55] Speaker A: No, because it doesn't provide. It doesn't really help me any. Because, I mean. Yeah, I've got. It's been enough now that I see deer in it and stuff. [01:02:05] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:02:05] Speaker A: But when I got it down and before any of it had come back, I had tall enough Kochi in there that the deer were in there just as fine. [01:02:11] Speaker C: So here. Here's a really cool. This again fire. We're gonna geek out a little bit on fire when you. When you masticate or molt stuff. 25 to 33 days later, that wood creates an ethanol. So that stuff burns really good. Really good. I mean, it's like, hey, I'm gonna throw some whiskey. You remember the old. Throw some whiskey on the fire, the campfire. That's what that. That any wood doesn't. It starts creating that wood alcohol. [01:02:39] Speaker B: Yes, it is. I looked it up with somebody who knows and it is part of the upper Colorado. I trust. I trust. [01:02:47] Speaker A: It's funny. She trusts. She'll trust AI, but not you. [01:02:50] Speaker C: Yeah. Exactly. [01:02:51] Speaker A: Don't feel special, [01:02:54] Speaker B: just confirming, because I thought you were right, too. [01:02:57] Speaker A: But it's funny because, you know, you see, when. As a kid not having. So we didn't have salt cedars in Terry county, they moved into eastern Terry county and around the old Salt. [01:03:07] Speaker B: I remember the first time I. I saw them. [01:03:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:03:10] Speaker B: As a kid driving to. [01:03:12] Speaker C: To Hoka, and he said, look, Christmas trees. [01:03:15] Speaker B: I was like, there's trees out here. What are these trees? [01:03:18] Speaker A: But it's amazing when you look at, like when I. When I got it down and I was, you know, walking through it and kind of seeing what it looked like and, you know, seeing what was there and how there was nothing there. [01:03:30] Speaker C: Right. [01:03:31] Speaker A: No, there's nothing. It is an absolute monoculture. [01:03:35] Speaker C: So in that thing, we did some over at Muleshoe Refuge. We. I mean, Golly, this was 20 2008. 2000. [01:03:44] Speaker B: It sounds about the time. So Lacey Vardaman is the one who started the Found the organization that I run. [01:03:50] Speaker C: We dug some salt cedar up. [01:03:52] Speaker B: I mean, just right there. [01:03:53] Speaker C: Ugly. Used to backhoe. That's how. [01:03:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:03:56] Speaker C: I mean, track hose weren't even around. Skid steers, nothing. Thought of a skid steer. We took them back off and we dug them up. And then they came, they popped back up, sprayed them. Dug. Sprayed. Like three years after that, water started percolating out of the ground. [01:04:11] Speaker B: So that's okay. So she's just east of there. We're talking about, you know, where she is. And we were out there, dry as it can be, and there's puddles of water out there by that lake. There are literally springs. [01:04:25] Speaker C: Yeah, there are springs. [01:04:26] Speaker B: There are springs out there. [01:04:28] Speaker C: Sure. And if. And if you're not. You're not pumping it out with that. [01:04:32] Speaker B: That's what she said. Well, and also, she said during the summer, they, you know, will. When everybody's pumping around them, pivots will [01:04:39] Speaker C: pull that head pressure down. [01:04:40] Speaker B: Yeah, but. [01:04:41] Speaker C: Yeah, no, we're. We see that all the time. [01:04:43] Speaker B: It's amazing. [01:04:44] Speaker C: Yeah, that's why I've gone to war against salsa. [01:04:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I think. [01:04:47] Speaker B: I think that is a good enemy to take. [01:04:49] Speaker C: No, we've. We've been hacking and grinding against Salt Cedar since 2012 or 2014 on the Brazos. [01:04:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:04:59] Speaker C: Now. [01:05:00] Speaker A: Well, earlier than that, they were doing it on the Pecos. [01:05:03] Speaker C: The Pecos was the first. First kind of the first deal. But the thing about the Brazos, Yeah, it's got a couple endangered fish, but whatever we do up on the upper watershed, that help us a bit more people. Dallas Fort Worth getting a drink and water their yard. I still think we should capture it and hold it up here as hostages. [01:05:26] Speaker B: Right. [01:05:26] Speaker A: Well, it's, you know, and they're not [01:05:27] Speaker C: in the Brazos River Authority never has said, hey, we like your program. Let me. Let us cough in some money to you. [01:05:34] Speaker A: Yeah, [01:05:37] Speaker B: interesting. [01:05:37] Speaker C: Figure that out. But anyway, I'm not gonna bang on them. They've been good partners. Yeah, They've helped us. [01:05:43] Speaker A: But getting the. I'll tell you what, getting invasive species in general, I mean, that's the thing about it. It's like you start looking at. At the high plains, you're like, okay, you know, there's actually, like, where we are. There's. There's like, no native trees right here. [01:06:00] Speaker C: Why is that? [01:06:01] Speaker A: Because they just. There's not any native trees. [01:06:03] Speaker C: So one of our old biologist guys, he was so big into planting windrows and tree rows and all that, and I used to always say that we're not going to be forced to prayer. So as he phased out, I was like, okay, it's time to get the chainsaws going again. [01:06:22] Speaker A: Yeah, but, you know, they had the big wind shelter belt program, which, I mean, and it's. It's really interesting to watch how the government's really big about throwing a big idea out that works for somebody that's squeaking, really. You know, the wheel that's squeaking. Sure. But they'll just say, everybody do this. [01:06:41] Speaker C: And then the consequences. It's that ecological time bomb. [01:06:45] Speaker A: What's like kudzu? I mean, there's another. That's the southeastern salt. [01:06:49] Speaker B: They call it the. The vine that ate the South. [01:06:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Or. [01:06:53] Speaker C: Or if you want to just get real local here, how about Old World blue stem? [01:06:57] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Yep, 100%. I watched out. That's. Then that's one that everybody thinks, well, it's blue stem. [01:07:05] Speaker C: It's not the right. [01:07:07] Speaker A: It's not the right blue stem. You know, the psychologist. It's kind of funny before, like, probably 25 years ago or so, my dad planted WWE doll over blue stem. That was the. That was the thing. [01:07:19] Speaker C: Mr. Doll was one of my professors at the university. [01:07:23] Speaker A: And I mean, and it, you know, they're like, oh, he grazed it. It works great. Yeah, definitely. I was like, oh, and me. And my little brain was like, oh, it's bluestem. That's grass. It's great grass. Good. Like, and then you start looking into, like, no, not really. Not the same thing. It doesn't provide the same. [01:07:39] Speaker C: Well, in. So. So we. We've Kind of in our program, Partners for Efficient Wildlife. We've kind of tailored a lot of our programs to fix those ecological scars. So we have a Pastures for Upland Birds program that we fund. So if it's exotic grass, we'll pay to kill it, and then we'll pay to plant native. If it's bare ground, we'll pay to. I like a good cover crop, like a wheat crop. Then just drill that grass right into it. Make it wilt. [01:08:14] Speaker A: Listen. And it's not just. I mean, we can pick on old one Bluestone, but it's also Klein grass. [01:08:19] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. No, no. My personal favorite is just the one that's here. [01:08:21] Speaker A: My personal favorite are Melio Weeping Love Grass. I'm like, that was the original CRP grass. [01:08:27] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [01:08:28] Speaker A: Probably. There was probably 80,000 acres that it put in for that. The government. [01:08:34] Speaker C: I was. I was down on the coast two weeks ago looking at some stuff, and I said, what kind of grass is that? I. What did they call that crap? Guinea. Guinea girl. I go, what's it? And they said, it. It's bad. You don't even want. You can't walk, though. It'll grab you and throw you down and beat you up. It needs a fire. And he goes, it loves fire. [01:08:56] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's the thing. I mean, that's, you know, the first iteration of the CRP program, which I am a huge fan of. I wish the CRP program, at some point in time, they will pass another farm bill, and it will update the rates and the acreage and stuff like that. And I'm hoping it expands, you know, And I will spit in the eye of the Farm Bureau to say that. Yeah. Because they don't want that, you know. [01:09:19] Speaker C: Well, so. So Kansas, Kansas, when they were doing their farm bill, they said, wait, does Kansas. [01:09:26] Speaker A: Kansas have a state farm? This has a state farm. [01:09:29] Speaker B: Let me just say there are states that have farm bills. [01:09:31] Speaker C: They mandated CRP will be native grass. [01:09:34] Speaker A: Yes. [01:09:35] Speaker C: There will be no exotics. [01:09:37] Speaker A: Exactly right. And. And you look at what, you know, they're still having. They're having problems with lesser prairie chickens just like everybody else. [01:09:44] Speaker C: They're grass. Well, no, but. [01:09:46] Speaker A: Well, they're coming back a little bit, but they're still. They're not as bad as Texas. [01:09:49] Speaker C: Kansas has. They have graders and lessers. [01:09:53] Speaker A: Yes. [01:09:54] Speaker C: And a. There's an F1 cross. Now, whatever we call a gripper or whatever. [01:10:02] Speaker A: Clipper. [01:10:03] Speaker C: But their chickens are doing good. Whatever we want to call them, they're doing good. [01:10:08] Speaker A: They're lesser chick. Their greater chicken population Is really good. [01:10:12] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:10:12] Speaker A: That's doing phenomenal. [01:10:14] Speaker C: But also their native grassland birds are doing. [01:10:16] Speaker A: Yes. [01:10:17] Speaker C: Whereas we come. Come farther south and we get into a bunch of garbage that we did 20, 30 years ago and we're paying the price. [01:10:24] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's, it's frustrating because you've got. [01:10:27] Speaker C: Grassland health is so important for these. [01:10:29] Speaker A: It really is. And you, you see, it's an economic opportunity for every small town on the high plains. I think so, to have healthy prairie [01:10:38] Speaker C: habitat because you'll get a hoot out of this. Let me tell this real quick. I had a landowner that had phenomenal lesser prairie chicken habitat, phenomenal lesser prairie chicken numbers. And he had a chuck wagon catering business. And I said, man, you're sitting on a gold mine. What do you mean? And I said, you could do a bird and breakfast thing and people would fly in from around the world. And he said, would you help me set it up? And I said, I can't help you set it up. Your chamber of commerce is for. He did it one year and he made a pile of money. And he goes, that's a lot of work. But it's only three weeks. It's kind of like stripping. [01:11:25] Speaker B: Right. [01:11:25] Speaker C: If you got three weeks of elbows and buttholes, but three weeks we're gonna get it done. [01:11:30] Speaker A: Yeah, but that's. [01:11:31] Speaker B: I, I think it's that kind of creativity. [01:11:34] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:11:34] Speaker B: That's going to keep. Decide who stays and who doesn't. You know what I mean? It. Because things will are changing. They really are changing, you know, quickly. [01:11:44] Speaker C: But people. People literally flew in from. [01:11:47] Speaker B: Yes. [01:11:47] Speaker C: Out of country. [01:11:48] Speaker B: Well, it's out of country. [01:11:50] Speaker C: Out of country. Landed in Lubbock International Airport, rented a car and drove out there. [01:11:55] Speaker A: The, the like, like for right now, the, the number of sage of like sharp tail grouse and sage grouse in like the eastern, western, rather north South Dakota and eastern Montana. Some areas are doing well in those three states, some not so much. I was listening to actually talking to a guy the other day that had been up there in Montana and he was hunting and the numbers are down. It's been a dry year for them. [01:12:25] Speaker C: No snowfall. [01:12:26] Speaker A: It's known to no snow. And you know, but they, and so their numbers are down. They said, now we're in a hardware store and said, we make a point. Go up there and we don't buy groceries here, we buy groceries there. [01:12:36] Speaker C: Sure. [01:12:37] Speaker A: And so they were going up there and they were in a hardware store and ladies. And they had. In. Montana has moved in case you didn't know. This. And you don't know why you would. But they moved the opening day of their sharp tail grouse season back two weeks for non residents. So the first two weeks are resident only. And then they get non residents get to hunt. And he was up there for the non resident opener for talking to it. And he was talking to this lady in the. In the hardware store in this small town. I mean, when I say small town, think small town, eastern Montana. Small town. Like soda. Maybe it would be like metal. But they have a hardware store because they're 100 miles from anywhere else. And so she said that there's her. She said, my sales are off 50% because they push the season back two weeks and the numbers are down. And so by the time I would get the. You know, they've got the first two weeks, everybody that knows somebody that's in resident, they say, well, the numbers are down. Well, the people that would normally be coming out didn't come out right. And said, our numbers are down. And see that this is, you know, that's basically the profit margin is the hunters that come into that. [01:13:40] Speaker C: The same thing happened in the Texas panhandle with our pheasants. I mean, you and I remember growing up, there used to be pheasants in Tarry County. Yeah, there were pheasants in Hockley County. I did the surveys. Yeah, they don't even think they count them anymore. [01:13:56] Speaker A: No, there's. There used to be a pheasant that hung out around the barn about 15 years ago. And I haven't seen him in at least 10 years. [01:14:03] Speaker C: But I remember. [01:14:04] Speaker B: What is it? What is it? The. The drought. [01:14:07] Speaker A: It's changing farm practices. Ironically, a lot of it has to do with tailwater pits. Yep, 100% has to do with tailwater pits. [01:14:18] Speaker C: But I remember driving. I grew up in Wichita Falls and I remember we would. It was like four or five of us would all jump in the vehicle. We'd drive out here. We'd rent. Rent or pay a landowner to hunt pheasants. Shoot two. We call them ditch parrots. Shoot two or three ditch parrots. Drive back to its stow Falls. Life is good. [01:14:37] Speaker A: Yep. [01:14:38] Speaker C: It ain't happening anymore. [01:14:40] Speaker A: Hereford used to have a big. You know, they used to have a big. [01:14:43] Speaker C: I ended up guiding a bunch of hunts for Olton Chamber. [01:14:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I was going to say Olton. Yeah, does too. I remember we. We lived north of earth for a few years. And I remember the first time I saw one out there and I was [01:14:55] Speaker C: like, yeah, I know farming practices we went from row water to center pivot, which is great, right? [01:15:02] Speaker A: Yep. [01:15:03] Speaker C: But also the commodities changed. I mean. [01:15:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:15:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:15:06] Speaker A: Grain. Sorghum is not worth anything. [01:15:08] Speaker C: Corn and corn and Milo kind of started falling down. [01:15:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:15:11] Speaker C: Cotton. Good gosh. My son is an ag lender and he goes, yeah, we're loaning money for cotton up in Oklahoma. [01:15:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:15:19] Speaker C: Northern Oklahoma. [01:15:20] Speaker B: Yeah. There's a huge gin. [01:15:21] Speaker C: Never ever. I mean, I was like, where are they ginning it? Oh, we. They built up there. Yeah. [01:15:26] Speaker B: That's a big one. Yeah. [01:15:27] Speaker C: No, you're supposed to. That's not. [01:15:28] Speaker B: I met a guy not long ago that said he's a. Runs a giant big gin up there. Yeah. [01:15:33] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:15:33] Speaker B: Well. [01:15:34] Speaker A: And I mean. I mean, for the most part, most of southern high plains is not actually suitable for corn production anyway. I mean, we did it. But when you're looking at, well, we're going to make 50 bushel corn versus, you know, I was making 275 bushel dry land corn. It's the math doesn't matter. [01:15:50] Speaker C: Well, they have three or four carts, grain carts, chasing the combine. And we just have one that comes service two combines. Yeah, there's a difference. [01:15:58] Speaker A: But I mean, so you go, you know, and I was thinking about this. Actually think about with the CRP program and when you look at where a lot of pheasants are, you know, there's a lot of. They're almost always associated with ag, but not always associated. They can live without. [01:16:11] Speaker C: They need a thing. They need an ag neighbor. [01:16:14] Speaker A: Do need an ag neighbor. [01:16:15] Speaker C: But they also need that bugging area just like those other upland birds. [01:16:18] Speaker A: And it's. And it takes thicker cover than. And you know, and you know, it's. It's. I mean, honestly, it's more surprising to me that we don't have Hungarian partridge down here then. [01:16:27] Speaker C: But the, the economic. The lack of economic. Because those little towns. I mean, I remember the Lions Club thing. [01:16:34] Speaker A: Yes. [01:16:34] Speaker C: Huge. [01:16:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:16:35] Speaker C: Huge. You know, and I always heard the [01:16:39] Speaker B: story about the first time that they did that hunt in Olton. Whether it's true or not, it's maybe urban legend, but that the guy raised them and then when they released to them, they were too accustomed to humans and. And that they were following the hunters. [01:16:56] Speaker C: They were pretty tame. [01:16:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:16:58] Speaker C: And they were there. They still do that. They still do a little bit of put and take, but they're still trying to depend on native birds. But it's gone. It's gone. [01:17:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And it would take. I mean, it would take the economic [01:17:10] Speaker C: viability of those little Towns used to thrive on that stuff, just much like the hill country does for deer Hunter. [01:17:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:17:16] Speaker B: I mean those guys are like, I think it's just a whole nother opportunity that, you know, people are. Hopefully people are starting to catch on. [01:17:23] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean it, you know, you look at one of the things that like the, like, okay, there's. I heard an ad on my, one of the podcasts. Aberdeen, South Dakota. Okay. Aberdeen, South Dakota, there's 120,000 acres of walk in hunting access which is typically public private land that is leased by the tech, by the South Dakota Game and Fish. And they have a walk in program where you can go and you can walk in a lot. Almost every state has something similar to that. [01:17:50] Speaker C: Right. [01:17:50] Speaker A: Some of them are better than Texas. All of them are better than Texas, but some of them are better than others. And. But there's 120,000 acres of walk in hunting access which is free to, you know, free to hunt. Free to the public to go hunt within 60 miles of Aberdeen, South Dakota. [01:18:08] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:18:09] Speaker A: 120,000 acres they can go hunt on. And you start looking at, you know, I was like, man, that's, you know, and there's 100,000 acres, there's roughly 20% of Terry county is CRP rough. Roughly. I looked it up this week just so I would know. So I couldn't get fact checked and I found four different numbers. So I'm just rounding everything, you know, averaging everything out. If, if half of that, which the vast majority of it is, is owned by people that are, either they're passed away and their kids own it and they don't farm or they have since moved to, you know, Abilene, San Antonio, Houston, they're not there. Not there. There's nothing else going on to it. On with it. If they were, you know, if that was to get enrolled into a walk in hunting access program, whether it's the state one, which I, I'm leery of saying that they would. I don't think that it would happen. I think you could walk in with every, every landowner's paperwork signed up and handed the target, Sparks and Wildlife. You wouldn't. They wouldn't do it. They might do a small punk part of it, but it's just anyway, that's neither here nor there. But. Or if this, if this, if a city count that, you know, chamber of commerce figured out a way to do it. Right. You know, which. The big thing on it in that is who's look at liability in that, you know, when you sign it up with the state, you know, and they go into it, it's like, you know, hey, you're on your own on there, buddy. [01:19:34] Speaker C: Sure. [01:19:34] Speaker A: If something happens, it's all you. [01:19:36] Speaker C: And I think you could do the same thing. The, the thing that in. When we were first starting the walk in program with tpwd, we were trying to, well, we were trying to mimic that, but we also said, oh, we need to, we need some, we need some game. So we were trying to build into the price to the landowner. You'll do some fallow disking. [01:20:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:20:02] Speaker C: You'll do some planting of some grain crops or something. Something to help to bring in, encourage the, the game to hold it there. [01:20:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:20:11] Speaker A: And I think either north or South Dakota is. Does a really good job. I think it's South Dakota that does a really good job of that. And you can, if you go, if you got like regular crp, if you really go out there and you chase the money on that thing. Yeah. You can make it. I mean, it's not, you're not going to get rich. [01:20:27] Speaker C: The Lemon brothers up North Idalo, they, they had a, they had a playa and they had CRP around it. And then they had some row crop. And I said, if you'll plant two. And they were, they were avid, your kind of guy. Avid quail hunter. I mean, they, they believed in white proso millet as a cover crop. And I said, if you'll just leave one planter with a proso millet and you'll do this. And I was paying them 10 bucks an acre. [01:20:58] Speaker A: Holy cow. [01:20:58] Speaker C: And anybody else was 2 bucks an acre. [01:21:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:21:01] Speaker C: But they would, they were like. And, and they, because they were landowners, didn't have to buy an aph. [01:21:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:21:07] Speaker C: I said, because you're just making our hunting better for us. [01:21:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:21:12] Speaker C: All they were leasing was the dove hunting. [01:21:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:21:14] Speaker C: They were going to get the quail birds. Yeah. [01:21:17] Speaker A: Well, that's the thing about it is the amount of, is the amount with the economy, with the agricultural economy changing up here with, with water declining and that can. There is a number of things that can be done to make things more profitable. [01:21:32] Speaker B: Sure. [01:21:33] Speaker A: I mean, if a guy's got, I mean, quite frankly, if I was, if I was a chamber of commerce person and could go out and, or whatever. Second magic wand. And the guy had a, had a playa lake on there. You know, she'll run your, run some K line down there, some poly pipe down there and put some water and make sure there's water in that thing in January, February, March. Said, you know, I'll lease it from you for X. I mean we used [01:21:59] Speaker C: to do that and we used to pump water in for water foul. [01:22:03] Speaker A: And that's, I mean, I've looked at, I've actually looked at some of that [01:22:06] Speaker C: and that's all well and good, but I, I would say that the non consumptive wildlife person's going, wait a minute, you taking my drinking water for so some ducks can get their butt wet? No. [01:22:20] Speaker B: Well, maybe so, but those, those people would have no say in it because [01:22:25] Speaker C: I'm the big picture. That water is fine. [01:22:28] Speaker B: Well, you know, what interesting I had yesterday was at Waters of West Texas in Pecos, which is a great water conference. And we had the conversation with somebody who has a lot of treated produced water they're working on. And he was like, we want to get it in apply us. And so I'm like, I mean, it'll be, it will be whatever you need it to be. [01:22:48] Speaker C: Oh no, we've got some research going on at the university right now. [01:22:53] Speaker B: Oh yeah, these are folks that are working with, with tech. [01:22:57] Speaker A: We actually had one, we actually had one of the tech researchers on a couple weeks ago. [01:23:00] Speaker B: Yeah, but you know, Shane Walker, he's the one of that, he's the head of the Texas Produced Water Consortium. [01:23:07] Speaker A: But we also, I mean, but you know, you look at that and you know, like I was looking at, okay, I went, like I went on my map program and I looked at, you know, the soil change, the color change on one of our, one of my brother's places and mapped it out and like, okay, it's this many acres. That's actually, it wasn't actually, it was like an acre. I'm like, okay, filling it up. That's, you know, if you add an acre that, that's 27,546 or something like that. Gallons of water. How long would that take? That I'm not going. I could put that on in just a couple hours, right. You know, I could run a. Well, a couple hours. Like, well, it may not hold. Right. But then I got looking at him like, well, if I, what if I went in there and we dug it out a little bit and I got some bentonite, put it in that, packed it in that stuff so that it would hold water a little bit better, then I could probably only run that thing, you know, like for four hours every three weeks and I would constantly have water in there. [01:24:02] Speaker C: We did that on a couple of lions. [01:24:04] Speaker A: And so I mean there's, there's. [01:24:05] Speaker C: It didn't have to be chock full. [01:24:07] Speaker A: No, just has to have to have water. [01:24:09] Speaker C: Just water. [01:24:10] Speaker A: We had read Overman on a couple weeks ago and he was like, listen, if a guy puts in, you know those little half moon dams for water for feeding, for watering cattle and just keeps fresh water in those. [01:24:21] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:24:21] Speaker A: He said that'll keep the sandhill cranes coming because that can stay roost on salt water and have to have fresh water drink. I mean it's, it's, it's an opportunity. Yeah, it is. It is an economic opportunity that a lot of people don't think about because it's not a big one for every person. [01:24:38] Speaker C: Well, the low, the low hanging fruits been picked. [01:24:42] Speaker B: Right. [01:24:42] Speaker C: We need to figure out how to, how to get those stretchy arms. [01:24:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:24:46] Speaker C: We can get that fruit. [01:24:47] Speaker B: Yes. [01:24:48] Speaker C: For, for our producers. [01:24:49] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. And it'll take, you know, more than one of those. [01:24:54] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:24:54] Speaker B: You know, so it's. But, but also too, you've got to have that. I mean, part of, part of something being sustainable, an economy is the diversification of it, you know, and I was reading the other day about how, you know, how so much of our economic development money is spent on large corporations when in fact it's a lot of small businesses that actually are the most benefit. [01:25:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:25:17] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:25:18] Speaker B: To an area. [01:25:19] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, I would imagine that, you know, and I'm just, I'm just pulling this out of a, you know, it's a swag. But I would say that you're probably gonna, you'd probably see more benefit of the number of small ones even if the employee numbers were the same because you'd see more turnover. I mean, you think that that money would turn over more in the economy because if you've got four people buying, four companies buying stationary versus one company buying stationary, you know, four people buying whatever versus. [01:25:44] Speaker B: I can't remember where the numbers are, but it's there. I mean, it's kind of an accepted fact, I guess according to the book I read. So. But my goodness, I can't believe it's hurting. 128. Not sure. We stopped and took a breath. [01:25:57] Speaker C: We have fun. [01:25:58] Speaker B: We always do. [01:26:00] Speaker A: Again, we forgot to give out the number. [01:26:03] Speaker C: What number do you want? 128. [01:26:06] Speaker B: Well, we just, we never remembered it, but, but we will when we have advertisements to do. Do remember that. [01:26:15] Speaker A: Yes. [01:26:17] Speaker B: Pay for it. What? [01:26:18] Speaker A: No advertisement. [01:26:21] Speaker B: I do want to say one thing. I do. I. I saw something earlier today, speaking of opportunities. [01:26:27] Speaker C: Okay, good. I thought maybe. You seem like a Tik Tok video. Me or Something. [01:26:31] Speaker B: No, no, no, no, no, no. [01:26:33] Speaker C: Are you on Tik Tok? [01:26:34] Speaker B: You're on Tik Tok? [01:26:35] Speaker C: I'm in the basement of the science spectrum. [01:26:38] Speaker B: You are? [01:26:39] Speaker C: I am. [01:26:41] Speaker B: What? Are you being serious? [01:26:43] Speaker C: I'm dead serious. A long time ago, a long, long time ago, early, early in my career, we were doing the Brazos river and they. Somebody funded it. There's a little Brazos river kiosk thing down there. And I'll be pushing my buggy in the supermarket, like, hey, there's that guy from the science spectrum. And the wife goes, keep walking. [01:27:07] Speaker B: Okay, so New Country Organics is going to have a growers meeting in Brownfield at the Lone Star Cajun Restaurant. And that will be October 14th. So they are looking for grain, grain crops for local delivery. And they've got. They've got contracting going on right now. So that is October 14th from 12 to 1:30 in Brownfield at the Lone Star Cajun Restaurant. [01:27:35] Speaker A: Well, it's. Right. Time is up and I still didn't get to ask. I was going to actually ask you questions about which kind of raptors are moving through because I'm seeing a whole bunch of new ones now. Yep. [01:27:45] Speaker C: Peregrine or not. Well, peregrines are moving too, but Broad wings. And I stopped yesterday and was watching one. [01:27:57] Speaker B: Oh, goodness. [01:27:58] Speaker C: Virginus. [01:27:59] Speaker A: Okay. Well, I've seen more of them. I've seen several of them, but I'm not thinking I'm seeing Cooper's hawks yet, which I wouldn't recognize them. I don't know that I would recognize them other than when they swoop down and get my quail. [01:28:13] Speaker B: Yeah, you're always watching for predators. [01:28:16] Speaker A: Yeah. It's funny, I was the last one I was hunting last year and I was going through and I was coming up and I'm like. I see a hop setting over, you know, sitting on the ground, and he's within 75 yards of me, and I'm like, one. I hope that didn't get one of my quail. And I got walked over to him, took off, and sure enough, he had. He'd gotten one of my quail. I like to see him, but I like to see them in other people's places. [01:28:40] Speaker C: Well, you know, but it's kind of like golf when you. Yeah, I. I don't play golf. I go out once a year and hit balls and I hit some in the water and I go to find him and I don't get my ball back, but I get somebody's. So it's. I always say, you know, a Mouse or a quail or something. You know, somebody's. Somebody's got to feed somebody. [01:28:59] Speaker A: Somebody's got to feed somebody. When you're. When what you like to see is at the bottom end of the food chain. [01:29:04] Speaker C: Right? Right now I'm mad at woodpeckers because they've ruined seven of my game cameras. [01:29:09] Speaker A: Holy cow. I did not even realize we had that many woodpeckers anywhere around here. [01:29:15] Speaker B: I've had them in my. I've seen it. I've seen two in my backyard since we've lived in lubbock. [01:29:19] Speaker C: No, I'm 70 now, and now they're armored. I'm a wildlife biologist. I should be able to win this war, right? They got bird spikes all around them all. It looks like I fight a bobcat when I go to get their little card out. [01:29:35] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. I know. My kids live in Denver, and you can hear they will get on, like, something metal. Like, especially if it's a gutter. And it is like, machine guns going off in the neighborhood. Okay, we're off topic and out of time. [01:29:50] Speaker A: Thank you very, very, very much. [01:29:52] Speaker C: Anytime. [01:29:52] Speaker A: I appreciate you coming on. It's been a. A long road. Getting. [01:29:55] Speaker C: Sorry. Sorry that it took. [01:29:56] Speaker A: Hey, it was well worth the wait. [01:29:58] Speaker B: Absolutely. [01:29:59] Speaker A: Let's not make it the last time. [01:30:00] Speaker C: We're not gonna. We're not gonna do that again. [01:30:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:30:04] Speaker C: That was a tough summer. [01:30:06] Speaker A: That was a tough summer. That was. That was a tough summer. But, you know, at least now we're going into fall and winter and we've got some hope. [01:30:13] Speaker C: For 50. Some reason. 58 degrees this morning. I felt good. [01:30:16] Speaker A: It does feel good. [01:30:17] Speaker B: Yes. [01:30:18] Speaker A: I just don't. I just get tired of seeing 85 in the forecast. I'm like, I want to see 65. But anyway, we will be back next week once again with a dry side. Dispatch brought to you by HSI Water. [01:30:29] Speaker B: Thank you.