EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/
Enjoy this blast from the past from the EarthX Archives. 'Round the Fire was one of the first shows we produced and aired back in 2020. EarthX Media has grown a lot since then, but we still like to look back on these insightful conversations and see how far we've come.
The grassroots Michigan organization, Trout Unlimited, discusses the conservation, protection and restoration of Michigan's coldwater fish and their watersheds.
About 'Round the Fire:
Hunters and anglers sit around the (virtual) campfire to discuss conservation and environmental issues from the unique perspective of outdoorsmen. Sportsmen and women can be important allies in America's ongoing efforts to protect its landscapes.
EarthX & EarthXtra
Love Our Planet.
The Official Network of Earth Day.
About Us:
At EarthX, we believe our planet is a pretty special place. The people, landscapes, and critters are likely unique to the entire universe, so we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We are committed to protecting the environment by inspiring conservation and sustainability, and our programming along with our range of expert hosts support this mission. We’re glad you’re with us.
EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/
Follow Us:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthxmedia/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/earthxmedia
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EarthXMedia/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@earthxmedia
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EarthXMedia
Dailymotion: https://www.dailymotion.com/earthxmedia
How to watch:
EarthX - Cable:
- Spectrum
- AT&T U-verse (1267)
- DIRECTV (267)
- Philo
- FuboTV
EarthXtra - Streaming:
- Plex
- Fire TV
- Xumo
#EarthDay #Environment #Sustainability #EcoFriendly #Conservation #EarthX
Enjoy this blast from the past from the EarthX Archives. 'Round the Fire was one of the first shows we produced and aired back in 2020. EarthX Media has grown a lot since then, but we still like to look back on these insightful conversations and see how far we've come.
The grassroots Michigan organization, Trout Unlimited, discusses the conservation, protection and restoration of Michigan's coldwater fish and their watersheds.
About 'Round the Fire:
Hunters and anglers sit around the (virtual) campfire to discuss conservation and environmental issues from the unique perspective of outdoorsmen. Sportsmen and women can be important allies in America's ongoing efforts to protect its landscapes.
EarthX & EarthXtra
Love Our Planet.
The Official Network of Earth Day.
About Us:
At EarthX, we believe our planet is a pretty special place. The people, landscapes, and critters are likely unique to the entire universe, so we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We are committed to protecting the environment by inspiring conservation and sustainability, and our programming along with our range of expert hosts support this mission. We’re glad you’re with us.
EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/
Follow Us:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthxmedia/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/earthxmedia
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EarthXMedia/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@earthxmedia
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EarthXMedia
Dailymotion: https://www.dailymotion.com/earthxmedia
How to watch:
EarthX - Cable:
- Spectrum
- AT&T U-verse (1267)
- DIRECTV (267)
- Philo
- FuboTV
EarthXtra - Streaming:
- Plex
- Fire TV
- Xumo
#EarthDay #Environment #Sustainability #EcoFriendly #Conservation #EarthX
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Hello everybody, I'm Kirk Dieter and welcome to this episode of Round the Fire on EarthX
00:22TV.
00:23I am, this is a special day because I'm joined by my good friend and colleague and frankly
00:27my boss, Chris Wood, who's the Chief Executive Officer of Trout Unlimited.
00:32Welcome Chris.
00:33Thanks Kirk, it's good to be here.
00:34Hey, listen, I wanted to talk to you about a lot of things and it's fun for me, I get
00:39to put you on the spot, which is something I've been looking forward to for a long time.
00:44I saved this as my last episode to host, to go one-on-one with you, but I do want to get
00:50into Trout Unlimited and it's more than just work for both of us.
00:55I know that this is a life passion and as anglers and people who are connected to rivers
01:00and lakes and so forth, whether we work for TU or not, the mission is something that's
01:06near and dear to both of us, but maybe we could start off and you could tell people
01:10a little bit about TU, Trout Unlimited, and how it was founded, how old it is, where it
01:15came from, and that sort of stuff.
01:17So you're right Kirk, this work really, whether you're a professional staff person like you
01:23or I, and you're paid, or you're a volunteer, this work is, it's not a job, it's a calling.
01:30And it has been that way since 1959 when about a dozen anglers on the banks of the Au Sable
01:38River in Michigan decided to form this entity called Trout Unlimited.
01:45And those dozen anglers, they were frustrated that the state of Michigan had been masking
01:52habitat degradation of the Au Sable and other rivers by producing ever more hatchery fish.
01:59And so they wanted to found an organization that was dedicated to the protection of wild
02:05and native fish, and the proposition that if you take care of the fish, the fishing
02:10will take care of itself, in the famous words of one of our founders, Art Newman.
02:14You know, I can think back, I grew up in the Great Lakes myself, the Great Lakes region,
02:20and I was a river rat, I was a creek rat, I remember Mrs. Neely used to have to pull
02:25me out of the creek and put me on the back of her bicycle and ride me home so that my
02:29mom could throw my clothes on the clothesline, you know, I was always in the water.
02:34And I think that a lot of kids today, it's starting to happen more and more, there's,
02:38and we're going to get into that in a bit, but people are connected to water and fresh
02:42water and need clean water, which is our business, more and more and more, and whether they're
02:49hardcore anglers or not.
02:50So while the name Trout Unlimited certainly implies trout fishing, and that's our roots
02:56and that's important to us, you don't necessarily have to be a hardcore angler to benefit from
03:01the work that TU does, do you?
03:02Yeah, that's right, Kirk.
03:03So if you think about it, we do three basic things when it comes to our mission at Trout
03:10Unlimited.
03:11We protect the sources of the coldest, cleanest water.
03:15We help to reconnect those protected areas down to places downstream, so that fish can
03:20move in response to floods and fires and drought.
03:23And then we do restoration along the valley bottoms where historically, we had the most
03:28biologically productive part of the landscape.
03:31Protecting, reconnecting and restoring river systems, there is no question, it makes fishing
03:35better.
03:36There's just absolutely no question about it.
03:39It also helps to make those landscapes more resilient, though, to the effects of a change
03:42in climate, right?
03:45By protecting those headwater streams, you're also reducing downstream water filtration
03:49costs for local communities.
03:52By reconnecting rivers to floodplains and allowing them to breathe, you're dissipating
03:57the energy of the flood as it rockets downstream toward a community.
04:02And by doing that watershed scale restoration, you're creating, in our case, thousands of
04:10family wage, good paying jobs in largely rural communities all across the country.
04:16So whether you trout fish or not, it doesn't matter.
04:20The work that TU does around the nation is good for fishing, it's good for building natural
04:25resilience in response to a changing climate, and it's good for communities all around the
04:29country.
04:30Yeah.
04:31And I think that the moment that we're in as a country, this pandemic has caused a lot
04:36of hardship and sorrow and terrible things.
04:39But one thing it has done is it's, with the movie theaters closed and the malls closed
04:45and the T-ball leagues shut down last summer and so forth, where did people go?
04:50They went to water.
04:51They went to lakes and rivers and oceans, but they found water as a source of recreation.
04:57It's actually astounding, RBFF, the Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation, recently
05:02sent out a report that said as many as 17 million people either connected with for the
05:08very first time or reconnected with water.
05:12It's almost like we're living in a brave new world, and TU is right in the middle of that
05:19mix right now.
05:20Yeah, that's right.
05:21I mean, we've seen it, even at TU, we saw our membership increase over the past year
05:25by 10, 11, 12%.
05:29You know, it's funny, back behind me, you'll see a part of a red rowboat, and that comes
05:34from a place called Fletcher's Boathouse, which is right up the river in the Potomac.
05:38It's a boat livery.
05:39It's been there for a hundred and something years, three or four generations of the Fletchers
05:44owned it.
05:45It's now a park service concession.
05:47It's run by a park service concessionaire, but Ray Fletcher once told me years and years
05:53ago when I first got to DC, he said, you know what, Chris, eventually everybody comes down
05:58to the river, and that's what we're seeing now.
06:01All of the excuses to not go down to the river are gone, right?
06:05Baseball.
06:06My kids haven't had baseball.
06:07They don't have swimming.
06:08They don't have tennis.
06:10They don't have basketball.
06:13But what can they do?
06:14Well, they can fish.
06:15They can go down to the river and be that river rat that you were talking about.
06:19It's happening all over the country right now, and I think it's a tremendous opportunity
06:23to not just build the membership roles of Trout Unlimited, but to, you know, create
06:29ever more conservation advocates by people having this tangible, visceral connection
06:36to water in a way that we just haven't seen in, you know, in the span of, I don't want
06:41to go too far on this one, Kirk, but in the span of a generation, America has gone from
06:4660% of us growing up in rural areas to 80% of us living in urban areas, and there is
06:53a consequence of that in terms of people becoming disconnected from the lands and waters that
06:58actually sustain our nation, and this pandemic has helped to reconnect and re-knit that tangible
07:06connection that people have by bringing them down to the river.
07:09Yeah, you're right, Chris, and one of the things that interests me the most from that
07:15report that I referenced from RBFF is that over 90% of the people who found water have
07:21indicated that they want to stay on the water.
07:23They want to maintain that connection.
07:25So I don't think you saw a flash in the pan, you know, don't think that, I think the worm
07:29has turned.
07:30I think that the paradigm has shifted.
07:31All those cliches, I think, I think they apply.
07:33I think we're living in a brave new world and water's at the center of that.
07:37Amen.
07:38Amen.
07:39So another thing the pandemic did, at least for me, you know, I've been very lucky throughout
07:45my career to go and travel and write about fishing in faraway places like Australia and
07:50Russia.
07:51It's been great, but this has been one of my most favorite summers fishing-wise because
07:59I connected with my home water.
08:01I hiked into places.
08:04I was a young man again doing these things that meant so much to me, and I think that
08:10a lot of people feel the same way, and that's another aspect of TU, you know, not to be
08:15such a cheerleader for TU, but, you know, I'm a cheerleader for TU because of this.
08:20We have people who are hyper-local focused, who are taking care of the rivers in their
08:25backyards, and yet we're all part of a mosaic that comes together on a national scale.
08:31So it's the, on the one hand, it's hyper-local.
08:34It's right down to the stream that runs through the little town out in the middle of Wyoming
08:39to a national effort that manifests itself on Capitol Hill, and I wondered if you could
08:45talk about that a little bit as well.
08:46Yeah, and I want to get, I want to come back in a minute though to my experience this year
08:52getting hyper-local, actually not through fishing, but through hunting, but, you know,
08:57you're absolutely right.
08:58I think that's the secret sauce of TU is that we have tens of thousands of local advocates,
09:06people who, they live, love, and they fish on their home waters, and they know those
09:12waters like the back of their hands, and they will, there is no one, you know, it's
09:18an adage, but it's true to say that that conservation that is most local is most durable.
09:24It's a thousand percent true because those are the places they love, and they live, and
09:28they fish.
09:29And so what we do though is we take that passion, and we harness it, and we aggregate it so
09:35that it can be directed at, say, the state capitol if there's, you know, a water bond
09:40that's coming through, or we'll just take that general passion that these anglers have
09:46for the place, their home waters, and we'll use it and target it elsewhere.
09:50So whether you're meeting with a town commissioner to try to explain why it's a bad idea to,
09:56you know, dump salt right by that blue ribbon trout stream that you like to fish, or you're
10:02a local angler from Pennsylvania who chooses to write then-President Trump a letter asking
10:07him to protect Bristol Bay, we have this unique ability to take the passion that people
10:16have for these specific places and redirect it where their passion can do the most good.
10:22And that, I think, is what makes us so effective as an organization.
10:25Yeah, you don't necessarily have to go to the meetings.
10:28You don't necessarily have to, you know, it's a new TU.
10:32We're charting a new course as far as how people can be a part of this community and
10:36how they can make their home waters better and how they can be part of the national mosaic
10:40that's in favor of clean water and all that stuff.
10:43Maybe, you know, looking forward, it's not, in other words, it's not my father's TU anymore, is it?
10:50That's right.
10:51No, that's exactly right.
10:52So look, there's every month our chapters meet, you know, wherever they meet.
10:55More and more often now it's at Michael Bruce, but, or Kiwanis Clubs or wherever there's
11:00a meeting place that they can get ahold of.
11:03Part of what we've learned is that we have a tremendous amount of engagement in thousands
11:07of communities around the country from people who aren't TU members, but they show up for
11:11a stream cleanup, or they show up for a community science project where you can help, you know,
11:16assess the health of your local waterway.
11:19Or they'll show up for a tree planting, or they'll show up to help teach kids to fish,
11:23or to learn to fish, or to teach veterans to fish.
11:26A whole host of things they show up for.
11:28They're not part of TU, but they are giving back.
11:31They are contributing back to the places that we really care about.
11:34And so part of what we're doing now is we're building a brand new membership model that's
11:38based on engagement.
11:40The model that we have right now is based on you send us a $35 check, and we'll send
11:45you a hat and a box of flies, and you become a member, and, you know, maybe 5 or 10% of
11:50those members show up at, you know, one of those local meetings I mentioned.
11:53But there's another, you know, an order of magnitude more people who are intersecting
12:00with our organization and making the places they live better.
12:03And we are welcoming those people into the organization.
12:06Whether they ever lift up a fly rod or not is not important.
12:10The fact that they want to give back to the places they live, they love, and they fish
12:13is what really matters.
12:15And that is the new TU.
12:17That is the paradigm shift, to use your phrase, from, you know, your father's TU to this TU.
12:23So let's talk about how we swing the big stick every once in a while.
12:27We've got some wins lately.
12:29We've had wins all along, but it seems like there's been great momentum in the last several
12:33years.
12:34Congratulations on your leadership, and I'm proud to say that.
12:39But maybe you could talk to us about Pebble Mine.
12:42Let's start there.
12:43Yeah, so Pebble Mine, it was a mine that was proposed in this little corner of southwest
12:47Alaska in a place called Bristol Bay.
12:50And so Bristol Bay has seven rivers that drain off the hills around it and into this big
12:55bay.
12:56And in the headwaters of two of them, a Canadian mining company wanted to build a massive open
13:02pit copper, gold, and molybdenum mine.
13:07And that mine would have required an earthen dam that would have been hundreds of feet
13:12high and miles in length.
13:14And the purpose of the dam would have been to hold back in perpetuity the toxic tailings
13:20that would have been created by this dam.
13:23And the two rivers that I mentioned that this dam would have sat in, or this mine would
13:28have sat in the headwaters of, are the Kwejak and the Nushagat.
13:32In every year, the Kwejak River system supplies about half of all of the world's wild sockeye
13:39salmon.
13:40That's not a Chris Wood fish tale.
13:44Nearly half of all the wild sockeye in the world come from this one river system.
13:48And the other one, the Nushagat, every year is one of the largest producers of Chinook
13:53salmon.
13:54There's almost no worse place that a mine could have been proposed than the place that
13:59they proposed it in the headwaters of Bristol Bay.
14:02And we fought that project with 50...
14:04And by the way, the other thing, Kirk, and I know you know this, there's a big lake up
14:08there called Lake Iliamnon.
14:10And giant, not steelhead, but they're steelhead size, rainbow trout move out of that lake
14:16into the rivers like the Nushagat and the Kwejak and the Nak-Nak and other rivers.
14:21And they feed on the salmon eggs or the decaying salmon themselves.
14:26And so you have a chance to catch 30 plus inch rainbow trout up there.
14:29It's probably one of the best native rainbow trout fishers in the United States.
14:34And so we fought that mine for 15 years.
14:38And by gosh, we were able, through the help of the local Alaska native villages, the places
14:44like Igiyagig and King Salmon, some of those other, Dillingham, other small communities
14:51up there, Alaska native villages, our friends at the Bristol Bay Native Corporation, the
14:57commercial fishing industry, the outdoor retail industry, everybody got together.
15:02And through their help, we were able to convince the Trump administration, their Corps of Engineers
15:07not to grant a very important permit that the proponent needed to build the mine.
15:14And now we're working to convince the Biden administration to follow through on their
15:18promise to protect the underlying real estate there in perpetuity.
15:23So we don't have to deal with any more boneheaded ideas like building a massive open pit mine
15:29in the headwaters of the world's most productive salmon fishery.
15:33Yeah, you know, you mentioned the rainbows up there.
15:36I did my one of my first stories I ever did.
15:39I went to Alaska and fished in King Salmon on the Naknek River in early, it was called
15:46early Alaska.
15:47And it was before the salmon started running, before the salmon season opened.
15:51But the rainbows had come out of the lake and they were eating smolt on the salmon smolt
15:54that were washing down toward the ocean and called the smolt bust.
15:58And it's almost like, you know, it's almost like a saltwater experience, like a striper
16:03bite or something.
16:04Yeah, yeah.
16:05I taped three or four fish that were over 30 inches just in four or five days of fishing.
16:11And it was just blew my mind.
16:12And I was immediately connected to the area.
16:15And so following this first field and stream magazine, and later now with TU, I mean, it
16:20was this has been like a labor of love.
16:22And so I couldn't tell you how elated I was when it finally came to pass that this is
16:30looking like, yeah, my great grandchildren are going to see this part of the world.
16:35And they're going to know that great grandpa Kirk was part of that deal.
16:39That's right.
16:40Amen.
16:41That's, that's great.
16:42That's a great story.
16:43Kirk, I'll tell you a fish story.
16:44I was fishing up there.
16:45I had to leave though.
16:46I was fishing out of on the Quijac River, out of Alaska Sportings Lodge, and they've
16:51been a huge proponent.
16:52All those lodges up there were tremendous advocates for that river.
16:56Brian Kraft, who owns Alaska Sportings Lodge in particular, was one of the leaders.
17:00Anyway, I had to, I had a, I could only fish for half a day because I had to get back.
17:05I was actually going to, I think I had to get back to New York to meet with our friends
17:09at Tiffany and Company who were helping to both oppose Pebble Mine, but also to support
17:15our efforts to clean up abandoned mines.
17:17And so I went out to fish in front of the lodge for maybe an hour.
17:20And as I mentioned, you swing these flesh flies and so you kind of do a three quarter
17:25cast and you let it swing all the way down and then, you know, you lift back up to cast.
17:29And I was lifting back up to cast and I felt this tug perfectly downstream of me.
17:35And then on a 45 degree angle to the side, I saw a fish come out of the water.
17:40And while I'm fighting this fish over here, I said to my guide, did you see that fish
17:45jump over there?
17:46And he said, yeah, that's your fish.
17:49That's how strong and fast they are.
17:51I mean, they, they are like rockets.
17:53Yeah, that's for sure.
17:56Well, let's, let's, let's jump coasts and let's talk about Atlantic salmon or let's talk
18:00about something in the East.
18:01If you can spell out a win that TU has had somewhere on the Eastern seaboard.
18:06Yeah, I mean, you know, conservation is a, it's really a game of increments.
18:09You know, the old expression, three yards in a cloud of dust.
18:12That's, that's what much of conservation is about.
18:15It's a long game.
18:16You got to be in it to win it.
18:18You got to be in it for the long run.
18:20And you don't have a lot of big, you know, big major victories that happen all at once.
18:27And so I don't want to overlook the fact that there are dozens of river restoration projects
18:32that are happening all along the Eastern seaboard that TU staff and chapters have been involved
18:38in.
18:38But one project that's really noteworthy was the removal of two dams on the Penobscot
18:43River and bypassing the third.
18:45And scientists tell us that the Penobscot in Maine, you know, freeing that river up
18:50really is the last best chance for Atlantic salmon here in the U.S.
18:55And we were able to, we were part of a giant coalition of different interests that managed
19:02to buy that, buy those two dams, create a bypass around the third.
19:06And the fish response has been just unbelievable.
19:10We're seeing increases in alewives in the tens of thousands.
19:17We're getting shad in places, communities that haven't had shad in, you know, decades.
19:21We've got the striper run has tremendously rebounded.
19:25And the Atlantic salmon run has rebounded, but not as much as we'd like.
19:28And we hope it's going to continue to rebound.
19:31But the thing about fish is they're incredibly resilient creatures.
19:35If you put the bends back in a river and you recover, it's natural, what they call
19:41sinuosity.
19:42Some fish have a place to hold and to hide in response to floods.
19:46If you replant those stream side areas with trees, if you take out those dams that obstruct
19:52them from moving, their response is incredible.
19:55It's almost immediate.
19:56We do work, Kirk, in a place called the driftless area, which I know you know well.
20:01It's the unglaciated part of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois.
20:06And so when the last glaciers receded, they just kind of bypassed this area.
20:10So it almost has like a Vermont feel to it or a little bit of almost like a West Virginia
20:15feel.
20:15We go in there and we shock those streams.
20:17And it's been that area has been degraded by agricultural development.
20:22And so you see a tremendous amount of erosion, you know, a lot of down cutting of the stream
20:28banks.
20:29And we go in there and we'll shock these streams.
20:32And that's something that fish biologists do to just get a sense of how many, what the
20:36population of fish is.
20:37It's not lethal.
20:38They come back, but it gives the biologists a chance to, you know, count the fish.
20:43We find two to 300 fish per mile, pre-restoration.
20:47It's a good number.
20:48When we post restoration, a year after we do the kind of restoration work we were just
20:53talking about, the numbers are two to 3,000 fish per mile.
20:57You know, these are just incredibly resilient creatures.
21:00And if we give them half a chance, they will respond to our efforts.
21:04There is nothing that I like more than going to the Driftless and throwing a grasshopper
21:09fly in some of those little creeks and end the day with a nice spotted cow beer.
21:15You can only get it in Wisconsin.
21:17And I like, I always make a point when I'm there.
21:19We got a few minutes left.
21:20I want to shift towards the future, my friend.
21:22And let's talk about what our challenges are.
21:25You know, TU as an organization, but also all anglers, all people who enjoy rivers,
21:29lakes, you know, we got to be concerned about climate change.
21:32Can you talk to me about climate change?
21:34And then maybe can you talk to me about the clean water rule?
21:38And I know that we've got an opportunity.
21:39You were just talking about removing dams, the Snake River dams.
21:42If we take those out, we can restore one of the greatest fisheries on the planet.
21:47Yeah.
21:48And so those three things would be what I must be interested in hearing about from you.
21:53Okay.
21:53Well, you want me to talk about, okay, so let me see.
21:55It's climate change.
21:56What was the other one?
21:57Clean water and the Snake River dam.
22:00How much time do I have?
22:04So, I mean, climate change is, by now everyone's aware of it.
22:08And, you know, we still have in this country people who, you know, don't believe it's happening
22:15or don't believe it's caused by humans.
22:18And my response to that is if you care about making fishing better, you should support
22:24protecting, reconnecting, and restoring river systems.
22:27If you care about that because it makes fishing better, great.
22:30You should be supporting our work.
22:32If you care about it because it happens to be the best and most effective climate change
22:37adaptation strategy, the best and most effective way to recover the natural resilience of our
22:42river systems to respond to flood and fire and drought, we'll then support to you for
22:46that reason.
22:47But we've got to get out of this game of, you know, making some of these issues that
22:53are happening on the planet political issues.
22:55It's completely nonsensical.
22:56And all we're doing is we're sullying our own nest.
22:59And I think that bleeds nicely into the Clean Water Rules.
23:04For the first, you know, couple decades of the Clean Water Act, it always applied to
23:10small seasonal streams.
23:13These are small streams that respond or that, you know, form because of weather events like
23:20rain.
23:20And, you know, every angler knows that gravity works cheap and it never takes a day off.
23:26So when those little creeks, those little rills and runs and rivulets, they get filled
23:32full of water.
23:32They then flow down into the next lower water body and they get a little bigger and then
23:37they go down to the larger water body until eventually those little, you know, dry streams
23:42in West Virginia, they flow, the result of their water flows right outside my window
23:46here down the Potomac River, which is the drinking water for the District of Columbia.
23:51And there was, unfortunately, there was a court case that called into question whether
23:56or not small streams should be protected under the Clean Water Act.
24:00And without getting into all the background, the Obama administration spent six years working
24:05on this.
24:07Basically demonstrating what the court had asked for.
24:09The court asked for a significant nexus, to document a significant nexus between upstream
24:15water bodies and downstream rivers, navigable rivers.
24:20That was then litigated.
24:22And the Trump administration, when they came into office, they threw out the Obama rules
24:26and they put a new rule in place that leaves unprotected all of those small seasonal streams.
24:33And so one of the things that we're really working on now is helping to convince the
24:37Biden administration that there's a way to depoliticize clean water, right?
24:42There's a way to do this in a way that provides the certainty that the agricultural community
24:46needs, that provides the clarity that real estate developers need and still protect that
24:53the sources of our coldest and cleanest water.
24:55And so that's a huge priority for us as an organization.
24:59Awesome.
24:59Awesome.
25:00Now, lastly, I think that we're looking for another big cause industry-wise, the fishing
25:05community and so forth.
25:06The removal of the lower Snake River dams can restore that fishery, can't it?
25:11I'll tell you what, the science is absolutely clear.
25:14There is no way to bring back Idaho's fabled Pacific salmon without removing the four lower
25:21Snake River dams.
25:22Think about this for a second, Kirk.
25:24Before those dams were built in the 50s, Idaho had a several month long fishing season where
25:30you could take several months, you could take two fish per day, two fish per day.
25:35Today, in places like the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, which is a five-star hotel for
25:40fish, the habitat is absolutely pristine.
25:44They get 1% of the historic numbers of Chinook salmon back there that they used to get.
25:49Places like the South Fork of the Salmon River drainage, 40% of all the steelhead in the
25:54entire Columbia Basin used to go back up into there and spawn.
25:57Because of those dams, those fish are not able to get back to their spawning grounds
26:02and their progeny aren't able to get back through the slack water bathtubs that have
26:07been created by those dams where they get preyed on by all kinds of predators.
26:13This is a major issue for Trout Unlimited, helping to remove those four lower Snake
26:19River dams.
26:20But Kirk, we want to do this the right way.
26:22I think too many people in the business of conservation forget that the business of
26:26conservation is about people.
26:29We want to do this in a way that helps to make sure that the people who have become
26:33dependent on those dams, the barge operators, the farmers, the irrigators, that they are
26:38taking care of, that they do not get left behind, that everybody is going to win when
26:43we take out those dams.
26:45The people of Idaho are going to win.
26:46Tribes that have basically lost their historic hunting grounds, they've lost their fishing
26:53grounds, they've had their treaty rights violated for years and years, and they've seen these
26:56salmon, which is so culturally important to them, dwindle now to the fact that we probably
27:01only have 10 years, 20 years before these fish are gone.
27:04We have a chance to bring them back.
27:06Well, we're going to do it, my friend.
27:07We're going to do it.
27:09Good news is we never wake up in the morning wondering what we're going to do, is it?
27:14I'm never bored.
27:16It was always something to work on.
27:17Thank you for being here on Round the Fire on EarthX TV.
27:21It's been informative.
27:22If people want more information about TU, they should just go to our website, www.tu.org.
27:29Thanks, Chris, for everything.
27:31Thanks, Kirk.
27:31Great to be with you.
27:33Yeah, we'll see you out there.
27:34All right.
27:42We are sportsmen and we are in trouble.
27:47We've learned what happens when we underestimate a serious threat.
27:51We can't make that same mistake with climate change.
27:57We need to stand up for America and for our kids and grandkids.
28:01Tell Congress to act on climate.