Episode 581 - Travis Thompson || Alligator Alcatraz and Florida Black Bear Hunting!

Summary

The Origins Foundation Podcast: Episode 581 – Travis Thompson || Alligator Alcatraz and Florida Black Bear Hunting!

Release Date: August 5, 2025

Host: Ashley Smith
Guest: Travis Thompson (also referred to as Mike Axelrod in the transcript)

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Introduction

In Episode 581 of The Origins Foundation Podcast, host Ashley Smith engages in a compelling discussion with Travis Thompson, a fifth-generation Floridian, professional hunting guide, conservationist, and director of a Florida nonprofit. The episode delves into two significant and controversial topics: the Alligator Alcatraz project and the upcoming Florida Black Bear hunting season. Through insightful dialogue, the episode explores the intricate balance between conservation efforts and human activities, highlighting the challenges and implications of recent developments in Florida's Everglades.

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Alligator Alcatraz Project: A Conservation Crisis

Overview of the Project

Ashley Smith introduces the primary focus of the episode: the Alligator Alcatraz project. This initiative involves the establishment of a prison complex within the heart of the Everglades, a move that has sparked intense debate from both environmental and political arenas.

Environmental Concerns and Lack of Transparency

Travis Thompson expresses deep concerns about the project's environmental impact, emphasizing the bypassing of standard environmental protocols. He highlights that the project was expedited under a state of emergency declared for immigration purposes, allowing the government to circumvent the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) requirements.

[15:50] Travis Thompson: "It feels very much like we hid behind the emergency declaration to avoid looking at any environmental impacts."

Travis underscores the absence of comprehensive Environmental Impact Statements (EIS), questioning the justification for asserting zero environmental impact without substantive evidence.

Historical Context: The Everglades Movement

Drawing parallels to the late 1960s and early 1970s, Travis recounts the cooperative efforts between environmentalists and sportsmen that successfully halted the construction of the world's largest airport in the Everglades. This historical victory was instrumental in galvanizing the environmental movement, leading to milestones like the inception of Earth Day.

[11:15] Travis Thompson: "It really was truly an environmental collaborative movement. The conservation community. The environmental community shut it down. It was one of the events that kind of triggered the start of Earth Day."

Current Controversies and Ecosystem Impact

The Alligator Alcatraz project has led to significant alterations in the Everglades' landscape, including the paving of roads and the construction of infrastructure necessary for the prison's operation. Travis raises alarms about the potential repercussions on the delicate Everglades ecosystem, highlighting issues like increased light pollution and disruption of wildlife, particularly the python removal programs vital for maintaining ecological balance.

[20:11] Travis Thompson: "There are refuges that are fully in a little area that can't be touched by the Alligator Alcatraz projects."

Political Implications and Slippery Slopes

Travis warns of the broader implications of utilizing state of emergency powers to bypass environmental safeguards, likening it to a "slippery slope" that could set dangerous precedents for future projects.

[28:18] Travis Thompson: "Is this some sort of angle where you've now got a back door to where if a governor declares a state of emergency and wants to do something on private land, have we created a... Have we unlocked the code?"

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Florida Black Bear Hunting: Balancing Conservation and Harvest

Background on Black Bear Population

Transitioning to the second major topic, Travis discusses the status of Florida's black bear population. After a prolonged hunting closure spanning over 25 years, the state is contemplating reopening the bear hunt, a move that has generated both support and opposition among stakeholders.

Upcoming Vote and Its Significance

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) is set to vote on August 13th regarding the establishment of a bear harvest season. This decision is pivotal, aiming to manage the bear population sustainably while addressing human-bear conflicts.

[46:16] Travis Thompson: "August 13th is going to be the final vote by the Florida Wildlife Commission to give approval to having a black bear harvest in Florida this year."

Conservation Perspectives and Sustainable Hunting

Travis advocates for the bear hunt as a tool for conservation, emphasizing that it is not intended as a trophy hunt but rather as a means to control bear populations and mitigate human-wildlife conflicts. He highlights the importance of scientific data in setting hunting quotas that align with ecological balance.

[50:27] Travis Thompson: "There is some number of bears that you could take out that would be in the compensatory mortality range."

Historical Context and Public Outcry

Reflecting on past bear hunts, Travis notes that previous efforts were met with significant public resistance, leading to early termination of hunting seasons. He stresses the need for transparent, science-driven policies to garner public support and ensure the effectiveness of conservation measures.

[47:02] Travis Thompson: "The public outcry was so great, they shut it down early."

---

Public Engagement: How You Can Make a Difference

Encouraging Public Participation

Throughout the episode, both Ashley and Travis emphasize the importance of public involvement in these critical environmental and conservation issues. They provide actionable steps for listeners to voice their opinions and influence policy decisions.

Submitting Public Comments and Attending Meetings

Listeners are encouraged to submit written comments to the FWC by August 8th and participate in public meetings to express their support or concerns regarding the bear harvest. Travis provides detailed guidance on how to engage with the commission effectively.

[52:34] Travis Thompson: "You can submit written comments until the Friday before that. So that would be the 8th of August. You can still submit written comments."

Contacting Legislators and Raising Awareness

The episode underscores the importance of reaching out to both state and federal representatives, particularly those on relevant committees such as Homeland Security, to advocate for environmentally responsible decision-making.

[42:11] Travis Thompson: "You can reach out to members of Congress, especially those on the Appropriations Committee and Homeland Security."

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Engaging Segment: Two Truths and a Lie

Adding a lighthearted touch, Travis participates in the classic "Two Truths and a Lie" game, revealing personal anecdotes that humanize his conservation efforts and background.

[54:27] Travis Thompson: "Two, I once outscored Tracy McGrady in a basketball game."
[54:33] Ashley Smith: "Oh, gosh. I would have probably guessed the both of the latter two were lies."

Travis confirms his athletic prowess during his youth, adding a personal dimension to the conversation.

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Conclusion

Episode 581 offers a nuanced exploration of the intersection between conservation, human activities, and political decision-making in Florida. Through Travis Thompson's expertise and passionate advocacy, listeners gain a deeper understanding of the challenges facing the Everglades and the pivotal role of sustainable hunting in wildlife management. The episode serves as a call to action for public engagement, urging individuals to participate in shaping the future of Florida's natural landscapes and wildlife populations.

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Notable Quotes:

• [15:50] Travis Thompson: "It feels very much like we hid behind the emergency declaration to avoid looking at any environmental impacts."
• [11:15] Travis Thompson: "It really was truly an environmental collaborative movement. The conservation community. The environmental community shut it down. It was one of the events that kind of triggered the start of Earth Day."
• [20:11] Travis Thompson: "There are refuges that are fully in a little area that can't be touched by the Alligator Alcatraz projects."
• [46:16] Travis Thompson: "August 13th is going to be the final vote by the Florida Wildlife Commission to give approval to having a black bear harvest in Florida this year."
• [54:27] Travis Thompson: "Two, I once outscored Tracy McGrady in a basketball game."

---

Action Steps for Listeners:

1. Submit Public Comments: Share your views on the Florida Black Bear harvest by submitting written comments to the FWC by August 8th.
2. Attend Public Meetings: Participate in FWC meetings to voice your support or concerns.
3. Contact Legislators: Reach out to members of Congress, especially those on the Appropriations and Homeland Security Committees, to advocate for responsible environmental policies.
4. Stay Informed: Follow updates on the Alligator Alcatraz project and the bear harvest vote to remain engaged in ongoing conservation efforts.

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Final Thoughts:

Ashley Smith and Travis Thompson underscore the importance of informed public participation in conservation decisions. By understanding the environmental stakes and actively engaging in the legislative process, listeners can contribute to the preservation of Florida's unique ecosystems and wildlife populations.

Transcript

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[Ashley Smith]

Hey everyone, this is Ashley Smith with the Origins Foundation. Thanks for joining us on this podcast. Today we are going to talk about two very interesting and somewhat controversial topics. We are going to delve into Alligator Alcatraz, which you have no doubt been hearing about in the news just about everywhere, and the conservation and environmental aspects of that project. We're also going to talk about the upcoming final vote by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Climate Conservation Commission on whether or not Florida will have an upcoming bear harvest season. We'll be joined by Travis Thompson, who is a fifth generation Floridian, a professional hunting guide, a conservationist and the director of a Florida nonprofit. He has a wealth of knowledge in these areas and he has worked in the conservation arena for decades in Florida. We are so excited to join. Travis, thank you for joining us.

[Travis Thompson]

So there's a reason why I started Blood Origins and that reason is simple, is that I wanted to convey the truth about hunting.

[Advertisement Voice]

It brings awareness to non hunters that it's more than just killing animals.

[Ashley Smith]

How do I start it?

[Mike Axelrod]

Brittany, My name.

[Ashley Smith]

Does my hair look okay?

[Mike Axelrod]

My name is Mike Axelrod.

[Travis Thompson]

Start again.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah, I hated it too.

[Travis Thompson]

Braxton, you said something in the car to me. You said that you were living on borrowed time. There's a perception around who hunters are, what we're supposed to be. And a feminist that works for a non profit that is a hunter that has only eaten wild game from the last 20 years is likely not the thing that people think about when it comes to hunter.

[Ashley Smith]

All right, I'm excited about my guest today. I have got Travis Thompson from Florida, a man of many, many hats and many talents. And Travis, I am going to just introduce yourself real quick. Let me move my microphone closer so people can hear me. Will you just introduce yourself and what your organization does for the audience real quick?

[Mike Axelrod]

Sure. So Travis Thompson, I'm a fifth generation Floridian, which is a rare breed. And I have an organization called All Florida. We do conservation policy and advocacy and education in the state of Florida. And we do that across the entire spectrum of conservation, not just sportsmen, although we are inclusive of sportsmen and do a whole lot of sportsman's work. But we do ag. We do ranching, we do timber fire. Anything that touches, like Alder Leopold's five tools of conservation, we touch.

[Ashley Smith]

Okay.

[Mike Axelrod]

And then I also work with the International Order of Theodore Roosevelt, who I got connected with last year during Florida's amendment, too, like doing grassroots stuff down here, and became really close with those guys. And so I work with them in states like Ohio and Maine and some of the other states where we're fighting for constitutional rights to fish and hunt. So.

[Ashley Smith]

Yeah.

[Mike Axelrod]

And just do a lot of stuff. A lot across.

[Ashley Smith]

Yeah. That Amendment 2 was the right to fish and hunt, the constitutional amendment, right to fish and hunt in Florida. And you were instrumental. I know that you were instrumental because I have heard from so many groups in getting that passed. So congratulations. And. And did you. Did you win an award for that? Did I hear that right?

[Mike Axelrod]

I did, I did. And I like to say that, like, you have to pick somebody to give the award to. I'm the guy that got picked for that because it was a monumental thing, and a bajillion people had so much to do with it. It was really cool. But it was. I don't know if you know who Chris Jansen is. The country music singer, Buy Me a boat. Our state wildlife agencies, friends of group, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission foundation, they. They gave me their Florida Fish and Wildlife Foundation. That's the name.

[Ashley Smith]

F. Fwcc.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yes. Well, their foundation, the Christian Creativity and Conservation Award. So it was a really big deal, and it was. It was fun to do, but, like, you don't do that without the bajillion people. Like, I. I like to say, I get. I got to be the guy to go on stage, but a whole bunch of people could have gotten that award, so it was really cool.

[Ashley Smith]

Still, that's a big, big deal. And so congratulations on that. You have been involved in so many issues down there, and we cannot, of course, talk about them all, but you are currently and have been very involved in helping Florida get a black bear harvest again. And we could talk about that the entire episode, but that's not what I want to talk to you about. We've got something that is just crashed onto the horizon, and I would really like to talk about Alligator Alcatraz and what's going on down there with that situation. It has become such a hot button, both from the political arena and just the, you know, the politics of the situation, but also from a conservation standpoint. A number of groups have sued the federal government in the state of Florida. And I think people are really confused about what is going on down there, what exactly is happening to the ecosystem, to the Everglades, how important they are. And so that's why I wanted to primarily have you on today. And we can chat about black bears a little bit, but can you just give us a synopsis of the situation? And we're going to take it more because we are a bipartisan group, we are going to try to leave most of the politics out. I know we all have our own personal opinions about what's going on and the reasons behind why they built it, but we're going to look at this just from a strictly environmental conservation aspect right now.

[Travis Thompson]

Look, guys, I'm a hunter, right? And when I go hunting, I like.

[Mike Axelrod]

To figure out how to get my.

[Travis Thompson]

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[Mike Axelrod]

And that's kind of how I enter and exit the conversation, too, because I'm not indifferent to the immigration conversation, but I'm not an expert on that. I'm not informed enough to be an expert on that. So, yeah, it was really interesting. We had this. There's a thing in. In the middle of the Everglades, and I say literally in the middle of the Everglades, called the jetport.

[Ashley Smith]

Okay.

[Mike Axelrod]

Was built in the late 60s, early 70s. Boeing decided they were coming out with this new aircraft and they were going to. It took a really long Runway to build to. To take off and land. And the aircraft flew better over water. So it was going to be for, like, international flights. And they decided that right there in the center of the Everglades, they were going to build the world's largest airport.

[Ashley Smith]

Okay. Right there in the middle.

[Mike Axelrod]

Right.

[Ashley Smith]

This was in the 60s, right?

[Mike Axelrod]

Late 60s, late 60s, early 70s. Like, I'd be fuzzy on days, but 69, 70, 71. Somewhere there.

[Ashley Smith]

Yeah.

[Mike Axelrod]

So that event. I was obviously not around for that. I'm old. I'm not that old. But that event kind of galvanized the environmental movement in Florida to some degree. Because what you had was, I'll say it this way, we're mostly sportsmen on this show, but the tree hugger, environmentalist, and the guy that carries a gun and likes to hunt deer. And like, you had them coming together to say, no, no, no, no, no, we're not putting an airport here. We're not doing this. Like, we're stopping this.

[Ashley Smith]

Yeah.

[Mike Axelrod]

And so it really was truly an environmental collaborative movement. The conservation community. The environmental community shut it down. It was one of the events that kind of triggered the start of Earth Day.

[Ashley Smith]

Mm.

[Mike Axelrod]

Which is, you know, this national thing now that we talk about. Right. It's not the only one, but it was one of the events that kind of triggered that. And so this. The state at the time had poured one Runway and they stopped, and we're not pouring anymore. There was lawsuits, there was all kind of involvement back in the early 70s, and they stopped and they shut it down. And so it was a huge victory. It was a bipartisan victory. It was a environmental victory, a conservation victory. That. That piece of ground, because there was an airport there or a Runway there, it was used for, like, training flights to some degree. It was used occasionally for staging for emergency equipment. If you had like a hurricane coming. Because it's. I'll get this backwards. I think it's 50 miles from Miami and 40 miles from Naples, or maybe that's the other way around.

[Ashley Smith]

40 and 50, but right in between them.

[Mike Axelrod]

Right in between them. So if you have a hurricane kind of like hanging down around south. South of Florida, you don't know if it's going to go east coast, west Coast. You could stage, like, your power company trucks and things like that there. Your. Your first responders for a hurricane event. You could stage them there and they could go one way or the other. They were kind of centrally located. But that's all very temporary stuff. Right?

[Travis Thompson]

That's.

[Mike Axelrod]

That's stuff where you're in for five days and you're out.

[Ashley Smith]

Right.

[Mike Axelrod]

Same with the training flights. Like it. It was. You would. You would have pilots do touch and goes there or things like that, but even that has kind of fallen off in recent years. Something else that's important to know in all of this is within the Big Cypress National Preserve, which was the nation's first national preserve. And we've been fighting against wilderness designation for that for a number of years. With the previous administration, they wanted to give it wilderness designation, which would have kind of shut off the use of ORVs, off road vehicles. And I know that's a Controversial subject in some parts of the country. But in Big Cyprus, you don't have ORVs. You don't get to your camps. And there are in holdings there that people privately owned that they use as their base for hunting. That's where they go. They're. The Gladesman culture is recognized by the Army Corps of Engineers as a federal culture. And so these are people that go out and they recreate in the. In the Everglades, in Big Cyprus.

[Ashley Smith]

Would that have restricted airboats as well?

[Mike Axelrod]

It would have personal use. It absolutely would have.

[Ashley Smith]

Okay, so you basically just could no.

[Mike Axelrod]

Longer get around not just personal use, but also, like, there are concessionaires that run into the Everglades. Private industry that.

[Ashley Smith]

I've taken one. Yeah. Yeah.

[Mike Axelrod]

It was fascinating if you're looking for one. Betty Osceola in Buffalo Tiger Airboats is my. She's my very dear friend, and she's one of the Miccosukee folks down there that's been fighting against this stuff with us. And she. She runs a great concession. Anyway, so a lot of layers to this. It's not as simple as. We're just gonna. We're gonna build an airport. We're not gonna build an airport. So what happened was we, under the state of emergency, you didn't have the same public process that you normally have for a project like this.

[Ashley Smith]

You're talking about now. Right now.

[Mike Axelrod]

Right.

[Ashley Smith]

Because they issued a state of emergency. Okay. Yeah. So bring us up to speed. So we've jumped from 1969, when it got stopped because of the environmental and conservation concerns, to fast forward. Here we are 2025, and all of a sudden, a state of emergency was issued by the state of Florida. Right.

[Mike Axelrod]

She was issued in 2023.

[Ashley Smith]

Okay.

[Mike Axelrod]

As an immigration. We have a state of emergency surrounding immigration. I don't know the right verbiage for it, but that's what we have.

[Ashley Smith]

Right.

[Mike Axelrod]

So under a state of emergency, the government is granted certain powers that they can exercise without following the normal processes. This is where it kind of gets sideways for us from a conservation standpoint, because the Everglades. There's only one Everglades. We like to say that. And everybody has a not in my backyard mentality, but there's no one listening to this, is not familiar somehow with the Everglades. Whether they've gone and taken an airboat tour or fly fished in Florida Bay or gone out of Chokaloskee or whatever. Like, everyone is just read articles about it, watched a documentary on tv. Everyone's familiar with the Everglades Right, of course. So what we saw was this was the site chosen, but we were never given any environmental studies, impact studies, et cetera. We were. One day, it was, hey, we're going to stand up this prison and call it Alligator Alcatraz. And two weeks to the day, three weeks, less than three weeks later, it was wide open.

[Ashley Smith]

Right, Right.

[Mike Axelrod]

They were bringing prisoners in.

[Ashley Smith]

So no Environmental Impact statement.

[Mike Axelrod]

No. NEPA didn't go through.

[Ashley Smith]

Nepa. Explain what NEPA is for everyone.

[Mike Axelrod]

NEPA is the National Environmental Protection Act. So it gets really confusing because the state of Florida, who's talking about opening this, NEPA's federal Homeland Security may be operating the prison, or maybe they're paying Florida to operate the prison. So, like, it's still fuzzy because it's happened so quickly.

[Ashley Smith]

Yeah.

[Mike Axelrod]

Who owns it? Who's in charge, what process should have been followed from an environmental study. And I'll say it this way, and you can email me or message me with the hate mail, but I'll say it this way. It feels very much. It's not Blood Origins with Travis. It's very much feels like we hid behind the emergency declaration to avoid looking at any environmental impacts.

[Ashley Smith]

Right, Right. They wanted to. They wanted to move fast. They wanted to build it. And didn't Santa say there was going to be zero scientific impact?

[Mike Axelrod]

Zero.

[Ashley Smith]

No basis of that.

[Mike Axelrod]

And if that's the case, show me how you reach that conclusion. Right. Like, I don't think that's an unreasonable ask. As a conservationist and. And as someone that leans, you know, more conservative, I. I'm not indifferent to the immigration conversation, but there's lots of locations in Florida.

[Ashley Smith]

Right. There's one right down the road. Right. Isn't there an. Wasn't there an empty prison there?

[Mike Axelrod]

There are a number of empty prisons in the state. But even if you said, okay, well, those facilities, they would cost too much money to stand up and get. But they're not fit for. They're not fit for habitation today. It would. It's actually more. More better. Can't say that, Travis. But it's actually better to build, like, a temporary tent city, and we have air conditioning.

[Ashley Smith]

And this was their argument. This is their argument.

[Mike Axelrod]

This is their argument, but that's the case. We have other air bases that are sitting fallow, so to speak, with the same amount of Runway, but better infrastructure in place that are not in the center of the Everglades. People can laugh and say, it's fun to. I don't want to be reductive to the immigration issue. But it is fun to say, oh, we're going to have alligators and pythons guarding a prison. I get that concept, but I, that's not really what's happening because you're, you're presupposing that on the fact that people are going to escape.

[Ashley Smith]

Right.

[Mike Axelrod]

But are we that bad at prisons? I don't think we are.

[Ashley Smith]

Well, no. And I mean it's not like we just set these tents up on the grass. I mean, you know, originally they said, oh, we're not going to need any new construction known infrastructure. But we know for a fact that they have paved at least 11 acres. They've built roads, they have put equipment installation in. And so the site was not fully pre existing. Like you said, the only thing that preexisted was this Runway.

[Mike Axelrod]

Right, right. So it looks like from aerial photos, like you said, they've paved blacktops, they've brought asphalt in for roads. I don't, I know this asphalt's not a porous surface that's gonna help with rainwater, aquifer recharge, runoff, et cetera. It's gonna pick up like. But I don't know what that impact is. What I do know is it's occurring now in the center of the Everglades, which is the crown jewel of federal conservation restoration. Like from the president, from. It doesn't matter which administration. Like, we've constantly been funding Everglades restoration for a long time. Our state. Obviously our governor cares a great deal about it. He talks about it a lot. It's just, it's kind of shocking and off putting.

[Ashley Smith]

And once it's there, I mean, let's say we do find out because like you said, it's almost like we've gone in, we've skipped the environmental impact study. We are just gung ho, you know, paving roads, putting this stuff down in there. And even if they don't know what the ultimate environmental impact is going to be, which we know can't be good from what they're doing and where they're doing it, by the time that we do have quantifiable problems and issues, it's, I mean, it could be too late. And what do you do with it then? I mean, how do you get rid of it? That's just as much of a problem on the impact, trying to remove it.

[Mike Axelrod]

Absolutely it is. I even go to like, I'm not a squishy environmentalist at all. But you've got, there's two dark sky designation places in the state of Florida. One is Big Cypress 1 is the Kissimmee Prairie. We've now built a little mini city in the middle of one of those dark sky designations.

[Ashley Smith]

Right?

[Mike Axelrod]

People will say, okay, so it's light pollution. Big whoop. What does that really hurt?

[Ashley Smith]

But migratory birds, it's big light pollution. I mean, you know, they're keeping giant, giant strobe lights on at all times, you know, 24 hours a day. It's not a little bit of light. It's not like some people have gone out and built a couple cabins. You know, it's major light pollution.

[Mike Axelrod]

It is an increase in traffic on this road, which already has a ton of wildlife mortality on it. And not just. We've read and talked. I know that Robbie's been down here and done python stuff before, and we know I forget the exact percentage, but it's like 96% of the mammals in the Everglades are gone.

[Ashley Smith]

Oh, yeah.

[Mike Axelrod]

Okay, well, what is the traffic increase and what is the mammal mortality on that? And again, not indifferent to that. You need a prison. I'm very. I have an issue with where this prison is located, and that doesn't seem like an unreasonable question to ask.

[Ashley Smith]

Well, I also know that it has inhibited the python contractor removal situation because they have been told, because, you know, you and I have mutual friends, they have the python program for the state of Florida, and they have been told that they cannot cross lines that they used to be able to cross, so.

[Mike Axelrod]

Exactly.

[Ashley Smith]

They're not able to go in where they were going to remove these pythons, which, as you know, is one of the biggest predators for all of the mammals and all of the other wildlife down. I mean, how many. What are they estimating? That there's about a million pythons now in the state of Florida?

[Mike Axelrod]

I don't know if it's a million. I think it was 300,000, the last estimate I heard. But they don't really know. Because you've been down. How would you know?

[Ashley Smith]

Like, it's like you can't find them.

[Mike Axelrod]

Stack of needles. Like they're impossible to see when you can see them.

[Ashley Smith]

Right. And I've heard that that 300,000 number that they throw around is kind of like a joke just from the people that are out there hunting them and see it on the ground. So.

[Mike Axelrod]

So I have been hunting pythons before and had python guides, experts say, do you see this snake? And unless it's laying across the road, I have. I'm a hunter for a living. Like, I professionally guide people to hunt. I know what stuff looks like you know, you're a hunter, you know that a deer looks different than a hog, than looks different than a rock.

[Ashley Smith]

Right.

[Mike Axelrod]

Like you know that things look different. And you learn that with a trained eye that is outside all the time. I couldn't see the blasted thing.

[Ashley Smith]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Axelrod]

And they're like, it's right there, it's seven feet off the road. And like, I'm like, I don't know how you would ever see that. So there's gajillions of them.

[Ashley Smith]

Right.

[Mike Axelrod]

Based off that data, let's just talk.

[Ashley Smith]

About the Everglades in general. Because you, you know them, you've grown up there. Just talk about what the Everglades do for the rest of the ecosystem, how important they are. You know, some of the major species that rely on the Everglades. Can you talk about that for a minute?

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah, absolutely. Like the, the, the charismatic species that we talk about all the time are your panthers, your, your alligators, your Florida black bears, which we'll touch on. But then there's endangered species like the Everglades mink, which is a little weasel looking thing that we have that no one has ever. I've never seen one, but I, that's like a life goal of mine to see one. You've got this, this system that goes from sawgrass prairie to coastal mangroves. It acts as a kidney for water. It's, it's, everyone's always heard it called the river of grass. It really truly is. The water is not, it's not just a flooded wetland. Because a lot of times we think of a wetland, we think of something that's still right. The Everglades is almost a imperceptible movement of water moving south. And there's been a lot of man made impacts over the years, like everything from going back to Diston cutting canals or Flagler cutting canals and putting a railroad and selling land to just developments in human habitation. The way we dammed up Lake Okeechobee and we're not going to undo all that. A lot of people say why can't we just put back what's natural? And it's because 8 million, 9 million people live south of Lake Okeechobee in what was historically the Everglades. Now so half of the state of population lives there. We got to figure out some ways around that. And there's a lot of Everglades experts out there that could talk to you about the C43, the C44, the L29 and this canal and that canal and how this works. And we need this flow there and that flow there. And my eyes glaze over a little bit. What I know is it's one of the most important, beautiful, special ecosystems in the world.

[Ashley Smith]

Yeah.

[Mike Axelrod]

And the one thing I did mention is it's just slap full of alligators.

[Ashley Smith]

Oh, yeah, I've seen that. They're everywhere. They're everywhere down there. It's pretty cool. Okay, you mentioned the people that live down there and the populations that rely on this area. And you mentioned earlier, the primary tribal authority that lives there. And this alligator, Alcatraz, was, from what I've read, you can correct me, constructed within like 900ft or something of the gateway to their land. I mean, can you talk about.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah, it's a little further than that, but you've got a Miccosupkee village there. The Miccosukee Indians. You've got a village there. It's a couple of miles. I'd say two to three miles, which is not.

[Ashley Smith]

Not. That is not far.

[Mike Axelrod]

And if you Google it, it's five. Sorry, I'm not trying to mislead you. I can't remember how far it is, but it's not far.

[Ashley Smith]

Right. And they have. They have protested this from the beginning. I mean, they have. And so we have a tribal land that's being infringed upon. I mean, you can imagine within two or three miles, the traffic going by and the sirens and the light and. And all of this. And. And we're not taking that into consideration at all.

[Mike Axelrod]

Well, and okay, a couple of things I want to talk about. Here is one, Florida. When we talk about Florida conservation, the first thing that always comes up in a conversation is development and growth. And I don't want to go way down that road, but anytime you put a development somewhere, what people don't realize is even if it backs up to wild areas, you create this noise buffer, this wildlife buffer, where, yeah, a bear may get in your trash, but also bobcats aren't going to show up in your backyard because they're going to give it a little bit wider birth deer or like there's human activity there that is going to create a disturbance that doesn't necessarily attract wildlife. It's going to. It's going to create a little bit of a buffer. So when you do something like this at this scale and this size, I don't know what this is because again, we have no data or anything that's been shared with us, but there is some impact on the wildlife that's going to expand it out from there and consolidate it. We also know that based on water management and Everglades restoration, the deer herd in Big Cypress is almost non existent anymore. Now that could be a number of factors. It could be reestablishment of the panther, it could be the pythons and the fact that a large python will eat deer. But if you look at the University of Georgia's deer study on South Florida from 2016 17, hydrology is what drives that herd. And so as we manage the hydrology, deer in the Everglades go to what we call tree islands, which are just higher spots. These are also really traditional islands for the Miccosukee people. They'll have certain islands where they grow crops and certain islands where they go to hunt and certain islands where they do ceremonies. The deer will go to those tree islands and that's where they will drop their fawns. As you put more water, you flood the, you flood the landscape more A, you have more fatality and more mortality in your fawn herd. But you also your fawn class, but you also end up with a shooting fish in a barrel type of situation for predators. So you create almost like a predator pit on a micro scale over and over. Black bears, as you know, will switch to fawns at certain times of the year. They'll eat blackberries the rest of the year happily and garbage. But certain times of the year, when it's fawning season, they will switch to fawns almost exclusively. And so there's a lot of layers of nuance to this way outside the alligator Alcatraz thing and impacts to people's way of life and a very important conservation area that the, the other thing I think is nuanced in this conversation is we've just come off the Mike Lee conversation, right? The Senator Lee public land sell off. And I can't help but sit here and wonder, is this some sort of a angle where you've now got a back door to where if a governor declares a state of emergency and wants to do something on private land, have we created a. Have we unlocked the code?

[Ashley Smith]

Golly. I mean, it is such a slippery slope that this causes me so much alarm. And so I looked it up because I wanted to know the exact number. Just within Everglades national park, there are 36 plant and animal species that are federally listened as threatened or endangered. You mentioned a couple of them. You know, the Florida panther, West Indian manatee, the snail kite, the wood store, all these birds, sea turtles. And outside. So within the greater Everglades region, which is still in the Everglades, but outside the national park, there are 70 threatened or endangered species. I mean, I cannot imagine any other area in the country that housed all of these endangered species. Anyone being allowed to circumvent. Circumvent the environmental process and go in there and just say, well, you know, sorry. Hopefully they'll whatever. Crazy. To me, this is crazy that this is going on. And the fact that the lawsuits haven't at least paused construction, they're just barreling ahead. It's like, ask forgiveness, you know, not permission.

[Mike Axelrod]

And so to me, it's like, okay, well, let's make this into a win. Can we. Can we get the proof that this has no environmental impact, or can we get one of the things we're famous for saying, our politicians are famous saying, well, it is temporary. Okay, well, tell me what that means. Does it mean six months? Does it mean a year? Does it mean we're going to reevaluate in two years? What does that mean? Because we already have other politicians talking about, well, now that this site's open, the Miami County Commission has already suggested putting an incinerator there. Like a trash incinerator.

[Ashley Smith]

Oh, gosh.

[Mike Axelrod]

In the middle of the Everglades. So it's like. You talk about slippery slopes, and I don't love slippery slope arguments, although I do tend to use them. I'm a hypocrite there. This does feel a little bit like a slippery slope. And I think it's easy to get caught up if you don't live in South Florida or you don't recreate in the Everglades or you don't care about the Everglades at a deep level to say that's a temporary prison. They got to do something about immigration. Anyway, we're okay with it. What you're really saying is we're going to trust the government to do everything that they said they were going to do and deliver on their promises here. And I'm not sure where you're getting the evidence to back that up. Particularly coming off the Mike Lee sale and particularly looking at. We've just given a blueprint for how we can use emergency powers to go around public lands. It's my belief that you see a lot of groups out there that were really up in arms over the. The rightfully so. I was up in arms just like everybody else was. But this is an issue that I'm like, we're not paying attention. This is a backdoor entry that we do not want to have happen. And maybe the answer is good. Maybe the answer is, you know, the governor comes back or the president comes back or whoever, and they're like, look, we're shutting this down in July of 2027 and we're going to tear up the tarmac and put it all back to natural state. Like, I'm not saying we do amazing things, right? Like we're capable of amazing things. Maybe that's the answer. And I'm alarmed for no reason, but I am alarmed right now because they don't have any answers on the other side.

[Ashley Smith]

No answers. And so much damage has already been done. So we know that they have spent because they have already signed 245 million in state contracts for the labor, the site prep, the sanitation, trailers, IT infrastructure, security, staffing, operations. These were awarded. Like somebody's making some money off this thing. Let's just throw that out there. And then the officials, including the governor and DHS have stated the cost to run this facility is going to cost $450 million a year. We all know we have an immigration crisis. Everybody knows that. I don't think there are very many people in the country that don't want something to be done about it, but this seems like there were so many other alternatives under the sun. And so do you think it's a PR stunt?

[Mike Axelrod]

I mean, it's 100% a PR stunt, Ashley. Like, so I hunt. God. I shouldn't say this on the, on the Internet, but I will. I hunt in Florida. There's a place called Avon Park Air Force base. It's an 80,000 acre sentinel landscape designation by the U.S. air Force. DOD operates it. It has been an active Air Force base.

[Ashley Smith]

Writing this down right now.

[Mike Axelrod]

Okay, you can join Avon Park Air Force Base. My dad joins it every year. I think it's 300 bucks. And it is a basically a 80,000 acre public hunting lease. I'd quasi say I think they have about a thousand members. There's people who hog hunt or deer hunt and you don't ever. It's not where you're going to go kill some monster deer. But every year somebody kills like a really nice 8 or 10 off of it. Somebody goes there with their kids to shoot squirrels.

[Ashley Smith]

And it's a hunting opportunity.

[Mike Axelrod]

It is. But within that facility there's a prison.

[Ashley Smith]

Mm.

[Mike Axelrod]

The 1400 bed prison. It's not being used anymore. There's also paved tarmac all over the place. There's runways because it was an air force base. Still is could be used. I mean it's not an active Air Force base, but it is Used for training, right? There's roads, there's infrastructure, there's water, there's ability to get rid of solid waste versus trucking in and out. It is way simpler to get to than the middle of the freaking Everglades. So, so I, I just, like, as a taxpayer, I sit here and I say, okay, if everything else was equal, why didn't you stick it in the middle of Avon park in the set of the middle of the Everglades? Because it would cost me less in gas to get stuff back and forth to Avon park versus what it does to get like, like take your diesel fuel or your, your waste water that you're evacuating or whatever. If you're trucking that in and out, how many, how often is that truck running? How many times when you're running, how much does that cost us? Moving water is expensive. I know this because.

[Ashley Smith]

And there were no facilities for plumbing, water, electricity. There's nothing there. So, I mean, just the costs and the disruption from running all of those out to outside sources, plus I cannot even imagine the conditions of what that creates. I mean, when you're having a truck in, I mean, I've been places pretty off the grid as you. As have you, you know, as, as hunters and outdoor enthusiasts. And when you stay in those places, they don't stay very clean. No.

[Mike Axelrod]

So, so you've got tarmac where you've poured new asphalt, we were talking about. And so you're bringing in how many workers a day they're parking their trucks there. They're all leaking oil, gas, whatever. I don't, I don't know the amount of it, but it rains every day in Florida and it's all running off into the system. What are the impacts? Maybe it's none. Yeah, maybe it really, truly is none. I'm just there, can't. Curious why you would do it there.

[Ashley Smith]

In no universe can it be none. We know it's not none. We don't know what it is. And they're not allowing, frankly, very much press or very many people, not even the congressional delegations that have gone down there, they have restricted their access to much of the area. No cameras. So, I mean, one, if this were such, this, this great thing that we're doing no harm, that we're going to be housed in humane conditions. We. Why aren't they allowing the press? Why aren't they allowing people to look at it? Why aren't they going and saying, hey, look this, look at this great thing we're doing here? Like, because they're not they're talking about it, but they're not really showing it.

[Mike Axelrod]

And so there's people down there from the Miccosukee tribe primarily, that are videoing basically every truck that goes in and out. And there's. There's a requirement in Florida that you have to have a DOT license on your truck. If you're transporting, let's say, waste or whatever you get, you've got to have that license cover. They're actually covering those up with tape because they don't want people calling the business and complaining. Why are you involved in this Everglades project? I would say there's also bad actors on the activist side, very much so that made call and threaten people like that, which then becomes a permissive way for them to avoid the permitting process. Instead of everything being transparent, I just. I come back to, there's no way this costs less than another site would. That's closer to civilization. And there's no way. There's no way we have an environmental impact study that says there's no environmental impact based off what we've done there.

[Ashley Smith]

Yeah. This is.

[Mike Axelrod]

Those two things, if they exist, prove me wrong, and I will come back on the show and say that I was wrong.

[Ashley Smith]

Right.

[Mike Axelrod]

But I just. I don't. I don't see how that's possible based on what I've seen occur there.

[Ashley Smith]

Has the agency put anything out about this? Or have they have political pressure? I mean, obviously, you know, they're political appointees in charge of the agency. So are their hands just tied because of the political implications?

[Mike Axelrod]

I've not heard a single politician. I've not heard a single Republican politician speak out against this. That's what I'll say. And I'm not making that partisan. I've obviously heard, because it's all Republican leadership in the state of Florida and Republican leadership nationally. So I've seen some Democrats speak out, but I've seen no Republicans speak out against it. And frankly, I've identified myself as a Republican as I've spoken out against it, because I don't think it's unreasonable to ask those things and still say, I respect a lot of the. We've done really good Everglades restoration.

[Ashley Smith]

Right.

[Mike Axelrod]

The president just funded, I think, 480 million. The governor just changed some of this federal stuff to the state stuff. We work on the EAA Reservoir. We're working on, you know, all these amazing projects. We do really good work. I'm not saying, you know, governor, you're a bad guy or president. Like, I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying, like, on this one thing, I really have some concerns about it, and I feel like we're not. We're not doing the due diligence that we should as a conservationist.

[Ashley Smith]

Well, I'm glad you brought that up. So I'm a conservative, and I hope, and I think that we saw through the federal public lands effort and outreach that it's okay to be a Republican and also care about these conservation and environmental concerns. And we need more and more and more sportsmen and outdoorsmen to start doing that. I know that sometimes are the issues converge. Not that often. This is one of those cases where, you know, I think that, yes, we want. We want immigration control, we want lawful immigration policies, but this ain't the way to do it. Like, and I think that's okay for us to speak up and say that. Like, you know what, if you're a Republican, if you're a Democrat, whatever you are. More politicians, I think, would get a lot more credit if they took a stand and said, we have other alternative means of immigration control than this project. This is.

[Mike Axelrod]

And let me, let me say this again, because I'm not sure if I said it well a minute ago, but even now, for where we're at, I would love for a politician to stand up and say, you know what? We're too far down this road. This is where it's at. Like, we've invested, whatever you said, 200 million or something like that. We're too far down this road. This is where it's at. Here's my commitment. We're going to have this thing completely out of here, and we're actually going to tear up the tarmac and we're going to turn it all into part of Big Cypress and it's going to become more public land. I'm not saying that's the only option, but give us a plan.

[Ashley Smith]

They've gotten themselves into a catch 22, though, right now, because, I mean, if they do that, then what have we done? We've literally just thrown. I mean, let's say we run it for one year at $450 million, plus the 225 that they invested. We've got an almost $700 million temporary project. I mean, think about that. This is just, this is just the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my lifetime. As far as taxpayer waste.

[Mike Axelrod]

I just, it's where it gets me as a fiscal guy. Like, I'm just like, wait a second, I'm a taxpayer. Like, let's Set everything else aside. Everglades or everything else.

[Ashley Smith]

Right.

[Mike Axelrod]

There was a cheaper way to do this.

[Ashley Smith]

Better, cheaper. You know, less environmentally catastrophic and probably better for just, from a humane perspective, places to do this. Nobody says, you know, don't put these people, you know, they are criminals, where they need to go. Whatever. That can be argued all day long from all different sides. And I see both sides. But let's. Let's. Gosh, let's just do it in a. In some way that doesn't tear up the Everglades and impact all the people.

[Mike Axelrod]

Down there, or show me that there's no risk to it.

[Ashley Smith]

Right, right.

[Mike Axelrod]

That's the other thing.

[Ashley Smith]

Be transparent with me, Travis. You know, they can't.

[Mike Axelrod]

They can't do that, which is why I keep coming back to that question. Show me there's no risk to it, and I'll.

[Ashley Smith]

So what? What can be done? Like, what can we do? What can the public do? What can concerned sportsmen and women, environmentalists, conservationists. Like, is it too late? Can we still do anything?

[Mike Axelrod]

I don't think it's ever too late to do anything. That's part of what makes me. I'll say good. I don't know if I'm good at this or not. But I like, nothing's ever permanent. Like, even statutes and laws and things like that. We can always change them. So that's why I love constitutional amendments, because they're way harder to change. Like that feels like it has a permanency to it. But no, I think. I think absolutely. If you come to Florida, recreate in Florida, I think there's. I think it's well worth your time to reach out to the governor's office. Our attorney general is James Uthmeyer. He was appointed by the governor. That's another thing that always irks me. We have a guy that was not elected by anybody that was kind of the champion of this deal. And I'm like, I don't know how.

[Ashley Smith]

I feel about it. A lot of states elect their attorney generals. In Florida, you do not.

[Mike Axelrod]

No, we do. Our attorney general became the senator.

[Ashley Smith]

Okay.

[Mike Axelrod]

The governor got to appoint a senator because the senator became secretary of state. He had this domino effect, and so he appointed his chief of staff as the attorney general. And then that guy became kind of the champion for Alligator Alcatraz, which I think.

[Ashley Smith]

So he will have to be. He will have to be reelected. But he was appointed to carry out the remainder of the term. Okay, that makes sense.

[Mike Axelrod]

You know, I think there's. There's tremendous value in Sending emails. I think there's tremendous value in public pressure on this sort of thing. What about members of Congress?

[Ashley Smith]

I mean, we know it's a combination of federal and state funds. So reach out to members of probably the Appropriations Committee. I would assume it's going through Interior and home security. Homeland Security. Okay, Homeland Security. And what about on the Senate side aside? Is it Homeland Security on that?

[Mike Axelrod]

So I, as I understand it's going through. And again, I don't have the.

[Ashley Smith]

Because ordinarily this would have to go through something like environment, public works if it were shown to have an impact. But because, yeah, yeah, but because they're circumming that. So we've got. Okay, so homeland security, probably on both sides. So that's easy to find. If you Google congressional members of the Homeland Security, they, they have their own webpage. That committee has its own webpage. You can see the members.

[Mike Axelrod]

It's fascinating to me too, as you look at it. Like you, you remember the spider man cartoon where they're all like pointing their finger guns at each other and nobody. That's a little bit what this feels like because the state's saying, well, this is federal. And the feds are saying, well, this is state. We're going to pay the state. And so no one had. And I have no paperwork that says what this is from anybody. The city of Miami actually owns the jetport or the county owns the jetport, even though it's not in their county, it's in Collier County. So it's like a lot of players in this that are all pointing at each other saying, well, we can't do anything without that person. You go to that person, they're like, well, we can't do anything without that person. You end up back where you started and you have no answers to anything. So it's very frustrating for a time when we have such struggles with trust with the government. It's really frustrating to go through something like this in such an environmentally sensitive, fragile ecosystem and not have any answers at this point. And I think that accountability deserves to be shown by the government, whether it is the federal government, the state government, whoever that is, they, they need to step up and, and kind of take some ownership of this.

[Ashley Smith]

So, okay, I just did another quick search. And so the state of Florida initially funded the setup and operations, 225 to 245 million in state contracts. And then. But they are seeking reimbursement from the FEMA shelter and services program. So that's federal money meant for sheltering non citizen Migrants. Right. And then this is saying it's not coming out of the federal disaster relief fund, but it is coming out of FEMA's larger budget. And so. And then the Department of Homeland Security support. So DHS doesn't directly fund the facility, but they give grants and it falls under their purview. So. So you're right. I mean, it's just a straight up mix, but it looks like Florida is planning on recovering a bunch of those funds from fema. And right now, with all of the controversy surrounding FEMA and, you know, the cuts in funding to FEMA and its jurisdiction and throwing this back on the states, this would seem a little hypocritical to me. Oh, well, it's the state's burden to take care of these disaster funding reliefs. Oh, but no, we'll do this like it.

[Mike Axelrod]

It definitely feels that way to me, too. Like I said, I, My hope is that there's some good outcome from this and maybe public pressure can help seek what that outcome is. Again, we don't know what temporary is, but if two years from now this all just gets reverted back into the national preserve, okay, maybe that was a win. Maybe it was the right thing and we came out better. But we've g. We're going to have to stand strong if that's what the win looks like. Just like with the Mike Lee stuff, like there's no, there's no alternative. That is. Oh, well, we're going to develop this out and now we're going to put an incinerator there. And now we're going to just keep expanding. We're not going to keep expanding it because the, the impacts are too great and it's too risky in this place that's so important.

[Ashley Smith]

Right. Well, we know this is a very controversial issue. Our mission is to convey the truth about hunting and promote the sustainable use of natural resources and wildlife. And from what we have seen so far in our perspective, and I appreciate you, you know, helping walk through this issue, this absolutely seems adverse to protecting and sustaining, you know, the natural resources and wildlife in that area. So we wanted to get that out there real quick because we've, you know, actually talked about this for a while now. I do want to touch on the black bear situation. Okay. The final vote. Right. Is coming up the beginning of August. What date is that?

[Mike Axelrod]

I think it's the 12th and 13th. So this will probably be the 12th.

[Ashley Smith]

Okay. And this is pretty historic. I mean, we're really excited about this. The Florida populations have 13th.

[Mike Axelrod]

13Th. It'll be okay.

[Ashley Smith]

August 13th is going to be the final vote by the Florida Wildlife Commission to give approval to having a black bear harvest in Florida this year. Because these, these numbers, the bears have recovered just, just beautifully down there.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah. I mean, so in my lifetime, we closed black bear hunting. It was closed for 25 years, 26 years. We reopened it for one year. The public outcry was so great, they.

[Ashley Smith]

Shut it down early. Right.

[Mike Axelrod]

Well, I mean, you could say that the hunt was effective because they had a quota of 325 bears and they killed 315 or 317 in 24 hours. And so the hunt did what it was supposed to do. It, it eliminated this many bears.

[Ashley Smith]

Right.

[Mike Axelrod]

That is not the optics. And you know, a lot of people don't like that. I say this, but I say this a lot. Larda Florida does not embrace hunting the way that it is generally thought of nationally. Yeah, it's just not. We love fishing, we don't love hunting. And when you get into your charismatic megafauna stuff like black bears, because really controversial sandhill cranes we can't even talk about even though we got gajillions of them.

[Ashley Smith]

Right.

[Mike Axelrod]

But so, so the bear hunt has become kind of like this political volleyball. And frankly, you know, we've seen a, a whole series of governors, appointees, et cetera, that wouldn't even pick this up to talk about for the better part of a decade. Now we're on the doorstep of reinstating the black bear hunt, which I'm a conservationist. You're a conservationist. Like conservation, I always tell people, is to seek the proper use of a resource. A black bear is a very usable resource. This is not a trophy hunt. No one's going to fly to Florida to trophy hunt a bear.

[Ashley Smith]

People are eating this.

[Mike Axelrod]

They're going to take the meat, they're going to render the fat, they're going to, yes, they're going to turn the rug, the fur into a rug or head into a mount or whatever, but it's way beyond that. That's a totem from the hunt. They're utilizing every part of that animal. This is not a trophy hunt. But that's the narrative that kind of gets caught up if people get into baiting and the use of dogs and how inhumane all this is. And we have a really strong anti hunting movement down here. Oh yeah, they took it, they took it in the chin on Amendment 2 last year. And so they've looked at things like commission reform bills, they've looked at stopping the hunt, they've Looked at ballot box movement for species like black bears, trying to protect them under some kind of ballot initiative or legislative initiative. They continue to come at us at a. And I say Florida's on this topic, a little bit of a canary in the coal mine. We're the only state with more than a thousand bears besides Connecticut that doesn't have a bear season. And we have over 4,000.

[Ashley Smith]

Like you had your first human mortality this past year. Right.

[Mike Axelrod]

Document that was in early May. It was a tragic situation. All the details haven't come out about that, but the agency, the wildlife agency is calling it a predatory attack. So it's a really tragic story. It's really sad to see. There's a lot of bears, there's a lot of people in Florida, but bears kind of adapt. They do really well. Like I. The place, if I, if somebody said, hey, I really want to see a bear, I would take them to my buddy's neighborhood that is, you know, he lives. There's his neighborhood after street after street of houses behind him. And there's bears always in his front yard. They, they like eating his mom's plants.

[Ashley Smith]

That's easy.

[Mike Axelrod]

Like, they're, they're kind of. Some of them are big raccoons and they've been kind of urbanized. There's also a lot of them that are still on your hunting leases to the point where I know guys that won't even put corn feeders out anymore.

[Ashley Smith]

Right.

[Mike Axelrod]

Because the bears just get in and rip them up. And it's become, it's become a species that's become a contentious issue. But I'm a North American model guy, so science should drive wildlife policy. There is some number of bears regardless of when the count is done. There's some number of bears that you could take out that would be in the compensatory mortality range.

[Ashley Smith]

Yeah.

[Mike Axelrod]

5, 50, 200. I don't know what that number is, but it definitely trusts the scientists that are making their recommendations to the agency. So I think, I think the tag number is either 186 or 187 is how many they're going to take on this first year. If, if every bear that was taken was a female and every hunter was successful, so he took 186 sows out, you would have zero change in population. So it would not decrease the population at all. It, it would essentially be a compensatory mortality climb.

[Ashley Smith]

And we know that every tag won't get a bear.

[Mike Axelrod]

And we know, we know that won't be a hundred percent Success.

[Ashley Smith]

And we know that they're going for males mostly.

[Mike Axelrod]

I think the la. I looked the last hunt, 40% of the bears taken were males.

[Ashley Smith]

Okay.

[Mike Axelrod]

So unless, and, and males are generally bigger.

[Ashley Smith]

Right.

[Mike Axelrod]

If you're, if you have time. The last hunt, if you didn't fill your tag with, if you didn't fill your tag before you got called off, you didn't get to hunt a bear. Yeah, I don't remember how many. Let's say they issued 2,000 tags. When it hit 320 or 315, they cut it off. Now these tags are issued. They're only issuing 186 tags. So you have three weeks, four weeks for the. I think it's three and a half weeks for the season, something like that. You could take the entire time. So if you got multiple bears on camera, you're going to hunt the biggest mayor.

[Ashley Smith]

Yeah.

[Mike Axelrod]

Right. Which is going to probably increase the, the, the take of big males versus Sals.

[Ashley Smith]

Right, right.

[Mike Axelrod]

Versus just going out and shooting the first bear you see. Because there was a pressure or a rush. The last time we did the hunt. That's gone. This time you've got the full three weeks to do the hunt.

[Ashley Smith]

Okay. Is there any chance it doesn't pass on the 13th?

[Mike Axelrod]

I never say there's not a chance because I've seen our commission do some crazy stuff and I trust our commissioners. I think our commissioners generally want to do a good job. I definitely think they take into account stakeholder input. I think better than any other agency, they take into account stakeholder input.

[Ashley Smith]

Public comments still open?

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah. So you can submit written comments until the Friday before that. So that would be. Look at my calendar. That would be the 8th of August. You can still submit written comments.

[Ashley Smith]

Okay.

[Mike Axelrod]

And they do get all of those. The agency staff will grant every written comment, every emailed comment. Put em into a binder. They'll put pro and opposed. So you could flip through the pros and take a sampling or read everyone. I know some of the commissioners that read every email they get.

[Ashley Smith]

So if you live in Florida or if you hunt in Florida, if you want to see the black bear harvest passed through the 8th, you can go what to the Florida agency website. Where do.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah, it's. It's MyFWC.com MyFWC on the Commissioners tab and you can email commissioners, there's a button that allows you to email all of them.

[Ashley Smith]

Okay. Yeah, wait.

[Mike Axelrod]

You can show up at a meeting. You can show up at the meeting. And if you show up at a meeting, a suggestion I will link to people that will attend the meeting. I'll go up and make public comments. A number of people will. But it is very well received by the commission if you waive in support. Okay, so you sign up to make public comments. You sit back there you go for your public speaking. When they call your name, just wave by wave in support. You just yell that out in the audience, and they'll say, thank you so much, because they don't want to listen to another three minutes of people saying the same things over and over again.

[Ashley Smith]

Okay, that's good to know. That's good to know. You have that mechanism down there. Um, yeah. So you can also live stream it. They will be live streaming the meeting on the 13th. Uh, this podcast before then.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah, it's on the Florida channel that you can watch it.

[Ashley Smith]

Okay. Okay, fantastic. All right. I've started asking every guest to give me two truths and a lie, and you try to stop me.

[Mike Axelrod]

Oh, my God.

[Ashley Smith]

Tell us some stuff about yourself, Travis.

[Mike Axelrod]

Two truths and a lie. All right, here you go.

[Ashley Smith]

Okay.

[Mike Axelrod]

I'm gonna give you three facts.

[Ashley Smith]

Okay. All right.

[Mike Axelrod]

One, I'm a fifth generation Floridian.

[Ashley Smith]

Okay.

[Mike Axelrod]

Two, I once outscored Tracy McGrady in a basketball game.

[Ashley Smith]

Okay.

[Mike Axelrod]

Three, I pulled two fishing world records.

[Ashley Smith]

Oh, gosh. I mean, I would have. I would have probably guessed the both of the latter two were lies, but because the. Because the second one is so random, I'm gonna say number three is a lie.

[Mike Axelrod]

That's correct.

[Ashley Smith]

Okay.

[Mike Axelrod]

I do not hold any fishing world records.

[Ashley Smith]

Okay. Okay. But when did you outscore Tracy in a basketball game?

[Mike Axelrod]

We played it. We were at opposing high schools when he was a freshman and I was a junior.

[Ashley Smith]

Aha. So you've got some hidden.

[Mike Axelrod]

He was unknown entirely. He did not play much in the game, so I think I outscored him 4 to 10. So you're a ballerina back in the day, yes, absolutely.

[Ashley Smith]

You could have just said that. I probably would have been like, that's the lie.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ashley Smith]

Well, you are quite tall in person. We have met in person, and you are quite tall. I am, so. Well, good to know you have these secret basketball talents.

[Mike Axelrod]

There you go. Yeah. Like, there's a couple. There's a little basketball underworld out here in the conservation community that we. We talk each other.

[Ashley Smith]

Love it. I love it. Well, thank you for being on today. We certainly appreciate everything you're doing down in Florida on all of the different fronts that you engage in. And you are really down there fighting for sportsmen and women and for wildlife, for conservation, for hunting and fishing. And I hope you will come back on again with me. You're going to have to think of some more trees in a lot.

[Mike Axelrod]

Okay, I got it. Thanks, Ashley.

[Ashley Smith]

All right. Awesome. Thanks, Travis.

[Mike Axelrod]

Have a good weekend.

[Travis Thompson]

Okay, well, that's it for today. I appreciate you listening, as always. Leave a review, share it with your friends. And most importantly, do what's right to convey the truth around hunting.