Ep. 769: Can Conservation Be Non-Partisan?

Summary

The MeatEater Podcast, Ep. 769: Can Conservation Be Non-Partisan?

Air date: September 29, 2025
Host: Steven Rinella
Guest: Benji Backer (Founder, Nature is Nonpartisan)
Also featuring: Cal, Randall

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Overview

This lively episode centers on one of today’s most urgent and divisive questions: Can conservation truly be non-partisan? Host Steven Rinella welcomes Benji Backer, a youthful but seasoned activist and founder of "Nature is Nonpartisan," to dissect historic and current divides in America's environmental movement. The conversation ranges from political history to modern polarization, the impact of online discourse, and the quest to build a durable, cross-party conservation culture.

With humor and authenticity, the crew explores why issues like public lands, wildlife, and water are so often caught in political crossfire—and what it will take to nurture a movement (“like support the troops”) that transcends party and endures, no matter who’s in power.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Can Conservation Be Non-Partisan? (02:36–04:13)

• Benji Backer: Nature is nonpartisan, or at least, it once was:

  “You could be the trumpiest voter in the world, or you could be an AOC lover and anything in between, and you want those same things.” (03:38)

• Bipartisan roots: EPA, Wilderness Act, and major conservation victories were historically broad-based.
• Challenge: Modern politics doesn’t reflect shared values—public desire for clean air, water, access to outdoors—due to increased partisan vitriol and culture wars.

Memorable quote:

“People just need to realize it. We got to get out of our algorithms... the biggest environmental achievements throughout history were immensely bipartisan.”
—Benji Backer (03:13)

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2. Political and Cultural Forces Shaping Conservation (13:00–14:25, 50:08–57:49)

• The panel discusses examples from recent conservation history (e.g., Wilderness Act, EPA under Nixon, buffalo management).
• Benji’s personal journey from being a young conservative activist to launching nonpartisan conservation movements.

Key insight:

• Environmental protection has become entangled in the “two-party” system, with advocacy groups often only impactful (or perceived as legitimate) when “their” party is in power.

Notable quote:

“What about an organization that’s just trying to move consistent conservation through, no matter what, and no matter who you are politically?”
—Benji Backer (47:35)

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3. Case Study: Florida Bear Hunt & Advocacy Tactics (20:07–34:02)

• Breakdown of Florida’s bear hunt policy, quota systems, and social reactions.
• Sierra Club’s tactic: buying up bear hunt lottery tickets so hunters can’t use them—a “protest via paperwork” that highlights both the passion and partisanship of modern environmentalism.
• Questions of whether such maneuvers help, hurt, or just reinforce polarization.

Quote:

“Florida’s attitude is, you guys can buy all the tickets you want. That’s great for conservation. You’re generating all this.”
—Steven Rinella (30:24)

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4. The Role of Online Polarization & Real-Life Experience (57:49–64:05)

• Social media exaggerates division, compared to everyday American interactions.
• Benji’s experiences with both left- and right-wing attacks; close relationships beyond ideological lines (e.g., friendship with Van Jones).
• Steven describes his temptation to exit public discourse amidst the toxicity of online “boxes”—but ultimately sees value in rational, cross-partisan engagement.

Quote:

“We are convincing ourselves that everyone else is actually evil, like Hitler-level evil... but we’re becoming a chronically online nation.”
—Benji Backer (60:02)

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5. How to Shift the Conservation Culture (68:03–77:03)

• Current advocacy organizations do good work, especially in the “hook and bullet” (hunting/fishing) space, but there’s no unified, broad-based cultural campaign for conservation.
• Analogy: What if “caring for the environment” became an uncontested, expected part of American identity—like “support the troops”? (90:46–93:43)

Quote:

“I want to make caring for the environment like: ‘Support the troops.’ Where everybody—left, right, center—has reason to claim it, and every politician has to have it as a feather in their cap.”
—Cal (91:11)

• Benji outlines the challenge: conservation asks are complex and local, not a “one trick pony” like legalization of weed or marriage equality (83:21–90:37). Yet the movement must tap local concerns to build bigger coalitions.

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6. Obstacles in Funding, Philanthropy, and Nonprofit Incentives (117:58–127:01)

• Philanthropic dollars often drive environmental organizations’ messaging, sometimes pulling them out of touch with local realities.
• Many rural, agricultural, or “on-the-ground” conservation actors bristle at national group messaging, feeling patronized or ignored.
• Organizational incentives can favor “perpetual problems” over solving issues, since solving them may mean the nonprofit loses its relevance and funding.

Quote:

“A nonprofit only exists if they get the money and you only raise money if there are problems… is there an incentive to solve the problem then? No.”
—Benji Backer (120:44)

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7. Tactical Lessons: When & How to Create “Friction” for Conservation (135:08–137:44)

• Benji outlines his organization’s approach: only oppose policies when there’s a winnable, mass coalition; prefer to be “for” things, not always “against.”
• Avoid dying on every hill just to look relevant—the focus is on outcomes, not headlines, fundraising, or performative opposition.

Quote:

“If there’s an overwhelming, winning coalition of Americans where the politicians are so out of touch ... we’re going to show them they’re out of touch.”
—Benji Backer (135:57)

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8. Looking Ahead: Building the Movement (130:36–134:26)

• Nature is Nonpartisan, founded April 2025, will soon launch “United by Nature”—a national narrative campaign and events, seeking broad cultural buy-in.
• Plans include a bipartisan Senate caucus, music/concert events (possibly at Yellowstone), national ad campaigns, and intentional inclusion of both liberal and conservative leadership and staff.

Quote:

“We’re going to try to make this ‘United by Nature’ the calling card for ‘support the troops’—we are united by nature, whether that’s your Salt Lake, Everglades, or Beartooth Mountains.”
—Benji Backer (131:00)

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9. Authenticity and the Power of the Rational Middle (141:26–145:26)

• True conservation wins are more important than organizational wins.
• It’s critical not to put people in ideological boxes, but to focus on building a “rational middle” that politicians cannot ignore.
• Success will require breaking out of the “nonprofit competition” mindset and seeing conservation as bigger than politics or credit.

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Notable Quotes and Timestamps

• “We got to get out of our algorithms here and realize that it actually once was nonpartisan.”
  —Benji Backer (03:13)

• “The health of our environment is about the health of us too. And right now, we are failing miserably. And the left doesn’t care. And the right doesn’t care. ... They care about winning the next election.”
  —Benji Backer (56:55)

• “If there’s a theme in wildlife management: When you have a species that becomes imperiled, you stop hunting... then over time you recover it, you will naturally—like, you’re gonna have friction when you want to reinstate a hunt.”
  —Steven Rinella (23:38)

• “The current environmental culture is not working for us. ... There’s no space for politicians to see they have to get something done except for the public lands sell-off as literally the first example in like a decade.”
  —Benji Backer (73:27)

• “The environment is ours to take care of and develop and work with and conserve so that future generations can also exist.”
  —Benji Backer (81:46)

• “What about an organization that’s just trying to move consistent conservation through, no matter what, and no matter who you are politically?”
  —Benji Backer (47:35)

• “This is not some kumbaya shit. But 80% of the time, there’s actually a lot of agreement.”
  —Benji Backer (93:15)

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Key Timestamps for Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:36–04:13 | Framing nature as non-partisan; bipartisan roots, need for cultural shift | | 13:00–14:25 | Historical examples: Nixon, EPA, Wilderness Act | | 20:07–34:02 | Deep dive: Florida Bear hunt, advocacy strategies, Sierra Club, quotas | | 47:03–50:08 | Benji’s journey from conservative activism to nonpartisan conservation | | 56:55–57:49 | Systemic failures: both left and right fail environment | | 60:02–62:20 | Anatomy of online polarization vs. real life | | 68:03–73:27 | Where advocacy organizations succeed and fail; need for unified, mainstream campaign | | 90:46–93:43 | The “support the troops” analogy for conservation | | 117:58–127:01 | Philanthropy & nonprofit world, donor influence, risks of performative advocacy | | 130:36–134:26 | United by Nature campaign and next steps | | 141:26–145:26 | Moving past competition, focusing on collaboration and authenticity |

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Takeaways

• Conservation has long-standing bipartisan roots; the contemporary divide is more a product of culture wars and politics than genuine disagreement on core values.
• Overcoming polarization requires broad cultural buy-in and a “big tent” approach—going beyond hunting/angling groups to mobilize all outdoor and nature-loving Americans, regardless of party.
• Sustainable conservation wins depend on building pressure from the “rational middle” and resisting incentives for advocacy organizations to prioritize perpetual conflict over solutions.
• A new movement—like Benji’s “Nature is Nonpartisan”/“United by Nature”—aims to make environmental concern a matter of national pride and identity, not a partisan wedge.
• Real progress will require humility, coalitional thinking, and a willingness to put outcomes over headlines—or credit.

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This episode is essential listening for anyone who cares about bridging divides, leaving a conservation legacy, and making American nature a cause we can all claim as our own.

Transcript

[Benji Backer]

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[Steven Rinella]

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[Benji Backer]

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[Benji Backer]

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[Steven Rinella]

Hey, if you're familiar with archaeology or just trying to uncover the secrets of like remote jungled landscapes, you've probably heard of lidar. Well, lidar is now the newest addition to the Onyx Hunt Elite membership. The best way I can explain it is it basically makes your topo map look 3D. I've been using it to eyeball some places. I'm very familiar with a man. It brings it to life. Like, you know how if you're looking at a map, you might have little old logging roads that you just, you just don't see on a map because they're grown over. Well, man, they pop on this kind of thing. Go download the Onx Hunt app today and try their new LiDAR maps. It is amazing. It is a game changer.

[Benji Backer]

Foreign.

[Steven Rinella]

This is the Meat Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwearless.

[Cal]

The Meat Eater podcast.

[Steven Rinella]

You can't predict anything. Brought to you by first light. When I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First Light builds, no compromise. Gear that keeps me in the field longer. No shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out@first light.com. that's f I r s t l I t dot com. We're joined today by Benji Backer of Nature is Nonpartisan. And we're going to talk about can it be? You're just saying it is.

[Benji Backer]

It is.

[Steven Rinella]

You're just. That's the title is.

[Benji Backer]

I'm going to will it to existence.

[Steven Rinella]

And we're going to say is it. How. How can it be? How does it become, how does nature become nonpartisan? Meaning wildlife conservation, wildlands conservation? Can it, can it rise above the.

[Benji Backer]

Vitriol, the, the, the, the culture wars and the.

[Steven Rinella]

In the. The cycles? Yeah, I mean it has to get off again.

[Benji Backer]

It has to. That's why I created Nature is Nonpartisan.

[Steven Rinella]

I mean, because you just, you're saying it is. It is because People just need to realize it.

[Benji Backer]

People. Yes, exactly. We got to get out of our algorithms here and realize that it actually once was nonpartisan. Right. You look at history. The biggest environmental achievements, conservation achievements throughout history were immensely bipartisan. Nonpartisan. I've spent the last 10 years of my career. I'm 27. So I was started when I was a freshman in college. I. I started a nonprofit my freshman year of college, like a normal freshman does, and went around the country and saw that people actually wanted a lot of the same things. They want clean air, they want clean water. They want wildlife habitat to be conserved. They want to be able to hunt and fish. They also want to be able to hike and ski. They just want to be able to spend time outdoors. And you could be the trumpiest voter in the world, or you could be an AOC lover and anything in between, and you want those same things. And yet that's not reflected in our politics today. So we have to get this right. So by saying. I could say nature should be nonpartisan. A less compelling organization. Yeah, there's four. Four words there instead of three.

[Steven Rinella]

Ought to be, ought to be, same problem.

[Cal]

The NSBN is not a really compelling acronym.

[Benji Backer]

It's just espn. Too similar. Too similar. But, yeah, I mean, we. We feel like it should be. And so we're going to make sure that it is. That's the whole goal.

[Steven Rinella]

When we get into this, I want to talk about some of my favorite little facts. Did the epa. All stuff that came in under Nixon.

[Cal]

Dude.

[Steven Rinella]

And not only that. Yeah, and not only that. My other little favorite thing. Cal might remember the numbers on it when they passed the Wilderness act. Wasn't like 99 to 1 in the Senate or like, it was like. Not that someone should look that up.

[Benji Backer]

Phil.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, I mean, that's not something Phil's gonna look up.

[Randall]

I can try.

[Steven Rinella]

I know Phil's back there trying to memorize his line. I'm also. I'm switching cameras, making you look good, taking notes. I can look this up. He's back there. A farthing.

[Randall]

I'm gonna be thrilled when Steve learns another form of English currency.

[Steven Rinella]

Bill, you ever hear of a fellow named Bob Scratch it?

[Benji Backer]

Nope.

[Steven Rinella]

Bob Cratchit. Yep.

[Cal]

I like that you didn't play along there.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, you showed up in town at the wrong time. If you'd have showed up in town months from now, you'd be able to go see Phil and Christmas Carol.

[Benji Backer]

Oh, is he in it?

[Steven Rinella]

Doing little Dickens? Yeah.

[Randall]

Is he.

[Benji Backer]

Can he perform for us right now? Is it.

[Steven Rinella]

Is that playing do. Do a couple.

[Benji Backer]

Is that the halftime show?

[Steven Rinella]

You know what? What? What? Like, this is my nightmare. You know how every. Just.

[Randall]

It's not technically a one man show.

[Benji Backer]

Okay.

[Randall]

But he makes it seem as if it is. That's.

[Benji Backer]

He plays all the roles.

[Randall]

Yeah. Just follows him around.

[Steven Rinella]

Like, in movies, there's like a big line that an actor is excited about. Like, when you think of Bob Cratchit in your role, what line are you. Like, what line are you most excited to just.

[Randall]

Yeah, he's got a very emphatic hear, hear when. When. When. When Fred is trying to convince. Convince Scrooge of the joys of Christmas.

[Steven Rinella]

I'll be watching for that. And the only reason I bring that.

[Randall]

Up is because that's the only line I have memorized so far.

[Cal]

When I went to Phil's.

[Benji Backer]

You got time. You got a couple months.

[Cal]

When I went to Phil's.

[Steven Rinella]

More of a sound effect than a line, but go ahead.

[Cal]

At Phil's last play, he. I didn't really know what his role was. And I was reading the bill, you know, and he's like, all the way at the end of the bill, and then as the play goes on, I'm like, God, he's got all the lines. Like, he's got all the laughs. He's the main character.

[Steven Rinella]

But they jammed him in the back of the bill. Yeah. And I'm like.

[Cal]

Like I was. I was like, growing. As I realized how central his role was, I was growing more and more offended at Phil's placement in the bill. And it wasn't until two days later and I told him this, and he said, well, it was alphabetized.

[Steven Rinella]

Phil the engineer.

[Cal]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. So he was under T. He was under te.

[Cal]

But I thought it was like this grave injustice.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Cal]

I'm excited for this one.

[Steven Rinella]

Thank you. I'll tell you what, it's. Watch this segue. You know what? You know what? It ain't gonna be as good as Phil.

[Randall]

Let's hear it.

[Benji Backer]

Mmm.

[Steven Rinella]

The Christmas tour.

[Benji Backer]

Ah.

[Steven Rinella]

Should have guessed. You like that? That was good.

[Benji Backer]

I don't know.

[Steven Rinella]

They liked it. Not gonna be as good as the Christmas tour. Me Eater Live the Christmas tour. Coming to the American South. I wish I had all the cities in front of me.

[Cal]

Birmingham, Memphis, Nashville.

[Steven Rinella]

I do the dates and everything.

[Cal]

Gotcha.

[Steven Rinella]

How do I find that?

[Cal]

You go. If you go to themeater.com tour. No, you can see all the days.

[Steven Rinella]

Hang tight. Here it is. We're coming out. We're coming on the road. Brent Reeves will be there. He's in for the full tour. Clay Newcomb there. Dr. Randall will be there. Yanni, full tour. Special guests at every stop. December 17th, we're going to be in Birmingham, Alabama, at the Lyric. At that event, I will tell my story about taking a. A very paranoid two days I spent where I took a shotgun apart. And I was going from. On a Greyhound bus from Missoula, Montana, to Auburn, Alabama, to Duck Hunt. Very nervous about if they found out I had that gun. And we went into. And I'll tell my story about Birmingham, people are gonna think they found the gun.

[Benji Backer]

They never found.

[Randall]

Wait and see. Wait and see.

[Cal]

But the drama is.

[Steven Rinella]

But, yeah, it's just worth it. At the Lyric. December 17, Birmingham, Alabama, at the Lyric. December 18, Nashville, Tennessee, Marathon Music Works. December 19. You'll notice these all are just. These are all just every night. Phil's up here. Scrooge. And we're down in these places. What's that line? Here, here, here, here. You got it. December 19th. Did I do that yet? 18th, Nashville, Tennessee, at Marathon Music Works. December 19th, Memphis, Tennessee, Minglewood Hall. I've been texting with Will Primos. I believe that Will Primos is going to be. He's going to come to the Memphis show and he's going to give life advice that's delightful.

[Randall]

That will be delightful.

[Steven Rinella]

Top pieces of life advice from. From a man that has earned a position of giving that advice. December. We've been kicking around a couple things, like Clay wants Brent Reeves to hold a fish fry on stage every night. But the minute you tell the venue, then they. Then they're gonna have to be like, well, now we gotta get a fire marshal. That's hard. You know, we do the casting contest. We kind of want to do a blowgun contest, but not tell the venue.

[Cal]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Cause then they'll have to get a cop.

[Benji Backer]

Or, you know, but you just said it right now, so they might get it.

[Steven Rinella]

There'll be a fire marshal and a cop.

[Cal]

Wait, we should just find out if there's.

[Randall]

The beauty of our show is there's like, 0% of stage hands that listen to it.

[Steven Rinella]

So.

[Benji Backer]

Except for Phil's friends listen.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. No one from the venue. Oh, yeah. Phil's friends. Do your friends listen just to catch you on the show, Phil?

[Randall]

Definitely not.

[Benji Backer]

No.

[Steven Rinella]

December 20, Fayetteville, Arkansas, at Ozark Music hall, which I believe is sold out. December 21st, Dallas, Texas, Texas theater. December 22nd. And I believe we got. Jesse Griffith is coming out to hang out with this one, too. December 22nd, Austin, Texas, at the Paramount tickets are all on sale now.

[Benji Backer]

That's a good week. Every night, dude.

[Steven Rinella]

I know.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah. You're gonna need to have some Christmas after that.

[Steven Rinella]

Gonna go see my ma.

[Benji Backer]

Where's she at?

[Steven Rinella]

Michigan.

[Benji Backer]

Hey, I'm a Midwestern boy myself.

[Steven Rinella]

What state?

[Benji Backer]

Wisconsin.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, okay.

[Benji Backer]

Well, part of two of the three best Midwest states covered.

[Steven Rinella]

What part of Scotty?

[Cal]

Ohio was also at the table.

[Randall]

Benji's build's kind of similar to Chester. When he said Wisconsin, I was like, huh?

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah. When I said it.

[Steven Rinella]

You do look like little Chester.

[Benji Backer]

A little Chester? Yeah, little Chester.

[Steven Rinella]

Like a big chest dress. I meant little Chester.

[Benji Backer]

You look like a big Chester.

[Steven Rinella]

Like if Chester had had better ate.

[Cal]

His Wheaties and spinach better.

[Steven Rinella]

Like prenatal. I don't know.

[Randall]

Yeah, exactly.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm just thinking we had that guy on the. The Monteith about deer's moms.

[Cal]

The full expression of his genes.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah, I'm gonna take this as a compliment. I'm not quite sure yet, but like everybody here loves.

[Steven Rinella]

My buddy's on Montana. Say I look like a big Chester and they're like.

[Benji Backer]

I don't know what that means. Near Green Bay.

[Steven Rinella]

Great. Okay. So we're just. We're just like right across the lake.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah. I could have.

[Steven Rinella]

I could have shot over. We used to cross and we'd land over at Manitowoc. Exactly. God, it's got Knowles, Great Lakes.

[Randall]

Steve. The Wilderness act passed 73 to 12 in the Senate.

[Steven Rinella]

But then that's why I like to say 99 to 1. Well, here's pretty much.

[Cal]

It sounds a lot better.

[Randall]

It passed the House 374 to 1.

[Benji Backer]

See, that's what you were thinking.

[Steven Rinella]

That's even better binding them. Yeah, I was combining the legislative bodies into one and finding a sort of average.

[Randall]

The only nay being Joe Poole from Texas. And I can't figure out why I've.

[Benji Backer]

Been looking up, but is he still alive?

[Steven Rinella]

I feel that it might be. This is lower. I feel that he didn't feel it went far enough.

[Randall]

That optimist part of the spiel.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, for sure. I've talked about this a handful of times. I don't know if I have on the show or not. This is fitting because me and Randall been working on our. Our. The Hide Hunters. Our Meat Eaters Audio original or. Sorry. Meat Eaters. American History the Hide Hunters, which tells the story of the Begin. Okay, let me back up. Meters. American History the Hide Hunters tells the story of the buffalo hidehunters. It covers from 1865, so the year the Civil War ended. We explain why that's of significance up to 1883. And it tells about the, the, the, the, the men, the motivations, the skills, the justifications, the dangers. The dangers, the bloodshed, the untimely deaths involved in the men who killed the last 15 million buffalo off the American Great Plains ran that, ran that number from 15 million down to less than a thousand. In the US today, we have about, there's about a half million in existence. 94% are privately owned. That really needs to change. Maybe we'll touch on that. That should be a nonpartisan issue. But even that is partisan.

[Benji Backer]

Buffalo or nonpartisan.

[Steven Rinella]

We're covering buffalo.

[Benji Backer]

Buffalo are nonpartisan.

[Steven Rinella]

They should be. But recovering Buffalo.

[Benji Backer]

New organization.

[Steven Rinella]

Recovering the Buffalo as a partisan issue. And it's not fair because it's one of the few conservation achievements we could have by not, it's like, it's not by doing something, it's by not doing something.

[Cal]

Getting out of the way.

[Steven Rinella]

Like a lot of times you're like, oh God, it's a lot of work. But with this, it's like, it's kind of like not doing something would help the animals.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Anyhow, it's long winded way of saying we've been talking about this. So we have a new jerky out. We take our own jerky. So if you guys bought our cookbooks, we always have jerky recipes in our cookbooks and we have a new jerky out. Here's a package right here where we take our own recipes from our cookbooks and use them on American buffalo. So bison jerky. You can get it. You can go to. You can get it right now. It's been a lot of fun working on it. You can get it. You can, you can order your [e-mail] 100 Buffalo fueling the country for a long time. And then you can go read about.

[Benji Backer]

Do you taste tests on, on set here or.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, you want some? We do a mega taste test on set. You want classic pepper?

[Benji Backer]

Yeah, I think pepper.

[Steven Rinella]

Classic pepper.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah, Classic. Sorry, Classic. I'm having classic pepper. That newfangled pepper. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Try it out.

[Benji Backer]

It's not normal pepper, but you know.

[Steven Rinella]

When you start chewing on jerky, then you got to talk, it gets hard.

[Randall]

Just do it right into the microphone.

[Steven Rinella]

You enjoying, you enjoy them. It's a good morning jerky. Do you regret taking that out? It's a good early morning.

[Benji Backer]

I just want this part to be clipped. And that's it. You guys can end it now. Yeah, that's actually really good. Though.

[Steven Rinella]

No, it is good. It's great.

[Benji Backer]

That is solid.

[Steven Rinella]

No, I think it's fantastic. It turned out really well.

[Benji Backer]

Really, really good. That's not. That's not regular pepper right there. That is classic pepper right there.

[Steven Rinella]

We had a lot of back and forth. We finally got one that we love. One last little thing. Whitetail week is here right now. September 29th through October 5th. First Lights run their whitetail sale up to 40% off all kinds of gear. Oh, look at this. Here's a kicker. If you pick up a new whitetail jacket and bibs, first light will throw in a multi trail camera for free. Shop now firstlight.com.

[Cal]

How could you say no to that?

[Steven Rinella]

Here's.

[Randall]

Well, yeah, it's not just a multi trail camera. It's the first light camo. Multi trail camera.

[Steven Rinella]

That's what I got. I got one keeping an eye on my fish shack right now. That.

[Randall]

That's an interesting thing is like the Moultrie folks really just want you talking about hunting. And I'm like, the hunting stuff I don't worry about nearly as much as people breaking into stuff.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Randall]

And that's a great, great use of those trail cameras.

[Steven Rinella]

Doug has a sign coming into the buckshack. The farmhouse. It reminds. It's like a sign telling you that if you're breaking in, he already has your picture on his phone.

[Randall]

Yeah. He's got. In typical Doug form. There's some cutesiness about it too. Like. Like there's nothing in here worth the trouble.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Nothing in here worth the trouble you're gonna have.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, I'd argue that, but because he's got this. He's got this 12 pound sledgehammer head, no handle in it, that he uses to hold the bathroom door.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And I kind of want that sledgehammer head. How much trouble do you get in for taking something like that? It can't be like a lot.

[Cal]

So when you enter a window, is it to the left or right? As long as we're putting this out.

[Steven Rinella]

There going, I know, Go in. Go like, go in. Is it just like, like, just to the right?

[Cal]

Gotcha.

[Steven Rinella]

There's a bathroom door. There's a 12 pound sledgehammer head there propping the door. That I. Is just a waste of a beautiful sledgehammer head antique. I would tell people, dog's gonna have your picture. Yeah.

[Randall]

Don't start in the kitchen. The kitchen's like the width of the table.

[Steven Rinella]

Bypass the kitchen.

[Randall]

And it is so chocked full of junk from, you know, decades of people Thinking, oh, you could use an extra saucepan. But there's already nine different saucepans jammed in the back of this thing.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Anytime you go to put something away, there's just like this cascade of old aluminum and nonstick pans and tin and.

[Steven Rinella]

People are like they're holding it over their garbage can and they're like dabrid to dogs.

[Randall]

Yeah, exactly. Oh, it's infuriating.

[Steven Rinella]

Here's the, here's the interesting little fight brewing. We're only gonna do like one or two. I think we got one newsy thing we're gonna do. One's just funny. I'm gonna do the funny one first, so. Oh, did you guys see. Damn it. The. The Mississippi black panther. Yeah, that's funny. I'm not gonna get into it. A news story broke out in Maryland. I only caught it after it happened, but a woman got approached by a bear in Maryland. Okay. She ran from the bear and fell and got hurt. The bear never touched her, but she fell and got hurt. So there was like a bear, an injury. So the news cycle I guess very quickly was like attack. And then it was well self inflicted.

[Randall]

She felt there's a self inflicted bear injury related.

[Steven Rinella]

So you can go and find. If you felt like you can go and kind of track the sort of evolution of, of like what exactly the telephone game. What exactly went down that the phantom bear attack. Here's one that's more interesting. We, I'm bringing this up because we've covered this a bunch over the years and our very own Jordan Sillers just wrote a piece about it. Florida is my favorite story in the on the world. Years ago, Florida ran a bear hunt. Florida had many bears. If you go back historically, they over hunted them, they over poisoned them, they over predator controlled them to the point where they had very few bears. Bears have really recovered in Florida I think now. Like, you know, over 50 of the state has good bear populations. Years ago they ran a bear hunt and they ran a bear hunt in Florida. Do you mind pulling up what year that was? Randall? Randall's always bragging about how fast he is at researching.

[Randall]

Well.

[Cal]

Turn my wi fi on.

[Steven Rinella]

Years ago they opened a bear hunt and they did the management strategy of using a quota. And when you use a quota hunt, what it is, is you'd go and say, trying to think of the best way, the simplest way to put this. You say to your, you say to the people in your state, you're like, hey, we're going to have a bear hunt and the quota is 100 bears. So everybody could go the whole state. You all go hunting. As soon as you get one, call our hotline. And then when we get to like 98, we're gonna turn it off. Okay. And it's a quote. That's how a quota system functions. So everybody goes and you just count, count, count, count, and then bang. Many things are managed by quota. There's caribou herds in Alaska that are quota hunts where they like, you hit 200 and the region closes. In the state I'm in Montana right now. Montana runs quotas on mountain lions. They run cool bighorn sheep where anyone, anybody that wants can participate. It turns off when you hit the quota. And there's a little bit of a, there's a lag. There's a little art and science to it. Like you sort of watch your quota, its speed, and then, and then you usually have a little bit of a buffer to turn it off. Meaning if some guy is like drawn back on a, on a bighorn sheep and all of a sudden his phone dings and the quote is full. Right. But he doesn't look at his phone and shoots the big orange sheep, he's not trouble because they give a 48 hour buffer. So they go like the numbers climb and you're sort of watching the trajectory and you're watching your quota cap and, and you call it and you're like, okay, it's full. So in 48 hours, season's over. When Florida years ago tried this bear hunt.

[Cal]

2015.

[Steven Rinella]

2015, they tried a bear hunt. And they, in some of their areas, they shot past the quota very, very fast. Yeah, it blew everybody away. How fast the quota. Like they had some units where they blew past the quota.

[Randall]

And I just bring the speed up because I do think that's like a factor in the general reaction.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, I don't think they had any.

[Cal]

Idea in two days the, the statewide quota, because this doesn't really, this distorts like what actually happened. But the Statewide quota was 320, and in two days they'd killed 300. But because of the regional distribution of that, like some areas were way shot past.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And then you, you call it. And then I think that what happened to some of those areas is they called it, but there's a 24 hour window. And then during the 24 hours over the, they shot over the quota not enough to be of like, biological significance, but plenty enough to be of social significance. Because it was a very contentious issue. Like if you look, if there's a theme in Wildlife management. It would be that when you have a species that becomes imperiled and you stop hunting for that species because it comes imperiled and then over time you recover it, you will naturally, like, you're gonna have friction when you want to reinstate a hunt. Because people in their minds, for as far as they can remember back the bears, they're not around, like, how could we be hunted? I thought bears are imperiled and like, they're not recovered. And also now you're telling me we're going to hunt them. I've known my whole life that, that you can't hunt them because. Right. So you're going to have friction. Um, and that created a lot of friction. So much so that they just. It was. The agency was beat up on the whole thing. Again, biologically insignificant, but it was socially very significant that in some areas they went over the quota. And then Florida just said, okay, we're done with bear hunting. They're back. They're trying again now, which I fully support. They're trying again and this time they're using the other way you do this. The other way you do this is you say. You say, okay, everybody can't go. We're not going to do the everybody goes thing. And the quota we're going to do where only some of you get to go. And I think they're probably doing a quota too, right on top of that. Yeah, they have, they have an amount they want. They're issuing 187 bear permits. So now they know how many people are going to be a field. They're going to issue 187 bear permits. And what do they look at? I know they have some quotas in place. I can't find it here.

[Randall]

It's a. Right. So you're. What is it providing like tons of opportunity for? With the expectation that there's. It's theoretical opportunity. The expectation of actual opportunity is much, much lower. In that 2015 hunt, the state didn't properly estimate the actual opportunity in the field, meaning that a lot more people, who in theory wouldn't be successful were in a very short amount of time. And it's a great fundraising mechanism. Right. Because you get to sell a ton of permits. And this is just exactly how like wolf tags in the state of Montana function. Everybody buys a wolf tag. Very, very, very few people put in any actual effort to target wolves specifically. It's like a animal of opportunity versus strict pursuit.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, I buy them sons of every year and never do anything different.

[Randall]

Exactly.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah, exactly.

[Randall]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

This will, this will impact my behavior. 0 yeah, but then there's that other.

[Randall]

Group of people who are like, I am specifically dedicating time in the pursuit of wolves.

[Steven Rinella]

Cory Calkins, right?

[Randall]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Culkins.

[Benji Backer]

I can never remember.

[Randall]

He's happy either way.

[Cal]

He knows what you mean.

[Benji Backer]

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[Steven Rinella]

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[Steven Rinella]

So they're they're saying to 187 people, hey, instead of letting everybody go you 187 going, it's going to be easier to monitor this whole thing. And they have a thing. So you, you buy a. They're doing it through a lottery, democratic allocation, $5 lottery ticket. You buy as many chances as you want. Five bucks. If you draw though, then you got to buy the permit. So if you're so like, you win, well then to actually get your permit, then you got to come up with more money. So it's five bucks to get in. And if you draw, if you're a resident, Your permit is 100 bucks. If you're a non resident, your permit is 300 bucks.

[Cal]

Great deal.

[Steven Rinella]

Now here's where it gets. Here's where it gets saucy. The Sierra Club is pushing its members. Hey, save a bear. Buy all these lottery tickets.

[Benji Backer]

Wow.

[Steven Rinella]

And then don't use them if you win. Okay. And they're like, that's how we're going to save bears. Florida's attitude about this is you guys can buy all the tickets you want. That's great for conservation. You're generating all this thing.

[Benji Backer]

So they are a conservation organization again.

[Steven Rinella]

And if we don't hit the quota, then we know next year we're just going to release a lot more.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah, right.

[Steven Rinella]

So it's like it's going to back, you know. Okay. This is a thing that's been tried before.

[Cal]

Like, I don't know if you remember Wyoming grizzlies.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And the catch there years ago when they moved to D list Grizzly. Grizzly bears in Wyoming, they were going to do. Do you remember 24. They were issue 24 permits.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Randall]

I was a Idaho resident at the time, so I actually was in the drawing.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, you were in the draw for that one tag?

[Randall]

For the one tag, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And then in Wyoming, some guys went out and there was a big push to get non hunters to try to get the permit, but they never did the draw. So you never could wind up seeing. It'll be. It'll be interesting to. It'll be interesting to see. I could picture that, what they might do like if I was in Florida Fish and Games Shoes, the agency shoes for Florida Wildlife Commission, I guess is who approved the bear hunt rule. I would be wondering, should we. Should we make it a greater hurdle to enter? Meaning you gotta go and look. Let's say you gotta be licensed, fully licensed. You gotta go and take an online bear identification class so you learn how to tell a female with cubs.

[Cal]

Or like, would I like tag money?

[Steven Rinella]

Would I make it more of a.

[Benji Backer]

Pain in the ass to filter out.

[Steven Rinella]

The preservationists to filter out anti hunters. Or would I just really be like, no, I want all those $5. So they've sold.

[Cal]

They've sold more than 160,000 chances.

[Steven Rinella]

Have they?

[Cal]

Yeah. Florida has for 187 tags.

[Benji Backer]

Good for them. Good for conservation.

[Steven Rinella]

Someone could tell me a lot of what Fat Times $5 is.

[Benji Backer]

It's about a million.

[Randall]

I would.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Randall]

You can grow anything in Florida.

[Benji Backer]

Literally.

[Randall]

If I was one of those bear tag holders, that's what I would be concentrating. I'd be like, what mix of food do I want in the black bear? I'm going to target.

[Steven Rinella]

Oranges. Yeah.

[Randall]

Pineapple.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Randall]

Like we're. Yeah, they'd be excited.

[Cal]

Salon people.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, exactly. Yep. It's. Yeah, it's.

[Randall]

Have a Cuban pig ready to go before you even have to.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

My favorite word lately is it's a. It's a situation that's gotten frothy. I heard that in the market, like in the markets, listening to markets about the news.

[Benji Backer]

Frothy M a.

[Steven Rinella]

A lot of M and A activity out there. You'd be like, it's a frothy.

[Benji Backer]

Can you. One of your snacks. You should have be a frothy something.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, frothy. Classic frothy. Yeah.

[Randall]

We'll make it pepper as frothy.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah. I would say it's 25.

[Cal]

It's a frothy chew.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

What a final point on this. That's like a little bit sticky. I feel for Sierra Club is like, how is it cool for like, is it cool for Sierra Club to be. Is it cool for Sierra Club to be like, not only do we not support the state agency. Right. The state biologists and the state agency is doing this. Not only do we not support their mission, we're. We're promoting the idea that you try to like thwart.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. The effort, which seems to me like that's a. That's an aggressive play.

[Benji Backer]

They're always aggressive.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, that's an aggressive play.

[Benji Backer]

Their whole thing is being aggressive.

[Steven Rinella]

You think so? Oh, yeah, Yeah.

[Benji Backer]

I mean, they only raise money off of being aggressive. They're almost a billion dollar annual organization every year because they raise money off of being anti. Whatever the other groups are for. They actually want sort of this, this coverage even because really conflict sells.

[Steven Rinella]

Cut this, Phil.

[Benji Backer]

Conflict sells. They love that Donald Trump's president because they can raise all the money in the world of being against everything that he does.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Benji Backer]

And when things are good and you're solving problems, it's Harder to rile people up. They love riling people up. They're the problem, in my opinion.

[Steven Rinella]

It's funny. Bring that up, because Randall and I were talking yesterday about. I don't even want to kind of get into this, but we were talking about.

[Cal]

I'm glad you said that.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm just gonna be real quick about it. We're talking about Tylenol. Ah. Because just why would you.

[Randall]

Talking about.

[Steven Rinella]

As one does.

[Cal]

As one does on a Wednesday.

[Benji Backer]

Good marketing.

[Steven Rinella]

Trying to explain. Explain. And Randall is trying to capture. If I go onto social media and I want to find out how people feel about Tylenol, I will come away with a different impression of what people feel about Tylenol than I would if I was just going about my existence in life.

[Cal]

If you go to a coffee shop, hold up a newspaper and start eavesdropping, there are people pounding the table about Tylenol.

[Benji Backer]

I mean, at this point, we should start creating, like, pro Tylenol, anti Tylenol swag.

[Steven Rinella]

I know. I feel that a lot of people are actually out there thinking, like, huh, that's kind of weird.

[Benji Backer]

What side are you on? Take your pick. Your fighter.

[Steven Rinella]

When he takes the national temperature, he feels the national temperature. In spite of what was happening in the news, the national temperature was. Huh. I guess I'll go to work today.

[Benji Backer]

While our leaders are fighting about what? Tylenol.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. You follow?

[Benji Backer]

Yeah, I know, I know.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Benji Backer]

No, I followed it. Autism. And.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Randall]

I will point out the tag buying strategy. I know I've told you about this.

[Benji Backer]

Back to the bears.

[Randall]

The. A buddy of mine drew the Upper Rock Crick bighorn sheep tag when it was still good. And the jackasses who locked out all the public access in Upper Rock Creek weren't there. The There ran into two guys, father, son, who had drawn the Lower Rock Crick. Couple of the U tags.

[Steven Rinella]

Yep. And this is back in the days. They're just standing along the road.

[Randall]

Yes, exactly. Yep. And we're chatting with them and they're like, oh, we're non hunters. We just bought. We. We apply for tags and then we come out like wildlife watch. And this is how we save animals. And that was back in probably, I bet like 0405. Maybe.

[Steven Rinella]

They were pioneers, early adopters. Yeah.

[Randall]

So, I mean, it was. It has been a strategy in the past. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

It makes. I mean, it seems like you could take everyone on the planet and have them all forget everything and then have new people come. And I think those new people would quickly hit on the idea that this could be a thing one could do.

[Randall]

Oh yeah, for sure.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. You're like, huh.

[Randall]

Yeah. Well, I mean, we were just talking about this. I missed the big party last night because at the public land water access.

[Steven Rinella]

I was able to track your movements through a way that you would never anticipate.

[Randall]

Oh, you're next door to my iPhone.

[Steven Rinella]

My neighbor is on the board.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

So I knew where you were before you knew where you were.

[Randall]

That was great. Yeah, we. We chatted for a little bit. But you could. I brought up in my talk last night, I'm like, you know, this public lands fight, you know, these people fought this in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and people were like, well, I thought we just won that. Right? You know what I mean?

[Benji Backer]

No. Like this has happened before. Yeah. It will happen again sooner than we'd like.

[Steven Rinella]

Cal. It's on a 10 year cycle, I think Cal thinks. Yeah.

[Randall]

Well, that's. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

10 snowshoe hairs. It's like snowshoe hares. Plus three years.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah. It's gonna happen sooner again. Oh, I know. So. Unfortunately.

[Steven Rinella]

All right, first off, man, give us some background. You're from Green Bay.

[Benji Backer]

Yep. Go back.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Is it Benjamin?

[Benji Backer]

Benjamin Packer?

[Steven Rinella]

Benjamin. So when you shorten most guys go all the way down to Ben.

[Benji Backer]

Ben. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

No, but I want to kept some.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah, I kept a little extra, a little tail there called G. Ben G. Yeah. I second grade woke up and I said, I don't want to. Ben. Benjamin's too long, so. Benji it is, but I like it. Thanks. Yeah, I grew up in, in Green Bay and I watched John McCain and Barack Obama debate in 2008 and said, I want to be part of that for.

[Steven Rinella]

How old are you?

[Benji Backer]

10.

[Steven Rinella]

You weren't like, I want to be a detective.

[Benji Backer]

Right. Or a sports announcer or, you know, an NFL player. NFL player. I'm five, nine. There's no way I'm becoming an NFL player. But yeah, I was like, I really want to be part of the civic process. And so I started, I asked my parents, who were not political at all, can we go. Can I go door knocking for. For John McCain? And they were like, that is the weirdest thing that you could ask us to do. And my parents were not political at all. And they did not want to have signs in their yard or bumper stickers in their cars or any of that stuff. And I just was like, allured by the process. And so I became super active in high school in conservative politics and spoke at cpac. My freshman year of high school was on Fox News. For the first time, my freshman year of high school. Had a really good Bieber haircut. My Wisconsin accent was really intense and I knew nothing about what I was doing, obviously, but I cared a lot about America was really what it came down to. And I wanted to be a part of solving complex problems. But I have since grown more and more disillusioned with politics and I hate the two party system. I hate the political system that we're working within and I hate how it's impacted the environment and conservation. Because at the same time that I was strangely volunteering for John McCabe and Mitt Romney, I also was an avid hiker, avid skier, was fishing every weekend in the summer with my grandpa. My parents were vegan, so.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, wow.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah. So I was the only meat eater in my family. So I'm like the resident meat eater in my family. So it's nice to be in a meat eater.

[Steven Rinella]

Were your parents right leaning?

[Benji Backer]

My parents were just, I think like most people were just like, whoever has the best ideas, they're gonna vote for. Like they were practical, practical fiscal conservatives. They voted for McCain and Romney, but like, they were definitely like independent voters. And my sisters are liberal. And I grew up in a very, like, politically diverse family. But we all got along and we all loved each other. And I. So I was frustrated with politics. I loved the environment and I also realized that people could actually get along and that the country that I was seeing crumble politically and it's still getting worse was not representative of the people itself. Like, the people themselves don't want that to happen. And they're not as polarized, they're not putting each other in such boxes. And so that's kind of how I got to being more of, you know, trying to bridge the divide on conservation and the environment. Because if there's one issue that should transcend party lines, that should get action regardless of who wins, it should be conservation of the environment like it used to. So I transitioned to that my freshman year of college. Tweeted out that I was gonna start a nonprofit to get this going as.

[Steven Rinella]

A freshman in college.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I knew when you did it that you were young, but I hadn't thought about the fact that you're also being in college.

[Benji Backer]

18. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Because normally it's like, well, I'm in freshman college and I have to drink a lot. And then that's kind of my schedule.

[Benji Backer]

Girls drinking, you know, I gotta have.

[Steven Rinella]

Time to hang out.

[Cal]

Pretty standard.

[Benji Backer]

Smoking weed.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm having a hard time finding hangout time.

[Benji Backer]

Right. I Was starting environmental policy nonprofits instead.

[Steven Rinella]

Where were you at school?

[Benji Backer]

University of Washington. So I searched the best business school, best business schools in America, and went down the list to the first one that was in a place that I could hike and ski on the weekends. And University of Washington was like, probably like 40th on the list of best business schools, but it was the closest to where I wanted to recreate. So the Cascades, obviously beautiful national parks out there. And that's really why I went there. So then I started it out there and I started, you know, and like registered.

[Steven Rinella]

A nonprofit.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah. I first started a pack cause I had no idea what I was doing. And I was.

[Steven Rinella]

We've all done that.

[Benji Backer]

Just me, 18 looking up. So what's the quickest way to start a nonprofit? Well, a pack gets approved right away.

[Cal]

Classic freshman year mistake.

[Randall]

Oh yeah. You look, wake up and you look at all the texts that you sent out that you don't remember and then you're like, oh my God, one of those nights that I said, I love you guys.

[Steven Rinella]

How is your week? Did we start a pack last night?

[Benji Backer]

I highly recommend because there's basically zero barriers of entry.

[Steven Rinella]

I didn't know this. I mean, I know, I know what it is, but I didn't know that. Is it designed to be fast?

[Benji Backer]

It shouldn't be, but like if you want to start. If you want an 18 year old accidentally starts a pack and he suddenly is the owner of a pack and then there's no, like, like the IRS checks 501c3s, traditional non profits. It takes like a year to approve that. A packet's approved literally overnight.

[Steven Rinella]

Help people. So I, I mostly know what you're talking about, but just help people understand like what you mean, like.

[Benji Backer]

So there's different designations.

[Steven Rinella]

Political action committee.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah, there's different designations.

[Steven Rinella]

They're ephemeral, right? Like because you can, they're very responsive to. I mean like, like a race heats up, you get a nominee and then all of a sudden there's all these packs, right? And some of them are meant to dissolve.

[Benji Backer]

That's because there's a lot of 18 year olds starting packs.

[Randall]

Most visibility, right, for the normal person is that fine print that says paid for by.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Cal]

Concerned citizens for Montana Victory 2024.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No one knows who it is. In this case it was me. But you know, it's. It's basically a political action committee. There's a super PAC and a pac, but it's a government designation of what you can do with the money. When someone donates it. And so like a 5, 1C 3, which is like the Red Cross and like all the big nonprofits that you're aware of, that's tax deductible to a donor. They can't do any political activity at all. A pac, you do not get a tax deduction when you donate. And it strictly is going to be to support candidates like you are supporting political candidates. There's no educational part of it. It's, it's, it's a political organization. And so I was like, wait a second, I'm trying to like bridge the divide on the environment. I'm not trying to like donate to candidates. So then I quickly shuttered the weekend mistake.

[Randall]

But a pack is, it would be, is a 501C4, right?

[Benji Backer]

So that's very complicated. But no, because if I want C4, this is like, this is like point 100 of the things that you don't wish you knew at age 27, the difference between the C4 and the pack. But a C4 is a non taxable organization that can lobby, but they don't really donate. You can donate to candidates, but it's like a certain percentage. A PAC is strictly to get people elected. And that was not my goal.

[Cal]

It's a money funnel.

[Benji Backer]

It's a money funnel and it's basically so people can't trace the money to dark money. It is honestly dark money. And it's like anyone can donate and then it's not traced back to them and no one knows where the money came from. So the whole nonprofit space is very complicated. And I think it probably is designed partially that way. The money in politics thing is its own really big issue.

[Steven Rinella]

What was your pack?

[Benji Backer]

Conservatives for environmental reform. And basically my original goal was to get conservatives back to the table on the environment because I watched Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton debate, and Hillary Clinton had a radical plan for the environment that I didn't agree with that was like shut down industry, very preservationist, wasn't about hunting or fishing or anything with the outdoors. It was largely just climate, climate, climate, but on the extreme end. And then Donald Trump was like, none of these problems exist and we shouldn't do anything about them. And he had no plan. I was like, what the hell am I supposed to do? And I leaned right. So I was like, I got to get conservatives back to the table.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh.

[Benji Backer]

So that's kind of the origin story of what became the American Conservation Coalition, which I still started my freshman year just after the PAC mistake.

[Cal]

Second semester. You always turn things around, turn IT.

[Benji Backer]

To the 5 1C3 and that organization now has 100,000 members across the country, has big staff, does a lot of work in D.C. and is strictly focused on getting conservatives active on the environment. But to me, that wasn't far enough because to me, it's not about the labels. Like the rational majority of Americans across the political spectrum, as I opened saying, want the same things. And I don't care if it's Martin Heinrich or Tim Sheehy or Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. We gotta figure out how to get shit done no matter who's in office and what the political wins are in that moment. And we have to show politicians that Americans want this, not just conservatives and not just liberals. We need to show them that Americans across the spectrum want action. So I thought getting conservatives at the table was helpful. But there's no organization in this country right now that has an impact no matter who wins. The Sierra Club, even the Nature Conservancy, any of these traditional environmental groups. They're only relevant when Democrats win. And the organization I started in college is only relevant when Republicans win. What about an organization that's just trying to move consistent conservation through no matter what, and no matter who you are politically, you want to be a part of that movement. And that's the vision of nature as nonpartisan. So it kind of went from a PAC mistake to a conservative group to now building upon that to try to build a nonpartisan movement in America again.

[Steven Rinella]

You can make a difference in someone's.

[Benji Backer]

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[Steven Rinella]

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[Benji Backer]

They also provide paid time off and opportunities for overtime.

[Steven Rinella]

Visit Oregon Home Care job to learn more and apply.

[Benji Backer]

That's OregonHomecareJobs.com.

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[Steven Rinella]

Let's start with the, let's start with the, the polar opposite. So what year was it? 2016. 20, I guess 2015.

[Benji Backer]

Yep. That was my senior year of high school, freshman year.

[Steven Rinella]

Where you had two visions.

[Benji Backer]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

One. One being a vision of denial.

[Benji Backer]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

One being a vision of offering a fix that isn't going to get widespread buy in. Yeah.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I could picture that if you were. I could picture that if you were a staunch Democrat because of all their other planks in their platform that you might say, man, I need to go get my party to start getting more in line with middle America.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

So that we can win and I can get my other policy pieces at play.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Like we're losing on the same way you might say in 20 in the last election cycle. Like if you were, if you were, if you're sitting there thinking, man, the tax structure in America is whacked. Corporations should be paying way more taxes, the poor should be paying way less taxes. But that's never going to happen because our party is going to continue to get slammed.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

On DI issues.

[Benji Backer]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

I need them to stop it about that so we can stick to the things that, that, that most the country, like, that's our Achilles heel.

[Benji Backer]

Right, Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Like I can picture that. But what I, what's hard for me to picture is the process of saying that, like to be like, I'm a conservative, I want bigger environmental presence within my party.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

I want them to come around. In my way of thinking, I feel.

[Benji Backer]

That that would be like very private for the politicians.

[Steven Rinella]

For you.

[Benji Backer]

Oh, for me, I feel like that's you having meetings with politicians.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Because you can't burn them.

[Benji Backer]

See, but you feel it.

[Steven Rinella]

You, like, you can't publicly burn them.

[Benji Backer]

Well, now, the same way if I.

[Steven Rinella]

Was doing my whole thing, I might go and say, hey, listen, tone it down, tone it down. Unlike ath, like, who plays on what team, See.

[Benji Backer]

But I, I could do, I could do that, I could do that. But that's not morally right to me. I could be in the Trump administration right now or have some really high up position if I just played the game. I don't care about playing the game.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Benji Backer]

I wanna get conservation outcomes and so I'm willing to be bolder because of that and I'm willing to take on both sides because of you. Shine a spotlight, right? Like, hey, you guys are fricking weak here and you're losing people. And by the way, I'm not afraid to say you should lose people because you don't have an environmental plan. You should lose people because you don't care about conservation. You should lose people because you don't have any plan for clean air, clean water, but yet you use those terms in your speeches, right? Like you say you want clean air and clean water, but yet you're rolling back some of the most important regulations and policies in American history. I'm not afraid to say that because I don't care about who. I actually don't care about who wins. In high school, I might have cared. I spoke at SeaPac and Stuff, but I do not care who wins. I'm an environmentalist, conservationist, nature lover person who wants to protect wild places and allow people to go hunt fish, recreate in them so that we can also have a healthy livelihood. More than I care about any political identity. And I think most people, when they think about this issue, do think about it that way. So people think. I mean, in the last couple weeks, I've. The. This famous EPA transition guy for Trump just wrote a big hit piece on me that I was like this Trojan horse at Climate Week, just trying to promote the Green New Deal. And I get told that I'm all the time some like, MAGA guy. It's because I don't really care. Like, we're quite familiar with this, you guys, you guys definitely get that.

[Steven Rinella]

We're quite familiar with your. Like, everyone, like, you get in the box.

[Randall]

Get in the box.

[Benji Backer]

And I don't want to be in the box. Yeah.

[Cal]

So don't you say anything. Just get in the box.

[Benji Backer]

And just say what we want you to say. But that would work. I mean. So I've been starting to talk about this a little bit more because of the light of recent events. I co founded, and I've never said this on a podcast before, but I've. I co founded Turning Point USA with Charlie Kirk.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, okay.

[Benji Backer]

In 2012, I was 14 years old. So just, it was a long time ago. The organization was supposed to be about young people standing up to the government to prevent the national debt from getting worse.

[Steven Rinella]

That was the turning point.

[Benji Backer]

Yes, that was the founding origin of turning Point.

[Steven Rinella]

Like, you guys are going to really stick it to. You're really sticking it to Us, Right.

[Benji Backer]

Our generation.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Later, like, at some point, we're going.

[Benji Backer]

To have to tackle this.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. At some point, you're creating a real headache for us. So please make my future not so tenuous.

[Benji Backer]

Exactly. So Charlie and I had this vision for that Charlie, that was a very tragic event, and it was a very perfect opportunity to see how divided our country is becoming, which is a huge problem. But what Charlie saw was that there is an opportunity in playing into the political culture war. Right. If I wanted to be a part of the culture war for the sake of telling people how to win voters or how to get people a part of our team or box, I'd be doing things so much differently than I am, and I could have many times, but it is ruining our country and it's ruining conservation as well. And so for me, when I wake up every morning, I think of how much progress can I make given the political shit that we're in? Because for the first time in a long time, our environment is getting worse in America again. We actually solved a lot of big problems for a very long time. We. We funded public lands. We had the Clean Air act and Clean Water act take care of really bad problems in our cities and in our rivers. We had the Endangered Species act, which was effective for a couple of years. There is sorely ineffective. Wildfires are getting worse, Public lands are getting worse. The management of our ecosystems is getting so much worse. Our water quality is getting worse. And you know what? The byproduct of all that is, is because it is the byproduct of the division that we're seeing, because no one actually has an incentive to solve problems. They have an incent to feed the culture wars. And until we change that incentive, at least on this, I can't promise that we can change it on every issue. But until we create a movement that just says, we expect you to get shit done and we're not gonna vote for you if you don't prioritize conservation, that's actually the part that we should be saying out loud. That's the part that we should be saying out loud, because it's not just about killing animals for recreation and hiking and skiing and all the things that we all love. Right? It's not just about that. The health of our environment is about the health of us too. And right now, we are failing miserably. And the left doesn't care. And the right doesn't care. They care about winning the next election. And that is where the root of our environmental problems comes from. And So I say that to say I could go down this path of playing into the culture wars, but I wouldn't be sitting at this table right now and I absolutely wouldn't be fighting for our environment because it's way easier to make a name for yourself and get power and get, you know, influence right now off of doing things completely differently. But at some point, at some point, Americans are gonna wake up and realize that the system right now is screwing us all and it's also screwing up our environment.

[Steven Rinella]

I just wanna back up comment on a thing you brought up with just how hot, like how heated the, how he did the online. I always want to point this out, how he did the online experiences.

[Benji Backer]

Oh, totally.

[Steven Rinella]

Now for Charlie Kirk.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

It wasn't an online experience.

[Benji Backer]

No.

[Steven Rinella]

That was a way that online, like.

[Benji Backer]

Became a bullet in real life. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And like killed a man.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Do you know what I'm saying? I have this thing and I brought it up. I brought it up to 10 guests talking about various things. I think I was most recently talking about with Sebastian Younger, where I'm like, there's what I understand to be true about the climate in America from social media, the news, and then there's what I understand to be true about America from being an American.

[Benji Backer]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

From going about my business.

[Benji Backer]

There's a major disconnect there. Right.

[Steven Rinella]

I had, I met someone for breakfast this morning.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

The, the conversations we had on the street with people, the interactions we had with the people that were working there, like the whole picture. I would never come out of my morning right. Being like, good Lord, everyone's. The country's falling apart.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I'd be like, this seems like a wonderful country.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

This is, this America. This is awesome. Being an American. But then I go and look about.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

What it is. And it's red hot. And, and, and with, with Charlie Kirk, it like. I was like, man. And many other examples. This one's because it's fresh. With Charlie Kirk, I was like, man, they collide. They are, they collide. And then.

[Benji Backer]

And we're manifesting it to become. It used to just be an online thing. I used to get. I got death threats in high school for what I was doing politically.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Benji Backer]

I had, I could picture that. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Because people don't like. Because it's. It's too unexpected.

[Benji Backer]

Right. It's too unexpected.

[Steven Rinella]

When I see a woman that killed a lion in Africa, that.

[Benji Backer]

That's going to go viral for the.

[Steven Rinella]

More than a. More than 10 year old. Even more.

[Benji Backer]

Making phone calls and my Voice hadn't even changed yet. Okay. I was just a little boy. But yeah, they're the chronically online world, which is so disconnected from reality. I mean, I had breakfast with Van Jones yesterday in New York City. The big social justice liberal commentator.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Benji Backer]

CNN guy.

[Steven Rinella]

I didn't recognize that name.

[Benji Backer]

CNN host. Yeah, but he's black social justice guy. We don't. He's one of my best friends. I don't talk to him about politics. I just love him as a human, you know, like. And my mom's like, oh, you know, what issues did you guys talk about? I'm like, we literally didn't. He was just giving me advice on how to be a better leader. And we were just talking about life and his girlfriend, his fiance and all that stuff. That is how most of America actually operates on a day to day basis. Yeah, but then you look online and you see what. But we're becoming a chronically online nation. I mean, you look at the average screen time in this country and it's not people looking at Candy Crush. Right. It's people looking at Twitter and Instagram and feeding themselves the worst information. And we are convincing ourselves that everyone else is actually evil, like Hitler level evil for both sides to think about their side. So it is colliding now. For a while it was just like, oh, yeah, just turn off the social media. It's just, it's not that bad in real life. Well, it's becoming that bad in real life because we're manifesting it.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Because there's some dude on a roof with a gun.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Cal]

And it only takes one. It only takes one to bring it.

[Benji Backer]

Out of bleed over.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

And man, it has a. Yeah, it, like it's been. I brought that up as a preamble to say I got a 15 year old. The insanity that he comes home and he's, you know, he comes home and.

[Randall]

Just like, it's like, dad, here's some solid facts. I know.

[Steven Rinella]

Just, it's not even that. It's more like a.

[Benji Backer]

What do you.

[Steven Rinella]

He kind of comes home with like, what do I make of this?

[Benji Backer]

Right?

[Steven Rinella]

And just the insane things, the insane things that are being spun on out of that. It just this long preamble led me to like, I hit a point a week, like some time ago. A week ago, I hit a point where I'm like, dude, I am like, I was like, I am ready at my age, I am ready to just. I'm. I'm going to step away from discourse.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I mean, I'm Not. But for a minute, I. For the first time in my life, I was like, I just don't want to talk to anybody anymore. Like, I don't want to participate in the discourse anymore. I just want to be the guy that only knows about who he runs into.

[Benji Backer]

I.

[Steven Rinella]

The hardware store.

[Benji Backer]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

It's like, I'll go to the hardware store because that's going to be cool.

[Benji Backer]

We have to bring that back.

[Steven Rinella]

I'll go wherever. I'll go to my buddy's party, because that's going to be cool.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

But I can't do anything. It didn't last. And it's not for real. But I just. I had a point where I'm like, I'm just done, man. Like, I'm done. Because that style of. Of that style of debating or that style of, like, exploring ideas is like, it's rational conversation. Hey, like, I understand what you're saying, but I don't agree.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Is pass a. Yeah.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah. That's. It's absolutely not the norm anymore. And. And I feel like.

[Steven Rinella]

So, like, do you give up?

[Benji Backer]

No.

[Steven Rinella]

You know what I'm saying?

[Benji Backer]

Like, I think we got to play the game.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. What's the game?

[Benji Backer]

The game is, let's talk about the environment.

[Steven Rinella]

How do you play the game?

[Benji Backer]

We have to create a similar movement around culture shifting for conservation that is in people's social media networks, it's in their communities, it's around them. Because we are not going to beat the algorithm. We're not going to change people's tendencies to log on to social media whenever there's a break in their day, at least not anytime soon, and see the worst news imaginable. We have to figure out how to meet people, where they're at and help people understand that there's something they can advocate for. Right. Instead of just being like, oh, my God, I hate this person. I hate this person. I hate this person.

[Steven Rinella]

Is that me?

[Randall]

No, that was me.

[Benji Backer]

Sorry, guys. Thought I was. That's his song.

[Randall]

Wow.

[Benji Backer]

You got a little tune to that.

[Cal]

It bleeds over sometimes.

[Steven Rinella]

You know what? I guarantee, I guarantee he goes in and takes that out of the show.

[Randall]

Just to prove you wrong. It's not gonna happen. I'm on do not disturb it. My one person I let through is my wife. And so I'll throw her. How dare you.

[Steven Rinella]

Just breaks the whole flow during the show.

[Randall]

Yeah. Kind of piggyback a little bit off of what Steve said, but also just the.

[Benji Backer]

The.

[Randall]

There is a need. I see. Well, is. It's going to be Complicated. I, I push back on the fact that like concert established conservation groups aren't making stuff happen under every administration. I mean they are maybe like the. Is the win that we're getting not an actual win. A lot of times I believe that for sure. Like I think if we are looking in terms of like oh my gosh, the Democrats did this, that's such a win. That's not a win. If we're looking in terms of like, okay, the Republicans did this, I agree, that's a win. That's not a win.

[Benji Backer]

I agree.

[Randall]

The win is when it's. There's certain things like the health of our natural resources are just this non starter for every political party. Like it's assumed that these things have got to have a certain level of health and management because it does tie into national defense, the health of individuals within our country, mental and physical and our food production and all the things like it does.

[Benji Backer]

But I would say the groups that are currently out there, there are so many good organizations, many of whom we both work with, but it's not getting the job done. And what I mean by that is there is no cultural movement in America that's telling politicians they should take the environment seriously as America, like as Americans. Like the Human Rights Campaign, for example, you might disagree with gay marriage or you might love gay marriage. They showed politicians they had a national campaign, their bumper stickers are still on people's cars all over the country. That it was an expectation for almost all Americans that equality was important there. That's how they got it done. And obviously this is a different issue because it's not just like one landmark thing that we need to get accomplished. We need continuous. But there was a national unified expectation of conservation 30 years ago that does not exist right now. So. And that is not the failure of these organizations. But it's not working. The current movement is not working. And the vast majority of people who do reach out for conservation of the environment are left of center people, whether we want to admit that or not. And until we make it left, center and right until we show, no matter if you're a Republican or a Democrat, this was an expectation of Americans that we're going to continue going down this trajectory where we don't get the policies that we need. And actually even worse, we get the policies that none of us want, which is what we've been getting over the last year. And it's because there's not an expectation of pushback. The only time that I've seen it since I became active in this space where it's actually worked is this public land sell off where you had people from across the political spectrum saying, no, over my dead body, you're gonna sell this land. Right. But we haven't had a unified front like that on the environment for decades. And we can try to push behind the scenes. And, you know, like, I love TRCP and TU and I know, you know, Chris and Joel and all these are great people running great organizations, but there's no national movement that represents what they believe is your.

[Cal]

As far as, like, what you're doing. That's not that groups like TRCP aren't, aren't doing currently. You're talking about a coalition that expands beyond the hunter. Because I think the hunter angler space has, is unique in that it's, it has that bipartisan angle.

[Benji Backer]

It's expanding that.

[Cal]

If I think beyond the hook and bullet, I am, I am having a hard time thinking beyond the hook and bullet groups.

[Steven Rinella]

What.

[Cal]

Like environmental policy groups have that same bipartisan influence?

[Randall]

Because, like, I'll give you an example. Right. Like, I, I believe very strongly in the work that Pheasants Forever, Quail Forever does. Right. And. And it's like, not super sexy working on the farm bill. Right.

[Benji Backer]

Right. Those groups are already there. Right. And they do great stuff, but the culture in America is not there.

[Randall]

And here's the example is like, it's getting late in the election cycle.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Randall]

All of a sudden it's announced all over media that both parties need hunters.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Hunters are underrepresented in their demographics, their research. We need hunters at the polls. And here's this push from the Biden campaign at that point.

[Benji Backer]

Right. With Tim Waltz, it was, it was.

[Randall]

The Biden campaign at that point. Yeah. And then. So it was like Biden Harris for hunters. And then, and then the Trump campaign was pushing out hunter specific language as well. And then there's the annual governor's hunt.

[Benji Backer]

Yep.

[Randall]

In Minnesota. That Pheasants Forever is always a part of. Doesn't matter what political affiliation the, the standing governor or current governor has. And that got kind of turned into like a Biden Harris.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Hunter moment.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Randall]

That had nothing to do with Pheasants Forever.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Randall]

And they just got absolutely shellacked.

[Benji Backer]

They still are.

[Randall]

And still are. Yeah. And they're, they're made to like, be the enemy now. Swallow this.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Rhetoric in order to, quote, unquote, be in the room when it's like our history, our track record says we will work with anybody in order to, to fulfill the mission. And the mission benefits everybody, by the way.

[Benji Backer]

Yep.

[Randall]

And the pushbacks on the organization that has this established track record of nonpartisanship. The pushback's not on the politicians that manifested all this bs, Right.

[Benji Backer]

That's true. And. But the political tenor of the conversation. Hitching your wagon to anybody politically right now is risky, Right. I mean, pheasants forever saw that, and they shouldn't have been taken, you know, to the, to the court for that. They should have had Tim Waltz there. And that's not a big deal. Like, it shouldn't be seen that way. But I go back to the fact that, like, this public land sell off was almost a godsend in terms of giving an example of what I'm trying to build, which is you had millions of people for the first time in years, like you did when there was smog in the cities across the country, like we did when there were rivers on fire in Ohio. Right. You had millions of people saying, I don't give a shit what my political belief is. And honestly, I voted for you, Mike Lee, but I'm not for this. That's the cultural movement that we need. And so I don't know how to change that specific pheasants forever situation, because that's very unfortunate and they don't deserve that.

[Randall]

I guess succinctly. Right. I'm like, the issue's with the politicians, right?

[Benji Backer]

The issue is with the politicians, but they're also.

[Randall]

They're the ones who are hitting the clickbait button.

[Benji Backer]

We're also falling for that, right? As a populace.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Benji Backer]

And that's part of the problem, too.

[Randall]

And so how do you break up that cycle?

[Benji Backer]

Well, the. The issue is like, Tim, the environment. Right? Now, if you ask the average person on the street who owns the environmental issue, almost everyone would say Democrats.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, yeah, man, everyone.

[Benji Backer]

So we, like, use that word. Right. But even conservation people associate. We've done polling and focus grouping. People associate these words, conservation, environmentalist, environment, stewardship, anything related to the environment as liberal, coded as Democrat coded words.

[Steven Rinella]

And so, yes, some more than others.

[Benji Backer]

Right. I completely agree. But we've got to change that because, like, all these words are being weaponized intentionally and unintentionally for people's gains, whether that be clickbait or for campaigning. And, you know, in the same way that, like, stand up for cancer or stand up to cancer or the human rights campaign or the Got Milk campaign, like, we need to show politicians that there is a cultural movement to help create space for the pheasants. Forever. And the ducks and limiteds and the TRCPs and the great organizations that are out there to do the work that they need to do. Because right now it's basically Republicans are fearful of associating with any conservation groupies. They are scared of being seen as liberal and the left is scared of the far left coming at them for not going far enough on like climate stuff.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Benji Backer]

And so again, it's creating the cultural space and we, and there's so many great local organizations out there already. There are, they're already there. There's so many great topical based organizations out there. They're already there, but in the way that like the Sierra Club or NRDC or these groups could have been like the face of America's environmental movement. Conservation movement, rallied people together for common sense conservation. But didn't we need to create that? And I would say I don't have every way of getting there yet, but someone's got to try because the current environmental culture is not working for us. And there's no space for politicians to see that they have to get something done except for the public land sell off as like literally the first example in like a decade.

[Randall]

Yeah, I see and I see this within the environmental space, within the, the non profit space of a real disconnect with the end consumer. Just as I see it in the political realm. The week of land sell off language going into the House. Right. We were up on, on Capitol Hill talking with everybody we could. Super packed schedule.

[Benji Backer]

Yep.

[Randall]

And it was like, hey, don't worry, not going to happen. But you heard over and over again the exact same lines from everybody. And by the way, we're not going to sell national parks. Don't worry. Right.

[Benji Backer]

Oh, thank God.

[Randall]

As, just as, just as it I've.

[Steven Rinella]

Ever hear that like, oh, we're not talking about national parks. I, trust me, I didn't think you were.

[Benji Backer]

Thanks for confirming what I already knew.

[Randall]

And the, you know, it's frustrating but eye opening too, where you're like, okay, something is going on.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Randall]

Because everybody seems to have the exact same talking points and they have no knowledge of the fact that the people that are starting to push back right now have no interest in the national parks or very little interest. Not because they don't care, but the assumption is parks are going to be safe.

[Benji Backer]

Right. I mean, I had a senior official in the Trump administration tell me, hey, like Americans won't get upset about this because Americans just care about national parks and national park health. And I was like, do you realize.

[Steven Rinella]

Bad bit of intel.

[Benji Backer]

Have you like a quick chatbots or a quick, you know, you're good at research. It sounds like very quickly you could have helped, you could help them with this. You know, there's more Recreationists in U.S. forest Service land and BLM land than there are in national parks every year. So they were missing the boat. But there is again, a real disconnect between the politics and the public on conservation right now. I mean, it was, but it was really uplifting to see like far right militia leaders and far left climate activists literally stand together and but usually think.

[Steven Rinella]

Of the word uplifting to be with.

[Benji Backer]

Either one of those, either one of.

[Steven Rinella]

Those groups.

[Benji Backer]

That'S replicable. Yeah, that is replicable, though, because it's not just about public lands and hunting and fishing. It's also about clean water and more efficient agriculture and forest health and wildlife conservation and like clean air. Like we could rally people in a similar diverse coalition. And that's what I'm saying hasn't existed in a while. And so there's it would create it create. It created space to kill the bill or that part of the bill. But it also could create space to do the right thing, too. And that's the vision that I have. You can make a difference in someone's.

[Randall]

Life, including your own, with a job in home care.

[Benji Backer]

These jobs offer flexible schedules, health care.

[Steven Rinella]

Retirement options and free training.

[Benji Backer]

They also provide paid time off and opportunities for overtime. Visit oregonhomecarejobs.com to learn more and apply. That's oregonhomecarejobs.com.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. Spooky season is quickly approaching, so time to stock up on all your favorite treats. Now through October 7th, you can get early savings on your Halloween candy favorites when you shop in store and online. Save on items like Hershey's, Reese's Pumpkin, Snickers miniatures, Tootsie Rolls, raw sugar milk chocolate, caramel, Jack O' Lanterns, Brock's Candy, Corn Charms, Mini Pops, and more. Offer ends October 7th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.

[Jacob Goldstein]

This is Jacob Goldstein from what's your problem? Business software is expensive. And when you buy software from lots of different companies, it's not only expensive, it gets confusing. Slow to use, hard to integrate. Odoo solves that because all Odoo software is connected on a single affordable platform. Save money without missing out on the features you need. Odoo has no hidden costs and no limit on features or data. Odoo has over 60 apps available for any needs your business might have, all at no additional charge. Everything from websites to sales to inventory to accounting, all linked and talking to each other. Check out odoo@o d o o dot com. That's o d o o dot com.

[Steven Rinella]

Let me hit you with one. I had three questions pop up my head, but I'm forgetting them as fast as I'm thinking. This was the first one that I wanted to ask you about. If. What is the. Let's say you went. You're talking to a neighbor. Okay.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

You're talking to a neighbor and you know that you. You're talking to a neighbor who is my parents. Fiscally, you're talking to a fiscally conservative neighbor.

[Benji Backer]

Sure.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. Single issue voter, maybe a little bit, likes the fiscally conservative economy. Efficiency. Okay? Not like an ideologue, right. And he says to you, benji, why should I give a shit about any of the stuff you're talking about? Like, sell me on it.

[Benji Backer]

There is no country that we love without the resources and the beauty that we have, right? Like the resources that we develop largely on public land. In a lot of ways, the resources that we develop, the water that we have, the agricultural industry that we have. Our entire country relies on the environment to survive. So we could extract everything over the next five or ten years and probably rake in a lot of money, but then we'd be destroyed after that. And you can't take care of the economy if you don't take care of the environment. You can't take care of the country without taking care of conservation. And it is not only an economic driver to take care of our country. I mean, recreation statistics, we had the most recreationists in American history, generating tens of billions of dollars of revenue for the government. It not only generates an economic value, but it also generates the value that our communities depend on to survive. And I'd argue what is a more important issue? Like, I live in Arizona right now, so if we're talking to a neighbor in Arizona, what issue is more important than water quality in Arizona? I mean, in water availability? Like, I can't think of one. Because if we have no water, we don't have a city, right? Like, so this is, this is all interconnected with people's lives in a way that we've kind of forgotten about because we've just developed so many resources and we're so technologically driven that we kind of forget about the natural world. But. But we have to. We have a symbiotic relationship with the natural world that we've completely forgotten about. And we're one of the last frontiers in the world that's actually taking care of our land by and large. Like, yes, we've got issues. And yes, this like, public land selloff was a huge threat. But if you look around the world, Africa is getting destroyed by the Chinese government and other countries going in and saying we're going to just mine everything and destroy it with slave labor. South America is getting deforested continually at a crazy rate and its wildlife habitats continually being encroached upon. We are one of the last places in the world, Canada, a couple other places where we actually are investing in this. And it's one of the best values and assets that our country has is our environment. So if we aren't thinking about that from a national perspective, then we're completely missing one of the most important parts of our country.

[Steven Rinella]

I buy that.

[Benji Backer]

I would hope you do. Will my neighbor buy it? I don't know. But, you know, I think the. We have become so digitized that we've kind of forgotten about the natural world around us. And yes, that's like, it's not. I heard a quote the other day that was like, so simple, but it's so true. Like, the environment isn't ours to extract resources from. The environment is ours to care for and develop and work with and conserve so that future generations can also exist. So yes, we need to develop resources and yes, we need to, you know, manage these places, but we also have to care for them because we're not the only people that are going to inherit this. And I think we've just become such a selfish society that that neighbor who's worried about fiscal policy isn't. They're not seeing the forest through the trees, literally. Right. They're just literally thinking about their own Vanguard account and the national debt, which of course is important. Both are important. But we've also gotta think about our children and grandchildren. And I'm 27. I've got. I was working with Charlie on the national debt when I was 12. Right. But I still got hopefully 70 more years on this planet. And then I'm gonna have kids someday, and then I'm gonna have grandkids someday. And I need to have a world that's worth bringing them into. Right. And it's not about like kumbaya, like protect nature because we just care about the wildlife. It's like it's so much bigger than that. Right. It's literally about us. And that's lost in a lot of this.

[Steven Rinella]

If you look at, there's. There's a couple of movements that I'm. That I'm always stunned by how effective they were. And so we're going to look at the push for the legalization of gay marriage and then the legalization of weed. Okay. Now those are long running. Those are long running disputes. But something happened and. But something happened and they hit like a, they hit like a moment and just poof. Like, they hit a moment where it became kind of bipartisan. Yep.

[Benji Backer]

That's what I'm hoping for.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. But here's the rub. I want to talk about those movements for a little bit. Then I want to tell you why I think that what you're engaged in is more complicated.

[Benji Backer]

It definitely is.

[Steven Rinella]

Because these were. These were like fairly simple asks.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. The way. The way gay marriage got over the threshold was it wasn't like, this isn't about special privilege.

[Benji Backer]

Right. Right.

[Steven Rinella]

This isn't about. This isn't like part of some zero sum thing. We're going to take away something from someone to give it to somebody else.

[Benji Backer]

Mm.

[Steven Rinella]

This isn't like we're not really asking the government to bend over backward on too much here. It's just there's a thing. There's like this symbolic gesture that we feel should be kind of applied to all Americans. And like, and then to the right on the right, you'd say, and really remember, what business is it of yours? What business is it of the government who I decide to marry? Like, do you really think the government should tell you who to marry?

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

And eventually you got where you had the, the. You had this kind of leftist idea and the right merged onto it. They had an easy way to merge on.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Because it was like if you'd gone back, my dad was very conservative. You got back, asked my dad, he would have said, but it's none of my business.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Whatever. You know what, what that guy's gonna do in his house? Oh, nothing to do with me.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

I don't have to love it.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

It's not my business that that became a thing. And like. And that's when that went legal. Weed. A long running left issue. And it eventually became. It's kind of even hard to get to it, but it kind of became like a little bit of a. This a plant that goes out of the ground. Yeah. I mean, can you really have a bunch of rules about a plant that grows in your garden?

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

And a, hey, what that guy is doing in his, you know, what he's doing in his own house? Is it really my business? And no one can really demonstrate to me that it's more destructive than alcohol. Seems like when you look at the stats, like domestic disputes, vehicle crashes, like booze ain't the best thing in the world.

[Benji Backer]

No.

[Steven Rinella]

Is it really, like there's less that goes into making weed than booze?

[Benji Backer]

There's also a safety argument, right? Like, wouldn't you rather have it be monitored by the government, not have it be illegally coming in? I mean, I had a friend in high school who had fentanyl in the weed because it was illegal and he died. So that's the argument that people make too. So yeah, there's plenty of arguments to morph people together there.

[Steven Rinella]

But these things that I've marveled at in my lifetime, in the end were real clean and they were an issue. Public lands becomes like a clean issue. But to call for a sort of expansive kind of umbrella of environmental concern is, is, is bigger because people would say like, well, what's the ask? And you'd be like, it's a lot of asks all the time.

[Benji Backer]

That's a great way of putting it.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, and it's harder.

[Benji Backer]

It is way harder. But I think it's worth it because you're gonna have different stakeholders engaging on different parts of it. Like the water stakeholders might be different than the forest stakeholders. Exactly. But very similar to those issues, there is an easy on ramp for every political identity to care, whether that be for national security or for jobs, or for moral high ground, or for just caring about your local community, or for caring about national, you know, our national identity and legacy and heritage, like protecting, conserving, taking care of our environment intersects with everyone's political views in a very similar way to those issues. Because that's not actually true on immigration as easily. It's not as easy on it on guns. Right. Like, those are core parts. And what on ramp are you going to create between those issues from both sides? I don't know how we solve those. Right. But the environment might have more variables to it because you're. It's not just one policy that you're trying to get to legalize it. Legalize it.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. It's not like you can go like, okay, we did it in that state, then we're gonna do it in that state.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

And eventually it'll be that we got like 49 states.

[Benji Backer]

Right. This is not a one trick pony movement that we're trying to create. And you look, this approach needs to be applied to situations, applied to the public land sell off and we were three months old, and obviously so many great organizations worked on that. We showed that it was at least possible on that applied to that. But if you apply that same group of people to restore, in Utah to restoring the Great Salt Lake, I think we'd do a lot better of a job at restoring the Great Salt Lake. But right now, there's no knowledge, but everyone in Salt Lake vicinity wants to restore the Great Salt Lake, yet nothing is really being done about it because everyone's focused on other political culture war issues, and there's no mobilized cultural movement across the party lines to get something done. So you apply it to that, or you apply it to, oh, my God. Wildfires are getting worse and worse. Mega fires are getting worse every summer, not only in the United States, but around the world. Apply that to that issue. And so this. Some stakeholders might drop off, some might come on, but it's the same on ramp where people have different whys, different reasons for caring, but they care about the same end goal, and they have the exact same end goal. Less wildfires. Who wants to create a policy that creates more wildfires in this country? I don't know anybody. So. And the way of getting there, the vast majority of people actually would agree on if we actually had the chance to debate it, but right now we're not. So I agree it's way harder, but it's worth it, and I think it's worth it to pursue that rather than having a disjointed movement where the pendulum swings back and forth every four years on a subject like Biden puts in all these massive conservation preservation restrictions and public land deals and all this stuff, then Trump undoes it. People are like, oh, it's just a Trump problem. No, we need durable conservation solutions in five years, in 10 years and 15 years, no matter where the country heads. We don't know. It could be a Vance, it could be a Newsom, it could be nobody that we've even been talking about. Right. But at some point, we have to have some consistency, because the lack of consistency is. Is killing our environment, and it's. And it's refusing. We are deferring any policy from getting done because of that disconnect. So it is harder, but I think it's worth it. And I don't have all the answers today, but hopefully in 10 years, we'll have this conversation. We'll have made a lot of progress there.

[Cal]

Let me offer a. Probably a poor analogy, and you can tell me how accurate it is.

[Steven Rinella]

Can I. Can I rate it, too?

[Cal]

Absolutely.

[Benji Backer]

Five stars.

[Cal]

Absolutely. Like, when you're talking about building cultural momentum and. And having something where people on both sides can approach it from their own angle, I'm wondering if you're. And I don't. This might sound stupid and maybe dismissive, but you're trying to, like, you're essentially saying, I want to make caring for the environment, like, support the troops.

[Benji Backer]

Yes. Like, no, that is not dismissive. That is exactly right. Because, like, five stars, there's.

[Cal]

Because every. Every politician is. Is going to say that they support the troops, and they're going to lean into it as sort of part of their mantle of. Of legitimacy. A Democrat who supports the troops might vote for mental health counseling for veterans and research on. On, you know, like, ptsd, things like that. Maybe they are pushing for greater equ. Like, you know, combat roles. Whatever. A Republican who supports the troops might vote for funding for extra. You know, like. Like make sure the troops have what they need to fight the wars we send them to. Armored.

[Steven Rinella]

Armored doors on their Humvees.

[Cal]

Armored doors on their Humvees.

[Randall]

Right.

[Cal]

And, like, obviously, I mean, I feel like there's part of. There's part of me that when I hear someone say, I support the troops, I'm kind of like, well, that's brave of you. You know, like. But it's good politics.

[Benji Backer]

And so it's created space where both sides are expected to support the.

[Cal]

Because Nixon. I mean, Nixon has all this huge environmental legacy. And. And you could read it one way and say, like, God, I didn't know he cared so much about the environment, but really, Nixon didn't give.

[Benji Backer]

He didn't.

[Cal]

He didn't care about the environment. He just was like, boy, this is a powerful horse to. To hitch to my wagon.

[Randall]

Right.

[Benji Backer]

Very positive.

[Cal]

That's. That's sort of the analogy that occurred to me as you're talking. It's. It's making this sort of a cultural plank of America that everybody's got to have that feather in their head if they want to throw their. Throw said hat into the arena. To make this a really messy metaphor.

[Benji Backer]

Five star.

[Steven Rinella]

No, I like the metaphor, but I think that. And I get the point. Supporting the troops, you could say, oh, no, I support the troops. We should bring them home. Right? And some guy's like, oh, no, no, I support the troops. We should send them.

[Cal]

Got to give them what they need.

[Steven Rinella]

To send them advanced munitions. Yeah, right. Like, you both get to carry it.

[Benji Backer]

Around, but I agree with that. But. But the troops are one of the few topics where both sides actually Sit down and have a conversation now, though, even though it's not pretty and they don't always agree, and I'm not expecting that. This is not some kumbaya shit. But 80% of the time, there's actually a lot of agreement. So. But that's not being facilitated. If there's agreement on troops and our military, they're at least having that conversation because they feel like it's part of the American national identity.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Benji Backer]

And of course, there's extraneous times where they totally see differently. Right. And that's going to happen. And that did happen when Richard Nixon was president. Right. There are people who thought Richard Nixon didn't go far enough, and there are people who thought he went too far. Sure. But stuff got done, and that was.

[Randall]

Farmers Feed America would be the platform that I think is the most applicable, is like, everybody loves farmers, and that is the thing that feeds us, in large part, secures our country. We don't have to import stuff from all these other countries if we really focused on Farmers Feeding America. But those ecosystems are the most rapidly disappearing ecosystems on the planet, let alone in the United States. Here in Montana, we lost a million acres of farm and ranch ground over the last year. Sorry. Over the last three years. And like, if you take a chunk of grazing ground in Oklahoma and look at the interests that want that grazing ground.

[Benji Backer]

Yep.

[Randall]

Despite the fact that every fricking politician is like, farmers Feed America. God bless the farmers. Right. It's like, unless we can put.

[Cal]

Let me. But let me push back on that. There's. There's probably elected officials from urban boroughs in New York that don't get questions about farmers.

[Benji Backer]

Totally. Like, yet they're eating their food.

[Cal]

Right. Like. Like, it's. That's something where people would be like, oh, sure. But that's not really what my constituents sent me here for. There's nobody who's like, do you support the troops? And they're like, it's not really.

[Randall]

Name one.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Cal]

I'm just not involved in that. You know, like, everybody's like, yes, absolutely, name one troop.

[Benji Backer]

Name one troop.

[Cal]

Like. Like that. That's an issue. I feel like, where no one can. No politician can sort of step out of line and no one can ignore it or say, like, it's. I'm focused on this. I'm focused on this. Like, no one would respond. Did you support the troops? They'd be like, well, really, I'm focused on transportation and infrastructure.

[Benji Backer]

Right. You can pivot easier with that. But I think it's like, if You're AOC as an extreme example. There are serious environmental issues in New York City and with the Hudson River. You know, if you're a Wisconsin senator, the water, you know, aquifers sinking and having the Mississippi get destroyed by runoff is an issue, but that doesn't really matter to New York. But, like, it's. I think that's where we've lost it is. It's like the environmental movement in general has also hurt the hunting and angling community because it's always been about, for the last 20 years, polar bears, climate change, energy, like, things that don't really impact the local community, that every local community has really, their own environmental issue, and they truly don't care too much. Like in Arizona, in Scottsdale, where I live, they truly could not care less about farmers. Should they care? Probably. But, like, they don't. They care about water quality and access, and they care about the smog that's getting worse. Mm. So as. But as a country, we share. We. We share a different reason for caring, but we all share the caring part because we know we rely on it. So I agree that, like, tagging farmers in is. Is part of it, but it needs to be a part of, like, local community ownership. And people feel like there's no way to get involved because it's like this issue's too big. Climate change, polar bears. That's not like, my thing. What if everyone was able to activate and advocate for the issues that they cared about in their own local community in a better way that felt more tangible, that felt more realistic? And, you know, the vision that I have is for, if you live in the Great Salt Lake area, you can advocate for that across party lines and actually get something done for that, because that's what's affecting you. If you're a big part of the country that has agriculture and farming and you're worried about water quality and the lack of crops that you can get now because the substance in the soil is so bad, like, then you can advocate for that. But right now, there's nothing kind of that holistic view like there would be on troops. Like, troops is very complex, too, actually. Right. There's so many different variables there, but there's a culture around it that kind of forces people to figure some sort of solution out. And that's kind of the vision.

[Steven Rinella]

A difference between you and me is that you thought about something and then did it. And I thought about this and never did it. But I'll share with you what I thought.

[Benji Backer]

I'm gonna eat another piece of jerky.

[Steven Rinella]

At a point, please. At a point. I realized that there's, like, a way I think about the environment that isn't shared by the environmental movement. And I realized that this way I think about it is actually shared by a lot of friends of mine, is that I have a sort of. There's. There's a bit of a. Like a. A nationalism and a patriotism.

[Benji Backer]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

To a view on the American landscape.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, like, a friend of mine was like, whatever. He's going fishing with his kid. He's like, you think they're doing this in Tehran? You know, Just joking. Perhaps they are, but just joking. Meaning he, like. It's like. He kind of views it like, America the beautiful.

[Benji Backer]

Yes.

[Cal]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Do you follow me?

[Benji Backer]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

And there was a. There was times, I think it was like, maybe like the last election cycle, whatever. There was times I was like, man, I should find some better way of articulating this thing that I think is kind of widely held where people have a sense of American pride about the American environment.

[Benji Backer]

That is exactly right. You know, and you look at, like, Yellowstone, the show. Right. People didn't watch that because the show was just good. It was. Because it evoked an emotional connection to Americana in a way. Whereas, like, I'm proud of the fact that we have places that look that beautiful and every. If you go into a member of Congress's office, no matter if it's Marjorie Taylor Greene or aoc, the first pictures on the walls are of their natural beauty in their districts. Right. Like, there is an immense pride that Americans have in our environment. This fall, we're gonna launch a campaign called United by Nature. Mm. United by Nature.

[Steven Rinella]

Can you call it Don't Shit up America?

[Benji Backer]

Don't shit. That'll be our secondary. That'll be the secondary slogan, and we'll let people use which one they like more. But we have America's 250th anniversary next year. I would argue that America and our conservation legacy is the best in the world. I would also argue that it's incredibly at risk right now for the first time, at least to this severity in a very long time.

[Steven Rinella]

When you get a minute, can you touch on a couple of those points.

[Benji Backer]

About what I'm worried about?

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah. Americans are so proud of the natural environment. We have to tap into that. So what I'm worried about. National parks are in massive maintenance debt. We're having conversations constantly about selling off public lands for development, which doesn't solve affordability at all. And the people who are Perpetuating that. Know that wildlife issues are becoming worse. Chronic wasting disease, endangered species like these things are not getting better necessarily, especially invasive species. I mean, water quality is going down. Microplastics are in 94% of tested water that we drink. And the water quality in our rivers is getting infinitely worse every single year. Mega fires are on the rise in this country. And things like the Great Salt Lake, the watersheds, the aquifers below the farms, these are all problems that are getting infinitely worse, too. And at some, we are already starting to see the impacts of this. Right. Air quality issues in the summer with the fires, farmers having tons of issues, flooding getting worse, not just because of climate change, but also because of the fact that the ecosystems that help prevent a lot of, like, hurricanes and stuff, the damage from the hurricanes have now been destroyed. So there's not these natural barriers. So we have massive problems. And yet the government, the Biden administration didn't focus on this at all. They focused on, like, climate and energy and infrastructure and EVs, but until kind of the final hour, they didn't even really talk about this conservation or preservation or anything with the natural landscape.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, yeah.

[Benji Backer]

And Trump's whole approach is, I wanna undo everything because it's gone too far and it's wrong and whatever, but we're not gonna replace it with anything better.

[Steven Rinella]

Cause I never liked that guy.

[Benji Backer]

Right. Cause I never liked that guy. But he's not just stuff that Biden did. He's not just undoing stuff Biden did. He's undoing stuff that Nixon did and George H.W. bush did and Clinton did. You can make a difference in someone's life, including your own, with a job in home care.

[Steven Rinella]

These jobs offer flexible schedules, health care, retirement options, and free training.

[Randall]

They also provide paid time off and opportunities for overtime.

[Steven Rinella]

Visit oregonhomecarejobs.com to learn more and apply.

[Benji Backer]

That's oregonhomecarejobs.com.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. Spooky season is quickly approaching, so time to stock up on all your favorite treats now through October 7th. You can get early savings on your Halloween candy favorites when you shop in store and online. Save on items like Hershey's, Reese's Pumpkin, Snickers Miniatures, Tootsie Rolls, Raw Sugar milk, chocolate, caramel, Jack O Lanterns, Brock's Candy, Corn Charms, Mini Pops, and more. Offer ends October 7th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.

[Jacob Goldstein]

This is Jacob Goldstein from what's your problem? Business Software is expensive. And when you buy software from lots of different companies, it's not only expensive, it gets confusing. Slow to use, hard to integrate. Odoo solves that because all Odoo software is connected on a single affordable platform. Save money without missing out on the features you need. Odoo has no hidden costs and no limit on features or data. Odoo has over 60 apps available for any needs your business might have, all at no additional charge. Everything from websites to sales to inventory to accounting, all linked and talking to each other. Check out Odoo at O D O o dot com. That's O D O O dot com.

[Randall]

What I point out to people often, right, is I'm like, there's always the other side participating in this, right? Like even when there's a super majority. Yeah, pick your super majority, right? But there's, right now there's Democrats in the room. They're, they're not going home. They're not like, okay, well we'll see in four years, right? There's always that nonpartisan aspect in there. One side's ultimately going to have like a final say.

[Benji Backer]

But you know, it's like people are trying.

[Randall]

And on the public lands issue too, it's like, well, thanks for calling, but we Defer to the 11 Western states, right? You know, they're, be it Democrat or Republican, they're the ones that have the knowledge and so we're gonna listen to them, right? And that's just like something that people need to be reminded of, right? Because it all gets shackled onto, you know, kind of who's in power at that time.

[Benji Backer]

Yes. And I, but I think on a quick diversion, I just wanna say thank you to you guys because first of all, I think between you and me and a couple of others in the non elected space, we are blamed for killing that horrible idea to sell off the 3 million acres. It didn't matter that Patagonia took a stance against the public lands at all. The sell off didn't matter that Sierra Club did, that didn't move the needle at all. In fact, it probably hurt that they were engaged. It mattered because center left, center and center right voters who were largely in your communities, Joe Rogan's community, Cam Haines community and in our community were saying no, hands off because that's the power of a broad coalition. Because no matter what the moment is, you're meeting it then, right? You're meeting the moment because you have the broad coalition. And it's nice that the people in California were saying things and it's nice that the people in Washington, like they should, but that didn't move the needle on that one. But maybe it'll move the needle on a different one. Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Maybe it's like if I tell my family something and my kids get real mad and then all of a sudden my wife's mad, I'm like, now I gotta pay attention. She's mad. I knew the kids would be pissed, but now she's ma. Never mind.

[Benji Backer]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Benji Backer]

So I want to thank you for that.

[Randall]

In the areas where it, you know, quote unquote, didn't make an impact. Right. Like the, the rosy picture, the idea, right, is it's building equity.

[Benji Backer]

Yes.

[Randall]

Right. And there's going to be this, like alarm bells went off.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Randall]

Why is that? What's the deal with this issue?

[Benji Backer]

No, and it's all very important.

[Randall]

I already said I support the troops.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Randall]

People are still looking at me weird.

[Steven Rinella]

What's up?

[Randall]

What's going on?

[Benji Backer]

But that's the power of this broad coalition. So I just say that to say also that's how, like in the future it will be different states that are relevant for different environmental initiatives. And we'll need those people there too. So. But you know, there's some really good people there, like Martin Heinrich and Tim Sheehy and, you know, Crapo and Danes and who care about conservation and there's overlap with this idea, but they also don't have a lot of space to work within. Like, they all actually, whether they want to publicly acknowledge this or not, they really were happy about the pushback because it gave them the ability to do what they actually wanted to do. Right. Like, especially for a Republican, a lot of Republicans. I know for a fact that There were about 16 other Republican senators who wanted to stand up against the public land sell off, but they didn't feel like it was politically helpful to do so. And until they feel like there's that space to step out and say, actually this is not only what I don't want, but it's also what my voters don't want, they're gonna be more gun shy. And you look at the senators who spoke out, we all knew that they didn't want this to happen from the get go, but because there were so many voters saying they didn't want it too, then they're like, well, now I can justify speaking out. That's kind of American democracy at work in a time when people just aren't really speaking out about things other than the radical extremes. So that's where like the Rational middle standing together to say, oh, we support the troops. Oh, we support the environment and conservation. It gives space for not just the Heinrichs and the ones who are always going to be willing to put their. Like Martin Heinrich, who we all love. I think maybe. I don't know. I love him.

[Steven Rinella]

No, no, I like him personally.

[Benji Backer]

Yes. He's a rare.

[Steven Rinella]

I like him personally.

[Benji Backer]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

And I appreciate his constant advocacy on behalf of public lands and.

[Benji Backer]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

And I appreciate that he. Of many things, I appreciate him. I appreciate that he is willing to be, like, a very outspoken hunter.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

He goes against the grain. Yeah. In a political party where that's not always the most. It's not always the most welcome identity to have.

[Benji Backer]

And Tim Sheehy, when I've had conversations with him, will be like, Montana cares more about conservation and the outdoors than, you know, any other place, arguably. And so I have to lead on this, but I also want to both of those two gentlemen go against the grain in a lot of ways of what they're, quote, unquote, supposed to do.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Benji Backer]

There's very few leaders like that in D.C. right. Like, that's the world that I'm, you know, really unfortunately familiar with. And we need to give space not just for those guys who are always gonna try to stick their neck out as much as possible, but also the kind of. The cowards, to be honest. They're always gonna be cowards in the Senate and the House who actually do wanna do the right thing, though, and they just don't feel like they have a space to do it. And that's the power of the movement that I think we could build, because there's an underbelly there. If you talk to those 16 Republican senators who wanted to speak out about it, I can guarantee you, if I said there's gonna be a million people in your state, right and left, who are speaking out about this in your favor, they would've been like, okay, then I can, too. And that's the power we need to build.

[Steven Rinella]

Let's change subject a teeny bit or change focus a teeny bit. If. If you're sitting there as a guy that grew up and you had conservative principles. Right. And you felt that, like, the party I kind of instinctively want to align myself with, like, they just are not representing my environmental concerns.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

I need them to. I want to change that position from your perspective, like, what do you have to say if you had a private audience? So you have a private.

[Benji Backer]

This is a private audience, Right?

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. So the Democrats in the House and Senate, they come to you and say, hey, what could we be doing different? What could we be doing different? What to them? Because it can't be that. They got it just right. And you just want the Republicans to adopt their approach. Where are they missing? Where are they losing people? Where are they missing? Where could they be more effective to? When I say, I mean like a big.

[Benji Backer]

They like, like the Democrats on average.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, yeah, like the party of the Democrats. Where do they miss?

[Benji Backer]

Well, I think I'll reiterate, I think both sides are failing almost pretty equally on this issue. And the way that the left has failed is it has been so much about climate and kind of this hysteria around, like, I believe in climate change and I, you know, I'm not afraid to say that. But like, when you're just talking about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, like climate change doesn't matter if we destroy all the wild places that we have left, right? Like, it's like a distant priority. If you destroy the Amazon and you destroy all the wild places that we all love to recreate in, then we might as well just keep heating up the climate because we're all screwed. So they've kind of forgotten to work on conservation because they've been so focused on this other issue, technical solutions. Right. Green New Deal, you know, is an oversimplified way to give the analogy, but it's basically, you know, that was their whole environmental platform and you were like, well, if you look at the Green New Deal, it had nothing to do with public lands, private land, conservation, sustainable ag, forestry, water quality. It just only had to do with energy and EVs and technical infrastructure. So that's, that's where they've really failed. And it's also been a race to the left. What's the most that you can do to be as radical as you can to out to say you care more than the other person. But it's all about grandstanding and it's all about like these pledges and these goals, but there's nothing behind them. Like, I went to cop the UN Climate Conference for three years in a row and it was the most abysmal time of my life because it was just like, well, if we have this pledge to be 100% renewable by 2030, that would be better than this company's pledge or this country's pledge or, you know, whoever the stakeholder was. And it was like, well, what are you actually going to do? Right? Like there was, there's no. It's all about the messaging and it's not about the details. And the last thing that I think that they failed at is it has been, you know, this, this age old conservation versus preservation is like the debate. Right. It's been going on for centuries. And in America specifically in the last century, they've been hinging very closely to just working on preservation rather than conservation and restricting access for hunting and angling and getting outdoors. And like, people are so scared of like resource development and using public lands for other reasons than just like the Sierra Club saying they want to watch the bears or the wolves and not hunt, you know, hunt them. Like, that's kind of been the mindset. Has been the Sierra Club mindset. And so in a similar way that the right has completely failed and is failing right now. And we're seeing it.

[Steven Rinella]

It's their turn to fail.

[Benji Backer]

It's their turn to fail. The left has been failing too. And at some point, one of the parties will get it right. Or hopefully ideally both of them get it right. But right now, neither one of them is.

[Randall]

Yeah. The use. Right. Like, we were both in New York City.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Randall]

And man, the riot that would ensue if somebody was like, yeah, we're just gonna make Central park off limits. Right. Just. I was up with this Upper west.

[Steven Rinella]

Side because it's gonna be a solar array.

[Randall]

Yeah. I mean, holy.

[Steven Rinella]

We don't want, we know, we don't.

[Cal]

Want people to interfere with the squirrel movement. Right?

[Benji Backer]

The squirrel movement.

[Cal]

Squirrel migration.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Couple, like, quick anecdotes. So rip over their brutal travel and get on the island of Manhattan. As soon as they get into Manhattan, there's this guy who does not look like me, probably has very different ideas about a lot of things. On an electric scooter flying through traffic, and he's got two fishing rods strapped to his back.

[Benji Backer]

No way. Yeah.

[Randall]

Coming off the Hudson. And I was just like, okay, this guy and I, like, we can have a conversation. I guarantee it.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Randall]

I thought that was just super awesome to see. And then, yeah, the conversations that I had about, like, the parks, because I was blown away by how many dogs or on the sober west side and people, like, they do whatever it takes to maintain a dog friendly lifestyle.

[Benji Backer]

Yep.

[Randall]

And I thought that and it, you know, it obviously, like connects to these park systems. Right. And I thought that was just a good example of, like, here's this very, this, this group of people that I would put in a very nature disconnected category who have totally changed their lives in order to have that connection with that version of nature.

[Benji Backer]

Right, right.

[Randall]

And they were like, bird Watchers. Holy cow.

[Benji Backer]

So many bird watchers in New York City.

[Randall]

I was amazed. I. I was pretty, pretty amazed with that. And then, but kind of to go back to the, like the farm ranch community and where a lot of environmental groups have just like again, lost connection with the end consumer.

[Benji Backer]

Another good example.

[Randall]

Man. The majority of farmer rancher folks that I know address climate change every single day.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Randall]

It is part of their, their business. It is part of their business plan. And in real life, they are so aware of the changes and the effects of climate change. The only way that they're gonna be.

[Benji Backer]

Viable is by adapting, mitigating. All of the above.

[Randall]

Yeah. And they are doing it.

[Benji Backer]

Yep.

[Randall]

And they do not want to be associated with the climate change crowd.

[Benji Backer]

No.

[Randall]

Right. But they're doing it every single day.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah. They're doing more for the climate than the climate change crowd.

[Cal]

They don't want anybody to think they're a weirdo. Yeah, yeah.

[Randall]

Oh, yeah.

[Benji Backer]

A liberal hippie. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And it was like, when my calves hit the ground, when I plant this, when I pick that. What I'm gonna do about water. Water.

[Randall]

How am I going to change what I plant? What, you know, what is worth it now versus was worth it ten years ago as far as like field cultivation or not field cultivation, Bringing what crops to market, the whole whole thing. Water use. Right. Fertilizer use, all of it. And if you're not doing these things, like, you're, you're not going to be around.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah. You're going out of business.

[Steven Rinella]

That's interesting point.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah. And, and then they, they hate the lecture to them, the environmentalists lecture to them, even though they're the ones doing.

[Randall]

And a lot in some hook and bullet organizations too. Like they, they use what I would call at this point, like boilerplate conservation speak.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Randall]

And it's in, it's the same version, slightly tweaked for the last 20 years. Right. That's going out to everybody. And they're like, well, this resonates. And like, well, it doesn't resonate with people with the dirt under their fingernails doing it.

[Benji Backer]

But the problem is philanthropy. So that there's money tied. There's so much money tied to it. And that's, that's where. That's another world that I have to work in is the philanthropic world, where, you know, and probably shouldn't even be talking about this because they probably don't like that I'd be saying this. But it's like they are so out of touch, but they have so much money and they're funding these campaigns. They're funding the Sierra clubs of the world when they're doing this anti bear thing for sure. They're also funding these very preachy, condescending, like, rural people are screwed up and dumb and like, are doing the wrong thing all the time. And we need to take it back because farming and ag and industry, they are the bane of our existence. And we have to basically ban them from society if we're going to keep going. And it's, it's like.

[Randall]

And don't even get into the nuance of like, the definition of rural. If you're standing in Manhattan, the philanthropistian of rural. If you're standing in Cold foot, Alaska.

[Benji Backer]

The philanthropists are only. The philanthropists would not survive a literally 10 minutes there. They live in San Francisco, they live in New York, and they live in Chicago. Those are kind of the end. A little bit of L. A. Those are the four places they don't leave there. And they are in the biggest bubble. If you think like D.C. the swamp is a bubble which people want to drain. Philanthropy needs to be drained. Like, it's, it's crazy what I have to put up with with philanthropists and how disconnected they are. And they actually don't understand what's going on in America at all. And yet they are funding tens of billions of dollars of nonprofits to dominate the narrative. And so that's also part of my plan. Right. Is to represent in an environmental movement America, actually. Because the environmentalist groups can't do that. They literally can't. That's why I have such an advantage here. They can't even, they can't. They can't even try to do what we're doing because they're funded to not do that. And they are. And philanthropy is so screwed up because a nonprofit only exists if they get the money and you only raise money if there are problems. And so what's the. Is there an incentive to solve the problem then? No. Cause if you solve the problem, you lose your job.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Benji Backer]

So there's, you know, that's where the disconnected messaging comes from. Because the people who are dominating that from a financial perspective who are donating to these groups have no idea how real America lives.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm going to give you a very weird, petty example of what you're talking about. I remember when, I remember watching just in the news when Michael Bloomberg. No, not Bloomberg. Who's the guy? The tall guy kind of left in a little bit of a scandal. Mayor of New York City, de Blasio, de Blasio. I remember right away when de Blasio got elected. I haven't thought about Bill de Blasio in a while.

[Randall]

And scandal. I was like, is it still no, Jordan?

[Steven Rinella]

Bloomberg's short, De Blasio's tall.

[Cal]

Phil, can you pull that up on the screen, please?

[Steven Rinella]

Pull up their high speed.

[Benji Backer]

Can you put up all the Michaels?

[Steven Rinella]

I just remember when he came in, a thing he did very early was this thing about. We laughed about it on the show, but he came in and very early had this thing about the rules about the horses that pulled out. Yeah.

[Benji Backer]

The Central park horses.

[Steven Rinella]

And I remember being like, if that is not an example of someone giving that guy money and saying, listen, you know, and he's like, okay, got it. Yeah. I'll try to remember. Like, you gave me a bunch of money and some shit about the horses. Got it. Like, it was so transactional.

[Benji Backer]

Oh, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Do you know what I mean?

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

And that, like, I imagine. Look, not that magic. I've seen it. Like, I've, you know, I've had exposure to the nonprofit space where I see where donors.

[Benji Backer]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Philanthropy can come in and manipulate a nonprofit agenda with a big carrot.

[Benji Backer]

That's. That's really how this. This all works.

[Steven Rinella]

And they're like, let me play devil's.

[Cal]

Advocate here, though there. Because there's also ways in which, like, a group, the people, as part of an ngo, have issues that they care about. Like, they want to work on wildlife, they want to work on public lands. They want to do this, and they see grants available, and they sort of go, oh, we can tie this to that by framing it this way, they're still trying to solve that problem. You know, Like, I don't believe that people at bha. I don't believe that people at BHA want the public lands issue to still to just be a constant football because they actually care about it.

[Steven Rinella]

No, that's true. Yeah. They're not. They're not. Like, they're definitely not thinking, well, we want to win, but not all the way. Yeah.

[Cal]

And then, like, when they look at a. I mean, the philanthropy thing is complicated, and I think that. I think it exists on sort of, like, a spectrum. It's like a tug of war. It's like, well, we could get into this pot of money if we sort of frame our work this way, and we can use that money to do what we really want to do. And it's. Sometimes you can get too tugged too far outside of your core issues. But there's also a lot of ways in which they're using that money strategically to get to sort of pour more gas on the fire. And what they really want to work on.

[Benji Backer]

I agree, but I think a lot of it's subconsciously going in the wrong direction. So what I mean by this is during the public land sell off, the senator, Mike Lee, if you remember on Twitter, was going after me largely because of what I was saying on social media. And his whole conspiracy is that I was funded to go against him. I will be transparent. I raised $50,000 after it happened. $50,000. I know that there are so many massive environmental NGOs who took this massive public stand. Again, not moving the needle at all, but they were like, you know, screw you, President Trump. Screw you, Mike Lee, screw you, whatever. They raised tens of millions of dollars off of that because they tried to make a name for themselves in a time where they weren't actually doing anything.

[Steven Rinella]

Probably were not impactful because they weren't talking to anybody new.

[Benji Backer]

Right. So Mike Lee had actually, in a strange way, the right thought process there, which is like Benji's probably using this to raise a ton of money. And I didn't, because I didn't even plan on getting involved in that because I didn't know it was coming down the pike. Like, there was like. Like you couldn't even plan for it. Right. We all found out pretty last minute and we all just did what we needed to do. So there wasn't some coordinated effort. But these groups are incentivized to make it seem like they are doing more than they actually are and to take harder stances than what actually would move the needle, because they know that that's where philanthropy's like, oh, thank God, you know, this group is taking such a hard stand, but there's not actually, like an outcome thought of it. And so I think that you're right. But a lot of groups raise money when they don't actually do anything with it. And I'm not saying BHA specifically. I don't know enough about that, but.

[Randall]

Well, I'll give you an example to your point. So roadless rule, right? I'm working with a bunch of different groups and talking about roadless rule, and. And this kind of ties in. A couple of points have been made today is right. Like, we're not even at the actual conversation about roadless rule, because it's not about timber. It's not about public access to these areas. It's not, in my opinion, actually about wildfire mitigation. So just tell me what the reason is. Yeah, that you want to roll back protections on 44 million acres. That that would be like the chunk that is actually going to get affected.

[Steven Rinella]

You're not, you mean you're not buying that? It's just general.

[Randall]

No, it's a thing. It's a thing. Like, just tell me the thing so we can talk about the thing.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Like earlier we talked about the debate, like the buffalo thing, and there's all these red herrings, brucellosis, whatever. In the end you're like, oh, I get it. This is about who's. What animals eat what. Grass.

[Cal]

It's about grass. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Do you know what I mean? And then with the sell off, with the public land sell off, it was about like, this is about increasing new lands for developers to develop.

[Benji Backer]

Right. And decreasing the federal state and trying to achieve, for their goal of reducing the federal budget deficit.

[Steven Rinella]

That's a red herring.

[Benji Backer]

It might, it might be.

[Steven Rinella]

I don't believe that part. I believe it was one thing. It was one thing.

[Benji Backer]

Well, either way, it's definitely not affordable housing. We can agree on that.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, it's not affordable housing. I don't think they're worried about the debt. There's a lot better ways to figure out the debt.

[Benji Backer]

Totally.

[Randall]

But on this roadless deal, you know, I have a good, good idea comer upper. And I was like, well, why don't we all these groups that have resources, why don't we spend some time, get the list of the green groups that sue the most on some of these mitigation efforts that are, that are technically included in the wording of the roadless rule.

[Benji Backer]

Right?

[Randall]

And we at least get them to a table where we can have a discussion on what they're going to sue on and what they're not. Right? And then we're going to have this letter and this coalition that says, hey, all these groups, including these ones that are screwing everything up for everybody because they just sue all the time. They just try to grind things to a halt. They are say, this is our line. If you guys outline where you need the work done, we will not sue on this. And if they don't, we'll just make this big huge coalition out here say there is no working with these groups and we'll, we'll make it as public as possible. We'll make them priors and that, that'll be the tactic here, right? And the response is like, bam. It's a great idea.

[Steven Rinella]

But like many great ideas, we can't do it. Yeah.

[Randall]

And they're like, are you, I mean, are you going to go to these law firms and be like, 100% of your business right. Is going to be right. And they're going to be like, hey, that's a good idea.

[Steven Rinella]

Go to those law firms, be like, you familiar with the whole, like, doge complex concept? That's what you have to apply something different because work's drying up.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah, they're not going to say yes to that.

[Randall]

Right.

[Benji Backer]

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[Steven Rinella]

When did nature is nonpartisan get founded.

[Benji Backer]

April of 2020 25.

[Steven Rinella]

April 2025. Lay out for me like how do you think, how do you approach things? Do you approach things like quarters in your mind years in your mind 10 years in your mind quarters?

[Benji Backer]

Because the world changes every quarter hit.

[Steven Rinella]

With a couple quarters. What's come like where's your head at?

[Benji Backer]

We're gonna launch a national narrative shifting campaign with a lot of the coalition partners that we've been working with, including a lot of the groups that you work with, the TRCPs of the world. We're gonna include everybody who's in this broad coalition in a campaign called United by Nature. We're gonna have Concerts, we're gonna have community events, we're gonna have calls to action, we're gonna have national ad campaigns. We're gonna try to make this united by nature the calling card for support the troops. Right. We are united by nature. Whether that nature is your Salt Lake or it's your Everglades or it's your Beartooth Mountains. Right. So it's trying to create that national identity. We're gonna launch it in the next quarter. We're also going to launch a bipartisan caucus in the Senate focused on conservation and try to create the space for that to get done.

[Steven Rinella]

Is it going to be called the level headed caucus?

[Benji Backer]

The level headed caucus. What was the notion, what was your secondary slogan for United don't shut up America caucus?

[Steven Rinella]

I'll ask the dsua.

[Benji Backer]

That's great. And then, you know, we're really going.

[Steven Rinella]

To focus on, tell people what a caucus is.

[Benji Backer]

A caucus is like a little, little family of senators that want to do the same action on the same topic. And so there's like the Congressional Sportsman's Caucus, which is a great group focusing on sportsman's issues and trying to build support in the Senate just on those issues.

[Randall]

And we saw the Public Lands Caucus in the House.

[Benji Backer]

Yep, yep. And so it'll be very complimentary to that in the Senate, but on more than just public lands, it'll be about private land, wildlife, water and a little bit of a wider suite of.

[Steven Rinella]

And you imagine pulling in, you imagine this pulling in centrists from both parties.

[Benji Backer]

We actually want pretty hardcore Republicans and hardcore Democrats. But it's going to be a one for one membership. So for every Republican we get a Democrat.

[Steven Rinella]

Is that normal for a caucus?

[Benji Backer]

No, there are a few that are modeled that way, but very rare.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh yeah, because yeah, obviously.

[Benji Backer]

And our, our organization is structured.

[Steven Rinella]

Tea Party.

[Benji Backer]

Our organization is structured that way too. We have half our staff is liberal, half it's conservative, half our board's liberal, half it's conservative. And we're intentional. For everybody that we add, we are making.

[Steven Rinella]

Do you have non binary.

[Benji Backer]

Everyone's got a leaning somewhere.

[Steven Rinella]

I'd be like, put me down for both.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah, we do actually. If you look at it in the box, you have to figure it out. No, we have, on our board we have got a few people who, I actually have no idea who they vote for. But if there's a pretty active conservative person, we're definitely going to have an active person too. So. So that's the vision that we see. Because when you have it structured that way and this is why, you know, a lot of environmental organizations, their staff is 100% liberal, their board's 100% liberal. And so of course they're gonna lean that way, just like if it was the other way. So we're gonna launch this caucus. We're gonna launch the national narrative shifting campaign, United by Nature. We're probably gonna do a big event at Yellowstone here in the spring to rally people around public lands and bring in like an A list celebrity, A list music. So we're trying to make this a culturally relevant thing and.

[Steven Rinella]

Can I come?

[Benji Backer]

Can you speak?

[Steven Rinella]

No, just bring my kids. We just want to hang out.

[Benji Backer]

What if they want to watch their dad on stage?

[Steven Rinella]

They won't.

[Benji Backer]

What if your wife wants to?

[Randall]

Yeah, that's a cute.

[Steven Rinella]

United by their desire not to listen to dad. Looking forward to this.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah, we wanted to go dad, but we're actually gonna stay home on this one.

[Randall]

We're like, we heard this speech at dinner last night. Part of.

[Benji Backer]

But yeah, that's kind of what the next few months look like. And you know, we're really excited because we're seeing, especially in the wake of just like the political division, people are wanting something positive in politics right now. And if there's one issue that could help democracy kind of move forward and also bring our priorities to the table, the environment's probably the best one, in my opinion. So we're seeing a lot of natural support and, you know, people from across the spectrum. I mean, we have drag queens and military militant activists who are all believing in this same model. And it's, it's. It's really kind of incredible what people are looking for on this right now.

[Steven Rinella]

How will you decide going forward? How will you decide, like, where with the public land sell off? There's like a specific thing.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

There's a known party that. That's pushing it. There's a known. Not. Not even party. There's a known individual who's pushing it.

[Benji Backer]

Yep. Right.

[Steven Rinella]

And so you gotta, like, create friction.

[Benji Backer]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Like, you're gonna. You're like, whatever you do, however positive you keep it, you will create friction.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

How. How are you deciding on what issues where you're like, I'm gonna create friction on this one. I'm going to create friction on this one. I mean, specific bills.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Specific measures. Do you mean, like, is it just your moral compass? Like, like what. What goes into going like this is going to get ugly?

[Benji Backer]

I think it's when we know that the vast majority, that there's a winning coalition that's willing to be like, active on something because we mostly want to be for things. So what I mean by that is, like, we don't want to always be the group that's standing against whatever is bad. Yeah, that's what a lot of environmental groups do. We want to show that there is a political constituency to put forward funding for national parks, to put forward funding for wildlife conservation. Right. Like. Like show that there's an appetite for that in a positive way. Because I'm so sick of, like, politicians only being afraid of people instead of like being like, oh, I'm doing this because people actually want me to do it. Right. So. But when there's this example, like the public land sell off, where we have to take a stance against it, we are going to be very intentional about picking and choosing. I've already gotten so much shit for not taking a stance against absolutely everything that's been happening over the last eight months. And I'm like, I can't die on every hill. Right. And our organization can't die on every hill. And no organization can die on every hill. But if there's an overwhelming winning coalition of Americans where the politicians are so out of touch with America, like they were on the public land sell off, we're gonna show them that they're out of touch. And so it will depend on really, where is the American populace at, where's the winning coalition at? And can we actually mobilize them? Because if we can't, then we're trying to, you know, stick a square peg into a round hole. And a lot of times that's what happens. And it doesn't actually do anything. So if we're gonna really lean in and be against something, we better be damn sure that it's gonna be impactful before we do it.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, that's. That's. I like that approach. Yeah, I'm at a loss for words. I love that approach. I like that approach because I think another way that groups would look and they'll say, this is we're gonna lose bad, but this is gonna be good for fundraising and this is gonna be good for press.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

If I wanted to, like, if PETA, if PETA says, hey, we're gonna have it be that you don't say whole hog anymore. You know, they're like, we're probably gonna lose. People are still gonna say whole hog, but it's gonna get a lot of media.

[Benji Backer]

Exactly.

[Steven Rinella]

But, you know, we're not gonna win this one.

[Benji Backer]

And that's exact. I mean, what I'm at the Point where it's like, I care about the outcomes, and if that. If that comes at the cost of fundraising, I'm willing to take that. If it comes at the cost of media, that's fine. If it comes at the cost of people thinking that I have some ulterior motive because I'm not taking a stance on everything because they think that I'm, like, trying to shy away from every issue, then that's fine, too. But I think people have gotten so used to, like, oh, you're not taking a stance on absolutely everything that's bad, therefore you must have some ulterior motive. It's like, no, it's actually the opposite. Right. Like, I could raise so much money opposing everything that Donald Trump does, I could raise so much money off of that, and if I wanted to, I would do it. Or if I wanted to defend everything he was doing, I could also raise a lot of money off of that. But I think over time, people's demand is going to be for trying to actually create good outcomes. At least that's my optimistic view of the world, that people actually want that. And over time, people will see, man, this is. If you want to take a legitimate stance on something that will actually move the needle, this is the organization to work with. That's the goal.

[Steven Rinella]

You know what a good analogy could be for you? Like, think about how the military would look at battles. They're not like, all the guys are gonna die, but think about what this is gonna mean from a publicity standpoint.

[Benji Backer]

Right?

[Steven Rinella]

They're kind of like, no, no, no, I think we should go on Wednesday night because we're gonna win on Wednesday night. Yeah.

[Benji Backer]

Are you guys just. You guys have this. We're gonna.

[Steven Rinella]

We're gonna go. We're gonna go on.

[Cal]

Too much time together.

[Randall]

Steve. Steve and I were playing phone tag all day, and I happened to be on a Gettysburg tour, and we finally connected. While I'm sitting there looking at. At Pickett's Charge from the viewpoint of the union lines, and Steve's like, well, what do you think? I'm like, this is so stupid. I'm like, you cannot tell me. You cannot. Like, I'm at odds with our historical tour guide right now. Because I'm like, yeah, I'm not buying this at all. This is ego driven.

[Steven Rinella]

Some dude going to pick it. Being like, can I get a quick word? Just kind of looking down, looking around here.

[Benji Backer]

That is the perfect analogy, though. That is the perfect analogy.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Benji Backer]

And I think the conservation movement could really use that. But. But also, like, They're. To your point earlier, there are so many incredible groups out there in the hunt, you know, in the hook and bullet crowd, but also in the conservation crowd. But they're not trying to do what I'm trying to do. And so we can work really well together to get things done because they do have a. They do have science behind them, they do have resources, they do have research, they do have some grassroots. Right. And they have a brand and they have really good ideas. But we need to facilitate the space for those ideas and create the national identity around those ideas. And so. So I think for most of America, we hope to be the national movement, but then we want to help accelerate the priorities of all these other great groups that are out there that just haven't had the space. TRCP has so many great policy ideas. All these groups have so many great policy ideas. But if the political space isn't there to move them, then they're just ideas. Right. And the roadless rule or anything that we're against being rescinded, we might be right about that. But if they still decide to go forward with it because Americans didn't speak up enough about it, then. Then it doesn't matter how right we were. So that's.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm a big TRCP supporter. Cal does a lot of work with bha, but I think that, I'm sure there are people that fall into a trap of being competitive.

[Benji Backer]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

But I would say, like, speaking for the people at this table, I would say, like, we'll take the wins. We can get them.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah. Yep. And we just need wins.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Like, you know, I love to see the groups I love and the people I love thrive and do well, but I'm not. I'd rather see environmental wins than organization wins.

[Benji Backer]

I agree with that. You know, and, and honestly, I mean, if nature is not.

[Steven Rinella]

God speed.

[Benji Backer]

Thank you.

[Steven Rinella]

God speed.

[Benji Backer]

And, you know, I. It really doesn't matter about who gets the credit. We just need good conservation wins. Like, I. People ask me all the time, why am I doing this? And I, I think you'll find out in 20 years, as we look back, 40 years, as we look back, I just care about conservation wins. And if nature's nonpartisan isn't needed, then that's great. But if it's also the most important culturally relevant organization, that's great, too. But, like, there is no motive other than getting wins on the board. But I like that approach because it also means that we are being so collaborative with all these other groups that largely have seen each other as competitive enemies in a lot of ways. But they could be moving together. And I do believe that it's more powerful if they do. And I. I know that's kind of breaking the mold of, like, the nonprofit model. It's breaking the mold of, like, the political model. People want to be against each other to find competition. But, like, this, to me, is bigger than that. It's bigger than politics. It's bigger than who has the money. It's bigger than who gets the money. It's bigger than who gets the win. It's who. And how did we get the best outcomes for conservation? Because we need, like, a 21st century infusion of conservation progress like Teddy Roosevelt created. We need to have that legacy recreated in this country, and we're not gonna do it with the typical political bullshit that we've been dealing with over the last few years.

[Steven Rinella]

Appreciate taking so much time to talk, man.

[Benji Backer]

This is really fun. I even got to eat jerky on air. Got to lick my chops a little bit frothy. Should we all do that? And you just go, oh, Phil, there's.

[Steven Rinella]

Some jerky where you feel like they should have put one of those little flossers in the bag with it.

[Benji Backer]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

But that doesn't give any problems.

[Benji Backer]

I mean, how's it like. How's it, like.

[Steven Rinella]

Doesn't have any, like, threads?

[Cal]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

When I was a kid, when we made. We made jerky, my dad would just, like, take the shank and just slice it thin, you know, I remember, like, every piece of jerky you ate, you'd have, like, a cut, you'd have a cud. And after an hour of jerky eating, you'd take this white ball, like a piece of chewing gum, but it was sinew. And you'd eventually take that and flick it.

[Benji Backer]

Yeah. And it's full of little jerky pieces.

[Randall]

Debate whether or not.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. You just be like, after. Why? I'd be like, yeah, it's probably. And you open the window and off into the side of the road.

[Benji Backer]

This does not do that.

[Steven Rinella]

No, I don't. I don't need that little connective tissue. Yeah. There's no cud. There's no cud to chew.

[Benji Backer]

But I do want to. Again, you guys have a lot of incredible influence and impact that you've made, both of you, specifically on getting people rallied around these ideas across party lines. So you're living the nature's nonpartisan mantra every single day. And I look up to you guys a lot. And just the way that you've led Kel's tenacious man. You are.

[Randall]

Well, it helps when you're right.

[Benji Backer]

That's the good thing we have on our side is vrl.

[Steven Rinella]

It's being right that gets him up in the morning. Yeah.

[Benji Backer]

Well when it's, when it's authentic, you fight harder. Right. And you can tell that you mean it and I can tell you mean it and hopefully you can tell that I mean it and that just makes it easier because you wake up every day and you actually want to do it and you're not trying to put someone in a box. Because the thing is, the thing that we have against these, these screw ups in politics today is that they are putting themselves in boxes that they don't even think are authentically real. And at some point this authenticity of fighting for what we actually believe in will win because we actually have the passion and we actually care that will win.

[Randall]

I keep reminding people, I'm like, we are right. And if you don't think you are, bring this, bring your viewpoint of public lands and the value of them to somebody who doesn't have that viewpoint and you can just watch the mental gymnastics happen.

[Benji Backer]

Exactly.

[Randall]

And how they have to like try to re center themselves on their argument. Like, well, have you considered. It's like, yeah, we got it.

[Steven Rinella]

But I feel like you're not feeling that.

[Benji Backer]

You get a sense that that's not an authentic view you have.

[Randall]

Right, right, right. They're like, well, I've never been but right.

[Benji Backer]

That'S true. I think some of those guys, we could really, they look like they've never been in the outdoors before and they look like, you know, maybe we could help them. So yeah, that's something we should think about at some point. Little sun, Little sun. A little, little mountain, little tree.

[Randall]

Little dirt.

[Benji Backer]

Little dirt.

[Cal]

Not to sidetrack it, but summer.

[Steven Rinella]

I was going to wrap up.

[Benji Backer]

Another analogy.

[Cal]

Summer in Yellowstone. You see all these people pouring through Livingston. They look like they've never spent a day outdoor in their lives and there's a lot of eye rolling about it. But when I see that, I actually think it's really cool that, that somebody who lives in Florida or New York or wherever is like, you know what we need to do this year? We need to go see Montana and Wyoming.

[Steven Rinella]

Because you're a big hearted person.

[Cal]

No, I mean, I agree traffic gets old. I don't like waiting for tables at restaurants, but like it's, I don't want.

[Randall]

To peel the curtain back too much, but Randall and his wife have both told me that if they ever went On a murder spree.

[Steven Rinella]

It would.

[Randall]

It would be to target people who do illegal things in national parks.

[Benji Backer]

Okay, that's. But that's a different argument.

[Cal]

Again, all of my darkest secrets are coming out.

[Benji Backer]

No, but those are not. Those are not contradicting statements just to.

[Steven Rinella]

Put a pin on it.

[Cal]

Like, I think it's. I think it's so cool that people are like. That people in this country are like, I have to see this. This is part of my American. This is part of being an adult as an American. There's, like, sharing this with my kids even if they never come back. Like, another day or they don't hunt or they don't fish. They're like, you know what? We're gonna load up the station wagon and go look at rocks and water.

[Steven Rinella]

Yep. No, that's true. Phil, you should take that clip and send that to Venmo and see if they'll let Randall back on.

[Randall]

Yeah, I'm on it.

[Steven Rinella]

Look at this guy. Come on. Look at this guy.

[Cal]

Not such a bad guy.

[Steven Rinella]

Not such a bad guy. Let him do a little transaction. Buy what he needs to buy.

[Benji Backer]

He's always.

[Steven Rinella]

Let him buy what he needs to buy from estate sales.

[Benji Backer]

This episode sponsored by Venmo.

[Steven Rinella]

Man. Benji Backer. Nature is nonpartisan. Thanks, man.

[Benji Backer]

Thanks for having me. This is a lot of fun and love to come back.

[Steven Rinella]

No, I'd love to have you back on.

[Benji Backer]

And let's get out there together at some point, too.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, I would.

[Benji Backer]

That's where I'd rather be.

[Steven Rinella]

Hit us up in a year. That's kind of a year later.

[Benji Backer]

Okay.

[Steven Rinella]

We got a lot of people come. We got a lot of people to come back.

[Benji Backer]

I'll put her. Well, hopefully we made a lot of progress. I'll put it on my calendar. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

One year.

[Benji Backer]

One year.

[Steven Rinella]

Unless things change a whole bunch. Unless all of a sudden you win all the environmental battles, then come back on.

[Benji Backer]

Is that. That's the incentive right there.

[Steven Rinella]

All right, you do an update. We won them all. It's over.

[Benji Backer]

I'll see you in a year. There's no way that's happening.

[Steven Rinella]

All right. Thanks, man.

[Benji Backer]

Thank you so much.

[Steven Rinella]

Appreciate it.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. Spooky season is quickly approaching, so time to stock up on all your favorite treats. Now through October 7th, you can get early savings on your Halloween candy favorites when you shop in store and online. Save on items like Hershey's, Reese's pumpkins, Snickers miniatures, Tootsie Rolls, raw sugar, milk chocolate, caramel Jack o' Lanterns, Brock's Candy Corn Charms, Mini Pops and more. Offer ends October 7th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.

[Benji Backer]

This prime big deal days October 7th and 8th. You can get a great deal on a new foot spa, transforming you into the queen of kickin.

[Steven Rinella]

It's Wait, this has bubble jets. Hmm.

[Benji Backer]

Okay, get up to 40% off with prime big deal days October 7th and 8th.

[Jacob Goldstein]

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