Ep. 845: Can Ruffed Grouse and Woodcock Be Saved?

Summary

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The MeatEater Podcast

Ep. 845: Can Ruffed Grouse and Woodcock Be Saved?

Host: Steven Rinella
Guest: Dr. Carl Malcolm (VP of Conservation, Ruffed Grouse Society & American Woodcock Society)
Date: March 9, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores a critical question facing North American upland birds: "Can Ruffed Grouse and Woodcock Be Saved?" Host Steven Rinella is joined by longtime podcast favorite Dr. Carl Malcolm, a wildlife biologist and now VP of Conservation at the Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society. The conversation weaves through forest history, habitat management, the roles of disturbance and human intervention, disease threats, broader conservation funding, and the cultural connections that bind people to these birds and the land. The discussion is rich with ecological nuance, vivid storytelling, and a call to responsibility for hunters and non-hunters alike.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Decline of Ruffed Grouse and Woodcock

• Across much of their range, ruffed grouse and woodcock populations are declining, with some states closing or restricting hunting seasons due to low numbers.
• Grouse and woodcock are indicators of greater changes in eastern forest ecosystems, not just species in isolation.
• Quote – Dr. Malcolm:
  "The story of how these forests have changed, and...what the status of ruffed grouse and American woodcock today tell us about the status of these forests, is the most important part of this conversation..." (10:56)
• Disease (notably West Nile virus for grouse) and habitat loss/change are both key drivers, but habitat is paramount and offers the best lever for positive action.

Forest Disturbance: Then and Now

• Historically, forests east of the Mississippi were dynamic, shaped by disturbance: fire, beaver, bison, elk, passenger pigeons, and indigenous land management (13:55–28:00).
• Loss of these disturbance regimes after European settlement created more homogeneous, closed-canopy, middle-aged forests with far less habitat diversity.
• Quote – Dr. Malcolm:
  "For thousands of years...these forests were tremendously disrupted by a whole host of drivers that have been eliminated from the system." (27:44)
• Without disturbance (natural or human-driven), habitat needed by grouse, woodcock, and many other species disappears.

Logging, Forest Products, and Conservation

• Not all logging is created equal. Unsustainable, exploitative extraction historically damaged forests; today, logging, if done right, is an essential tool for creating diverse, healthy habitat (34:03–44:56).
• Advocates for "active forest management" – logging that considers what is left behind, not just what is removed.
• Declining forest products industry (especially pulp and paper) is a major concern:
  "Without robust forest products industry, the ability to deliver habitat outcomes at scale is tremendously compromised." (64:44)
• Modern stewardship agreements and partnerships (e.g., with the US Forest Service) can generate timber revenue to reinvest directly in habitat improvement (56:12–61:56).

Private Landowners and Responsibility

• Many private landowners want to manage forests well but lack the expertise or resources; organizations like RGS/AWS play a vital support role (45:41–49:00).
• Example of a landowner ("Doug") balancing financial and ecological goals:
  "He's making those decisions with an eye on the financial side...and also thinking about that legacy, you know, it's not ours. It's our turn." (46:27)

Conservation Funding & Declining Hunting Participation

• State agency funding, often tied to hunting license sales, is under threat due to declining hunter numbers (65:00–67:18).
• Dr. Malcolm reframes: it's about broader disconnection from nature—hunting is one of several deep connections to land, but overall apathy poses the greatest threat:
  "Declining participation in hunting is representative of a broader trend that is a real threat to conservation." (67:00)
• Quote – Dr. Malcolm:
  "If you don't have people who feel that sense of responsibility [to land], that is an existential threat." (68:49)

Public Perception, Education, and Nuance

• Many well-meaning people see forest management or tree-cutting as negative ("hands-off equals healthy"), failing to recognize the need for active management and disturbance (74:20–76:37).
• Distinguishment between caring for places versus truly understanding them and their ecological needs:
  "A lot of people care. They just don't care in the right way." (75:28)
• Welcomes non-hunters and broader allies; focused on developing a sense of responsibility, not just appreciation.

Habitat Loss: Irrevocable (Development) vs. Neglect

• The two biggest ecological threats are outright habitat loss ("irrevocable harm" – pavement, development) and neglect (lack of management/disturbance leading to suboptimal habitat) (88:32–91:09).
• Many eastern US forests are middle-aged, closed-canopy, low-diversity stands resulting from regrowth after past logging—now in "mesofication" (shift towards shade- and moisture-loving species: red maple over oaks), with little understory and diminishing oaks due to lack of disturbance and fire (91:09–93:47).

Woodcock: Ecological Outliers and Migration

• Woodcock require habitat at continental scale; their migration makes the system more fragile, needing “quality at the right places at the right times” (96:13–107:03).
• GPS tracking, banding, and new research are sharpening understanding of migratory routes and critical stopover habitats.
• Despite brief local booms, they too are declining continent-wide.

Disease, Predators, and the Primacy of Habitat

• West Nile virus, avian influenza, parasites, and predation are secondary to habitat; good habitat can mediate negative effects (11:55–13:04; 143:00–145:36).
• "Everybody's killing them, man. Like, grouse and woodcock are delicious...but the lever that matters is the habitat." (142:31)
• Predator control is not a practical fix for declining grouse/woodcock.

Conservation Requires Coalition and Community

• Broad partnerships (with groups like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, American Bird Conservancy, Pheasants Forever, Quail Forever, and the Aldo Leopold Foundation) are essential and celebrated (148:23–151:09).
• Competition between conservation orgs is counterproductive:
  "There's no excuse for there to be a sense of competition among these organizations. We've got to be taking the tact... where they're creating a space to try to elevate the missions of all these different organizations." (148:31)
• Building a "community around taking care of the land" is the RGS/AWS mission, focusing on responsibility and active stewardship (151:11–153:38).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Forest Perception:
  "For thousands of years...these forests were tremendously disrupted by a whole host of drivers that have been eliminated from the system." — Dr. Malcolm (27:44)
• On Modern Forest Management:
  "[Logging] can be a terrible thing, and it can be a tremendous thing...when you talk about logging, what a lot of folks hear is exploitation." — Dr. Malcolm (34:03)
• On Funding and Disconnection:
  "Declining participation in hunting is representative of a broader trend that is a real threat to conservation." — Dr. Malcolm (67:00)
• On Habitat vs. Predators/Disease:
  "Having quality habitat is going to mediate those effects. It's like the thing to do." — Dr. Malcolm (144:07)
• On Shared Conservation Ethic:
  "What we're trying to do is find ways to redeem our responsibilities to the places that we love and help leave these forested ecosystems in a state that's going to be better for wildlife and for people into the future." — Dr. Malcolm (28:32)
• On The Anthropocene:
  "If [humans] are the dominant force [in ecology], then maybe we need to be the dominant force of good as well." — Steven Rinella (120:48)
• On Building Community:
  "What we're really trying to figure out is building this idea of building community around taking care of the land." — Dr. Malcolm (151:38)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 04:46 – Introduction of Dr. Carl Malcolm and his background
• 09:35 – Setting the scene: what’s happening to ruffed grouse right now?
• 13:04–28:32 – Deep dive on eastern forest history, disturbance, and lost ecological drivers
• 34:03–44:56 – Logging: exploitation vs. modern habitat management; forest products
• 45:41–49:07 – Private landowners, responsibility, optimism for bottom-up stewardship
• 56:12–62:07 – Modern stewardship models, Forest Service partnerships, paying for habitat work
• 65:00–69:06 – Conservation funding, hunters, and broader disconnection from nature
• 74:20–76:37 – The difference between caring about nature and understanding its needs
• 88:32–93:47 – Forest loss vs. neglect, “mesofication,” and landscape-scale implications
• 96:13–107:03 – Deep dive into woodcock: migration, GPS data, cross-state connections
• 143:00–145:36 – Predators, disease, and why habitat always matters most
• 148:23–151:09 – Conservation coalitions, joining organizations, the Aldo Leopold connection
• 151:11–153:38 – Ruffed Grouse Society/American Woodcock Society campaign and final thoughts

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Key Takeaways

• The fate of ruffed grouse and woodcock is deeply tied to active and thoughtful forest management—without diverse, perpetually disturbed forests, these birds (and many others) are in trouble.
• Disease and predation matter, but nothing outweighs habitat.
• Declining hunting is a symptom of larger cultural disconnection—cultivate connections, whether by hunting, hiking, birding, or volunteering.
• Conservation needs partnerships—no single group can solve these issues alone.
• Well-managed logging and private land stewardship can be powerful ecological tools if done with vision and responsibility.
• Anyone interested in forests, birds, or just ensuring vibrant landscapes for future generations has a stake and a role to play.

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To Learn More or Get Involved:

• Join or donate: ruffed.org (memberships include a Sand County Almanac & more)
• Follow conservation partnerships: Ruffed Grouse Society, American Woodcock Society, Pheasants Forever, Quail Forever, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Aldo Leopold Foundation, and others.

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Summary curated in the spirit and tone of The MeatEater Podcast: honest, informed, slightly irreverent, and deeply passionate about wild places, wild things, and the people who care about them.

Transcript

[A]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human hey, you guys know the Onx Hunt has great mapping tools, but did you know that they have draw odds? That's right, during application season, which is now, things can feel overwhelming. Got different states, different point systems, different deadlines. It's easy to screw up and miss those deadlines. That's why Onyx created Hunt Research Tools. It organizes the data that matters, helps you compare units side by side, and helps you build a plan based on real metrics that are easy to understand. Elite members also get a free pro membership to Hunt and Fool and access to Hunt reminder so you never miss a deadline again. Start applying with confidence across the west with Hunt Research Tools from Onx. Free for elite members, not elite well, use Code me Eater for 20% off at onxmaps.com Hunt Man, I'm telling you what I recently strapped into a pair of Tocovas rugged mock boots. It's like their rugged moccasin boot that was going real good and I loved them till my kids swiped them from me. To Cova's crafts quality Western boots for everyone from generational ranchers and lifelong cowboys to first time boot buyers. Toba has you covered with premium genuine leathers and superior construction techniques. Every pair is handcrafted in over 200 steps. No stiff break in period. You get just instant out of the box comfort. They got premium apparel? No, they got elevated leather goods like wallets, belts and more. Everything at Tokova's is crafted with the same attention to detail and timeless style. Shop to Cova's Western Goods online at tokova's.com or swing by a to Cova store for the full experience with free drinks, boot shines and complimentary boot branding to make your pair feel personal. Their expert and friendly staff are at your service to answer any questions and help you pick out the perfect pair of boots. Right now, get 10% off at tocovas.com meateater when you sign up for email and text. That's 10 off at T E C O V A S.com meater to cova.commeater C site for details Covis Point your toes West Warning this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Black Buffalo products are intended for adults aged 21 and older who are consumers of nicotine or tobacco. If you're 21 or older and use nicotine or tobacco, it's time you charge ahead to America's only credible smokeless tobacco alternative, Black Buffalo. Established in the good old US of A in 2015, it dips just like the real thing without the tobacco leaf or stem. It's made from barn cured leafy greens with USP grade nicotine. Now available at thousands of best in class retailers across the USA like Wawa, Circle K Sheetz loves Pop, Pilot, Racetrack and even more places that you can see on their store [e-mail] Black Buffalo Tobacco Alternative it's everything you love about dip and nothing you don't. This is the Meat Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwear list. We hunt the Meater podcast. 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 at first light.com that's F I R S T L I T E.com hot damn. We're joined today by the one of the greatest guests.

[B]

Oh man.

[A]

I mean for like in terms of just consistent performances over the years. Dude. One of the greatest guests of all time. Greatest guests. Wow. I mean like, I'm not talking about just of guess. Do you feel like I'm buttering up a little much?

[C]

You're going big. I didn't expect, dude.

[B]

I don't know.

[C]

Normally he tries to knock you down first and then he'll build you back up.

[A]

I I if you took all the greatest guests.

[B]

Oh man.

[A]

And then had a showdown among those guests.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Carl would emerge top. Maybe not the top, but like he would.

[C]

He might be too nice to make it to the top.

[A]

He'd be up there. Carl Malcolm, Wild, like wildlife biologist, long history at the Every time you've ever been on, I think you've been on. No, every time you've ever been on, you've been on as a guy from the Forest Service.

[B]

That is true. That is true.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

You and I started doing podcasts not long after I joined Federal Service, which was back in late 2011.

[A]

Yeah, okay. But Carl's got a very deep history in all things outdoors. Grew up big time hunter, big time angler. Got into things like weird stuff, man. Like got into doing deer work on deer work on air. Airport runways.

[B]

Yeah. Wildlife damage management work.

[A]

Wildlife damage management. Got sew into muskrat trapping. I don't know if you know this, Brody.

[C]

Nope.

[A]

Phil probably knows about this. Got so into muskrat trap and that he used to put in a bid to lock down a chunk. Oh, don't tell me.

[C]

I Can't think of a chunk of marsh.

[B]

Damn it, I was gonna do it. Horicon Marsh.

[C]

Well, that's a famous one.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

In the world.

[A]

Regardless, some of the best muskrats on the planet.

[C]

Yeah, I've heard of that.

[A]

He used to put in a bid to get his own private chunk of the marsh. The Horicon Marsh. During the. During the mini boom. Yeah, the mini boom of, like, 2011 to 2014.

[C]

Did you have, like, trapping rivals? Like, trapping wars?

[A]

He had his own section.

[B]

Yeah. With my saying to people, like.

[C]

People, like, didn't come in and try.

[B]

I mean, the federal. The federal agents out there.

[A]

Stay close that mic or Phil's gonna make. Oh, you already got your headphones on.

[B]

Never mind. The. The federal agents there do not mess around. And these boundaries are very clearly defined. That was with my. My dear buddy, Jacob Zayski.

[A]

What were you guys. How many muskrats were you guys catching?

[B]

Hundreds. Hundreds. Yeah. And during the mini boom. Yeah, because they would do a sting out there. The federal agents would do a sting out there. There's a highway that cuts east, west across Horicon Marsh, and there's so many muskrat trappers going across this bridge. Federal agents would put a roadkilled muskrat out there and see who had stopped to pick it up, because that was one of. One of the ways that they could pinpoint folks who were not following the rules because it was technically illegal to gather up a roadkilled muskrat.

[C]

That seems kind of cheap. That seems kind of cheap.

[B]

Come on.

[A]

I knew. I knew.

[B]

I knew what your sentiments would be on that. But.

[A]

But the point out. Rosa Parks, that situation.

[B]

Yeah, the point. The point is they. They. They strictly enforce those boundaries.

[A]

I got to return to that in a minute here to tell you something. Interesting reason Carl's. What we're here to talk about is rough grouse and also. And also American woodcock. Because Carl is now the VP of conservation at the Rough Grouse Society and the American Woodcock Society. And what we're here to find out about is this. Are rough grouse screwed? If so, how screwed? And what. Like, why? What's it gonna take? What is the. What is the future of the bird in America? Before we're going to get into all that, but before we do, I gotta tell you a funny story. My friend Stu, who's a trapper in southern Illinois, he's been on the show. Stu Miller's. Stu Miller. Coon Creek Outdoors. He makes some of the best. If you want to See good fur handling information online. I don't think anybody has better fur handling information than Stu Miller from Coon Creek outdoors. Like, if you were like, how do you skin and flash and stretch an otter, a raccoon, coyote, whatever. Stu is has a phenomenal series on YouTube. Anyhow, he was traveling in Kansas. You know, skunks are real high right now. All they want is the tail.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

Okay. Stu said when he was in Kansas, he was seeing dead skunks on the side of the road. Roadkill skunks on the side of the road minus their tail.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Now, everybody's used to seeing deer on the side of the road somehow minus their head.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But, yep, skunks minus their tail on side.

[C]

I just saw a nice skunk on the side of the road yesterday.

[A]

30 bucks laying there. And if you cut the tail and you learn what you're doing, you can cut it without getting into the sacks. But I wonder how many guys hop out and cut a little too close to the base.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And have just a mess that they are not.

[B]

Was it worth the 30 bucks?

[A]

Ready to deal with grade? Like. Like, how are. Just before we get into all the details, like, in the. In your organization.

[B]

Mm.

[A]

What is up with ruff grouse right now? I mean, why are we seeing, like. Like there's states that had rough grouse seasons that don't have rough grouse seasons? Like, restrictions are down.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It just doesn't, you know, it just doesn't feel like we're in the good old days of rough grouse hunting. That is true in much of the country.

[B]

That is true. And I think, you know, as we get into the topic at hand, I want to just kind of, like, zoom back, and we're going to be talking about ruff grouse and American woodcock over the course of this conversation. But I really want to frame it in terms of what's going on with forests and forest habitat and kind of the history of these forested ecosystems. We'll focus primarily east of the Mississippi river, which is sort of the. The core of what we think about being habitat for rough grouse and American woodcock and. And the upland bird hunting tradition that goes with it, recognizing there's certainly plenty of forest grouse west of the Mississippi as well. We can talk about that, too. But I think the history of these forests and what the status of ruffed grouse and American woodcock today tell us about the status of these forests is, is the most important part of this conversation, because I think, you know, I'm somebody who Loves these birds. There's plenty of people out there who do. But there's a lot more people that really appreciate forested ecosystems. And being able to understand the dynamics of those places and understand what we can and should be doing differently to make sure that we leave these places better than we found them is a much bigger and deeper and more significant conversation than just what's the letter grade of current status for ruffed grouse and American woodcock? And those two things are inextricably linked. So I really want to anchor into kind of the history and status of forests. But to answer your question.

[A]

Well, I want to.

[B]

Yeah. Say.

[A]

Sure. That opening bit where you're saying we can't talk about ruffed grouse without talking about forest and forest health.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Now, if I had sat down in my chair and the first thing out of your mouth was, we can't talk about ruffed grouse without talking about mosquitoes and West Nile virus, or we can't talk about ruff grouse without talking about avian influenza, like, I wouldn't have been surprised.

[B]

Hmm. Well, those things. We can talk about all those things.

[A]

And I think you teed it up like it's. We're talking about. We're talking.

[B]

We're talking about forests for sure. And I love the fact that you're bringing up. You're bringing up West Nile virus, you're bringing up avian influenza, West Nile virus, by the way, a way bigger deal for rough grouse. And I want to talk a little bit about the sort of moderating or mediating effect that good habitat can have on helping a species like ruffed grouse while facing a stressor like an expanding disease, which West Nile virus is. And there's some really interesting interconnections between habitat, ruffed grouse, abundance and distribution, and climate as well. It's one of the really great examples of how shifting climate can influence a disease vector that has very clear ramifications for the status of a species that many people care a lot about. But at the bottom line, the story of how these forests have changed and I think even just the misconceptions of what these forests are is something that I think we can turn some light bulbs on for. Folks.

[C]

Can I tee you up, like, with this whole thing about, like, going back in time, like.

[B]

Yeah. Why?

[C]

Was it because, like, ruff grouse, like, I feel like the pinnacle of their, like, popularity and, like, king of the forest or, you know, their nickname and all that, like, that's like, in the past, that reputation that they had, I Don't think it's like a thing with hunters. Like, it used to be, like, why was it like, when my dad was like, he was a big rough grouse hunter, like, and why was it so good in the 70s when he was out there in Pennsylvania and there was just grouse everywhere?

[A]

Yeah, like, ammo ads, shotgun shell ads were like the. The featured critter. It was like, if you go back far enough, cottontail rabbits and stuff. But there's a point when, like, ammo ads, it was like grouse, the king

[B]

of the game birds, which.

[A]

Which I was raised to call pats.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Partridge.

[B]

Yeah. There's good debate.

[A]

I.

[B]

We grew up just. I was a little bit north. You there in the northern Lord.

[A]

Within that. Like, what is within that? You got. You probably got a way to hit this. But, like, what is the sort of timeline? And then also, where are we talking about? That might be the best thing. Yeah, just real quick.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Where are we talking about?

[B]

Yeah. So I think focusing the conversation on the midwestern United States, down into Ohio, Indiana, across into the mid Atlantic and up into the Northeast. Maine continues to have tremendous grouse hunting and down into the Appalachian Mountains as well. You know, a lot of people associate ruffed grouse, rightly so, with the presence of aspen. Aspen is one of those species for. For grouse that provides tremendous cover and also availability of food. But if you start looking at more southern grouse habitat, essentially, if you have good structure, if you have high stem densities, and if you have the sun hitting the forest floor and promoting robust availability of. Of various mast species, you have grouse all the way down into northern Georgia. But the general storyline. Brody. We could talk about Pennsylvania a little bit as an example, where just in the span of the last handful of decades, many states, particularly at the southern extent of their range, are seeing grouse decline rapidly. And it's noteworthy, you know, a lot of folks understand the dynamics around sage grouse decline. Like sage grouse get a lot of attention, rightly so. Sage grouse habitat, sagebrush ecosystems are tremendously imperiled for a variety of reasons. That story is out there, and it's noteworthy to me that you have this species. To your point, Brody, that like in your dad's generation, in our. In our. In our father's generations, grouse were a big deal. And I think the simplest and best answer to why that's not the case is that fewer and fewer people have access to robust populations. Now, where I spend a lot of my time, grouse and woodcock hunting, which is across the northern tier of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, we are still in the good old days. It's phenomenal. And I had. I had great rough good old days

[A]

relative even to the good old days.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, and. And there's a cyclical dynamic at play with. With grouse woodcock. So. So just a sort of. If we step back and look at the big picture, the general story is one of decline for both of these species, having nothing to do with hunting pressure, having everything to do with habitat, and also some of these other variables. Like, we can talk about the disease issues, but habitat is the bottom line. And at the southern extent of their range, where we start getting into some of the more acute issues with disease dynamics, the influence of climate. So Pennsylvania, for example, there's a really important elevational gradient at play here where, you know, you can think about grouse contracting northward, so sort of retreating from a latitudinal perspective. But then there's also this elevational retreat that's occurring where grouse are being pushed higher and higher because it's more than the same. Right, right, exactly. Because those climatic variables are influencing the availability of. Of habitat. And in the case of West Nile virus, the presence of the mosquitoes that carry West Nile is influenced by longer, wetter summers. So you have the disease sort of marching upslope as climates continue to.

[C]

You mentioned aspens for grouse. Like. Like, can you give people, like, what is like the ideal chunk of rough grouse habitat? What's it look like? Because you hear like, early success, you know, a lot like things like that. Like if people aren't seeing them or around them as much anymore, like, what does a good chunk of grouse habitat look like?

[B]

Yeah. If I have one word to answer that question, the answer is diversity. Young, Young forest habitat super important. Yes, early successional habitat is very important. And a lot of the work that we do at the Rough Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society is focused on trying to get more early successional habitat on the ground. The reason for that is not because early successional habitat is the only thing that matters. The reason for that is that we are limited in early successional habitat. We're an organization that's very interested in overall forest health. And in terms of these eastern forests, the bottom line, there is diversity of habitat. We want young forest, we want middle aged forest, we want old forest, and we want these things in a juxtaposition where in individual grouse, because these birds have a very strong sight fidelity, they do not travel great distances. But having the access to these different age classes over the course of their life cycle for foraging, for raising their broods, for escaping predators. It's that availability of diverse habitat within a small area and being able to maintain that over time is a huge part of the challenge. Right. So if we go back, if we go back and think about what these forests were like centuries ago, this idea of diversity is critically important. And I think one of the. I'll give you two misconceptions when it comes to forests. Number one, I think a lot of people, when they step into the forest, like where we grew up, Steve, or where you grew up, Brody, Michigan, Pennsylvania, you walk into the woods and it's this peaceful, serene, beautiful place. And it's easy to fall into the trap of failing to recognize the complexity, for one, the interconnections among different species in that system, and then also the fact that there is a constant battle playing out among all of these species at a timescale that makes it hard for us to perceive. So everybody in the forest, woody vegetation, grasses, forbs, shrubs, all the plants from the understory to the canopy, are duking it out in real time for access to nutrients, access to sunlight. And historically, in these forests, there were a lot of drivers of disturbance that are gone now. And this is one of the things that I think is both most interesting and also saddest to contemplate when you think about the forests of the eastern United States. And again, I'm thinking like east of the Mississippi river. And when the first European settlers arrived on the east coast, the first. They did not arrive to some massive, homogeneous, pristine, untouched forest. What they arrived to was a very complex system that had a tremendous diversity of drivers influencing the structure of that forest, and it included wildlife that we all. I think we can think about these species in their own right, but we don't often think about them as drivers of ecosystems. So species like elk, species like bison, species like beavers, species like passenger pigeons, and also the people who are already here burning these landscapes to benefit those species I just mentioned, particularly elk and bison, but maintaining the landscape in a way that made their lives possible. So you have all of these interesting connections between those inhabitants of the North American continent that have been tremendously disrupted. So elk largely gone from the east, although amazing work being done. Of course, we're all familiar with Rocky Mountain Elk foundation, the work that they're doing with state agency partners to bring elk back, that's phenomenal. RMEF is a great partner of ours, by the way. A lot of partnership opportunities There we're talking about elk habitat and grouse habitat in the same breath. Bison gone. Passenger pigeons gone. Gone, Right. And beavers like, nothing like they were at European contact with this continent. And then indigenous fire, largely gone. So these five drivers that created all of this heterogeneity, all of this diversity in structure. And the one that I really wanted, like, we can. If any of those geek either you guys out and you want to dig deeper into any of them, we can. We can dig deeper. But I want to talk about passenger pigeons just for a minute, because I think a lot of folks, you know, we. We all. If you're a nerd around conservation and wildlife in America, we all know the stories of, like, the sky blackening and the rivers of birds and John James Audubon and others trying to come up with estimates of the billions of passenger pigeons. Like one in four land birds in North America being a passenger pigeon, right? Just like you can't wrap your head around it. Those are all stories that are really familiar to us. But I want to. I want to flag one of the most sort of haunting books that folks probably haven't heard of, written by a guy named Peter Matheson, called Wildlife in America. And in that book, Matheson does a phenomenal job of capturing the stories in just the most haunting and poetic language around the loss of. Of wildlife on this continent over the span of the last handful of centuries. And one of the things that's most memorable about that book for me is the way that he talks about the passenger pigeons and them as a driver of disturbance. And this is the important part. And there are stories, like up around Petoskey, Michigan, of these.

[A]

That's where the last big shoot was.

[B]

Well, and these nesting events that would span for tens of miles in length and multiple miles in width, where the forest was absolutely inundated and in some cases, decimated by the presence of nesting passenger pigeons. So they would come through. And these were birds that were heavily dependent on mast species like oak, species like beech, species like American chestnut. And there's an. There's a whole other story of loss, right? The loss of chestnut to the blight starting in 1904. But the passenger pigeons, they'd find a place where they. They had the resources that they would need to nest. They had the structural support with the. With the tree canopy. They had availability of mast, et cetera. And they would. They would arrive in such numbers that they would physically level portions of the forest. Like, if you were out there during one of these nesting events, you would just Hear for miles in any direction, the sound of branches breaking, of trees falling, of guano raining down to the point where the forest floor would have inches of accumulated droppings that would be so high in nutrient content that that would have its own set of effects on vegetation, like basically killing the understory because it was so nutrient rich with all this, all this pigeon guano raining down. And the birds themselves would reset succession in those places where they would nest. The next year, they're not coming back to nest in that same spot again. But years down the line, those systems would recover and promote the availability of the very habitat features that the passenger pigeons need to thrive. So if you step back and think about the continental scale of that species interacting with the land, it's not unlike any, a beaver or any other ecosystem engineer where they're influencing their own habitat in a way that benefits themselves over time, over generations.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But also influences the structure to the advantage of all of these other plant and animal species that occupy that habitat. And that's just one of the five examples that I gave you. You know, we could talk about bison and their wallowing or their, their, the fact that they established these movement corridors that were the precursors to a lot of our roads and highways. Right.

[A]

They would call them roads.

[B]

Exactly. The traces, right, the buffalo traces. They would leave, they would leave a path of disruption. And so this idea, and this is one of the biggest challenges if you think about current condition in these systems now and trying to get good habitat back on the ground for species like ruffed grouse and American woodcock. There's this misconception of what forests are, which I touched on, like failing to see the fact that all of these species are out there, the vegetation is battling for resources in real time. And the reality that for thousands of years, for hundreds of thousands of years prior to European settlement of this continent, these forests were tremendously disrupted by a whole host of drivers that have been eliminated from the system.

[A]

So

[B]

what that means in terms of current context is if we're taking a hands off approach to these systems, we are starving them of the things that they need, the things that the forest needs to provide the types of habitat and diversity, not just for ruffed grouse and American woodcock, as much as I love those two species, but for a whole host of plant and animal species. And this is why, if we look at land bird conservation more broadly, I've got a copy of the 2025 U.S. state of the Birds report here in front of me. Any bird species that depends upon that diversity of habitat in a forested context is struggling. Like, we are seeing tremendous loss. Like, think about whippoorwills. They're a good example. When you grew up, you're hearing that whip or will whip or will call. Yeah. And now if you hear one, you're like, oh, you know, that was like the sound of summer in our childhoods. Right. They have dropped off a cliff and we could go through the list. Golden winged warblers are one that's commonly brought up. So it's important to recognize, and I think from the standpoint of our organization too, there's an advantage of being able to sort of hitch our wagon up to these two iconic upland game bird species. But I also want to make sure that people understand the why of our work is about much more than thinking about having lots of grouse and woodcock to hunt. What we're trying to do is find ways to redeem our responsibilities to the places that we love and help leave these forested ecosystems in a state that's going to be better for wildlife and for people into the future. So that's a, that's, I think, a good entry point into this conversation about current condition for those couple of species.

[A]

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[C]

You you mentioned disturbance being important. And like if you talk to a couple of my buddies in Pennsylvania that are still like die hard grouse hunters despite.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

The fact that they might only flush a few birds in an entire season. Yeah, like, it's always like they don't log enough. They don't log enough. They don't log enough. Like is that like, and I know like West Nile and avian flu, like play a role but like is that perspective from just like a grouse hunter? Is there a lot of truth to that?

[B]

There is. And I think the language is really important, too. And I'm just thinking about the way that we frame up this work. And, you know, logging. Logging can be a terrible thing, and it can be a tremendous thing. And part of the problem is when it comes to social license and public discourse around what doing right by these forests means, there's not enough time or effort put into having, like, a really thoughtful, nuanced conversation about what it is we're talking about. So logging. Like, let's talk about logging. Part of the challenge. And. And like, I'll go.

[A]

Just to clarify, we're talking about logging. You're talking about. There's these historic forest disturbers.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Passenger pigeons, fire bison, elk, beaver. Yeah, beavers. Large animals that are, like, out disturbing forest.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Grazing, bowling stuff over, knocking stuff down, clearing stuff out.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And over time, we've developed a system where we have one. A lot of those places become paved over.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Or grassed over or golf course. Dover. Or parking lotted over or subdivisioned over. And so they're out.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

That's all. Just out.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

What remains is woodlots at times, wood lots that aren't having habitat disturbance on them. They grow, grow, grow, grow, grow.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So when we talk about. Just for people, just for listeners. Understand, when we talk about logging, I mean, Carl will get into it, but what we're talking about is like a. A modern disturbance driver.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Right. So if. When Brody's saying if a rough grouse guy. If a rough grouse hunter or a guy in lower, you know, the northern Lower Peninsula, Michigan, where I grew up, when we. About that. There's no logging.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

What we're saying is there's. It's not that we, you know, it's not like, you know, I used to cut firewood. I used to be a tree surgeon. I understand the siren song of the chainsaw. Right. Nothing brings the old man out of his house.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Nothing brings the old man out of his house. Like hearing chainsaw down the road. There's so. But when people talk, they're not. They're not lamenting the act of logging.

[B]

Right.

[A]

They're not necessarily lamenting the loss of jobs around logging. What they're talking about is they're lamenting what happens after you log.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is you invite a lot of sunlight onto the forest floor and it grows up thick.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The kind of stuff where if you're out walking around with your wife, you just go around it.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like, you go around it.

[B]

Unless she's gross hunting with you, man. You might go through. Unless, like.

[A]

Yeah, the kind of stuff that the only business you have going through it is grouse hunting.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like that thick.

[B]

Right, right, that.

[A]

So we talk about logging. We're talking about is the thick. The. The period of cargo tells how many years. It's a long time.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's enough to, like, kind of get used to it, where you have a thick stuff.

[B]

Yeah. Well, I really appreciate this question because I want to go back to this idea of the forests that were pre European settlement, all that disturbance happening. And then there's a really important story that we can't lose track of where this word logging. What I want to get at is the idea that not all. Not all logging is the same.

[C]

Yeah, sure.

[B]

And so if we go back to this arc of time, post European settlement, and think about the things that happened on these forests from east to west, and the wholesale liquidation of forest resources. I mean, like, the. The most sort of vivid, powerful example of intensive resource extraction that you can imagine. Right. This is when the white pines of the lake states, our childhood home range, Steve, when those forests were being liquidated. This is the chapter of the Northeast and Mid Atlantic and the declining chestnuts being felled and all of the clearing for agriculture and all the fragmentation that was happening, the forests just being liquidated, building the cities of, you know, Chicago, all the lumber that was being shipped across the Great Lakes to. To build these exploding communities. It was a period of tremendous exploitation of the land. And I think that's one of the problems is when people think about a word like logging, what a lot of folks hear is exploitation. All right? So it's important to honor the reality that in a lot of places and in our country, we do not have a long history, man. We're talking about a few centuries here. And so for. For the majority of that time, we have not had our act together in terms of how we think about logging being done in service to the land as opposed to being a source of exploitation of the land. Mm. So I want to. I want to make sure we. We. We paint this picture with a lot of intent. And we have to own the fact that places like. I'm thinking about the Monongahela National Forest as an example right now in West Virginia, where on Forest Service land, like, there was clear cutting, there was a tremendous amount of erosion, there were huge impacts to these incredibly biodiverse streams. A legacy of terrible management. You can't even call it management. A legacy of exploitation of forest resources. And if I think back to, like, I remember being in Maybe sixth or seventh grade and them talking about logging the rainforest, right. And how much rainforest is being lost in Brazil. And you know, every day there's this many square miles of rainforest being cut down.

[C]

Spotted owl on the Northwest.

[B]

Sure. The spotted owl wars, man, like Pacific Northwest. This tension between trying to keep an imperiled species on the landscape and that industry that's like the backbone of those rural Northwest communities. So there's all this history that gets wrapped up in this word logging, right. That you have, you have to be eyes wide open about. And I think it's also a fallacy to suggest that all logging that's happening today is good logging. There are plenty of examples where people are high grading forests. They're just basically thinking about, they're thinking about what value can be taken from this land now as opposed to thinking about what forest conditions for the future am I trying to create. Mm, that's a very important distinction. And that's not to say that it's impossible to extract value like monetary value from a forest and also put that forest on a trajectory to be healthier as a result of that intervention. That is 100% possible. In order to do that though, you need robust industry. Like there has to be a market. You cannot move habitat without being able to move wood. And the forest products industry is in, in a difficult state of affairs right now. So there's a lot of smart people putting a lot of thought into how to revitalize the forest products industry. But just in the past week I read in my home state of Wisconsin now there's, there's a little mill up in the town of Mozanee where by the way, I chased a couple bears around as a grad student right there in Mosani. They are shutting down a couple of their, their paper production machines and, and they're going to be jobs lost. There's going to be an impact at this Mosin email. And that's just the most recent in a long string of mill reductions, mill closures, the disruption of these, these forest products industries that are important for so many reasons. But one aspect of it is this relationship between habitat and rural economies. So being able to find ways to reinvigorate the forest products industry. And there's some cool examples of things on the horizon, things in the works, things like mass timber trying to, trying to replace steel in the construction of high rise buildings with mass timber. And there's, there's a, an amazing building in downtown Milwaukee that was just constructed using essentially replacements for where you'd have Steel beams using these laminated wood products. So that's an example. There's a push to find ways to convert woody biomass into sustainable aviation fuel. That's a budding industry. There's some amazing work going on looking at very high quality packaging being derived from molded wood fiber. So trying to replace all the plastic that we have everywhere around us all the time. Basically anywhere you see plastic, there's probably a potential to replace that plastic with a molded wood fiber product. So there's, there's reasons for optimism, but in terms of the overall picture of, of the forest products industry, there's a lot of reason for concern right now and a lot of reason for action in terms of policy, in terms of having conversations with the public around the importance of these concepts. But this idea that logging has the potential to be good and grouse hunters grumble and like, man, there hasn't been enough logging. What I hope they mean is, and what I think they mean and what I mean when I say that is there hasn't been enough active forest management where we are thinking both about what value are we extracting from these systems. And you know, I would argue even more importantly thinking about our long term commitment and responsibility to these places and what are we leaving behind? I think that's the key question. If you're focused, if you're focused more on what you're taking than what you're leaving behind, you're probably looking at it from, from a more extractive standpoint. If you're thinking about both of those things in concert, that's a beautiful space to operate. And I think we've got a ton of examples of the kind of work that we're doing on public land, on private land, with a lot of partners to derive both forms of value.

[A]

Yeah, Think about our.

[C]

Oh, no, go ahead.

[A]

No, think about our mutual friend Doug.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

No, he needs to make. He's. He manages a family farm.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Spending their family a long time. He needs to make the farm pay.

[B]

Yeah, right, right.

[A]

They do timber harvest.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

This is very small scale in terms of talking about the entire. Everything east of the Mississippi. It's a little teenage.

[B]

It's a perfect little teeny chunk.

[A]

But when you're looking at what Doug's gonna cut, he's explaining to you what it's gonna look like in five years.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Do you follow what I'm saying?

[B]

100%.

[A]

He's like, he's got a, he's got a dollar figure rolling through his head, but he's like. And it'll Be like this.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And then I'm going to do.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You know what I'm saying?

[B]

I do. And Doug, you know, I was just with Doug this past weekend, or both, up in Minneapolis at Pheasant Fest, and I was talking with Doug. Doug is. Doug is absolutely emblematic of that philosophy where, yeah, he's got the farm he needs to make it pay. He agonized over decisions about whether to cut down some of the oak trees that they harvested that were there for generations prior to him showing up. But he's making those decisions with an eye on the financial side of it, which is 100% his responsibility. And also thinking about that legacy, you know, it's not ours.

[A]

It's.

[B]

It's our turn. What is he doing to make sure that the folks who have the next turn are grateful? In hindsight, let's be clear, too.

[A]

Doug agonizes over what to do about mud puddles. Well, but on the one hand, but.

[B]

But he's coming at. He's coming at it from that space, man. And I think you know that. So on the private land context, this is one of the things. This is one of the reasons why I think there's a lot of. A lot of room for optimism and hope is you have so many people who cherish these forests for which they have personal responsibility, and there's. There's value in the forest products and there's a need for good intervention in those systems. And again, this isn't a new thing, right? It's not a new thing for humans to be looking at the land and trying to figure out how to engage with it in a way that makes the land better and makes the humans lives better. That's actually like, that's. That's the story of our species. For millennia, right? We've been in the business of manipulating the ecosystem to benefit ourselves. Unfortunately, we're at a period in human history now where fewer and fewer of us have those levers of responsibility at our fingertips. And there are also a lot of people who have those levers of responsibility at their fingertips who don't know what to do. Right. They don't know how to care for a forest. They haven't been taught that. The expertise that somebody like Doug has, the training and the knowledge. He is an outlier in that regard. But where I think he is not an outlier is in having a desire to do the right thing for the forest under his purview. I think a lot of folks want to do the right thing but don't know where to Start. So for an organization like ours, being able to work with those private landowners and help them think through how to generate revenue from their forest, but doing that through the lens of what are they leaving in terms of future habitat value, that is a really cool service. And, you know, we're doing that in a private lands context as well with. With agencies like the Forest Service, like state departments of natural resources, where we're helping them implement their management plans, which are always rooted in this idea of sustainable and wise use, but also desired future conditions. So those are really good spaces for,

[C]

like, where does the wildlife component come in? Like, from Fish and game agencies? Like, are they involved? Are they, like, we want to improve this for grouse and everything else, but, like, say, Pennsylvania game commissioner, do they come to you guys and say, this patch of forest, like, used to be good for grouse. We'd like it to return to being good for grouse. Like, is that stuff that you guys do, like, working with game agencies?

[B]

Totally.

[A]

But wasn't it historically, though? If you think of the metaphor of, like, you know, people say, like, the. The tail wag and the dog. For a long time, The dog was industry. They inadvertently, they accidentally created great habitat. I always think about the history of this big chunk of ground. Right. Like that. We would walk over and hunt. As a kid, it had always been the property of the summer camp. Mm. I'm sure historically had been logged, but it hadn't been logged in forever. And it was giant oaks with canopies interlocked.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And there was no now and then. A little sassafras, maybe a big white pine, but for the most part, it was just wide open, and the ground was covered in, like, inches of oak leaves. It had squirrels in it, but there was nothing. There was not much in there. It sold. The first thing I did was do a timber harvest a couple years after that. Timber harvest. The first time we ever, ever saw a deer in there. The first time we ever, ever saw ruffed grouse in there. All kind of grapevine, multiflora rose thickets.

[B]

Yeah, man.

[A]

And then wham. Houses. But you. But you. It was like no one was saying, hey, I'm gonna go do timber stand improvement.

[B]

Right.

[A]

On the old summer camp.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It was inadvertent.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So when people. When we talk about, like, the return of logging or forest service products, we're talking about, like. Like, making the dog healthy.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

But on the other hand, you hear a lot about, like, hat, like, habitat work. But imagine habitat work is limited in scale because it's not financing itself.

[B]

Yeah, I see where you're going. Yep.

[A]

I'm saying, so is it more so in restoring forests or restoring forests to have successional forests where you have these patchworks of different things happening?

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Like, can you even get at. Can you scale conservation work or will that never work? You'd have to scale industry.

[B]

Yeah. I love the language of making the dog healthy again. Yeah, I think that's a really good way of looking at it because that's

[A]

what Brody's bringing up. He's bringing up. Well, how about when the dog wags? When the tail wags. Dog. Like when we do like habitat work.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which wound up being like a little chunk.

[B]

Yeah. Or whatever.

[A]

I don't know. Maybe, maybe not.

[C]

I mean, maybe like if agencies are flush with money.

[B]

Well, you know, and there's a lot of different directions we could go here, so. So let me just focus in on this idea of trying to scale up conservation outcomes in forested habitats.

[A]

I like that. Conservation outcomes.

[B]

Yeah. And accidental or expenses. It's expensive work.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

You know, like a lot of the things that we do, we're involved in non native invasive species control like buckthorn removal or timber stand improvement treatments, prescribed fire. Just to give folks like a sense of the cost of some of these treatments. Imagine anywhere between like $500 an acre and a couple thousand bucks an acre to do a treatment. Right.

[A]

Like no one's making profit.

[B]

No, this is. So this is where there's. It's non commercial work. Like if we're. If we're contracting or if we're going in and trying to like have people in there with like a hand felling crew with chainsaws trying to implement a habitat project where there's not a commercial angle. It is expensive. It is tremendously difficult to scale that up.

[A]

Hey, as outdoorsmen, we always spend a lot of time thinking about how we interact with the land, how we care for the land. But then yard care, like your lawn care, defaults to chemical heavy routines. The tree. Every yard the same. Well, Sunday offers a different model. They begin by understanding your soil and local climate, then build a customized yard plan designed specifically for your environment. Their products rely on nutrient dense ingredients like seaweed, molasses and iron rather than harsh synthetic chemicals. Everything arrives at your door and connects to a hose, simplifying what has traditionally been a complicated trial and error process. It's a more targeted, more thoughtful approach to caring for the space just outside your home. Less guesswork, less excess. Fewer unnecessary treatments. If you're curious what your yard actually needs and prefer a smarter way to support it. Sunday makes that process remarkably straightforward. Go to getsunday.com to get your free custom yard analysis. That's Get Sunday. Life moves fast at American Military University. They are ready to help you keep up. AMU's flexible, affordable online programs in cyber security, I T, space studies and more are designed for service members, veterans and their families. AMU provides the support you need to take the next step wherever life takes you. American Military University Built for what's next. Learn [e-mail] edu I'll tell I get a ton of satisfaction out of process and game meat that me and my family can eat. You know, last night we vac sealed some mallards, we vac sealed some Canada Goose breasts all in my LEM Vac sealer, which I love. LEM Products has been a trusted leader in making game processing possible. What started in an Ohio garage is now a family owned company with a legacy of innovation and quality across their full line of commercial grade grinders, sealers, dehydrators, stuffers and slicers. From their Big Bite grinders to their cordless vacuum sealers, the stuff is built for reliability and performance. It's not just a purchase when you get lem, it's an investment in feeding your friends and family for years to come. And with rising meat prices, processing your own wild game is more practical than ever. Don't wait to get the gear you need. Go to LemProducts.com and use code Steve20 for 20% off your order. It's time to take control of your harvest, build new traditions and experience the pride of a well stocked freezer.

[B]

I'll give you a contrasting model that I think is really powerful and really cool. We've got a number of national forests where we're partnering on stewardship agreements where the Forest Service has the ability to hand responsibility over for the administration of timber sales to a non profit organization like ours. We can administer the timber sale, generate revenue through the timber, cover all the administrative costs of handling the sale, and then also have in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars left over from the value in that timber that we can put right into the ground.

[C]

And the Feds aren't after that money.

[A]

Why are they letting you do that? That's great. I could picture 100 reasons they're not going to want to do that.

[B]

Well let's so think about it. Think about it. They have more work to do on these forests than they can get done. They have backlogs of habitat need. They have limited capacity. And the way to look at it is not that somehow a nonprofit organization like the ruffed grouse society Is somehow benefiting in isolation. The way to look at it is we have such alignment with the forest service in mission delivery that we are joined at the hip Trying to implement the forest service's mission. We are there providing additional capacity and that revenue. To be clear, that revenue Is not coming to the ruffed grouse society and american woodcock society. It's paying for our staff time to help do that work. Like we have as an example, we have an amazing young forester on the green mountain national forest, Young lady named Mellie knapper, who's been administering timber sales on the green mountain national forest. And she basically functions as a forest service employee. She's there at the office. She's out painting the sale. She's administering the sale, Interacting with the folks who are executing on the sale. She's fielding questions from the public. She's talking to reporters about the why of the work. She's representing our organization and the forest service. And even more importantly, she's representing the story about why this work is so important, which is a win for everybody involved. And in a period of time where the forest service cannot hire additional people, they don't have enough people to implement their mission. Being able to work with a partner to fill some of those gaps, that is a win for the forest service.

[C]

When you guys do that, does the logging, like, whoever gets the actual logging work, the concession for that, do they do that work differently than they would if they weren't working through you? Like, if they were just like, forest service timber sale. We're going in, and we're getting our stuff versus Forest service timber sale through the ruffed grouse?

[B]

No, they do it the same. And here's why. In order for that sale to move forward, it has to be cleared through the exact same process that any other activity on the forest.

[C]

So they're not going in. You're not like, this is kind of the habitat results we're looking for in advance?

[B]

No. And in this case, like, like, so. So this. This example on the green mountain national forest.

[A]

Where is that national forest?

[B]

It's in vermont.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And the. The decision in that case, I might have a word slightly off, But I believe the name of this project Is the early successional habitat creation project. Love it. The forest service gets right to the point. Yeah. And, you know, in forest service parlance, you, have what's called an interdisciplinary team that. That gets Together to develop a proposed action. So you have biologists and soil scientists and silviculturists and folks who are experts on heritage and our responsibilities to archeological resources, et cetera. Everybody gets together and looks at a piece of ground and says, all right, what do we want to do here? In the case of a project like this early successional habitat creation project, the biologists are the ones in the driver's seat there. It's a veg management project. Right. And there's valuable timber being harvested, but the whole focus is on what kind of trees, like, what are we leaving behind in the. In the wake of this treatment. And that's. That's what. That's the language that we use. It's a treatment as opposed to an exploitation of a resource. Right. So in that case, you have the sale, you have someone bid. Right. It's open to public bidding.

[A]

You have an operator business coming in to bid.

[B]

Yeah, they're there to make money. Right. And they are there to make money. And also they are the source of capacity to implement the veg management outcome, period. Without industry, we cannot get the work done. But in this model, you're leveraging the value in the timber to pay for all of those administrative costs, and then you have this surplus of value. And this is the really cool part. And in some cases, we're talking literally hundreds of thousands of dollars from some of these timber sales, where you then turn around and say, all right, with this money, what. What other good things do we want to do on the forest? So it could be things like replacing undersized culverts at road stream crossings to promote aquatic organism passage. It could be paying for decommissioning roads that are resulting in stream sedimentation. It could be helping cover the cost of a prescribed fire. It could be helping treat non native invasive species, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So in that model, the forest service is relying on partner organizations like ours to unlock the value in the timber in a way that leaves the forest habitat better.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So that to me, like, that's the dog as healthy as the dog can be. And the tail also, like, really benefiting from the healthy dog. But you got to have industry there to be able to.

[A]

Yeah. And the Green river forest, what is the product?

[B]

Green Mountain.

[A]

Green Mountain. What is the product they're cranking out? That's like dimensional lumber?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, probably hardwood.

[B]

They're hard. They're harvesting hardwood there, primarily. Yeah.

[A]

Okay, so like veneer logs and trim and whatever else.

[B]

Yep, yep, got it. Yeah. I Mean pulp. The, you know, the pulp market has been one of the real weak spots.

[A]

So why, why is that? Well, huge because like we're, we're, you know, you know, we grew up in the same area.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

When stuff got, when stuff happened there,

[B]

it was pulp, right? Yeah, cut and pulp, man.

[A]

Like all that great rough grouse country and like the UP or northern lower peninsula was like cut and pulp. It was pulp. And you were looking at stuff, you weren't look, when you were a kid and you were looking at logging, you weren't looking at old growth logging, right? You were looking at stuff that had been logged several times, right?

[B]

Yeah. Second growth, third growth. I mean, and those forests, you know, that's making paper. Making paper. And you know, I'm, I'm, I'm old school. I'm sitting here, I've got like stacks of paper around me from stuff I printed off, you know, notes and things for the conversation today. But this is rare, man. Like, when's the last time you bought a newspaper? Right? I mean, now like the thing in

[A]

terms of, because they, they and also they taught you to think it was bad.

[B]

Well, that's true, you know, like going, I think about this every time I'm in the bathroom.

[A]

And you got both sides save a tree.

[B]

You got paper towel and you got the, you got the electric hand dryer, right? Yeah, I've gotten in the habit of going for the paper towel every time, man. Like use up some of that paper towel. Yeah. But the, you know, now like one area where there's still, I would say like robust and growing demand, like cardboard boxes for Amazon. Okay. Like there's a portion of the industry where packaging, we're making a lot, we're shipping a lot of stuff around. But when it comes to, when it comes to like newsprint, I mean, newsprint's basically dead, right? Like, if you've got a subscription, like pick your favorite newspaper, you're probably looking at it on your phone as opposed to waiting for the kid on his bicycle to throw the paper against your door on a Sunday morning. Right? So it's been a tremendous disruption to the demand for pulp. And a lot of those pulp mills have, have closed down just in the span of the last, I mean, I told you about the one in Mozani just in the last week. But if you look at the last decade, we've lost a tremendous amount of pulp capacity. But on the wildlife side, you think of it in terms of demand for those habitat outcomes to be implemented, right? So there's this really important connection. And just to hammer this one more time, like, without robust forest products industry, the ability to deliver habitat outcomes at scale is. Is tremendously compromised.

[C]

So there's just not a situation where like wildlife management agencies or the Forest Service or whatever are just going to like, go in and chop trees down just for the sake of chopping them down.

[B]

So. So now we start getting into this whole other realm that I think is also very timely and very important. And we could have a whole other conversation on this one. But just in terms of thinking about conservation funding and the constraints that a lot of state agencies are starting to feel. Steve, you and I have been sharing materials and texting back and forth a bit about the financial woes of some of the. Some of the states that are near and dear to our hearts. I'm thinking specifically about Michigan and Wisconsin as a couple of examples right now where just trying to make ends meet under a funding model that was built on the backs of hunting and fishing license sales, where that model is, from my perspective, starting to unravel. There are cracks in the foundation starting to show.

[A]

And Carl believes that, that, that declining numbers of hunters.

[C]

Right.

[A]

Is of. Is like an existential threat to conservation.

[C]

I mean, I agree. I'll give you a kind of a different scenario. In Pennsylvania, there's shitloads of state game lands that the Game Commission, you know, owns and manages, and they have like, historically had tons of fracking leases on those lands and that, like, they're flush. Like they have money.

[B]

Yep.

[C]

That they can put into potentially projects like this. I understand that's like, probably the rare case as far as these agencies go, but yeah, you know, it's something to think about.

[B]

It is. It is. And I, you know, I would, I would rephrase your characterization of my perspective on this a little bit, Steve.

[A]

I think, well, I did a great job.

[C]

Broke it down.

[B]

I'll push back a little.

[A]

I said like half a sentence.

[B]

You said that. I, Carl, believe declining hunter participation poses an existential threat to conservation.

[A]

You need to clarify that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, go ahead.

[B]

What I think is the declining participation in hunting is representative of a broader trend that is a real threat to conservation.

[A]

What's the broader trend?

[B]

So from my standpoint, I look at hunting in particular, but really like a whole suite of outdoor activities that are pathways to people having a connection to the land as being sort of the backbone of conservation. Like, if you, if you don't have people who feel a sense of connection to the natural world,

[C]

just less people around who give a shit.

[B]

Right. That's a blunt way of putting it, but it's like if, if you, if, if you don't have people who feel that sense of responsibility, that is an existential threat. I think the hunter participation piece, and I do believe, and I'm obviously biased here, but I think these activities of hunting and fishing and trapping and procuring food from the land in any form, it's one of the most just obvious, Deep, significant kinds of a relationship that you can have to a place. It's so visceral. Right. It's a very personal, visceral connection to the land. Which is not to say that it's the only way to develop an appreciation for place. I don't believe that at all. I think there's, there are a lot of different pathways to caring for the land. But the fact that we see these declines in participation in activities like hunting, which are, I believe, among the most strong and meaningful relationships to the land that a person can have, that is representative of this broader trend of disconnection and apathy around conservation. And that, I believe is an existential threat.

[A]

I want to comment on that, but I want listeners to understand very well that this is Steve talking and not Carl talking.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I don't want Carl to get rolled

[C]

up and say, I Steve, or not I Steve.

[A]

I don't know if you read it. There was a. I think it was in the New York Times. There was an op ed where the guy's arguing. He's like, he's arguing that part of the. He argues that as the Republican Party has moved away from conservation, particularly under the Trump administration. And he's like, because you don't have those old style hunting and fishing, like in that circle aren't like the old style hunting and fishing Republicans. These are.

[C]

Mike Lee doesn't care about hunting.

[A]

These are Florida golfers. Do you know what I'm saying? And he was kind of saying that like that, like this, like, it's kind of like this is a moment of kind of like the indoor Republican. You follow me?

[B]

That's interesting. I'm following you.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And had a bunch of examples, but it's like they just,

[C]

they don't know that connection.

[A]

They don't know. Yeah, they don't care.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They're not. Their vacation isn't fly fishing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Jackson Hole. Like, their vacation is West Palm Beach.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Or whatever. The one I can't remember. What's the nice one? Is it Western?

[C]

I don't know. Never been.

[A]

There's one that's like super swank either Palm beach or West Palm beach is super swank. Yeah. And one's not like, Jeffrey Epstein lived the one, but kind of did his pursuits in the other one. I can't remember how it all worked,

[C]

but, like, what you're talking about, like, the lack of connection. And it ties into this, too, whether it's Republican or Democrat. Like, there's, like, when I grew up, people knew what a rough grouse and a woodcock were.

[A]

It was a pat.

[C]

I mean, but, like, you could ask someone.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Anywhere on the east coast or the Midwest, and they. They might have. No, they'd be like, I don't know what that thing is, what they look like, you know.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, this idea of finding opportunities for folks from whatever political persuasion, but also whatever sort of circumstance in which they enter their human experience. So whether you're born in a rural community, whether you're born in an urban community, whether you're born in a conservative family or a liberal family, this idea of a sense of connection to place and a sense of responsibility to place and also to community. You know, we talk a lot about. In this country, we talk a lot about rights. Right. Rights are a big deal, and they are. But the flip side of all of these rights that we have are certain unalienable rights. As Americans, we don't spend enough time thinking about responsibilities and what it means to go through life in a way where we are enjoying the rights that we have been given, but also asking ourselves, what are we doing to redeem the responsibilities that we have as members of our community?

[A]

Yeah, but those are.

[B]

Those are. I think, big important question is that in the conservation space, it's like if your community extends to the places and the species that you interact with, whether it's as a hunter or otherwise, it frames your worldview such that decisions around policy, you start thinking in terms of what kind of world do you want to create? What kind of world do you want to leave behind? And that. That framing, to me, is one of the keys to success in terms of having a really vibrant, healthy culture as a nation, which I would suggest we've got some room to improve right now on that front. So just thinking in terms of how are we positioning ourselves to take care of the things that take care of us.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

How are we showing up in our community?

[A]

There's edge. There's an education component to it, for sure.

[C]

You.

[A]

And I don't want to hover too long on this thing about declining hunter participation in the Midwest or wherever, but

[B]

a Thought on it nationally, but.

[A]

Okay, you'll say, you're like, well, it's, it's, it's a part, it's a part of people disentangling themselves, stepping away from caring about wild landscapes. There are plenty of people that, that aren't going to come out of those backgrounds that would, that would say, oh, I love seeing wildlife, I love walking in the woods.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But what they don't know, because they weren't culturally educated around, like a hunting, angling, outdoor background. What they don't know is they don't know how to look critically at what they're seeing.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Meaning if they see someone cutting a tree, boom, that's bad.

[B]

Right? 100. 100.

[A]

Okay. If they walk through a big closed canopy forest that's easy to walk through and it's really pretty because there's a bunch of big trees.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They love all that stuff, but they don't know. They're not looking at it. And I'm not saying there's only one way to get there. They're not looking at it with a hunter's eye or an educated eye about what are you not seeing?

[B]

Yeah. Yes, that is true.

[A]

Right. You're seeing a handful of woodpeckers up in the top, some squirrels, not many. Right. But they're like, this is perfect. It's a big woods.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, it takes, I don't know, a level of exposure and some kind of, like, professional understanding a little bit to start to move not just from caring about places, but to, like, understanding them.

[B]

Yeah,

[A]

well, because a lot of people care. They just don't care in the right way.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It's like the kind of people who think that the way to support wildlife is to be an animal rights activist.

[B]

Right.

[A]

In their mind, they're like, well, of course it is.

[B]

Right.

[A]

They don't understand the damage. They do.

[B]

Yes, I, I agree with that point. I also think there are, there are a lot of non hunters who care about these concepts and are very supportive of hunting. In fact, there are more non hunters who are supportive of hunting than there are hunters.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So, you know, we have to be careful of painting with too broad a brush.

[A]

I, I agree, but I mean, we're. In some ways. I'm not countering you. I'm saying in some ways we're saying we're talking about the same kind of

[B]

thing, and I want to do that.

[A]

Like, there's an instinctive.

[B]

I.

[A]

What I'm saying is I don't think that we're going to run out of if, if, let's say hunting does decline or declines long term or something. We're not going to run out of people who would tell you they love wildlife. I picture we run out of people who, knowing what that we run, we risk running out of people who understand what that means.

[B]

Yeah,

[C]

there'd still be a lot of people around who care about the Yellowstone version of wildlife.

[A]

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[B]

The language that comes to my mind is I'm thinking about, rather than focusing on, like, a particular activity, whether it's. Whether it's hunting or wildlife viewing, this idea of thinking in terms of encouraging experiences for people that foster a sense of connection and responsibility to a place. Because if you have that sense of responsibility and you want to execute on that, you need to know what the place needs from you. And I think hunting is a phenomenal gateway to just like experiencing in a visceral way, a sense of being part of a system. Right. It's like you are. You are not observing. You are a participant, actively engaged in a system, which is something we have been doing since the beginning of our species existence. But I think in terms of messaging, as you were talking, I'm just looking back at this, this 2025 State of the Birds report, and it, it talks in here about there being 100 million Americans engaged in birding and the economic impact of that, etc. So. Well, give me a moment here, man.

[A]

That just makes me roll my eyes.

[B]

Well, I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised to hear that. But listen, here's the thing. Here's the thing. So here, here, let me give you, like a sense of.

[A]

You don't want to know why I'm rolling my eyes. Okay, go ahead.

[B]

So listen, listen here.

[A]

I'll tell Brody later.

[B]

I do want to hear your thoughts on this, but I want to give it. Give some shout outs. So organizations including American Bird Conservancy, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ducks Unlimited, National Audubon

[A]

Society, you tell me again how many birders there are.

[B]

100 million, but. And that includes 80 million of those

[C]

are watching birds in their backyard.

[A]

What does that mean?

[B]

It means people.

[A]

It means when someone asks you, you say you like birds. Yeah, Okay.

[B]

I think that's an important data point, man. I believe that's an important data point. And guess what? That includes virtually all.

[A]

So there's over 200 million people in this country.

[C]

Don't I get what you're saying. Think about that. These people that are interested people, people

[B]

who have enough interest to be like, yeah, birds are cool, but I would Low.

[C]

I would also. I would.

[A]

Part of why I roll my eyes. What a. What an extraordinarily low barrier to entry. Do you like birds? Yes. Okay, I'm gonna put you down on my list of birders.

[C]

And I would say, like, you were talking about hunters versus non hunters earlier. Like, a hunter a good chance he's gonna walk around a chunk of woods and be like, man, there's no rough grouse here. There's no wood got here.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

A lot of those hundred million birders, they wouldn't.

[A]

I would at least be like, okay, but to be on my list, do you have a bird book? And like, you gotta, like, there has to be some showing picture of a

[B]

cardinal and an oriole.

[A]

Yeah. Test them. So let's check their bookshelves. There's gotta be something other than being like, I like birds.

[B]

Listen, the reason I'm bringing this up is not to get you all fired up about the data.

[A]

I live with four birders.

[B]

Sure. And by the way, the report also talks about, like, including virtually every hunter. Like, what hunter's gonna say, you know?

[C]

Right.

[B]

No, when I'm out elk hunting, I always avert my eyes when I see a Lewis's wood.

[A]

Damn birds.

[B]

Right. Those damn birds keep interrupting my elk hunt.

[A]

Right. But. But that's why I rolled my eyes.

[B]

So I'm not surprised you did. But the reason I'm bringing this up is because I think there are going to be times where these concepts that I think we hold dear around people's connection to place, having the voices of other organizations in this space with us who are coming at it from a different lens. So, like, American Bird Conservancy is a great example that is a nonprofit where there is so much alignment in terms of what we want to get done on the ground. And they're talking to a slightly different audience, and they are 100% supportive of the kinds of hunting that we're talking about. Sustainable, responsible, relationship based. There's no mismatch in terms of what we want to see happen. And it's rooted in good science. And so, like the State of the Birds report, you can go ecosystem by ecosystem through the country and talk about the status of. Of sea ducks, western forest birds, shorebirds, dabbling, whatever you want to look at. The point I want to make here, though, is when it comes to a very troubling picture in terms of bird conservation, including, but not limited to ruffed grouse and American woodcock in the eastern forest of the United States. We know what we need to do in these systems. Like, we know we have the science to tell us what we need to do. It's a matter of figuring out how do you scale up and have those outcomes delivered. And we're watching as these species, whether we're talking about whippoorwills or woodcock, we're watching not even a gradual, like, in the span of our lifetime. We're watching these declines happen before our eyes because of our inability to take care of these habitats. So having an organization or a chorus of voices that are coming from different perspectives and talking to different audiences. And obviously the ruffed grouse society in American woodcock Society, we're a very proud hunter, conservationist oriented group. But I would offer that anybody who cares about forest health should be really happy about the work that we're doing, Whether they ever want to pick up a shotgun or not. Like, we're in exactly the same business as the audubon society, American bird conservancy, the nature Conservancy. Like, we're partnering with these organizations to try to get the same things done. And that's.

[A]

I understand what you're saying now. I didn't mean to hack on all those guys. I understand what you're saying in that if you can get again, the 100 million. Come on. But whatever. How many are truly there? 10 million?

[B]

Less than 1 in 3 people who are into birds in the country. I don't think that's like a jaw drop saying, where?

[A]

No, no. Okay. Let's say you got. Let's say you polled Americans and said, do you like the thought of a beach? Okay. And 200 million are gonna be like, yeah, yeah, sure. I'd be like, okay, when was the last time you were at a beach? Right. It's a smaller number. Okay. And then be like, do you plan your schedule around visiting a beach every year now there's a smaller number.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Somewhere within that hundred million is hiding a. A. A number of, like, die hardcore beachgoers. Birders.

[B]

Yeah, hardcore birders.

[A]

Or hardcore beachgoers who are like, oh, next weekend I'm flying down to Florida to go to the beach. I'm like, that.

[B]

I'm waxing myself.

[A]

But to be fair, fake tanning as we speak. Like, that's a beachgoer.

[C]

To be fair to Carl, though, like, hunters suffer from myopia just as much as everyone else. Right. Like, I might be aware of this, this bad thing that's happening to ruff grouse and woodcock and not be aware of a bunch of other things that are happening with other species that the hardcore birders might be aware of.

[A]

I know, but the reason. And we spent way too much time on this already. But I have to have my. I have to have my pointy hurt the hunt. I don't think. Oh, they. If I thought to myself, oh, thank God, there's a hundred million die hard birder allies out there wanting to fix America's forests, that'd be great. But I don't think that. Yeah, I think, yeah, it's probably like maybe 10 million.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Maybe as many as there are hunters. Like, like birders.

[B]

Yeah, birders who are like showing up in America's forest ready to.

[A]

Because when you go out and just ask people like, do you like seeing a bird you're not collecting?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I hear you.

[A]

People who want to fix America's forests.

[B]

Right, but. So a counterpoint to that argument is if you were to ask the question about caring about fixing America's forests, you might find a lot of other allies who care about it for reasons other than birds.

[A]

I know. And bring them on. I just couldn't have you say that number without commenting on it.

[B]

I'm not surprised that, that.

[A]

Here's a way to change generated. Here's a way to change the subject.

[B]

Let's hear it.

[A]

I picture there's two things happening.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

With habitat.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

There. Okay. Be like there's loss, meaning irrevocable harm.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Development.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Right. And then neglect.

[B]

Yeah, good word.

[A]

Okay, can. I don't know, like, how do you picture the relationship between those two numbers? Like, meaning for every hundred acres of subprime bird habitat in the eastern U.S. right. For every hundred acres of prime habitat that's been lost in the last 50 years, what is the ratio of acres lost to irrevocable damage? Yeah, pavement, whatever. And what is the acreage loss to mismanagement or neglect?

[B]

Yeah. I'm not going to hazard a guess on that. But those are the two keys. And I think one thing that I could put a little bit finer point on here. I mean, we know all of us have the stories of the places where we grew up playing the woodlot that you described with the oak trees getting cut and then all of a sudden boom houses popping up. We've all got those stories. Right.

[A]

Makes me depressed. Every time I visit my mom, I listen.

[B]

There's a place. There's a place where I had my, my Sort of illicit campground along a trout stream in Leelanau county that the last time I went and checked it out, there was a trampoline sitting where my fire pit used to be. So we've all got those places. Right. We know we're losing ground to development, of course, fragmentation, et cetera. The story of the. I like the word neglect because I think a lot of folks, you know, if you're driving through the forests of the eastern United States and looking out your window, you're like, yeah, you know, there's, there's a lot of forest here. What we have is a lot of the, the forests that have regrown after that era of exploitation. And so we have a tremendous amount of, of like middle aged forest that is very homogeneous, very much middle aged forest, like 80 to 120 years old. Oh really?

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I mean, yeah. So I'm using like some, some non precise, non scientific language. But if you think about the timeline of when these forests were slicked off, when the, when the, the era of exploitation and liquidation of our timber resources occurred, a lot of what we have now is the growth that has replaced.

[C]

If you were standing in a middle aged forest, what would you be seeing?

[B]

Well, that's so that's great. Especially in these, in these landscapes. I'll tell you a few things you're going to see. You're going to see, take me to Indiana, a canopy overhead that is allowing very little sunlight to hit the forest floor. You're going to see very little understory, plant diversity or community, just leaf litter on a lot of leaf litter. And I'll throw, I'll throw a cool term out here and a shout out to one of my retired forest service colleagues, a guy named Greg Nowacki, who coined this term mesofication, which refers to the increasing sort of moisture tolerance of a forest over time. So a lot of our forests in the east, when you think about that era of all this disruption occurring, the passenger pigeons, the bison, the elk, you had forest where things, things were drier as a result of more sunlight hitting the forest floor. So in places like Indiana is a perfect example where the, the species of woody vegetation that are less tolerant of shade. So like oaks are a prime example. We historically had tons more oaks on the landscape, much more fire maintaining those oaks. If you just take a hands off approach in those systems, remove all those drivers of disturbance, you'll start a successional process where in the understory you'll start getting shade tolerant species like red maple is a good example that'll come up in the understory. And then if the oaks are dropping their acorns in a sea of red maple seedlings, those oak seedlings are going to be out competed because they don't do as well in the absence of direct sunlight. So you have a canopy come up eventually to where red maple will be the dominant species and the oaks will not come back. So that transition from shade intolerant to shade tolerant species, which corresponds to increasing moisture content in the understory, that's mesification, referring to a more mesic site as opposed to a more xeric site. So a mesic site is more moist, a xeric site is more dry. My good buddy Greg Nowacki was the one who kind of termed this, this mesofication idea through his research looking at that change over time. So if you're in this forest stand, you're going to have a very consistent aged overstory. Like all the trees came up in the same cohort, made it to the canopy, they're now shading out the understory. You don't have the robust grass Forbes shrub understory. You don't have a lot of mid, mid canopy complexity.

[A]

Squirrels see you way too far away.

[B]

Squirrels see you way too far away. There's. And you're not going to have, you're not going to have nesting habitat for a whole species, a whole cadre of species of birds that require that diversity. And also like the understory plant community, the pollinators. You know, we could talk about Rusty patch bumblebee comes to mind, a species listed under the Endangered Species act where we're not talking about birds anymore, we're talking about insects. But it's the same story of disturbance being a limiting factor. So the forest is going to have a closed canopy, it's going to be real shady, it's going to look the same as far as you can see. And I think if folks pay attention as you're driving through a lot of these eastern forests, you're going to notice some of those characteristics. And I'll throw one more thing out there for you now that's very different from what things looked like three or four hundred years ago on these landscapes. And that is an overabundance of white tailed deer, which are not a replacement for the elk and the bison. The, the browsing dynamics of white tailed deer in these systems are a very different driver of disruption ecologically letting the oaks come up, they're not letting any of those species join the, you know, the older age classes. So this is where you get into maybe another feature that you're going to see in a lot of places is a pronounced browse line from white tailed deer, which is a whole other set of ecological issues. So this is where, you know, we can't fall into the trap of thinking, oh, well, we've got deer. And so maybe deer are playing the role that elk or bison did. Deer, in the absence of sufficient predation, are another driver of a decline of ecological integrity in these systems. So that's, I think, a good picture of what you'd see. And then the other piece is if you are one of these maybe 10 million die hard birders and you're out there with your Cornell Lab of Ornithology app and you're listening to the birds, you're going to hear very little diversity in those systems as well, for a variety of reasons, but the structural complexity lacking being one of the keys.

[C]

I wanted to ask about the woodcock because you guys just recently kind of took woodcock under your. Officially under your umbrella.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Are they. Are they more at risk for these kinds of problems because they migrate or are they better able to deal with these problems because they migrate? Because rough grass, like you said, like small home range.

[B]

Right, right.

[C]

Woodcock might fly 900, a thousand miles twice a year.

[B]

Brody, you're the man. I'm so glad we could talk about woodcock a little bit, man.

[A]

Timber doodle.

[B]

Timber doodle. Mud Bat man, Bog partridge, Bog sucker. The names go on. Yeah, the timber doodle. Thank you.

[C]

Because if you ask my. My buddy in Pennsylvania I was talking about, he would be like, holy crap. Is the woodcock hunting good these days?

[A]

Well, is it really?

[B]

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[A]

So he's the only birds where you can trust him with his own beak.

[B]

Listen, woodcock man should do a whole separate episode just on woodcock. Listen, here's the thing. A really cool aspect of working for this organization is you have the opportunity to focus on this high sight fidelity king of. King of upland game birds, where you know everything we've been talking around around 4. Forest diversity and managing it at a tight local scale is the key. And then you get to shift gears and talk about a migratory upland game bird that is just this like bizarre, amazing outlier.

[C]

Birders love them because they do that cool little dance.

[A]

Watch them do that on the gas. Yeah, they'll go down to the gas line like not a mile away from the house and watch them.

[B]

They are. They are so damn cool. They might be flight or they call that one of. One of My. I half jokingly sometimes say to folks on our team at RGS and aws, I'm like, you know, people think I came for the ruff grouse, but I'm really here for the woodcock, man. So I think the answer to your question, Brody, is the fact that woodcock operate ecologically at a continental scale. You need, you really need those habitat elements to be in the right places at the right times at a, at a scale that makes it, makes the system much more fragile to disruption. Right. And we're seeing that in terms of woodcock declines. So I'll give you like, a quick stat here that's helpful. State agencies, State fish and wildlife agencies are responsible for developing state wildlife action plans in order to qualify for federal funding through Pittman Robertson Act. So every state fish and wildlife agency has a state wildlife action plan. And one of the things that happens in these state wildlife action plans is they go through all the species and they try to identify what ones warrant listing as a species of greatest conservation need. That's an indicator that a particular critter is in some level of, of decline or, or threat. And for ruff grouse, There are currently 18 states that have ruff grouse listed as a species of greatest in Ohio. Just do something with Ohio. We. Ohio is, is right now considering what to do with their hunting season. And there's a proposal on the table. Just in the next couple of weeks, they're going to be talking about a proposal to reduce the ruffed grouse hunting season to include just a handful of properties where we know we still have grouse on the landscape versus just closing it outright. But back to this idea of the state wildlife action plan. So 18 of them have ruffed grouse listed. 29 of them have American woodcock as a species of greatest conservation need. And that includes Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, like states where we're sort of in the breadbasket of upland bird hunting. And this year, one of the highlights of the time I've been with this organization was I had a chance back in December to go down to Louisiana, flew down to Baton Rouge and had a chance to spend some time with folks from the state agency down there. And we went out and banded. We banded 53 woodcock one night on one of their state game areas, which was an absolute call. Oh, man, it's. It is such a cool example of technology in action. So the biologists down there, and I'll give a shout out to Richard Temple at the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. He and the team from the state first they have a drone with infrared, and they fly it over these open fields at night. And the infrared camera can, I mean, these woodcock glow like, they blow up out of the background. And then the drone also has a spotlight on it so they can hover, like, I don't know, 100ft above the field. See where these woodcock are. And then they can. They have a camera with such incredible resolution that you can, like, you can see the woodcock blink from the drone.

[A]

Got it.

[B]

And if a woodcock defecates, you can see, like, the heat of the splash at a woodcock's backside. It's like, it's just incredible view of the field. And then we go out with like a four wheeler and spotlights on the ground. And basically it's like a deer in the headlights. You shine a spotlight on the woodcock and you can take a fishing net or even you can grab them by your bare hand with a. With the spotlight shining on the bird.

[A]

Oh, really?

[B]

And then we're aging them and sexing them and releasing them. And I have to say, like, after having a lot of woodcock, like dead woodcock in my hands, or, or having a woodcock that's crippled and you're dispatching it, to have these little woodcock that were banding and releasing, watching them fly away out of my hands was. It was pretty damn cool, man. So we, we did all this banding work, um, and then also did some hunting. I was down there for the opener of the woodcock season. Got to hunt with a guy named Paul, Paul Frischerz and Keen Jones, who are a couple guys down there looking to kind of resurrect a American Woodcock Society chapter and their bevy of pointing dogs. But the coolest part about all of that experience was when the biologist, this guy Richard Temple, showed me the map of the band return data. So all these woodcock that they're. They're banding right there on Baton Rouge, he puts up this map of where the bands have been returned from. Like, hunters have shot a woodcock that's banded and they call it in, just like what we're used to with ducks and geese. And there were a couple of points that were within like 15 miles of my family camp up in the. In the west.

[A]

Oh, really?

[B]

Like, right where I grouse and woodcock hunt, man. So these birds, you know, you're down here, like, worried about your dog running into a cottonmouth. There's alligators hanging out in these, like, bayous, hanging out with all these great Cajun upland Bird hunting, guys. But it's exactly, exactly the same individual birds that we're chasing around, like, in October up in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota. Here they are down in, you know, the Gulf coast in December. So I had that experience, and then I'm flying back. You know, I'm on my trip from Baton Rouge back up to Milwaukee. And I'm looking out the window just watching the miles right, pass under the plane. And I'm thinking about this. These little birds, like, just making that journey. And then they're also nesting. Like they're laying eggs and hatching chicks during their return migrations north, too. So you've got, like, the summer ground in the north. You've got the wintering ground, and then there's all this stopover habitat where we know these birds are nesting. Part of the reason we know that is this amazing collaborative called the Eastern Woodcock Migration Research Program.

[A]

They're not nesting in their northern chunk.

[B]

They do most of their nesting in their northern chunk. But what the recent research has demonstrated is that there are hens rearing clutches, rearing chicks during this, you know, it's not like a cut and dried. Like, I'm going back to Minnesota to lay my eggs. Right. Like, it's happening over that latitudinal gradient north.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

And so I've been, you know, academically, like, oh, yeah, they're migratory. And your buddy, him talking about, man, the woodcock hunting sure has been great lately. It's like, yeah, it might be like, Monday, there's woodcock everywhere, and then Tuesday, like, gone, right? And anybody who's hunted woodcock, when you. When you hit these migration events, it can be, oh, it. Like, you can't. You can't walk without bumping birds. Like, I've had. I've had situations where, you know, I'm hunting pointing dogs. I'll have a dog on point. A bird goes up, shoot the bird. Dog goes to retrieve the bird. But, like, points another bird on its way to get the dead bird. Or it's bringing a bird back and pointing another bird on their. Like, yeah. When you get into these flights, it can be amazing. But the big picture in terms of woodcock numbers is a. Is a gradual decline continentally. So you need the good habitat in the north. You need the good habitat in the south. You need the habitat along the way. And one of the really exciting things is this. This work being led out of the University of Maine, the Eastern Woodcock Migration research cooperative. The two leads, Dr. Eric Blomberg and Dr. Amber Roth, are leading a collaborative to try to understand the use of habitat during this migratory period. And they've put out, at this point, over 700 backpack transmitters on woodcock. They and their collaborators, lots of other academic institutions. One of our team members, One of our forest conservation directors, Sarah serve, has been a collaborator in this work. They've got like 30,000, actually close to 40,000 GPS coordinates of migrating woodcock now. So we can see at the flyway scale, like, here are places that are very important for us to think about providing habitat, Whether it's along the Atlantic coast or along the Mississippi flyway. Being able to target these treatments in a way where you're providing key habitat in places where it might be limited. And it gives you just some tremendous insights into the trials and tribulations. I mean, one thing, if folks are interested in looking at recent news stories, these big spring storms, or, I guess late winter storms is a better way to describe it, obviously that have happened on the east coast. There have been some tremendous woodcock casualties as a result. There's a point in New Jersey called Cape May, which is sort of like a funnel along the Atlantic flyway that is notorious for getting lots of. Lots of young woodcock and into that area. And that's a place where a couple of big storms ago, between frozen ground and snowfall and really cold temperatures, they had hundreds of woodcock die on site, like freezing and starving on site during these migration events. So that all paints a picture of just how demanding for a bird of that size, these seasonal migrations are. Like any bird that makes it through one of those cycles and is able to reproduce and rear offspring, It's a hell of an accomplishment.

[C]

Yeah, like. Like, you know, a two, three year old turkeys, an old man, like gobblers. An old man, like how long? Like rough grouse and woodcock, like, I assume, like, not many make it past the first year.

[B]

Very high mortality from. From one age class to the next, for sure. Yeah, yeah. And in the case of woodcock, you know, the migration poses a whole set of risks that ruffed grouse aren't subject to. You know, they're flying into windows, they're flying into buildings, they're getting smoked by owls. A lot of the movement that woodcock are engaging in during migration Is happening at night as well. So they. Yeah, they're subject to very high mortality. And certainly in the case of grouse, too. Like, there's nothing in the woods that eats meat that doesn't want to eat a grouse. Right. Like, a grass is a snack for anything out there. So very high mortality during that first. Basically, if you look at from year 0 to 1, 1 to 2, 2 to 3, every one of those stages, you're you're seeing very high mortality for both of these species.

[A]

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[C]

I had a question I wanted to ask you that actually has to do with turkeys and maybe a conspiracy theory. Is there any correlation between like the rise of the wild turkey, like the comeback.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And the fall of the grouse? Because it's kind of like happening at the same time. Right.

[B]

Yeah, I've heard those stories and I think my answer to that is when it comes to thinking about drivers of either success or failure for both ruffed grouse and wild turkeys and like pick your, pick your hunted species if you want to. Just look at it at this from the lens of hunting, I mean, white tail deer. You mentioned your story from Michigan, Steve. We're dealing with species that evolved with forests where disturbance equals habitat period. So when we talk about doing things that are good for grouse or doing things that are good for turkey or doing things that are good for white tailed deer, we're talking about benefiting the forest and the rising tide, lifting all boats and this idea of like, oh, we've got turkeys back on the landscape now, that's going to be terrible for grouse. My answer to that would be if we have good habitat and a good juxtaposition of that diversity that's accessible to turkeys and to grouse. There may be some fluky case where a turkey disturbs ground, a ground nest. I'm sure that happens. I mean turkeys are, they're, they're a source of disturbance and disruption. They're clawing and digging and I have no doubt that that has happened and does happen. But nest mortality is par for the course. There's a whole host of other things out there that are taking out nests too. We should never expect rough grouse or woodcock to, you know, succeed in every nesting attempt. But if we have really good habitat and if we have lots of females attempting to nest, we're going to have lots of birds. So I would, I would debunk that a bit and say I. Focusing in on habitat it brings up.

[A]

There's an interesting point to it that. There's an interesting point you make that I hadn't thought of. A lot of times we. Because we focus on like as hunters or anglers, whatever, you focus on your favorite game species, right? Meaning like you might look, maybe you bass fish some lake and you Kind of track, like, what's going on with the bass in that lake? And you'll, you'll have pet theories about what impacted bass. Right. Or you might look at like, what's impacting mule deer.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you look and it's like you find this suite of factors that maybe like pertains very particularly to mule deer.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Or some things that pertain very particularly to elk. Right. It's interesting to think of the woodcock and ruff grouse decline as being that, like, we know those ones and love them. But what we're talking about is like land birds.

[B]

Yeah. Forest health.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What we're talking about is forest health. Yeah.

[A]

Because I think that you tend to like, in my mind, like if I'm, you know, whatever. If I'm talking about black tailed deer on some island in Alaska, I'm usually looking at, well, what is impacting black tailed deer.

[B]

Yeah. Right.

[A]

It's interesting to take a thing like this and be like, what is impacting birds?

[B]

Right.

[A]

One of which or two of which are these ones that you're intensely focused on. But that, that unbeknownst to you, they're. They're going away as well, you know.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But you missed it. You missed it because you're just thinking about the ones you are looking for, you know?

[B]

Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And even if you want to get into some of the specific drivers, like just briefly back to this idea of the West Nile virus as a cause of decline, there too, the idea that you can really focus on habitat quality to help kind of buffer the impact of that disease agent. If you think about a bird that's like, I'm getting at this idea of cumulative effects. Right. If you have a bird that is struggling to take in enough calories and it's also subject to slightly higher predation risk because it doesn't have the structural complexity to hide from death from above. You know, hawks, owls or coyotes, fox, whatever. And then on top of that, you add a disease that's further weakening that bird versus a bird that is diseased but also has really good forage, really good habitat. It's not any one of these things. Right. It's very rare in ecological science to be like, nope, there's the cause, there's the effect. Right. Much more often it's these complex interconnections and feedback loops and death by a thousand cuts as opposed to, well, here's the one thing that explains it all. But in the case of these eastern forests, it's like the one thing that explains it all is that we have not done a good job of maintaining the diversity and disturbance. And that includes everything ranging from driving passenger pigeons to extinction, extirpating eastern elk and bison up through. I love the word used neglect because I think that is a perfect label for many of our eastern forests is that they have been neglected. And part of the tragedy is that now you have people who I think their hearts are in the right place, but they are strongly advocating for continuing to neglect the forests that they claim to love.

[A]

Like Matt at Yanni for cutting down all those trees in this place.

[C]

Neglect by inaction. Just letting them sit.

[B]

Yeah. This idea that, this idea that. And I think this is, this is such a powerful, it's such a powerful thing to really think about because a lot of folks who I believe have their hearts in the right place, they think about human beings as being only capable of making things worse in the environment.

[A]

We're the problem.

[B]

Too many people, all we do is pillage and pollute. And when you really start looking at our history as a species and you start looking at all the different cultures and relationships that people have to different ecosystems around the planet and thinking about it more carefully, for the vast majority of our existence, we have been in the business of actively taking care of the places that support our existence. We have been dependent on the action that we take, mediated through the land for our very survival. So this idea that somehow you step back and take a hands off approach, nature will take care of itself, that ignores the reality that we are fundamentally a part of nature. Right? So it's, it's a troubling worldview at the deepest of levels because it takes this role that we should be embracing and points to that as if it's a problem. The only thing we can do is make things worse in the environment. That is just simply not the case. We have been in the business of interacting with and being a part of these systems. And that's the thing, man, the more I'm thinking through this, that's the problem is it takes us and removes us from the system. And we look over there, there's nature, don't mess it up. As opposed to we are in this thing. And if you want to zoom back to like a global scale, whether you live in an urban environment, whether you live in a rural landscape, whether you're in a flavella somewhere in South America or whether you're living in remote Alaska, all of us are existing within this closed system, right? And we're all making decisions individually and cumulatively that influence the trajectory of that closed system. So approaching it in a way where you're actually embracing the fact that you have a responsibility to take action, to try to make things better for the future as opposed to, well, that's nature over there. I'm over here doing my thing. Let nature figure it out. Like, that is a very deeply flawed worldview, in my opinion. Mm.

[A]

When we talk about the Anthropocene, meaning that, like, the Anthropocene is this concept that, you know, like, we think of the Pleistocene as the ice ages. That was followed by the Holocene. Then we very quickly entered the Anthropocene, meaning that humans, when people use that term, what they're saying is that humans are the dominant force, the dominant global force on habitats, the dominant global force on ecology. We're the dominant force. Part of recognizing that needs to be embracing that role to be like, okay, if that's the case, then maybe we need to be the dominant force of good as well.

[B]

Yeah, I love that.

[A]

In some places, I love that. You know.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, there's no more powerful ecosystem engineer than Homo sapiens. Right. Like, we have been manipulating the face of this planet to benefit ourselves for forever, but we have. We have absolutely reached a point in our history as a species where we have. We have these controls at our disposal, and we can either do things that will promote a future of continued prosperity or. And in a lot of places, this is already reality. We've gone so far down this path of manipulating the system for short term gain that we've compromised the ability of those systems to be a source of prosperity to us. So there's a lot of cleanup work to do in those places. But I think what you just said is a super important message. It's like, we need to acknowledge that reality and then approach that with a focus on what are our responsibilities in light of that reality.

[A]

Do you think that. How relational is it? Like, do you think that when I say relational, it's a terrible word choice. How much do you think a habitat project

[B]

say you.

[A]

Do you do a habitat project on a thousand acres? Can you do a habitat project on a thousand acres and then come back a couple years later and be like, oh, the grouse are back?

[B]

Really depends on where you are. I think in a lot of places, the answer is going to be no. Once grouse are gone and you lose, like, a source population and they do this. They have this life history trait where, you know, they hatch in the spring, the broods kind of stick together. If you think about bumping into grouse early season, when you're hunting them, oftentimes you'll flush like broods of birds. You'll get almost like a covey.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Flush of grouse. But then they get into a dispersal mode mid fall, and birds start striking out to essentially occupy new territory, spread their genes across the landscape, avoid competition, avoid inbreeding. Um, so they will cover considerable distances to pioneer unoccupied habitat. But if you do a restoration project in an area where there's no source of rough grouse, they're not going to. They're not going to find it. And we're not. There's a very poor track record of trying to relocate grouse into previously occupied habitat.

[A]

They don't.

[B]

They don't do well. So being able to hold on to grouse where we still have them and then focus on trying to restore habitat around the places that are occupied, much better course of action.

[A]

We had a researcher, we had a deer, you know, does a lot of work with cervids on the podcast one time, and he's talking about when you look like. Let's say you're meal deer hunting and you look and that perfect stuff and you're like, God, it seems like they'd be here. It looks like it would be perfect.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He's like, it might be. They're just not there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Something happened to. They have a lot of fidelity to their area. Something happened to that group.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it might be a long time. It might be perfect. It might be the most perfect meal deer country in your area. But there's just not any there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because they don't. They. They haven't colonized it.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

They got their own. The ones nearby have their little plan and they're not looking for a new spot. And it can take a long time to put them back when you have an event.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Carry them away.

[B]

Yep. I think there's some applicability there. And that's in obviously direct contrast with woodcock, where they're.

[A]

They're going to find it.

[B]

They're going to find it. Which is one of the advantages. We've talked about some of the disadvantages of being a migratory species, but in advantage is you're surveying that landscape with fresh eyes every year and taking advantage where habitats popping up.

[A]

It's interesting to me that putting grouse out on the ground doesn't work like putting turkeys out on the ground.

[B]

They have not done well with reintroduction.

[A]

What do you think it is? Because they just don't. They don't carry with them. Like a sort of generational land use plan.

[B]

It's a good question. Man, I wish I knew. I wish I knew more about the constraints on survivorship of translocated grouse. I. I know that it has been attempted in many settings, and I'm aware of no successful reintroduction efforts.

[A]

They got to do their own thing. So you got to preserve those pockets.

[B]

Yeah. And build out from there. And we do have just some tremendous strongholds still. But the thing that is both most frustrating and most encouraging is that we're not scratching our heads. Like, man, if we could just figure out, Right. It's like, we know what needs to be done, and it's also a set of actions that is broadly beneficial beyond these two iconic species. So that's where, like, the idea of trying to get some coalitions built around leaving those conditions, like the partnership with the Rocky Mountain Elk foundation, the partnership with American Bird Conservancy, we have a shared vision of what needs to be done.

[A]

Yeah. Those kind of things are frustrating in their own way. I think when you look at big conservation problems, you have the ones you'd be like, like, acidification of the oceans. You know, you're like, good luck with that. So, I mean, like, like something that would call for sort of like a global change in. In habits that would impact every person on the planet.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

You know, like, ain't gonna happen anytime soon. But then you got conservation problems where you're like, dude, it's right at our fingertips. Yeah, it's right at our fingertips. It's not even, like it's so achievable.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

King salmon people are like, they don't know where to begin.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Do you know, I mean, with king salmon, it's hard to know where to begin.

[C]

It'd be a bummer to see, like, that species, that hunting opportunity, like, blink out in your lifetime, because so much of it has gotten better over time. Right. Like, if you're an elk hunter, it's pretty good time to be an elk hunter, whitetail hunter, you know, you name it, it's pretty good. But to see, like, do you envision the trend being more states, closing seasons or restricting seasons or status quo or.

[B]

Yeah, I think. I think we're on a trajectory where we're likely to see continued loss of opportunity.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And, you know, a couple examples. New Jersey's a state where they had a season that's been closed, I think 2019 for that one. Indiana lost its season in 2015, and now ruffed grouse are listed on the state Endangered species list in Indiana, Missouri, no season. Ohio, flirting with potentially a steeply restricted season.

[C]

Yeah, I think Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania had an early and a late. And they got rid of one. Maybe the late season, like after Christmas.

[A]

God, Michigan's still just got a doozy of a season, man.

[B]

Yeah, it's long. Yeah. Yeah. Hunt him right up through the end of the calendar year and September 15th, right? Yeah, that's right.

[A]

Opener.

[B]

A sacred day for those hillbilly kids of the Northwoods. Man. You take that day off of school, go squirrel hunting and grouse hunting.

[A]

Those are all restrictions that came out like in our lifetimes for sure.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

What else, what else you got on that list?

[B]

Well, I just, I think there's not.

[A]

But, but speak to the fact that this is all southern extent, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is it because it was the poorest populations? Well, I think it was just kind of naturally borderline. It was naturally fringe habitat.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I mean you're starting to get, you're starting to get into the areas where the. If you look at the distribution of aspen, I made the comment earlier that aspen is not the key, but it's a really important aspect of grouse habitat in many places. You're starting to get into areas where that species is not available to provide food and cover. You're also looking at places where these forest change dynamics that we've talked about. Mesification, lack of disturbance. That is absolutely the case. One of the most compelling examples of that going back to Doug Duran. The driftless area in southwest Wisconsin. If you look like 25, 30, 40 years ago, grouse numbers in southwest Wisconsin were off the charts, like phenomenal grouse, rough grouse habitat. Now it's unusual to hear talked about a drumming grouse in the driftless area. So.

[C]

Yeah, so what, what happened?

[B]

Just the habitat, habitat change, lack of change or gone. Gone for now. And the problem is, you know, like we were just talking about with the sort of mule deer story there. If you get to the point where the habitat's gone long enough and the population is dwindled to the point you're. I'm not going to say you're never going to get them back, but you are facing a very steep uphill battle.

[C]

So for like the northern populations, like whatever northern Wisconsin, Maine, Minnesota, where they're doing well, is it just like why are they. Like is it just that stuff's not getting messed with. It's the right habitat and it's staying the right habitat. Like because if it, if this good habitat depends on disturbance, like what kind of disturbance is going on up there that keeps things.

[B]

Yeah, well, you're right, you're right. In the core of their range in terms of climate, in terms of the vegetation community. You know, I'm thinking I'm envisioning this spot right now in the, in the upper, where it's just like this tangle of 1510 to 15 year old aspen, understory of witch hazel. It's like every. You've got like wintergreen. It's, it's just food everywhere. Covers phenomenal. Typically you have a good snow pack and ruffed grouse will burrow into the snow and seek thermal refuge in cold conditions. So having that snow cover is a big deal if you have crappy snow snow years, grouse are at higher risk of freezing and cold temperatures. That's not good news around here, you know, so. So you're in a really sweet spot. It's like you're right, you're right in the wheelhouse of where those birds evolved to be. And so now I'm thinking about some very cool work that's been happening in the central Upper Peninsula, Michigan, looking at the management of these remnant boreal forest ecosystems where you're kind of on the fringe for like. I'm thinking about snowshoe hares as well. Right. Populations of snowshoe hares, ruffed grouse, a whole host of species that have significance from the standpoint of food and medicine for tribal communities. So there's some really cool work. My buddy Eric Clark and collaborators from the Sault Ste. Marie tribe of Chippewa Indians working on the Hiawatha National Forest to get more fire back into those systems, to promote the, the diversity of habitat. And if you go back, there are places where, particularly in red pine, you can look at the dendrochronology, like the tree history of fire activity in those systems. There's a place called Bachelor's Marsh as an example on the Hiawatha National Forest where red pine dendrochronology data shows how frequently fire was burning through those systems prior to European settlement. And it was very high frequency. So very often fire at a low enough severity that the trees were surviving it. And as they've been starting to get some of those fire regimes back into those systems, with the tribe really leading that, that work, the grouse response has been phenomenal. But it's also great habitat. Like they're doing a lot of work trying to keep moose on the landscape. Right. We haven't talked about moose at all. A lot of the work that we're doing thinking about rough grouse habitat in those northern lake states. A ton of it is also phenomenal moose habitat. Yeah, there's a collaborative up on the Arrowhead in Minnesota focused on moose habitat. We're right in the mix, partnering with the Forest Service, partnering with the state, partnering with the tribes, trying to get moose habitat on the ground. You call it whatever the hell you want. Yeah, it's great moose habitat. It's also great for all these other species that we're talking about.

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[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Than it might be in other places.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, those sites, like when you

[A]

think of places that, that stayed good, I can think of like good grouse spots that have just stayed good for forever.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Then I can think of good grouse spots. It was like they were very ephemeral.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

They were good for a minute.

[B]

Totally.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, so there's a couple. I mean, they were good for a few years, but places seem like you're like, shoot, we shot grouse out of there for 20 years.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So we talk about like site index or site, site richness, site quality. And that takes into account. It's basically like the capacity of a particular place to grow vegetation. And there's obviously a strong climate component to that. There's also a really strong soil component to that. And a lot of the places, when I think about really good grouse and woodcock habitat, places where I grew up hunting, you're dealing with pretty poor soils too. Right. It's not like you, you expose the earth to the solar rays and you get like a jungle immediately growing. It's. It's a more drawn up process and that's in contrast. And I'm thinking back to the time down in Louisiana this past winter, and the site richness on those sites is like off the charts. So they, the amount of effort and, and investment that they have to make in order to keep woodcock habitat on some of those state game lands. Oh, it's crazy because like they'll mow it and the next year it's like a jungle has reemerged. Right. So you're pointing to something that's in

[A]

A lot of that northern grouse habitat, like in the upper Great Lakes region, you'd be like, wonder why no one's farming this, but.

[B]

Because you can't, dude.

[A]

Because Norwegians, there were a lot of. There were a lot to grow there.

[B]

A lot of frustrated potato farms in the up, man.

[A]

A deal. I've noticed too, man. You probably have seen this. Like, I'm thinking of in the county where I grew up and around that area, a lot of times, a good grouse pocket would be centered around. This is going to sound weird. It'd be centered around Christmas tree plantations.

[B]

Oh, yeah. Doesn't sound weird.

[A]

Because when you'd go out and hunt a late season, like you go home for Christmas break or something.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you go out.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All the grouse are in the Christmas tree plantations.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it always be that around those big blocks, like, you know, whatever. You got like 10, 20 acres of Christmas trees or something.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It would always be good grouse.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

But there's a certain look to those areas, too. But I'm just saying it would be like. That was sort of like a real holding position. I could think of one on. I can think of one of these that was on public land on Manistee National Forest was a pine plantation.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Always good grouse in that area because they had that, like you said, their home bodies and they had that, like, feature.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And this other. On this dude's place used to grow pumpkins. Nice. He'd hired me for a couple days a year to pick pumpkins and bring them down and sell them, but he had a pine tree plant. A Christmas tree plantation.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And always good whether they were in there or not.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it was just that, like, I think of them in there, like it's where they go to survive the cold.

[B]

Yeah, totally.

[A]

So.

[B]

So I love that. And. And one of the things when I'm looking for grouse, like, really good grouse habitat. Having a component of conifer in the mix.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Is awesome. You know, it might be spruce or fur, but in terms of shelter from predators and also in terms of thermal protection.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

And. And hiding from precip, too. Like, they do not like getting.

[C]

Oh, man. They can disappear in those. Those tree that. Those conifers you get. Get a kid trying to find one that's perched up.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Because they're not sitting way out. They'll sit up close and toward the thing.

[B]

Yeah. So that's where you get, like, if you're in a hunting scenario, taking turns flanking, like, having one Dude. On the backside.

[C]

Sometimes they just don't budge, man.

[B]

That's true. And oftentimes, you know, you'll hear. You'll hear them flush, and you'll never see him.

[A]

But, dude, the guys. When you're hitting those patches I'm talking about, the dudes that are going to get the shooting are the dudes on the outside.

[B]

Right. That's what I'm saying.

[A]

Yeah. The flank. And you. And you want to kind of go like. If you picture a Christmas tree plantation, like. Like a lap. Picture a laptop computer.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay. And you got your pushers and you're pushing it the long way.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

A lot of guys are going to make the mistake of having their pushers out. Like, you're entering one end of the laptop.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Your pushers are. And you've got your sitters.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You're thinking you're going to position them off the points off the other end of the laptop.

[B]

Strategy, man, That's a good trick.

[A]

Is to have a guy mid laptop.

[B]

Yeah. Yep.

[A]

The one isn't conceptualizing that pine tree patch the way you are.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like, you think he's going to go to the end. Right. And then hop out.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You know, but they're blowing outside, so you got a guy on the side.

[B]

That's what I'm saying. Flank. Like, you'll never hear me talk about a stander. A flanker is somebody mobile.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He's moving. They're flanking and maybe a few steps up ahead.

[A]

And he's recognizing those gaps and trees that he knows they're going to use to get out of there, man.

[B]

The other thing that's nice is then you can be within eyesight of each other, too. So you can take your shot knowing where your buddy is.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Right. Because a lot of times in grouse habitat, like, you can. If you're more than like 30 yards from your friend, you're not gonna be able to see him.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Carl, I had one more question for you. It's like, I'm surprised it didn't come up because, like, it usually comes up in these kind of conversations, which is like predators and predator management.

[A]

Like, there doesn't matter on gross.

[C]

Because I know a lot of grouse hunters. Be like, raccoons are eating or whatever. I don't know. I like. I feel like things like.

[A]

But there's something there with turkeys. But anyways. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, man. So what?

[A]

Who's killing.

[C]

Nobody traps anymore. That's part of why, you know.

[B]

Yeah. Everybody's killing them, man. Like grouse and Woodcock are delicious. They are little nuggets of energy on the landscape waiting to get eaten. And the nests too. And these systems are full of things that are going to eat them. And that's okay. The lever that matters is the habitat. Yes. To be thinking about like, oh, if I kill all the coyotes, kill all the fox or these possums getting nests or whatever that is, like that is.

[C]

It's not going to move. The lever.

[A]

You want people to stay focused.

[B]

I want people thinking about habitat, man.

[C]

Yeah, Let all that, let all other

[A]

stuff sort itself out.

[B]

And the thing is, we know this.

[A]

We had a guy in your seat came on talking, same conversation, Bob White. Quail.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He was your thing with habitat. He didn't do what you're doing.

[C]

Oh, he downplayed.

[A]

He came in on quail and he was like, parasites, parasites, parasites, parasites. And man, we got just more negative feedback and pissed off people.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because he jumped to. He had the audacity to talk about.

[C]

He also had a product he was.

[A]

That he worked on. Yes, yes.

[B]

Let me, let me throw a couple

[A]

things, but I'm saying he, he shifted and people were like, you gotta stay on the habitat you can't talk about. Right. And people were pissed.

[B]

They should be. Here's the thing, here's the thing, man. Let's talk about parasite loads.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Not unlike the conversation around West Nile. A lot of these birds are going to pick up all sorts of maladies, diseases, parasites, etc. Having quality habitat is going to mediate those effects. It's like the thing to do. And since you brought up quail, I want to just like briefly point out the fact that we spent a lot of time talking about eastern forests. And again, I'm looking at the state of the birds report in terms of declines. Eastern bird, eastern forest birds, 27% decline over the course of the last 40 years. Looking at this graph from this report, there are two categories that have steeper declines that I want to highlight. Arid land birds and grassland birds. So grassland birds in particular. And I want to tie this back to the conversation about quail. We have talked today about the importance of markets and being able to move wood and not being able to move habitat without being able to move wood. One of the challenges with grassland ecosystems is, is figuring out how those ecosystems can pay their way. Right. This is where the farm bill and programs like CRP incentivizing stewardship and there's.

[A]

Which isn't paying their way in the same way.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And those are long term investment, long term Investments. And there's. There's just some amazing success stories of. Of ranchers taking a long view on habitat and trying to, you know, trying to do right by grassland birds and also right by their herds and their bottom line. And it's. It's harder in a system where you don't have the timber helping with those economics. But I want to just highlight, you know, folks have opportunities to be really involved with moving the needle. And I'm thinking back to last week being at Pheasant Fest. You mentioned quail decline and quail in a lot of places, in most places, continue to struggle. And in fact, that's one of the reasons woodcock are getting more attention. As people who have historically loved hunting quail and have pointing dogs and all that, they're like discovering woodcock as an alternative in some places where quail, like in the quail stronghold. But I just want to highlight the experience of last week being up in Minneapolis at Pheasant Fest, so hosted by Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, another organization that's really dialed in on this habitat piece in a different system. Right. Thinking about these grassland systems. And I'm a big proponent for folks to think about being affiliated with lots of different organizations and finding ways to support the missions of lots of different organizations. And I couldn't be more impressed with how Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever rolled out a red carpet for our organization and a whole host of other, like prairie grouse organizations. We had this little corner, not a little corner. We had a great space at the. At Pheasant Fest to talk about grouse conservation, both forest grouse and prairie grouse. And the thing I love about what Pheasants Forever is doing is taking this stance. Like, I think it'd be really easy for folks to imagine there being a lot of competition among conservation organizations. It does not have to be that way, man. There's so much work that needs to be done across these different ecosystems. We've got a niche with thinking about forest grouse, thinking about woodcock. But I've already told you, like, there are other nonprofits. American Bird Conservancy, Audubon Society, tnc. There's so much work that needs to be done that from my perspective, there's. There's no excuse for there to be a sense of competition among these organizations. We've got to be taking the tact that I saw last week from Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, where they're creating a space to try to elevate the missions of all these different organizations. So my hope is that.

[A]

Well, it could be that it's. It could be that there's a problem where the efforts are too scattered and not. And not streamlined.

[B]

Well, that's there. There is a risk there. And that's where I think having some strong alignment among collaborators and keeping your eye on the prize and finding ways to leverage the strengths and expertise of different partner organizations. I mentioned Rocky Mountain Elk foundation earlier, another group where, you know, they've got a strong presence in the west, they want to be able to implement work in the East. We can help them do that. So we're able to funnel some of their conservation investments through our organization. So I just. I hope, as folks are thinking about all of the needs, taking some time to learn about the bigger picture and not just. Not just focus on one ecosystem or one species, but think about these big concepts of what these landscapes need from us and then finding ways to align and become a member of communities with organizations that are trying to drive that. And I want to throw one other thing out that I'm really excited about right now in terms of collaboration, and that is when we were at Pheasant Fest, one of the coolest things happening there was we had a partnership with the Aldo Leopold foundation at Pheasant Fest. So anybody who was joining RGS and AWS as a conservation member, they were all getting copies of a Sand County Almanac through the Leopold Foundation.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And I think that's a significant collaboration because what we are, what we are doing with our work, and what I've been trying to communicate through the conversation today is that the significance of this effort is much. It's about much more than just having really good grouse and woodcock hunting. Right. We're trying to approach these big questions around responsibility to place and thinking about showing up in community in a meaningful way. And for anybody who's familiar with Leopold's work, those should sound like familiar concepts. And so this idea of highlighting those ideas and that legacy through the work that we're doing and trying to be exemplary ambassadors of that land ethic in action is something I'm really excited about. And so just in the last week, we've gotten a further commitment from the Elder Leopold Foundation. For anyone who joins our organization in our membership drive right now, that deal is going to continue.

[A]

Oh, is that right? Online?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So tell them the deal.

[B]

Yeah. So if you go, we've got a. We've got a slick little URL now to use, which is ruffed.org and make sure you spell ruffed R U F f e d ruffed.org and you'll get.

[A]

That's your guys website.

[B]

Now it's. This is. This is a tight little URL that will take you to our rough. It'll take you to our membership campaign. Right.

[A]

Not roughed like roughed. Yup. But rough.

[B]

Right.

[A]

A rough around your neck.

[B]

Are you ruffed? And get a copy of a Sand County Almanac and get yourself a cool trucker hat with the grouse and woodcock on it. And get newsletters from both the Leopold foundation and the Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society. And the thing I want to highlight here, like memberships are great, but what we're really trying to figure out is building this idea of building community around taking care of the land. That's what we're about, taking care of these forests. And we do that with memberships. We also have people who are volunteering and I want to, I want to say a huge thank you to everybody who volunteers to support our mission. We have tremendous, we have folks who have been volunteering for this organization for decades, hosting banquets, fundraisers, all that kind of stuff. Just pouring a ton of time and passion. We had volunteers at Pheasant Fest helping staff our booth. So I want to say a huge thank you to the, the volunteers who are part of this organization. We have some incredibly generous private philanthropists who support our mission. But this idea of just having a community of people who are affiliated with the work that we do and want to see these forests left in a better condition than we found them. That's what we're trying to build. And I think in the conservation space with some of the trends that we've talked about around declining participation, like what is the future of, of the funding model for conservation in this country? These questions about how do we build community around these ideas of responsibility to place, I think that that is where the answer lies. And so we want to be one of the leaders along with our partners in helping drive that kind of community building. So ruff.org check it out. Join us.

[A]

Thank you, Carl.

[C]

Thanks Carl.

[A]

And again, this is Carl Malcolm. He's the VP of conservation with the Ruffed Grouse Society and the American Woodcock Society. Thanks so much for coming on, man. And please go check out so easy to remember ruffed r u f-ffed.org get yourself a membership. Ruffed Grouse Society in the American Woodcock Society. Get perhaps the greatest, not even perhaps the greatest conservation book ever written.

[B]

I won't argue with that.

[A]

The greatest conservation book ever written San Carne Almanac by Aldo Leopold and Carl doubles as a Leopold expert for you guys that you guys know that if you watch Me Eater, the TV show and have listened to Carl's past appearances on this podcast. Again, thank you Carl.

[B]

Appreciate the opportunity. Steve, good to see you.

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