Carey Smith oral history transcript

              Oral History Cover Sheet

Name: Carey Smith

Date of Interview: January 17. 2007

Location of Interview:

Interviewer: John Cornely

Approximate years worked for Fish and Wildlife Service: 30+

Offices and Field Stations Worked, Positions Held:

Most Important Projects: NAWMP; Joint Ventures – Pacific Coast Joint Venture Coordinator;

Colleagues and Mentors: Marv Plenert, Dick Bower, Dave Paullin, Joe Lautrette, John Doble, Jim McCuag, Art Martell, Dr. Mark Petrie, Bob Altman, Don Cragie, Larry Debates, Henry Merkin, Leif Fredrickson, Mickey Heightmeyer, Rick Coleman, Skipp Ladd, Keith Harmon from the Wildlife Management Institute, Roy Lowell, Tom Dwyer

Most Important Issues:

Brief Summary of Interview: beginnings of the Pacific Coast Joint Venture; partnering with states, Canada and NGOs; funding relationship w/Intermountain West Joint Venture; funding for and quality of the staff (part-time mostly) hired to work w/Joint Venture; Management/Strategic Plan development; adding Alaska and Hawaii; loss of original estuarine habitat and purchase/easement rights for other estuarine habitat w/in areas covered by Pacific Coast Joint Venture; NAWCA and Coastal Grants; differences between US and Canadian handling of Joint Venture funding; State Steering Committees; problems with administration/old ways of thinking about conservation and partnerships; working with Fisheries Boards; using “grass roots”; the synergy of partners and projects; Science Coordinators – Land and Water Bird Coordinators; energitics / Flyway issues / breeding lands problems vs estuarine lands problems / Pacific Coast problems vs Prairie Habitat problems; Depredation Plans; Larry DeBates’ history w/Joint Venture and contributions; development of biological guidelines and standards; looking forward to accomplishments in next few years; importance of land trusts.

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John Cornely -- Good afternoon. This is John Cornely and I’m with Carey Smith this afternoon. We’re going to do a interview related to the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, it’s kind of the second in a series that started with the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Plan by the US and Canada. And Carey and I go back quite a … quite a ways, to my days as a refuge biologist. And he was a … a biologist pilot for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, as Flyway biologist in stationed out of Portland, in Region 1. And I think we met probably when I was over at Mahler, but we spent a fair amount of time flying together when I was at western Oregon refuges. And then Carey was the first Regional Refuge Biologist in Region 1. And we did a lot of work together -- biological workshops, and I actually had some, if you recall, I had some duties to assist you as kind of a zone kind of a biologist ...

Carey Smith -- That’s right.

JC -- … for a while. So we worked on some plans together and … and different things. And after I … you were still the Regional Biologist when I moved to Denver to become the Migratory Bird Coordinator. And then sometime later I heard something about a new role in Pacific Coast Joint Venture. And we’ve talked about some of this; you’ve been on a panel earlier today, but I’d like you to go back … and some of this is a little review, but talk about how it came to be that you became the first US Joint Venture Coordinator for the Pacific Coast Joint Venture, and kind of how the Joint Venture got started. It wasn’t one of the very … very first ones. And Jim McCuag, who’s here, talked a little bit from the Canadian perspective about their part of it. So tell us how you got involved with this Joint Venture.

CS -- Well, I first realized there was a Joint Venture I think in a meeting in Jackson, Mississippi, that … that Charles had talked about earlier today, and a couple of new Joint Venture Coordinators were introduced at that meeting. I hadn’t realized that was the first … first time I’d thought about the Joint Venture, until he mentioned it today. It was kind of, what this is all about? And I thought well, that’s … that’s really interesting. But I was … I really enjoyed my job as Regional Refuge Biologist, and didn’t give it much thought again. I realized my supervisor, Dick Bower, was working with the Canadians to possibly put together one of these Joint Ventures, and I hadn’t paid a whole lot of attention to it other than dick was out of town quite a bit, doing tours and on the Georges Straights and places like that but with Canadians. And one day I was called into the Regional Office and I thought … the Regional Directors Office … and I thought ‘oh, geez, what have I done this time’, you know. And, as it turns out, Marv started talking about the … the North American. And he suggested that I think about becoming the Joint Venture Coordinator. Well, Marv had had a long experience with it … with the North American. He was real supportive of the North American. And he was rather urging this to happen. And he gave me the weekend to think about it. And I knew Marv well enough to know that if I came back and said ‘no’, I was still going to be the Joint Venture Coordinator. So I said ‘yes, Marv, this is a wonderful idea! This is just what I want to do.’ Not knowing what it was all about. I was more than a little apprehensive, I’d have to say, but once it got started, I think the first thing we did, as a Joint Venture Coordinator, was get the partners together. And I used some of the other Joint Ventures

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as a model. I realized the states were going to be big players and there also had to be key NGOs. At the time, the key NGOs were, naturally, Ducks Unlimited and The Nature Conservancy, in our part of the world, which is a real strong acquisition partner. And we got together in Bellingham, Washington, first part of January in 1991. And pretty much the partnership was formed there. lot of the other folks talk about apprehension about getting into this federal program, but luckily some of the folks to come … our Joint Venture started a couple of years after the first ones, and was already pretty well known that this North American thing was a pretty good deal. It seems to work in some areas. So everybody was pretty excited when they came around the table. So that part of my job was a little easier than some peoples. That’s kind of how we got started. The first thing we were expected to do was put together a Management Plan, or a Strategic Plan was what we called it. And we held off a little bit on that, because we wanted to get a staff together. And we had no money at all. Marv had stolen some money, probably from Refuges, to make my salary. We had no operational dollars at all. And … so I kind of did things on my own for a while. and we were kind of putting the Strategic Plan back a little bit, because I didn’t feel comfortable writing down a Strategic Plan for two countries and … and three states right away, before we had more time to work with our partners. And then the next year I … I forgot what the amount of money was -- it may have been a hundred thousand or 40 thousand, something like that -- but we managed to steal it from Dave Paullin in the Central Valley Joint Venture. Dave was really nice about it, he kind of offered the money to me. He said ‘we don’t really need it.’ And I said ‘well, that’s great, we can certainly spend it.’ That’s not quite how it went down, but [laughter] … but with that money we thought ‘well, maybe we can, you know, add a little bit of staff.’ And we thought well, we could hire an Assistant Coordinator. And we thought ‘well, geez, we got three states and … and what’s an Assistant Coordinator going do in the office that I’m not already doing?’ So we thought … and we realized, our Joint Venture wasn’t one of those Joint Ventures that had NCRS sitting there, waiting in the wings, with lots of money and lots of people, and our private lands program in Region 1 is never … how do I say this nicely -- hasn’t been a big factor in acquiring or restoring lands. And so, we thought if we were going to get this done, we were going to have to do it from the grass roots level, you know, the states and local communities and that type of thing. And me having another Assistant sitting in the office wouldn’t be near as appropriate as having a Sate Coordinator in each state, working with the state agencies and all the NGOs. Because the Northwest is full of NGOs; we have land trusts on top of land trusts, ‘friends of’ groups, these type of people. And they are really influential people within their communities. And they … most of them have spent their lives in these communities. So it seemed to us that this grass roots approach … and we could also hire these people … we didn’t need to hire these people full-time. We hired them anywhere from a quarter- to a third-time. So, what it would have cost me for an Assistant Coordinator, I had three people out there, doing work on the ground, in communities they were familiar with. I wasn’t hiring somebody from Vermont to come and work in Washington. And as it turns out …

JC -- [indecipherable]

CS -- Humm? 3

JC -- What … if you were paying for part of their time, was somebody else paying for …

CS -- Yeah.

JC -- … the rest of their …

CS -- That’s … that’s a good … I really want to cover that.

JC -- Okay.

CS -- I was saying earlier that lot of the Joint Ventures started with some money to spend. We started with none. And, to us it turned out to be an advantage, ‘cause when people came to the table, they weren’t moving up to the government trough. They were coming, knowing that if they participate, and they put something into this, they’re going to get something back out of it. So, when we started with our State Steering Coordinators, we actually … this … the states and the NGOs actually ponyied up money to help us hire these people. So that really spread our leverage out, as far as that was concerned. Our coordinator in Oregon is a good example. His salary was paid through Bureau of Reclamation / Forest Service / Oregon State Office; his office was supplied by the Defenders of Wildlife; and his contract was overseen by Ducks Unlimited. And I think we were … we may have had ten thousand dollars a year into this fellow. And he was just doing wonderful work. And the type of people we were able to get was really a big factor too, to make this thing successful. In Washington, we hired the former Deputy Director of Washington Department of Wildlife, who after being there became a lobbyist just … which was what we needed. And he was a lobbyist for the Wildlife Federation and he also started up what’s called the Washington Wildlife Recreation Coalition, which he and two state governors -- past state governors – put together this program where they managed to get 50 million dollars of appropriated funds a year out of the Washington Congress, the state senate, and this … half of this was to be used for habitat. So this … this is the kind of people I was able to get for 10 or 20 thousand dollars a year, who was [indecipherable] devoted to the Joint Venture and saw the advantage in it right away. Our Oregon Coordinator had been a Congressional Aid for eight years -- four years in Washington and four years in California -- and what we needed was dollars. So we went along with these two doing great work, in local communities, for several years. And we, you know, we’re still getting a minimum of money, most of it from Dave. And they said ‘well, you know, you don’t have do this’, and I said ‘what do you mean?’ And [they] said ‘well, we can get you money, you know.’ ‘Well, okay. See what you can do.’ So those two just packed off to DC, talked to their local congressmen, the senators -- we got lot of power in the Senate in Oregon in those days, not so much any more. But … within a few weeks they had a quarter of a million dollars. And, at the time, Intermountain West didn’t have any funding, so we split that quarter of a million dollars with them. We got 125 a piece, which was big bucks for us at the time. And following that they got … other Joint Venture went ‘whoa, how did you do that?’ And the Service was wondering ‘how did you do that?’ [Laughter] ‘Cause, as matter of fact, Service was saying ‘you can’t do that.’ But we did. and so we started the Association through their … beginning of their

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efforts, where we are now get … you know, we’ve been up … I think we’ve gone up four or five million dollars, and before the Iraq war, our target was another 15 million dollars for the administration, because we were going ‘all birds’ and … and covering almost the whole country. There were few white spaces left.

JC -- The Association you’re talking about is the Association of …

CS -- Of Management …

JC -- … Joint Venture Management …

CS -- That’s right

JC -- … Boards.

CS -- That’s right. So that was kind of the beginning of that. And if I’d hired a Fish and Wildlife Service Assistant none of that would have happened, you know. It’s … it was just fortuitous we made that decision. We’ve continued that way; California we’ve done the same thing. We just hired our coordinator for Hawaii, and … and she’d been putting on our wetland workshops … we put a two day wetland workshop on in Hawaii every year, and she’d overseen that. And she’s also written several NAWCA Grants and Coastal Grants, and it was a no-brainer to hire her. So, that’s kind of why we decided … and were cost sharing her position with Ducks Unlimited. So, with very few bucks, we’re getting just tremendous service at the local grass roots levels. And it’s just working very well for us.

JC -- And so, you initially … you put off the strategic planning to get some things up and running, and you were really successful with this, even though you didn’t have a Strategic Plan yet. You developed a strategy, and you got some folks on board, so, did you then get back into kind of planning mode?

CS -- Yeah. Yeah. Within a year we gave the State Coordinators the responsibility of writing the Strategic Plan. I think we did Washington first, as a format, and the others followed, so that it would all flow. And I think we had that done by the end 1992. So it wasn’t that prolonged a deal, just waiting long enough ‘till somebody else could do it, it wouldn’t by me. [laughter]

JC -- When we were setting up this session, we kind of, you know, lumped you into breeding area Joint Venture. I knew that wasn’t really quite right, but talk a little bit about, you know, the issues that were the driving issues of … and the resources problems that made this Joint Venture a valuable conservation tool in the Pacific Northwest.

CS -- Well, as Dave was saying, the development populations are just exploding. Pacific Northwest is the place to be these days. And some of our estuaries -- the Skagit -- we’ve probably lost 85 – 90 percent of the original estuarine habitat in the Skagit. Some -- the Duwamish -- there’s nothing left, virtually nothing. And the Puget Sound, I’d say we

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average between a loss of 25to 95 percent of the estuarine habitat. And some other areas, like Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay, it hasn’t been nearly that bad. As a matter of fact, these are fairly pristine. So the first things we want to do is protect what was left of the Skagit. And this is a tremendous brant area -- snow geese have gone from 40 thousand to about 100 thousand -- Russian snow geese, [] birds -- since we started. And it’s also an important swan area. So we picked these first step areas, looking really, at brant, snow geese, and swans, at the time. We figured ducks would do their own thing. And … but, we had depredation problems, and lead problems, and things like that, with those species. So we zeroed in on them in the beginning. And our first achievements were in the Puget Sound, also the Willapa Bay area. They were pristine, but we wanted them to remain pristine. And over the last 15 years, oh, my gosh, there’s hardly any estuary there we haven’t acquired. At the time, there may have been, with the one refuge there, there may have been three or four thousand acres of protected estuarine areas. There’s probably, between the two bays, 40 to 50 thousand protected areas now.

JC -- How were they acquired – easements, or fee title, or combination?

CS -- All of them fee title.

.

JC -- Okay

CS -- We don’t really mess very much with easements. And most of them with NAWCA and Coastal Grants. Coastal Grants have been a huge boon to us. When they first came out, about ten years ago, the rest of the country didn’t seem to notice. And we were going geez, this is what we do. And we have lots of match money with the plan that Joe Lautrette, our Coordinator, put together - with 40 million dollars of match. And so those first few years we would put in for nine or ten of them and get all nine or ten of them. So we just racking up the dollars and the acres for quite a while. The competition has gotten worse now …

JC -- Right.

CS -- … but there’s a little bit more money, and were probably still getting seven to eight million dollars in that. So that was a huge … we put most of that early money into the Puget Sound and the southeast Washington bays there -- huge shore bird areas, [indecipherable] areas.

JC -- Who … who ends up with management authority over these after they’re acquired?

CS -- We added a few areas to the refuge there -- Willapa Bay Refuge. I’d say all the rest of the area are either The Nature Conservancy or one of the four state agencies … Washington is wonderful. Oregon, politically, it’s really tough -- very conservative. Even when we get a Coastal Grant, they won’t let us spend the money. Now Washington, you know, the Washington Department of Wildlife just runs like heck when you even mention it, ‘cause it’s not very popular with their congressional folks. But in Washington, if we have a good one coming up we’ll have four agencies fighting over

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who gets to put in for it and manage it. And it’s just … part of that is that 40 million we’ve put together for the [WWRP [?]] too. So, it’s very seldom … a couple times we thought the Service was going pick up some really important areas. There’s one area called Port Susan Bay, which is the major wintering area for now 100 thousand snow geese, and when Marv was there, and a guy named John Doble, they never saw a piece of property they didn’t like. And we had negotiated to where we got a million dollars NAWCA Grant, and then TNC was going to add another million -- it was going to become wildlife refuge. But Region 1 has gotten a lot more conservative in their acquisitions and … it broke my heart, but at the last minute they decided, no, we can’t do this. But TNC has it now, which has lead to a problem we may talk about later.

JC -- Okay. One of things that I recall as I helped set up the meetings to kick off the Intermountain West Joint Venture years ago, and you mentioned Joe Lautrette working with you, he’s also working with Intermountain West, and I remember discussions with Washington, and Oregon, and … I think Washington and Oregon mainly, possibly, you know, Idaho and Montana -- some of the other intermountain states – where, you know, small state agencies, you know, even though Washington has quite a few people, not as many then we’re talking, you know, quite a few years ago now …. But, they were concerned, from a staffing standpoint, about too many Joint Ventures and, you know, ‘well, geez, we’ve … we’ve already got somebody working in this Joint Venture and we don’t have anybody else to cover this Joint Venture …’ so, it sounds like that that’s part of this partnership and sharing. And, as I recall, that was one of the strategies some of these states say ‘well, we’re not gonna name a new and different person to represent us on this new Joint Venture, we’re going … we’ve got a person that knows Joint Ventures and knows the North American Plan, so’s best we can, we’re going to let them take care of more than one.’ Does that come into play, besides … Joe was one that I know about, but …

CS -- Yeah. Bruce Taylor also does [indecipherable] eastern side of Oregon which has worked …

JC -- Okay.

CS -- … out really well. I forget that’s … there only two State Coordinators. For them it was just kind of … I think for Intermountain West it was kind of a low hanging fruit, here was two guys who were really … who had really done a wonderful job already on our side of the border, and they still had a quarter of a time or so that they could devote to this. And it was just fortuitous. And I think it helps … it helps us plan together, too

JC -- Right.

CS -- It brings our two Joint Ventures together, which is an important thing. I don’t think we do as well with Central Valley and some of the California Joint Ventures. But we do have a good dialogue with Intermountain West, and I talked to their Board several times during the interim period where they had no Joint Venture Coordinator.

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JC -- Right. Talk about … when I interviewed Jim McCuag earlier today, he talked about the importance … and the fact that they got the Canada part of the Pacific Coast Joint Venture up and running. Talk a little bit about the dynamics and the relationship that you have across the border, and, you know, difference, similarities …

CS -- I’d say the most refreshing difference is, is their leadership. Our … they seem to actually be biologists. I can go out with their Regional Director and argue about what kind of shrub this is, when were up in the Queen Charlotte Islands or something. It’s … it’s … I think being a good biologist is … is part of how they get jobs. They actually have … when they get a new position, they test for the position, and they have to be up to speed on that kind of thing, which has been a pleasure. Because, typically, mostly recently, that hasn’t been a case with our side. It’s, you know, and part of it probably is ‘cause they don’t have three four five hundred people working for them either. So they don’t have to be that … they’re good managers, but they don’t have to zero in on widgets quite as much as people on our side. So, it’s really been a real pleasure to work with them -- both with the province and with the CWS. And their Coordinators have been real … they’ve picked really great people to work with as Coordinators. So that’s been wonderful. As far as how we work together, we have our Management Boards together. We have a Management Board meeting about every … twice a year. And we used to go Canada once, US once. And they … finally the Canadians said ‘well, geez, you’ve got five states and we’ve got to do this every other time.’ And so now we’ve acquiesced a little bit, and so we do two in the US and one in Canada. And, as far as projects are concerned, we did our First Step Areas together, looking at the same species. We’re doing research now, on energetics for shore birds and waterfowl in the upper Puget Sound and Georgia Bays, and we’re working together with the Canadians on that, with Andréa Burrow and some other folks. And project-wise, oh, when we first got discretionary dollars we’d send a few bucks there when they really needed some dollars … snuck it across the border. And we’ve done a good job of that. But mostly what we do best together is party. We have [laughter] we have great Joint Venture meetings, and have just a great time. We’re loosing a few real key people -- Ian is leaving, but we still have some really good folks there. And huge part of the … this whole thing has been Art Martell, he was working with Marv at the beginning, to put this whole thing together.

JC -- Yeah.

CS -- A huge advocate of the Joint Venture. And, as a matter of fact, he kept moving up the ladder and getting these higher and higher positions. And he would always predicate this new position on ‘I can still be the Joint Venture Management Chair’, you know, [laughter] he was running the weather department, everything else, in DC, and … but he always was adamant that, you know, ‘I can do this, but I’m still the Chair of the Joint Venture.’ So, it’s … it’s been a good relationship.

JC -- As … as Jim explained earlier today, why they’re … the way they allocate NAWCA funds is very different than ours. so that, when you were trying to coordinate and match across the border, some of these projects together, that … sounds like they probably would have … would, you know, counted on their dollars maybe, a little bit

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easier than you did. And you were probably say [sic] ‘well, yeah, we think we can match this and get this going at the same time, but we’ve got to go through the ranking process’ and …

CS -- That’s true.

JC -- Yeah.

CS -- Yeah. Ours was a little bit more in doubt. They would get … I forgot, nine percent, 11 percent, something like that, off the top, that they stole from the Prairies.

JC -- Yeah.

CS -- And … but, they knew it was there every year, you know. We had our administrative dollars -- we knew it was there, but we had to compete every year, and, you know, the Coastal Grants, sometimes you wait six months to find out whether you got them or not. So, so, they were more fortunate in that way. And it facilitated some planning. But we always felt confident that if we didn’t get it this year, we’ll get it next year. They’re pretty patient.

JC -- Yeah. Well, you’ve, you know, you’ve mostly, through the years that we’ve talked about these things, you’ve been, you know, pretty satisfied that you’ve been very successful in your Joint Venture. But you’ve also, from time to time, talked about some issues and problems that you’ve had to overcome. And, you know, this is isn’t all, you know, goodness and light here, we like to, you know, this is a historical interview, and … and we want to find out about what things, you know, either, maybe worked, but didn’t work as well, or maybe even didn’t work, or what kind of obstacles did you have to overcome, from time to time, to get things done.

CS -- Well, I think the first obstacle was … Marv, as I was saying before, was hugely supportive this whole thing. But I actually worked for the ARD for Refuges, and getting this partnership thing was really hard for him to swallow. He, like a lot of people, and the way the Service was in those days, it’s a Service program, we have control of it, and if they want to play -- that’s great. But, they’re going to play by our rules. And trying to get this fellow to understand … that was really difficult. He would come to us … he’d get nervous about ‘what’s going on … what’s being said at these State Steering Committees, and meetings’ -- and I should talk about those, too – but, he would show up and it would take me two months of damage control after the things he said about … this being a short-term deal, and, oh, it was … it was just unbelievable. He didn’t expect us to give the other partners any sway at all, because it’s our money. And that’s just not the way it works. As a matter of fact, at one point he was … he decided that we should do an EIS on the Joint Venture, to look at the cumulative effects of what were doing, you know. My mouth just dropped open. It was … obviously he just wanted to slow us down, and that way he could have more control. And, we hired a guy, and he’d been working on it for three or four months, until finally, we got a new Regional Director. And Regional Director got us all together and he said ‘what we really have to avoid is paperwork that’s

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not necessary.’ And -- light went off. So, the meeting was over. I went back up to the Regional Director’s office and said ‘do you realize were doing an EIS on the cumulative effects of the Joint Venture? Nobody else is even thinking about doing anything like this.’ And so, it was no longer gonna happen. It didn’t ingratiate myself to my boss, but we were back on the road. It didn’t slow us down. So, some of our problem has been internal and it’s just because of … of changing the way we do business. And some folks changed a little slower than others. That same fellow was a huge, you know, proponent of all the acquisition lands we could get. So, there were some good things, but it was hard to get around this … he didn’t want to let go type attitude.

JC -- So talk about … you said you should talk about State Steering Committees. Talk about that a little …

CS -- Well, I’ll talk about a few more problems first.

JC -- Okay. Sure.

CS -- Another problem we have, and probably everybody else has too, but ours seemed to be worse, is permits for moving dirt, that type of thing -- especially in northern California. The Coastal Commission there, they treat every project we do like it’s the Wal-Mart. We have to go through … matter of fact, California Waterfowl Association was a huge part of what we do up in Humboldt County, they finally have given up and left, you know, they just can’t do it. Right now, we have our Coordinator up there, working with the Coastal Commission, trying to get them to agree what their expectations are, ‘cause they don’t even agree within their department, which is part of the problem. So he is doing a … he’s writing up a sample application and … and standards that they will accept and use. So, hopefully, we’ll turn that around. But that’s one of our problems. Another one is … fisheries is my big plus for us. Matter of fact, we try to get fisheries people on our Board several times, have had some success. We’re looking at estuarine areas, and that’s the same areas that fisheries people are looking for … for anadromous fish -- going from fresh water to salt water physiology -- and so were interested in the same areas. And were being able to cost-share Salmon Recovery Board money with Coastal money, that type of thing. It’s been a huge boon. And also riparian, now that we’re ‘all bird’ a lot of the riparian is keeping the streams cool for anadromous fish, so were great partners. Where we break down is the typical DU type project in our part of the world, where you put up a water control structure, and put the Boards in, and do moist soil management. Well, these are all rearing areas for salmon and … off channel rearing areas. So, we’ve had a really tough time with that. We’ve paid for several … a lot of research on fish passage. DU has actually brought a fish passage PhD into their office as a full time member of their deal. So, that has been a real problem over the years, and we’re trying to get around it through putting … throwing some money at research and that type of thing. And … there was another problem I was going to bring up and it just escapes me right now. I guess I’ll go to state steering committees

JC -- Okay. We can if you think …

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CS -- Okay.

JC -- … of that we’ll come back to it.

CS -- Okay. It can’t be that big a problem. I can’t remember it.

JC -- Yeah.

CS -- We decided the best way to deliver the meeting … deliver the Joint Venture is through the grass roots. And through these grass roots we developed State Steering Committees in each state. And State Steering Committees are generally the same type of organizations that are on the Management Board, but at the state level. And also, anybody who wants to be on the State Steering Committee, they show up and they’re part of the State Steering Committee. We’re … we’re an inclusive group. And we have them in each state … some states … some states only meet maybe quarterly, other ones we meet every two months. And typically we’ll get anywhere from 15 to 30 people, representing 12 to 25 organizations, around the table. they’ll probably … we always have a subject or topic, whether it be a new initiative, or a new way to do projects, that type of thing, as the hook. And they’ll all come. Most important part of our meeting’s at the end. We go around the table and we say ‘okay, so-and-so, what are you doing?’ And they talk about what their goals are for this next six months, what projects they’re working on. And the guy next to them’ll go ‘oh, that’s important to us. How are you doing that? Well, we can help this way and that way.’ And the synergism -- just gives you goose bumps. I’ll sit there, and look at my State Coordinator, and go ‘yes! This is what it’s all about’ you know. So, that’s where we put together our NAWCA Grants, our Coastal Grants. It’s just … all these people working together. I do a matrix every year, of all the projects we’ve done, which will be 150 / 200 projects, and at the end we’ll put the partners. And almost every one of those … six seven eight partner organizations in every one of those projects. And that’s because of the state steering committees, and the strength of those committees.

JC -- True. So you have these three state steering committees.

CS -- Five now.

JC -- Five now. So, you got more than one in a state or …

CS -- No.

JC -- … you’ve added states?

--- both speaking over one another.

CS -- No. It’s whole states.

JC -- Is it?

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CS -- Yeah.

JC -- Okay.

CS -- The only place that’s … it’s getting a little … it’s a little problematic in Alaska where there’s travel …

JC -- Okay.

CS -- … problems. We try to … with Alaska once … we try to we have workshops up there that we put on. We’re putting on a workshop next month, so we’ll have it in conjunction with that workshop.

JC -- Okay.

CS -- And Hawaii -- the same thing; we have …

JC -- Okay.

CS -- … Wetland Workshops that we put on.

JC -- Okay, Alaska and Hawaii.

CS -- We get the people from the islands ….

JC -- Right.

CS -- Yeah.

JC -- Okay.

CS -- So we got people from all the islands come to the workshops.

JC -- Okay. Where I was going with this is -- you’ve got … okay, you’ve got these five state committees working and they’re … they’re grass roots. They’re looking at priorities and developing projects. Then, at Management Board level, then you sort out, amongst the projects that come from these various state committees, what the highest priority might be for a NAWACA proposal, or how …. How do you do that?

CS -- First of all, we also have Science Coordinators.

JC -- Okay.

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CS -- These are also half-time people. One of them we have a Land Bird Coordinator and a Water Bird Coordinator. Our Water Bird Coordinator is Dr. Mark Petrie.

JC -- Okay.

CS -- He … he works with DU, we pay part of his salary as well.

JC -- Okay.

CS -- And our … our Land Bird is Bob Altman, who has been the [indecipherable]CR Coordinator for 90 percent of our Joint Venture, for several years.

JC -- Okay.

CS -- And they … our first crack at it will be at the State Steering Committee. Like, right now, we’re doing small grants, and I’ve been hustling around trying to get all the small grants to the State Committees for them to … not so much rank, but say ‘this isn’t as good as it looks’ or that type of thing. And maybe … they may rank it, it’s up to them, but I’m looking for comments,

JC -- Yep.

CS -- And then I’ll get … take those, give them to my two Science Coordinators, and they’ll rank them. And then we’ll present that to the Board. So, it’s …

JC -- Do … do …

--- both speaking over one another.

CS -- … filtered several times.

JC -- Do you have … do you fulfill the role of … of kind of the waterfowl science part, or how does that fit into the ….

CS -- Well, Petrie …

JC -- Petrie does ….

CS -- Petrie does that.

JC -- Okay.

CS -- And he’s the one who did the Strategic Plan for Central Valley.

JC -- Okay.

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CS -- And he’s working also on energetics …. We’re updating our Strategic Plan.

JC -- Okay.

CS -- And we’ve got 13 focus areas, running from the arctic to the tropics of Hawaii. So, you can’t just write ‘a Plan’.

JC -- Right.

CS -- So, we’re writing a Plan for every focus area.

JC -- Okay.

CS -- And were starting …

JC -- And then you’ll … they’ll combined …

CS -- Yeah.

JC -- … be your new Strategic Plan.

CS -- That’s right.

JC -- Updated Strategic Plan.

CS -- That’s right. And it’ll … it’s probably going to be a three, four … three year …

JC -- Okay.

CS -- … project. We’re starting with north Puget Sound, lower Columbia River, and Willamette Valley. And right now, this last month, we were working with TNC, they’re going to cost-share a monitoring of all the riparian habitat in the Willamette Valley. And Mark’s working with Duck Stamp money from both Washington and Oregon to do some energetics … studies, looking at how many kilocalories a goose uses, and if we want ‘x’ number of geese, how many of different kinds of habitat in the Puget sound … we’re comparing estuarine habitat to farmland habitat -- looking at … we know how much estuarine habitat we’ve saved, and we thing we have enough, but now we’re looking at how much farm habitat, and when that … for the first time … we almost do everything fee title, but on these farm lands in the Skagit, we’re looking at some opportunities to do some permanent easements on those lands. So, we’re keep out Steering Com… or Science Coordinators busy ranking things, as well as doing focused research on helping us re-do our Strategic Plans.

JC -- Okay. Pointing to one of my old, personal, biases -- do you guys get involved in all the, you know, you’re talking about energetics and … and goose habitat, do you interact on the multitude of goose problems in the Willamette Valley and the lower Columbia

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River -- and Oregon coast now, which is kind of, you know, new since … since I left that … that country?

CS -- We don’t have a Tech Team, so to speak. We’ve suggested a Tech Team. Mark Petrie says ‘well, why don’t we put a Waterfowl Tech Team together?’ And he contacted several of the Flyway … normal people on the Flyway you would contact. They go ‘do you know how many committees were on, you know.’

JC -- Yeah.

CS -- But, at the same … Don Cragie’s on our State Steering Committee …

JC -- Okay.

CS -- … in Washington. Bailes is on our State Steering Committee; he’s very active. He goes to the Management Board meetings as well.

JC -- Okay.

CS -- Petrie’s very involved in the Flyway issues, along with all the DU people. And I’ve been on most of the Flyway Technical Committees, at one time or another …

JC -- Right.

CS -- … throughout my career. And we work closely with [indecipherable] on the coast, and … and … and closely with the Aleutian Canada geese people up in Delmar County. And we’ve helped them write their Plan. Actually, one of … our Coordinator for California wrote their … their Depredation Plan for the Aleutian Canada geese, which have gone from 500 to …

JC -- Right.

CS -- … over 100 thousand.

JC -- Right.

CS -- Yeah. Those farmers thought that it was really cute to have the last 500 of the same … of an endangered goose, but they’re not very excited about it …

JC -- Yeah. Yeah. I … I’ve sat in, you know, I’ve … I’ve been going back the last few years, representing the Region at Pacific Flyway, and, you know, now we’re having depredation hunts on Aleutian Canada geese, …

CS -- Oh, yeah.

JC -- … which is, you know, in one way you say ‘what a wonderful success story!’

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Laughter

JC -- But on the other hand, I’m … I’ve been saying, you know, maybe we ought to start working on a, you know, depredation order for trumpeter swans someday, ‘cause we may … we may get there. ‘Cause if … if they ever take off, they can put away a lot of groceries.

CS -- Oh you bet.

JC -- Laughter

CS -- And did a lot of holes.

JC -- That’s right. So, basically, one of the things that I want to ask about was the role, or the interaction, between the Pacific Flyway … your entire Joint Venture’s in the Pacific Flyway, and it sounds like maybe that role is the connection through some of the state, and maybe some federal folks, that are plugged into the Flyway -- the Waterfowl Study Committee and so on.

CS -- Yeah. Tom [indecipherable] is also on our Board …

JC -- Okay.

CS -- … from Alaska. And the ARD is on our [indecipherable]. My bird ARD is also on our Management Board.

JC -- Okay.

CS -- So, we get a pretty good idea what their priorities are.

JC -- Okay.

CS -- And I make to some Flyway meetings, but not all.

JC -- Yeah. Well, one of the one of the things … this is a little aside, in that, you know, we haven’t really talked about this, but, because this person that had an impact on … on your career, my career, both, is … is no longer with us, and had some early, you know, involvement North American Plan stuff in Region 1, talk a little bit about our old friend Larry Debates, and some of your interactions with him before, really, the North American Plan got started. But, you know, a little bit about what Larry did after he … he was the ARD for Refuges and Wildlife when he was our ARD …

CS -- Uh hum.

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JC -- … for a number of years after you went to work for the Region. And I don’t think he gets very much credit for a lot of wonderful things that he really put in place in the region. So, I’d like you to talk a little bit about Larry, since he can’t speak for himself any more.

CS -- Okay. That… that… that… that’s a… that’s a… I’m glad to have the opportunity to talk about Larry. I was the Regional Refuge Biologist… Larry had a real feel for the needs of biology on Refuges. He, I think he realized that … that we had a few Refuge Biologists out there, but they never talked to one another. The training was nil. And so, he sold the Project Leaders s on better biology. And we had biologists out there mowing the lawns, and oh, it was… it was sad. Managers didn’t know what do with them. And so, I was a Flyway Biologist at the time, and I was, as you mentioned before, I became the first Refuge Biologist in Region 1, and it was just tremendous to get these people together. The biologists from one state had never met the other people; they don’t know what they were doing. Communication was just absolutely zero. And, so, we… working quite a bit with you on this, ‘cause you were kind of my mentor, ‘cause I had never worked on a Refuge, so I depended on you quite a bit to… to make sure I was doing the right things, and so we… we decided we’d put together a minimum… how did we word that – ‘minimum accomplishments’ or ‘minimum standards’…

JC -- Yeah.

CS -- … for refuge biology. And we went through and had folks determine how to best survey, and when to survey, and how to survey. And more important than that -- document how they survey, so the next guy who comes alone is… their data is comparable. And so we had workshops on things like that, we had workshops and Larry really supported them. We had workshops on invertebrates -- we brought Henry Merkin in from Alaska… from Canada, we… during the Stanley Cup, which was… he…

JC -- Yeah.

CS -- … it wasn’t easy for him

JC -- Yeah. He doesn’t talk to us since then, I don’t think.

CS -- No. I don’t think so. And we did moist soil management with Leif Fredrickson , Mickey Heightmeyer and all those folks. And these were great workshops, but the important thing was, it was bringing all these biologists together. We actually we tried to put together a biologist work… newsletter, where biologists wrote in, but that didn’t work out too well. But it was a good idea I think, and so… and, I think we increased the number of biologists… oh, three- or four-fold during that seven or eight year period. And other Regions were coming to us and talking a look at our program. And a lot of that was adopted by other Regions. I think we actually had a national committee that were…

JC -- Yeah.

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CS -- … starting to implement that kind of stuff, when I took the Joint Venture job.

JC -- Right. And actually the… the biological standards that you helped implement in Region 1, eventually were… Rick Coleman, who’s now the Assistant Regional Director for Refuges in Denver, was back on some sort of a detail in Washington, and got those put in the Refuge Manual – nationally, they had a little different title… I can’t remember what they ended up… and they became ‘guidelines’ instead of ‘standards’ or …

CS -- Oh, I got goose bumps

JC -- … or whatever.

CS -- That’s great.

JC -- We did the same… you know when I was working for Skip Ladd, when he became the ARD in Denver, we did… we took the same ones and modified them in Region 6.

CS -- They were pretty crude, but they were all we had at the time.

JC -- Yeah. So, what… what do you know about… Larry had something to do with the Central Valley Joint Venture …

CS -- Yeah.

JC -- …. before there was a Coordinator, I believe, and do you… did Marv Plenert or somebody else… did somebody ask him to take a role in the North American Plan in… in Region 1? What do you know about that?

CS -- It was… it was after he retired, and I think Marv…

JC -- Okay.

CS -- I… I… the way I think it happened was Marv asked him to… to get some of these things off the ground….

JC -- Okay.

CS -- At least some initial… initial contacts. And I think he did that for Central Valley. And I think he may have been working with Dick Bower when they were doing those original tours with the Canadians

JC -- Okay.

CS -- And,

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JC -- For… and this had to do with the Pacific …

CS -- That’s right.

JC -- … Coast?

CS -- That’s right.

JC -- Okay.

CS -- So, he was working with both those, a little bit, at the beginning with both these Joint Ventures, just before we had decided who the Coordinator would be.

JC -- Okay.

CS -- So, that was… that was great.

JC -- Okay. I had an interesting experience, that I may not have related to you, that had to do with Larry doing some of this North American stuff. And, you know, helping kind of set the stage for the Central Valley. This was, you know, a little bit after, not too long after though, you started with the Pacific Coast. We were writing the initial Concept Plan for the Rainwater Basin Joint Venture in Nebraska, and, you know, I knew Larry was involved. And I said ‘well, there’s a Joint Venture, all in one state, and that’s what we’re doing here, and we’re just getting started, so maybe we can get Larry out to give us some advice.’ Which seemed like a really good idea at the time. And we brought him out to a meeting in Lincoln, with the Game and Parks people, and some other Fish and Wildlife Service people, there was a Ducks Unlimited person as… as I recall, and probably… I’m… yeah… Keith Harmon from the Wildlife Management Institute. And it… I… you know, Larry and I had… had rooms… I got him a room… and I was paying for his travel, and I hadn’t seen him for a while. And we caught up a little bit. We go into this meeting and the… the Assistant Director in Nebraska, who was Bill Bailey -- he’s a Pennsylvanian and a guy that Dave Sharp and I had worked with for years -- but he came into the meeting and he says… he says ‘we’re not listening to anything that they do in California, they’re so screwed up out there that we don’t want to have anything to do with that.’ And we’re… and I’m looking at Larry, and he’s looking at me, and I’ve flown him all the way out from Portland and… and fortunately, Bill, you know, said a few opening words and left. And then we really did get some good advice from Larry -- how to initiate a Joint Venture that was all in one state. But I… I was geez, this… this seemed like a good idea….

CS -- Sorry, Larry.

JC -- Sorry, you know, sort of a… sort of a thing. We… I… we’ve… I’ve asked most of the questions that I wanted to talk about. Have you thought about the other problem, that you forgot about? 19

CS -- Yeah, I think…

JC -- Okay.

CS -- I hit it tangentially...

JC -- Okay.

CS -- … because I mentioned the problems we had, politically, with the state of Oregon being so conservative. And since that last… since the last election, some of this is taken care of itself, but we spent… our Coordinator spent a lot of time in Salem, trying to push things though, that… the folks there in Salem just thought any loss of private lands was an absolute disaster.

JC -- Yeah.

CS -- Even if it was marginal, estuarine, behind dikes that broke...

JC -- Yeah.

CS -- … that nobody could ever have made a dollar on. So, that… that was the one I think….

JC -- Well, things have changed quite a bit on the Oregon coast. I remember my boss, who was a little hard to deal with at times, said that we’re never acquiring any more land, there’s no way we can, in the Willamette Valley on the Oregon coast. And, of course, I had a hand in hiring Roy Lowell over there. And he’s… he and others, I mean, we’ve… there’s been a lot of… of acquisition and… and really neat stuff that’s… that’s gone on that’s surprised… surprised lot of us. But the youth… how many years now have you been the US Coordinator of Pacific Coast Joint Venture?

CS -- 16.

JC -- Okay, and you’re planning on continue to do this for the, you know, foreseeable future?

CS -- I get the… I get asked that question quite a bit. I always say two years, ‘cause if you say less than that, they’re looking for a month.

JC -- Yeah.

CS -- So, two years is… we’ll say two years.

JC -- Okay. Well, but, you’ve been saying two years for….

CS -- Quite a while.

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JC -- 14…

CS -- Quite a while.

JC -- … years, or something like that?

CS -- Well, five or six.

JC -- Okay. So, you know, I… I’m really not trying to pry here. what I really want to say is, okay, from, you know, where you are now, you know, you’re working on new… an updated Strategic Plan, but what do you see, since you’re still in the traces, what are your… are your priorities different now, you’ve added Alaska and Hawaii obviously, and that’s changed things. But, what are… what are your biggest issues now, and… and what are the things that you really are starting to work on that… that… that you really want to accomplish in the next two years?

CS -- Well, one of those… one of them’s in the Willamette Valley, the other one is in Hawaii.

JC -- Okay.

CS -- The Willamette Valley -- working with the private lands program there, and lots of NAWCA Grants, and lots of work with the land trusts, who do the yeoman’s part of our work these days. We’re being able to block up huge areas in easements in the Willamette Valley. They’re all coming together. The map there is just really exciting, ‘cause… ‘cause one land owner hears about it and says ‘wow, that’s great.’ And it just goes like mad.

JC -- Are we talking grass seed fields or…

CS -- We’re talking…

JC -- … combination or what…

CS -- We’re talking riparian,…

JC -- Okay.

CS -- … we’re talking about fields that probably that haven’t been in… well, some of them have been in grass field, mostly it’s been cattle, that type…

JC -- Okay.

CS -- … and great dusky habitat, as opposed to…

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JC -- Yeah.

CS -- … you know…

JC -- Yeah.

CS -- … other type of…

JC -- Right.

CS -- … [indecipherable] habitat.

JC -- Uh hum.

CS -- … and we’re really getting that all pieced together, and all the way from, you know, these areas, all the way from the Delta, the McKinsey, Green River…

JC -- Uh hum.

CS -- … Green Island, we’ve bought all that, all the way to the Refuge, which is 30 miles, just bang bang bang...

JC -- Uh hum.

CS -- … we’re picking off easements all the way through there. That’s really exciting. Especially with the increase… with global warming, I mean, cacklers don’t go to California anymore, they’re…

JC -- Right.

CS -- … sitting in the Willamette valley. So, we have a tremendous problem…

JC -- Yeah.

CS -- … more and more geese….

JC -- They… they still blame that on me you know.

CS -- Oh, is that right?

JC -- They have

CS -- Over counting?

JC -- That’s… that’s been a… 18 years, you know, and… yeah… that….

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CS -- I think the other big one was… Tom Dwyer, who I should mention,

JC -- Uh hum.

CS -- … he’s been a huge part of this whole thing, he was involved in the beginning of the North American and he’s been our Chair for 10 years. And we decided to… we had gone up to Alaska, and it was really a natural from the beginning, but…

JC -- Uh hum.

CS -- … but the Region 6 people… politics is huge up there,…

JC -- Uh hum.

CS -- … and they went ‘well, we’re not really comfortable about this, you know, and… or it would have been part of it originally.’

JC -- Right.

CS -- About 10 years later there was a better comfort level, and I went up and…

JC -- Yeah.

CS -- … gave a presentation to the Regional Director and their staff, and they said ‘well, let’s go baby steps.’ And…

JC -- Okay.

CS -- … now it’s going pretty well. I have a Coordinator up there and everything.

JC -- And I’ve… I’ve heard that they’re talking about even more expansion of the North American …

CS -- Yeah.

JC -- … activities in the …

CS -- Uh hum.

JC -- … in the state, recently …

CS -- Okay.

JC -- … I’ve been involved in some of …

CS -- [indecipherable]

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JC -- … conversations ….

CS -- But that was an ecological continuum all the way up. And that made sense. And then when it got to Alaska, they said ‘well, we’ve got, you know, these… these… a lot of birds that winter in Hawaii, and lot of [indecipherable]... and then we’ve got to make sure they go to Hawaii for the… for the shore birds, and that type of things -- the plover …

JC -- Right.

CS -- … and things like that. And, so, well, they twisted our arm, and actually refuges came to us and said, well, they could use our help there, too. So we went there; we showed up there; and huge endangered species programs there, but it’s all forest birds.

JC -- Right.

CS -- We’ve got five endangered water birds, fewer than 2000 individuals in the world, that depend on almost nothing as far as wetlands are concerned. And it’s just low hanging fruit, I mean, I think in a couple of years, three years, we can have those well over the… I think we have to be three running years… it has to be over… so, I think we can get those birds off… or several of those species off the list in five years.

JC -- So, is there potential there for restoration of wetlands…

CS -- Yes.

JC -- … that have been drained…

CS -- Yes.

JC -- … that sort of thing?

CS -- Yeah. We’ve been doing a lot of work on the refuges. We’ve got a million dollar NAWCA Grant on O’ahu that is going to help both state and federal agencies. Our big one right now is a place called Menaw Plain. And I was driving by there one day with my son, and I looked out there, it looked like… it looked like Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge with no water. It had ditches, and pumps,

JC -- Uh hum.

CS -- … and the whole works.

JC -- Uh hum.

CS -- Well, it had all been rice fields …

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JC -- Okay.

CS -- … and… and later… it was rice and then it was in sugar, and when it was in sugar they drained the whole thing. And my son was over there and found some documents where the… the limit for Koloa per day was 30, in the bag. And there are only 1800 [indecipherable]

JC -- Uh hum.

CS -- … at this point. It was a 1000 acre marsh.

JC -- Wow.

CS -- Nothing there at all now.

JC -- Hum.

CS -- So, I stopped by the Washing… the DoF -- Hawaii Department of Forestry -- on the way back, and talked to a biologist, who’d been there for 35 years, and I said ‘do you realize what you have down there?’ And he goes ‘oh, yeah, we know all about it. Here’s maps, and I’ve done plans for years. But it’s state Ag lands, and they won’t do anything.’ So I said ‘well, just humor me, I’m heading back to the Mainland, why don’t you give them a call. Nothing’s happening there, maybe it’s an opportunity.’ And by the time I got back, there was an email saying ‘you won’t believe this, the timing is perfect. They’re willing to give up 160 acres.’ And 160 acres of wetland, in Hawaii, is huge. I mean, we have… we have great refuges with only 30 acres. And we had a problem with the Navy, because it was right next to a Navy base…

JC -- Yeah.

CS -- … and of course, the terrorists were going to come through the wetlands and get the Navy; and these gallinules are going to knock down jets.

JC -- Uh hum.

CS -- And so, that scaled us back to about 110 acres. And… but, this last year, we got a… well, we… we did get them to switch it over. And last year we got a NAWCA… or Coastal Grant for a million dollars. We’ve put in for a WHIP. And we have Lee [Leif ?] Frederickson over there this week, trying to figure out what to do, that we’ve already done the soil samples …

JC -- Uh hum.

CS -- … and that stuff. So, were going to have a 160 acres there, plus we’ve… we’ve turned Hule’ia around, which is an area that the Service has bought 37 years ago and

25

never did anything with. Now we’ve got lots of Koloa coots in there. So, it’s… it… it was… Tom and I are just so excited, because…

JC -- Yeah.

CS --... it’s a place you can really see a difference, …

JC -- Right.

CS -- … you know. You can double the birds and you know it’s because of what you did. It isn’t because of breeding areas in the north…

JC -- Yeah.

CS -- … you know, cause it’s all right there.

JC -- Well, incidentally, I’ve got some spare time now and I can go over and help…

CS -- Oh, that’s great.

JC -- …over there.

CS -- Great.

JC -- [laughs] Any other things that come to mind that you’d like to comment on before we….

CS -- Well, I think I’ve said several times how important land trusts are …

JC -- Yup.

CS -- … and I don’t know… I don’t know if I’ve done a good enough job on that.

JC -- Okay.

CS -- We’re running low on time I guess, but… but…

JC -- We past time …

CS -- … but …

JC -- … they… they’ll still have [indecipherable] …

CS -- Yeah. We were moving… we were going along with the Joint Venture, and working with the states, and some major NGOs, and we thought we were doing a pretty [good] job. We were spending about 40 million dollars a year on habitat. And I got

26

interested in a local land trust. And I got on this land trust and it was just county parks and stuff like that. And after a while I thought ‘well, geez, you know, there’s a nice piece that we could add to the Refuge there,

JC -- Uh hum.

CS -- … at Steigerwald Lake,

JC -- Right.

CS -- … and we could have them put in for it.’ So I said ‘why don’t you… why don’t you put in, I’ll show you how to do a small grant.’ And… and low and behold, they got it. So we added 50 acres to the Refuge. And they went ‘geez, this is great. Tell us about big grants.’ So, this was a little Columbia land trust,

JC -- Uh hum.

CS -- … that had four or five part-time people, and a Board. Now, they have done, I think, six NAWCA’s, I don’t know how many Coastal’s, Willapa Bay. They have 11 full-time people, in two states. And they’re just… I mean,

JC -- Uh hum.

CS -- … we’ve got 11 people out there, just pounding on doors, writing grants,

JC -- Uh hum.

CS -- … finding… finding donors, finding local… local community dollars, putting things together. And you multiply this by … 35 land trusts we work now with. And a lot of our… lot of our discretionary dollars is going through capacity building for these land trusts. We can… we can take a little land trust that’s piddling around, add a few bucks, get them excited, and off they go. You can’t even hold on, you know, they’re… phones running off the hooks.

JC -- That’s great.

CS -- ‘Can we do this? Can we do that?’ So, now were at over a hundred million dollars a year, and that 16 million dollar difference is working with these -- rabid -- land trusts. It’s… it’s just been a wonderful experience. And they go back… they go back to DC with us and lobby. And these are real people…

JC -- Uh hum.

CS -- … -- not bureaucrat lobbing.

JC -- Right.

27

CS -- And, it makes a huge difference. And… and they are also very effective lobbing locally as well -- local governments and that type of thing. So, that’s kind of how we’ve had to do business, but it’s just been wonderful. We’re continuing to do the [indecipherable].

JC -- Uh hum.

CS -- We’re looking more at… more help from fisheries people, and… and…. But, that’s probably been our huge… biggest

JC -- Yeah. [indecipherable]

CS -- … success story, is the down grass-roots….

JC -- Right.

CS -- And a lot of it, I’ll have to admit, is opportunistic, because the local community wants to do something right there.

JC -- Right.

CS -- It’s all great habitat, and if we had a billion dollars and ‘right of condemnation’, you know, we could pick our best things and do them one at a time. But, we’re getting it all done. And we’re getting a lot done that… that isn’t great habitat, but it’s good habitat,

JC -- Uh hum.

CS -- … and keeping people happy, and it’s not costing us anything. It’s just encouraging these folks.

JC -- Uh hum. Right. Great.

CS -- So, yeah, [indecipherable]…

JC – You would…

CS -- It’s been a great trip.

JC -- … you would encourage other Joint Ventures that have the opportunity to really nurture… develop and nurture relationships with land trusts in their areas?

CS -- Yeah, by all means. Although I think we’re a unique situation.

JC -- Yeah.

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CS -- We’re kind of a yuppy part of the world,

JC -- Yeah.

CS -- … with lots of land trusts, lots of people with time. And this probably wouldn’t work in the Dakotas or someplace like that.

JC -- Yeah.

CS -- But… and it took us a few years to realize how well it would work, you know, for us.

JC – Yeah. Alright. Well, thank you very much for your time. We really appreciate…

CS -- You betcha.

JC -- … the time and… and the insights on Pacific Coast.

CS -- You bet.

JC -- Thank you.

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