 Thank you so much for coming. My name is Cece Harris and I have the joy and privilege of serving as the president of the board for the Friends of the MSU Library. As an alumna of MSU, I've been personally impacted by the resources and programs that the Friends of the Library puts on. And thank you all for attending just such wonderful events. So we are in for a fun, enjoyable and educational night. Thank you Martha. So for those of you who are not familiar with the Friends of Montana State University Library, we are a group dedicated to enriching the lives of students and community by strengthening the library itself. Since our foundation in 1994, we have been instrumental in helping maintain the library's role in research and public service on campus, as well as throughout the state of Montana. If you're not a friend of the library, you do have some information at the registration table about how to do that. I love a former board member of ours, quote, while nobody in MSU graduates from the library. Certainly nobody graduates without it. So thank you for joining us this evening. With that, I'd like to introduce the dean of the library, Mr. Kenning Arledge. We begin. We lost Bud Lilly about a year ago. Bud was a driving force behind the Trout and Sandman Collection. He lived a long and full life, and I'm just really pleased to see Esther Lilly here tonight. Thank you for joining us. Jim is our special collections, one of our special collections librarians, and he is the curator of the Trout and Sandman Collection. We don't see Jim much this year because he's unsabattable, but he is working really hard on building a new resource called the Oral History of Angling Collection. This is funded by the Willis Frins Foundation, and Jim is traveling everywhere to make oral history recordings with politicians and authors and artists and fishing guides. And there are, I think, about 150 give or take of those oral histories up on our website already, so check those out. They're very good. He's very good at Bureau. So I'm very pleased to introduce Martha Williams. She's the director of Montana's Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, a state agency that is crucial to the health of Montana's natural environment. Fish, Wildlife and Parks jurisdiction exceeds 147,000 square miles and includes 55 state parks, numerous wildlife management areas, historic sites, cultural landmarks, fish hatcheries, scientific laboratories, and the Montana Wild Interpretive Center and Museum in Helena. As the Missoulean put it in an article last year, visiting all seven regional headquarters of the FWP can easily put 3,000 miles on the obdometer of the big area. So Martha is the first woman and possibly the first attorney appointed to this position. And although she assumed the directorship in early 2017, she had previously served the FWP as its legal counsel from 1998 to 2011. She's currently on leave from a faculty position in the University of Montana School of Law, where she taught natural resource law, public land and resources law, and wildlife law. We are delighted that Martha accepted a Bobcat invitation to speak at the MSU Library's annual trial lecture. While she clearly has a broad portfolio in her job, the appropriate title of her presentation tonight is Wildtrap in Montana. She will be happy to answer questions afterward. Please welcome Martha Williams. I got the message that I wasn't supposed to talk about elk in big game. I'm so used to that. Actually, I thought, I'm very honored to be here and to be invited to talk about walleye and saugre. They're my favorite topics. That's meant to be a joke, but only half a joke. Actually, the fact that I can tease about that is in part due to Dick Vincent's legacy and the lessons we learned from Wildtrap and are able to apply them to other species. So thank you for that. So good evening and thank you to the Montana State University Library for having me. I'm honored that you would invite an admitted non-scientist to speak to you because I've ironically spent my entire career trying to translate science to decision makers and scientists. So I'm curious more about you than I am about myself at the moment. And I thought I'd start off with asking you a few questions just to get to know the audience and what you might be interested in. How many of you are students? Thank you. Because you are the future of conservation. You are the leaders of not too soon tomorrow. So thank you for being here. How many of you in the audience are scientists or biologists by trade? Thank you. You're the underpinning of what we do and we couldn't do it without you. How many of you think of yourselves as relationship people? You're interested in how the people and cultures and communities fit together with our natural resources. So they're not mutually exclusive, I hope. How many of you think you know what fish, wildlife and parks? Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks does. How many of you think you know all that Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks does? So I've been on a quest for the past year. I've been the director for only a year. So pretty new, still very exciting. I pinch myself most days. I also summon my inner courage most days to show up at work. But I'm on a quest to get around the state. I have been to all of the regions. I will go as often as I can. But I'm on a quest to try to understand all that Fish, Wildlife and Parks does. And I would guess, I don't know that anybody, any one person, realizes the breadth of what Fish, Wildlife and Parks covers. And I want to use tonight to talk about that a little bit more to get in the habit of telling our story. And for people to understand the breadth of what we're doing. And then dive into the specific issues of wild child management specifically, but our fisheries management. Just when I taught at the law school, none of my students are here for me to pick on. We don't have a habit of picking on them. So I guess they're lucky they're not here. One of the things that I really stressed to my students was understanding context and place. And in Montana, I think that's especially important that all of our work requires that we understand the place where we are. And that we have some context on how the issues might evolve in the specific place. So with that, I just think it's important to give some context tonight about the breadth of what Fish, Wildlife and Parks covers. Make a video. Try this ahead of time. Looks like that may not work. So the video, the gist of the video is at Fish, Wildlife and Parks, we understand we need to get better about telling our story. We need to explain context and help people understand the breadth of what we cover. And what that means to each of us in Montana, what it means to us as a nation. That it really goes to the integrity of the outside experience in Montana, which is why most of us are here. So what is our mission? It's a mouthful. But I read it every morning when I go to my desk. I read it every day to remind me that Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, through its employees, through our Citizen Commission, our Fish and Wildlife Commission, our Board, our Parks Board, provides for the stewardship of the Fish, Wildlife, Parks and Recreational Resources of Montana, while contributing to the quality of life for present and future generations. So Fish, Wildlife, Parks, Recreational Resources, Cultural Resources, pretty broad and pretty inspiring. Not just pretty, incredibly inspiring. This is meant to be making you dizzy. And I'll move on from it. It's not an exciting visual. But to remind our constituents that Fish, Wildlife and Parks means fisheries, the fisheries division, our fisheries resources, our parks resources, our wildlife resources. It includes, you know, often the face of the agency or enforcement officers that they put their safety on the line every day. They also work to include people and help educate people. It includes communication and education. Those are long together, but they're both pretty big. We have to be better about communicating what we do. And education sometimes feels like an appendage and it's critical to bringing young people into the fold and explaining better about what we do. This afternoon I was lucky enough to talk to some of the ecology graduate students, Aquatics. And one of the students very passionately said, gave me the suggestion, I think you need to do a better job educating people. Because once people understand the issues, the context and what you do, it's easier to sort through the issues. That doesn't mean it's easy, but it's easier when everyone has that common understanding. Fish, Wildlife and Parks, we get our revenue mostly through licensing. So our licensing division is critical to us operating accounting. If you've read the papers in the last year, we've been calling that on some of our accounting practices and how we track the money we receive and the money we pay out. Our budgeting, the health of our budgeting is critical to us having credibility to get our work done. Technology services. How many of you had the joy of signing onto my FWP when you were trying to get the hunting licenses for this year? You know, I heard about that a lot that we're working through that. We have to protect everyone's information, but we also will provide better service through technology services. Human resources, they do a yeoman's duty hiring. We have 722 full-time employees and that almost doubles with summer seasonal employees. And that takes a lot of work too to hire them and manage those seasonal employees who are also critical to us fulfilling our mission. Then we have 7 regions. So what does that look like? Think of the geographic breadth of our state and that we need to cover it all. It covers mountains and the region one, western Montana. It covers rivers. It covers prairies and plains. It covers parks and all those resources. So to remember the geographic vastness of our state and that we cover it all and that they're not the same. It's very, that it covers game species, non-game species, fisheries, communities, public outreach, enforcement. Those are just examples. So if we were to take the breadth of what Fish Wildlife and Parks does and narrow it down to the Fisheries Division, what does the Fisheries Division need to do to meet its mission to be stewards of the fisheries resources across our vast state? So is any of it about water? Right? It's all about water and all the different components of water. So water rights adjudications. Critical. Fishing access sites. How many of you have been to a fishing access site? Almost everybody. So I'll talk about those later. I think they are an absolute gem in how incredibly lucky we are to have the fishing access sites we do in our state. How many of you use fishing access sites for fishing? How many of you use fishing access sites just for access to the water and maybe not fishing? Right? So we're seeing a change in how our fishing access sites are used and that we are an agency about access. It's not just hunting access. It's fishing access sites. Fishing access, it's access to our waters and lands for other recreational purposes. So what does that mean if you distill our mission? What is our role then as an agency? And what does it look like when we're fulfilling our mission? Ideally, really our job is to unite people to protect the integrity of the Montana outdoor experience. That's pretty lofty, but I bet every one of you is in this room tonight because you care about that. Who doesn't? And how many of us feel that there is a certain exceptionalism? There's something extraordinary in Montana about the experience, the integrity of the experience you have here versus other states. And that's something worth fighting for. It's something worth working for. And that doesn't mean it's easy and it doesn't mean it has to be, but it's worth it. So one of my issues, I feel that we would get a lot more work done if we were better or a little more courageous about understanding our roles and having those conversations and realizing we don't have to agree on everything. But if we understand our roles and how they fit together, we might get a lot more done. So I just met with a young lady as I came in and she works for an organization that sometimes is in odds with, I think you could say, access maybe. Sometimes with Fish, Wildlife and Parks. And we talked about in this age, if we were just better at talking about our roles and having those fierce conversations, we might get a whole lot more done because there are many things we might agree on. And let's just agree on what we can agree on and we don't have to convince each other that we might agree on everything. But they're those key commonalities. So I think of this all the time now is how do we unite people to protect the integrity of the Montana experience and outdoors. And so what we've done as an agency, we've taken this and this was through a lot of public input that we thought of this statement. How do you break that down? What does it mean? So we broke it down into four values, four key beliefs that are critical to us, to Fish, Wildlife and Parks being a healthy agency. Integrity, inclusivity to be inclusive, to provide balance and opportunity outside. So tonight I will go through each of those four beliefs or values and give examples through the Fisherman's Division of how I think as an agency we are meeting these, but we always have work to do and we can always improve. So what do we mean by focusing on integrity? You know, broadly across the agency that includes professional and scientific integrity, critical. The integrity of the land, water and cultural and historic resources we manage and conserve. The integrity of the outdoor experience, whether it's hunting, fishing, trapping, camping, hiking or boating, or others. By maintaining the integrity of all of that, we help keep Montana a place of beauty, wonder and opportunity. And that's different from other places. It just was talking to somebody as I came in this evening. The other day I was flying to, unfortunately I don't get out and not anymore. My job means I work with my job and I'm not out fishing or recreating like I used to be and it means a lot of flying around the country. So I was flying to Norfolk, Virginia to the North American Conference of Wildlife, Fisheries and Wildlife. And as I went to the airport in Helena there was this big group of people with a ton of bags and guns. You could see their gun pieces and I went up to them and I said, what are you doing? Where are you going? It's always that excitement of being at an airport and going off on an adventure. And they said, we're going to South Africa to go hunting. And I thought about it as I got on the plane and flew across the country and I thought, you know, something resonated with me there and that Montana has become to some degree that place in North America where people come here to fish, hunt, recreate in a way they can't somewhere else because of that integrity of the experience they get here. And to pay attention to that, that we can't kill the goose that lays the golden egg. And what does it mean to fish wildlife at parks? As the steward of those resources, what's the responsibility on us to manage those for the long term? So those resources, the corpus will be around for a long time for people to enjoy. That's pretty cool that we get to think about that. So integrity, Mr. Vincent, I believe is in the audience. I get to pick on Dick Vincent instead of my students. And you are Bobcat. He did go here as an undergraduate student and a graduate student. You're clapping well. I can be generous for the evening. So talking about integrity, those four beliefs that are so important to us being a healthy agency and adhering to our mission to be stewards of these remarkable resources and uniting people to protect the integrity of that experience. So an example for tonight is, in part, Dick's work for fish wildlife in parks and beyond. I hear you've moved from trout to doxons. I was told to give you that, to do that. So why bring up Dick as an example of integrity? What do you, in your mind, what does integrity require? I think it requires some bravery in natural resource management and fisheries management. It requires a strong underpinning of science and data. It requires working with others. It requires a number of items. What am I missing, Dick, on what integrity entails? Being honest with the sportsman about what you see, let's say being honest with everyone. And I very strongly feel as an agency, every conversation we have, every conversation an employee at Fish Wildlife in Parks has with the public or one another, we require some honesty. Otherwise we got ourselves in a world of hurt and we can't afford to do that. So honesty, and it's not always easy to be honest. Certainly not when you have angry sportsmen and women and others. So I bring Dick up, a wild child management in Montana as an example of integrity. And I do that because his groundbreaking work, I think, is a model and a metaphor for all that we do at Fish Wildlife in Parks, not just wild child management. So an example, and this is somewhat awkward, I told Dick earlier, I don't know if it's more embarrassing for me to try to distill Dick's life work into this talk or for him to have to hear me do it. But what he was presented with, I believe, first I want to back up because this is critical to how we operate as an agency. In 1951, Congress passed the Dingle Johnson or Federal Aid in Sportfish Restoration Act. And that imposes an excise tax on sport fishing equipment, fishing tackle, yachts, pleasure craft. And that money is used to help state agencies restore, conserve, and manage sport fish in their habitat. What that translates to is it's critical to fisheries research and management. That's what we use to fund those efforts. So in the mid-60s, did I have the timeframe right? In the mid-60s, as I understand, I was around, but I was a little too young to know just what was going on. Dick Vincent started monitoring trout populations. And at that time, we didn't have really accurate ways to track populations. And I believe with the help of your uncle and friends and yourself developed electro-shocking equipment and technologies to try to monitor and understand trout populations. So in doing that, Dick picked two stretches of the maps and river. How many of you have been on maps and river? Again, it's a pretty tough crap. So Dick picked two stretches of maps and river, the Norse stretch and the Barney stretch. And first, which demonstrates another type of leadership, I would say balance and inclusion, worked with a power company to increase flows. Because at that time, you understood that increased flows were critical to the fish populations. So the power company increased these flows. And the not, both stretches of populations did not increase as you thought they might. So wondered, okay, what is the science telling us that doesn't make a lot of sense? What's going on here? So that you looked at what was the difference. And the difference was in the Norse stretch, there was no fish stocking. Fish wildlife and parks did not stock trout. But in the Barney section, fish wildlife and parks did stock trout. So there was the difference. So then moving forward saying, okay, how does this fit together? What next? Did a study where they used Odell Creek as a control and stocked Odell Creek. Discontinued stocking the Barney stretch on the Madison River. And kept management of the Norse stretch the same which meant non-stocking. Okay, so let's just stop there for a second. What do you think it would feel like as the fish wildlife and parks employee, for me, as the director, to say, you know, we're not going to stock fish on the Barney stretch of the Madison River anymore. That was huge. And a lot of repercussions, personal and professional, potentially, that required those honest, frank conversations. So a lesson learned, I think, for the students especially, but all of us, when I was talking to the students, what I wish for in future generations, that we were more, that we showed humility and that we were more forgiving of each other. Which means you're better able to say to admit to what you don't know. It's pretty hard sometimes for people to admit, you know, I don't know that. And here, there was that honesty of saying, we're not sure, but we're going to study this and use science to figure it out and take our looks. And that is a responsibility of fish wildlife and parks. We're not always going to be popular, believe you me. But it is our responsibility to think about the long-term to be stewards of these resources, to be the long-term stewards of them. That doesn't mean just for today or tomorrow or the next five years. So, took your legs, I suppose, by stopping the stalking of the Barney stretch. What was it going to do to Ennis as a community? What was it going to do to the populations? Well, it turns out it was pretty helpful. So, what happened was that the populations started to improve on the Barney stretch, first by 153%. That's pretty darn good. Ultimately, what by 213% at the end of the study? So, it wasn't worth the risk. Was it worth being honest and saying, we don't know, but we want to study this and it might come to good things. So, why I use this as an example for integrity is what resulted from this and what we could have taken from wild-child management on the Madison River across the state, not just for wild-child, but for wild-life populations. And for me, personally, through my career, I have been, and something I love about Fish and Wildlife and Parks, is that we focus on habitat, that we focus on the health of the ecosystem. When we talk about endangered species, when we talk about game animals, whatever species we're talking about, we focus on the habitat. We've been really careful over the years to try not just to focus on the species, but the habitat around them. And I think that's something for us to really stick to our bones about in today's political times. Where I see a lot more discussions focused on sage grass versus sage grass habitat or grizzly bears versus grizzly bears and how they recover and what it means to populations. So thank you, Jack, for exhibiting to me integrity, strong scientific underpinning honesty and bravery and moving forward with what science demonstrated. And really, ultimately, having people care, understand that the environment or species is what's important. So wild-child management, now we focus on habitat protection and enhancement. And we still do. Fish, wildlife and parks, we work on habitat protection, permits, extreme work, water, adjudication, restoration projects. So that work continues today. Habitat, habitat, habitat. And that's not just for fisheries. And resiliency in the long term, especially, I hope we have a chance to get to talking about challenges that come our way. I think we have some, but I think we're in a good spot to address them. So what's the second belief or value that's critical to fish, wildlife and parks being a steward of these resources and protecting the, uniting people to protect the integrity of them? Second one's inclusion. And fish, wildlife and parks do any of this alone? Not a chance. Not a chance. We can't do really any of our work alone. And if we think we can, we've got something else coming to us. So inclusion, and what does inclusion mean? That we bring people together. So through fish, wildlife and parks, people discuss, debate. Do people engage in these issues? You bet. Do people get passionate about them? You bet. With the students this afternoon we were talking about that. It can be hard. Emotions can fly. I've developed a thicker skin than I'd ever want to. But it's a gift. It's a gift that people engage on these issues. So it's not a complaint. At least people care. So we, it is our job to unite people to discuss, debate, about outdoor resources and experiences. We should create solutions but we can't do that by ourselves. We need even more inclusion. So the example I want to use for inclusion is aquatic and basic species. Everybody knows to clean, drain and dry their boats, right? Yes. Yes. Thank you. So when invasive mussels, we first thought we had a hit of invasive mussels in Montana. I had not taken the positionist director yet. I wouldn't have second guessed that for a minute. But it was while fish father from parks had a program on aquatic and basic species. It was the shoestring operation. So in a very short period of time first we stood up an incident command team. Fish father from parks wasn't used to standing up incident command teams. That wasn't something that we knew how to do. We could not do that alone. It required partnerships. DNRC completely helped us out. We couldn't have done it without DNRC. We couldn't have done it without Department of Environmental Quality. We couldn't have done it without transportation. We couldn't have done it, for example, we got help from the red lodge firefighters. We couldn't have stood up that first incident command team without extraordinary help from our partners and admitting that we needed their help to get on it right away. And then because of the strength of those partnerships in a very tight budget session, legislative session of funding for an aquatic invasive species program that's incredible. Somehow by pulling together and having that extraordinary partnership we got the support of legislators who don't support a whole lot of what we do, but they did support that. And then the next step from there we go moving from an incident command team into full on implementation. We could not have what is it required, it requires inspection stations, decontamination, and education. We have the tribes helping us with inspection stations. We couldn't do it without the tribes help. Conservation districts have stepped up and helped us in a way that we've never partnered with them before. Local governments, NGOs have been incredibly supportive. So it's this new partnership model that we've never we've never needed quite to the degree that we have with aquatic invasive species. And I thank everyone for the support we've gotten to get this up and running. I would not be honest if I didn't say there, we're learning. And that we're learning as we go. So I'm not pretending that we know it all on aquatic invasive species and that we have it all figured out. We're learning from other states, we're learning from tribes, we're learning from provinces. And I'm proud of our staff and that they're admitting where we might do better. So an example of the requirement that of inclusion and bringing people together, we've known tiger reservoir was where there was a positive hit. How many of you have been tiger reservoir? Pretty remote big area. How do you have inspection stations and cover all tiger reservoir? It's a challenge. And so we were going to limit access points to tiger reservoir this spring for this coming season. But to be honest, we could have been more inclusive. Didn't we work with the community enough? Did we talk to the legislators ahead of time? Not enough. So our public meetings demonstrated we needed to be more inclusive. The tiger reservoir this spring and we're having more public meetings and we're going to do that and I think we'll come up with a better solution. Will it make everybody happy? No. Can it? No. But will it do a better job? I sure hope so. For me, aquatic invasive species and our approach there are needed partners. This is an example of why we need to bring people together. There's also the creation of the UC3, the Upper Columbia commission there, which I think broadened the issue beyond just a flathead basin but to the whole Upper Columbia basin. So what's the third value? The third belief balance. That's a tough one. I remember an interview when Brian and Conn interviewed now district court judge Brian Morris and asked him about activist judges and Brian said he asked what's an activist judge and Brian said it depends whose ox is getting bored. I think balance is somewhat the same. What you think is a balance, it all depends on where you stand. But as stewards of the public trust, and we are stewards of the public trust, that's an honor. Our job is to create balance through sound science and management and that almost every decision means weighing the various needs of different user groups as well as balancing use of the resources themselves. Now that can get tricky, right? We're supposed to stand up for the resource. Is there room for balance? Where do people fit in? Where do communities fit in? So I argue that we do need balance but that balance means constant tending. It wouldn't be a balance if you just did something and stayed the same, right? It's that constant need to attend to it and adjust and learn. So what's an example of balance? I would argue that the work in the big hole on Arctic Rally is an example of balance. And it's also an example of where place matters context in place matters. So if we Fish and Wildlife and Parks were to just show up in the big whole valley and ask landowners to help us out, how does that work if you just knock on the door and say I work for the state for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, I have our big fishing game truck. You want to help us out? Right? No. It requires tending, relationship building, years. It requires some patience. You don't do it overnight. And it does require balance. And there are some discussions. There's the court case challenging the candidate conservation agreements in the big hole valley. It just was, I know the oral argument was just in the Ninth Circuit Court. I would argue this is a question, something to think about. While the resource is critical and we want grailing to do better, what would it look like? What would grailing conservation look like if we didn't have these candidate conservation agreements? If we didn't have some of these agreements in place. So are they a panacea? No. Are they important as ways for us to in this place, in certain places in Montana to work with long standing landowners? I would posit yes. What would it look like if they weren't there? If we didn't make some of those decisions and work with landowners? So it's panacea to know what has resulted from some hard work and balance and understanding place improved stream flows. Projects in place that we couldn't have done without that balance. I think improved stream and run perian habitat, fish passage reduced in treatment. Those are all benefits of that hard work. Those relationships built over years. And also understanding our role and knowing sometimes we get a whole lot more done when we're not the ones doing it. Knowing when it's a role for fish and wildlife and parks to be engaged and when there's a role for another agency or another organization to help out and for us to step back because we wouldn't be as helpful. So the last belief and value is that we perpetuate opportunity outside. What we're really talking about with all these resources including wild trout is that the integrity of the experience outside when you're in Montana. And aren't we all about having people engage care about these resources care about that opportunity without people caring about it? How would we get our work done? So to I think perpetuating this opportunity outside is all about relevancy going forward as support to do our work. People live in and visit Montana for what it offers outside. When fish, wildlife, and parks creates opportunities and passion from Montana experiences we build public support and cooperation that help us keep Montana Montana. That's the logic behind what will be our new tagline the outside is in us all. So the last fishers example for opportunity outside for these beliefs are fishing access sites. So I think our fishing access sites are this gem that's kind of flown under the radar. I don't know another state that has them. We've just built them over time. Over 332 fishing access sites across the state that they connect our state. They connect our rivers and people to our rivers. We could not recreate these fishing access sites in this day and age moving forward. It's time again that patients are building one site after another looking where people need access. It's the our fishing access sites coupled with stream access that the opportunities we have in Montana those opportunities outside are part of a lot of hard work blood sweat and tears over the years. Your husband you did all these others who worked as champions of stream access to get these fishing access sites in place one at a time to assemble that system. It's pretty special. So to be hopeful as I finish I'm hopeful because of people's engagement. I'm hopeful because of our students. I'm hopeful because people care about these resources. I'm hopeful because if I can do anything in my time as the director of fish well life in parks is to help our agency be a team that works well together and we can address the challenges that are coming our way. And we know we've got them but we'll be ready to address them. So I have lots more to say but I will leave it at that because I didn't want time for questions and answers. That's a way for me to hear what you really want to know and any questions you might have. It's a good way for me to learn what everyone's thinking. So with that I'm going to turn it over to questions and answers and if people are too shy I can talk more but I've got to turn it over to you. How does the current pricing structure for out of state college students or the innovation of the current pricing structure for out of state college students at MSU or University of Montana? Oh for hunting and fishing licenses. Right so why do we charge non-residents more than residents because those licensing fees fuel how we get our work done? We wouldn't have enforcement officers without those fees we wouldn't have all of the biologists we have we wouldn't have wildlife, biologists, fisheries, biologists we wouldn't have the infrastructure now is if your question is not just the differentiation between residents and non-residents but how much it is there was a lot of there was a lot of college students that are not participating because of the price for those people if they got into any college they may as they get older they may become into it and they may contribute and I believe that that provides greater value than all of those who go through. So why not have more inclusive prices for a college student to encourage you to participate? Sounds like you should contact a legislator and I hope we don't show up and oppose that though because we want the money and for our operations no I don't mean to be flipping it's a big question it's always a fine line I think we need to do the best we can to encourage people to participate period so with that said we need to operate as an agency too but we need more people involved and that's something that would help it's a good idea So the question is is there we get revenue from hunters and anglers and we get revenue from excise taxes on fishing equipment and then guns and ammunition too those federal sources that are so important Could we find an additional source of revenue that taps into other recreationists not just hunters and anglers and that came up when we were talking when I was talking to the graduate students this afternoon you bet we need to be looking at it there's a bill in Congress right now called Restoring the Americans Wildlife Act that doesn't have a specific funding source attached to it but it talks about broadening funding sources and how to help pay for species restoration not just being species So I think a lot of people are looking at that the trick I think is to make sure that hunters and anglers feel very included and if you were broadening the pie explain why and how and that you're not living leaving that traditional base behind that we're very used to funding our state fishing and wildlife agencies through this licensing structure and so it's a shift and you just have to navigate that carefully to be inclusive and not leave the traditional base behind so I think a lot of people are looking at that and then what adds to that is in Montana that it's fish wildlife and parks which makes a ton of sense to me we really are in the recreation business whether we like it or not we're charged with that whether it's river recreation water based recreation hunting, camping, hiking all of the above so the challenge of funding state parks where because you cannot use license money or by and large those federal sources of money to fund parks so how do we do that going forward so it's a good question and a lot of people are looking at it and if you have an answer I'm all ears yes because they're all on a draw so the question is if we really wanted to encourage in a way non-resident college students how would you do that, how would you structure it do you look at their states what the price would be there and the answers in some of those states they're not even available it's the opportunity that we provide that's so extraordinary I hear you but at the same time I don't think it ever hurts to think about how we can encourage more people to participate that comes with peril too yes if you sit on any officially on any planning program that would affect the town like both of them for the future the question is do I as a representative of Fishwell that can park sit on any of those planning processes for Bozeman I do not but I do know that we have a responsive management unit and they pay attention to comment they coordinate all of our comments in the agency to any NEPA processes, planning processes, we certainly engage in subdivision processes things like that so sometimes our regional staff does do that to some degree but I think we raise another question and that is you know as we want to encourage people to get outside we want to encourage people to participate we also we think of the challenges ahead climate, drought, fire I'd say pressures pressures on our resources from overuse in some places or how does that impact the experience how do we want to do get into that whole social issue but Bozeman I mean what better place to talk about pressures than here in Bozeman where it's growing so much more than say in eastern Montana and are we prepared to do that I think we're trying to be but I don't know Yellowstone River fish kill so last summer there was the Yellowstone River fish kill I don't have a good answer to that that's not, are any biologists here who worked on that I mean I think my understanding was that we thought it was a combination of factors so it wasn't just one thing and was it there to begin with and was exacerbated by factor numbers because the original fish kill was just before I started to and we had, we're divided this summer yeah cool enough so that this algae or whatever it was that ended up killing them and trauma limited Montana through their lawyer ended up working out with all the accusers that were using that water to coordinate the drainage into the Yellowstone and it's helping to solve the problem so the question is whether temperatures and flow are critical pieces of that and I would say yes everywhere they are and did we have the help of Montana Child Unlimited and other NGOs in trying to address that I wouldn't say solve it but address it yes but that's part of our ongoing work but I thought it was not only temperature and flows that those changes those pressures exacerbated the fish susceptibility to these diseases or put another way those are challenges facing us coming down the road whether it's another disease not just spaghetti but there are other people in the room this is where the honest for me to admit there are other people in the room who know way more about this than I do I know enough to be dangerous I don't care about how our agency responds and responds into the future yes right here so across the nation participation hunter numbers are decreasing fishing is increasing slightly you know there are peaks and valleys where we've seen the biggest increases in women fishing so Montana is a little bit of an anomaly this goes back to thinking about seeing those the people at the Helena airport going to South Africa to go hunting we, Montana is not seeing the death and license sales and the decrease in participation that some of others, most other states are seeing but there's constant challenge to make sure we engage 20 somethings to engage all youth to want to participate going forward and also I think understand that heritage and understand what hunting is in Montana to not lose that yeah, in the back yeah you did a great job thank you about talking about how important the outdoors is to Montanans and then also to people coming to Montana I'm wondering if you can talk about what role and honestly responsibility Fish, Wildlife and Parks has in your mind towards how federal lands are managed in our state oh, you saved the easy question for last so, I mean first off it's not easy it's a big chef for me to stand up here and talk about the outside is in us all I would say that as an agency we are not all there that's a new step it makes total sense to me because that's what we're about and it is our responsibility how that responsibility applies to federal land that's a tricky jurisdictional question certainly wildlife management and the health of rivers and aquatic species that go through those federal lands we've got to pay attention to we do back to the responsive management unit any federal public land planning processes we follow and we comment and I specifically now ask wildlife fisheries, parks enforcement to comment I want to hear from each of those divisions so that we're coordinating them so we have a role with federal public lands but it's limited you know, we would get pretty hourly about the feds telling us what to do gotta be careful about planning to tell them what to do but nonetheless we absolutely have to I don't love it, I think it's part of my job I have to engage in those bigger national conversations about conservation and public land management it's not always the most fun thing to do but this is I realized when I went to Norfolk, Virginia last week I said to my staff who was upset, it's hard for me to be gone for a week, to be honest and I said to them if I don't show up at those conversations the decisions are made for us and Montana has something to say about this and we have I was talking about this earlier I feel very strongly that we have this window this opportunity to lead out and to decide what future we want there's a bit of a vacuum for better or for worse with not enough staff and federal agencies with turnover that leaves it I think for us we have taken the lead in the past clearly we've been leaders but we can't rest on our laurels I mean it's really time for us to pay attention and leave the discussion I think we are the grizzly bears I think we are the sage drows I think we are on a number of issues on habitat, not just specific species on water how important water is I think a number of issues we are trying to lead that discussion Mr. Gatznow, hard question from you tonight and I see you're still there I purposely planned and people in the audience to turn to them to answer the hard questions for me thank you very much for coming and spending time with us we've got a next little trout you gift basket for you from your friends at MSU and hopefully you can wrap that probably when you go to Missoula they're my makers item or two in there thank you all for your time and attention and great thoughtful questions we have a reception just following now so if you can remain and continue to ask questions of the experts in the room thank you