Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Council
Meeting transcript – Session 1

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This file was created in real time by a Human Realtime Captioner for the purpose of communication access. It is not a certified legal transcript and may not be entirely verbatim. It is intended for use by the consumer only as notes of the proceedings. A consumer should check with the presenter for any clarification of the presentation.

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>>	 [Live captioner standing by] 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Good morning, everybody.  It looks like more people are jumping in here.  Good morning.  I know it's earlier for some of you than others.  But my name is Doug Hobbs, I'm with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in our headquarters office.  I'm the designated federal officer for the Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Council.  
So welcome, everybody, to the first meeting of the council, the inaugural meeting of this council.  And I'm assuming we're still ‑‑  we got more people jumping in here to the meeting, so I'll be letting more folks in.  But anyway, I need to get this kicked off.  I see John Devney has arrived.  Collin O'Mara, are you on by any chance?  We'll just keep going here and wait for Collin. 
So just quickly, I wanted to introduce Matt Filsinger, support for the council, we have been tag teeming to put agenda items together for the meeting.  Matt will be helping through the meeting and helping identify council members who might have questions or comments.  Matt, do you want to introduce yourself real fast. 
>>	Matt Filsinger: Yeah.  Thank you, Doug.  I'm Matt, I work for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in my headquarters office.  I'm a national team lead for the partners Fish and Wildlife program, private programs within the service.  I'm here really to assist you, this team and the process throughout the day and into the future.  So thank you, Doug. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Matt's been a huge help and it's nice to have some staff support for the council business.  I mean, it's a huge undertaking to get one of these things together and it's been great to have Matt be able to help do that.  So thanks, Matt. 
Just real quick, I wanted to let everybody know that I'm going to start a transcription for the meeting, so I don't think that's going to be a problem for anybody.  I'm not recording the meeting, but I do need to ‑‑  it helps to have a transcript of the meeting proceedings.  So I'm starting that transcript process now.  
And then just a little more, to make this ‑‑  to help with the meeting, there are a lot of folks participating, a lot of members of the public participating, so just in general, for folks, these Teams virtual meetings are great because it does allow more participation, but it can create some distraction opportunities.  So if you would, for everybody, if you'd keep your mic muted when you're not speaking.  And then for just public participants, if you'd keep your camera off, that would be great. 
And then, just in general, to try to help with the transcript, for council members, if you would, before you make a comment or ask a question, if you could do your best just to identify yourself, that will help with the transcript.  And the same for public speakers, when you're introduced during the comment session, just be sure to introduce yourself before you make your comments.  
So I think that's it on the meeting instructions.  I'm going to do a couple of things here.  I want to quickly run through and allow council members, and there are actually both primary and alternate members participating in the council meeting today, so it's great to see you all.  I'm glad you all could make it.  
But to make it a little easier in terms of introductions, I'm going to go through the council roll, so it will be accomplishing a couple of things.  I'll be taking roll but it will also give you a quick chance to introduce yourself, what your day job is or what interests you might help, and then I'll run through that.  And when we're done, I'm going to introduce the two co‑ chairs to everybody.  And then we have Secretary Haaland joining us shortly.  So I want to make sure we get the introductions done so she can join us and make some comments to kick the meeting off. 
So with that, unless there's any questions, I'll go ahead and just run through the agenda ‑‑  I'm sorry, the roster real fast, so folks, just introduce yourself real quick and we'll move through it.  And then we'll introduce the two co‑ chairs. 
So Colin Beck, are you on?  Do you want to introduce yourself?  
>>	Good morning everyone.  My name is Colin Beck.  I'm the director of forest management for the confederated tribes of () Indians. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks, Colin.  Ryan Busse, are you on?  Ryan, if you're on, you're muted. 
>>	Ryan Busse: Sorry, yup, I'm here.  I'm setting in balmy Montana today.  I spent my career in the firearms industry intimately involved in the shooting sports and also have been proud to be a part of many conservation organizations and efforts.  So honored to be on today. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Good to see you, Ryan.  Jeff Crane, I see you're on. 
>>	Jeff Crane: Good morning, everybody, I'm Jeff Crane, my day job is president and CEO of the Congressional Sportman's Foundation, I had the privilege and honor to be the immediate past chairman of the previous iteration of this council, so I'm delighted to be back on the council and also very happy somebody else is taking over those duties and responsibilities.  So thank you and look forward to the meeting. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Michael Crowder. 
>>	Michael Crowder: Good morning, I'm from eastern Washington State.  I am the current president for the National Association of Conservation Districts and represent conservations, farmers and ranchers from 50 states and 7 U.S. territories.  I grew up in southern Indiana and been a lifelong hunter, fisherman, hiker.  I love what we do.  I have a master's in wildlife and taught wildlife science and restoration at Washington University for eight years.  Thank you for having me. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks, Michael.  Good to see you.  John Devney. 
>>	John Devney: Good morning everyone.  John Devney, chief policy officer in Bizmark, North Dakota.  I look forward to working with you all in getting, creating some new opportunities for the sportsmen that we all care deeply about and wildlife and their habitat.  Look forward to working with you all.  Thank you. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks, John.  George Dunklin. 
>>	George Dunlin: Yes, I leave near Arkansas on a farm, past president of Ducks Unlimited back in 2013 to 2015.  Currently senior advisory vice president for ‑‑  Chuck Smith at Ducks Unlimited, glad to be part of the council.  
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks.  Good morning, Bethany, do you want to introduce yourself. 
>>	Bethany Erb: Good morning, everyone, I'm Bethany Erb, I work for Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, I've been NDC area for 17 years working on conservation policy, originally from a cattle ranch in southwest Montana, I'm going to proactively apologize to this group, it's Christmas break and I have some very bored children at home, so apologies for the camera flashing in and out when they're in the room.  
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks.  Dan Forester, are you on?  
>>	Dan Forster: Yes I am.  I represent the archery industry.  I'm the vice president for the Archery Trade Association and I come to you from Georgia. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks.  Cole Mannix. 
>>	Cole Mannix: Good morning, everyone.  Calling in from Helena, I come from ranching in Montana.  I'm happy to be on this meeting with you all.  
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks, Cole.  Lucas Martinez, you're on.  Do you want to introduce yourself. 
>>	Lucas Martinez: Thank you so much.  My name is Lucas Martinez, I'm an attorney.  I'm with league of united landmark and citizens.  I'm so excited to be here.  I have had the pleasure and honor of working in local government a number of non‑ profits, my experience has been in environmental sensitive land management and () but I have broad experience with coalition building and just very excited to be here as I'm an avid outdoorsman. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks, Lucas.  Glad you could make it.  Glad to have you onboard.  Collin O’Mara, are you on?  
>>	Collin O’Mara: Hey everybody, good to see everyone.  My day job, excited to be on the council again and I'm excited to get ‑‑  I grew up in upstate New York but I'm calling in from Delaware.  Good to see everyone. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks.  Lydia Parker, do you want to introduce yourself?  Lydia?  All right.  Move on, Joel Peterson, you're on, do you want to introduce yourself. 
>>	Lydia Parker: Can you hear me?  I'm sorry, Joel.  I don't know how to use Teams and I was unmuted and now you can't see me. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Hey, Lydia. 
>>	Lydia Parker: No.  Apologies for that.  (Speaking native language) My name is Lydia, executive director of hunters of color working to create equity in the hunting, fishing and conservation, and I'm in year three of that job and really excited to be here, bring some ideas from indigenous standpoint in conservation and hunting, and from people of color standpoint as well.  So ‑‑  for having me. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Glad you could make it, glad to have you onboard.  Joel Pedersen, do you want to introduce yourself?  
>>	Joel Pedersen: Good morning, I'm the president and CEO of the Milder Foundation, been in that role for a couple of years now.  I'm in Salt Lake, look forward to work with everybody on all the issues we need to address. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks, Joel.  Land Tawney. 
>>Land Tawney: Good morning, everybody.  I hope everybody is well, coming to you from Corvales, Montana.  I'm the president and CEO of back country hunters and anglers. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks, Land.  Let's see.  Keith Tidball, are you on. 
>>Keith Tidball: 	Yes, sir, good morning everybody.  Good to see you, from corn net university Department of Natural Resources and environment, fisheries wildlife ‑‑  in the great state of New York coming to you from upstate New York.  Good duck hunt this morning.  Glad to have been on the council last year and looking forward ‑‑  last time around I should say, looking forward to working with y'all this time around.  Thanks for having me. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks, Keith.  Lauren Ward, are you on the call?  Lauren?  If you're on, unmute yourself.  All right.  We'll keep moving here.  Tony Wasley, are you on?  
>>	Tony Wasley: I am.  Good morning.  I'm the director of the Nevada department of wildlife, past president of the association of Fish and Wildlife agencies, representing state wildlife agencies.  So this is my first meeting of the council and it will likely be my last as I am leaving state service just after the first of the year.  So grateful for the opportunity to be here, however short it may be.  Thank you. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks, Tony.  Appreciate it.  And Joel Webster. 
>>	Joel Webster: Good morning, everybody.  Joel Webster, vice president of western conservation at the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.  I unfortunately did not get to go duck hunting this morning, but it is nice and snowy here in Montana.  So nice to see everybody. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks, Joel.  Let's see here.  Just keep going down the member roster and then we have a couple of – Ed Arnett do you want to introduce yourself. 
>>	Ed Arnett: Good morning everybody, CEO of the wildlife society and I hail from Loveland, Colorado. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks Ed.  Glad you could make it.  Brad Brooks, are you on?  I'm going to keep moving here.  Brad, if I miss you, just let me know.  Let's see.  Kathleen Falk, are you on?  
>>	Kathleen Falk: Yes, from Wisconsin, former environmental lawyer, both in a nonprofit organization and then an assistant attorney general in Wisconsin, former elected official head of Dane County.  Former law professor, hunt, fish, active in conservation and environmental groups. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks, Kathleen.  Glad you could make it.  Mark Hennelly, are you on. 
>>	Mark Hennelly: Yes, California Waterfowl ‑‑  I'm the vice president of advocacy and yeah, I wish I had been out hunting this morning.  But I did get out with my son on Saturday and we had a great hunt on a public refuge, so that was nice.  Just really glad to be on the council and look forward to working with all of you.  Thank you. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks, Mark.  Blake Henning, do you want to introduce yourself real fast?  
>>	Blake Henning: Good morning, everybody.  Blake Henning, chief operation officer with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thank you.  Wayne Hubbard, you're on, introduce yourself please. 
>>Wayne Hubbard: I’m Wayne Hubbard, founder of Urban American Outdoors, host TV, for the last 25 years I've worked with engaging diverse African Americans and diverse communities in outdoors and hunting.  Originally I'm out in Kansas City but originally from Oklahoma.  I am a member of the Cherokee Nation and so excited to be here with you guys.  Just glad to be here.  Thanks. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thank you, Wayne.  Marshal Johnson, are you on the call?  
>>Marshall Johnson: 	Yes.  Marshall Johnson, chief conservation officer, national Audubon Society, glass to be here on the call.  There will be very little duck hunting today in Fargo, North Dakota, although ‑‑  he's not done yet. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Glad you could make it.  Simon Roosevelt. 
>>	Simon Roosevelt: Good morning everyone, Simon Roosevelt, founder of the conservation roundtable, appreciate the Department of the Interior and agriculture reauthorizing the council.  It's done important work in its previous iterations and look forward to engaging with folks as I can here on this.  Thanks, Doug, and good morning everyone. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks, Simon.  Roberta Salazar-Henry, do you want to introduce yourself?  
>>	Roberta Salazar-Henry: Good morning, everybody, I'm the current chief of staff of the majority whip of the house of representatives in New Mexico, former retired Assistant Director for the New Mexico ‑‑  and state game commissioner, glad to be here. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks.  Glad you could make it.  Andrew Schmidt, are you on the call, want to introduce yourself?  Keep moving here.  Theodore Sedwick, are you on?  Want to introduce yourself?  And then last, but not least, Michael Van Fassan. 
>>	Micheal Van Fassan: Yes, I go by Ford.  I am the director of brand and conservation for first light hunting apparel. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks, Ford.  Quickly, a couple of ex‑ officios, Martha Williams is on, one more introduction after that, and then we'll get going. 
>>	Director Martha Williams: Martha Williams:  Thank you, Doug, for going through the introductions.  Martha Williams and I'm so delighted to see so many faces that I know.  I do know a fairly healthy representation from Montana, so perhaps an apologize for that, but not fully.  And what a remarkable group of people.  So thank you so much for serving and really look forward to working with you. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks, Martha, and then Ron Regan. 
>>	Ron Regan: Sure, Doug.  Ron Regan with AFLA, dialing in from my home outside of Washington, D.C.  I have been an ex‑ officio or previous iterations of it dating back to 2010 and glad to be serving again. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks, Ron.  Glad you could make it.  So with that, just really fast, I want to introduce the new council co‑ chairs, Collin O'Mara and John Devney will serve an as council co‑ chairs and I've had a chance to chat with them before the meeting and they're excited to be serving.  Although they might not after I deal with them a couple more times.  
But anyway, just personally, it's great to have them both on.  I've had the pleasure of working with them in the past, so really excited to have them onboard as co‑ chairs and look forward to working with them.  And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Colin and John, and then they'll introduce our special guest.  And then we'll get going here with the rest of the meeting agenda.  So I'll turn it over to you, Colin and John.  Thank you very much. 
>>	Collin O’Mara: Thanks, Doug.  Is there a special guest with us yet?  
>>Doug Hobbs: Yes. 
>>	Collin O’Mara: Hi. Let me jump to introducing our amazing 54th Secretary of the Interior, the woman that doesn't need any introduction but I will anyway because I'm such a huge fan and glad to call her a friend.  Second Deb Haaland has been ‑‑  well before she came to DC, runs through her blood and her 35 generations of new Mexicans that came before her on the land in that incredible part of the country.  The work that she's done expanding access, investing in restoration, making sure that we had significant conservation pieces of both the infrastructure package as well as the Inflation Reduction Act is building an incredible legacy.  With that Madam Secretary, why don't I turn it over to you. 
>>	Hon. Deb Haaland:  Thank you, Collin, for that very kind introduction.  Thank you, Doug, for giving everyone an opportunity to introduce themselves.  And thank you, all, so much.  Welcome to the Hunting And Wildlife Conservation Council's inaugural meeting.  It's really exciting to see each of you on this call.  I'm joining you from Washington, D.C., the ancestral homelands of the (speaking native language).  And there is a lot of water and ducks here. 
I want to start by thanking my colleague, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director, Martha Williams.  You know I love you, Martha.  Thank you for your exceptional leadership.  Your work to stand up this council cannot be overstated and we are so fortunate to have you here at The Department working alongside our great team every single day.  Thank you. 
To each member of this council, thank you for bringing your expertise, your knowledge and experience to this table.  From state and local governments to tribes, sporting groups and outdoor recreation organizations, this council represents the diverse group that is dedicated to protecting our outdoors and the resources it provides.  
Here in this room we know that conservation is not a part son issue.  Fishers, hunters, anglers, they don't care where the next person next to them comes from or how they vote.  They care about having open and safe spaces to be outside.  They care about passing down their outdoor traditions to their children and grandchildren.  That bipartisan collaborative approach to conservation is what the department hopes to achieve through this council, because we know that these issues impact everyone and that all voices should be brought to the table. 
Like many of you, I learned a deep respect for the natural world as a child.  My dad taught me to hike to the tops of maces, wade in spring, that I could hook.  I developed ‑‑  whereas a young child I learned how interconnected the world is.  The food we ate came from the seeds we planted which rely on Sunday and river, the same river relied on the snow from the mountains during the winter.  
Later in life I took part in the tradition of responsible hunting that my ancestors have practiced since time in memorial.  I was very honored to obtain a permit for white sands missile rank in a orex hunt one year and I was fortunate to obtain that blessing from creator to feed my family. 
I come from a family of hunters who knew that we were blessed by creator with animals and land that are here to sustain us, but only if we protect and care for them in return.  As leaders in the conservation community, this council knows we cannot take these blessings for granted.  We must work together to conserve them for the generations to come.  
Today's convening represents a new era for our shared conservation vision, one in which we work together in everyone's best interests to protect the lands and waters that sustain us.  My ancestors knew we had to protect our lands and waters if we wanted to protect ourselves.  I see that sentiment shared across this council today and I'm proud to be a part of an administration that understands those values. 
Each of you is selected for this task because you bring the expertise necessary to address our most complex wildlife conservation issues.  With your insight, you will help us to maximize our conservation investments, made possible by President Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act.  This includes advancing the America the Beautiful initiative.  This initiative is a ten‑ year locally led effort to conserve and restore the lands and waters that bind us together as Americans.  
Through it the president set the first ever national goal, to restore and conserve 30% of U.S. lands and ocean by 2030.  It is at its core a call to action for all of us to do more for the planet, for the economy, and for our future generations.  As some of the most compelling conservation wildlife champions, hunters, anglers and wildlife community must be at the forefront of this work.  Through your indispensable knowledge and expertise this council will help ensure we have the right practices and policies in place to nurture future outdoor stewards.  I'm so proud of our work at the Interior to advance this mission and I look forward to working with the council on achieving this future in the coming months and years. 
Thank you all so much for joining the Department in this journey and for taking on this essential responsibility.  I wish you a really great meeting and I'm so proud to be here.  Thank you so much.  Back to you, Collin, I think.  
>>	Collin O’Mara: Thanks, Secretary Haaland.  Thank you for joining us.  Thanks for getting the charter done and everything it took, I think we're going to be a great support for you as you're leading the department and really trying to invest these incredible resources Congress has blessed the department with in a long time.  Thank you so much.  I don't think, would you like to take a couple of questions or do you have to get to other business?  
>>	Hon. Deb Haaland:  
>>	Collin O’Mara: I think you're on mute, Madam Secretary. 
>>	Hon. Deb Haaland:  I'm so sorry about that.  You think I'd learn after three years of doing virtual meetings.  I apologize, I have to run and get on another meeting.  But I know Martha is here, so we ‑‑  I just look forward to working with all of you.  Thank you again so much for sacrificing your time, energy, knowledge and experience to be here at the table today.  Bye‑ bye. 
>>Collin O’Mara:	Fantastic.  Thank you so much for having the secretary join us this morning.  I think for our kick‑ off, we just want to talk about how excited we are.  I think we're entering an interesting era in interior history as well as USDA and the Forest Service.  The amount of resources that this group has worked with our friends in Congress to secure between the Great American Outdoors Act, including all the monies for maintenance of our parks and wildlife refuges and national forests and BLM lands, obviously the permanent dedicated funding for permanent and water fund, huge amount of investment in natural resources, our forests that are in the BIL package and the Inflation Reduction Act which has another 40, $50 billion across the agency, a huge slug of money for the NRCS to do smart conservation and restoration.  Huge opportunities that we can help shape from this council to make sure money is spent well.  
I'm deep in negotiations right now.  We're trying to eat the ‑‑  out of the negotiations that are becoming a little like fairly, I don't know, sort of like games right now trying to get things out of that process. 
A lot to be proud of, at the same time we want to make sure we're providing support to all the agencies.  One thing that I'm interested in working with all of you on is making sure that we're giving great guidance not only to the Fish and Wildlife Service but all the land management agencies, doing a lot of work with the Farm Bill coming up next year, a huge opportunity, in addition to the lag money in the IRA.  Huge ambitious goals the White House has set out, for example, the con serving and restoring 30%, how we do that we really focus on restoration and at the same time increase ecological function.  Some huge opportunities. 
With that let me turn it over to my good friend John who is going to copilot this council with me. 
>>John Devney: Yeah.  Collin does what Collin does and covered the issues incredibly well, but, you know, I think after having the incredible pleasure of serving on this council in its last incarnation I want you to challenge yourself to think how you could contribute to it in a meaningful way.  There is incredible talent in terms of council members and alternates here that have a great deal to give.  And Collin and I are going to do our very best to get everything we can from you throughout that process.  
And so, again, thank you for, as the secretary said, as Colin said, thank you for your time.  And know that you have an important role to play here.  And we're going to expect that you contribute in a very meaningful way.  Thank you.  
>>	Doug Hobbs: Collin and John, I had one other introduction I wanted to, just before we get rolling here, our Deputy Assistant Secretary Matt Strickler has been helping a lot.  I want to give Matt an opportunity real quick to introduce himself and say hello to folks. 
>>	Matt Strickler: Thanks, Doug.  Good morning everybody, Matt S, Deputy Assistant Secretary for ‑‑  at the department.  Good to be with you.  
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Thanks, Matt.  All right, Colin, back to you and John.  
>>	Collin O’Mara: Great.  So I think for today's agenda, which was kind of developed by the department, I'm going to run through it quickly in case there is any questions.  There's going to be kind of a series of presentations on private land, conservation, so starting with a presentation by ‑‑  animal disease surveillance and management, this council has been heavily involved in chronic wasting disease, a range of wildlife diseases so that will be a good update to get.  An update on private land conservation, some of the Farm Bill programs, hopefully we'll get insight to some of the investments that are either underway or planned from the resources from the IRA but as well as kind of beginning to tea up the next Farm Bill and really talking about the restoration and recreation national forest lands.  
A lot of money has been invested through the forests through Congress making sure money is being spent what the priorities are and how we can help.  A few big pieces for the morning session, we'll have a break after that so folks can get food and recover from hours of Zoom time.  We'll have a public comment section after that and an afternoon session for the department to bring the council up to speed on some of the questions that they've been grappling with in some of the recent progress they've made on trying to reduce the impact of different toxic materials on the landscape and really trying to figure out different ways to make sure the led‑ based ammo is good science kind of driving the decision‑ making, good data driving that as well as opportunities for alternatives and some additional education.  
So we'll have a summary of the provision from the hunt/fish rule.  We'll have a scientific kind of analytics from the ‑‑  which I think will be good information and then looking at Cynthia Martinez is chief of the refuge system will talk about kind of how they are thinking about the use of led and led ammunition as well as tackle national wild refuges in the years ahead.  And so again, this isn't to make a decision.  This is going to begin a conversation.  I think our goal is to take all this information in and public comment as well, and have a subcommittee kind of thinking through these issues maybe with additional expertise to then provide some recommendations and some thoughts back.  
But the ability for us to have healthy wildlife populations and still have abundant recreational opportunities is incredibly important.  I think we can do both.  I think the science shows ways we can do both if we're working together on it.  So that will be kind of the kind of mid, early afternoon session.  We're hoping to end with a robust conversation about priorities that each of you've identified and want to bring in.  
We've got a couple of buckets that we'll encourage folks to think about for how things will work and this will become the makings of a committee structure that John's already given a lot of thought to, and it worked incredibly well when Jeff crane cap is let the last.  It led to good recommendations that led to good outcomes. 
John, anything else you want to highlight for the agenda today?  
>>	John Devney: No, I think ‑‑  no, I think, again, I think let's take the time that we hear from our friends at the Fish and Wildlife Service today sort of as counsel and experience from the services perspective.  I think let's figure out how this council and appropriate stakeholders have a part to play in the conversation as it evolves.  
So this is not a moment ‑‑  we're going to get a lot of information.  I'm sure there's a lot of us that don't have incredible expertise in this issue, so let's take the opportunity to be thoughtful and reflective in what we hear today, both in the public comments and from the Fish and Wildlife Service, and then figure out sort of what the path forward is from there. 
>>	Collin O’Mara: Any questions about the agenda from anyone before we ‑‑  before we get started?  And Martha, I don't know if you want to, or Director Williams, if you want to say anything before we kind of jump into the agenda.  Thanks so much for being with us and your team's incredible leadership.  Matt, thank you for your help, too. 
>>	Director Martha Williams:  I think jump in, Collin, for that just to thank you for your time and service on this.  And how just recognize the depth and breadth of your experience and wisdom.  And really look forward to being part of this.  And to know, thanks for stepping up as chair and co‑ chair, to know that the discussions are in good hands.  Here to listen.  
>>	Collin O’Mara: Great.  Thanks, Martha.  Thanks for your incredible leadership of the service and all your help with the council. 
>>	Doug, are we okay to kind of keep moving into the agenda right now?  Do we know if we have our first speaker lined up?  
>>	Doug Hobbs:  I think so.  I have a long list of folks here.  Let me look through the list.  I think we're good to move through.  Hang on just a second.  I see some Ag folks.  I'm trying to see if I can find Jenny Moffitt in here.  I see Meryl Harrell.  We can try with Jenny, Colin, if not we can work through the agenda as folks are on here. 
>>	Colin Stewart: She should be joining, Jenny should be joining shortly. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Is that Colin, is that you?  
>>	Colin Stewart: Yeah, this is Colin. 
>>	Doug Hobbs:  Okay.  Thanks, Colin.  Are you on by any chance?  
>>	Lucas Martinez: This is Lucas Martinez.  Can I ask a quick ground rule question.  If we have questions do the co‑ chairs prefer that we raise our hands?  I don't suspect I'll have a question, but I want to know how you'd like to operate?  
>>	Collin O’Mara: Yeah.  Lucas, just given the technology platform, if you can just use kind of the raise hand function at the top of your screen, top right‑ hand side, that way we can have a cue and we can facilitate.  We'll introduce a little later ‑‑  
>>	Doug Hobbs: And then Lucas, Matt, we're trying to keep an eye out for raised hands, so we'll be monitoring that to help, too.  
>>	John Devney: Colin, if it's appropriate while we've got a minute here, I know that Dan Forester worked very hard on the CWD issue in the last sort of council.  Maybe while we're waiting for Jenny, if Dan would just like to give us just a couple thoughts on the work that the last council did as it related to wildlife disease, just to sort of queue up, to sort of get everybody that wasn't a part of that council a sense of why this has been an issue.  And Dan, maybe you can just speak to it.  I know I'm catching you a little flat, but I know you're an expert on the subject, so. 
>>	Dan Forster: Well, thank you, John.  There's a number of other folks on this committee in this call that certainly have been engaged in that issue in particular.  But, you know, to summarize the issue, CWD in deer is one of the greatest concerns and greatest potential threats not only to the resource but to the hunting community, hunting fraternity, hunting tradition and the hunting industry.  We have seen it taken its toll in places where it continues to spread.  It has cost the states a tremendous amount of money, both in monitoring and surveillance.  We still continue to get policies that are challenging the situation and many times exacerbating the continued spread, which is certainly a place for us to work.  
And in spite of the fact that we know a lot about the disease, there's still more it seems like that we don't know.  And so there's a lot of research, both from the farm community, as well as wild deer management that needs to be addressed.  And the two principal issues we've dealt with on the committee in the past have been first and foremost trying to find adequate funding to deal with this issue.  While the issue certainly hits hunters square in the eyes, its economic impact to everybody is such a significant factor that it's impacting that that we've tried to put that on the agenda and get money from many different levels.  We're on the verge of that now.  There's some funding bills from Congress we hope to see mature before this session that would provide some surveillance dollars for states, would provide some focus research dollars to address the issue. 
So that's kind of the principal place that we're working.  But secondly is research.  If we can answer some of these more difficult questions, do perhaps a better job of monitoring the disease and tying management decisions to predictable outcomes in ways that we can help maintain the disease at a less of an impactful level and take the sting out of the disease where it tends to, I guess, broach into new areas that causes a tremendous amount of consternation and angst.  Lots to do on that front.  It's still an infantile disease it continues to spread, this is one area we've tried to coalesce all of the conservation interest in terms of the research and monitoring and focus some targeted dollars and targeted efforts where we need it most.  And I think continuing on that trajectory is exactly where we need to go with this next iteration of the council as well.  So thanks for that. 
I certainly welcome anybody else whose been invested in this to kind of pile on to that.  
>>	John Devney: Thanks, Dan.  That's perfect.  Look, this is obviously a huge issue that's already affecting more than 30 states and that number continues to climb.  I also think this council, some of you expressed interest, making sure we're kind of the broader range of wildlife diseases, CWD is obviously the disaster that's happening in real time.  There is big conflicts we're seeing in ‑‑  the health initiatives and things that state agencies have been doing, it's incredibly important and something this group can lift up and make sure it's appropriately resourced like it hasn't been in the past. 
With that, Jenny, are you on the line?  
>>	Under Secretary Jenny Moffitt: I am, yes.  
>>	John Devney: Perfect.  Let me do a quick introduction.  Thank you so much.  We're running a little bit early.  This group is going to run a little early, which is a good thing overall.  We're incredibly excited to introduce Jenny Moffitt, who is the undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs for the Department of Agriculture.  We're very grateful for you making time for us today and the floor is yours.  
>>	Jenny Moffitt: All right.  Thank you, Colin.  And it's a pleasure to join this group.  And I know my colleagues with USDA are going to talk about other issues.  But I just wanted to hop on for some time to talk with you about a few things that we're working on particularly in AFIS on, as you mentioned, on wildlife disease management and surveillance, and opportunities for partnership, particularly with you all and your organizations and the stakeholders that you have in your organizations. 
So, I will ‑‑  I'll start off by saying, by way of background, I come from my family's farm, so born and raised on my family's farm.  Ran the operations for about ten years.  And then started to work for the state Department of Agriculture.  
So I come from, I would say, the ground up and bring that perspective of the incredible partnership and the value of partnership both at the state level as well as with producers and then, of course, hunters and folks who are only the ground every day and who have a really great perspective of what's happening.  
And I say that because we're working on a few things.  I know, Colin, as I hopped on I heard you talk a little bit about chronic wasting disease and I think that's a key thing I'd like to cover today, but also pathogenic () influenza as well as One Health initiative overall, and things like SARS CoV2 and the surveillance we're doing in wildlife conservation as well. 
I'll start with highly pathogenic Ai, we'll call it Avian influenza this year in 2022 we had our first detection in 2022, and that first detection was a detection that actually came to us by way of, I believe, someone who ‑‑  sorry ‑‑  someone who was hunting, and discovered that there was something going on with the fowl, water fowl in that area, I believe in South Carolina.   
So it just shows how important hunters are, how important certainly our conservation organizations are on the ground and really being our eyes and ears, as well as partners with the state wildlife agencies as well. 
Unfortunately, highly pathogenic Avian influenza has been devastating this year.  It is widespread throughout the country, widespread unfortunately in many areas of the world.  Canada has a significant amount of Avian influenza as well.  We've had to depopulate more than 52 million birds, so that is more birds than we had to depopulate in the 2015 outbreak.  It is in wild bird populations in 48 states, and those 48 states are basically all of the mainland United States, so all states except for mainland states except for West Virginia and then also Hawaii. 
So widespread throughout the country.  What we've been working with the industry on since 2015, and I know we've also been working with many of your organizations on as well, is how do we prevent the spread and we call that biosecurity.  And so we've worked with the industry on different biosecurity practices to make sure that we don't have spread between different poultry houses, particularly turkey houses, because this strain of Avian influenza seems to be mostly affecting the turkeys, devastating to turkeys, but certainly also to chickens and everything as well.  So the industry has been a big partner in this. 
And then I know also your organizations have been a big partner as well, as we've been working on disease surveillance, the wild bird species.  There's over a hundred wild bird species and over 5,000 wild birds that have tested positive for Avian influenza.  So it's prevalent in the environment.  We've been testing and sampling.  And we really do rely on hunter harvester's samples to be our key indicator. 
So I wanted to just bring this up because there is, as this organization, as this meeting of the council comes together, there's a lot of ‑‑  a lot more opportunity.  We've really been able to benefit a lot from the partnership that we've had with the hunting community this year and the conservation community as well together and really identifying, bringing in samples, also see what's out there in the field, are we seeing increased mortality in certain areas of certain types of birds; calling our state Fish and Wildlife agencies, calling ‑‑  and of course working with AFIS to really start to identify and get a good trend of what's going on so we can continue to contain the disease. 
This influenza could have been much more devastating than it is, in the 2015 outbreak it was only a handful of states.  As I just mentioned, it's pretty much almost every state now has both wild as well as commercial outbreaks, but we've really been able to contain it, thanks to the partnership we have with you guys and the partnership we have with the poultry industry who's calling us when they find increased mortality in their houses and working and asking us to come in and do depopulation, you know, work on cleaning the houses and getting them back set up again to be able to raise birds for important, you know, meat, as well as eggs for our country. 
So that's one that I just wanted to highlight for you guys is the work that we've been doing.  This has been an all‑ hands‑ on‑ deck effort.  This has been our team at AFIS around the clock on multiple 21‑ day deployments around the states, really working on this, but it's also state Departments of Ag as well as state wildlife agencies as well as, of course, industry and conservation partners all coming together. 
Unfortunately, I wish I could say we're at a wrap with this, but I think we're going to see the trend continue into 2023.  And so anything, any idea that you guys have for your organizations on how we can help get the word out, talk about, you know, what things folks who are out in the field should be looking for to help, again, be our eyes and ears in the field that would be great, because we really do value the partnership we have with you and want to really increase that as well. 
And the chronic wasting disease, which Colin, you were talking a little bit about, we know how devastating chronic wasting disease is to the serving population, to our deer.  We have been working with many, many wildlife agencies, veterinarians, tribes, and local organizations.  There are a lot of irons in the fire, but there's not one lead point.  I think chronic wasting disease is one where we're still learning, we're still learning about the disease, how it transfers, but also we're learning how to continue to work together and develop action plans so that when we do have CWD in certain regions, who's in charge, how do we address the situation as well. 
So we do have cooperative agreements with state agencies and tribes.  In 2022 we provided ‑‑  AFIS provided $9.6 million to agencies and tribes to conduct management research throughout the nation.  So this is to really increase our knowledge about the disease and not just to increase our knowledge, but increase our knowledge in a specific way so that we can address chronic wasting disease to try to minimize and con contain chronic wasting disease where it is so we don't further spread it.  That's a tough thing to do with a wild population, but one that is very, very important. 
I think we do also have the National Wildlife Research Center, which also has invested about $4 million for chronic wasting disease research just in 2022 alone.  These are, a lot of this research is in partnership with universities who are working on different things, for example, environmental monitoring for early sentinel warning, for presence of chronic wasting disease, that's a partnership with Mississippi State University, we have other partnerships across the board with Penn state, Michigan state, Colorado state.  As you can tell, lots of the states that are deep in addressing and managing and dealing with chronic wasting disease.  
So we're doing surveillance of farm servants throughout the plan, but we're also working on wild deer surveillance as well over 20 different states.  So that's I think a key thing, is that we're addressing on both ends, both on the farm serving operations may going sure we have a plan and a certification and we're working with the states as they have their registration for farm serving operations to control movement, if there are positives as well within a herd. 
And then, of course, our partnership, I would also highlight the partnership we have with Department of the Interior and across our federal partnerships as well.  We just launched a steering committee for chronic wasting disease here in the federal agencies as well to make sure that we're managing it.  
Then the last thing I just want to talk about briefly is One Health.  We received $300 million to do SARS CoV2 surveillance and research and understand what is happening with SARS CoV2 in the animal population, both wild, particularly wild, but also in the contained operations as well, really understanding how does SARS CoV2 and other emerging () diseases transfer between different animals species, transfer between animal species and humans, all of the things that we are really interested in understanding a lot more so we can begin to develop early warning systems for SARS CoV2 as well as other emerging animal and zoonottic diseases.  This is important.  
Our partnership, of course, extends not just in the field but also with our labs, so we have our national veterinary services lab in Iowa that has been a big part of really stepping in and doing a lot of the testing.  That lab is also very impacted right now doing all of the confirmation testing for highly pathogenic Avian influenza as well. 
So we're working on a few different initiatives.  I'm going to stop here because I think we have others that are queued up to speak as well.  I wanted to again strike the strong cord that partnerships are really important.  We are all in on working on a variety of different animal diseases and really the strength and partnership that we have with many of your organizations through surveillance, through partnership and research, through telling us what you guys and your organizations and your constituents see so that we can make sure that as we're identifying not just surveillance but also research, as well as action plans, that they are best informed from you all and from really the ground swell of information that we get. 
So it's my ask to continue this partnership.  If we don't already have a partnership with you, we invite you to come, talk and meet with us.  We have Janet Bucknall on the call, she heads up the work we're doing at wildlife services at the animal health plant inspection services.  She's certainly your key point of contact and I'm sure you've worked with her a lot and/or many of the folks in her team, as well as her veterinary services team as well on this. 
So thank you all for your time.  And I think I'll pass it back to you, Colin, who will introduce the rest of our team.  
>>	Collin O’Mara: Great.  Thanks Jenny.  Before we pass it over we have a few extra minutes.  Do you mind taking a couple quick questions if we have any or comments?  
>>	Jenny Moffitt: Absolutely. 
>>	Collin O’Mara: If anyone has a question or comment, hit the reaction button.  Wayne, how are you doing?  
>>	Wayne Hubbard: Fantastic.  How are you, Collin?  This is so important to me.  I work with a very unique group of individuals and I work with a lot of nontraditional urban, suburban and rural communities that this information doesn't populate to.  And so I get those calls that traditionally wouldn't come to anyone in this ‑‑  that's on this call. 
And so, how are we communicating this to that nontraditional stakeholder who might be just walking in a park somewhere and see a dead bird, see something from that perspective?  And so as someone who's been doing this for a long time and have heard this, I'm a center of influence, a center point.  But I was wondering how are we doing that?  And how are we educating them in a way that we're not talking at them but talking to them?  
So, you know, that's something that I'm very interested because I get a lot of calls, you know, and there's more diverse people going outdoors now.  So we get those calls saying hey, I saw a dead deer, or I saw these water fowl are not acting right.  And so are there ‑‑  the birds are just laying out.  So that's a question I'd like to know, how you guys are communicating to that audience and not only are you communicating to them, is there a point of reference if they see something, you know.  And again, I talk to a lot of individuals, so I'm going to stop there and just lower my hand. 
>>	Jenny Moffitt: Thank you.  You bring up such an important thing.  And I have one idea, I invite Janet if she's on also to share a little bit more about what we are doing.  We have a lot of material.  
But I'll just say to you guys is, our hope is that you can help be our messengers with your audiences, right; that you guys have ‑‑  sometimes the best we can do is to develop the content and then you guys can help make sure that you're spreading that content out.  So if we're not already doing it, I want to make sure that we're utilizing this group here that we have to be able to help spread the content. 
Another thought I have is, because we have Merrill on I think that's going to be speaking in a bit with the Forest Service, is how we use the opportunities with education through Forest Service, whether it's science or what have you for service land, to educate about things like chronic wasting disease, Avian influenza, Brucella, all sorts of animal diseases that might be good educational opportunities for folks as they're starting on a trail, whether that's urban or in the Forest Service land.  
So Janet, I don't know if there's anything else that we have to say about what we have been doing as far as outreach. 
>>	Janet Bucknall: Thank you, Jenny and Mr. Hubbard as well.  We do a lot of work with communities around the country, we have AFIS wildlife services in many of the urban areas, sometimes they're related to the airports, but we have a district office in Brooklyn, New York, and work in Chicago and elsewhere.  But what I'd like to just do is say, Mr. Hubbard, I wrote your name down initially when you did your introduction so I'd love to chat and interact with.  Jenny is right, we're sort of experts at developing technical material and descriptions and stuff, but we could probably use your help in collaboration to reach out to the different communities.  So that would be outstanding.  Thank you.  
Jenny, I also threw up into the chat CWD symposium information for the group, if anyone is interested they can click on that.  It's coming up in May. 
>>	Jenny Moffitt: Thank you, Janet.  I skipped that in my talking points, so I appreciate you putting that in.  
>>Collin O’Mara: 	Fantastic.  Any other questions before we move on?  Jenny, thank you so much for the partnership and obviously incredibly important to the work of this council.  We look forward to working together. 
>>	Jenny Moffitt: Thank you.  Really nice to join you today.  Thanks, all. 
>>	Collin O’Mara: Fantastic.  And next we'll be introducing Bidisha Bhattacharyya and I'm going to ask John to lead the introduction. 
>>	John Devney: Yeah.  You guys are in for a treat.  Bidisha has done an excellent job in her current role sort of doing incredible outreach to the partners as it relates to the good work that USDA and NRCS specifically are doing with delivering the kinds of private land conservation programs that are so important to us all and which I know will continue to be a focus for the council.  And obviously, Bidisha and her team's job has gotten bigger and more expansive.  They've got new responsibilities with the big bucket of cash that was provided through the Inflation Reduction Act.  
And so we look forward to hearing from Bidisha, and Bidisha, thanks for all you do. 
>>	Senior Advisor Bidisha Bhattacharyya:  Thank you for that kind intro, and great to see a bunch of familiar names on the screen.  Thanks so much for having me.  And I first want to say hello from Undersecretary Robert Bonny, he could not be on today but hopes to join future conversations and, of course, the door is always open to continue dialogue with you all and you're such important partners in our work. 
That was a great setup.  The first thing I wanted to touch on is the Inflation Reduction Act and the historic opportunities it does present.  So we're super excited.  We know also, you know, I think Undersecretary Moffitt talked about partnerships and how critical it is and that's the theme we have going with all of our work.  Whether it's IRA implementation, continuing to work on our partnerships for climate‑ smart commodities projects that were announced recently, those are major opportunities for, you know, what, while they have kind of climate in their label, the cobenefits and the practices that are really, really important to wildlife and water quality and all of that, there's such an overlap.  And so I think this is truly a transformative opportunity for us to be able to do some major leaps forward in conservation and all of these kind of really important critical resource concerns. 
So the IRA provides, I think as many of you know, $20 billion to the NRCS in particular to do, to kind of really bolster the flagship programs under NRCS, so eclipse, CSPR, CPP, et cetera, a lot of those familiar tools that I think are so critical to private landowners, farmers and ranchers across the country.  Right now there is an RFP open, or an RFI open, sorry, a request for information.  Encourage y'all to tell us what you think.  Many folks have already contributed and commented on how NRCS should be thinking about spending those dollars rag. 
There is a lot of kind of design questions in there.  So as we go into FY'23 there is going to be initial, obviously getting to work and then really ramping up in the future years as we process a lot of that feedback and really understand where the priorities are.  So very excited.  And we cannot do it alone, so we're going to be really leaning on key partnerships across the country, with states, organizations like many of those represented here to be able to deliver these outcomes for conservation and for climate. 
So that's the IRA.  And, you know, the IRA feeds into a lot of our work.  It really bolsters and provides to the huge work NRCC in particular.  There is the landscape initiatives and wildlife are such important priorities, I think for us and for this group, and a lot of those programs are the ones that are being bolstered by the IRA and there is a lot of overlap there.  I think we're going to see really interesting opportunities coming down the pike. 
I wanted to talk a little bit about working ‑‑  for wildlife in particular, it's been such a huge opportunity to be able to partner with a variety of folks for really important conservation outcomes at the landscape scale.  So we continue to really prioritize that work.  There were three different frameworks released in the last couple of years that are going to be guiding and that's sort of like the beginning here but the great plains grasslands framework, northern ‑‑  stage ‑‑  framework released by NRCS and those are kind of tools to be able to help strategically implement the different conservation programs in ways that kind of benefit the resources and priorities and put science behind that to be able to guide that work through NRCS and its partners.  So we're really excited about that. 
I don't think I need to preach to the choir here but there has been a lot of great success stories there on kind of being able to team up with our Fish and Wildlife Service colleagues, too, and to support over 8,000 producers and voluntary conservation of over 12 million acres of wildlife habitat since 2010.  These are key conservation actions leading to, you know, no list decisions for species lie the gopher tortoise, greater sage grass, the list goes on.  The model is powerful.  Totally hinges on partnerships and collaborations and voluntary work in support of our farmers and ranchers, so we're going to continue to prioritize that work. 
I wanted to talk about another area where we're kind of really trying to get creative with our tools that the Farm Bill offers, that's the pilot on big game conservation that we've kicked off with Governor Gordon in Wyoming and it came about with a conversation with the state saying hey, this is a really important priority for us.  USDA, you have interesting tools, how can we work together and augment and kind of be strategic in how to deploy some of those tools and resources.  And so this October culminated in a formalized partnership and MOU with the state.  We are bringing additional resources to the table through our Farm Bill conservation programs, particularly the EQUIP and ASAP program and the ‑‑  CRP program, and so what this does is allow for producers to have a package of opportunities that they can come to the counter for their NRCS or FSA counter and say I'm look at restoring, I need help with sensing, I looking for this idea of some way to support the big game populations that are using my land around the year, how can you do that.  And that's where the habitat lease really came out from a lot of conversations we had with folks around the table on what they were looking for. 
So we ‑‑  that's going to ‑‑  the pilot is really the offering of these over the next few years in a package way, being able to stack the programs against each other in ways that we haven't done before, and we're going to learn a lot.  And we are hoping to learn and extrapolate those findings to other places in the country.  That's certainly going to be a priority over the coming months as well.  
I'm going to touch on a couple more things quick here.  The conservation reserve program, I think that's another really critical tool, so the program is part of the broader conservation program.  I think we were coming into, in 2020 with a little bit of a deficit there in terms of lands that were being enrolled and I know that's a critical program for a lot of species.  
And so we really boosted our efforts, we upped the incentives, did everything we could to increase flexibilities, recognizing we need to get the right lands into that program.  So we had ‑‑  we've had historically high grasslands CRC sign‑ ups.  We've also kept up with other sign‑ ups to be able to at least make sure that we make up for the expiring acres, many of which were coming out.  So we're dealing with expiring acres, high crop prices, et cetera.  But despite that, I think we saw really good results and we're hoping to continue to build upon that over the coming years. 
Everyone knows there is a Farm Bill coming up so there's a lot of work to be done to continue to stand by CRP and all of these tools to keep them strong, to help make sure that Congress and everyone understands the importance of these tools.  So we're going to continue to champion and tell the story so that ‑‑  and hopefully partners like yourselves can help continue to make the really good impact on the ground that a lot of these tools, in collaboration with others, can make for wildlife, for water quality, for air quality.  There's so many different important resource concerns. 
So I will pause there.  I just said a lot of things.  So happy to answer questions and, you know, the door's always open.  We the FPAC missionary, which is where I sit Undersecretary Bonnie, we work across SSCA and we're very much in touch with our colleagues across the federal families in how to plug these conservation tools in with other conservation happening across public land and so always really interested in continuing to hear what you all need and what more we can do with these tools in creative ways.  So I'll stop there.  
>>	Thank you, Bidisha.  Again, I think we'll hear from the council members today, but again, this is an incredible opportunity and an incredible opportunity for the council to be engaged with Bidisha and Robert Bonnie and others, Chief Cosby and other folks at USDA because the historic amount of funding has the opportunity to do immense amount of good for private landowners and for wildlife habitat out there. 
I think we just need to keep focused on it.  Bidisha, I appreciate your continued vigilance in that regard.  And with that, I'll open it up for any questions that anybody may have for Bidisha.  Michael Crowder doesn't have a question?  
>>	Michael Crowder: I didn't want to take up time but I wanted to thank her for meeting with our group a couple weeks ago in her office in DC.  So thank you for everything we do.  We appreciate it at NACD. 
>>	And I see Joel Webster's got his hand up. 
>>	Joel Webster: Yeah.  Hi, Bidisha.  Hey, I don't have so much of a question as much as a thank you.  I want to say thanks for all the work you're doing looking at the Farm Bill program and how they can be used to conserve wildlife migration and Wyoming is fantastic.  I think a lot of folks agree with that and want to be helpful there, so thank you.  
>>	Thank you.  I mean, I think a lot of that work came out of ongoing conversations with groups like yours, right.  So I think it just emphasizes, I think we're really excited about the tools that we have, but it really hinges upon working together with folks.  
>>	Colin, did you have something?  I saw your hand up. 
>>	Colin Beck: Yeah.  Bidisha, one quick thing, one of the things this council is going to be working on together over the next several months is trying to line up recommendations for the secretary's consideration for the Farm Bill, and working with you and Robert and the team.  I think the more we can share successes on things you're seeing on programs that are moving well, things that are getting money on the ground quickly, things that ‑‑  I think there will be a back and forth about the baseline and how the IRA funding fits in.  So anything that we can do to help you kind of make that case that these are great investments and we should keep the money in the landscape could be a really great use of this council's influence.  So this is kind of a standing offer but we should think about how we talk about that off line and bring it back to this council for the next meeting. 
>>	Bidisha Bhattacharyya:  Absolutely.  And I think we feel great urgency to get those dollars out the door and put them to work on showing outcomes leading into the Farm Bill conversations to just be able to really tell that story.  And we'll be absolutely looking at working with you all to figure out how best to do that and how to make ‑‑  how to get those outcomes to ham in the first place through partnerships.  So certainly a lot of conversation to be had in the new year.  
>>	Great.  Any other final questions for Bidisha?  Ed and Wayne. 
>>	Wayne Hubbard: I'm so excited to talk to you, Bidisha.  I work with the black farmers, and one of the cross‑ pollinations that they have is I've been talking to them about creating spaces for wildlife.  And you just answered my question by talking about these programs.  So this might be something that if we get the opportunity, I'd love to talk with you.  I've done a lot of work with USDA and the Forest Service, and so I've done some cross‑ pollination over there and some shared stewardship stuff.  But this is something that I definitely thing the audience that I have would just be gigley about, so thank you for the information and I'll be reaching out. 
>>	Bidisha Bhattacharyya:  Please do.  I'll put my e‑ mail in the chat in a second and would love to have a follow‑ up. 
>>	All right.  Thanks again. 
>>	Ed, you have a question?  
>>	Ed Arnett: I do.  My first question was to Colin, if it's okay if alternates chime in, I'm going to make that assumption that it's okay.  Bidisha, thanks very much for the presentation.  I have kind of a interesting question about the match and a potential for a barrier here.  I hear from colleagues that this is becoming more of a challenge.  I'm curious what you think through your lens about match being a barrier.  If I heard you correctly, 20 billion and the typical match would be, what, 25%?  That's a lot of money.  Is it time for a discussion quickly about a policy change perhaps on the match or look for more creative ideas on partnerships. 
>>	Bidisha Bhattacharyya:  Yeah.  I mean, I think we welcome that conversation.  I know that there's been a lot of thinking about how to reduce barriers for folks that have not been able to participate.  Some of that is things like match.  Some of that is things like, you know, the way our programs don't always work well together in looking at some of the regulations behind those things and trying to carve away at those, doing some of that in the Wyoming pilot, looking at things like ‑‑  I mean, there's a lot of different examples, like payment limits and how that can prevent large operations from enrolling, things like that. 
So we would certainly welcome further conversation on that.  Submit your comments to the RFI, too, I would certainly encourage that.  But I think those types of barriers are exactly what we're looking to think about addressing as we're trying to figure out how do we get these dollars out the door and to meaningfully bring new people into our work, which I think is critical to the success. 
And then, you know, this is a little bit outside of IRA specifically because it's CRP, but we're also looking at ways to ‑‑  we just announced three tribal creps, they're under the conservation reserve program, that's a public/private partnership and the match is, in certain cases, especially with when you have government entities at the table, it can be in kind.  And so anyway, we were just ‑‑  and there were some other various reasons that tribes couldn't participate in CRP very effectively in the past.  So we worked with the OGS and others to figure out how we can actually do that.  We announced three tribal creps recently, very excited about those.  They each are a little bit different in terms of what they're looking to do, but they're enrolling land into CRP to address specific natural resource and wildlife concerns that they have.  So it's just another example. 
But we're very open to those types of ideas.  And obviously, some places we're going to run into statutory barriers and that's a conversation for our colleagues in Congress.  But in places where we don't have those, you know, we would welcome those types of ideas.  
>>	Great.  Thank you so much, Bidisha.  Oh, Mark, sorry.  
>>	Mark Hennelly: I just wanted to add in to Ed's point, too.  In California, for instance, the rental rate caps with CRP haven't worked well with us.  We have irrigated agricultural landscape like rice and the rental rates tend to be much higher than the rest of the country.  So getting more flexibility with the rental rate caps or lifting them would be very helpful for us.  
We just hardly have any CRP enrolled in our state because of that.  So if we ever want to really do a lot for nesting birds here through that federal program, we're going to have to get that modified.  So, thank you.  
>>	Bidisha Bhattacharyya:  Yeah.  You know, we've heard, there's a lot of interesting situations particularly out west where we're seeing some of those same types of comments and feedback.  So I think would be happy to, Mark, have a follow‑ up with our FFA team on some of those questions in particular.  
>>	All right.  Thank you.  
>>	George, did I see your hand up?  
>>	George Dunklin: Yes.  Thanks a lot.  I know the Biden Administration is focused on climate change and protecting and creating wetlands will help achieve carbon capture and sequestration as well as conserve the benefits for farmers and environment.  
Is the Biden Administration considering a new net loss of wetland pledge?  Is there an opportunity to kind of take this to the next level and make it a net gain of wetland pledge?  
>>	Bidisha Bhattacharyya:  So what I can say is I think a hundred percent agree, and the importance of wetlands and there is a lot of interesting tools we have to be able to kind of boost wetland restoration, including in the IRA.  It's one of the initial practices that we're covering and that practice list is going to be iterative as we get public comment and science.  
The specific question around the pledge, I can't answer that in terms of what might be happening from kind of like ‑‑  through something like an executive order, et cetera.  But I can say that USDA, both there, both through CRP where wetland practices are really, really critical, through our ASEP and ‑‑  we have wetland easements.  There are a lot of places we can boost wetland conservation and even restoration, so those are things that absolutely are really, really important. 
We have some ‑‑  we have a project with Ducks Unlimited on CRP in particular that's going to be doing ‑‑  that's underway already that's doing carbon, soil carbon sampling and monitoring over time, specifically in places for wetland acres.  And so we're really excited about that because it's actually helping fill kind of a science gap on what's happening over time in those soils as we go back to the same places and measure over time and see what's happening as we put those lands into CRP specifically and those types of wetland practices. 
So super important.  A lot of places ‑‑  and again, worth the follow‑ up.  Happy to do so on kind of what we're thinking in that regard. 
>>George Dunklin: As the past president of Ducks Unlimited, still a current volunteer.  I really appreciate that.  And we look forward to getting those answers to show what wetlands are doing and to show it in a scientific form.  So thank you very much.  Appreciate your grants. 
>>	Bidisha Bhattacharyya:  And we are looking forward to it as well.  
>>	Thank you.  
>>	Simon Roosevelt: John, did I read your lips to say that I could go ahead?  
>>	John Devney: Yes, sir.  I'm sorry.  
>>	Simon Roosevelt: Thank you very much, John.  And thank you, Bidisha.  My name is Simon Roosevelt, alternate member for the you council.  Quick question on the MOU with Wyoming.  I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit about any direct connects with previous secretary of order 3362 and the work that's happened under that program and additional opportunities to connect the work that the Fish and Wildlife Service has done under that program with expanding that into some range with the US Forest Service and other ideas?  Thank you very much. 
>>	Bidisha Bhattacharyya:  Yeah.  That's a great question.  I think the work obviously didn't come out of nowhere in a vacuum, so it really very much is building off of the energy and the thinking behind past priorities.  And so I think in terms of linking it with the Fish and Wildlife Service, I think I saw Matt on here earlier, but we're talking to our DOI colleagues a lot in terms of how we can collaborate and kind of make sure things are moving in a complimentary way.  The Wyoming pilot was very much done in collaboration and conversation with them as well. 
So I think we're going to ‑‑  and we're very much looking forward to continuing that and building on it.  We're just at the beginning here, so I think it's going to be interesting to see how we can continue to make those connections.  But the intent is certainly to tie this together with other places where we can compliment and I think this might be a good segue to Meryl who is going to be speaking.  We have been talking with our Forest Service colleagues and the Forest Service lands and how they're thinking of connectivity and wildlife and making sure we can connect the dots there as well.  
>>	Colin O’Mara: Great.  I think that sounds like a perfect segue.  Bidisha, thanks so much for spending so much time with us this morning.  We greatly appreciate all the work and partnership.  We will now turn over to a conversation about exactly as Bidisha teed it up, about restoration and recreation on the National Forest Service.  A good friend who has done a good job in this administration listen joining us, Meryl Harrell at USDA.  So Meryl, take it away. 
>>	Deputy Under Secretary Meryl Harrell: Thanks so much, Collin.  That was a good segue.  Thank you.  It's good to be with you all.  I'm so glad this council is back up and running.  I know how important the contributions were from my previous service for eight years in NRA during the Obama Administration and I care about these issues, have worked with many of you on them for a long time and I'm excited for the council to be returning even better than before and for what each of you are going to be able to bring to this space. 
So I want to start with appreciation for you all taking your time and energy and knowledge and talents and bringing them into this conversation and this space and this council.  And bring that appreciation from my undersecretary, Undersecretary NRCS Wilks who many of you may have worked with his previous work at and chief Moore and () cares about the issues deeply.  Really looking forward to the conversation. 
As Collin said, I'll sort of build on what Undersecretary Moffitt and Bidisha have both shared, and again express appreciation for all the partnership work.  Hunters, anglers, outdoor recreation, critical long time historic partners and we could not do the conservation restoration, outdoor recreation work without your efforts and without partnerships. 
So I want to focus on a couple of things.  One is that wild five situation that we're experiencing and how that is impacting our national forest system lands, forest lands across the country, habitat, water sheds, grasslands.  Second is around opportunities for connectivity, building on the great work that Bidisha just highlighted.  And then third is around improving and expanding infrastructure and equitable access to the outdoors.  
So I'm happy to talk about each of those after I share a few thoughts.  So first on wildfires.  As you know, our wildfires have been growing in size, duration.  We've moved from fire season to a fire year, a combination of dryer conditions, climate change, expanded values in the wild land urban interface, suppression and historic fire regimes on these lands.  And that has impacts for wildlife habitat, for watersheds, for carbon, for how people, communities and natural resources experience wildfire risk. 
So, you know, it's a high priority for USDA, NRA and the Forest Service to really get ahead, try and get ahead of where we've been and do more to mitigate the risk to people, communities and natural resources.  And about a year ago, Secretary Bellsack and Chief Moore released the strategy for taking a science‑ based approach thinking how do we do increased treatments on the acres that are going to be most impactful for protection of critical values and resources.  And we initiated work on that increased restoration, including through fields treatments, mechanical thinning, prescribed fire and more over this last year, we used some of those Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funds and know how important many of you have been for advocating for the BIL and IRA, and really want to extend appreciation for that. 
But in addition to that, you know, used our base appropriation dollars and projects including through the joint chiefs ‑‑  restoration projects and the CFO wildlife projects we have that many of you have been a part of, to, again, accomplish fire risk reduction along with multiple other benefits. 
We are going to be in January kind of on the anniversary, around the anniversary of the release of the ten‑ year strategy sharing some of the successes that we've had over the last year and where we've gone.  There were a number of roundtables a lot of you participated in to help us refine and learn about how to advance and do shared priorities at multiscale or multijurisdictional level and what that looks like for our work moving forward in 2023 and beyond. 
And as part of that, we, in the ‑‑  over the summer secretary ‑‑  forests and improve resilience and address the climate crisis.  And among other things that memo called for updates to the original fireshed map and that was released with the ten‑ year strategy.  That map was looking at transmission of fire based on historic data to structures, risk of transmission to structures as a sort of indicator of risk to multiple other values. 
And one of the things that Secretary Vilsack called for was updating those maps to demonstrate and show the presence of a number of other values that we want to be protecting for, including habitat for at‑ risk species and intersection with underserved communities.  And we are really ‑‑  and watershed municipal watersheds and the importance from a watershed point of view.  So we're really looking forward to be able to highlight what those additional layers are showing us and how we can ‑‑  them and how the agency is using them to prioritize and inform where to go so that we're thinking about multiple values at risk on the landscape, both in the prioritization of resources and dollars and relationships and partnerships, but also in terms of designing of projects on the ground. 
The layers in there are great from a visualization point of view but will help us unlock the ability to think about connectivity across the landscape, so have the opportunity to really build on something that Bidisha was highlighting, which is how do we stack multiple federal programs that can support habitat conservation and ecological restoration and connectivity in ways that intersect with one another and that can relate to what partners are doing, what private landowners are doing on their lands, what states are doing, what tribes are doing, investing in.  So how can we be really looking at how these values are appearing across the landscape and complimenting and integrating across the board our investment so that we can be having a more impact.  So we're looking forward to working together with FPAC and all of you on what those ‑‑  what we can unlock there and what that highlights.  
One of the ways that I know many of you have been involved with helping us think through ecological connectivity has been through our land management plan revision processes, and in 2012 the Forest Service released a land management planning role that included the recognition of connectivity as a core value and function of ecological integrity.  And that land management plans needed to have plan components, desired feature conditions, objectives, standards, guidelines, et cetera, for habitat connective, for migration corridors, so wetlands, habitats that are important for wildlife species, including for species that are important for hunting, fishing, gathering, subsistence, cultural and heritage values for outdoor recreation.  So there is a lot more that can be done there.  I think a number of you have been involved in thinking of creative ways to use management areas, geographic areas, to think about how to create suites of plan components and management direction that will support the outcome of connectivity.  
And I think the more of the visualization data, the ethnic group has grown so much in the last ten years that we have even kind of better and more information about how habitats are shifting, how presence is being reflected on the land and how we can be mutely supporting the ecological conditions necessary to support the long‑ term persistence and resilience of species on the landscape.  So excited for the continued work there. 
And there's been a number of collaborative relationships and partnerships that it would be good to highlight, including the partnership with northwest improving habitat quality and western migration and games corridor program, as well as some of the shared work we're doing on public private grant programs for locally led ecosystem restoration projects in connection with America the Beautiful, as well as the Forest Service this year released a climate adaptation program, which hopefully some of you had the chance to look at.  And that climate adaptation plan includes the protection of movement corridors and connectivity as key parts of the adaptation picture. 
So looking forward to continuing to work with many of you on those ‑‑  in those fronts.  And Secretary Vilsak early on directed cross‑ directional ‑‑  for increased biodiversity, migration, habitat integrity and resilience through secretary memo 1077, and in the summer Forest Service units and regions were asked to do a few things:  Consider the impacts of agency actions on ecological connectivity in wildlife corridors during broad scale planning; integrating connectivity and corridor considerations into existing Forest Service programs, that includes shared stewardship, vegetation management, legacy roads and trails, travel management, LWCF acquisitions and easements; seeking opportunities to enhance migration corridors and connectivity through management of the national forest system in collaboration with tribes, with states, private landowners, local governments, NGOs and other agencies, including our colleagues over at Department of the Interior; continuing to look for opportunities and ways to share and leverage knowledge, funding, technical expertise, and other resources through our partnerships; and advancing a priority of working with tribes on wildlife considerations, including in support of the joint secretary orders () as well as through tribal relations plan. 
So each of those have been ‑‑  you know, our units and leaders have been working on each of those fronts.  And in a minute I'll highlight a couple of the successes through that.  
The BIL and IRA dollars have given us a boost to be able to advance all of that work and think about connectivity as we implement the programs and make the investments that have ‑‑  we've been provided resources to make through BIL and IRA.  And those laws include resources for reducing risk of wildland fire, restoring ecosystems and investing in natural resources related infrastructure, including on many of the fronts that I mentioned. 
So these are really historic investments and will give us the opportunity to really develop a lot of really critical partnerships and get a lot of work done on the ground.  And that's everything from fire risk reduction, post fire ‑‑  and water shed restoration, ecosystem restoration, improvement for wildlife conditions and more.  
These investments also build on and help us deepen our commitment to and stabilize some of the historic programs that I mentioned earlier, the collaborative forest restoration program and the joint chief restoration partnership and those have demonstrated great success, the CFOR projects through originally through the omnibus in 2009 and then reauthorized and extended through the 2018 Farm Bill, as well as the joint chiefs partnership program that began in 2014 and really has been able to highlight Forest Service and NRCS cross‑ boundary investments for natural resource outcomes for wildlife habitat for at‑ risk species and BIL codified the joint chiefs program, established additional criteria for evaluating proposals and also authorized the appropriation of $90 million for fiscal years 2022 and 2023.  
And so those programs continue to be really important to us in 2022, Forest Service announced $31 million in 15 CFR projects and those projects enhanced forest and watershed health, support local economy and jobs, reduce wildfire risk and more. 
There's an additional program to highlight that BIL created and established, that's the collaborative aquatic landscape restoration program and very similar acronym, CALR instead of CFLR, but that program is just an amazing opportunity to do high‑ priority projects on federal and nonfederal lands for water quality, fish patch age restoration and other projects important for aquatic organisms. 
So in 2022, Forest Service announced 25‑ and‑ a‑ half million dollar in investments for 11 projects over the next five years and some of that came in this last fiscal year and more of it's going to come in the remaining future fiscal years. 
Those projects are going to let us, with partners, restore over 600 miles of waterways, improve 28 priority watersheds, address 15,000 acres of soil and water resources and enhance over 500 miles of stream habitat.  So just a small example of the ways that we're talking about dollars, but the dollars are going to support our relationships and together that's going to matter for how we're able to collectively support habitat and improve conditions for at‑ risk species and for automatic quick for ‑‑  required species. 
Both Undersecretary Moffitt and Bidisha highlighted the importance of partnerships and those are absolutely critical to get things done.  We have to be working in a shoulder‑ to‑ shoulder way.  A couple to highlight, we're currently working with the Melio foundation in working on a national agreement related to the wildfire crisis strategy for habitat and connectivity.  We've worked together with charter unlimited, national wild turkey, NFF, nation conservancy and many of you to think creatively about our partnerships and we're going to be building on that in the year to come. 
Ed's question about MASH is one that we really wrestled with because we know that, one, it can be a barrier to access, including from a equity point of view, to have the match as a threshold, as well as barrier to scaling up.  We're getting enormous amounts of dollars, it's critical we do that with partners, but partners aren't going to be able to scale up that level of match at that rate.  And so how do we handle that.  
Over the summer, Chief Moore we leased a letter of direction highlighting a couple of different ways that we're trying to create flexibility and create opportunities.  One is that for all partnerships and agreements where there's a match requirement, the direction is to consider and include all of the different ways that partners are contributing match.  Often we sort of assign match value in very specific ways around dollars or specific number of hours.  But we know and you know that there's so many different attributes of partnerships that we're bringing to a shared space.  And so really being able to sort of open the aperture of thinking about what all those values and benefits are and including those in the match contribution picture, including in how we think about in‑ kind valuation was one step. 
The second was in removing substantial cash contributions, which was when a partner was maybe bringing in another, a contractor to help do part of it, like maybe you needed a bulldozer to help do a culvert replacement that was going to matter from an aquatic organism point of view and there was a requirement to bring 50% cash value match to that portion of an agreement, that's now been removed.  
There's also, from some of our match requirements are statutory, some of them were not statutory, for any match requirements that were not statutory all non‑ statutory match requirements and agreements with tribal governments have been removed, as well as a process for approving match wavers for organizations that are serving underserved communities and advancing priorities around equity.  And then a process for reducing match requirements across the board to about five percent, the original Forest Service can implement in service of mutual objectives, you know, as needed.  And that really gets at that scaling up, both the threshold access and the scaling up elements of how can we be doing more work in collaboration with each other. 
So we're really excited for that.  Also want to highlight two weeks ago at the Tribal Nations Summit, we were able to highlight 11 co‑ stewardship agreements that we've developed in consultation with a number of tribes and we highlighted 11.  There are additional 60 that were in the works.  And we're going to continue to build on our implementation of joint secretarial order around co‑ stewardship and on nation‑ to‑ nation relationships and respecting the rights, interests, priorities, views and knowledge of tribes as we go forward across the board.  And that will be a really important part of our work going forward. 
So looking forward to continuing that restoration work and stewardship work.  Also really want to highlight the importance of inclusivity and outdoor recreation and the importance of recreation access for hunting, fishing and for all of the activities that you all care about so much.  
The Forest Service in 2021 did a study on economic contributions from recreational fishing, wildlife viewing and hunting on Forest Service lands in 2021, and that report highlighted that overall economic contributions from wildlife‑ related visitation, there were 31 million visits, which supported about 25,000 jobs and $2.2 billion of contributions to the nation's GDP, just in FY '21 alone.  And those are economic numbers, but we know that it's more than that; that it's not just the dollars.  The dollars are important, the jobs are important, the contributions are important, and we know it's also about physical and mental health and thank you to the many of you that are not doing duck hunting, to be able to be part of the meeting, as well as food, cultural heritage, ways of life, traditions with family. 
And so it's just absolutely critical that we are enabling and recognizing the importance of outdoor access, for all of these reasons and for people to do what they love on public lands, and the national forest system lands. 
So we are going to be really prioritizing and focusing on our opportunities, including through Great American Outdoors Act, and thank you to the many of you who helped advocate for GAOA, to support and enhance access for these activities and to make sure that we are providing safe and inclusive access for everyone.  That is going to be a critical part of our thinking about our future investments and how we want to work together. 
So I'll stop there and just again say we are really looking forward to the contributions of this council and to learning from you all and continuing to work with all of you.  This work really matters.  We appreciate it.  And happy to answer any questions.  
>>Collin O’Mara: 	Thank you, Meryl, so much.  A ton of good information.  One quick question then we'll open it up to questions.  Can you give us a more specific update on the rate of spend of some of the resources the department's received from the ‑‑  from both the IJA and IRA, how you're feeling about that?  That's a question that's kind of come up as we're trying to advocate for more resources for you all. 
>>	Meryl Harrell: Yeah.  I appreciate that and can follow up with some more specifics.  There was a lot of effort to sort of scale up, you know, there's a need for capacity, there's a need for programmatic design and delivery and there's a need for being able to create systems to be able to deploy the funds.  We feel good about where we are based on when we got the money and the resources we had available to be able to successfully deploy funds and do it strategically and thoughtfully in the past year and we're looking forward to an increased rate of spend in this next year and current fiscal year. 
>>	Collin O’Mara: Great.  Let me turn to Lydia and then Joel. 
>>	Lydia Parker: Hi.  Thank you so much for joining us today.  I really appreciate all the input and all the updates, too.  I am the executive director of Hunters of Color and we run a nationwide mentorship nonprofit getting people of color into the outdoors, hunting, fishing, outdoor recreation.  And one of the most is the access piece you mentioned in my opinion, as less than four percent of private land is owned by people of color in the nation, being able to access national Forest Service land and all other public land is super important to us as an organization. 
So I was hoping to hear how you all are gathering information and listening to the underrepresented, underresourced groups when it comes to creating priorities for access and what safety looks like and what equity looks like, and how are you listening to tribes and other minority groups to develop those priorities.  
>>	Meryl Harrell:  Thanks.  Really appreciate that question and share the sense of urgency and importance of making sure that there's inclusive and equitable access.  And there are a number of different ways that we're working on that because we know that access has not been equitable.  
And we are working, we've been working in partnership with an X100 coalition for the past year and they've been working directly with the Forest Service's recreation staff to have those conversations around what are the priorities, what are the needs, what does safe access look like and how can we be understanding, how and where, who has access, where are our resources going, what communities are we serving, how are we designing experiences so they're inclusive for all. 
And thinking about all of those important questions, and also a number ‑‑  you know, a lot of the information is coming from partners.  So if there's information or understanding that you have that you would want to shares we have an open door, would really appreciate having that conversation along a period of time.  So yeah, thanks.  
>>	Joel Webster: Hi, Deputy Undersecretary Harrell, nice to see you.  First just to thank you on the migration and connectivity comments that you had, specifically to planning and really across the board.  And also, I want to say, too, just specifically the secretary's memo with that call out for migration in the subsequent chief's letter that was signed back in August with specifics on forest planning, it was awesome and we really appreciate that and look forward to working with USDA and the Forest Service in the implementation there. 
I have a question or I guess a request.  I know that you're all super busy with BIL and IRA implementation, and one thing that also passed earlier this year was the modernizing access to our Public Land Act which is and was a huge priority for the hunting and fishing community, really trying to make sure that information about recreational access is accessible to the public.  I know the agency spent millions of dollars creating rules, but then it's hard sometimes for the public to find that. 
And there's some specific timelines in mapland, it's not a big bill but there are timelines.  And I think making sure there is a steady process that will make sure that the agencies can hit those because it's not something that can be done in a hurry.  So I just wanted to flag that for you and just make sure that's on the radar.  And thank you. 
>>	Meryl Harrell: Thank you for the reminder, definitely on the radar, and looking forward to following up.  Thanks for all you're doing in leading, especially on the planning creativity. 
>>	It's tough.  Thanks, Joel.  We have three folks left in the queue.  We have seven minutes left in the break.  I want to give folks time to get on the screen.  Ambassador, let me go to you, then Colin and William and we'll wrap it up. 
>>	Hi, I'm an alternating member of the council and thank you for all the great work you're doing.  I mentioned a number of partnerships and I wanted to make a pitch for an NGO, a lower profile one, leading NGO and prescribed ‑‑  Tall Timbers research station in Tallahassee, Florida.  I don't know if you're working with them, if you're not, I really recommend that you use their expertise which could be so valuable in the west.  It's a robust organization, but low profile and not part of the council.  So if I can be of help to put you in touch with them, I'm happy to do it. 
>>Meryl Harrell: 	Thanks so much.  I think Tall Timbers is doing incredible work and Morgan is doing great work.  And folks in the agency.  I'm based here going back and forth but I have a home in region eight, so I know the region eight folks are extremely familiar with all that Tall Timbers does.  Appreciate that flag and they are a great partner and have a lot to contribute to thinking about how we can advance the ball on prescribed fire.  
>>	Great.  Elaine and then Colin. 
>>	Thank you very much. 
>>	Who?  Who's first?  
>>	Colin, let me go to you first and then Wayne.  Sorry, I apologize. 
>>	Colin Beck: Thanks.  Sorry.  Hi, Meryl.  My name is Colin Beck, director of forest management for the confederated tribes of ‑‑  (speaking native language) ‑‑  I want to say it's encouraging to see the sister from the federal agencies and partnering with tribes on management of lands within tribes ancestral territories, we've been seen grant funding available to tribes through BIL and IRA.  I've been hearing from a lot of our local agencies, they're planning projects and they want to partner with us on planning and implementing those projects. 
The one thing that I can say our tribe is lacking and I'm hearing this from a lot of other tribes, is even though there's a lot of project grant funding available, we lack the long‑ term staff capacity to get involved in these projects.  We don't have the staff to do it.  We're passing up opportunities, grant opportunities.  There's projects on ancestral lands we want to be involved in but we just don't have the staff to make that happen. 
And I'm wondering if USDA is looking at opportunities to help support tribes develop their long‑ term capacity through recurring funding, through self‑ governance compacts or contracts and what the ISDA can do to help in that regard. 
>>	Meryl Harrell: I appreciate that feedback.  We've been hearing that across the board.  We just had a great presentation on tribe and indigenous perspectives on federal land management planning last week and heard the very same thing that folks were finding on the land management planning front. 
And when we think about our capacity to be able to do this work, we need to have shared capacity across the board.  And so it's not just thinking about how to invest in federal employees, it's how to think about how to invest in tribes and all of our partners to be able to do the work. 
One example of a recent opportunity for that was in one of the co‑ stewardship agreements that was highlighted a few weeks ago with eastern band of Cherokee Indians, there was a signing of tribal force protection act agreement and associated good neighbor agreement, annual the funds that will be attached to those agreements will include resources that will help support capacity.  So I think there are definitely ways to be able to use the vehicles that we have to deepen our investment in shared capacity and be able to do that in a number of new ways. 
So that definitely is really critical and would appreciate any additional thoughts that you have on how to do that successfully.  
>>	Colin Beck: Thank you.  Yeah, I'm really interested in hearing more about the eastern band of Cherokee agreement, so I may reach out to you and follow up on that. 
>>	Collin O’Mara: Thanks, Colin.  Wayne, you have the last question. 
>>	Wayne Hubbard: Thanks.  How are you doing, Meryl. 
>>	Meryl Harrell: Great, Wayne.  How are you?  
>>	Wayne Hubbard: Wonderful.  So, you know, I heard you talk about the planning rule and stuff and I know there's shared stewardship tied into that.  And as much as we're talking about access, you know, I want to talk about having diverse employment opportunities in that space.  And I know that you guys have been kind of working in that space, but also, does this also, those fundings tie into Justice 40?  Is that a mechanism that's tied to the funding you're talking about also?  
>>	Meryl Harrell: Yeah, absolutely Justice 40 is a priority and we're thinking about how to deliver on Justice 40 across our programs.  And again, I think the new on the fireshed front, the new maps that help highlight intersection with underserved communities is going to be really critical.  That's also, it's also critical in things like our GAOA investments and more.  
On the workforce pipeline front, so the answer is yes, absolutely.  On the workforce pipeline front, you know, one of the great ways of delivering the work is through partnerships that provide workforce experience and that includes for youth, for Veterans, for tribal members.  And those experiences that are paid are great opportunities for inclusive workforce pipelines and they come with hiring authorities, like the public land service corps hiring authority or the resource assistance program which has a direct hire authority.  
And so we are really focused on thinking, or the Indian youth service core is another pathway there, YCC job corps, thinking about how we can make sure that we're not just providing more of those opportunities and providing them in a equitable and inclusive way, but then also really thinking about how we are ensuring the opportunity for those who want to move into the workforce to be able to do so successfully. 
So there's a lot of ‑‑  there are multiple teams on outreach and recruitment, on the convergence side, to be able to more effectively utilize those authorities, and then on the retention front, so that we can be moving in the direction that you just highlighted is so important. 
>>	Wayne Hubbard: All right.  So one last question and I'm going to let you go because I finally got you.  So, dealing with this, how has shared stewardship been working?  I know that's a big thing that your cross‑ agency, cross‑ department.  How's that been working?  Is that a lot more seamless now?  And, you know, where do you see that going?  
>>	Meryl Harrell: Yeah.  I think shared stewardship is critical.  I think being able ‑‑  we have a number of shared stewardship agreements with states.  We've been able to build on that with partnership agreements across the board, including our work with federal land ‑‑  other federal agencies.  And then thinking about our connectivity across public and private lands, as well as co‑ stewardship agreements. 
So I think the question is, you know, these challenges are multijurisdictional challenges and we need ‑‑  we need to be able to work across boundaries and identify shared priorities so that we can have the best ability to have ‑‑  to impact on the values that we, positive impact on the values that we want to see steward and protected and in ways that reflect and create equity and shared knowledge. 
So we remain really committed to that principle and we'll look forward to working on that with all of you.  I know how much you do to advance the ball in that space, Wayne, so thanks for all of your efforts and Candace's efforts and more. 
>>	Thank you, Meryl.  Have a good day. 
>>	You, too. 
>>	Collin O’Mara: Meryl, thank you very much for a great report.  As you can see, lots of interest here as well.  With that, I think the council is going to stand down for our lunch break here.  We'll reconvene at 1:30 eastern time.  And just as a reminder to everybody, as I think was probably described when we met a couple weeks ago when the council was stood up, the FACA councils have a responsibility to the public and so we'll be hearing from members of the public when we reconvene at 1:30.  
So take a quick break and we will see you back here in just a little over 27 minutes.  
[Break]