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DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
FISH AND WILDLIFE
DECEMBER 19, 2022

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>> For guests that are joining, we're finishing up break and should restart the meeting in a minute or so.  So we'll be back live in just a minute.
>> Hi, everybody.  This is Doug Hobbs.  We're just finishing up break and people are rejoining.  So we'll start here shortly.  Just waiting on the council co-chairs to rejoin.  So we'll start in just a minute.  Thank you.
>> So this is our next session which is public comment session and we have amazing folks that are going to joining us.  Doug, do you mind reading off names?
>> DOUG HOBBS:  Just real quick.  Just some instructions for speakers.  Colin, do you want me to introduce people to speak?
>> COLLIN O’MARA: If you can do it, that's great.
>> DOUG HOBBS:  Thanks, everybody.  I thought morning session was good.  Welcome back and looking forward to the rest of the day.  We have some public speakers coming up.  Just for those folks, we will recognize you in the order to speak in which you made your request.  And then it's your choice to use camera or not, just when you're recognized, obviously, unmute yourself and your choice about whether you want to use the camera or not.  Otherwise you're fine.  Then you have 4 minutes to make your statement, your comments.  If you run over, I'll just remind you if you're 30 seconds over and a minute over, we'll ask you to wrap it up.
If you want to submit your longer written statement, you're welcome to do that.  And you have up until 30 days after the day of this meeting to submit those to me.  So you're welcome to do that.  So with that, I'll introduce the first speaker.  Hardy Kern.
>> Thank you so much.  Are you able to hear and see me?
>> DOUG HOBBS:  Yes.  Both.
>> HARDY KERN: Fantastic.  Thank you so much for the opportunity today to speak.  My name is Hardy Kern and I'm director of public relations and birds and pesticide campaign.  ABC implores the Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Council to recommend to any and all relevant parties that led ammunition and fixing tackle be phased out in all lands managed under the National Wildlife system and National Park Service system.  And I like to mention that our request regarding the National Wildlife system have also been prepared in conjunction with the National Wildlife refuge association, however, our comments in the park system are our own and not within.  BRA.  And propose phasing out lead by fall of 2026.  ABC and are looking to completely phase out lead and larger decision to not allow any newly open led to have ammunition or fishing Tactual use.  ABC supports the expansion of hunting and fishing public lands so long as lead is not included in the expansion.  We're fundamentally not opposed to hunters and anglers.  We're grateful for the recreation and the revenue and conservation they provide.  Lead ammo and fishing tackle impact hundreds of species which rely upon public lands, scavenging rapt chore and condors and core individual are at-risk for eating carcasses and pile and grain of rice is going to cause spot and ingested by Upland gain birds of waterfowl and led fishing tackle by loons, ducks, and water and birds and ammunition and fishing tackle already exist.  American bird conservancy has been engaged for the last six months and we're asking more and better information about lead toxicity and lead alternatives be made available on the state wildlife agency website.  In fact, we surveyed all 50 state wildlife agency website and from what we could find only 20 of them had any information about lead toxicity and of those 20 only 8 were easily accessible and didn't require any digging around the website.  Only 15 websites had any information available about lead fishing tackle and only 6 had information about alternatives.
We believe that it is important to involve hunters and anglers in this process and encourage demonstration and educational materials which showcase the efficacy of non-lead ammunition and fishing tackle.  However, to quote the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service final 2022-2023 station specific rules and regs for hunting and sports fishing, at the same time, we note that years of effort toward educating hunters and non-lead use by the service and other organizations have not yield significant uptake of non-led ammunition and tackle despite stories.  And National Park Service land is necessary.  We support the provision of information about the dangerous effects of lead ammo and fishing tackle on state and wildlife and Anglo as well.  And a wider availability of ammo and tackle exchange programs.  We strongly request that the HWCC and National Park system lands phase out lead ammo and fishing tackle.  Thank you for the opportunity to submit this comment and speak today.  And I came in right under 4 minutes so I'll stop there.
>> DOUG HOBBS:  You did.  Thanks, Hardy.  Hardy provided a written statement for the council which was provided to them.  So they have that.  And then we've been having little bit of issue with our website.  We've switched over to Drupal recently in the content management system and had some technical issues posting the materials prior to today.  So we're still working on that.  And all these meetings materials will be posted eventually, hopefully today.  And that will include Hardy's statement he submitted.  So anyway, thanks, Hardy.  Great timing.  Moving down the list is Chandra Rosenthal.  You have 4 minutes.
>> CHANDRA ROSENTHAL: Thank you, thank you for the opportunity, everybody.  So I'm the Rocky Mountain director for PEER.  And as we represent Federal and State employees and people like you, councilmembers, advisory committees, people who work to protect natural resources for the public.  So federal employees have known about the harmful effects of lead ammo and tackle for a very long time.  In the 1870s of first report recognizing the harmful effects of lead in 1986.  Federal regulations were initiated to phase out lead shot for waterfowl hunting.  In 199, Fish and Wildlife Service was concerned about lead poisoning and proposed expanding lead-free fishing in reserves and wilderness areas.  But didn't issue final regulations.
And then in 2009, the park service announced get the lead out campaign.  And they were planning to phase out lead ammo and tackle.  And they walked back from that.  So various park units, reserves, preserves, refuges, and even a state have effectively limited lead ammunition and fishing tackle.  But we really need a national effort.
So I want to reiterate that the federal employees who work in this space, the subject matter experts on wildlife, so the people who are on the ground who have dedicated their careers to protecting shared public resources, they support removing lead ammo and tackle from public lands.  So in October, group called the coalition to protect Americas national parks wrote to Secretary Holland for phase out of lead ammo and tackle.  And this group is called voices of experience.  Their membership is current and former park service employees.  And in November, PEER, another group that represents federal experts filed a rule-making petition with Secretary Holland with a similar request and we were joined with the Nina concerned scientists and American bird conservancy.  And earlier this month, a group of senior federal executives, including the former director of Fish and Wildlife Service, former Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife Service and Parks.  A principle deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife Service and parks, and Fish and Wildlife Service and national biologist and knowledgeable people and very experienced people sent Secretary Holland a letter laying out a grave concern and department wide band.  So Federal and State employees who work to protect our national public lands, we urge the Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Council for a request that the National Wildlife and fishing tackle on lead ammo on all of its lands.  Thank you.  And I'm happy to provide any of these documents or anything if anyone has any questions.
>> DOUG HOBBS: Thanks, Shaundra.  You can submit any of that.  If you have written statement, we'll make it available to all the councilmembers.  So appreciate you joining us and your comments.
>> Will do.  Thank you.
>> DOUG HOBBS: Let's see.  Checking the list here again.  Kylah Staley for center for biological diversity.  You have the floor.
>> KYLAH STALEY: Hello.  Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.  My name is Kylah Staley and I'm an attorney for center for biological diversity and co-author of center's petition to phase out lead ammunition and wildlife.  This is a non-profit organization with over 1.7 million members and supporters dedicated to the preservation protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems.  I'm commenting today to urge this council to recommend the phase out of lead ammunition and fishing tackle on wildlife refuges.  Over 120 groups and over 20,000 individuals called for a nationwide band on lead ammunition and fishing tackle.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledged the negative impact of lead to wildlife and human health.  It is wildly accepted that lead is harmful and there are numerous studies highlighting the Darren of using ammunition and tackle.  And 131 species including eagle, swans, endangered swans and condors have been exposed to and killed by lead bullets or fragments of lead ammunition.  In 2016, a U.S. and Fish and Wildlife Service study led by Nancy Goldman was the stating that most recent cause of poisoning and scavenging birds.  Wildlife researcher published a study on lead exposure in over 1,000 bald and golden eagles and over half the population study led to chronic poisoning of lead ammunition.  Wide express always among the population growth of birds.  There's also significant health risk to hunters and anglers who handle lead tackle.  Lead ammunition shooters and leaves res do you behind after the pellet has been removed.  CDC has stated.
Lead poisoning can cause damage to the brain, central nervous system, reproductive system, and cause kidney disease, cancer, high blood pressure, and other health disorders.  Even at low-level exposure can cause learning disabilities and behavioral problems in children and increase the risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke in adults.
There's no reason to continue the use of led ammunition and tackle when there are cost-effective and widely available alternatives.  Over 50% of manufacturers provide non-lead ammunition.  Alternatives like copper ammunition is more expensive about $5 to $10 more per box, but this additional cost is only a fraction of what a hunter would typically spent on their sports.  Hunting ammunition is widely available in California despite banned ammunition in 2019.  For only $1 to $2 more anglers can use a steel jig than a toxic one.  And I want to thank the council for the opportunity to speak today and recommend the phase out of lead ammunition of tackle and for wildlife and refugees.
>> DOUG HOBBS: Thank you, Kylah.  Appreciate that.  Moving down the list.  Elaine Leslie, you're on the call.  And just reminder you have 4 minutes.
>> Elaine Leslie, are you on the call?  You might check to see if you're muted or so.  Last call for Elaine.  I'll check back.  I'll keep moving down the list.  So I'll go to the next speaker.  Dan Ash with the association of zoos and aquarium.  If you're on the call, you have 4 minutes.
>> I'm on the call, Hardy.  [Echo Resonating]
>> Is that Elaine?
>> Yes, but I have an echo.
>> Everybody, if you can just check your mic to make sure it's muted.  I'm getting the echo too.  Elaine, you want to try again?  I'm still getting the echo.  If you have a cell phone on near your computer?  If you're on your computer, you might want to mute one of the two.
>> Can you hear me now?
>> Yes, much better.
>> Oh, okay.  Great.  I'm not on audio, because I have a cold and it looks like Rudolf invading your screen.  I just have audio.
>> That's okay.  You have 4 minutes, Elaine.
>> ELAINE LESLIE: Thank you, folks and council.  I've attended many of these meeting before so I'm happy to be back talking about this issue.  I work for the National Park Service association and Advisory Board in the Alabama diversity network executive board.  I'm retired chief of biological resources for the National Park Service and have been dealing with this issue for decades.  So my familiarity is extensive beginning with the impact to the health and welfare of the California condors and the restoration program in the greater Grand Canyon ecosystem.  Those of us from multiple agencies and organizations have hands-on experience with these highly valued birds suffering and dying from ingestion of lead.  In addition, our collaborative work in Chesapeake Bay and understanding this is a national and multispecies problem, and we know this because those are intensely monitored species.  It is very likely it's a far ranging issue is that we can imagine beyond the wildlife population.  Public has a much better understanding that the lead exposure is a significant public health issues due to its persistence in environment and many places where we work and where we recreate in our public lands, of refuges and park.  We know lead poisoning can affect children, especially in underserved communities globally according to the established study published by UNICEF in 2020.  We're also concerned that children in underserved communities may be consuming wild gain contaminated with lead and possibly exposed during fishing activities.  Since many communities not just recreate but rely on subsistence in national of tribal member and fishing in Local Park and refuge water, their health should be of the utmost concern.  We know far S lead needs to be eliminated from all products, especially when cost-effective non-toxic alternatives exist and while this discussion focuses on actions that prevent the use of lead in some wildlife system, we think this need to be an agency wide phase out and complete banned.  And fishing tackle in National Park needs to be addressed.  All of these arguments regarding negative impact of lead also apply to the National Park unit for the activities also that are unauthorized.  Request here for a serious consideration by Office of Secretary of Interior and park service to implement agency banned where hunting I authorized.  Whereas on the banned of use and sale and fishing tackle and park and fishing is authorized.  In the park system, we've expanded what's in place and our crown jewel park such as Yellowstone, Glacier, and teacup and the wildlife there in, not the same level of protection.  It is time for the most protective lands and water in America and the world to fulfill their conservation mission.
One that the public and world expects of these agencies as world conservation leaders.  Biden-Harris Administration by launching "America the Beautiful" challenges to solve a nationwide effort to conserve, connect, and restore.  These bans can significantly contribute to the worthwhile endeavor.  It is important to support non-toxic materials entering in the environment.  With more threats to wildlife and natural systems, we have to pursue greener alternatives if learn to more light the on the earth.  Protection and restoration of our natural refuges will ensure the national natural heritage for this and future generations to come.  I just want to make it clear the park service supports hunting and twice as many, 3 times many that authorize fishing.  So it's not anti-fishing or hunting campaign.  It's simply an eco-system protection campaign for the health and welfare of wildlife and humans alike.  So thank you very much for your time.  And I'll submit written comments as well.
>> DOUG HOBBS: Thank you, Leslie.  Appreciate that.  And let's see, we're going to get back to the speaker list here.  Dan Ash with association of zoos and aquarium.  If you're with us, the floor is yours.
>> Dan might not have joined.  I'm going to move on to the next speaker, Mike Leonard with the American sports fishing association.  If you're on the call, you have the floor and just a reminder you have 4 minutes.
>> MIKE LEONARD: Yep, thanks, Doug.  And thanks for the Chairman and Vice-Chairman for allowing me to speak.  I'll stick to 4 minutes.  I know many folks here, but for others, I'm Mike Leonard for American sports and fishing association and we're representing fishing tackle manufacturers, including those that make sync Russ and jig lead and non-lead.  And sports and boating fishing council is up and running at the moment to talk about this issue.  I wanted to talk about the fishing tackle side on particular.  There's plenty of overlap when you talk about ammunition and tackle as part of this discussion, primarily from the industry standpoint as with just about all the decisions around Fish and Wildlife Service management.  Is these need to be based on science at the population level from our perspective, these decisions are best left to state and Fish and Wildlife Service agencies.  It's important to note where and how lead re-enters the national environment and how wildlife interacts with it.  There are differences between tackle and ammunition.
The main interaction between lead tackle and wildlife, at least as it surrounds the regulatory and policy side is with certain waterfowl, mostly loons.  And sinker jig that's on the bottom of the lake.  I hope no one is going around intentionally discarding sinker and jig.  But it does occasionally happen if your line breaks or split shot comes off or what have you.  In the case of loons, I first note the population is stable or increasing throughout the range and loons are classified as a concern.  But regulatory standpoint, the states that covered the range on tackle that's been around a certain length or weight based on the state.  And what size is realistically ingested by loons.  So whether we agree with those restrictions being needed, an outside one or two battles, loons interacting with lead has been addressed regulatory standpoint at the state level.  So whereas previously we've had debate with states over, again, specific wildlife population, in this case, loons interacting with tackle and we saw the tailoring of those regulations.  Even though we don't always agree with the outcome, you contrast that with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and lead tackle having population impact.  We saw no regulation of subset of lead seekers and jigs might be ingested by wildlife and what justification was provided over generalized and/or inaccurate from our standpoint.  One of those which has come up in the session is those alternatives are available and while there are alternatives of lead sinkers and jig, they come with a trade-off.  And anglers tend to be a pricey group.  And whenever they try to increase the license fee by few bucks.  So there needs to be strong justification needs and in this case U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service doesn't have it in our minds.  So anything this council can do to discourage this rule or anything for the future will be appreciated.  And thank you for the opportunity to speak.
>> DOUG HOBBS:  Thank you, Mike.  Appreciate that.  That is it for the speaker list.  It looks like Dan Ash had a meeting conflict and was not able to join us.  But I can touch base with him if he had any written comments to submit to Colin and make sure we get those and provide to the councilmembers and post it to the website.  So unless I missed somebody, I don't think I have, that is all for the list of public speakers.  So this will end that session now.  And then we can keep moving down the agenda.
>> COLLIN O’MARA: Great, just huge thank you to all the speakers and time and preparation.  Thank you.  It's very factual.  Thank you, thank you.  So next we're going to begin a longer conversation about an overview and discussion about the future of management of the use of lead based firearm and fishing and wildlife services in particular.  We have 3 speakers joining us today.  And the first up will be Mitch Ellis who is the division of natural resources of the National Wildlife system in the service.  And he will talk about the unrelated version of the 2022 hunt fish rule.  Thank you arc Colin.
>> MITCH ELLIS: Thank you, Colin.  Yeah, I'm going to run through real quick process for our rule-making and implementations of success that has been drawn for past couple of years.  Most of you know Fish and Wildlife Service published a specific hunting and fishing regulation annually in the Federal Register.  This annual rules open and fishing and hunting on the refuge system and fish hatchery and gives us an opportunity to revise existing regulations.  Specific regulations are necessary for the service to allow new or expanded access for hunters and anglers as well as to ensure safe and compatible opportunities for hunters and anglers on refuges and hatcheries.  Hunting and fishing are directed in our organic legislation wild wile improvement act.  The annual rule-making cycle is an important part of ensuring the Fish and Wildlife Service provide these opportunities consistent with the purposes of individual refuges and the mission of the refuge system.
I do want to point out that increased investment in this process over the past 6 years have allowed us to provide more than 2700 new hunting and fishing opportunities throughout the refuge system and on year between 2017 and 2022.  It also eastbound abled us to remove over 43% of our station specific regulations that were duplicative or unnecessary.
And those would have been regulations that were duplicative of existing state regulations, enforceable and otherwise.  So 43% of our regulations have been removed after a thorough analysis.  So we're very proud of that.  And we'll continue our efforts to align with state regulations to the degree possible.
Of course, during these larger rule-making, we received a lot of public comment and input otherwise of interest of the vast majority of public comments received over the past 3 years of rule-making have dealt with the issue of lead ammo and lead fishing tackle.  In fact, in the 2022 rule, 47,627 of the 28,000 comments we received dealt with lead issue.  We're shifting gear to the 2022 rule specifically, this past year the Fish and Wildlife Service opened and expanded hunting and fishing opportunities on 18 National Wildlife refuges across the U.S.  This created 109 new fishing and hunting opportunities where it expanded 138,000 acres to fishing and hunting.
However, there were 9 refuges covered in the 2022 rule that made commitments related to lead.  Refuges in the northeast part of the country that opened or expanded hunting and fishing opportunities with no change in the current use of lead but did make a commitment in the 2023 rule to plan to propose a requirement for non-lead ammunition and tackle on these stations in a phased in approach by fall of 2026.
There was also a Patoka River wildlife in Indiana that required them to use non-lead ammunition in phased approach by the fall of 2026.
And if you read this past year's rule, there were a lot of comments about lead.  As I mentioned before, our response to comments went into great detail about how the Agency is committed to dealing with the issue.  And in the preamble of the rule, took a measured approach to evaluate the use of lead in the refuge system and to do so with input from partners with transparent process to determine what actions and methods are appropriate for addressing lead potential for adverse environmental and ecological health impacts.
So we're looking forward to working with the council on this issue and receiving input how to more appropriately move forward to address the issue.  And, again, I was asked to lay out our annual rule-making process as it relates to the issue and commitment moving forward.  I'll turn it back to you, Colin unless there's questions about 2022 rule or process in general.
>> COLLIN O’MARA: Thank you, Mitch, for all the information and work.  Let me open up any questions for Mitch on the rule or anything else that he lifted up?
>> Can I jump in, Colin?  Please.
>> JOEL WEBSTER: It's good to see you.  Just a question.  Thanks for that overview.  That was super-helpful.  As in addition to like the regulatory approach, Fish and Wildlife Service evaluated incentive-based measure to reduce lead, to reduce that use and potential conflicts?
>> MITCH ELLIS:  So, as far as incentive-based programs, those would be more localized.  And I'm not aware of any currently.  I know historically, when the lead shot ban went into water hunting in Alaska region, we did have number of incentive-based programs, exchange programs, et cetera that worked pretty well.  It's a little unique in Alaska, of course.  But thanks to some of those ideas or exportable they're pretty effective nationwide.
>> Thanks for that.
>> If I could jump in.  Co-Chair, to answer you, Joel, also if this committee goes further in this discussion, and/or if there's a subcommittee, that's something that we would be interested in hearing about.  I think we're always open to those conversations.
>> Thank you.
>> COLLIN O’MARA: Jeff.  And then Ryan.
>> JEFF CRANE: Mitch, thanks very much for the overview and really appreciate the expanded opportunity and success of hunting and fishing roles, and thank you, director Williams for that.  I'm just curious for the 8 or 9 refuges that you were proposing, the phase out of lead, were there specific issues relative to problems with lead tackle and ammunition on those?  Or species of concerns?  What was the exact reasoning for those 9 refuges and why was that more philosophical with the expansion this is marking the beginning of a trend to try to phase out lead on the refuge system?
>> MITCH ELLIS:  Hi, Jeff.  Good to see you.  Thanks for the question.  The refuge specific analyses, the compatibility determinations or NEPA document and environmental assessment, Endangered Act Section 6 is done at the local level specific to that refuge.  So those are all part of the record for the 2022 rules.  Those refuges plan to propose next year.  There's no decision made yet on those.
>> JEFF CRANE: So Mitch, if I can follow-up and clarifying.  Is there -- obviously, we're going to learn more about that.  But is there something right now that those specific refuges have identified that has motivated this proposed action to try to remove lead, ammo, and fishing tackle?  Michigan you know, I'm not that familiar with the details of all of those different analyses.  So I really be hesitant to speculate.  I think it's AV scavengers related to it.  But very specific details that were part of the environmental assessment, ESA Section 7, if there were listed species, you can find all that in the links to those documents.
>> And if I may jump in and answer you too, Jeff.  Nice to see you.  My understanding, too, with those refuges that were singled out, and last hunt for school and we had further discussions, we really are trying to work with the states and take the lead of those states that want to lean in.  I mean, obviously, there's a wide disparity across the country.  And how the states want to address this issue.  But I think we are wanting to be responsive to those states that had asked us to be responsive.  But then I think what we learned is that the hunt fish rule, the way we've done it traditionally was a bit clunky.  And how we were also working with the states on issues like this.  So because of that, we have formed a joint task force with AFWA talking through the next hunt fish rule.  Those refuges in the northeast, and maybe Patoka as well.  We'll be working with those states really closely on this issue specifically so there's no surprises that we're working through that task force as we get to the next proposed rule.  So it taught us how we can better coordinate beyond just a hunt fish rule but also on this topic.  So look for further discussions on those, Jeff.
>> Thank you.
>> COLLIN O’MARA: Thank you.  Next is Ryan.
>> RYAN BUSSE: Yeah, thanks, everybody.  Thanks for all your work on this, Mitch.  I just want to piggyback a bit on Joel's question.  And something you said, Mitch.  I would like to encourage this sort of exploration into some sort of incentive program.  I think what or how the hunt fish community adopted waterfowl regulations and lead shot, everyone considers it to be a big success so we should look at what we learned from how that was implemented and adopted, and embraced by the shipping community and see how we can incentivize a transition perhaps overtime to the use of non-lead and big game on refuges.  So what we can learn from that Alaska example to help minimize some of the obvious angst around this issue.  That's it from me.  Thanks.
>> MITCH ELLIS: Yeah, certainly appreciate that.  And I want to echo what director Williams was speaking to.  And that's the idea of having a very deliberate transparent process with stakeholders to make sure that we get the right input that we move forward the correct way.  And so I think the 2022 rule really sets the stage not only for our interaction with this group, but I think for state partners at AKWA and tribal partners.  So next 6 months to a year, we can start to make progress on getting valuable input on what those programs look like, what the policies look like moving forward.  If there's more questions.
>> COLLIN O’MARA: Right.  Okay.  Good.  Thank you, Mitch and thanks for all the questions.  John, do you want to introduce the next speaker or do you want me to?
>> COLLIN O’MARA: Sure.  Next conversation we're going to have is Dr. Todd Katzner.  Wildlife and research wildlife biologist for rangeland ecosystem Science Center.
>> DOUG HOBBS: This is Doug.  Let me get to Todd's presentation here.  Michael, did you have something for Mitch before we finish this?
>> MICHAEL CROWDER: Yeah, I did.  And it didn't have anything to do with lead.  And I was hoping to grab it at the end.  If he's still on.  I just have a general question about comprehensive millimeter plans for National Wildlife refuges and we have, I live next to McNary wildlife refuge in east Washington and they do a great job.  But there's certain issues they're not following the comprehensive plan and I'm just curious why and maybe you and I can talk offline some time about that.  But how strict are the comprehensive conservation plans and are they guidelines or are they to follow type guides?  I have a question on that.
>> MITCH ELLIS:  Yeah, real quick for the benefit of the group, conservation plans are legally required by the improvement act for every refuge in the system.  We have CCPs in place for most refuges.  There are few that don't have them because of capacity issues.  Many of our CCPs are out-of-date.  We've had a very difficult time-keeping up with the 15 year review cycle.  We just don't have the capacity to implement the CCP process correctly.  So what you might be seeing are some refuges that it appears they're doing management actions that are outside the direction and the CCP.  But it may be based on more current information or direction or public input process through other planning processes.  And they haven't gone back and amended or updated their CCP to catch up.  But, honestly, we've got new policy that aware working on for CCP to try to help streamline the process, to bring in more land escape, skilled conservation designs, more modern contacts with regard to climate science, et cetera for CCP process.  So we're also looking for input from the public in the coming year or so on some of those revised policies.  So I'm glad you brought that up.
>> MICHAEL CROWDER: Okay.  I'll probably try to get in touch with you offline to talk about this, if that's okay.  I appreciate that.
>> MITCH ELLIS:  Absolutely.  That would be great.  Thank you.
>> DOUG HOBBS: Okay, Colin, Todd as a control in and PowerPoint.  It might be easier than the PowerPoint.  Todd, if you want to take over the screen, it's all yours.
>> TODD KATZNER:  Thank you.  Are you able to see my screen?  Okay.  Okay.  Perfect.  Thank you very much for the invitation and opportunity to talk about this issue.  I'm going to give basically a science talk.  I'm going to focus on the science of this issue.  There's not going to be policy in this discussion.  And I'm happy to talk about all of these scientific things as we go through.  I want to acknowledge my partner in crime Vince Slabe who is the lead author on a paper that was influential in this discussion and dealing with this issue.  And Vince is on the call as well in case there are questions for him.
So I'm going to start out just giving you some background on land and why it's around, why we use it, things like that.  And then I'm going to get into how it affects wildlife and talk about some of that.
We've been, humans have been using lead for 6,000 or more years, long, long time.  We do this because it's well-suited for testing, it's got a low melting point, and it's malleable and corrosion-resistant.  And so we do things like put it in pipes.  These are some old Roman pipes, but we put lead in glass where you have a lot of modern uses of lead.  But the flip side of this, we have all these uses of lead, and lead is really nasty stuff when it gets inside our bodies.  So it is a toxicant that affects our nervous system and metabolic system so there's no natural reaction for our bodies or in wildlife animal's body that uses lead normally, not like any of these trace micronutrient and things like that.  And there's no safe level of lead.  And that's because it has broad impacts.  It replaces central nutrients and interferes with enzyme function.  So on the right-hand side of the screen is a WHO graphic that just shows some of the many, many different systems that are affected by lead in a human body.  It affects brains, it affects blood, it affects bone growth, reproductive organs, kidneys, blood pressure, all kinds of stuff.  We don't have these details as well-defined for wildlife, but the effects are pretty much the same.  On the left is a lead poisoned bald eagle and it's showing the typical signs of lead poisoning.  It's lost a lot of muscle control.  The head is dropping and wings are drooping and holding the feet in a really weird posture.  If you look at the tail, the tail that's supposed to be all white has this green stain, this gross green staining and that's typical for birds of prey that are lead exposed.  They get green staining around the tail and underbelly.
We use lead in all kinds of ways.  This is kind of a modern graphic from the government of Canada.  The vast majority the lead we use is in batteries, especially car batteries.  That 85% or so.  But non-sequential component of lead we use is in ammunition and fishing tackle and things like that.  And that is particularly relevant to wildlife.  And that kind of brings us to the next phase's talk.  I want to give you background on how lead gets into wildlife.
Fundamentally, the lead that is in wildlife is available to them because of human activity.  So we put lead into water.  It gets into wildlife and plants and sediments.  We put lead into the air and it gets into soil and water and wildlife.  We put it into soil, it gets into earthworms, been thick fish, ground squirrels.  And vegetation and herbivores and water birds and particularly relevant to this discussion, metallic lead from hunting ammunition and fishing tackle get into scavengers, predators, game birds, and water birds.  That's kind of the big picture look.  We can get into some details and really focus on some of these and just understand specific cases.
So there's a lot of good examples of lead getting into the air, water, food, and soil.  It's ingested, it's inhaled.  Lots of species have been documented to have lead exposure in these ways.  Couple of specific mechanisms and one that you might not expect, lead paint actually sometimes affects wildlife.  And it's kind of a surprise, but some birds will actually ingest lead paint.  This is a picture of an albatross on midway island from the Hawaiian Islands.  Think of us is an old military base, the building in the back of the builder is painted with paint.  And they have fairly high lead levels.  And we've seen similar data from condors where condors will be exposed to lead paint.  But that's kind of a weird outlier.  Most of the lead that gets into wildlife that is particularly relevant nowadays comes from 3 sources.  Fishing tackle, shotgun palettes and rifle bullets.  Fishing tackle as noted before, birds will ingest that.  There's evidence from alone and Osprey and bald eagle and they're particularly to the waterfowl game bird and predators.  And rifle bullets, the bullets use are ones that are used in hunting, recreation shooting, for predator control, and there's really, really strong evidence for this coming from a huge number of different sources.  We see evidence from seasonality of lead exposure, isotope and pre and post outreach data and from bullet fragments that are ingested into birds.  I want to show you a few radiograph how we know there's lead in these birds.  This is a common loon that had ingested a lead jig.  And the lead poisoning from this jig actually killed this bird.  Interestingly, this bird also had a few shotgun pellets when they radio graphed it.  And you can see few shotgun pellets in there as well.  This is shotgun pellets that killed the bald eagle.  This bald eagle died from lead poisoning from the lead pellets that are in the digestive tract.  The other side is rifle bullets.  Or, you know, even on the left is a copper bullet disdained to mushroom and I've got one like this on my desk that I took from an animal I harvested couple of years ago.  You get one big piece of projectile.  It mushrooms.  There's a lot of wound, a large wound channel.  Lead bullets are designed to fragment.  And you can get thousands and thousands potentially thousands of pieces from that single lead bullet.  And each of those tiny little pieces, again, as noted previously, just one of those tiny pieces can, in certain cases, negatively affect the health of a bird and potentially kill it, so these birds can be susceptible and I'll talk about that in a little bit.  I'll talk about why in a moment.  Some additional evidence on the rifle bullet.  This is a bald eagle that died of lead poisoning.  It had a lead fragment that's visible in the radiograph and was necropsy and removed.  And you are can see the fragment after taken out of the bird.  That's a pretty big fragment.  P even smaller fragment can be seen.  This was a lead projectile with a rifle bullet.  And you can see that reflection of white colored material and those are lead fragment in the ground squirrel.  Each of those are enough to kill an avian scavenger.  Those who have been around shooting ground squirrels, the gun starts shooting and all the raven and bald eagle can be drawn to that sound because they know it's a free meal.  And it's a free meal that has some cost potentially if they ingest some of those fragments.
This is a radiograph of a white-tailed deer that was shot with, I'm not sure which species.  But it was shot with a rifle bullet.  And again, you can see all the flecks.  And all those potentially can kill an avian scavenger or poisonous a mammalian scavenger.  One of the interesting things about those reflection [Rewriting] flecks, pieces can be 18 inches from the exit hole and that's 18 lateral inches within the body cavity of a deer like this.  So if you be butcher a dear, you clean away the hematoma and things like that.  It's rare to clear 18 inches from that exit hole.  Again, it's not just rifle bullets.
This is a radiograph of the gut pile from a white-tailed deer.  You don't get as many lead fragments from muzzle loader or shotgun slugs but you can get some.  So that gives you an idea what goes on and how we know it's happening.  I just want to give you some numbers, throw a pile of numbers at you and this presentation is going to be available on the committee's webpage.  So please don't, if you want any of these numbers, I can answer questions.  I can give you these numbers.  But this presentation should also be publically available afterwards.  And I'm going to throw a pile of number at you.  Lead was banned.  It was estimated before that time that one and a half to 2 million waterfowl per year died from lead poisoning.  Those numbers are dramatically less now.  There is still legacy lead poisoning that happens with waterfowl.  Or waterfowl get poisoned by legacy lead that are still out there but not at the rates that are out as previous to the ban.  A study was done in a Skeet yard in New Jersey.  It's estimated there's 3.7 billion pellets hectare.  If you're going to put a lead out there from a conservation and science perspective, it makes sense to concentrate it and a Skeet yard is a perfect place nor that kind of thing.  From a conservation perspective, we're going to worry more about having pellets out in wildlands.  There was a study done, or there have been a number of studies done in Upland game areas between 8,860,000 pellets per hectare in the Upland game areas.  So we're getting a lot of these lead out in the area as well.  Study from him the 1980s just looking at dove hunting showed 6 to 9 million kilograms of lead per year.  That's shot gone pellets.  In terms of fishing tackle and rifle, there's reasonable data on fishing tackle.  One study estimated that in just 5 lakes in Minnesota, there was about a ton of tackle lost per year.  Another study from Vermont and New York estimated up to about half of sinker per meter on Lake Bottom in Vermont and New York.
A third study from the UK suggested there can be as many as 16 sinkers.  There's less data I was able to scrounge up on big game hunting or rifle hunting.  We know many thousands of big game is taken annually every year throughout the U.S.  The only study that I've been able to find on ground squirrels suggests from South Dakota where in just one year in 2011, they suggested either one and a half million prairie dogs shot, the vast majority of them with lead ammunition.
So that's kind of numbers about how this stuff is getting out there.  What is taxa exposed.  There's lots of experimentals and few studies object wild mammal and reptiles.  There's been work on grizzly bears, red deer, and turtles.  I think there's been a lot less work focused on the bird side.  Waterfowl, other water births and passer reasons [Rewriting] passerines Upland game birds.  And there's paper from 1880 to 1890 talking about lead poisoning of pheasants. 
And this research that's been conducted just a little bit on wild mammals and reptiles, a little more on passerines.  And this is from 2008.  I suspect if you redid this work today, you would see an awful lot more paper on raptors and scavengers because that's been a focus of recent work.
But, again, this is a few years old.  If we just look at numbers, we can see that 23% of 522 dead loons necropsy from New England ingested lead.  It's 23% of game birds.  And this is based on neck necropsy. 100% of 108 vultures had chronic lead poisoning over the course of their life.  They were repeatedly getting this and it was showing up in their bones at a level that a clinician, that a Veterinarian would say these animals reap the threshold for chronic lead exposure.  So I talked a lot about birds of prey, right?  And you might be wondering why is Todd focusing on birds of prey?  Well, part of it is I know birds of prey.  But other reason is birds of prey are specifically particularly vulnerable to the effects of lead poisoning.
And they're about 3 reasons for this.  And first of all, their demography is such they're long-lived and slow reproducing and that makes them vulnerable to threats.  Their lifestyle is another part of it.  They specifically do, bird of prey do a lot of scavenging.  And they're exposed to dead dear, dead ground squirrels and all that stuff.  And third thing is their physiology is kind of cool and unique.  Birds of prey have really low ph, highly acidic stomach.  And because of that, if a lead pellet spends 10 hours in the digestive tract of an animal, with all that acid, it's going to get broken down a great deal more than if it's in the digestive tract of a mammal that might have a much lower -- excuse me, less acidic stomach.  How wild spread is this?  This support just a North America thing but it's a global thing.  Every continent where there are humans using lead hunting fishing tackle, there are issues with birds of prey and lead exposure.  America, Australia, Asia, Africa, there's really strong evidence for this.  There's evidence from seasonality, there's spatial evidence and isotopic data.  That's all about the individuals and how they're exposed.  I want to close by taking this to the population level.  Because that's obviously something that's really important.  And it's how decisions get made.  There are treatment optionals for individuals and that's dealing with these individuals.  And we see it's not just individuals that are affected but populations are affected.  And the evidence for these population level effects, you know, 15 years ago was not strong.  In the past 5 years or so, in the evidence 10 years, the evidence has become very strong for these population level effects.  So there's a 43% reduction in alone population in New Hampshire over 23-year period.
For California condors, lead "the" main factor limiting the recovery of those populations.  That is really it.  For raptors in Europe, paper was published earlier this year showing that lead is suppressing at least 10 species of raptor in Europe and then I want to spend little bit of time on the last one.  You this is the paper that Vince and I published on bald and golden eagles in North America.  But there's two main things to take from this.  First of all, the data that we collected from over 1,000 bald and golden eagles showed very clearly that more than 50%, almost 50% of them showed evidence of chronic poisoning.  That means, again, same thing for those vultures.  Repeated exposure to lead over the course of their life to the point that if Veterinarian or clinician or diagnostic lab were to look at those lead level, they would say this meets the threshold for severe chronic poisoning.  These animals were repeatedly exposed over their life.  And that's why almost 50% of them showed this chronic level of poisoning.
And then the other thing to take from this is that these levels of lead exposure that these eagles were having is reducing the growth rate of their populations.  It's causing that growth rate to slow down.  Now, you look at bald eagles and their population is growing fast without lead exposure.  Golden eagles, their population is stable, maybe declining.  Lead is one of the factors that's holding the populations, preventing them from growing.
So that is pretty much it.  I just want to close just to summarize.  Lead poisoning of wildlife happens across many tropic levels.  It has many potential sources, but data is very clear.  Some are far more important and pervasive than others.  And this lead poisoning is particularly relevant to avian predators and scavengers and data is clear for the species studied, there are strong and obvious population level consequences.  And but solutions do exist and many of you have been talking about them for awhile.  So I'm happy to take any questions.  I can stop sharing and put my face on the screen.  The condor is better looking than I am.  So you might want to leave the condor up there.  It's up to you.  But I'm happy to answer questions people have.  Thanks a lot.
>> KEITH TIDBALL: Could I ask a question on the presentation?
>> COLLIN O’MARA: Yeah, go ride ahead, Keith.
>> KEITH TIDBALL: Appreciate that very in-depth and empirically rigorous presentation, Todd.  One question on the alone.  That flashed by quickly on the alone population study.  That looks like a growth measure within the individual population that is breeding in New Hampshire.  Is that correct?  What are we're looking at that?
>> TODD KATZNER:  When we talk about population growth rates, it was focused on New Hampshire.  And what that was a looking at a 23-year period of time and looking at the reduction and the population over that 23-year period of time.  I can't remember off the top of my head.  I think the reduction per year was somewhere in the 1 to 2% range.  And so when you multiply that over 23 years, it turns into a really substantial effect for the population.  And we talk about population growth rates and they're little bit esoteric.  But they tell us and their often small in any given year, but when you spread that out over a long time period, you can have substantial effect.
>> KEITH TIDBALL: And just a follow-up.  So the correlation between that and potential lead exposure versus habitat loss, temperature change, other correlation study there for lead?
>> TODD KATZNER:  So I don't have the details from that study in the front of my head.  I can email that study to you and share it with you.  I'm happy to do that.  But I can tell you typically when we do population modeling, what we do is we separate out these distinctive effects so we can focus on the effects of one or two in the context of the bigger picture.  So this would have been -- they would have, to get it published in the peer review literature, that's the type of thing they would have had to do.  If you can shoot me an email, or, you know, I think the chairs have my information as does Doug and Mitch.  I can give you these papers and delve into the details with you.  Absolutely no problem.
>> Thank you.
>> TODD KATZNER:  If there aren't any other questions, I'm happy to hang out and sit in the back and answer questions as discussions are going on.  I can do my best to address them.
>> COLLIN O’MARA: That sounds great.  Thanks for the presentation.  I'm sorry, Joel.
>> JOEL WEBSTER: Yeah, I'm sorry for talking too much today.  But I'll use the opportunity.  I appreciate this, Todd.  It's super informative.  And I don't know, I've got a question and I don't know if you're the right person to answer it.  But this hard science stuff is interesting.  I'm curious if there's been any research on people and like just looking at people demographic background and who might be more inclined to use non-lead shot based on age and income.  I'm just curious if anybody has done that for anybody who might be here?  I'm curious as we look at solutions that might be helpful information to have.
>> TODD KATZNER:  You know, there have been couple of programs.  There's a lot of local programs to sort of share this information and get non-lead ammunition to people.  I think Vince Slabe my co-author has done this on a larger-scale in Montana, Wyoming, and New York to deal with this issue.  And other people to talk to is North American non-lead partnership.  And Chris and Leland brown is on this called.  And folks like that will have data on those questions.
>> Thank you.
>> COLLIN O’MARA: Thanks John and Todd.  Please stay and we can have a discussion after this.  But let me turn it to our amazing director Cynthia Martinez who is going to talk little bit about the summary of the factor and tackle on the refuge system and water and mechanisms and opportunities.  So Cynthia I'll turn it over to you.
>> CYNTHIA MARTINEZ:  Thank you, Colin.  Thank you to everybody who spoke on this issue today and all of our committee member.  It's nice that we're getting the community going again.  So some of the factors we have to consider when we are making decisions in the national wildlife refuge system centered around the regulations that we work under, so I just wanted to make sure the committee was aware of that.  So of course under the Endangered Species Act, the services required listed to endangered species and our agency action which include authorization of public use and national wildlife refuge will not jeopardize and continue to exist with such species.  And this all of which necessitates regulations, policy, actions protecting the wildlife in refuges in general whenever there's an ESA listed species.  And Mitch talked little bit about, the service, we're charged ensuring the biological integrity, and diversity and health on refuges which entails regulations, policies, management action to protect susceptible species from potential adverse impacts.  The improvement act additionally requires all public uses of National Wildlife and commission of the resembling system.  Preventing us as the Fish and Wildlife Service from allowing hunting and fishing activities that interfere with conservation or threaten the existence of healthy wildlife population.  However, when hunting and fishing is compatible with wildlife conservation, the improvement act requires the Fish and Wildlife Service to provide the wildlife recreation opportunities to the public.  And most of you are aware that hunting and fishing are two of our wildlife dependent recreational opportunities that we allow on national and wildlife refuges.  Mitch discussed many of the openings that we have had in the last several years.  So we've done a pretty good job opening up access for the American public to hunt and fish within the National Wildlife system.  And additionally, under the bald and golden eagle protection act, the treaty act, the service is obligated to regulate and limit the take, even indirect designated bird species.  And several of the designated species including bald eagle acceptably prone to lead exposure that Dr. Katzner talked about.  And of course, service is long balance of wildlife center and conservation mission and maximizing public access for wildlife dependent recreational opportunities.  And we will continually to do so in determining the future use of lead on service land and water.
And we're certainly seeking input from stakeholders.  Director Williams discussed the working group that we have stood up with the association of Fish and Wildlife Service agency and there's a small group working on that.  Dr. Katzner gave the same presentation to that group last Friday.
We will be after the fiscal year engaging in tribal consultation on this issue.  Certainly open to input on this issue and decisions about how we would best serve the public good in terming the future use of lead.  Over the last 3 hunting and fishing rules, we've received over 47,000 public comments concerning the use of lead.  It was actually the most common topic phrase among all of the topics from the public in both '21 and '22.  So we look forward having open and transparent conversation with this committee.  And furthering this topic within the refuge system.  Thank you, Colin.
>> COLLIN O’MARA: Great.  Thanks, Cynthia and thanks for the background.  Can I open it up for questions specifically for Cynthia and then we'll have a discussion.  Lydia.
>> LYDIA PARKER: Hi, Cynthia.  Thank you so much for joining us.  And for all the information.  I got really excited when you mentioned you'll be working with the tribes this coming year and I want to know a little more information about that.  Is there a specific tribal region or groups you'll be working with is that how does that work?
>> CYNTHIA MARTINEZ:  So we're actually trying to figure that process out right now.  We know that some of our other programs within the Fish and Wildlife Service have done that as well.  And we're working closely with BIA how we would go about that.  Certainly, open to having a conversation with you.
>> LYDIA PARKER: That would be great.  Thank you.  Can you -- do we have information, contact information for all the speakers today?  Doug or someone?
>> DOUG HOBBS: Yes, I have all that information, Lydia.
>> LYDIA PARKER: Wonderful.  Thank you.
>> COLLIN O’MARA: Great.  Any other questions for Cynthia at all?  First, a huge thank you for your service.  The quality of the presentations, the depth of research and kind of offer for your assistance is hugely appreciated.  And I want to thank Martha for teeing up this conversation and we've seen pendulum swings from different administration.  And our challenge as a council to grapple with different issues.  And as we're talking about subcommittees, this obviously is one that deserves a lot of further discussion.  And I will just speak for myself and the Federation.  We are seeing more and more compelling science and the impact on, especially, subregions and raptor populations are real and concerning.  And as well as loons and other species.  So trying to figure outsmart ways to accomplish priorities and identify landscape is really important.  At the same time, there's a big conversation around the market.  And how do we get other markets?  We do a lot of lead-free alternative work.  And there's more and more opportunities, but it's also whole bunch of different alternatives that could be in the marketplace if they're approved for sporting use by ATF.  So there's other pieces to this education and piece we're going to focus around the hunt and fish rule.  If there's folks that want to participate in a more robust conversation in a committee structure, please let me or John know.  I'll open it up now.  John, anything you want to add?
>> JOHN DEVNEY: Yeah, just to ask your question to Martha.  Martha, what do you perceive is the opportunity for the sportsmans and recreational shooting and fishing community and potentially the industry to have a Nexus with your ongoing deliberations about sort of thoughtful and transparent approach, both you and Cynthia that Mitch mentioned?
>> MARTHA WILLIAMS: Thank you for that question.  Well, this was the start, I think to have the wisdom of this council think through it.  Let me backup.  I understand that this is an issue that's been around for a while, as Colin so artfully said.
And one that I don't think we've come up with a clear solution.  One of the values of putting this council together to talk about the issue is each the recognition that the Fish and Wildlife Service, when we get these comments, and a challenge, it then becomes our legal responsibility to think through the issue.  And to be responsive.  We can't ignore it.  So if, indeed, we have this challenging issue before us, it's my goal while I'm the director that we do address it.  And that we do try to address it in a way that isn't so subject to the big swings of the pendulum, but instead, we recognize that it's an issue, and then try to find a path forward.
So I am genuinely open on what that path forward is.  And I think the first step was to get to this, hunting and wildlife conservation council and beginning suggestions on what other conversations do we need to be having?  We're engaging affluent closely related to the states.  So I don't have a path set forward beyond this conversation and suggestions here other than we will, obviously, we do these annual hunt fish rules, and we're working with the state.  So with everything, each of the pieces I can think of are public process or an open process where people can weigh in.  But I think I'm open to suggestions.
And came in today's meeting and these going forward, our subcommittee still with an open mind.  I didn't want to do too much work going into this, because I didn't want to presuppose an answer.  Right?  I think there could be a number, and ones I'm not probably aware.  There are potential solutions that I'm not even aware.
>> JOHN DEVNEY: Perfect.  Thank you, Martha.  Appreciate it.
>> MARTHA WILLIAMS:  Thank you for the question.
>> COLLIN O’MARA: Other questions or comments or reactions folks want to share?  As I've said in the wildlife health subcommittee will take this up.
>> I guess, Colin, this is Leland.  Chris Paris and folks doing in the North American and on that partnership mentioned today, for more information and just kind of like, I love to hear more about their work.  Probably not today, but at a subsequent meeting will be very appropriate.
>> COLLIN O’MARA: Yeah, that's a great idea.  Why don't we note that and some other great efforts out there.  So folks can see some of the best practices and best thinking.  Great.
>> I see Jim Heffelfinger is on the call and he has a great perspective and background.  And game and wildlife fishes has been doing with hiring compliance and regulatory approach in California.  I just think, not to call you out, Jim, but he might be another individual to be willing to weigh in on this.
>> Yeah, I'll be happy to for future meeting.  Thanks.
>> COLLIN O’MARA: Any last comments or words for feedback?  We'll be working on the subcommittee structure and we'll talk about that in our next session.  Why don't we take a 15-minute break right now.  We're running little bit ahead of schedule.  We'll jump until 3:10 and then come back and, 3:10 eastern for friends on the West Coast.  And we'll need another hour and then we'll be done ahead of schedule.  Thanks.
>> Thanks, Colin.
(Break).
>> Hey, everybody.  Looks like folks are rejoining.  So we'll be starting here again shortly.
>> I work with the tribe.  There's a national museum and there's a display and my family is in that display.  And they came across the trail too.  So I do work with them.  And we definitely have to talk.
>> Yeah, I was excited when he said that.  I'm Mohawk.
>> Absolutely.  We'll have to get together.  [Laughter]
>> Yes, please.
>> COLLIN O’MARA: Let's give folks one more minute to come back.  Very good.  Let's call it back to order.  First of all, appreciate everyone staying on.  I know it's a lot.  But there's a lot of information to get the juices flowing and, hopefully, get the conversation going.  This last segment that we have before we adjourn for our first meeting is really to talk about priority setting for the council.  And there's a lot of different topics, a lot of different issues.  Obviously, we're talking about Interior and USDA on all the Agencies within.  A lot of opportunities we can take things and I like to kind of begin to organize ourselves a little around different processes and John and I have been talking about subcommittee structures and kind of what things go together.  But I think I love to start off by getting folks to maybe put in the chat and kind of to begin with some of the things they're thinking of top of mind they like to see this council work on.  We're going to have homework assignment and put things in detail and writing to John, myself and Doug and put all the pieces together.  If you can take 3 minutes, you know, think for a second.  If you can do one or two things with this council, what would be at the top of that list and put it in chat.
>> Hey, Colin, while people are doing that.  Quickly realize this is our first meeting of the council.
>> Doug, you were cutting out there.
>> DOUG HOBBS:  Sorry, I think my Wi-Fi is acting up this afternoon.  But we did bring on facilitation expert to help with the conversation.  Laura Calandrella is on the call.  She is a resource management professional by training.  In fact, there's a deputy for supervisor, Laura, in her past life.
>> LAURA CALANDRELLA: I was in the Forest Service for 10 years before I moved out to start my consulting practice.  Yes.  So facilitation expert and she has her own company she runs.  So she's here to help with any conversation that we may have.  But for this first, might be helpful, Laura, this first round of topics people are kicking around.  But I thought I introduce Laura real fast and let you know she's been participating in this afternoon session but is all here to help if need be during this open session with council.  So I just wanted to introduce her real fast.
>> Thanks, Doug.  And just as a note, I can't access the chat.  So I don't see anything in chat.  I don't know if it's my permission or not.  But I don't have access to it.  So if there's something that's necessary for me to see there, which I think there might be if we can download the chat afterwards and send it over to me?
>> Let me see if I can figure this out on-the-fly, Laura.  Sorry about that.
>> No worries.
>> Maybe we can give folks 3 more minutes and then we can dig into some subareas.
>> While we're waiting, Martha, is that a tundra or trumpeter behind you.  I can't tell from this angle.
>> MARTHA WILLIAMS:  I know we're not supposed to name them.  But it happens to be Timmy, the trumpeter swan.
>> It's a beautiful animal.
>> MARTHA WILLIAMS:  Thank you.
>> COLLIN O’MARA: This is great stuff.  Okay, so Gary Kenya, spreadsheet we used to have and all the council and priorities.  So this is great.  Tough attribution.  But just to get a sense of where people's priorities are.  I'm going to go down to the next level and talk about wildlife priorities and I think John is going to talk little bit about public land and private land priorities and some stuff on the hunter activation and reactivation, earth rework.  And equitable access to the outdoors.  If I can focus our attention on the wildlife health side.  And this could be in the chat or disease and we talked about CWC and avian flu and other diseases being invasive.  It could be issues with toxics and pollutants climate and other stressors.  But there's wildlife specific priorities folks have, if folks can take a couple of minutes and put it in chat.  If you feel free strongly, you can raise your hand and talk about it too.
>> Colin, you said wildlife specific?  In separate amount of previous comments.
>> If some is duplicative that's fine.  I just want to make sure the work is reflective of the full diversity of this group.  Yeah, so this is kind of the wildlife specific bucket and then we'll do private lands, public lands and other ways to organize ourselves.
>> This is great.  Let's keep them coming.  Is there any that folks want to give voice to their seeing or in the wildlife bucket?  Just raise to the council?  I'm encouraged by there's seems to be a lot of alignment.  Which is great.  Do you want to talk about the private lands?
>> Just, yeah, I just want to make note, you know, the list we're compiling here is for councilmembers and alternates to help us organize the thinking.  So if you're a guest, we appreciate your insight, but we really need to prioritize the input of councilmembers and alternates.
>> So, John, if you want to talk about the private land priorities?
>> JOHN DEVNEY: Yeah.  As Bidisha mentioned earlier, you know, we have this expansive range of programming through USDA primarily through NRCA and also with CRP through FSA, and as a disproportionate impact on wildlife and working farms and ranches.  Just to give you a little bit of a sense is a duck guy who lives in North Dakota over, well over 90% of North America waterfall is produced on private working farms and ranches in the prairie pothole regions.  So we know a huge amount of wildlife population is borne out on private working farm and ranch land.
And so we think this is going to be a continued emphasis.  We have good engagement with Bidisha.  So if you will add in your particular interest around private land, private working lands and farm bill and how AFPAC and USDA and we're currently implementing the farm bill and implement with this new historic investment, we love to hear from you on that as well.
>> As you're thinking and writing in the chat.  Goal is to help us with which speakers and help us in a bunch of different directions.  And couple of words in the chat are great.  At the end of this, we're going to ask folks to spend a little bit of time at home just sending us an email with some of their priorities, because there's more depth, couple of things that are really, really high priority for you.  I want to be as inclusive as possible.  Yes, let's keep those coming.  As we're thinking about work on public lands and so thinking about priorities there may be around restoration and resources agency has gotten through the IRA and IJJ and money in the connectivity and maybe around co-management and addressing historical injustices.  So, yeah, if folks have thoughts on public land priorities, that would be helpful to put in the chat here too.
>> And just to augment what Colin said, when we talk about public lands, lots of times we think about stuff out west and big BLM and Forest Service lands.  Let's also be conscious of national wildlife refuge system and stuff that happens throughout the entire Federal and State.
>> Yeah, I want to make sure by the time we're done with this council, administration pays much attention to the refuge system as well as the park system.  This is really great stuff in the chat.  Great.  Let's keep this coming.  This is great stuff.  John, you want to tee up hunting and shooting?  Recreational priorities?
>> Yeah, so this was a time in Mitch and Cynthia and others, Martha did a nice job explaining the depth of impact in the hunt and fish rule.  And I'm typing it in my chat now.  But what are the administrative things both USDA and Interior could do to augment hunting opportunities, hunting and fishing opportunity and access for both hunters, anglers and recreational shooters?  What are some things that might be top of mind for your organization as it relates specifically to getting people engaged in the outdoors?
>> Also think about how this council can help advance our equity work, Justice40 initiative, the tribal priorities and how can we make sure we're living those values?
>> DOUG HOBBS: Hey Colin and Doug.  I just want to let you know the Bureau of Land Management is interested in this as well.  Think the whole family at Interior.  I know they would have some interest and moving forward, and getting a chance to engage as well.  So just wanted to make sure people weren't forgetting the full DOI family.
>> Thank you, Doug.
>> I think in 6 months, I can deliver the complaints to Tracy personally.  [Laughter] Lots of opportunities, on BLM and leadership is doing great, great work right now.  This is great.  As you're reading the chat, hopefully you're getting sense of that gravitational pull may be of interest.  But lots of, lots of great stuff here.  Lots of great stuff.  And Laura, can we work with you on helping think through how to organize some of this great feedback?
>> Yes, I would love to, except I can't see any of the chat.  [Laughter]
>> Sorry.
>> I don't know what's going on.  I have you as a presenter and I made you an attendee and put you back as a presenter.  For some reason, it's not letting you.  I'll cut-and-paste some more and send it your way.  But, ultimately, I'll have this entire list.  So we can -- I can get this to you one way or another.  But sorry about the technical difficulty.
>> No, no.  And without even seeing the chat, I mean, Colin, if I was looking at it, I would start to look for where those private and public values might be overlapping.  Or user bases in general.  And in addition to just issues.
>> COLLIN O’MARA: That makes a lot of sense.  This is great.  There was ton of feedback here.  I think I also would ask if folks would take couple of minutes over the next month or month and a half to try to think about the things they want to go deep on and where they might have interest in providing leadership at a committee level would be really, really helpful.  Just let John know and myself and Doug know and we'll make sure everything comes together.  We are hoping to have another meeting in the first quarter of next year.  Hopefully somewhere appropriate that may be D.C., but it may be somewhere else.  So we'll take feedback on that too.  But that's kind of to be determined.  After we get through the holiday seasons.  I grew up in Upstate New York, so watching this region shutdown completely still amazes me.  It's funny to watch.  John, any other comments that you want to share?
>> JOHN DEVNEY: No.  Thank you, Colin.  No, I think now is the time to be sort of coalescing your priorities and be thinking about how you may be able to add value to the subcommittee process.  And just to sort of reiterate that the strength of the council would be based on be heft of the subcommittee.  That's where the real work of the council will be done.  So think about how you would like to participate, the kinds of committee you would like to participate.  Colin and I have work to do to flush out what that roster looks like and then we're going to let folks self-identify where they like to participate and engage.  And then and I like to have a good bit of committee work done going into our next in person council meeting so that we're starting to take action on some of the priorities and start to bubble up through the councilmembers and through the committees.
>> COLLIN O’MARA: Yeah, and just to John's point, as you're thinking about it, our job is to advise the secretaries and directors, and the agencies.  It's more administrator, right?  It's not really Congressional, obviously, you can encourage them to prioritize things but it's little bit outside of the scope of this particular FACA.  So with that, I will give the floor to our fantastic director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, and former director of the Montana department of fish and game, the amazing Martha Williams.
>> MARTHA WILLIAMS:  What a lovely introduction, Colin.  Fully to live up to that would be my goal.  Thank you, all, for your time and efforts today.  And I'm just so pleased to see this council up and running.  And I especially appreciate your time and work to advise both the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture when I know it is such a busy time for so many, and in so many different ways, looking at those of you on the screen are playing a critical role in keeping the government open and getting some really key pieces of conservation legislation through as well hopefully.
So today, the council, you talked about and introduced more so some really important and complex policy issues that I know we at the Department of the Interior and at USDA can use your help in addressing.  And then we talked about some other issues that would benefit from your future consideration, and I really look forward to that.  What an incredible list that you just provided.  And I learned a lot just from watching you think through that in real-time in the chat.
So as the Secretary stated in her opening comments, you are all leaders in the conservation community.  And our ability to tap into your unique expertise and perspectives will be so helpful for us to better address the complex natural resource issues that are before us.  And the Fish and Wildlife Service recognizes and appreciates your individual and your collective efforts on behalf of wildlife conservation, hunting, and other wildlife associated outdoor recreation and substance activities.  And I would like to add my congratulations and thank you, appreciation to our new co-chairs, Collins and Johns, for what you're already stepping into when I know you have busy day jobs on top of that.
You both are also recognized leaders within the wildlife conservation community and long time thoughtful partners of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  I really look forward to working with you and your new capacity in this council, but, really, with all of you on the council.  I will attend as much as I can, because I think it's really helpful for me in this leadership role and service to understand what you're thinking and really kind of have tabs on these complex issues as they unfold.  So this council was created in part to help provide advice to increase access to all Americans in a way that supports wildlife conservation and your comments demonstrate and your commitment to that.  And at the Fish and Wildlife Service, we want to continue to expand and open new hunting and fishing opportunities for game species, and at our national wildlife refuges as part of our efforts to increase recreation access to our public lands and at a time where we want the access to be growing and we want more people to feel safe and engaged in these outdoor activities on our public lands.
And we also understand that private lands play a critical role to conservation of wildlife thus using public land as well.
So as you learned today, the service also, we have to work to ensure these new and hunting and fishing opportunities are consistent with the biological integrity and health of wildlife and habitat on refuge lands and waters.  So we're committed to addressing the issue of lead in an open and transparent manner with your help, particularly, by examining methods to address it and knowing there's much we do know and there's some still that we don't know.  And we're open to ideas on how to best address this.  Your insight is going to be so important to that topic-specifically.  As the Secretary referenced earlier, we also continue to collaborate with wildlife conservation and outdoor recreation communities as well as with local and state governments and tribal communities to make strategic conservation investments through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, in inflation reduction act and other vehicles.  And we want that to collaborate with state drives to target investment of those funds.  And all of those investments will significantly benefit Fish and Wildlife Service population.  But with your consideration, Chairs, I hope also we may begin next meeting or at some point in the next meeting dovetail with the USDA presentation this morning highlighting the Department of the Interior efforts and focus on partnership as well as the Fish and Wildlife Service, whether through the Fish and Wildlife Service partners for Fish and Wildlife program, section 10 of the ESA or through landowner assistance as examples.
And I look forward to demonstrating how the Department of the Interior and its bureaus have gotten the bill and IRA money on the ground quickly and all in a collaborative and community-based process.  So there's so much that we do with collaborative stewardship.  I look forward to getting to cover some of that in the next meeting.
And then your thoughts on where we can be more strategic, effective and collaborative, and making these future investments will be so helpful.  I'm seeing in the chat the need to have better coordination with USDA, and I have to say we sent notes to each other as I heard Merrill speak this morning.  How she practices what she says.  In this administration, I think we are working closely together, and yet, we're open to knowing how we can do more, and how we can do better.
So in closing, it's just nice to be able to participate in your inaugural meeting and hear your perspectives, to read your perspectives and we're so eager to get your feedback.  So thank you for recognizing how conservation is a shared responsibility.  And I believe it will take all of us working together to be successful.  And this is one way where at least at the service within the Interior and USDA, we get to hear your thoughts collectively.  So we're looking forward to more of these.  We're looking to learning from you.  And I just want to thank you for your leadership.  Back to you, Colin and John.
>> COLLIN O’MARA: Great.  Thank you, Martha.  And I agree.  This work is never more important and obviously, as big announcement in Montreal earlier today about the global commitment to addressing the biodiversity crisis and there's a ton of work here to do in the U.S. to do our part.  And we're still working on negotiations running.  We're in a rough shape right now, but we'll see how the next one goes.  John, access else you want to add before we adjourn?
>> JOHN DEVNEY: Just get ready for good work.  And we're going to need you to lean in.  So thank you, everybody.  Enjoy a wonderful holiday and Christmas season to everybody and we look forward to reconvening in the New Year.
>> Thanks, guys.
>> Thank you.
>> Good job.
>> Happy holiday.
(End of meeting)