WEBVTT 00:00:01.149 --> 00:00:05.766 Hi, this is Paul, her and Jennifer Sweeney of Arizona State University. 00:00:05.799 --> 00:00:10.046 Uh Speaking with Mike Yates of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office and 00:00:10.079 --> 00:00:17.056 Northern Arizona University. It's September 8th, 2018 and we're at Nau 00:00:17.089 --> 00:00:21.407 Mike. Thanks for joining us. Sure, no problem. Um Could you start out by 00:00:21.440 --> 00:00:24.846 telling us your full name, the positions that you've held in the Adaptive 00:00:24.879 --> 00:00:29.977 Management Program in the years that you were involved in it? Ok. Um Well 00:00:30.010 --> 00:00:35.656 , my name is Michael Yates and I guess I got involved in the program 00:00:35.689 --> 00:00:41.726 before there was an adaptive management program. I started back in 1991 00:00:41.759 --> 00:00:47.786 with the original Dun Canyon environmental studies, which is the first EIS 00:00:47.819 --> 00:00:53.896 that led up to the adaptive management program. What created it? And so, 00:00:53.929 --> 00:01:00.207 you know, at the beginning I was doing research 00:01:00.240 --> 00:01:07.245 for the Hopi, I got hired in 1991 for the, you know, at the Hopi tribe and 00:01:07.278 --> 00:01:13.406 it was specifically for that time, the G CE S program. And so I was 00:01:13.439 --> 00:01:19.656 primarily doing the research and of the Hopi involvement, although I was 00:01:19.689 --> 00:01:23.647 also involved in a lot of the cooperators meetings for the development of 00:01:23.680 --> 00:01:31.680 the EIS and was on the writing team for the original EIS 9596 00:01:31.719 --> 00:01:39.719 EIS. Um But a lot of what I was doing was research in the Canyon for both 00:01:41.790 --> 00:01:46.456 the ethno history of the Hopi tribe down there in conjunction with like TJ 00:01:46.489 --> 00:01:50.727 Ferguson, who the tribe hired as a consultant. Um I was doing 00:01:50.760 --> 00:01:56.337 archaeological surveys of the Little Colorado River, which was going to be 00:01:56.370 --> 00:02:00.525 the focus of a lot of the fish research, the endangered fish work. And 00:02:00.558 --> 00:02:04.406 it's culturally a very important place for the Hopi. So they were 00:02:04.439 --> 00:02:08.906 concerned that we made sure we documented what areas were culturally 00:02:08.939 --> 00:02:13.255 important there, so they wouldn't be impacted by the work. And then I also 00:02:13.288 --> 00:02:17.995 was working some with the park service doing archaeological work down 00:02:18.028 --> 00:02:22.186 there. Were you working with Jen Balsam on that big survey? They had a 00:02:22.219 --> 00:02:27.156 whole series of trips that did a comprehensive survey of the river, but I 00:02:27.189 --> 00:02:32.835 wasn't working on the park's actual survey. We kind of overlap. But the 00:02:32.868 --> 00:02:37.786 survey I did in the little Colorado River was the parallel to what the 00:02:37.819 --> 00:02:42.047 park was doing. So it was to make sure that stretch also had a 00:02:42.080 --> 00:02:46.297 comprehensive archaeological and cultural inventory to go along with the 00:02:46.330 --> 00:02:50.346 parks through the whole river corridor. So in the years you were doing 00:02:50.379 --> 00:02:58.379 that was 1991 92 basic, you know, the the research to essentially record 00:03:00.929 --> 00:03:06.606 information for the Hopi to support the positions in the original EIS were 00:03:06.639 --> 00:03:11.316 from essentially 1991 to 1995 00:03:11.349 --> 00:03:16.196 more or less. I mean, it was ongoing. It continued ever since. But that 00:03:16.229 --> 00:03:21.346 was the primary focus was to be able to document stuff for the cultural 00:03:21.379 --> 00:03:27.467 sections in the EIS. And then, you know, as part of that, as involved on 00:03:27.500 --> 00:03:30.707 the writing teams for it to make sure the Hopi stuff got integrated 00:03:30.740 --> 00:03:38.740 correctly and parallel with that. And actually a little earlier than the 00:03:39.288 --> 00:03:44.927 completion of the EIS was the development of the section 106 Cultural 00:03:44.960 --> 00:03:48.775 Resources Compliance for the National Historic Preservation Act. And that 00:03:48.808 --> 00:03:56.808 actually was completed in 1994 I believe. And so we were writing that a 00:03:57.000 --> 00:04:02.055 programmatic agreement at the same time for addressing the cultural 00:04:02.088 --> 00:04:07.755 resources issues. So let me ask you the work that was done to comply with 00:04:07.788 --> 00:04:13.427 the Historic Preservation Act, I guess. Um was that foundational then to 00:04:13.460 --> 00:04:18.334 the EIS or were those separate documents? They're, they were separate 00:04:18.367 --> 00:04:25.197 documents. And I think some of the confusion that we're in still with the 00:04:25.230 --> 00:04:30.687 different roles and compliance responsibilities for section 106. And for 00:04:30.720 --> 00:04:38.106 the broader NP A date back to that time period because 00:04:38.139 --> 00:04:42.916 we, when the dam was constructed, there was cultural resources were 00:04:42.949 --> 00:04:50.949 upstream but never downstream. And so the first 00:04:51.178 --> 00:04:56.567 swipe we took it developing a cultural resources compliance program for 00:04:56.600 --> 00:05:02.336 downstream was basically independent of the E I SI mean, it triggered it 00:05:02.369 --> 00:05:07.817 all off, but it was specifically for the operations of the dam, which sort 00:05:07.850 --> 00:05:13.447 of was what the EIS was. But not entirely normally you would do the EIS 00:05:13.480 --> 00:05:19.726 and then either during the development of it or following it, do the 00:05:19.759 --> 00:05:23.955 compliance for whatever the selected alternative was, we just did it on 00:05:23.988 --> 00:05:28.687 the overall operations of the dam. And so it was completed before the E I 00:05:28.720 --> 00:05:33.736 was, but it also meant that the cultural program 00:05:33.769 --> 00:05:39.336 was never as well integrated into the overall what became the AMP program 00:05:39.369 --> 00:05:46.955 where is parallel to that, the endangered species work, primarily the fish 00:05:46.988 --> 00:05:51.606 was developed part and parcel with the EIS. And so a lot of the activities 00:05:51.639 --> 00:05:54.705 that came out of the EIS 00:05:54.738 --> 00:06:01.356 were directly aimed at the ES A, you know, compliance. So we ended up with 00:06:01.389 --> 00:06:05.967 kind of two parallel programs in a sense where the, when N A was done, the 00:06:06.000 --> 00:06:10.866 ES A stuff became essentially the Adaptive management program. Whereas the 00:06:10.899 --> 00:06:16.226 cultural, we were never sure how it fit in and we're still not entirely 00:06:16.259 --> 00:06:18.296 sure 00:06:18.329 --> 00:06:21.507 the cultural people I think know how it fits in, but the rest of the 00:06:21.540 --> 00:06:25.217 program doesn't necessarily. So that was one of those legacies out of the 00:06:25.250 --> 00:06:30.637 original development that they, you know, part of the concern at the time. 00:06:30.670 --> 00:06:36.377 And part of the reason why the Grand Canyon Protection Act ended up being 00:06:36.410 --> 00:06:39.137 written was 00:06:39.170 --> 00:06:46.495 there wasn't a lot of, I guess assurance that we'd ever complete the EIS. 00:06:46.528 --> 00:06:50.976 And so the thought was, well, even if the EIS never gets completed, we 00:06:51.009 --> 00:06:57.296 want to make sure we do the section 106 Cultural Compliance. And so that 00:06:57.329 --> 00:07:04.116 also is why it's kind of on a separate path that, you know, when the, when 00:07:04.149 --> 00:07:11.606 the original EIS was started back in 80 nine, I think is when it actually 00:07:11.639 --> 00:07:17.856 got launched. Yeah, you know, there was no, 00:07:17.889 --> 00:07:22.825 the politics were such, it wasn't clear it would ever be completed. 00:07:22.858 --> 00:07:30.858 So I think uh Lee Kuan Wassa mentioned that there was uh a a chapter on 00:07:32.399 --> 00:07:36.575 the cultural resources for each of the affected tribes integrated into the 00:07:36.608 --> 00:07:42.546 record of decision. In 1996 did the cultural resource inventory work, the 00:07:42.579 --> 00:07:45.887 ethno history work and the archaeological survey work that you all were 00:07:45.920 --> 00:07:49.856 working on earlier, did that get integrated into that record of decision 00:07:49.889 --> 00:07:54.197 or is it still remaining a sort of a parallel path with some integration 00:07:54.230 --> 00:07:59.026 but not full? I would say some essentially 00:07:59.059 --> 00:08:04.205 the tribes that were involved. You know, I think one of the 00:08:04.238 --> 00:08:10.895 the really progressive innovative things with the original EIS was how 00:08:10.928 --> 00:08:15.276 integral the tribes were brought into the process. And I think Dave Wagner 00:08:15.309 --> 00:08:22.236 had a lot to do with that, but it meant that rather than us just 00:08:22.269 --> 00:08:27.156 generating a report that then someone else took and tried to put in the 00:08:27.189 --> 00:08:33.297 EIS, we were able to do our own research to document stuff. And most of 00:08:33.330 --> 00:08:37.907 the tribes kept the really detailed report confidential because there's a 00:08:37.940 --> 00:08:42.616 lot of esoteric knowledge and things because you know, the ties to the 00:08:42.649 --> 00:08:47.667 Canyon are more than just archaeology. They cover a lot of the, at least 00:08:47.700 --> 00:08:55.047 for Hopi, the really significant values that cause Hopi to be what hope is 00:08:55.080 --> 00:09:01.196 now, you know, in the ceremonial and clan history and all of that. And so 00:09:01.229 --> 00:09:07.395 we were able to document that, but then we also were able to 00:09:07.428 --> 00:09:14.486 put in the EIS the stuff that would support our position based on that 00:09:14.519 --> 00:09:19.336 research. But was it a level that was appropriate for other people to see 00:09:19.369 --> 00:09:23.677 ? And so that's why we were part of the writing team was to actually do it 00:09:23.710 --> 00:09:30.206 ourselves. So in that sense, it did get integrated, the specific cultural 00:09:30.239 --> 00:09:38.239 surveys were primarily done for the 106 portion of it. And so while that 00:09:38.500 --> 00:09:45.596 information certainly fed into the analysis that went on in the EIS for 00:09:45.629 --> 00:09:51.907 changing the operations, you know, it wasn't, 00:09:51.940 --> 00:09:56.346 I guess, duplicated or regurgitated just in that. And certainly the record 00:09:56.379 --> 00:10:01.467 of decision reflected the views, 00:10:01.500 --> 00:10:06.515 positions that came out of all the cultural resources surveys and work. 00:10:06.548 --> 00:10:12.525 Can I ask you who funded that? So when you say section 106 compliance work 00:10:12.558 --> 00:10:16.086 , you're referring to the National Historic Preservation Act section 106 00:10:16.119 --> 00:10:20.696 who funded that early work before there was an adaptive management program 00:10:20.729 --> 00:10:23.606 and dedicated funds from hydro power revenues. Where did that money come 00:10:23.639 --> 00:10:26.557 from? It was Bureau of Reclamation. And I think even then it was 00:10:26.590 --> 00:10:32.996 hydropower. That's my understanding. I'm trying to remember but 00:10:33.029 --> 00:10:41.029 it was, I mean, it was part and parcel of doing the whole EIS but it was 00:10:42.190 --> 00:10:47.566 because there's a separate law, it was also on its own path without the 00:10:47.599 --> 00:10:52.356 EIS research going on, it wouldn't have been done. Somebody else has told 00:10:52.389 --> 00:10:57.467 us before that. Um, most of what really gets a lot of attention in the 00:10:57.500 --> 00:11:02.686 Adaptive Management program are those things that have the extra leverage 00:11:02.719 --> 00:11:07.476 of a legal mandate, like the Endangered Species Act. And you just 00:11:07.509 --> 00:11:10.875 mentioned earlier that, that really almost drove the program at the 00:11:10.908 --> 00:11:16.346 beginning because the ES A was something you couldn't ignore. Um, do you 00:11:16.379 --> 00:11:19.657 feel the same way about, uh, the National Historic Preservation Act that 00:11:19.690 --> 00:11:24.726 without that in the section 106 compliance that it might have been ignored 00:11:24.759 --> 00:11:32.226 much more than, uh, uh, than it was. Um, yeah, probably. And even, you 00:11:32.259 --> 00:11:38.476 know, there's essentially three laws that kind of are driving the program 00:11:38.509 --> 00:11:43.907 , you know, the Grand Canyon Protection Act ES A and NHPA, I mean, those 00:11:43.940 --> 00:11:50.557 are the ones that need to be complied with for the operations. I mean, 00:11:50.590 --> 00:11:55.096 certainly there's the whole body of law of the river stuff that constrains 00:11:55.129 --> 00:12:02.297 everything and, but as far as what is kind of ongoing compliance, those 00:12:02.330 --> 00:12:08.986 are the three, the three. And unfortunately, I don't think that they've 00:12:09.019 --> 00:12:12.057 all been. 00:12:12.090 --> 00:12:16.446 Well, the Grand Canyon Protection Act is kind of just nebulous. I mean, I 00:12:16.479 --> 00:12:20.765 don't know how you comply with that other, do something. But, but the 00:12:20.798 --> 00:12:25.186 other two, the Endangered Species Act is certainly the bigger hammer in 00:12:25.219 --> 00:12:33.219 the program. Um, for a number of reasons, I think, I mean, the National 00:12:33.349 --> 00:12:39.005 Preservation Act is pretty rarely used 00:12:39.038 --> 00:12:45.096 for lawsuits or those kind of things. It's just people rarely sue under it 00:12:45.129 --> 00:12:50.356 , whereas the under ES A people get sued all the time. And so I think 00:12:50.389 --> 00:12:55.206 that's a for the bureau of reclamation, that's probably a bigger threat. 00:12:55.239 --> 00:13:00.255 So they want to make sure. But I think actually probably the more 00:13:00.288 --> 00:13:05.686 important driver for why there's so much fish work, which is mostly driven 00:13:05.719 --> 00:13:13.057 by ES A as opposed to just generic research on fish is because 00:13:13.090 --> 00:13:19.336 it's the one resource that pretty much all the basin states and 00:13:19.369 --> 00:13:25.956 particularly the upper basin have an interest in seeing progress because 00:13:25.989 --> 00:13:32.606 there's a large number of development projects in the upper basin water 00:13:32.639 --> 00:13:39.486 development that rely on the population of chubb down here being healthy, 00:13:39.519 --> 00:13:45.395 essentially, it's part of their compliance. And so whenever you get to 00:13:45.428 --> 00:13:48.275 funding 00:13:48.308 --> 00:13:54.226 ESA is and stuff that helps the job is viewed as important by virtually 00:13:54.259 --> 00:13:59.736 all the stakeholders, cultural resources. If we go totally out of 00:13:59.769 --> 00:14:05.265 compliance, it really doesn't affect the upper basin or much of the lower 00:14:05.298 --> 00:14:11.446 basin. It's just a bureau of reclamation issue. So that also, I think is 00:14:11.479 --> 00:14:16.616 driven a little bit how the budgeting ha has happened both, you know, 00:14:16.649 --> 00:14:24.649 since the record of decision and since the new New Rod to the temp, 00:14:25.408 --> 00:14:30.717 um you got me thinking about the difference between the Endangered Species 00:14:30.750 --> 00:14:35.726 Act and the National Historic Preservation Act now. Um And I'm wondering, 00:14:35.759 --> 00:14:38.417 you know, in the Endangered Species Act, it, it requires a bunch of 00:14:38.450 --> 00:14:42.125 research right up front and then you have to come up with a biological 00:14:42.158 --> 00:14:46.515 opinion about the endangerment of whatever it was you were researching and 00:14:46.548 --> 00:14:51.645 if it's found to be threatened or endangered, then you're required to do 00:14:51.678 --> 00:14:55.936 something to either recover the species or certainly to not add any 00:14:55.969 --> 00:14:59.086 additional jeopardy. Is there anything like that in the National Historic 00:14:59.119 --> 00:15:04.316 Preservation Act? It certainly funds site surveys. But then is that kind 00:15:04.349 --> 00:15:11.537 of where it stops? And then, no, it's actually very parallel. I mean, 00:15:11.570 --> 00:15:14.005 essentially 00:15:14.038 --> 00:15:20.566 what NH P is saying is that when a federal agency does something, whether 00:15:20.599 --> 00:15:24.066 directly or through funding or permitting or whatever they need to 00:15:24.099 --> 00:15:30.996 consider their potential effect on historic properties. And so that 00:15:31.029 --> 00:15:34.677 usually what triggers the surveys and identification of what properties 00:15:34.710 --> 00:15:38.246 are out there and then you determine what the potential effect to them 00:15:38.279 --> 00:15:44.177 might be. And if there is an adverse effect, you need to develop ways to 00:15:44.210 --> 00:15:50.015 mitigate that effect. If possible, the place where it somewhat differs. 00:15:50.048 --> 00:15:55.986 Although I'm not an expert on es A to the point of knowing what latitude 00:15:56.019 --> 00:16:00.816 the lead agency has. But 00:16:00.849 --> 00:16:06.667 it's the one that section 106 is a process and you can go through it and 00:16:06.700 --> 00:16:10.086 at the end come out and say we've identified everything we know we're 00:16:10.119 --> 00:16:15.726 having an adverse effect. Oh, well, we're moving forward generally. That 00:16:15.759 --> 00:16:20.456 isn't the case. I mean, enough players will come in and say you should be 00:16:20.489 --> 00:16:24.677 doing something either modifying the project or, you know, traditionally 00:16:24.710 --> 00:16:29.186 for archaeological sites to excavate that kind of thing. And so that's 00:16:29.219 --> 00:16:35.186 just viewed as part of doing business, 00:16:35.219 --> 00:16:39.307 but it's within the purview of the lead agency to do nothing if they go 00:16:39.340 --> 00:16:43.246 through the whole process. Because if you're challenged, it's all you need 00:16:43.279 --> 00:16:46.467 to do is document, you went through the process. That sounds like the 00:16:46.500 --> 00:16:50.265 National Environmental Policy Act. It's a procedural process. You, you 00:16:50.298 --> 00:16:53.635 have to do the assessment. It doesn't tell you what decisions you have to 00:16:53.668 --> 00:16:59.895 take. You know, and generally people try to minimize their impact with ES 00:16:59.928 --> 00:17:03.177 A. It's kind of the same thing you go through and you develop the 00:17:03.210 --> 00:17:08.496 conservation measures and they probably do. Well, I don't know if, you 00:17:08.529 --> 00:17:13.054 know, if you decide you're not going to do anything. 00:17:13.087 --> 00:17:17.405 I don't know what latitude the agency then has. I mean, can they say we've 00:17:17.438 --> 00:17:21.665 changed? We've decided we just can't preserve the species. We're not going 00:17:21.698 --> 00:17:25.575 to do what the fish and wildlife says, you know, there'll probably be 00:17:25.608 --> 00:17:29.206 challenged and I know there's what do they call it, the God squad or 00:17:29.239 --> 00:17:34.446 whatever that can decide they're not going to try to save a feces. You 00:17:34.479 --> 00:17:37.436 know, and that's where 00:17:37.469 --> 00:17:43.295 if an agency isn't doing what it says or what people think it should, you 00:17:43.328 --> 00:17:49.325 know, they tend to get sued but you say not many people sue on the 00:17:49.358 --> 00:17:54.147 National Historic Preservation. No, it's pretty rare. And so that, you 00:17:54.180 --> 00:17:58.887 know, in a sense, there's not as much of a big hammer hanging over if you 00:17:58.920 --> 00:18:04.585 don't do it, you know, and again, though generally when you go through NHP 00:18:04.618 --> 00:18:09.906 A, when you get to the point where you say there's an adverse effect, then 00:18:09.939 --> 00:18:14.906 you put together either a memorandum of agreement or a programmatic 00:18:14.939 --> 00:18:19.406 agreement that stipulates what you're going to do to mitigate those 00:18:19.439 --> 00:18:24.226 impacts. And so again, if you have a bunch of stipulations that everyone 00:18:24.259 --> 00:18:29.776 agrees to and you don't follow them, then probably you're legally 00:18:29.809 --> 00:18:33.436 in jeopardy in the same way as if there's a bunch of conservation measures 00:18:33.469 --> 00:18:38.976 for endangered species and you don't follow through on them. So there is 00:18:39.009 --> 00:18:46.555 still that. So if an agency agrees to do something and doesn't, I think 00:18:46.588 --> 00:18:52.176 they can't, then just ignore it, they're legally binding. Well, let me ask 00:18:52.209 --> 00:18:58.117 you um just following up on that, then how, what's your judgment about how 00:18:58.150 --> 00:19:04.906 well the Adaptive Management Program has accommodated, addressed the 00:19:04.939 --> 00:19:09.857 concerns and requests of the cultural resource professionals like yourself 00:19:09.890 --> 00:19:14.186 and others. Um 00:19:14.219 --> 00:19:20.186 I mean, throughout the whole program, it certainly gets, 00:19:20.219 --> 00:19:24.785 you know, a fair amount of attention in things 00:19:24.818 --> 00:19:30.627 monetarily. It's definitely not anywhere near what the biological or 00:19:30.660 --> 00:19:36.916 sediment programs are, although some of the sediment is certainly related 00:19:36.949 --> 00:19:43.276 to the cultural resource issues. Um And again, I think some of that is due 00:19:43.309 --> 00:19:48.486 to just the legacy of how the program develops slightly independent. And 00:19:48.519 --> 00:19:56.035 what it's meant is that, you know, in the budgeting process, there's kind 00:19:56.068 --> 00:20:02.506 of the overall adaptive management budget, but it's broken down between 00:20:02.539 --> 00:20:07.117 what the Bureau of Reclamation administers mostly for their compliance 00:20:07.150 --> 00:20:12.206 stuff. And then the broader Grand Canyon Monitoring and research center 00:20:12.239 --> 00:20:19.295 budget for the science and the cultural resources work by and large has 00:20:19.328 --> 00:20:27.328 been viewed is synonymous with just an HP A compliance. And beyond that, 00:20:27.670 --> 00:20:32.857 there's been a fairly limited, I guess non-compliance cultural Resources 00:20:32.890 --> 00:20:34.956 program, 00:20:34.989 --> 00:20:42.989 it's also meant that tribal interests tend to be subsumed under cultural 00:20:43.469 --> 00:20:45.835 resources 00:20:45.868 --> 00:20:50.597 in the beginning, probably because that is kind of where the tribes were 00:20:50.630 --> 00:20:57.335 involved. Most is the program developed. But also 00:20:57.368 --> 00:21:00.805 it, 00:21:00.838 --> 00:21:06.097 it's in a way I think easier for the rest of ant to the bureau is dealing 00:21:06.130 --> 00:21:10.315 with the tribes and cultural because they're the same thing. So in that 00:21:10.348 --> 00:21:15.476 sense, it hasn't nearly been as well integrated in the to the broader 00:21:15.509 --> 00:21:19.825 Adaptive management program and the broader science, you know, certainly 00:21:19.858 --> 00:21:26.506 there's issues with how do you integrate, integrate the tribal knowledge 00:21:26.539 --> 00:21:32.217 value system into a Western science program. But I think it also has not 00:21:32.250 --> 00:21:37.666 been done very well. You know, it's, it's one of those hard ones to 00:21:37.699 --> 00:21:43.196 address. And, you know, there's both issues of not knowing how to do it. 00:21:43.229 --> 00:21:46.756 But also just like I said, some of the legacy issues of how the program 00:21:46.789 --> 00:21:53.467 developed and how you got handed off to different people. You know, it's 00:21:53.500 --> 00:21:59.397 again, is the legacy of in the G CS days, the tribes kind of came up with 00:21:59.430 --> 00:22:05.709 what they wanted to do and provided a budget to the Bureau of Reclamation. 00:22:06.519 --> 00:22:08.519 And 00:22:09.900 --> 00:22:16.986 as the research center came into being, you know, initially, that was 00:22:17.019 --> 00:22:21.976 gonna be essentially a contract administrative center and it contract all 00:22:22.009 --> 00:22:24.795 the science out 00:22:24.828 --> 00:22:28.585 and they would develop rps and that kind of thing for most of the tribal 00:22:28.618 --> 00:22:30.607 work, 00:22:30.640 --> 00:22:34.617 they couldn't really develop rfps because the tribe essentially had to do 00:22:34.650 --> 00:22:37.785 it. And then they were the only ones who could do the research because the 00:22:37.818 --> 00:22:41.526 tribes knew what they needed, they needed, you know, tribal elders, 00:22:41.559 --> 00:22:46.825 specialists with traditional knowledge to be able to do the research. So 00:22:46.858 --> 00:22:54.656 it became essentially the cultural program at the center. It was 00:22:54.689 --> 00:23:00.305 a way to facilitate getting the tribes the money to do the research. And 00:23:00.338 --> 00:23:07.696 so there was just never a cultural program separate from the tribal work 00:23:07.729 --> 00:23:12.756 that the center did much of. I mean, they've done certainly stuff pieces 00:23:12.789 --> 00:23:17.976 and then for the archaeology side of it. The park service has always done 00:23:18.009 --> 00:23:22.285 that. And again, when they, you know, they did the original survey, there 00:23:22.318 --> 00:23:27.696 wasn't a center at the time, but the park service did that work, just like 00:23:27.729 --> 00:23:32.516 most of the other players did their own work and their own specialties, 00:23:32.549 --> 00:23:37.575 the tribes each did at game and fish did fish work, fish and wildlife did 00:23:37.608 --> 00:23:42.717 their own thing. But it's all funded out of one pot. When the center was 00:23:42.750 --> 00:23:48.347 kind of taken over to become the coordinating role, 00:23:48.380 --> 00:23:54.315 the cultural stuff, the park retained it. The fish stuff became part and 00:23:54.348 --> 00:24:01.607 parcel of what GCMR CS essentially science was in the sediment and they 00:24:01.640 --> 00:24:06.035 just weren't sure how to deal with tribal stuff. And so we've always been 00:24:06.068 --> 00:24:10.736 a little on the periphery, both tribal and cultural in the larger sense 00:24:10.769 --> 00:24:15.397 and there was, you know, certainly still are, I think to some extent, some 00:24:15.430 --> 00:24:21.486 turf wars between different agencies and that kind of thing. So, you know 00:24:21.519 --> 00:24:24.986 , that's kind of led to where we are now, which is still somewhat on the 00:24:25.019 --> 00:24:30.766 outside looking in. And the GM do you think that could be remedied? I 00:24:30.799 --> 00:24:34.217 think. So, what would it look like? Can you paint us a picture of what it 00:24:34.250 --> 00:24:37.906 would look like if it was working better? 00:24:37.939 --> 00:24:40.916 Um 00:24:40.949 --> 00:24:48.446 I think, you know, one of the, the big needs essentially is a unified 00:24:48.479 --> 00:24:53.127 vision of what the program is. And within that some of the cultural 00:24:53.160 --> 00:25:00.325 resource stuff and then buy in from all the different players about how to 00:25:00.358 --> 00:25:05.075 achieve that essentially. And so, 00:25:05.108 --> 00:25:10.367 you know, with the park always doing the archaeology monitoring, 00:25:10.400 --> 00:25:15.565 you know, they're, they don't want an outside agency 00:25:15.598 --> 00:25:19.656 to be doing that. I don't think, you know, they view that that is 00:25:19.689 --> 00:25:24.166 something that they do, that's their management responsibility. 00:25:24.199 --> 00:25:31.085 But it also means that they decide kind of what they're doing, the 00:25:31.118 --> 00:25:34.956 protocols and methodologies, those kind of things. And with the, the 00:25:34.989 --> 00:25:40.127 programmatic agreements, you know, the other participants in the cultural 00:25:40.160 --> 00:25:45.825 review things and stuff, certainly. But it's driven more by the park, I 00:25:45.858 --> 00:25:53.196 think than the broader Adaptive Management Program. Um 00:25:53.229 --> 00:25:58.426 You know, and again, the signatories to the pa really are the ones who are 00:25:58.459 --> 00:26:04.026 interested in the cultural resources. And so I think the rest of the 00:26:04.059 --> 00:26:08.496 Adaptive Management Program, stakeholders don't really want to get 00:26:08.529 --> 00:26:12.815 involved in that. Whereas with the endangered fish work, like I said, the 00:26:12.848 --> 00:26:18.186 , they have a vested interest so they're willing to push things ac will 00:26:18.219 --> 00:26:25.847 help recover the fish, um for the tribal stuff. You know, 00:26:25.880 --> 00:26:29.617 you have another federal agency, they're not going to tell the tribe what 00:26:29.650 --> 00:26:33.726 they think the tribe should be doing as far as their own research. So that 00:26:33.759 --> 00:26:38.857 ends up somewhat outside of the program. Um You know, we've tried 00:26:38.890 --> 00:26:43.815 different things through time. Certainly. I think the best approach has 00:26:43.848 --> 00:26:51.266 been just a lot of day to day involvement, people all working together to 00:26:51.299 --> 00:26:55.756 come to agreement on some of it. And I mean, I think the Adaptive 00:26:55.789 --> 00:27:00.637 Management Program has very been very good at that, having lots of buy in 00:27:00.670 --> 00:27:04.776 from lots of different stakeholders, 00:27:04.809 --> 00:27:11.065 but just the process of how you design research and review it and stuff, 00:27:11.098 --> 00:27:18.075 it makes it hard when some of the participants 00:27:18.108 --> 00:27:25.516 have to develop it on their own and then feed it into the program. So, um 00:27:25.549 --> 00:27:32.476 that didn't really answer your question. But I mean, I think we're kind of 00:27:32.509 --> 00:27:40.147 doing it as best we can. I think, you know, the program has to recognize 00:27:40.180 --> 00:27:46.506 we independence of the different agencies to some extent and recognize 00:27:46.539 --> 00:27:51.696 that they have their own mandates that may dictate how much of a lead role 00:27:51.729 --> 00:27:54.835 they take in developing some of the stuff. I mean, certainly, you know, 00:27:54.868 --> 00:27:59.746 with the endangered species stuff, fish and wildlife, pretty much 00:27:59.779 --> 00:28:06.825 unilaterally says these are what you need to do and to be in compliance. 00:28:06.858 --> 00:28:11.637 The difference has been that then 00:28:11.670 --> 00:28:16.426 since they're not the landowner, they're willing to let others do that 00:28:16.459 --> 00:28:21.107 actual, whether it's management or research or monitoring. So there's 00:28:21.140 --> 00:28:25.295 other players that are involved in doing that for the cultural resources 00:28:25.328 --> 00:28:30.706 because the resources are a part resource. 00:28:30.739 --> 00:28:37.206 It's harder from a management perspective and administratively for the 00:28:37.239 --> 00:28:42.916 park to yield to some outside groups going this is what this is the way 00:28:42.949 --> 00:28:47.996 we're going to manage the cultural resources So, you know, we, the way 00:28:48.029 --> 00:28:52.107 we've tried to go about it in the past is put together a star preservation 00:28:52.140 --> 00:28:57.065 plan that basically says this is what we want to manage for how we want to 00:28:57.098 --> 00:29:03.016 go about doing it. And when you say we tried, for example, in this case, 00:29:03.049 --> 00:29:07.756 as one of them, the signatories to the programmatic agreement. OK. Both 00:29:07.789 --> 00:29:12.696 the first one and the one we're working on now. So it's kind of the groups 00:29:12.729 --> 00:29:18.726 are, have an identified role in cultural resource management coming up as 00:29:18.759 --> 00:29:24.446 a group with how we see the management going forward in the future. The 00:29:24.479 --> 00:29:29.186 question then becomes who's actually going to do that work? And you know, 00:29:29.219 --> 00:29:35.166 some of that gets back into funding and you know, the dam is, I don't want 00:29:35.199 --> 00:29:40.315 to say, viewed as a large cash register, but it, it, it has been a solid 00:29:40.348 --> 00:29:47.607 source of funding outside the normal politics that goes on with um you 00:29:47.640 --> 00:29:53.016 know, the normal funding cycle. And so, 00:29:53.049 --> 00:29:55.877 you know, people 00:29:55.910 --> 00:30:01.717 see that as a way to help fund their agencies to do work, you know. And so 00:30:01.750 --> 00:30:05.127 the park service gets funding for monitoring the cultural resources or the 00:30:05.160 --> 00:30:10.325 archaeological sites, game and fish gets some funding for fish, monitoring 00:30:10.358 --> 00:30:15.805 fish and wildlife does some too. I mean, everyone involved 00:30:15.838 --> 00:30:22.045 benefits from the program too, you know. So, so it's not an easy one. I 00:30:22.078 --> 00:30:25.516 mean, like I said, when they originally established the center, it's 00:30:25.549 --> 00:30:30.805 supposed to be a small enterprise that basically just wrote RFP and 00:30:30.838 --> 00:30:35.545 contracted work out. That's a Grand Canyon monitoring and research center. 00:30:35.578 --> 00:30:38.766 And then they started doing their own research. They started. And, yeah, 00:30:38.799 --> 00:30:45.397 part of it was because, you know, coming out of GCMRC, a lot of the people 00:30:45.430 --> 00:30:50.357 who ultimately were at the beginning of the Grand Canyon Monitoring and 00:30:50.390 --> 00:30:55.206 research center were doing the research and to keep those people on 00:30:55.239 --> 00:30:58.246 scientists are interested in doing research. So they started out, you know 00:30:58.279 --> 00:31:03.006 , continuing those programs and then slowly those programs, you know, it 00:31:03.039 --> 00:31:08.206 switched from being a contract center to a pure science center that does 00:31:08.239 --> 00:31:12.617 does most of the science now. Certainly there's still a lot of partners 00:31:12.650 --> 00:31:20.486 who do stuff. But yeah, I mean, it's become a pretty big science program. 00:31:20.519 --> 00:31:26.367 We, we have spoken to at least one other person who was a little bit 00:31:26.400 --> 00:31:33.137 disappointed in that change because, um, there was a lot of money for a 00:31:33.170 --> 00:31:37.676 lot of research that supported a lot of professional researchers that were 00:31:37.709 --> 00:31:41.825 either independent or had their own consulting organization or worked at a 00:31:41.858 --> 00:31:46.236 university. And a lot of that money that supported that kind of work dried 00:31:46.269 --> 00:31:51.976 up when it got sort of concentrated in the GCMRC. Do you see it that way 00:31:52.009 --> 00:31:57.097 or not? Well, certainly from the tribal side, it really didn't change 00:31:57.130 --> 00:32:02.535 things in the sense of being able to get funding because, you know, since 00:32:02.568 --> 00:32:07.717 the tribes were the only ones that could do the work, you know, whether it 00:32:07.750 --> 00:32:10.647 went through the center or not, it still came to us. I mean, certainly the 00:32:10.680 --> 00:32:14.496 funding has never been what we thought was adequate. But I think probably 00:32:14.529 --> 00:32:20.535 everyone would say that no matter what. Um, 00:32:20.568 --> 00:32:25.285 I think one of the things that it's led to and this gets a little back to 00:32:25.318 --> 00:32:32.835 , you know, how could you make it work better, be more integrated is 00:32:32.868 --> 00:32:39.397 since the center develops the budget and work plan, 00:32:39.430 --> 00:32:44.456 they, you know, it's their own scientists who are developing a lot of that 00:32:44.489 --> 00:32:51.967 work. I mean, they get certainly guidance from Twig and am wig. But 00:32:52.000 --> 00:32:56.397 really the the actual development of what research is going to happen to 00:32:56.430 --> 00:33:01.045 address these bigger questions is driven by the center and because it's 00:33:01.078 --> 00:33:04.877 the scientists who may be doing the work, who are developing it, you know 00:33:04.910 --> 00:33:10.315 , whether that goes down some pet project sort of roads or not. I mean, 00:33:10.348 --> 00:33:14.766 you know, it does certainly there's checks on the system and there's lots 00:33:14.799 --> 00:33:19.726 of projects that get dropped, that may be interesting research. But once 00:33:19.759 --> 00:33:23.986 it reaches Twig and Amway, it's like, well, you know, this is either 00:33:24.019 --> 00:33:27.137 straying too far or the budget is limited and these are much higher 00:33:27.170 --> 00:33:31.617 priority sort of things. But I don't know whether at the center it stayed 00:33:31.650 --> 00:33:36.877 mostly as a contracting sort of entity if it would have been better at 00:33:36.910 --> 00:33:44.910 developing research monitoring programs that 00:33:45.239 --> 00:33:48.936 would be more integrated, but also more focused because others would be 00:33:48.969 --> 00:33:55.847 bidding on it then, you know, and I don't know how that would deal. Yeah. 00:33:55.880 --> 00:34:00.295 Yeah. And I mean, I, I certainly don't wanna say that they're, you know, 00:34:00.328 --> 00:34:06.357 they're milking the system or anything. But, yeah, I mean, the researchers 00:34:06.390 --> 00:34:09.316 are interested in lots of stuff down there and they do really good 00:34:09.349 --> 00:34:17.349 research. But, you know, it's certainly one of those areas where 00:34:18.219 --> 00:34:22.365 it can bring in the different personal interests and emphasis to different 00:34:22.398 --> 00:34:27.537 parts of the program. One of our interviewees told us that there were 00:34:27.570 --> 00:34:35.256 occasionally research programs um funded and implemented by GCMRC. Um that 00:34:35.289 --> 00:34:38.756 not everybody in Am wick thought were of the highest value. And when you 00:34:38.789 --> 00:34:43.776 have a limited pot of research funding, you want to sort of fund the 00:34:43.809 --> 00:34:47.865 programs that are going to provide the greatest value added value. And 00:34:47.898 --> 00:34:52.217 this particular interview, he was saying that just because there were 00:34:52.250 --> 00:34:57.967 researchers at GCMRC committed to this particular line of research that it 00:34:58.000 --> 00:35:01.566 kept getting funded, even though a majority of people on AM wig were 00:35:01.599 --> 00:35:07.345 questioning the value of continuing to put money down that pathway. Did 00:35:07.378 --> 00:35:12.675 you experience anything like that? Well, certainly, I mean, there's, you 00:35:12.708 --> 00:35:17.046 know, research that different stakeholders question. I mean, you know, I 00:35:17.079 --> 00:35:20.086 think there are enough checks and balances in the system with all the 00:35:20.119 --> 00:35:25.686 review that goes on of what the proposed programs are that I don't think 00:35:25.719 --> 00:35:29.356 too much gets through. I mean, it is definitely, you know, funding limited 00:35:29.389 --> 00:35:35.416 , there was a funding limit put on it, you know, when the Rod was done, 00:35:35.449 --> 00:35:40.445 the original Rod. And so, you know, I think in that sense, there's enough 00:35:40.478 --> 00:35:45.106 oversight that it's not like it can just run amok and do whatever they 00:35:45.139 --> 00:35:48.006 want. So it's working pretty well. So I think it works pretty well. I 00:35:48.039 --> 00:35:51.885 guess, you know, my, 00:35:51.918 --> 00:35:56.925 you know, the comment about whether or not it's 00:35:56.958 --> 00:36:02.236 always the best research that could be done for some bigger picture. You 00:36:02.269 --> 00:36:07.287 know, again, that's because most of those research questions are being 00:36:07.320 --> 00:36:10.316 developed internally. 00:36:10.349 --> 00:36:13.706 You know, it's going to be driven by people's interest to some extent, you 00:36:13.739 --> 00:36:19.717 know, what they choose to focus on and those kind of things. So yeah, it's 00:36:19.750 --> 00:36:23.747 relevant. But is it if you had a totally outside group come in and go? Ok 00:36:23.780 --> 00:36:27.046 , we're gonna, this is what we think should be done. And even that, I mean 00:36:27.079 --> 00:36:29.836 , the program's been good about getting those kind of reviews, the 00:36:29.869 --> 00:36:34.166 protocol of evaluation panel, the pet panels, those kind of things we 00:36:34.199 --> 00:36:37.865 bring outside people and go. This is what we're trying to achieve. This is 00:36:37.898 --> 00:36:43.546 what we're doing is this the best way to go about it should we change? So 00:36:43.579 --> 00:36:47.247 there has been a lot of that. I mean, you know, I think this has been one 00:36:47.280 --> 00:36:53.267 of the better programs that I know about there as far as trying to address 00:36:53.300 --> 00:36:58.666 the complex system with a very diverse suite of stakeholders and interests 00:36:58.699 --> 00:37:03.666 in the face of great uncertainty, right? You know, and some of the, you 00:37:03.699 --> 00:37:08.865 know, some of the issues, you know, in one sense, all the hard issues were 00:37:08.898 --> 00:37:14.666 resolved in the first EIS it's the hard ones that couldn't get resolved 00:37:14.699 --> 00:37:20.175 there that drive adaptive management and some of the issues which gets 00:37:20.208 --> 00:37:23.876 back to the question of, you know, is the research that's being done, 00:37:23.909 --> 00:37:28.695 something that everyone agrees to or not is just what is the scope of the 00:37:28.728 --> 00:37:33.517 program? Are we, you know, a lot of people are insisting, it's only things 00:37:33.550 --> 00:37:38.856 that are affected by the day to day operations of the dam. 00:37:38.889 --> 00:37:44.606 Uh for cultural, you know, at least from my perspective, part of the 00:37:44.639 --> 00:37:48.876 operation of the dam is the fact that there is a dam. 00:37:48.909 --> 00:37:53.336 But other stakeholders have said, no, it's just the daily up and down is 00:37:53.369 --> 00:37:58.227 all we're looking at and that changes then what you think should be 00:37:58.260 --> 00:38:02.557 studied or not and what's in or out of the program. In a sense. You're 00:38:02.590 --> 00:38:06.006 saying some people are saying the existence of the dam should be off the 00:38:06.039 --> 00:38:09.595 table. Oh, they've explicitly said that it's not the existence, it's the 00:38:09.628 --> 00:38:16.456 operation. But, you know, a large majority of the program 00:38:16.489 --> 00:38:20.997 is really the existence. I mean, the fact that there's no sediment, it's 00:38:21.030 --> 00:38:26.736 cold clear water which drives all the fish stuff 00:38:26.769 --> 00:38:31.606 you know, that's an existence of the dam. That isn't the daily operations. 00:38:31.639 --> 00:38:36.506 You can't do much with daily operations to affect those parameters. So a 00:38:36.539 --> 00:38:42.767 large part of the program isn't really looking at existence. But because 00:38:42.800 --> 00:38:46.236 stakeholders 00:38:46.269 --> 00:38:51.876 sea value in addressing the endangered fish, we have people working, you 00:38:51.909 --> 00:38:55.595 know, 12 miles up the little Colorado river that's not affected by the 00:38:55.628 --> 00:39:00.236 daily operations of the dam. But in cultural, they get upset if we go 00:39:00.269 --> 00:39:06.006 above 45,000 CFS, even though there's definitely documented indirect 00:39:06.039 --> 00:39:11.456 effects up there. So, you know, some of its politics and what people think 00:39:11.489 --> 00:39:15.106 should or shouldn't be done. But generally you're saying the the 00:39:15.139 --> 00:39:19.836 safeguards in place, the peer review and the collaborative process and the 00:39:19.869 --> 00:39:24.497 multi stakeholder that all, you know, nothing's perfect and things are 00:39:24.530 --> 00:39:28.155 working about as well as they could be and you're satisfied that, you know 00:39:28.188 --> 00:39:30.767 , 00:39:30.800 --> 00:39:34.836 yeah, that's great. No, I think, you know, by and large, it's a very good 00:39:34.869 --> 00:39:39.747 program. And, you know, I think one of the strongest 00:39:39.780 --> 00:39:46.296 aspects of the program is that all the stakeholders are still at the table 00:39:46.329 --> 00:39:51.615 willing to talk to each other after all these years. I mean, you know, 00:39:51.648 --> 00:39:56.066 bring it up to the present day when the issues of potentially not having 00:39:56.099 --> 00:40:01.416 funding for Fy 19 came to a head. When you look at the groups that were 00:40:01.449 --> 00:40:06.425 collaborating to lobby Congress for legislation, it's like they're on 00:40:06.458 --> 00:40:10.796 diametrically opposed ends of what you would think would be cooperating. 00:40:10.829 --> 00:40:16.425 But they are, you know, and by and large, 00:40:16.458 --> 00:40:19.365 you know, a lot of the people in the program have been involved for so 00:40:19.398 --> 00:40:24.267 long that everyone's friendly. I mean, everyone knows everyone. And so 00:40:24.300 --> 00:40:28.896 it's very collegial and, you know, even if we don't agree on everything, 00:40:28.929 --> 00:40:31.997 we're willing to sit down and have a beer afterwards and stuff. So, I mean 00:40:32.030 --> 00:40:35.506 , that has been a real benefit of the program and that gets to, I think 00:40:35.539 --> 00:40:41.186 that collaborative aspect that, you know, if it becomes a program that 00:40:41.219 --> 00:40:46.986 looks like it's only driven by one entity with just kind of input that may 00:40:47.019 --> 00:40:51.037 or may not go anywhere from everyone. There's just a lot more distrust 00:40:51.070 --> 00:40:54.017 whereas if everyone feels like they have a say and even if you don't get 00:40:54.050 --> 00:41:00.905 your way, you get that buy in, I think, and people understand what's going 00:41:00.938 --> 00:41:06.967 on, which has been a real benefit in your experience is that uh unusual, 00:41:07.000 --> 00:41:12.586 um you know, the, the sort of multi stakeholder uh level playing field, 00:41:12.619 --> 00:41:17.506 everybody negotiating together without one player dominating is that a 00:41:17.539 --> 00:41:20.827 pretty unusual situation and natural resource management and historic 00:41:20.860 --> 00:41:27.747 preservation? It, it seems like it certainly historically, it is, I mean, 00:41:27.780 --> 00:41:33.706 it's gotten better through time. Um People realize it's better to or a lot 00:41:33.739 --> 00:41:37.836 of agencies have realized it's better to have discussions up front and 00:41:37.869 --> 00:41:43.717 keep people in the loop than to just essentially check the boxes of what 00:41:43.750 --> 00:41:49.546 they have to do and not put any emphasis on, you know, for the tribal 00:41:49.579 --> 00:41:54.876 stuff. It's the consultation and there's a difference between the legal 00:41:54.909 --> 00:41:59.836 consultation and actual, you know, collaborative consultation where we 00:41:59.869 --> 00:42:06.146 discuss things and, you know, one of the things that this program 00:42:06.179 --> 00:42:12.276 I think got right really early on and it's probably accidental, but when 00:42:12.309 --> 00:42:17.425 we were putting the first programmatic agreement together for the section 00:42:17.458 --> 00:42:23.506 106 compliance, all the different parties were writing that P A and up 00:42:23.539 --> 00:42:28.296 until that time pas tended to be put together by a lead agency and then 00:42:28.329 --> 00:42:32.756 you put a few, you know, whereas clauses and stipulations in from other 00:42:32.789 --> 00:42:38.537 people after they review it and then sign off on it. This one we developed 00:42:38.570 --> 00:42:45.526 as a group and partially that was because it was after the National Assort 00:42:45.559 --> 00:42:50.456 Preservation Act had been amended to recognize traditional cultural 00:42:50.489 --> 00:42:54.936 properties as historic properties. But before the regs had been developed 00:42:54.969 --> 00:42:59.046 , so no one actually knew how to deal with them. And it made sense that 00:42:59.079 --> 00:43:03.675 the tribes would probably have as good an idea of how to address that. And 00:43:03.708 --> 00:43:11.708 so the pa that came out really did what later became in their eggs for how 00:43:13.360 --> 00:43:20.106 to implement National Star Preservation Act. And so, you know that and 00:43:20.139 --> 00:43:24.945 then having essentially any of the stakeholders who wanted to be involved 00:43:24.978 --> 00:43:29.146 in actually drafting the EIS, you know, all working together, we'd go on 00:43:29.179 --> 00:43:32.425 retreats and things and actually draft sections of it, it wasn't just a 00:43:32.458 --> 00:43:38.695 lead agency doing it and then sending it out for review and comment. So, 00:43:38.728 --> 00:43:42.845 you know, the program came out of, I think a very collaborative place to 00:43:42.878 --> 00:43:49.425 start with. I'm wondering now if you think that um the example of the 00:43:49.458 --> 00:43:57.006 Adaptive Management Program had influence beyond the program itself, had 00:43:57.039 --> 00:44:03.327 influence on how federal agencies work with stakeholders and tribes. Do 00:44:03.360 --> 00:44:08.037 you think um you know, having to collaborate like that? Um you know, 00:44:08.070 --> 00:44:11.327 written into the Grand Canyon Protection Act and the record of decision 00:44:11.360 --> 00:44:17.057 and all of that, that, that provided a different example of how to do 00:44:17.090 --> 00:44:21.675 consultation and how to collaborate with stakeholders that has had impact 00:44:21.708 --> 00:44:28.135 beyond the Adaptive Management Program maybe. Um Yeah, it's hard to know. 00:44:28.168 --> 00:44:35.166 I mean, certainly from a tribal side, you know, it, it, 00:44:35.199 --> 00:44:39.956 since we were led in the door in that process, we were probably more 00:44:39.989 --> 00:44:43.876 insistent in other places. Going wait, we wanna be more involved in this. 00:44:43.909 --> 00:44:48.445 We don't want to just review and comment, we wanna actually help with some 00:44:48.478 --> 00:44:54.865 of the upfront decision making, you know, certainly tribes have been 00:44:54.898 --> 00:44:59.717 allowed to provide some of the traditional cultural information and stuff 00:44:59.750 --> 00:45:04.537 to incorporate into it. But, you know, in the original EIS, we were 00:45:04.570 --> 00:45:08.566 involved in helping develop different alternatives and, you know, the 00:45:08.599 --> 00:45:16.599 whole nine yards. Um And so, in that sense, I think it probably, 00:45:16.708 --> 00:45:21.997 and gave us an idea of what we could do in a collaborative process, you 00:45:22.030 --> 00:45:24.736 know, from a federal agency site. I don't know whether they thought it was 00:45:24.769 --> 00:45:28.405 good or bad because, 00:45:28.438 --> 00:45:32.756 you know, it, it certainly means more work up front. It doesn't go as 00:45:32.789 --> 00:45:38.967 quick and, you know, some agencies I'm sure prefer the old way where they 00:45:39.000 --> 00:45:44.247 can sit in the room and do it themselves and send it out and not have to 00:45:44.280 --> 00:45:49.236 have quite as much involvement. And the most recent E I SI think did go 00:45:49.269 --> 00:45:55.456 back a little towards the old, that older model in the L temp one and that 00:45:55.489 --> 00:46:00.546 is the two lead agencies that did the majority of coming up with, you know 00:46:00.579 --> 00:46:05.827 , what, what would be done? Certainly, there is still an open process for 00:46:05.860 --> 00:46:10.077 the alternative development and stakeholders were involved. And as far as 00:46:10.110 --> 00:46:15.876 the actual writing and stuff, you know, most of that was done by V or 00:46:15.909 --> 00:46:22.467 their contractors which might be fine writing them is a lot of work, you 00:46:22.500 --> 00:46:25.986 know, but the tribes are still allowed to write their own sections for the 00:46:26.019 --> 00:46:31.590 affected environment and stuff. So, you know, I think there is that legacy. 00:46:31.679 --> 00:46:33.679 Hm, let's talk about change over time a little bit. Um, I'm thinking now 00:46:36.800 --> 00:46:43.977 you've been personally involved in this for 27 years, 28. Now I'm talking 00:46:44.010 --> 00:46:49.615 more than a quarter of a century most of my life, I think professional 00:46:49.648 --> 00:46:57.166 life. Um, can you sort of reflect on the changes that you've seen in the 00:46:57.199 --> 00:47:01.206 program or the relationships or the kind of research that's been done. 00:47:01.239 --> 00:47:06.816 What kinds of changes over that? 2728 years have you seen? I mean, 00:47:06.849 --> 00:47:11.767 certainly the biggest is, is just become a much bigger program. I mean, 00:47:11.800 --> 00:47:15.896 when it originally started, everyone knew everyone and was probably 00:47:15.929 --> 00:47:21.066 involved in the research at the very beginning. And, yeah, I mean, GCMRC 00:47:21.099 --> 00:47:25.666 has grown, I mean, now I go in there now and I don't recognize very many 00:47:25.699 --> 00:47:29.276 people and there's, you know, lots of students and interns and that kind 00:47:29.309 --> 00:47:34.405 of thing that are involved. Um 00:47:34.438 --> 00:47:37.936 You know, it's a, 00:47:37.969 --> 00:47:41.356 I think the fundamental 00:47:41.389 --> 00:47:46.477 kind of research that's going on is still pretty much the same, you know, 00:47:46.510 --> 00:47:51.655 there's, it's reached that point where we definitely are cycling back 00:47:51.688 --> 00:47:59.206 through issues that in the past never got completed and still need to be. 00:47:59.239 --> 00:48:04.026 Um like, for example, 00:48:04.059 --> 00:48:08.247 I was trying to think some of the things that I saw as, you know, the 00:48:08.280 --> 00:48:15.175 biggest not changes per se but things that 00:48:15.208 --> 00:48:20.336 have not happened, you know, and one of the, I think one of the most 00:48:20.369 --> 00:48:23.595 interest or maybe not interesting, but one of the things that 00:48:23.628 --> 00:48:30.977 fundamentally shifted between when the E I, the original EIS was started 00:48:31.010 --> 00:48:36.316 in the record of decision was that it was coming out of the high flows in 00:48:36.349 --> 00:48:41.506 the 19 eighties, the mid eighties. And so one of the driving factors was 00:48:41.539 --> 00:48:47.046 to not have the dam have unexpected spills. So a lot of emphasis was 00:48:47.079 --> 00:48:51.776 placed on making sure that you didn't essentially fill it and spill 00:48:51.809 --> 00:48:55.577 because that was one of the most damaging things that people had seen down 00:48:55.610 --> 00:48:59.405 there and really triggered a lot of the erosion that people were seeing at 00:48:59.438 --> 00:49:04.227 archaeological sites and other things. By the time we got to the record of 00:49:04.260 --> 00:49:09.557 decision is the opposite we were looking at. Well, still not having 00:49:09.590 --> 00:49:14.155 unplanned spills, but actually having floods because people realized, I 00:49:14.188 --> 00:49:18.916 think that too much stability wasn't good either for that system. You know 00:49:18.949 --> 00:49:22.787 , there was a lot of debate about having seasonally adjusted steady flows 00:49:22.820 --> 00:49:28.595 and whether that would be best for fish and those kind of things. Um So, 00:49:28.628 --> 00:49:34.267 you know, there was a big shift and now a lot of the experimentation is 00:49:34.300 --> 00:49:39.626 surrounding having higher than normal flows out of the dam. So that is one 00:49:39.659 --> 00:49:46.227 that kind of shifted, I think. Um, 00:49:46.260 --> 00:49:50.836 the, 00:49:50.869 --> 00:49:56.095 what was I trying to think of that something when I was talking to him, 00:49:56.128 --> 00:50:02.827 what other things have changed? Um 00:50:02.860 --> 00:50:08.767 You know, for the certainly for the fish work, we've learned an awful lot. 00:50:08.800 --> 00:50:11.986 Um 00:50:12.019 --> 00:50:17.747 We still still don't seem to know what fundamentally ends up driving the 00:50:17.780 --> 00:50:20.986 native fish populations. 00:50:21.019 --> 00:50:24.997 You know, early on 00:50:25.030 --> 00:50:29.296 water temperature was viewed to be one of the big issues. Although at that 00:50:29.329 --> 00:50:34.425 time, one of the earliest meetings I went to was was called the Aquatic 00:50:34.458 --> 00:50:39.006 Coordinations. Team, which was the predecessor of all the fish work stuff. 00:50:39.039 --> 00:50:42.635 And Chuck Mink said that, you know, he thought actually the cold water 00:50:42.668 --> 00:50:46.046 was probably the only thing that potentially saved a lot of the native 00:50:46.079 --> 00:50:54.079 fish because it's so disadvantaged, everything that neither the really 00:50:54.619 --> 00:51:00.986 cold water exotics could spread quickly because it was too cold at the dam 00:51:01.019 --> 00:51:06.905 and the warm water which up until the dam was completed were actually the 00:51:06.938 --> 00:51:12.135 dominant fish in the system. Catfish and carp. And those kind of things, 00:51:12.168 --> 00:51:15.486 essentially, it just kind of put a hold on everything. It didn't benefit 00:51:15.519 --> 00:51:21.537 any of the fish. So water temperature was one of the big issues. And 00:51:21.570 --> 00:51:29.296 somewhere along the line, trout, rainbow trout became the big 00:51:29.329 --> 00:51:37.046 species that was decimating the chub primarily and predation was the 00:51:37.079 --> 00:51:41.925 predation, then maybe competition. So we shifted to that for a long time. 00:51:41.958 --> 00:51:45.086 And now I think we're shifting back 00:51:45.119 --> 00:51:49.727 because the tribes, I saw that as one of the areas where the tribes maybe 00:51:49.760 --> 00:51:55.256 actually had a pretty big role in not necessarily changing perceptions, 00:51:55.289 --> 00:52:00.606 but stopping some of the management because 00:52:00.639 --> 00:52:05.217 the idea that you go in and kill a lot of the trout, the tribes didn't 00:52:05.250 --> 00:52:12.865 find very tasteful. I thought that was inappropriate and weren't 00:52:12.898 --> 00:52:20.767 necessarily convinced by the science at the time that trout were in fact 00:52:20.800 --> 00:52:25.557 causing the population level declines. 00:52:25.590 --> 00:52:28.356 And so I think 00:52:28.389 --> 00:52:33.905 now we're looking more at food base and temperature again, is maybe being 00:52:33.938 --> 00:52:37.827 what some of the limiting issues are because the trout have gone up in 00:52:37.860 --> 00:52:42.747 numbers at the same time as chubb have. Now, the whole western canyon is 00:52:42.780 --> 00:52:47.236 dominated by native fish again and we're not quite sure why we didn't do 00:52:47.269 --> 00:52:54.106 anything specifically other than water down street. Basically below the 00:52:54.139 --> 00:52:59.977 LCR. At this point, it's back to being a native fish 00:53:00.010 --> 00:53:06.405 fishery, which is kind of nice to hear mostly the, the, um, the suckers 00:53:06.438 --> 00:53:11.066 that are getting wild spawn, chubb down there too, that aren't spawning in 00:53:11.099 --> 00:53:16.566 the LCR. What's the LCR, the little Colorado River? So, you know, I think 00:53:16.599 --> 00:53:20.666 that's an area where there's definitely been significant knowledge and 00:53:20.699 --> 00:53:26.925 changes in perception. Um, you know, some of the food based stuff I think 00:53:26.958 --> 00:53:32.405 has been, we've learned a lot lately and learned what we don't know, fish 00:53:32.438 --> 00:53:40.438 food. You mean primarily, um, an area that early on? I think there was 00:53:40.659 --> 00:53:46.626 more work that has now been lost is the whole terrestrial riparian zone. 00:53:46.659 --> 00:53:51.956 And that's an area that Hopi and I believe some of the other tribes tend 00:53:51.989 --> 00:53:57.155 to want more focus on and for a while we were getting more, there was a 00:53:57.188 --> 00:54:02.247 lot more work going on in that zone on both vegetation but birds, reptiles 00:54:02.280 --> 00:54:09.445 , amphibians, insects, you know, kind of a more ecosystem look at it. Why 00:54:09.478 --> 00:54:12.695 do you think that's not getting the attention that it used to? And that it 00:54:12.728 --> 00:54:20.445 ought to, I think primarily funding, you know, again, it's not a resource 00:54:20.478 --> 00:54:24.546 that affects a lot of the stakeholders. If it changes one way or another, 00:54:24.579 --> 00:54:30.626 it doesn't make much difference to a lot of the stakeholders. It's also 00:54:30.659 --> 00:54:38.477 that we don't know what we want. I mean, prior to the LTP, I, you know, 00:54:38.510 --> 00:54:44.316 one of the big pushes was to develop desired future conditions 00:54:44.349 --> 00:54:51.155 and that was to kind of lay out what was agreed to is how we wanted to see 00:54:51.188 --> 00:54:54.967 things in the future. And 00:54:55.000 --> 00:55:00.037 most of the resources there isn't a lot of guidance or agreement on uh 00:55:00.070 --> 00:55:04.106 partially because 00:55:04.139 --> 00:55:09.376 they're not used in a sense, I mean, kind of a western concept. But, you 00:55:09.409 --> 00:55:13.486 know, if you don't use it for something, you really don't have a 00:55:13.519 --> 00:55:21.519 management need for it. And so doesn't become a priority. And so for a lot 00:55:21.570 --> 00:55:25.666 of the riparian zone, 00:55:25.699 --> 00:55:31.506 you know, their natural resources, the park has some desired future for it. 00:55:31.539 --> 00:55:36.115 But even those are very nebulous. I mean, it's to maintain natural 00:55:36.148 --> 00:55:44.148 processes and uh support native over non native, but that's an artificial 00:55:44.739 --> 00:55:49.066 zone essentially through there anyway. I mean, pre Dam most of the 00:55:49.099 --> 00:55:54.577 riparian zone with sand, you know, certainly the patches of things. So 00:55:54.610 --> 00:56:00.977 it's a new zone. And because since 1963 when the dam gates closed, 00:56:01.010 --> 00:56:05.497 sediment has been coming. And so the sand that was there has eroded away 00:56:05.530 --> 00:56:10.436 for the most, it hasn't entirely eroded away, but it's becoming vegetated 00:56:10.469 --> 00:56:14.695 stuff that would have been scoured every spring during the high flows 00:56:14.728 --> 00:56:21.017 isn't. And so that zone has allowed lots of things, both native and non 00:56:21.050 --> 00:56:27.876 native to move into it that weren't there in any numbers. Pre Dam. 00:56:27.909 --> 00:56:34.486 Well, you know, the park didn't really have any targeted management for 00:56:34.519 --> 00:56:39.537 that zone beyond some of the recreation stuff. But if it's, you know, 00:56:39.570 --> 00:56:44.606 nonna, if it's non native, they really don't want it in there. So that's a 00:56:44.639 --> 00:56:49.695 management Tamari camel thorn, some of those kind of species. But on the 00:56:49.728 --> 00:56:53.296 other hand, there's a lot of natives that are probably equally, if not 00:56:53.329 --> 00:57:00.787 more detrimental to recreation, then the non natives are, you know, you 00:57:00.820 --> 00:57:05.557 get it the arrow weed, think it's down there and potentially the way the 00:57:05.590 --> 00:57:08.066 dam is operated 00:57:08.099 --> 00:57:13.595 is driving that system towards very clonal species. And so you may see an 00:57:13.628 --> 00:57:17.497 awful lot of arrow weed and frag mites through the corridor. Nothing else 00:57:17.530 --> 00:57:21.856 , you know, is that good or bad? I don't know. And those are two native 00:57:21.889 --> 00:57:26.586 species not necessarily desirable. You're saying they may or may not. But 00:57:26.619 --> 00:57:30.727 , yeah, but no one, you know, that's a hard thing to decide. You know, it 00:57:30.760 --> 00:57:33.577 would be one thing if you're logging them or something or harvesting and 00:57:33.610 --> 00:57:37.166 then you go, yeah. And so what's happened is, you know, for the cultural 00:57:37.199 --> 00:57:41.896 resources, archaeological sites, primarily there's a law that kind of 00:57:41.929 --> 00:57:46.037 tells you what you need to manage for, for the endangered species. We've 00:57:46.070 --> 00:57:49.486 got a lot that tells us what we need to manage for our desired future 00:57:49.519 --> 00:57:55.635 conditions are predetermined. So that makes it easy for, you know, 00:57:55.668 --> 00:58:02.497 sediment, a lot of its condition is, is a foundation for other things. So 00:58:02.530 --> 00:58:06.026 depending on what those other things are, then you can kind of back into 00:58:06.059 --> 00:58:09.477 how much sediment you might want or wear those kind of things. You know, 00:58:09.510 --> 00:58:14.615 water power that's also driven by a lot of the laws. But, you know, 00:58:14.648 --> 00:58:16.936 vegetation, 00:58:16.969 --> 00:58:20.405 it's one of those things where 00:58:20.438 --> 00:58:23.327 it's hard to know what you want down there and different people want 00:58:23.360 --> 00:58:27.006 different things. You know, a lot of the discussion in the past has been, 00:58:27.039 --> 00:58:30.876 are we looking for a pre dam environment 00:58:30.909 --> 00:58:35.646 or some kind of post dam thing? If it's post dam, what's it driven by, is 00:58:35.679 --> 00:58:40.146 it driven by recreation? I mean, right now in the L temp, some of the 00:58:40.179 --> 00:58:45.876 vegetation management is specifically targeted to try to open up camping 00:58:45.909 --> 00:58:51.517 area. We're, we're kind of reaching, 00:58:51.550 --> 00:58:56.026 you know, maybe an equilibrium on how much sand can be stored and where 00:58:56.059 --> 00:59:01.206 the stuff that is gone is gone. And with some of the high flows and those 00:59:01.239 --> 00:59:04.717 kind of things, we may be reaching an equilibrium in places, but we're 00:59:04.750 --> 00:59:09.896 losing a lot of that area to vegetation now and the flows are no longer 00:59:09.929 --> 00:59:14.566 high enough to remove it, you know, during, 00:59:14.599 --> 00:59:17.345 but 00:59:17.378 --> 00:59:22.997 pre original EIS period, you had the high fluctuating flows and So you 00:59:23.030 --> 00:59:30.006 actually had a pretty big scour zone with a lot of sand um just by virtue 00:59:30.039 --> 00:59:34.557 of having those flows. But the other thing that happened is when the EIS 00:59:34.590 --> 00:59:39.557 was started, you still saw a pretty strong signal from those really high 00:59:39.590 --> 00:59:45.126 flows in the mid eighties. In the 1983 flood sand was still up there and 00:59:45.159 --> 00:59:50.296 everywhere. A lot of the beaches that are no longer even possible to camp 00:59:50.329 --> 00:59:55.365 on. I remember as big open sand beaches at the time just because the 00:59:55.398 --> 00:59:59.236 vegetation hadn't encroached. The flows in the eighties were high enough 00:59:59.269 --> 01:00:04.856 to truly scour things. The first high flow experimental high flow that we 01:00:04.889 --> 01:00:09.925 did in 96 scoured some stuff but not to the point that it didn't 01:00:09.958 --> 01:00:14.675 re-establish within, you know, 3 to 5 years, it came back pretty quick. I 01:00:14.708 --> 01:00:18.586 mean, one of the marshes plug in the marsh. I remember 01:00:18.619 --> 01:00:22.175 it was an open sand dune right after the high flow, it was enough to 01:00:22.208 --> 01:00:28.126 actually de vegetate it more or less, but enough was left that been a few 01:00:28.159 --> 01:00:33.356 years. It's a jungle. And yeah, so, you know, some of that we're just 01:00:33.389 --> 01:00:40.856 seeing probably still the successional changes from when the dam was first 01:00:40.889 --> 01:00:47.416 put in place and then flows got stabilized back in the early nineties and 01:00:47.449 --> 01:00:53.856 where that goes. I don't know, you know, the other thing that I've seen is 01:00:53.889 --> 01:00:58.546 the removal of a lot of the big willows because again, when the flows 01:00:58.579 --> 01:01:03.856 stabilize, I think the beaver population has increased and those love to 01:01:03.889 --> 01:01:08.376 topple the trees from what they love chewing on. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like 01:01:08.409 --> 01:01:12.456 they eat them, they just, I think like to see them fall. So you know, 01:01:12.489 --> 01:01:15.537 that's some more stuff that now is coming back to trying to do 01:01:15.570 --> 01:01:21.635 revegetation work down there to re establish some of those. Um Do you 01:01:21.668 --> 01:01:27.686 think the adaptive management process, this commitment to multi 01:01:27.719 --> 01:01:34.256 stakeholder multi-agency, collaborative decision making is a good 01:01:34.289 --> 01:01:40.217 institution for trying to figure these things out? Like what desired 01:01:40.250 --> 01:01:46.217 future conditions do we want? What what resources should we prioritize? Is 01:01:46.250 --> 01:01:50.956 it on the one hand, some people might say it's too complex and messy and 01:01:50.989 --> 01:01:55.416 democratic and inefficient and other, on the other hand, other people 01:01:55.449 --> 01:02:00.655 might say, no, we don't want, you know, one agency or one powerful 01:02:00.688 --> 01:02:04.537 interest to be able to dominate decision making. We need a level playing 01:02:04.570 --> 01:02:08.175 field and we need people to talk to each other and develop relationships. 01:02:08.208 --> 01:02:13.626 Where do you stand on that process and its ability to actually solve 01:02:13.659 --> 01:02:17.736 these longer term deeper problems about figuring out what it is that we 01:02:17.769 --> 01:02:23.675 want and how to manage to try to get those things? I mean, I think it's 01:02:23.708 --> 01:02:26.577 one of the better 01:02:26.610 --> 01:02:33.936 approaches for just avoiding lots of litigation for trying to manage 01:02:33.969 --> 01:02:39.046 resources. It's been, 01:02:39.079 --> 01:02:42.497 I think a mixed 01:02:42.530 --> 01:02:44.537 thanks. 01:02:44.570 --> 01:02:49.425 Its success has been mixed in this program and this from what I understand 01:02:49.458 --> 01:02:55.376 is one of the better programs in doing it. Um And for a number of reasons 01:02:55.409 --> 01:02:58.595 as far as developing 01:02:58.628 --> 01:03:04.276 some of the conditions that are desired, 01:03:04.309 --> 01:03:09.796 I don't think adaptive management is necessarily the best way to do that. 01:03:09.829 --> 01:03:17.829 I think it's a good way to try to balance some of the issues. And I think 01:03:18.300 --> 01:03:23.546 direct research and some of those sort of things. But I think in this 01:03:23.579 --> 01:03:26.126 situation, 01:03:26.159 --> 01:03:30.675 it's led to some problems 01:03:30.708 --> 01:03:37.416 and I think it's given in a way stakeholders 01:03:37.449 --> 01:03:42.816 a belief that they have more power maybe than they do. Um May I say that 01:03:42.849 --> 01:03:48.385 for a number of different reasons, the, 01:03:48.418 --> 01:03:51.717 you know, 11 thing 01:03:51.750 --> 01:03:57.425 is I'm not sure if we've effectively done adaptive management in the way 01:03:57.458 --> 01:04:03.017 it was kind of originally conceived, this program 01:04:03.050 --> 01:04:09.727 was beginning, right, during when Adaptive management was kind of still an 01:04:09.760 --> 01:04:14.385 academic sort of exercise and looking at ways to do that type of 01:04:14.418 --> 01:04:16.986 management. 01:04:17.019 --> 01:04:22.256 And so, you know, some of the early meetings we have, what was his name? 01:04:22.289 --> 01:04:29.706 Kylie, I think is one of the people who is an early, 01:04:29.739 --> 01:04:35.566 right, Kylie from the Pacific Northwest and Carl Walter. Carl Walter is 01:04:35.599 --> 01:04:42.537 coming in last month. Yeah. And so one of the things that happened 01:04:42.570 --> 01:04:48.296 is when the record of decision occurred and we put a series of changes 01:04:48.329 --> 01:04:55.695 into effect. It was not clear what the scope of the adaptive management 01:04:55.728 --> 01:04:59.655 was to operate on. 01:04:59.688 --> 01:05:05.037 Some people you know, and traditionally, I ask you come out with some 01:05:05.070 --> 01:05:10.396 something you're going to do and then you go ahead and do it. 01:05:10.429 --> 01:05:14.986 The flows that were put in place, I think were viewed as being pretty 01:05:15.019 --> 01:05:18.606 conservative. 01:05:18.639 --> 01:05:26.639 And so the question then became, is with the monitoring and research was 01:05:26.849 --> 01:05:34.849 that to guide whether the flow other parameters could be expanded or was 01:05:35.840 --> 01:05:41.037 that the limiting box in adaptive management? Only tweak things inside 01:05:41.070 --> 01:05:47.195 inside the box. And that I don't think was ever agreed upon. My thought 01:05:47.228 --> 01:05:52.256 initially was adaptive management was to change the size of the box as we 01:05:52.289 --> 01:05:57.217 learned because we had taken a pretty conservative approach to the flows 01:05:57.250 --> 01:06:00.695 and the restrictions and it might be that we could expand them or do 01:06:00.728 --> 01:06:05.416 different things as we learn more. A lot of people said, no, the box is 01:06:05.449 --> 01:06:10.236 the box, you can do whatever you want within it, but to go outside of that 01:06:10.269 --> 01:06:15.017 required a new EIS. And so, 01:06:15.050 --> 01:06:19.236 you know, in that sense, it wasn't clear whether tweaking things within 01:06:19.269 --> 01:06:23.376 the box is adaptive management or not. Certainly, it was adaptively 01:06:23.409 --> 01:06:27.486 managing the research that was going on those kind of things. And as new 01:06:27.519 --> 01:06:32.425 things, inputs to the system came in changed the kind of research what 01:06:32.458 --> 01:06:38.217 needed done. So I think it's, it was a the collaborative approach was 01:06:38.250 --> 01:06:41.425 certainly the best way to try to manage that kind of thing. Look at 01:06:41.458 --> 01:06:45.635 priorities, look at those sort of things. But as far as the actual 01:06:45.668 --> 01:06:49.467 management, I don't know whether that's the best and then to get back to 01:06:49.500 --> 01:06:54.747 the broader question of, is it the way to manage the system? One of the 01:06:54.780 --> 01:06:58.066 things when 01:06:58.099 --> 01:07:02.655 we started was the park really didn't have a good general management plan 01:07:02.688 --> 01:07:07.175 for what they wanted as the land manager for many of the resources down 01:07:07.208 --> 01:07:12.557 there. And so that gave the stakeholders, I think this perception that 01:07:12.590 --> 01:07:19.747 they could develop a lot of these resource goals instead of the park, 01:07:19.780 --> 01:07:24.776 which has led to some issues too. The Park service probably felt that was 01:07:24.809 --> 01:07:30.626 stepping on their toes. And so, but because a lot of these resources 01:07:30.659 --> 01:07:34.336 didn't have anything explicit, that's where we got into the DF CS and all 01:07:34.369 --> 01:07:39.486 that kind of stuff. Had there been very explicit, desired future 01:07:39.519 --> 01:07:47.519 conditions. So um had the park had really explicit 01:07:48.199 --> 01:07:52.006 conditions that they were managing for, for all these resources. I think 01:07:52.039 --> 01:07:58.336 it would have limited some of that more management. 01:07:58.369 --> 01:08:04.546 I guess feeling that the stakeholders felt they should be able to do, it 01:08:04.579 --> 01:08:09.436 would have been driven by more of this is what's there? Are we meeting it 01:08:09.469 --> 01:08:14.126 ? You know, you look at the hydropower, I mean, people aren't getting in 01:08:14.159 --> 01:08:17.675 there and saying no wa a should change your contracting this way to do 01:08:17.708 --> 01:08:21.967 contracts or you know, those kind of things, they're not telling the fish 01:08:22.000 --> 01:08:28.095 and wildlife what they should be writing for their biological opinion, but 01:08:28.128 --> 01:08:33.571 they are saying what a lot of the resources should be. So, you know, in 01:08:33.604 --> 01:08:37.321 that sense, I don't think adaptive management is the best way to manage 01:08:37.354 --> 01:08:42.010 for an individual agencies thing. I think they need to take the lead and 01:08:42.043 --> 01:08:46.121 what those priorities are and then use the adaptive management to look at 01:08:46.154 --> 01:08:54.154 how that's being achieved, ways of better meeting those goals. 01:08:55.029 --> 01:08:59.906 So I think it's a mixed thing. Yeah, I mean, it's one thing if it's true 01:08:59.939 --> 01:09:03.675 co management, you know, and the tribes, that's one of the things the 01:09:03.708 --> 01:09:07.366 tribes have been arguing for because the Western management goals and 01:09:07.399 --> 01:09:11.885 tribal for the same resources are so often disparate about how they 01:09:11.918 --> 01:09:19.918 approach it that without a true co management sort of approach one side or 01:09:20.408 --> 01:09:24.165 the other is the one that makes the decision. And so the other side feels 01:09:24.198 --> 01:09:29.514 they're being shorted on it if it's a different decision, you know, it's a 01:09:29.547 --> 01:09:34.295 power, power issue. Ultimately, 01:09:34.328 --> 01:09:41.715 what uh reflect a little bit on the power dynamics um in the Adaptive 01:09:41.748 --> 01:09:45.844 Management Program in the 28 years that you were involved, who have been 01:09:45.877 --> 01:09:51.545 the more powerful, influential players and why and what, what's the 01:09:51.578 --> 01:09:57.357 outcome of that? Most? Certainly, I mean, the bureau of reclamation is 01:09:57.390 --> 01:10:03.086 obviously the principal driver. Um 01:10:03.119 --> 01:10:07.506 They operate the dam it their program, I mean, most of the comp no, again 01:10:07.539 --> 01:10:13.175 , so much of the program is driven by the compliance needs of the Bureau 01:10:13.208 --> 01:10:16.906 of Reclamation for endangered species and to a lesser extent cultural 01:10:16.939 --> 01:10:20.836 resources, those are the first things that tend to get met through the 01:10:20.869 --> 01:10:25.845 science. That's what needs to be done 01:10:25.878 --> 01:10:29.166 and is the 01:10:29.199 --> 01:10:33.116 essentially the coordinating agency for everything, you know, they can 01:10:33.149 --> 01:10:38.135 sort of lead by developing agendas and those kind of things. And, you know 01:10:38.168 --> 01:10:41.866 , certainly during the original EIS, 01:10:41.899 --> 01:10:48.487 you found out pretty quickly that whoever got whatever language down first 01:10:48.520 --> 01:10:52.987 on paper, for everyone to comment on the first straw man that tends to 01:10:53.020 --> 01:10:58.286 direct kind of where you go, you know, and the Bureau of Reclamation. I 01:10:58.319 --> 01:11:02.817 mean, you know, it's, it is their program in a large sense. So it makes 01:11:02.850 --> 01:11:08.476 sense that they would drive things, you know, power, I think, 01:11:08.509 --> 01:11:13.226 you know, is one of the stronger stakeholders. But I think, you know, by 01:11:13.259 --> 01:11:17.076 and large all the stakeholders 01:11:17.109 --> 01:11:22.906 have been pretty well incorporated into the process. You know, they don't 01:11:22.939 --> 01:11:27.286 always get their way certainly. But I think they've all been heard the 01:11:27.319 --> 01:11:35.319 environmental groups where always at the table. And, you know, I think 01:11:35.708 --> 01:11:39.946 they were the first ones who felt that their needs weren't being met when 01:11:39.979 --> 01:11:45.586 Grand Canyon Trust pulled out and had a lawsuit. 01:11:45.619 --> 01:11:52.456 It must have been in the late nineties after the record of decisions. And 01:11:52.489 --> 01:11:57.836 they had been involved throughout the environmental studies period and 01:11:57.869 --> 01:12:02.055 through the EIS and the Rod and then they pulled out a few years later, 01:12:02.088 --> 01:12:05.555 they 01:12:05.588 --> 01:12:11.876 they felt that it was probably not appropriate for them to be involved in 01:12:11.909 --> 01:12:19.909 litigation and sitting on the committee. You know, so, but 01:12:20.060 --> 01:12:24.217 they decided they might get more of what they wanted uh through an 01:12:24.250 --> 01:12:28.506 adversarial relationship than participating as a collaborative. Yeah, I 01:12:28.539 --> 01:12:32.265 guess they felt that, you know, their collaboration wasn't getting to 01:12:32.298 --> 01:12:36.456 where they wanted it to be. Um We're gonna try to do an interview with 01:12:36.489 --> 01:12:40.217 somebody from Grand to get that perspective. Yeah, Rick Johnson would be a 01:12:40.250 --> 01:12:48.250 good one. Or Nikolai or who Nikolai, uh, what's his name? Uh, think of it 01:12:48.659 --> 01:12:56.467 in a second. It was Nikolai Lash, but he changed his name. Um, Ramsey or 01:12:56.500 --> 01:13:01.937 maybe a one from Ramsey to Ash. But either of them Rick Johnson. Yeah, 01:13:01.970 --> 01:13:09.006 Rick's on my list. Ok. Um, other, I mean, I think one of the groups that 01:13:09.039 --> 01:13:12.425 has been 01:13:12.458 --> 01:13:18.296 surprisingly powerful behind the scenes in a way and possibly because it's 01:13:18.329 --> 01:13:23.616 sort of a coalition. It is the, the fishing, the recre recreational 01:13:23.649 --> 01:13:29.536 fishery, you know, they, they tend to be pretty vocal. I mean, they get 01:13:29.569 --> 01:13:35.246 their position out, but it's been one of those and Arizona game and fish 01:13:35.279 --> 01:13:41.857 obviously is very supportive allied of the trout fishery, but it's been 01:13:41.890 --> 01:13:46.956 one of those from a logical standpoint that just never makes sense. You 01:13:46.989 --> 01:13:52.086 know, in one sense, trout are being blamed is the bane to the Humpback 01:13:52.119 --> 01:13:58.759 chub. And yet there's no way they'll get rid of the trout fishery up there. 01:13:58.878 --> 01:14:00.878 You know, it's just one of those things where on the face if you look at 01:14:03.239 --> 01:14:07.956 it, it's like, why are you trying to maintain a trout fishery at one part 01:14:07.989 --> 01:14:14.126 of the river? There's no barriers between that part and the part with the 01:14:14.159 --> 01:14:19.527 endangered fish that's being managed almost diametrically opposed. And so 01:14:19.560 --> 01:14:23.906 it's just like, you know, and it's an artificial fishery, you know, 01:14:23.939 --> 01:14:28.777 they're non native fish. It was put there as a trout fishery as a 01:14:28.810 --> 01:14:32.256 management choice through most of the Grand Canyon. They're trying to 01:14:32.289 --> 01:14:39.067 remove trout, non native fish. But yet we have this one place where we're 01:14:39.100 --> 01:14:46.467 going to insist that they remain and everyone involved in, you know, 01:14:46.500 --> 01:14:51.296 whether it's fish and wildlife game and fish or the trout fishermen, you 01:14:51.329 --> 01:14:55.987 know, it's like, yes, this is a given, this is gonna be here and, you know 01:14:56.020 --> 01:14:58.555 , it's just one of those weird situations where it's a little 01:14:58.588 --> 01:15:03.857 schizophrenic looking, but everyone kind of lives with it. But clearly 01:15:03.890 --> 01:15:08.897 there's some power somewhere in there. Have you seen shifts? And, uh, you 01:15:08.930 --> 01:15:12.616 know, a number of people, like you have talked about how some of the 01:15:12.649 --> 01:15:17.805 stakeholders ally together. When we interviewed Lee Kuan Mua, he was 01:15:17.838 --> 01:15:23.385 talking about a tribal caucus, how the tribe's representatives often meet 01:15:23.418 --> 01:15:28.281 the day before Hewick meets and sort of go over the issues. Um, what other 01:15:28.314 --> 01:15:31.692 interest groups? You just mentioned one, the, the commercial and, and 01:15:31.725 --> 01:15:36.371 recreation on the recreational fishery, not commercial fishery. Um, what 01:15:36.404 --> 01:15:43.251 other sort of caucuses have developed and how has their participation 01:15:43.284 --> 01:15:47.461 changed over time? Or relationships between caucuses changed over time in 01:15:47.494 --> 01:15:50.857 your mind? 01:15:50.890 --> 01:15:58.476 Well, certainly, I mean, there's some long standing, I guess informal 01:15:58.509 --> 01:16:05.406 groups that tend to lie together, you know, certainly 01:16:05.439 --> 01:16:12.506 park service tribes, environmental groups tended to come in sort of in the 01:16:12.539 --> 01:16:20.539 same. Um, the whitewater rafting, those are all kind of allied together. 01:16:21.569 --> 01:16:27.095 Generally, the basin states were together and often with the power 01:16:27.128 --> 01:16:31.246 interests. Um, 01:16:31.279 --> 01:16:36.515 you know what, this is a little tangent, but one of the things that I 01:16:36.548 --> 01:16:43.996 think has been successful in this program and 01:16:44.029 --> 01:16:50.536 I think allowed people to try to do things cooperatively is it's always 01:16:50.569 --> 01:16:56.487 been somewhat of a consensus program. And so 01:16:56.520 --> 01:17:01.726 as we were moving along, it got more and more into kind of a caucus kind 01:17:01.759 --> 01:17:05.376 of situation because of voting 01:17:05.409 --> 01:17:11.976 decisions were being done by voting. And so 01:17:12.009 --> 01:17:17.036 it became trying to line up people on your side of issues. So you had the 01:17:17.069 --> 01:17:21.206 votes rather than to try to come to an agreement on an issue and 01:17:21.239 --> 01:17:26.357 compromise. And 01:17:26.390 --> 01:17:32.135 we got going down that path of voting. And that's when the Department of 01:17:32.168 --> 01:17:36.086 Interior Agencies kind of pulled out and said, no, we shouldn't be voting 01:17:36.119 --> 01:17:40.536 members if we're going down that road. 01:17:40.569 --> 01:17:42.555 And 01:17:42.588 --> 01:17:47.956 luckily with the Anne Castle 01:17:47.989 --> 01:17:54.626 era, we went back to doing things by consensus if at all possible. And so 01:17:54.659 --> 01:17:58.345 it got rid of that need to caucus and get groups together and form 01:17:58.378 --> 01:18:02.666 coalitions to try to outvote the other side, which I think has been really 01:18:02.699 --> 01:18:08.666 beneficial because I think it has allowed the groups to be, 01:18:08.699 --> 01:18:14.376 to essentially not stake out territory and not give on it and allow people 01:18:14.409 --> 01:18:19.805 to, you know, is that the voting thing when it's like, well, if we're not 01:18:19.838 --> 01:18:26.345 gonna win, why even go to the meeting, you know, that kind of perception. 01:18:26.378 --> 01:18:33.175 Um, the other kind of caucusing which isn't really caucusing. But the 01:18:33.208 --> 01:18:39.687 before like the AM wig meetings, the do I has their own meetings? So that 01:18:39.720 --> 01:18:43.536 again, they were trying to get all the doi agencies sort of on the same 01:18:43.569 --> 01:18:47.446 page for the Department of Department of Interior because again, one of 01:18:47.479 --> 01:18:51.425 the things I thought was always nice to see, but the Department of 01:18:51.458 --> 01:18:56.777 Interior wasn't so keen on, it apparently was often different Department 01:18:56.810 --> 01:18:59.567 of Interior agencies 01:18:59.600 --> 01:19:04.357 didn't see things, eye to eye. And I always enjoyed the discussions to see 01:19:04.390 --> 01:19:09.746 why they didn't agree on things, you know, fish and wildlife might, may or 01:19:09.779 --> 01:19:17.187 may not see things the same way as the park service who almost definitely 01:19:17.220 --> 01:19:21.196 didn't see things the way the bureau of reclamation did. But those 01:19:21.229 --> 01:19:25.336 discussions I thought were always interesting, but I guess they decided it 01:19:25.369 --> 01:19:29.305 wasn't appropriate to air the dirty laundry in a public forum. So the 01:19:29.338 --> 01:19:35.305 Department of Interior started having meetings before AM wig didn't make 01:19:35.338 --> 01:19:38.226 sure they were kind of all on the same page. And since they weren't voting 01:19:38.259 --> 01:19:44.277 , it didn't matter during the era of voting, you could have again, park 01:19:44.310 --> 01:19:50.515 service fish and wildlife might get together with the tribes as a group, 01:19:50.548 --> 01:19:55.256 whereas Bureau of reclamation might go with Western area power or 01:19:55.289 --> 01:19:59.357 something as a group. And so they'd be voting against each other, which 01:19:59.390 --> 01:20:03.737 was always kind of weird. But when, when, uh, what, what were the dates in 01:20:03.770 --> 01:20:08.357 which you feel it was more based on consensus and then what was the date 01:20:08.390 --> 01:20:16.390 range in which it went to caucuses and voting and blocks? And then, 01:20:16.409 --> 01:20:20.527 I don't know if there were any dates for it actually to, I mean, there was 01:20:20.560 --> 01:20:28.277 always a voting ability during twig and am wig. Um, 01:20:28.310 --> 01:20:33.015 but it seemed like it got more and more formal probably during the early 01:20:33.048 --> 01:20:38.156 two thousands. I don't know, it just kind of slowly crept in until it got 01:20:38.189 --> 01:20:41.916 to the point where all of a sudden the vote became more important than the 01:20:41.949 --> 01:20:48.416 issue in a sense. Um, and 01:20:48.449 --> 01:20:53.687 I don't remember the exact date as when an castle was the secretary's 01:20:53.720 --> 01:20:59.416 designee that we really formally tried to go back to consensus, you know, 01:20:59.449 --> 01:21:05.345 and I'm sure that Mary Horton probably has the exact date when that got 01:21:05.378 --> 01:21:12.777 passed. But, and, but the operating procedures I think, tried to make it a 01:21:12.810 --> 01:21:18.406 consensus process which I think is good. Um, and again, you know, this is 01:21:18.439 --> 01:21:23.675 an advisory committee. So, right, ultimately, what was happening, makes 01:21:23.708 --> 01:21:27.126 recommendations to the Secretary of Interior. And so what was happening is 01:21:27.159 --> 01:21:31.256 you'd end up with a split vote, so you'd have the majority and then you'd 01:21:31.289 --> 01:21:36.796 have a minority report also written. So it just in a way, didn't make 01:21:36.829 --> 01:21:42.296 sense because the same discussions were contained within the record anyway. 01:21:42.329 --> 01:21:46.696 And at least with Anne Castle, she was very involved in the process, took 01:21:46.729 --> 01:21:51.446 a large interest in it. And so she could report those discussions back to 01:21:51.479 --> 01:21:57.967 the secretary too. And so everyone was being heard anyway. You know, and 01:21:58.000 --> 01:22:03.996 it may be when that voting process is getting more and more formal. That 01:22:04.029 --> 01:22:09.607 may have been when Grand Canyon trust pulled out too because, 01:22:09.640 --> 01:22:13.996 you know, if you end up on the losing side of the vote too long, it makes 01:22:14.029 --> 01:22:20.357 sense rather than writing, uh, minority position, just have your lawyer 01:22:20.390 --> 01:22:26.385 write that position instead, you know. So, but yeah, I mean, I think going 01:22:26.418 --> 01:22:32.076 back to a consensus makes it much more collegial and I think we can talk 01:22:32.109 --> 01:22:36.576 the issues out a lot better than when it didn't matter. You just lined up 01:22:36.609 --> 01:22:41.416 your votes and went for it. Hm. Interesting. 01:22:41.449 --> 01:22:47.246 Um, any particular events that happened during your time involved that you 01:22:47.279 --> 01:22:54.326 thought were sort of marked a significant change in the way people 01:22:54.359 --> 01:22:58.487 approach things or the issues that were addressed? 01:22:58.520 --> 01:23:04.756 Um, well, I think certainly the shift to decide we needed to do high flows 01:23:04.789 --> 01:23:07.845 was, 01:23:07.878 --> 01:23:14.487 you know, it wasn't a huge change in, I think, thought process. But I 01:23:14.520 --> 01:23:20.696 think just, you know, as far as actual and adaptive management sort of 01:23:20.729 --> 01:23:27.166 thing, that was really the first kind of big experiment in, in that we're 01:23:27.199 --> 01:23:33.336 going to go outside of the normal operations of the dam and do something 01:23:33.369 --> 01:23:40.265 specific, have a lot of science and monitoring to understand 01:23:40.298 --> 01:23:43.897 if it was doing what we thought it might be doing and to track the outcome 01:23:43.930 --> 01:23:50.366 of it, you know, there were some other experiments similar to that, you 01:23:50.399 --> 01:23:53.845 know, the low steady flows and some of those to address some of the other 01:23:53.878 --> 01:23:58.595 earlier questions about what might be best for the native fish. Were those 01:23:58.628 --> 01:24:02.737 experiments implemented or just talked about? No, they were implemented. 01:24:02.770 --> 01:24:06.166 What is it below 01:24:06.199 --> 01:24:08.996 seasonally adjusted, low steady flow or something? I'm trying to remember 01:24:09.029 --> 01:24:11.967 what they called LSSF 01:24:12.000 --> 01:24:18.206 most steady, low seasonal steady flow. Something I don't know too many 01:24:18.239 --> 01:24:24.796 acronyms can't keep up with all of them. Um 01:24:24.829 --> 01:24:28.147 What other things, I mean, a lot of things tended to be somewhat 01:24:28.180 --> 01:24:32.897 incremental uh um 01:24:32.930 --> 01:24:37.246 which is probably good in adaptive management program. You know, I think 01:24:37.279 --> 01:24:41.175 certainly 01:24:41.208 --> 01:24:48.626 the recognition that there's an awful lot of outside influences too to do 01:24:48.659 --> 01:24:53.416 the whole thing is just a formal experiment which again, I think is 01:24:53.449 --> 01:24:57.336 looking at some of the adaptive management, it's recognizing you can't 01:24:57.369 --> 01:25:05.175 control all the, all the inputs to the experiment, that some stuff, you 01:25:05.208 --> 01:25:13.208 just have to sort of ongoing experiment and you just got to monitor it. Um 01:25:15.048 --> 01:25:20.027 I think probably one of the 01:25:20.060 --> 01:25:25.036 biggest changes is just the shift that we're seeing to a native fishery 01:25:25.069 --> 01:25:30.937 down there and unfortunately not knowing 100% why that's happening. You 01:25:30.970 --> 01:25:34.666 know, I think that's something that's gonna be a focus probably in the 01:25:34.699 --> 01:25:40.805 next 10 years or so. The other thing that I think kind of an interesting 01:25:40.838 --> 01:25:46.135 unknown as why we still have a native fishery at all because in most other 01:25:46.168 --> 01:25:52.759 places where you have as big sources of non natives all around the system. 01:25:52.779 --> 01:25:54.779 You know, they immediately get replaced. The non native take over fast 01:25:58.979 --> 01:26:05.536 when this program was kind of early on the Yampa River was a primarily a 01:26:05.569 --> 01:26:12.416 native fish river and it just went overnight. I mean, it's now non native 01:26:12.449 --> 01:26:19.706 and it happened fast. Why the LCR persists as a refugia in a sense for 01:26:19.739 --> 01:26:24.925 Humpback chub and hasn't been invaded, given that it's warm water, there's 01:26:24.958 --> 01:26:28.666 bass around, there's other warm water, non natives, but they've just never 01:26:28.699 --> 01:26:34.256 gotten a foothold. And the same with most of the river, 01:26:34.289 --> 01:26:39.446 there's been lots of other non natives in there, but they've just never 01:26:39.479 --> 01:26:42.876 completely replaced the native species. So, you know, that's one of those 01:26:42.909 --> 01:26:50.067 big questions I think. And certainly it's a focus of concern for going 01:26:50.100 --> 01:26:55.206 into the future. That's why the park is doing a non native aquatic species. 01:26:55.239 --> 01:26:59.476 E A is to figure out what to do when something shows up that is going to 01:26:59.509 --> 01:27:03.015 spread rapidly. 01:27:03.048 --> 01:27:09.826 That reminds me that one of the reasons that people like Carl Walters and 01:27:09.859 --> 01:27:16.067 Kylie came up with the science of adaptive management is the recognition 01:27:16.100 --> 01:27:21.987 of uncertainty and climate change is another one of those things that we 01:27:22.020 --> 01:27:26.746 know it's happening, but we're uncertain about, you know, what the effects 01:27:26.779 --> 01:27:30.996 exactly the effects are going to be. And that recognition of the 01:27:31.029 --> 01:27:36.567 tremendous uncertainty of ecological responses to, you know, to a dam or 01:27:36.600 --> 01:27:41.906 to climate change is the rationale for coming up with this idea of 01:27:41.939 --> 01:27:47.217 adaptive management. Do you think, uh how do you think the Glen Canyon Dam 01:27:47.250 --> 01:27:53.635 Adaptive Management Program has done in recognizing embracing and dealing 01:27:53.668 --> 01:27:57.076 with uncertainty? 01:27:57.109 --> 01:28:02.326 Um 01:28:02.359 --> 01:28:05.897 I think it's certainly 01:28:05.930 --> 01:28:12.296 recognizes it and, you know, it's, I think a lot of the science uh either 01:28:12.329 --> 01:28:20.329 explicitly or implicitly recognizes that it's there, but I think we still 01:28:21.619 --> 01:28:26.706 try to address the system 01:28:26.739 --> 01:28:32.786 too much in, I guess, a traditional Western scientific approach. 01:28:32.819 --> 01:28:35.496 And 01:28:35.529 --> 01:28:39.726 it's, you know, I think one of the, 01:28:39.759 --> 01:28:43.385 it's probably a human nature issue, but, you know, the scientists working 01:28:43.418 --> 01:28:49.805 on things want to address research that they actually live to see the end 01:28:49.838 --> 01:28:55.476 of and can write up. And so even though, you know, some of the stuff 01:28:55.509 --> 01:29:00.326 hopefully will be long term and maybe we can't answer it for 20 years, a 01:29:00.359 --> 01:29:06.397 lot of the research still has to be 2 to 5 years sort of time frames. And 01:29:06.430 --> 01:29:11.366 , you know, this is an area that I think 01:29:11.399 --> 01:29:18.717 the tribes, the tribal involvement, I think has been 01:29:18.750 --> 01:29:24.345 one of the, they've been incorporated and involved better than in a lot of 01:29:24.378 --> 01:29:28.616 programs. But on the other hand, 01:29:28.649 --> 01:29:33.527 I think they fundamentally look at the system in a way that would be 01:29:33.560 --> 01:29:39.897 helpful for the Western scientists to look at it and it's getting again 01:29:39.930 --> 01:29:45.305 into that uncertainty sort of area. I mean, the tribes have the time to 01:29:45.338 --> 01:29:51.576 that their traditional knowledge is seen climate change, you know how it's 01:29:51.609 --> 01:29:57.055 recorded, how well it's recorded in oral history or other tribal knowledge 01:29:57.088 --> 01:30:02.416 is, you know, hard to say and the integration of that into Western science 01:30:02.449 --> 01:30:08.446 is poor, not just here but anywhere, it's not something that's easy to do. 01:30:08.479 --> 01:30:13.996 But it also, I think kind of underpins the tribal 01:30:14.029 --> 01:30:19.336 view of a more hands off approach because they're looking at that long 01:30:19.369 --> 01:30:24.376 time depth and things change, we can't foresee everything that's going to 01:30:24.409 --> 01:30:29.737 happen, can't control and can't control it. And so, you know, going back 01:30:29.770 --> 01:30:36.836 to like the rainbow trout, the tribes basically said, you know, you 01:30:36.869 --> 01:30:39.897 shouldn't be going in there and trying to kill them all off. It's not 01:30:39.930 --> 01:30:43.305 their fault, they're there, you put them there, they're a living entity in 01:30:43.338 --> 01:30:49.067 the system. Furthermore, they seem to be coexisting with the child. They 01:30:49.100 --> 01:30:54.147 may be somewhat limiting but they haven't wiped them out and it's better 01:30:54.180 --> 01:31:00.476 to let nature do what nature does, which in a sense, you know, I think is 01:31:00.509 --> 01:31:06.135 them recognizing that people can't control everything. And I think that is 01:31:06.168 --> 01:31:11.666 born of that really long time depth, you know, very environmentally 01:31:11.699 --> 01:31:16.616 changeable area. I mean, yeah, in the last 100 years it's not done a lot 01:31:16.649 --> 01:31:20.376 of things, but in the last 2000 years, it has, you know, we had the whole 01:31:20.409 --> 01:31:25.817 drought in the 12,000 or 12 hundreds and stuff, you know, so some of that 01:31:25.850 --> 01:31:29.726 , I think just gets into their over philos overall philosophy of land 01:31:29.759 --> 01:31:36.817 management. And so I think they view the more active management that 01:31:36.850 --> 01:31:43.756 western land managers want to do as being too much. And so that's kind of 01:31:43.789 --> 01:31:49.286 a roundabout way of saying, but, you know, the uncertainty, I think we try 01:31:49.319 --> 01:31:54.187 to control more of it than we actually can and especially when we get into 01:31:54.220 --> 01:31:59.067 decal time periods are longer and certainly climate change is operating 01:31:59.100 --> 01:32:03.076 over that. You know, you look at the changes in what's going on in the 01:32:03.109 --> 01:32:08.456 riparian system. We may still be just seeing the ripple effect from the 01:32:08.489 --> 01:32:13.487 fact there's a dam there, not by the daily changes in what the operations 01:32:13.520 --> 01:32:19.095 are, you know, it may be 5060 years before you get some kind of 01:32:19.128 --> 01:32:25.385 equilibrium of what that downstream riparian habitat looks like with a dam 01:32:25.418 --> 01:32:29.586 upstream. You know. And so there is some of that, I think that the 01:32:29.619 --> 01:32:34.406 traditional tribal knowledge could be used for adaptive management to 01:32:34.439 --> 01:32:40.897 recognize what the limitations are. 01:32:40.930 --> 01:32:45.737 Let's, uh, uh, I'd like to get some advice from you of, uh, additional 01:32:45.770 --> 01:32:50.046 people that you think we ought to consider interviewing. 01:32:50.079 --> 01:32:54.467 Um, you mentioned Rick Johnson with the Grand Canyon Trust, but, uh, who 01:32:54.500 --> 01:32:57.095 else? I wanna make sure nobody falls through the cracks. It would be 01:32:57.128 --> 01:33:02.706 really important, you know, I'm sure Ted Mellis has been, he's been 01:33:02.739 --> 01:33:07.987 mentioned, you know, because he's was involved a lot early. Um You 01:33:08.020 --> 01:33:12.607 probably talked to Dave Garrett and some of those people trying to think 01:33:12.640 --> 01:33:16.576 um whether some of the other 01:33:16.609 --> 01:33:20.527 uh other directors of GCMRC, 01:33:20.560 --> 01:33:28.560 um Jack Schmidt, Schmidt. Yeah, he was in town yesterday two days ago. Um 01:33:29.958 --> 01:33:35.906 Who else? 01:33:35.939 --> 01:33:40.925 Clayton Palmer? You probably have on your list. I'm not sure who is 01:33:40.958 --> 01:33:48.958 Western area power. Ok. Yeah. Um We need to interview somebody from W A 01:33:49.890 --> 01:33:57.890 and he'd be a good one. Uh Randy Peterson probably has some of this. How 01:33:58.569 --> 01:34:02.166 about tribal wraps? 01:34:02.199 --> 01:34:06.906 Um You have Kurt, I'm sure Danowski, we talked to Kurt last month. That 01:34:06.939 --> 01:34:13.456 was a good interview. Let's see, Loretta Jackson. She's now on the list. 01:34:13.489 --> 01:34:19.015 We talked to Kerrie Christensen and uh we're gonna try to get Loretta, ok. 01:34:19.048 --> 01:34:24.866 Um Maybe Clay Bravo, that's a new name, Clay Bravo or Don Bay are both 01:34:24.899 --> 01:34:27.076 together, 01:34:27.109 --> 01:34:35.109 Don Bray Bay Bay. They're both with Wy or were during the original EIS. 01:34:36.168 --> 01:34:42.586 So they were around at the beginning like your time frame too. Who other 01:34:42.619 --> 01:34:46.246 people? Um 01:34:46.279 --> 01:34:48.925 A and downer 01:34:48.958 --> 01:34:51.706 it was Navajo. 01:34:51.739 --> 01:34:57.046 Yeah, Lee Kuan Wasima mentioned him earlier. How do you spell his last 01:34:57.079 --> 01:35:00.055 name down? 01:35:00.088 --> 01:35:04.687 Er, and I believe he's still the Hawaii sho. 01:35:04.720 --> 01:35:10.385 Yeah. Sho in Hawaii. Yeah. Yeah. I think we cracked a joke about going to 01:35:10.418 --> 01:35:15.746 Hawaii to interview him. Uh but he worked for the Hopi Cultural Navajo, 01:35:15.779 --> 01:35:21.777 Navajo Historic Preservation department. He basically started it and was 01:35:21.810 --> 01:35:29.385 involved. Um maybe Richard Bey if you want early stuff again, he did all 01:35:29.418 --> 01:35:36.135 the early work for Navajo, the ethnographic work and stuff. Him and Alexa 01:35:36.168 --> 01:35:39.305 Roberts, 01:35:39.338 --> 01:35:46.836 Alexa Roberts. Jeez W Park Service had just retired and they didn't uh 01:35:46.869 --> 01:35:51.786 work for the Navajo, they did the Navajo ethnographic work at the same 01:35:51.819 --> 01:35:56.095 time period. A bunch of these people kind of all left when the a 01:35:56.128 --> 01:35:59.487 management program started, they were involved in the lead up to it and 01:35:59.520 --> 01:36:06.376 the development of the EIS and moved on. How about documents uh important 01:36:06.409 --> 01:36:11.956 uh documents that uh were produced that, you know, we want to make sure 01:36:11.989 --> 01:36:19.397 are highlighted in the administrative history. 01:36:19.430 --> 01:36:26.446 Mhm. 01:36:26.479 --> 01:36:30.527 I don't know if there's anything specifically that wouldn't be just kind 01:36:30.560 --> 01:36:33.967 of the general, right? 01:36:34.000 --> 01:36:37.076 Yeah, I mean, all the documents I can think of are things that were never 01:36:37.109 --> 01:36:41.765 completed. I mean, they're the things that keep getting revisited, you 01:36:41.798 --> 01:36:47.777 know, the hard issues essentially. So like, you know, there's been various 01:36:47.810 --> 01:36:53.437 iterations of core monitoring plans to try to develop something that's 01:36:53.470 --> 01:36:59.796 just, you know, try to change every year, just a long term core monitoring. 01:36:59.829 --> 01:37:07.086 There's been plans that are looking at, you know, desired future 01:37:07.119 --> 01:37:13.576 conditions in one way or another, those kind of management things. Um But 01:37:13.609 --> 01:37:16.967 yeah, none of them are ever completed because those are the hard issues 01:37:17.000 --> 01:37:21.595 that not everyone can agree to or they're agreed to at such a high level 01:37:21.628 --> 01:37:27.956 that you don't necessarily get you where you need to go. 01:37:27.989 --> 01:37:32.576 When was the first round of efforts to identify desired future conditions 01:37:32.609 --> 01:37:36.286 ? Do you remember a time frame? 01:37:36.319 --> 01:37:41.217 Probably in the original EIS is my guess. I mean, we're trying to figure 01:37:41.250 --> 01:37:46.586 out what resources should look like. I mean, certainly there were lots of 01:37:46.619 --> 01:37:51.765 discussions that went on in the drafting of the EIS but among the 01:37:51.798 --> 01:37:57.446 cooperating agencies about what, you know, is there a time period we're 01:37:57.479 --> 01:38:04.635 targeting? Is it a pre dam thing? Is it something else that we don't have 01:38:04.668 --> 01:38:09.546 now? You know, so there were things like, well, the beaches after 1996 we 01:38:09.579 --> 01:38:17.437 should target that is the area, you know, things like that. But 01:38:17.470 --> 01:38:23.067 yeah, I don't think there was ever truly anything agreed to of what that 01:38:23.100 --> 01:38:27.876 should be. Any other hard issues, you mentioned that twice, there are hard 01:38:27.909 --> 01:38:31.576 issues that just have to keep coming back. You've got long term core 01:38:31.609 --> 01:38:34.717 monitoring plans you mentioned and desired future conditions, you 01:38:34.750 --> 01:38:39.916 mentioned. Anything else that is sort of perennially cycles back around 01:38:39.949 --> 01:38:43.607 because it doesn't get resolved 01:38:43.640 --> 01:38:49.135 in and out of the program? What is the scope of the program? 01:38:49.168 --> 01:38:55.256 Um You know, I think that's a little more detailed from the current L temp 01:38:55.289 --> 01:39:01.446 since the L temp is now the program that rod but still, you know, with 01:39:01.479 --> 01:39:06.366 different resources, what is that boundary of your cultural is varied? And 01:39:06.399 --> 01:39:11.546 it depends on what kind of cultural resource it's kind of flexible. Um But 01:39:11.579 --> 01:39:16.946 that's been a long term issue. Funding funding. I was just writing that 01:39:16.979 --> 01:39:24.979 down, you know, there's never enough um 01:39:25.119 --> 01:39:29.946 representation. There doesn't seem to have been much controversy over who 01:39:29.979 --> 01:39:34.046 are the stakeholders. And yeah, I mean, it's a pretty broad scope. I mean 01:39:34.079 --> 01:39:41.187 , we haven't heard of any groups wanting to come in really. And, you know 01:39:41.220 --> 01:39:46.246 , some of that's laid out in the Grand Canyon Protection Act. 01:39:46.279 --> 01:39:51.265 It's not clear necessarily how some of the identified stakeholders select 01:39:51.298 --> 01:39:56.996 , who should represent them primarily within the environmental and 01:39:57.029 --> 01:40:02.437 recreation interests. Um You know, it's the environmental groups have been 01:40:02.470 --> 01:40:09.726 different at different times. Recreation, there's been some trout fishing 01:40:09.759 --> 01:40:15.265 and the Grand Canyon river guides have been the whole time. But 01:40:15.298 --> 01:40:20.836 you know how that's decided, I don't know, but that hasn't been 01:40:20.869 --> 01:40:24.756 controversial. It doesn't seem like it has been, I mean, it doesn't seem 01:40:24.789 --> 01:40:29.107 like it in my interviews anyway. Yeah, I've not really heard much, either 01:40:29.140 --> 01:40:34.555 inside or outside about that being too much of an issue. 01:40:34.588 --> 01:40:42.588 I thought of one other. What was it, 01:40:44.418 --> 01:40:50.027 the inside, outside of the, oh, I guess just what, what the role of the 01:40:50.060 --> 01:40:58.060 program is in relation to whether it's a rec, uh, recovery program for 01:40:58.668 --> 01:41:04.076 endangered species versus just a monitoring, 01:41:04.109 --> 01:41:09.376 you know, reporting sort of program. Because, 01:41:09.409 --> 01:41:16.277 you know, a lot of the stuff that we do ties to some of the what would 01:41:16.310 --> 01:41:23.036 potentially be recovery goals, but some of the commitments are outside of 01:41:23.069 --> 01:41:29.226 the scope of the program, things with refugia, doing stuff with potential 01:41:29.259 --> 01:41:36.647 spills in the LCR, some of the other things that are identified. And so, 01:41:36.680 --> 01:41:41.595 you know, while a huge amount of the funding goes to monitoring and even 01:41:41.628 --> 01:41:48.246 doing stuff for the, the Chubs like trans translocation and stuff, we 01:41:48.279 --> 01:41:54.336 can't do everything that's identified and 01:41:54.369 --> 01:42:00.675 there's, it isn't a recovery program, you know. And so it isn't clear, I 01:42:00.708 --> 01:42:04.456 mean, if 90% of our funding goes to fish, well, should it, would it make 01:42:04.489 --> 01:42:09.135 more sense to just say? Ok, it's a recovery program for the chub you can 01:42:09.168 --> 01:42:13.317 do. Now, your scope is to be able to do everything that's identified to 01:42:13.350 --> 01:42:18.076 meet that, you know, but would you recommend that? Would you like that 01:42:18.109 --> 01:42:21.456 outcome? Um 01:42:21.489 --> 01:42:27.317 At one time, I thought it would almost make sense to separate out a 01:42:27.350 --> 01:42:32.607 program that could be adequately funded to do just that and have this 01:42:32.640 --> 01:42:37.586 program essentially address all the other resources that don't have a law 01:42:37.619 --> 01:42:43.296 that you have to comply with, which might get you more towards the broader 01:42:43.329 --> 01:42:48.885 environment and management of it. Because you know, the ES A stuff and 01:42:48.918 --> 01:42:52.786 cultural has a lot of it. They got to do whether this program exists or 01:42:52.819 --> 01:42:59.576 not. And so that might be a way to focus more emphasis on some of these 01:42:59.609 --> 01:43:05.546 other resources down there. It's remarkable to Jen and I, how many people 01:43:05.579 --> 01:43:12.647 acknowledge that the Adaptive Management program has essentially been for 01:43:12.680 --> 01:43:19.126 its entire stretch about fish and sand. And which is a little surprising 01:43:19.159 --> 01:43:27.159 to me that those have become so overwhelming in influence and focus, 01:43:27.159 --> 01:43:32.317 you know, it's only been 20 some years, 25 years. Uh What do you think the 01:43:32.350 --> 01:43:38.666 next 10 or 20 years, what's going to be the fish and sand or, or added to 01:43:38.699 --> 01:43:42.536 the fish and sand in the next 10 or 20 years or ought to be added as a big 01:43:42.569 --> 01:43:47.156 emphasis. Well, actually, it reminded me of a couple of other things that 01:43:47.189 --> 01:43:52.616 are both long standing issues. But I think maybe relevant for the next 01:43:52.649 --> 01:44:00.246 however long is fish and sand. Two things that have repeatedly come up are 01:44:00.279 --> 01:44:06.446 some kind of sediment augmentation and temperature control device and 01:44:06.479 --> 01:44:11.406 their big ticket things. But, you know, I think one of the things we're 01:44:11.439 --> 01:44:14.385 seeing now with the fish and how well the natives are doing is the 01:44:14.418 --> 01:44:19.756 temperature issue, particularly in the Western Canyon. It's a double edged 01:44:19.789 --> 01:44:25.305 sword. Initially, when temperature control was discussed, it was for 01:44:25.338 --> 01:44:31.256 raising temperature. Now, we may be going into a situation where we may 01:44:31.289 --> 01:44:34.237 want to cool the temperature because we may be creating finally that 01:44:34.270 --> 01:44:39.126 habitat, the warm water, non natives, you know, they can flee out of Lake 01:44:39.159 --> 01:44:44.067 Mead and come upstream do well. So that's one that's been on the table for 01:44:44.100 --> 01:44:52.100 a long time and I think could become a bigger issue in the future. And 01:44:52.409 --> 01:45:00.409 then the the other one is sediment and sediment augmentation. Again, that 01:45:00.619 --> 01:45:05.786 was fairly looked at as trying to get lots of sand in the river for 01:45:05.819 --> 01:45:09.527 beaches, that kind of thing. More recently, it's been looked at as 01:45:09.560 --> 01:45:14.647 turbidity. Turbidity again is a fish management tool making the water more 01:45:14.680 --> 01:45:16.696 turbid 01:45:16.729 --> 01:45:20.476 to try to prevent non natives coming in because that favors the native 01:45:20.509 --> 01:45:26.527 fish because they evolved in turbid. And you know, again, the two 01:45:26.560 --> 01:45:32.345 principal players in the non natives, the two trouts, brown and rainbow 01:45:32.378 --> 01:45:39.527 and turbidity definitely disadvantages rainbows and potentially browns. 01:45:39.560 --> 01:45:47.560 And so that was looked at as one way, but at least for cultural resources 01:45:49.088 --> 01:45:53.456 to do anything with erosion, you need something more than just making the 01:45:53.489 --> 01:45:58.647 water muddy. You have to have a lot of sediment slurry pipelines, whatever. 01:45:58.680 --> 01:46:02.675 So that's another one that I think may come back around in the future is 01:46:02.708 --> 01:46:06.996 something that we need to look at and it may and with the stuff going on 01:46:07.029 --> 01:46:11.576 down in the wall with having too much sediment down, we need a pipeline to 01:46:11.609 --> 01:46:16.226 circulate it back up, push it back up. The Black Mesa pipeline is no 01:46:16.259 --> 01:46:22.107 longer in use if we can run it over there and back up stream. 01:46:22.140 --> 01:46:25.476 That's right. There is a slurry pipeline going down to that coal fired 01:46:25.509 --> 01:46:30.317 power plant that's now closed. Yeah, well, still on the ground. Most 01:46:30.350 --> 01:46:36.397 places I had heard that the, the Navajo and perhaps Hopi were interested 01:46:36.430 --> 01:46:41.906 in using that pipeline to get water from the Colorado River up to the two 01:46:41.939 --> 01:46:46.147 reservations. I don't know if it would even be functional, but somebody 01:46:46.180 --> 01:46:51.527 was thinking about, yeah, they've looked at pipelines. It'd be, 01:46:51.560 --> 01:46:57.496 I mean, it'd be probably cheaper to do a new one from Lake Powell which 01:46:57.529 --> 01:47:01.196 has been studied. I mean, your reclamation is looked at that multiple 01:47:01.229 --> 01:47:07.675 times or just downstream from Lake Powell, depending on which base and 01:47:07.708 --> 01:47:10.196 adjudication. 01:47:10.229 --> 01:47:16.256 We're Hopi it would all be lower base and Navajo has some of the base. And 01:47:16.289 --> 01:47:21.027 so Hopi technically, we couldn't take it out of Lake Pal. You got to wait 01:47:21.060 --> 01:47:27.226 until it gets below these fry before we can take it, I think. But, or they 01:47:27.259 --> 01:47:31.357 could buy or trade water with the Navajos. There's all kinds of marketing 01:47:31.390 --> 01:47:36.876 options. Do you ever think about how climate change uh may shift the 01:47:36.909 --> 01:47:44.126 emphasis of the program in the future? Um or cause it to adapt. Well, 01:47:44.159 --> 01:47:50.345 certainly. I mean, we're already looking a little more seriously. I think 01:47:50.378 --> 01:47:55.425 it putting generators on the bypass tubes. You know, that was a suggestion 01:47:55.458 --> 01:48:01.265 long ago for when you want to have high flows so that you don't get the 01:48:01.298 --> 01:48:06.737 penalty for bypassing the turbines and the power generation, you put 01:48:06.770 --> 01:48:11.576 turbines on the bypass tubes, but with lower lake levels, they're 01:48:11.609 --> 01:48:17.015 foreseeing a future where you may not be able to get water out the normal 01:48:17.048 --> 01:48:20.595 generators and the only way to get them through is going to be through the 01:48:20.628 --> 01:48:25.616 bypass tubes. And once you get below that then it's just a dead. So it 01:48:25.649 --> 01:48:29.675 doesn't matter. So, yeah, climate change, I think is driving that a little 01:48:29.708 --> 01:48:33.906 bit. You know, the certainly 01:48:33.939 --> 01:48:36.777 it's 01:48:36.810 --> 01:48:40.717 change, sort of, 01:48:40.750 --> 01:48:46.027 you know, it's driven how the water is allocated now between the two lakes 01:48:46.060 --> 01:48:49.456 and what that's meant is actually in a lot of these lower water years, 01:48:49.489 --> 01:48:53.437 we've seen high higher flows down the river, which is a little 01:48:53.470 --> 01:48:57.967 counterintuitive, but it's too bad. So, yeah, even though when we're 01:48:58.000 --> 01:49:05.286 getting, what in the past would be a normal minimum release year out of 01:49:05.319 --> 01:49:09.336 Lake Powell. Now, they're higher than minimum release just because they 01:49:09.369 --> 01:49:16.246 got to get water to meet, to equalize. And you know what that's gonna do 01:49:16.279 --> 01:49:24.279 if we hit a shortage and stuff, if, when 2020 apparently 01:49:24.989 --> 01:49:29.496 that's what they're saying. Yeah. You know, and it changes the run off. I 01:49:29.529 --> 01:49:35.656 don't know if it's, it could potentially change 01:49:35.689 --> 01:49:41.126 the frequency that high flows could be triggered. But may also just in a 01:49:41.159 --> 01:49:44.737 broader sense, change sediment input because we tend to get more of the 01:49:44.770 --> 01:49:51.206 bigger storms that have short term high sediment runoff and you know what 01:49:51.239 --> 01:49:55.687 that will do to sediment balance stuff. I don't know. Do you anticipate? 01:49:55.720 --> 01:50:01.866 There'll be any um obvious potential impacts to cultural resources from 01:50:01.899 --> 01:50:07.055 climate change. Um, 01:50:07.088 --> 01:50:10.726 in, you know, if we're getting more frequent heavy storms, you get the 01:50:10.759 --> 01:50:16.305 catastrophic loss of archaeological sites. I mean, what's driving it down 01:50:16.338 --> 01:50:22.305 there is rainfall? I mean, it's the rain that washes it out. And in the 01:50:22.338 --> 01:50:28.586 past you had new sediment coming in to replenish it. So, unless the entire 01:50:28.619 --> 01:50:33.345 site went, it's usually when a Roy it starts eroding things and that, that 01:50:33.378 --> 01:50:38.437 refills some healthier time and that isn't happening as much. But if 01:50:38.470 --> 01:50:43.015 you're getting more intense storms, you have a better chance of 01:50:43.048 --> 01:50:47.296 catastrophic loss, it seems like just coming up the river this time, there 01:50:47.329 --> 01:50:51.046 are some places that are pretty impressively hit in the last few weeks 01:50:51.079 --> 01:50:57.126 down there. Go on youtube and look at a flash flood down at f, I saw that 01:50:57.159 --> 01:51:00.937 last week. Yeah, we went by there and you can just see where it's come off. 01:51:00.970 --> 01:51:05.406 All the slopes there. It was pretty muddy water coming off too. Yeah. 01:51:05.439 --> 01:51:09.496 Well, and it was just debris coming off. The canyon sides in places that 01:51:09.529 --> 01:51:12.446 in the past 01:51:12.479 --> 01:51:17.296 you just rarely saw that much rain all at once in one spot. I mean, it 01:51:17.329 --> 01:51:21.777 runs off. You get the normal pour overs and stuff. This just whole slope 01:51:21.810 --> 01:51:26.196 areas were coming off. Every little rivulet had debris coming out into the 01:51:26.229 --> 01:51:31.515 canyon. So it's pretty impressive to see some of that. And that's unusual. 01:51:31.548 --> 01:51:36.116 And you expect to see a lot more of that in a warmer. Yeah. Yeah. I mean 01:51:36.149 --> 01:51:41.305 , they were saying based on the radar images they're estimating. What was 01:51:41.338 --> 01:51:47.086 it? Five inches in 20 minutes or something ridiculous. Oh, I mean, we had 01:51:47.119 --> 01:51:51.675 five inches out at Donny Park in two hours earlier this year. But, yeah, 01:51:51.708 --> 01:51:55.737 five inches and 20 minutes is a little scary. I don't know if that's an 01:51:55.770 --> 01:52:01.147 overestimate or not based on just the radar stuff they're looking at but, 01:52:01.180 --> 01:52:06.187 you know, much more than to an hour is pretty unusual. 01:52:06.220 --> 01:52:11.647 So, um, one of my last questions. Now, do you have any advice for new 01:52:11.680 --> 01:52:15.317 people who will be coming on to the Adaptive Management Program? I heard 01:52:15.350 --> 01:52:19.836 you're gonna be retiring in about a year, similar to me, less than a year 01:52:19.869 --> 01:52:24.107 you got this year? Yeah. Wow. So you gotta be thinking about who's gonna 01:52:24.140 --> 01:52:27.786 come next and if you, you know, if you had an opportunity to sit down with 01:52:27.819 --> 01:52:31.626 your replacement, what kinds of things would you say to this person? Well 01:52:31.659 --> 01:52:36.366 , certainly, I think you know, 01:52:36.399 --> 01:52:42.246 to try to come in recognizing that there's a lot of different expertise in 01:52:42.279 --> 01:52:47.217 the program and that, you know, to try to learn from all the people 01:52:47.250 --> 01:52:53.385 involved and keep a co-operative sort of atmosphere I think is a big key 01:52:53.418 --> 01:52:58.817 to the program. Um, you know, it's definitely a steep learning curve, the 01:52:58.850 --> 01:53:05.027 more you can apprentice with someone the better. Um 01:53:05.060 --> 01:53:09.036 But yeah, I think mostly just 01:53:09.069 --> 01:53:15.696 coming in with the intent of trying to make it work, I think is a big key. 01:53:15.729 --> 01:53:19.916 Um because I think that is one of the things that's made this program 01:53:19.949 --> 01:53:24.376 somewhat unusual is everyone is willing to listen to each other and learn 01:53:24.409 --> 01:53:28.527 from each other and 01:53:28.560 --> 01:53:35.647 at least broadly manage for kind of similar goals. You know, the, it's 01:53:35.680 --> 01:53:40.237 always heartening to see when everyone in the program agrees that the 01:53:40.270 --> 01:53:45.456 program should continue when the funding gets cut when they see that on 01:53:45.489 --> 01:53:48.925 the horizon and no one's going. No, let's get rid of it. It's been a 01:53:48.958 --> 01:53:55.166 detriment or something. So I think, you know, that would be one key. And 01:53:55.199 --> 01:53:57.246 then, 01:53:57.279 --> 01:54:00.836 you know, and I think that then allows people to try to learn from a bunch 01:54:00.869 --> 01:54:04.336 of different players to come up to speed on what's going on. You know, the 01:54:04.369 --> 01:54:09.196 program has also been good in that there hasn't been a lot of turnover. I 01:54:09.229 --> 01:54:15.175 mean, people involved tend to stay 35 plus years, you know, obviously 01:54:15.208 --> 01:54:21.116 there's a few of us outliers. But actually, up until five or six years ago 01:54:21.149 --> 01:54:27.885 , a lot of the people involved were predating the EIS, you know, and are 01:54:27.918 --> 01:54:33.345 still at least peripherally involved. So, you know, try to learn from 01:54:33.378 --> 01:54:37.027 those people who know some of the legacy of the program because, yeah, 01:54:37.060 --> 01:54:40.696 there's just so much knowledge and science, there's no way you can just 01:54:40.729 --> 01:54:44.786 walk in and go, ok, I know everything about this program. You know, so 01:54:44.819 --> 01:54:52.819 much comes in on a daily basis. Just it seems like when sending out a new 01:54:53.239 --> 01:54:55.737 , 01:54:55.770 --> 01:54:59.817 do we report once a week or something? Actually, I don't know if Linda 01:54:59.850 --> 01:55:03.166 Wetton is on your list there. But she should be too. So, how long has she 01:55:03.199 --> 01:55:09.536 been involved in the program? 01:55:09.569 --> 01:55:13.967 Probably 01:55:14.000 --> 01:55:19.265 since the 90 late nineties, at least, I think I'm trying to remember when 01:55:19.298 --> 01:55:25.156 she first came in. I thought she was, you know, recent staff. But if she's 01:55:25.189 --> 01:55:28.506 been around that long we need to talk to her. No, she'd be a good one to 01:55:28.539 --> 01:55:32.857 talk to. I think, you know, certainly from administering the program and 01:55:32.890 --> 01:55:37.055 all the behind the scenes and all of that. 01:55:37.088 --> 01:55:41.897 Yeah, that would be a good perspective. Mary Orton was probably the only 01:55:41.930 --> 01:55:46.256 person we've interviewed so far who is almost entirely focused on the 01:55:46.289 --> 01:55:50.326 administration of the program and the relationship building and consensus 01:55:50.359 --> 01:55:54.446 building and sort of that aspect. Most of the people we talk to are, you 01:55:54.479 --> 01:55:58.817 know, either scientists or policymakers or stakeholders. So that would be 01:55:58.850 --> 01:56:04.425 a valuable perspective. No. Yeah, she's been around definitely for a long 01:56:04.458 --> 01:56:08.527 time, basically doing the meeting notes and setting up the meetings and 01:56:08.560 --> 01:56:14.385 coordinating everything and all of that. So, yeah, she'd be good. But no, 01:56:14.418 --> 01:56:20.696 and I, you know, for certainly from a tribal perspective, 01:56:20.729 --> 01:56:26.416 you know, I think whoever would be coming in needs to 01:56:26.449 --> 01:56:32.976 be interested in kind of the whole range of 01:56:33.009 --> 01:56:37.885 the tribe's involvement from doing, you know, the on the ground, science 01:56:37.918 --> 01:56:43.217 and monitoring up through the being at the meetings and the management and 01:56:43.250 --> 01:56:47.746 that kind of thing. You know, because certainly one of the things I've 01:56:47.779 --> 01:56:53.095 been able to benefit from is seeing that whole range of stuff. You know, a 01:56:53.128 --> 01:56:57.446 lot of people, they're just at the AM wig meetings or also just in the 01:56:57.479 --> 01:57:01.357 canyon doing research. But for the tribes, because we're usually fairly 01:57:01.390 --> 01:57:06.616 limited on both staff and expertise, you end up kind of becoming a jack of 01:57:06.649 --> 01:57:11.527 all trades and doing it all. I mean, I know an awful lot more about fish 01:57:11.560 --> 01:57:16.925 than I ever expected. I would. Yeah, it's funny because your training's in 01:57:16.958 --> 01:57:22.446 anthropology, right? Yeah, I'm an archaeologist, archaeologist. Yeah, I, 01:57:22.479 --> 01:57:29.777 no, Kurt and I had worked together just for contract archaeology companies 01:57:29.810 --> 01:57:35.067 in Phoenix. We both went up to work for the Navajo tribe like a few months 01:57:35.100 --> 01:57:40.226 apart. And then Kurt got hired at Hopi and then hired me a few months 01:57:40.259 --> 01:57:48.217 later to start the Grand Canyon stuff. And I think the first two meetings 01:57:48.250 --> 01:57:54.726 I went to one was a technical kind of review on fish. And I'm sitting in 01:57:54.759 --> 01:58:02.237 there going, what am I doing? And then the next one was on non use 01:58:02.270 --> 01:58:08.166 economic valuation down at a su where they were talking to all the people 01:58:08.199 --> 01:58:11.326 at the forefront of doing that kind of work, which was really 01:58:11.359 --> 01:58:16.345 controversial and not used at the time. That would have been 91 you 01:58:16.378 --> 01:58:20.967 talking about, you know, how much would people pay to not cut down a tree 01:58:21.000 --> 01:58:24.527 and those kind of things? And so I came back from those meetings kind of 01:58:24.560 --> 01:58:30.567 going, I have no clue what I got into here. What is this? But, you know, 01:58:30.600 --> 01:58:34.425 certainly in hindsight, just being exposed to all the different stuff I 01:58:34.458 --> 01:58:37.987 think is really valuable. 01:58:38.020 --> 01:58:42.187 Tribal members. I think it would be a good way. And certainly, you know, 01:58:42.220 --> 01:58:46.967 for the tribe, it'd be great to get tribal members more involved in 01:58:47.000 --> 01:58:51.866 representing the tribe. You know, part of it was just by default, but 01:58:51.899 --> 01:58:57.385 there's very few tribal archaeologists or Hopi archaeologists out there. 01:58:57.418 --> 01:59:01.196 It's not a profession Hopis go into because there's been very few 01:59:01.229 --> 01:59:05.696 positive role models in anthropology and archaeology. So not something 01:59:05.729 --> 01:59:09.135 they want to do, but we've got a couple. Now, there's some definitely 01:59:09.168 --> 01:59:13.706 moving up. I imagine all of those annual river trips that each tribe takes 01:59:13.739 --> 01:59:20.187 , especially the ho is a great way of introducing the next generation of 01:59:20.220 --> 01:59:27.046 young people to the canyon and to these issues and you're training your uh 01:59:27.079 --> 01:59:30.086 yeah, well, sort of, but not entirely, I mean, for Hopi, it's been a 01:59:30.119 --> 01:59:35.206 little bit unique just because for Hopi, the Grand Canyon, you know, it's 01:59:35.239 --> 01:59:40.095 the origin point and lots of other history, migrations and stuff, but it's 01:59:40.128 --> 01:59:45.866 where they go in the afterlife. And so it's actually fairly taboo to go 01:59:45.899 --> 01:59:50.906 down there and you're supposed to be fully initiated 01:59:50.939 --> 01:59:56.726 Hopi male to go into the canyon. And so for a long time, we didn't have 01:59:56.759 --> 02:00:01.156 very many young people at all going down there. We haven't taken women 02:00:01.189 --> 02:00:06.925 into the canyon and there's a lot of people or not a lot, but a number of 02:00:06.958 --> 02:00:11.126 people in our office including one of the Hopi archaeologists who for 02:00:11.159 --> 02:00:15.925 cultural reasons just won't go down there. And so it, that's what it's 02:00:15.958 --> 02:00:19.567 been a little tricky finding a replacement because a lot of the Hopi for 02:00:19.600 --> 02:00:25.866 cultural reasons won't go into the canyon, they'll do the outer stuff. But 02:00:25.899 --> 02:00:31.147 yeah, just going into the canyon has been something that we're going to 02:00:31.180 --> 02:00:36.866 have to find the right person. Yeah, Lee Kuan Masuma was telling us that 02:00:36.899 --> 02:00:41.286 uh of the 30 years he's been involved in the program, he's probably only 02:00:41.319 --> 02:00:45.425 gone down the river maybe seven or eight times. And, and that was his 02:00:45.458 --> 02:00:48.845 explanation that you're not really supposed to do that very often. It's a 02:00:48.878 --> 02:00:56.126 very special sacred place. Yeah, I mean, you're, you know, traditionally 02:00:56.159 --> 02:00:59.717 is only the initiated people who go down there and only for certain 02:00:59.750 --> 02:01:07.147 reasons. And, you know, the salt pilgrimage was part of the initiation 02:01:07.180 --> 02:01:15.180 ceremony. And so you were led by a person who was initiated and now that 02:01:15.779 --> 02:01:19.256 ceremony doesn't really occur at third mesa, which is where they mostly 02:01:19.289 --> 02:01:24.036 went over there. So theoretically, no one is supposed to be down there. 02:01:24.069 --> 02:01:29.046 The Salt pilgrimage isn't nobody does it anymore. Not in the sense that it 02:01:29.079 --> 02:01:34.595 was in the past, there's still Hopi who have done it to collect and things. 02:01:34.628 --> 02:01:40.437 And at second mesa, the initiation still occurs. But they go to Zuni Salt 02:01:40.470 --> 02:01:47.135 Lake as much as they go into the canyon. One of the, one of the people 02:01:47.168 --> 02:01:54.506 that we worked with early on was one of the last initiated people from 02:01:54.539 --> 02:02:01.166 Third Mesa. And so he was able to go down with us both for the research. 02:02:01.199 --> 02:02:06.305 But for him, it was completing what needed to be done for the initiation 02:02:06.338 --> 02:02:12.555 to, to go to the salt mine and up to see Puni. And so, you know, some of 02:02:12.588 --> 02:02:18.317 that was carrying on some of it. But through time, you know, obviously 02:02:18.350 --> 02:02:23.116 traditions change in cultures and there's a recognition that the knowledge 02:02:23.149 --> 02:02:28.366 about the place needs to be carried forward, but it may not be done in the 02:02:28.399 --> 02:02:34.286 same way as it used to be. So, you know, as we've shifted from research to 02:02:34.319 --> 02:02:39.786 more monitoring down in the canyon too. We don't need necessarily the 02:02:39.819 --> 02:02:44.246 people who are the, you know, the higher level of ritual knowledge and 02:02:44.279 --> 02:02:47.967 those kind of things down there because we're just getting the people's 02:02:48.000 --> 02:02:53.336 impression of whether it's being cared for, appropriate appropriately. And 02:02:53.369 --> 02:02:57.555 so, you know, we get more of a mix now of some of the younger people on 02:02:57.588 --> 02:03:04.467 the river. But, yeah, finding someone to do it as a profession, it's been 02:03:04.500 --> 02:03:07.126 tricky. 02:03:07.159 --> 02:03:11.366 Well, I wish you the best of luck in that. And I hope that the program 02:03:11.399 --> 02:03:17.446 continues. Everybody we've talked to has emphasized how valuable it is and 02:03:17.479 --> 02:03:22.237 what an honor it's been to be involved. And it sounds like you feel the 02:03:22.270 --> 02:03:26.737 same way. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, this certainly, 02:03:26.770 --> 02:03:30.906 you know, if it wasn't a valuable program, so many people wouldn't have 02:03:30.939 --> 02:03:34.996 been involved for so long in fighting to make sure it goes on because it 02:03:35.029 --> 02:03:39.487 is important. I mean, it's producing a lot of information for the tribes. 02:03:39.520 --> 02:03:43.196 It's been really important because it's allowed them to have a much 02:03:43.229 --> 02:03:49.666 larger say in management in general, but in specific about a place that's 02:03:49.699 --> 02:03:56.845 so culturally important to them. And, you know, in a way, 02:03:56.878 --> 02:04:02.147 you know, I mentioned colonialism somewhere in his discussion, but he 02:04:02.180 --> 02:04:07.866 probably did, but in a way it's allowing the tribes to have access back to 02:04:07.899 --> 02:04:11.987 the land that they were displaced from and have some role in the 02:04:12.020 --> 02:04:16.746 management of it going into the future, which is good. 02:04:16.779 --> 02:04:21.826 It helps them keep their own knowledge and traditions alive, even if it's 02:04:21.859 --> 02:04:27.987 through a different, different way of doing it. You know, we do surveys 02:04:28.020 --> 02:04:32.246 during our monitoring and one of the consistent things that they say is 02:04:32.279 --> 02:04:37.487 that, you know, going into the canyon doing the trips and being involved 02:04:37.520 --> 02:04:43.046 is very important for them in their culture. So there's certainly buy in 02:04:43.079 --> 02:04:47.305 among the tribal members too. It's like something they want to see go 02:04:47.338 --> 02:04:49.876 forward. 02:04:49.909 --> 02:04:56.229 Well, I think that's a great place to end the interview, say.