WEBVTT 00:00:00.519 --> 00:00:04.236 And we're rolling. So whenever you're ready to start. All right. So this 00:00:04.269 --> 00:00:08.146 is Paul Hertz and Jennifer Sweeney of Arizona State University 00:00:08.179 --> 00:00:14.226 interviewing Bruce Babbitt on September 21st, 2018, at nine o'clock in the 00:00:14.259 --> 00:00:19.355 morning at a Su Bruce. Thank you so much for agreeing to meet and speak 00:00:19.388 --> 00:00:23.425 with us. Good morning. It's great to be back. Great. So, um, I'm gonna 00:00:23.458 --> 00:00:28.515 start with a big question. Um, you, your family has a long legacy here in 00:00:28.548 --> 00:00:32.856 Arizona. And I just would like to ask you to talk a little bit about your 00:00:32.889 --> 00:00:36.945 early life experiences and connections to the Colorado River and the Grand 00:00:36.978 --> 00:00:41.467 Canyon. Uh I think it was pretty obvious and natural growing up in 00:00:41.500 --> 00:00:45.737 Flagstaff, you know, kind of that is the Grand Canyon. Um It's always 00:00:45.770 --> 00:00:49.385 interested in the out of doors, of course. And, uh, it's an incredible 00:00:49.418 --> 00:00:55.375 place to uh the outdoors, uh hiking, uh and doing all those related things 00:00:55.408 --> 00:01:00.496 , uh, stimulated an interest in geology, of course. And, uh I went on to 00:01:00.529 --> 00:01:04.665 do a geology major in college and then do graduate work uh in earth 00:01:04.698 --> 00:01:08.977 sciences. So, the Grand Canyon kind of drew me in that way. But the other 00:01:09.010 --> 00:01:14.337 piece of, of course was a river because um the river running really 00:01:14.370 --> 00:01:18.686 started to come into its own in the 19 sixties when particularly with 00:01:18.719 --> 00:01:23.176 Martin Litton, uh and the other legendary Outfitters and I was drawn to 00:01:23.209 --> 00:01:27.885 that, uh got acquainted with them, particularly with Martin Litton and uh 00:01:27.918 --> 00:01:31.576 spent a lot of time on the river. It was really a terrific part of uh 00:01:31.609 --> 00:01:35.596 being up there. How many trips do you think you took over the years? Oh, I 00:01:35.629 --> 00:01:40.596 have no idea. I have no idea. It would certainly be more than 10 and less 00:01:40.629 --> 00:01:43.837 than 50 but a lot 00:01:43.870 --> 00:01:48.346 that, that must be an extraordinary experience. Well, it blended a lot of 00:01:48.379 --> 00:01:53.415 things that really served me very well later on uh uh the outdoor interest 00:01:53.448 --> 00:01:57.117 , of course, um the science training which I took all the way through 00:01:57.150 --> 00:02:03.007 graduate school uh and the interest in um a fluvial geomorphology if you 00:02:03.040 --> 00:02:05.126 will. 00:02:05.159 --> 00:02:08.936 So, um did you notice when you were taking those trips down the river or 00:02:08.969 --> 00:02:13.457 did you talk about um, the impacts of Glen Canyon Dam on the river 00:02:13.490 --> 00:02:17.305 ecosystem? Because that's what led to the establishment of the Glen Canyon 00:02:17.338 --> 00:02:22.106 Dam Adaptive Management Program. Yeah, I really started a awakening to the 00:02:22.139 --> 00:02:26.755 changes along the river, probably, you know, not right away, but certainly 00:02:26.788 --> 00:02:31.707 uh by the 19 seventies. So from trip to trip, you could see the way the 00:02:31.740 --> 00:02:37.186 sand was being totally stripped away and where a lot of sandy beaches are 00:02:37.219 --> 00:02:43.096 now, a lot of piles of boulders and, and rocks. And it came home to me, uh 00:02:43.129 --> 00:02:47.686 , in a really interesting way. I was on a trip with, uh Martin Litton, 00:02:47.719 --> 00:02:54.906 probably late summer. And Martin said, uh, we can't do hs rapid over 00:02:54.939 --> 00:02:58.827 pulling in and making an unscheduled stop. And I said, well, what's that 00:02:58.860 --> 00:03:03.427 about it? And he said, well, you wait and see the river is gonna go down 00:03:03.460 --> 00:03:09.666 so fast and so quick. Uh that once we get to hands, it will be impassable 00:03:09.699 --> 00:03:14.797 and we'll have to camp and wait until the guy up in Glen Canyon dam, turn 00:03:14.830 --> 00:03:18.525 the faucet on again and bring the river back up. That was kind of a point 00:03:18.558 --> 00:03:23.876 at which I really uh sort of in viscerally started to make the connection 00:03:23.909 --> 00:03:29.816 between this incredibly up and down river being manipulated for hydro 00:03:29.849 --> 00:03:35.626 demand and what it was doing in terms of all the downstream ecology. 00:03:35.659 --> 00:03:41.225 You, um when you became governor uh in the 19 eighties, you must have had 00:03:41.258 --> 00:03:46.156 an opportunity to maybe try to um think about how we might solve some of 00:03:46.189 --> 00:03:50.995 those problems during that tenure as governor. Um How did you approach of 00:03:51.028 --> 00:03:56.725 the issues in the Grand Canyon? Not a lot uh obviously uh spent time out 00:03:56.758 --> 00:04:01.666 on the river, but uh my tenure as governor was really intensely focused on 00:04:01.699 --> 00:04:07.356 the groundwater issue. So, uh and uh trying uh to bring together the 00:04:07.389 --> 00:04:11.827 parties, a lot of contentious parties in Arizona to get what subsidy in 00:04:11.860 --> 00:04:16.887 the Ground Order Management Act in 1980. So, uh uh during the governor 00:04:16.920 --> 00:04:21.166 years, I was kind of an absentee on, on the river that I had spent so much 00:04:21.199 --> 00:04:25.666 time on beforehand. There weren't many voters uh living on those rocky 00:04:25.699 --> 00:04:29.336 banks of the Colorado river. 00:04:29.369 --> 00:04:33.055 Well, uh that would change then in the 19 nineties when you became 00:04:33.088 --> 00:04:37.305 Secretary of Interior under the Clinton administration. Uh can you talk 00:04:37.338 --> 00:04:43.055 about the origins of uh the effort under your guidance to try to establish 00:04:43.088 --> 00:04:49.156 the Glen Canny Dam Adaptive Management Program? Sure. But I I think it's 00:04:49.189 --> 00:04:55.245 important to take a step back and to understand why it is that the 00:04:55.278 --> 00:05:00.217 Secretary of the Interior is such a significant player on the Colorado 00:05:00.250 --> 00:05:06.586 River because in most of American history and most of the river uh 00:05:06.619 --> 00:05:10.546 management uh regimes that you see everywhere else. Uh The federal 00:05:10.579 --> 00:05:14.976 government is really an interior sector. It's really not a major player 00:05:15.009 --> 00:05:23.009 because of the uh control of water on public lands really was fluffed off 00:05:24.319 --> 00:05:28.086 to the States uh with the Desert Land Act clear back in 1880. And there 00:05:28.119 --> 00:05:33.096 was uh this kind of sense that water management is not the business of the 00:05:33.129 --> 00:05:38.687 federal government. It's a state's rights kind of function. Um The 00:05:38.720 --> 00:05:45.197 Colorado River uh is a remarkable exception to that uh that came about as 00:05:45.230 --> 00:05:50.426 a result of a really unusual history of litigation and contention which 00:05:50.459 --> 00:05:55.437 resulted in uh the decision uh in Arizona versus California, the great 00:05:55.470 --> 00:06:01.817 lawsuit of uh that brought it all to a culmination. And the Supreme Court 00:06:01.850 --> 00:06:07.567 in that lawsuit uh rendered an incredible decision which uh is without 00:06:07.600 --> 00:06:13.075 precedent and has not been repeated. But they, uh the court basically 00:06:13.108 --> 00:06:17.286 going through all of this incredible history of quarreling and fighting. 00:06:17.319 --> 00:06:25.036 Uh said we hold that the Congress has delegated the management of the 00:06:25.069 --> 00:06:29.776 Colorado River of the lower river to the federal government in the form of 00:06:29.809 --> 00:06:34.086 the Secretary of the Interior. And the secretary is by virtue of that 00:06:34.119 --> 00:06:39.226 court decision vested with, he becomes effectively the the the water 00:06:39.259 --> 00:06:45.055 manager of, of the of lower Colorado River. Uh It's a remarkable 00:06:45.088 --> 00:06:50.805 transformation, a lot of controversy at the time. Uh that is in fact, and 00:06:50.838 --> 00:06:58.616 we can discuss that more if you wish uh resulted in a quite interesting 00:06:58.649 --> 00:07:02.786 precarious and, and kind of really very productive balance between uh 00:07:02.819 --> 00:07:07.955 state uh and uh national interest in the river and the role of the 00:07:07.988 --> 00:07:13.106 secretary. So I arrive in Washington and all of a sudden, I'm suited up as 00:07:13.139 --> 00:07:18.606 the water manager of the Colorado river. Oh, yeah. You know, that was like 00:07:18.639 --> 00:07:24.137 a, like a sardine to a cat. And I grabbed at that and said, uh this is 00:07:24.170 --> 00:07:30.687 really gonna be interesting and of course, um the issue at the time uh was 00:07:30.720 --> 00:07:36.145 increasingly the management of, of Glen Canyon. They were surplus years. 00:07:36.178 --> 00:07:40.986 There's a lot of water in the river and the question was uh how are we 00:07:41.019 --> 00:07:46.197 gonna manage it? And the hydropower uh issue became uh more and more 00:07:46.230 --> 00:07:52.276 important as the river damage uh uh becomes equally apparent as I've 00:07:52.309 --> 00:07:58.836 described. Um Well, the bottom line of that is, 00:07:58.869 --> 00:08:06.257 it's complex. It not clear what the answers are. There are a lot of 00:08:06.290 --> 00:08:10.546 serious contending interests at stake. Uh And the only conclusion you 00:08:10.579 --> 00:08:15.836 could draw from that was it's time to get the scientists involved. Uh And 00:08:15.869 --> 00:08:21.817 to get really serious about the water management. Uh The second part of 00:08:21.850 --> 00:08:25.586 that was how do you do that? And the answer is you got to get all the 00:08:25.619 --> 00:08:30.495 contending parties together. You can't just go say uh I decree here's a 00:08:30.528 --> 00:08:34.086 science program. You got a lot of people out there, the Universities of 00:08:34.119 --> 00:08:40.505 State Federal Agencies. And so that's kind of a platform on which we got 00:08:40.538 --> 00:08:45.616 into the, the Glen Canyon and river Management issues. You mentioned a lot 00:08:45.649 --> 00:08:48.476 of contending interests. Some of those are within the Department of 00:08:48.509 --> 00:08:52.116 Interior itself. You know, you've got the US Fish and Wildlife Service. On 00:08:52.149 --> 00:08:55.096 the one hand with the wildlife and fish mandate, you've got the Bureau of 00:08:55.129 --> 00:09:01.167 reclamation with, with a dam and irrigation and Idr Power mandate. How did 00:09:01.200 --> 00:09:07.875 you find um that? I mean, how was it trying to orchestrate and integrate 00:09:07.908 --> 00:09:12.395 all of these contending interests even under your wing in the. Well, the 00:09:12.428 --> 00:09:17.547 department is a house divided in terms of, of all of the agencies and 00:09:17.580 --> 00:09:24.057 frankly, the bureau of reclamation uh historically uh was a, you know, 00:09:24.090 --> 00:09:30.836 kingdom unto itself. Um The great years of Floyd doin as the uh manager of 00:09:30.869 --> 00:09:34.596 the bureau who spoke only to the president of the Congress, who didn't 00:09:34.629 --> 00:09:38.515 even bother to talk to the Secretary of the Interior, he ran an empire all 00:09:38.548 --> 00:09:44.486 of his own. And uh the, the bureau uh has still got particularly in those 00:09:44.519 --> 00:09:49.686 times, much of that kind of legacy uh kind of in its DNA. Uh There were 00:09:49.719 --> 00:09:56.625 two things that I think really gave me the leverage to say, folks, we're 00:09:56.658 --> 00:10:00.856 gonna get together and it's no longer, you know, unilateral decision 00:10:00.889 --> 00:10:06.096 making. One of course was the Grand Canyon, you know, a national icon. 00:10:06.129 --> 00:10:10.596 It's not like you're gonna go out and say, well, here's the big muddy 00:10:10.629 --> 00:10:17.547 river. We'd like to see some nice science uh with no constituency. This is 00:10:17.580 --> 00:10:23.307 the Grand Canyon and uh there had been some legislation moving in that 00:10:23.340 --> 00:10:30.346 direction. Um The second one was Endangered Species Act. Uh I rapidly came 00:10:30.379 --> 00:10:37.557 to realize the incredible power of that act of the, the it strongly 00:10:37.590 --> 00:10:42.956 drafted and the Supreme Court had consistently interpreted the act to say 00:10:42.989 --> 00:10:49.986 it is that in the case of conflict, the Endangered Species Act rules. And 00:10:50.019 --> 00:10:55.456 uh that meant that um the Humpback shrub and the warm water adapted 00:10:55.489 --> 00:11:01.316 species um in the junction of Little Colorado River particularly uh were 00:11:01.349 --> 00:11:06.746 at risk and that the fish and Wildlife Service uh was now gonna be 00:11:06.779 --> 00:11:12.037 somewhat to the surprise of Bureau of reclamation, a really big player. Uh 00:11:12.070 --> 00:11:18.287 And that gave us the chance to bring it together. 00:11:18.320 --> 00:11:24.417 So, do you remember um when, so I guess it was the record of decision in 00:11:24.450 --> 00:11:31.677 1996 while you were secretary um that uh kind of mandated the creation of 00:11:31.710 --> 00:11:36.557 the Adaptive Management Program and the implementation of that 1992 Grand 00:11:36.590 --> 00:11:40.005 Canyon Protection Act. You wanna talk a little bit about the Grand Canyon 00:11:40.038 --> 00:11:43.976 Protection Act and then that record of decision that led to the creation 00:11:44.009 --> 00:11:46.407 of the program. 00:11:46.440 --> 00:11:51.316 Well, uh I'm gonna talk only a little bit because uh I don't have a lot of 00:11:51.349 --> 00:11:55.015 detailed memory about that. Uh What 00:11:55.048 --> 00:12:02.515 I had in mind at the time, of course was we've got to get out this problem. 00:12:02.548 --> 00:12:08.787 We need the science. Um We are awakening to this concept of adaptive 00:12:08.820 --> 00:12:14.907 management which I can uh uh describe in more length. Uh And it's clear 00:12:14.940 --> 00:12:21.586 that we've got to get people moving in the same direction and not only 00:12:21.619 --> 00:12:24.765 within the department, but in terms of the scientific resources outside 00:12:24.798 --> 00:12:29.606 the department, in the universities and elsewhere. Now, that's basically 00:12:29.639 --> 00:12:35.616 my role. I mean, I said, do it uh signed a document and went on to other 00:12:35.649 --> 00:12:42.746 things. So I, I don't claim paternity for all of the detail that went in 00:12:42.779 --> 00:12:48.936 into all of that. I, I really watched it from afar but of course, went to 00:12:48.969 --> 00:12:53.586 the great event when the first big flood is generated out of uh out of 00:12:53.619 --> 00:12:57.505 Glen Canyon. Pretty exciting. Standing up there on a ramp, opening a valve 00:12:57.538 --> 00:13:04.236 and watching this Niagara of water cascading down into the river. Uh 00:13:04.269 --> 00:13:07.616 That's kind of the keystone of the adaptive approach, which is we're gonna 00:13:07.649 --> 00:13:12.816 stir that sediment up, uh get something going on those beaches and uh see 00:13:12.849 --> 00:13:16.427 how it goes and adjust. And interesting enough, we're still doing that 25 00:13:16.460 --> 00:13:20.356 years later, we still haven't learned everything. 00:13:20.389 --> 00:13:23.287 I think that's one of the foundations of adaptive management science is 00:13:23.320 --> 00:13:27.596 that you're always learning and you always need to be adaptable um to what 00:13:27.629 --> 00:13:32.385 it is that you learn by monitoring the effects of your actions. Well, it 00:13:32.418 --> 00:13:39.436 was interesting because um I came to my perhaps limited understanding of 00:13:39.469 --> 00:13:44.686 adaptive management uh through forest management and that got started uh 00:13:44.719 --> 00:13:50.576 at Northern Arizona University where on a summer day in 1993 I spent a 00:13:50.609 --> 00:13:58.609 morning with Wally Covington uh in his uh forest lab uh and got deeply 00:13:59.389 --> 00:14:03.606 engaged in that. And uh while they took me up to Mount Trumbull, which was 00:14:03.639 --> 00:14:08.576 a forest administered not by the Forest Service uh but by the Bureau of 00:14:08.609 --> 00:14:15.755 Land Management, uh where I could basically run the joint and uh spent a 00:14:15.788 --> 00:14:22.375 day with Wally up there and then started uh giving him grants uh to manage 00:14:22.408 --> 00:14:27.047 that tract up there in an adaptive way. This was um you know, the entire 00:14:27.080 --> 00:14:32.226 issue of fire, the history of fire suppression and fire restoration uh 00:14:32.259 --> 00:14:38.047 which at the time, uh with one and largely unknown and secondly, really 00:14:38.080 --> 00:14:42.265 controversial among the forest professionals who had been brought up in 00:14:42.298 --> 00:14:49.057 this uh uh what do they call it? The 10 a.m. theory, any, any fire spotted 00:14:49.090 --> 00:14:53.726 on day X has gotta be out by 10 a.m. the next morning. And, and here's why 00:14:53.759 --> 00:15:00.836 we said no, no, no. Uh we're gonna use fire. Uh And that really brought me 00:15:00.869 --> 00:15:05.927 into this kind of adaptive management understanding and we did uh some 00:15:05.960 --> 00:15:11.515 similar kinds of things in the long leaf pine forests of the South. That 00:15:11.548 --> 00:15:17.407 sort of got me into this kind of iterative kind of process in the way you 00:15:17.440 --> 00:15:22.515 design things and make adjustments. So sure that background that I brought 00:15:22.548 --> 00:15:27.096 very quickly a year or two later into an understanding of what we were 00:15:27.129 --> 00:15:32.667 gonna try to do uh at Glen Canyon, you've mentioned um the importance of 00:15:32.700 --> 00:15:39.116 science and decision making for land management a couple of times. You, 00:15:39.149 --> 00:15:44.907 you made a strong effort to strengthen uh scientific research in the 00:15:44.940 --> 00:15:49.346 Department of Interior. When you were secretary at one point, you proposed 00:15:49.379 --> 00:15:54.265 establishing a National Biological Survey to try to coordinate scientific 00:15:54.298 --> 00:15:57.787 research across federal agencies. Can you talk a little bit about that 00:15:57.820 --> 00:15:59.976 effort. 00:16:00.009 --> 00:16:03.677 Sure. The, the the basic issue is kind of simple what I as we get into all 00:16:03.710 --> 00:16:09.967 of this forest management um uh river geomorphology, uh endangered species 00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:16.895 , uh looking around it becomes clear that the biological science, uh what 00:16:16.928 --> 00:16:24.928 there was was embedded in kind of silos in each agency and was uh you know 00:16:25.940 --> 00:16:33.096 , very much kind of oriented toward what am I gonna do tomorrow for a 00:16:33.129 --> 00:16:38.385 particular issue in my agency in my region? And my jurisdiction is 00:16:38.418 --> 00:16:41.895 scattered all over the place, the Bureau of Reclamation Bureau of Land 00:16:41.928 --> 00:16:46.356 Management of Fish and Wildlife Service. So the obvious thing to do was to 00:16:46.389 --> 00:16:52.366 say, wait a minute, science has got to be one comprehensive. And secondly 00:16:52.399 --> 00:16:58.525 , at a remove from day to day decision making, you've really got to kind 00:16:58.558 --> 00:17:06.467 of use the knowledge and the needs of the managers, but uh sort of 00:17:06.500 --> 00:17:11.545 integrate that into a larger concept of what the issues are, how it is, 00:17:11.578 --> 00:17:17.226 what kind of information you needed in it, ec ecological kind of uh sense. 00:17:17.259 --> 00:17:23.446 Now, interestingly enough on the Earth Science side, that's exactly the 00:17:23.479 --> 00:17:27.865 way the department is always run since 1880 when John Wesley Powell came 00:17:27.898 --> 00:17:33.815 off the river and established uh the the Geological Survey as an 00:17:33.848 --> 00:17:39.676 independent agency uh with data and results available to everyone. So the 00:17:39.709 --> 00:17:45.397 idea was to try to get the biology out of all this scattershot stuff into 00:17:45.430 --> 00:17:51.377 something resembling of what's done on the earth science side. And uh how 00:17:51.410 --> 00:17:56.706 far did you make it with that? Well, it's a, it was a typical kind of uh 00:17:56.739 --> 00:18:02.996 Washington political story. I put this, um, fresh face newcomer. Uh It was 00:18:03.029 --> 00:18:06.526 a great idea, uh invoke the name of John Wesley Powell. We've got to 00:18:06.559 --> 00:18:11.575 finish his task on the biological side. I gather up all the science stuff 00:18:11.608 --> 00:18:16.717 , put it in a combined budget and say, well, you got a US geological 00:18:16.750 --> 00:18:22.357 survey. Now we're gonna have a biological survey. Uh And of course, uh in 00:18:22.390 --> 00:18:26.597 the spirit of the Times Congress kind of shot it all down, uh blasted it 00:18:26.630 --> 00:18:31.887 to pieces. And in one of these odd kind of throw me in the briar patch 00:18:31.920 --> 00:18:36.847 kind of sequences uh out of all that wreckage. Well, I said, well, why 00:18:36.880 --> 00:18:41.446 don't you just throw all these remnants into the geological survey? It's 00:18:41.479 --> 00:18:45.637 already there. We won't create anything new. And of course, that was the 00:18:45.670 --> 00:18:49.717 perfect result. I didn't have the courage to propose that in the first, 00:18:49.750 --> 00:18:54.406 that is a complete integration of natural science and that's what we've 00:18:54.439 --> 00:18:58.467 got today uh uh through all of its ups and downs, it's clearly a correct 00:18:58.500 --> 00:19:05.506 model. So, um at a uh very specific level, um you were able to establish a 00:19:05.539 --> 00:19:13.325 new um science organization for uh Grand Canyon and the Glen Canyon Dam 00:19:13.358 --> 00:19:16.676 Adaptive Management Program. There's an organization called the Grand 00:19:16.709 --> 00:19:22.335 Canyon Monitoring and Research Center. Now, GCMRC. Um I think it was your 00:19:22.368 --> 00:19:26.717 effort to create an independent science body that led to the creation of 00:19:26.750 --> 00:19:32.535 that separate Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center. Uh Yeah, a a 00:19:32.568 --> 00:19:37.367 again, uh I'm not the father of all the detail, although I'm happy to 00:19:37.400 --> 00:19:43.117 claim paternity for the idea. Um But the important thinking behind that 00:19:43.150 --> 00:19:49.075 was that even as we consolidate biological science at the national level 00:19:49.108 --> 00:19:54.825 in order to get political support, uh we're gonna have to look across the 00:19:54.858 --> 00:20:02.545 landscape and see how we can integrate science and scientists around kind 00:20:02.578 --> 00:20:09.456 of nodes uh on the landscape of mutual interest and mutual problems. Uh 00:20:09.489 --> 00:20:14.785 And interestingly enough, uh my thinking ran particularly to how it is we 00:20:14.818 --> 00:20:22.535 were gonna activate universities and uh not only for their science but for 00:20:22.568 --> 00:20:29.186 their political clout. Scientists may not realize this but uh universities 00:20:29.219 --> 00:20:33.535 uh have a have a pretty big constituency among elected officials. And I'm 00:20:33.568 --> 00:20:38.446 thinking if we can draw these circles of interest, get all these 00:20:38.479 --> 00:20:44.305 university constituencies in and give them a reason to be lobbyists with 00:20:44.338 --> 00:20:48.976 their congressmen, uh we'll generate some support and you know, that 00:20:49.009 --> 00:20:54.565 support right now is is much at risk, but in the longer run over decades, 00:20:54.598 --> 00:21:00.065 I think it's worked pretty well. Um I'm thinking back to uh who are the 00:21:00.098 --> 00:21:04.486 designated stakeholders in the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program. 00:21:04.519 --> 00:21:09.897 And there's no designated university representative is that I think Dave 00:21:09.930 --> 00:21:15.107 Garrett told us that uh that uh you and, and uh the secretary's designee 00:21:15.140 --> 00:21:18.976 who participated, felt that because he had been Dean of the Forestry 00:21:19.009 --> 00:21:23.756 School and represented uh academic science that it was probably uh covered. 00:21:23.789 --> 00:21:27.147 Do you remember talking about whether there should be a designated 00:21:27.180 --> 00:21:32.607 university representative on the team? No, I don't specifically remember 00:21:32.640 --> 00:21:38.936 that. But the important point was that he was a university leader and by 00:21:38.969 --> 00:21:43.857 whatever name he was there. And in each one of these, uh the particular 00:21:43.890 --> 00:21:48.936 combination of how you put all of the different people together. Uh It was 00:21:48.969 --> 00:21:55.016 pretty ad hoc. Well, you did insist that there, that this whole program be 00:21:55.049 --> 00:21:59.535 , um, uh, report directly to the secretary's office, which was an 00:21:59.568 --> 00:22:04.795 important innovation. Uh And that there would always be a secretary's 00:22:04.828 --> 00:22:10.295 designated representative. Um Can you talk about why that's important and 00:22:10.328 --> 00:22:14.565 how you think it worked out during the years that you were there? Look, 00:22:14.598 --> 00:22:21.986 that's just uh politics, 101. You want to get something done, you better 00:22:22.019 --> 00:22:27.436 not delegate it out through all the existing bureaucratic channels. You 00:22:27.469 --> 00:22:35.469 better say one, here's what I want done. And secondly, report to me. Uh 00:22:35.739 --> 00:22:40.117 and that simply sends a message, uh that kind of awakens people to the 00:22:40.150 --> 00:22:45.847 fact that this is a priority and better get with it. Uh And there's 00:22:45.880 --> 00:22:50.486 nothing unusual about that. I mean, I mean, that, that's tried and true. 00:22:50.519 --> 00:22:56.467 Uh, um, political administration 101, it always tends to drift a little 00:22:56.500 --> 00:23:02.756 bit with time. Uh And uh you can say this is my project report to me, the 00:23:02.789 --> 00:23:08.835 next secretary may or may not see it quite so clearly and there may be uh 00:23:08.868 --> 00:23:14.835 some kind of geological drift if you will out into the various strata of 00:23:14.868 --> 00:23:21.016 bureaucracy. Uh But it's the right approach. Uh One of the uh persons we 00:23:21.049 --> 00:23:25.815 interviewed was Ann Castle who was Assistant Secretary for Water and 00:23:25.848 --> 00:23:30.857 Science under, I guess the Obama administration. And she talked about how 00:23:30.890 --> 00:23:36.085 , when she got there, there was no unified voice among the interior 00:23:36.118 --> 00:23:41.726 agencies on the, you know, that were participants in the program. And she 00:23:41.759 --> 00:23:47.226 had to sort of uh convince them all to try to talk and caucus together and 00:23:47.259 --> 00:23:52.206 come up with a common department of interior position on various decisions. 00:23:52.239 --> 00:23:57.956 Did you, how did you uh attempt to coordinate and integrate the different 00:23:57.989 --> 00:24:01.916 voices and interests of the different agencies? Well, the bureaucratic 00:24:01.949 --> 00:24:06.426 answer to that is, that's why you have all these uh agency heads next 00:24:06.459 --> 00:24:12.397 layer up is assistant secretaries who have beneath them, two or three 00:24:12.430 --> 00:24:18.946 agencies who in turn, report to a deputy secretary who kind of up the 00:24:18.979 --> 00:24:26.217 pyramid. Uh and hopefully kind of uh enforces that. Um ironic 00:24:26.250 --> 00:24:29.467 coordinations, 00:24:29.500 --> 00:24:33.825 Aden, get much out of that. I, I mean, I basically spend my time on the 00:24:33.858 --> 00:24:38.097 phone talking directly to agency head. So, I mean, there's a coordinating 00:24:38.130 --> 00:24:41.906 problem, I'm gonna tell you I'd call up the head of the Fish and Wildlife 00:24:41.939 --> 00:24:46.986 Service. I'd call up the head of the GS and, oh, I'm not sure that in the 00:24:47.019 --> 00:24:52.456 long run that's the right way to do it. But I'm confessing is, I really 00:24:52.489 --> 00:24:59.785 ran sort of wild across all the bureaucratic co ordination and said, oh, I 00:24:59.818 --> 00:25:02.486 don't have time for that. I'm just gonna deal with people and tell them 00:25:02.519 --> 00:25:07.377 what to do and tell them to talk to each other. Uh, that's a, if you will 00:25:07.410 --> 00:25:12.266 a personal admission, I'm not sure that that's good government. Bye. Do 00:25:12.299 --> 00:25:14.696 you, uh, what were you, do you remember what you were trying to accomplish 00:25:14.729 --> 00:25:19.726 ? Um, when you were calling up these individual agencies, uh, I suspect 00:25:19.759 --> 00:25:22.627 you were probably trying to get over some obstacles or get some direct 00:25:22.660 --> 00:25:28.226 communication going. Well. Well, there, there were of course 00:25:28.259 --> 00:25:33.926 specific issues I remember, um, an early conversation that I had with the 00:25:33.959 --> 00:25:38.736 president. Um, uh, I don't remember. There's a third party who there are 00:25:38.769 --> 00:25:46.516 just three of us and I was asked in the presence of the president, what is 00:25:46.549 --> 00:25:53.717 the legacy you want to leave for? Bill Clinton? Well, and I kept thinking 00:25:53.750 --> 00:25:57.887 about that again and again and again, because there are just scores of 00:25:57.920 --> 00:26:02.867 decisions and directions and all that stuff. But ultimately, you gotta say 00:26:02.900 --> 00:26:10.900 , what is it that really needs redirection in the most intense way? Huh? 00:26:12.039 --> 00:26:16.256 Now what that meant in my case, I spent it hugely disproportionate amount 00:26:16.289 --> 00:26:20.996 of time, sufficient wildlife service because uh getting the Endangered 00:26:21.029 --> 00:26:28.006 Species Act in motion and in play uh was a huge task and I spent enormous 00:26:28.039 --> 00:26:32.535 amounts of time out in the field all over the country with people kinda 00:26:32.568 --> 00:26:37.436 saying we gotta make this act work. It's, it's powerful, it hasn't been 00:26:37.469 --> 00:26:42.996 deployed, but it is the ultimate ecological management tool, whether it's 00:26:43.029 --> 00:26:47.847 the old growth forests of the Northwest, uh whether it's reregulate the 00:26:47.880 --> 00:26:54.785 Colorado River, endless kind of stuff like that. So, uh I'm bonded with 00:26:54.818 --> 00:26:59.335 fish and my service. But the second orphan uh during my time there, I 00:26:59.368 --> 00:27:03.656 think was uh the Bureau of Land Management. Uh Park Service is a mature 00:27:03.689 --> 00:27:08.117 organization. It needs attention, but it doesn't need a bear hug because 00:27:08.150 --> 00:27:15.295 it's got its spirit, its cabra its support. BLM was a real orphan. Uh So I 00:27:15.328 --> 00:27:20.597 picked them up out off the street and brought them in and said, look the 00:27:20.630 --> 00:27:22.676 BLM, 00:27:22.709 --> 00:27:25.867 you guys have got an inferiority complex, understand it what people think 00:27:25.900 --> 00:27:31.617 of it as a bureau of, of Livestock and mining. Uh And everybody wants to 00:27:31.650 --> 00:27:35.137 take away all of your beautiful assets and give them to the Park Service. 00:27:35.170 --> 00:27:40.097 And BOM is just a dumping ground for the other 200 million acres of land. 00:27:40.130 --> 00:27:44.946 Well, and I said we're gonna leave a legacy for BLM in which it becomes a 00:27:44.979 --> 00:27:50.637 conservation agency and we're gonna do that from, you know, root and 00:27:50.670 --> 00:27:55.756 branch. We're gonna start giving you national monuments. There weren't any 00:27:55.789 --> 00:28:00.107 national monuments in the BLM system because whenever something, uh was 00:28:00.140 --> 00:28:05.097 thought to be of a place of special interest, uh it would go up to the 00:28:05.130 --> 00:28:09.367 President and he sign an Antiquities Act Declaration and give it to the 00:28:09.400 --> 00:28:14.315 National Park Service. Thereby deepening the despair among the few 00:28:14.348 --> 00:28:19.256 environmentalists that you could find in the BLM. I said, stop. I went to 00:28:19.289 --> 00:28:23.805 the president with the first big monument uh proposal that grant staircase 00:28:23.838 --> 00:28:27.795 esca landing, we drew it all up, put it all together, did all the 00:28:27.828 --> 00:28:31.696 bureaucratic stuff. The Park service is looking over my shoulder, uh 00:28:31.729 --> 00:28:37.467 licking their chops at the newest unit of the National Park System. Uh And 00:28:37.500 --> 00:28:41.016 I said to the president, I want you to do something different. I want you 00:28:41.049 --> 00:28:46.627 to give this monument, keep it uh uh in the administration of the Bureau 00:28:46.660 --> 00:28:51.545 of Land Management. That's just one example of a lot of issues of the BLM 00:28:51.578 --> 00:28:57.006 played a big part uh in the Northwest Forest Plan. Uh Yeah, I would say 00:28:57.039 --> 00:29:04.446 those are two examples of what I would say. Uh kind of the 8020 management 00:29:04.479 --> 00:29:11.555 rule which is uh in any organization uh as a kind of rule of thumb, you 00:29:11.588 --> 00:29:19.305 have to spend at least 80% of your time on no more than 20% of, of the 00:29:19.338 --> 00:29:22.686 institutions, agencies or whatever you're doing that. And those are the 00:29:22.719 --> 00:29:26.967 examples so that you could actually not spread yourself too thin but 00:29:27.000 --> 00:29:32.456 concentrate on getting something big done. Yeah, look at where the 00:29:32.489 --> 00:29:36.897 opportunities are and we, there's not been enough attention and there's 00:29:36.930 --> 00:29:44.496 some real gain, uh, involved and, you know, put your time there. So one of 00:29:44.529 --> 00:29:49.065 the other legacies of, uh, your time and the Clinton administration is 00:29:49.098 --> 00:29:53.516 getting adaptive management science integrated more into land management 00:29:53.549 --> 00:29:56.946 decision making by various agencies. You mentioned the Northwest Forest 00:29:56.979 --> 00:30:01.377 Plan. That's kind of where adaptive management science uh grew up was in 00:30:01.410 --> 00:30:07.516 the Pacific Northwest. Um Do you feel like you were successful in getting 00:30:07.549 --> 00:30:12.647 in helping to sort of usher in a new kind of a management paradigm? 00:30:12.680 --> 00:30:17.035 Because before that in the 19 seventies, it was all this linear um you 00:30:17.068 --> 00:30:20.597 know, plan and manage, you know, you look out 50 years, decide what 00:30:20.630 --> 00:30:25.065 sources you want to have and, and you manage toward that. And there's none 00:30:25.098 --> 00:30:29.825 of this sort of collaborative decision making, none of this incremental 00:30:29.858 --> 00:30:35.147 manage, monitor and adapt. Do you feel like you were able to change that 00:30:35.180 --> 00:30:40.756 management paradigm toward adaptive management? Look, look, you can never 00:30:40.789 --> 00:30:48.315 claim credit for a complete victory. Uh Everything uh is a process in 00:30:48.348 --> 00:30:54.575 motion, I guess uh what you need to do is think of it across time. And um 00:30:54.608 --> 00:31:00.847 what I would think is go back to 1990 where it was just you and a few 00:31:00.880 --> 00:31:05.236 other, you know, wooly headed academics out there saying adaptive 00:31:05.269 --> 00:31:11.627 management please uh hear what we have to say. It's really out there on 00:31:11.660 --> 00:31:19.347 the, on the French. Well, it's now front and center uh and everything. Uh 00:31:19.380 --> 00:31:24.456 but it, but it is a uh a continuing process because in a way adaptive 00:31:24.489 --> 00:31:29.555 management kind of uh even as, as you have success integrated, it tends to 00:31:29.588 --> 00:31:34.637 degenerate into a slogan. And rather than saying, here's adaptive 00:31:34.670 --> 00:31:39.575 management, it instructs us to do something but you get this kind of 00:31:39.608 --> 00:31:43.436 degeneration in which it becomes inverted. People do what they wanna do 00:31:43.469 --> 00:31:47.127 and say this is adaptive management. Nobody will ever know the difference 00:31:47.160 --> 00:31:55.160 so that there's gotta be this kind of, you know, really strong incessant 00:31:55.239 --> 00:31:59.295 kind of look at what's going on commitment to that. Yeah, that was my next 00:31:59.328 --> 00:32:02.805 question is, how do you feel? I mean, there's a difference between an 00:32:02.838 --> 00:32:07.357 academic theory or model and how it plays out in the real world when you 00:32:07.390 --> 00:32:13.936 try to implement it. Um Talk a little bit about your feelings about how 00:32:13.969 --> 00:32:19.627 the idea of adaptive management actually played out. 00:32:19.660 --> 00:32:24.397 Well, I think maybe I should get off of the main track and talk a little 00:32:24.430 --> 00:32:31.426 bit about what I'm doing in California now where uh adaptive management is 00:32:31.459 --> 00:32:37.065 really being put together uh in a really strong way. This is the whole 00:32:37.098 --> 00:32:41.335 issue of water management up in the Bay Delta uh system of Northern 00:32:41.368 --> 00:32:48.967 California. And it involves uh water coming off the Sierra, uh the huge 00:32:49.000 --> 00:32:53.217 reclamation projects running down the Mexican border, the decline of the 00:32:53.250 --> 00:32:58.936 salmon runs uh uh for lack of water in all of the uh streams running into 00:32:58.969 --> 00:33:05.217 the delta, a whole variety of endangered species issues. And uh nine or 10 00:33:05.250 --> 00:33:09.656 regulatory agencies with direct power, three or four federal agencies, 00:33:09.689 --> 00:33:15.795 three or four state agencies, a huge scientific establishment. Uh 00:33:15.828 --> 00:33:20.206 California doesn't lack for science. Uh They've got the best university 00:33:20.239 --> 00:33:24.936 system in the world uh and a huge amount of resources. If there's a 00:33:24.969 --> 00:33:32.335 scientist sitting uh uh you know, on every stream in the whole state, uh 00:33:32.368 --> 00:33:40.368 they're all over the place. Uh And the, the the problem now demands 00:33:41.949 --> 00:33:47.617 integration and experimentation because the difficulty of these issues uh 00:33:47.650 --> 00:33:54.117 in terms of trying to find the right water balance against all of the 00:33:54.150 --> 00:34:02.150 demands and the obvious degradation of the natural systems uh calls uh for 00:34:02.750 --> 00:34:10.750 really moving the science effort up and putting the money into adaptive uh 00:34:11.938 --> 00:34:17.546 research base. The basic problem uh in a really complex biological fluvial 00:34:17.579 --> 00:34:25.579 system like uh the San Francisco Delta is no one really knows what's going 00:34:27.117 --> 00:34:35.117 on and what it is that how it is resources can be altered or managed to 00:34:36.117 --> 00:34:40.546 make a difference. There is so much noise in the system from 100 years of 00:34:40.579 --> 00:34:47.526 gold mining uh exports contamination ocean conditions and all of that. But 00:34:47.559 --> 00:34:53.006 uh the idea that, you know, anyone can come in and just say, well, here's 00:34:53.039 --> 00:35:00.017 a lot of science. Let's do X is doomed from the start uh without an 00:35:00.050 --> 00:35:08.050 intensive effort to define what it is that to, to set up the hypothesis of 00:35:09.469 --> 00:35:16.477 what are the variables. Um And that in a really complex system AAA very 00:35:16.510 --> 00:35:21.077 iffy job, but you gotta do it and then to get the scientists together and 00:35:21.110 --> 00:35:28.896 say, OK, um we're gonna use this intervention uh and measure the results 00:35:28.929 --> 00:35:35.126 and be honest enough, honest enough to admit failure, the kind of null 00:35:35.159 --> 00:35:40.126 hypothesis, we have put up a hypothesis, put resources into this and it 00:35:40.159 --> 00:35:47.206 made no difference at all. It's a hugely important part of science, but it 00:35:47.239 --> 00:35:51.467 , it's kind of bypassed by the politicians who hate that kind of uh 00:35:51.500 --> 00:35:56.526 conclusion as valuable as it is. 00:35:56.559 --> 00:36:02.396 You're uh underscoring the importance of uh recognizing uncertainty both 00:36:02.429 --> 00:36:08.655 in the natural world uh and in our ability to, you know, the kinds of 00:36:08.688 --> 00:36:13.537 decisions we make the funding amounts that are appropriated, the, the 00:36:13.570 --> 00:36:18.135 science that we do, everything is uncertain yet for so many generations, 00:36:18.168 --> 00:36:23.497 we kind of we Americans and we policymakers kind of assumed that we could 00:36:23.530 --> 00:36:29.405 know enough and eventually perfectly know nature and how it would respond 00:36:29.438 --> 00:36:34.276 to our management actions. Um Can you talk a little bit more about how 00:36:34.309 --> 00:36:39.686 uncertainty, challenges, decision making at an administrative level for 00:36:39.719 --> 00:36:47.017 someone like you? Well, the, the most dramatic example I think is um when 00:36:47.050 --> 00:36:55.050 I came to interior uh and 2001, the Colorado River system was full to 00:36:56.898 --> 00:37:02.077 overflowing. Uh We had spent some time uh a year or two before uh up at 00:37:02.110 --> 00:37:08.706 Glen Canyon, uh in which the water was up against the free boards. The uh 00:37:08.739 --> 00:37:16.739 spillways were running 100% and it wasn't an immediate emergency, but we 00:37:17.030 --> 00:37:25.030 were beginning a discussion of what's, what happens if the system is no 00:37:26.510 --> 00:37:32.057 longer containing uh uh the, the input, it's really quite close, 00:37:32.090 --> 00:37:36.186 underscoring the fact that all of the decisions we are making in those 00:37:36.219 --> 00:37:42.385 days, uh were based on kind of, you know, a short term assumption of that. 00:37:42.418 --> 00:37:50.418 We have a, a system in which there was plenty of capacity to deal with 00:37:50.519 --> 00:37:55.526 all, all of the demands. And we were actually uh running scenarios about 00:37:55.559 --> 00:38:00.456 how we would portion surplus. This is the great issue uh that came out in 00:38:00.489 --> 00:38:03.787 19 eighties. That was that El Nino year in 1983 I think you're talking 00:38:03.820 --> 00:38:07.227 about. Yeah. Yeah. How are we gonna portion all that surplus? Let's get 00:38:07.260 --> 00:38:11.256 together. Uh But we've got to make discretionary decisions. How do we do 00:38:11.289 --> 00:38:18.175 it? And it was precisely that point that the 19 year drought that is 00:38:18.208 --> 00:38:25.956 extended from 2001 to the present time began. And all of the assumptions 00:38:25.989 --> 00:38:33.626 that were being made quite understandably about uh the uh hydrology of the 00:38:33.659 --> 00:38:39.037 system based on our own life experience and our, and our own short time uh 00:38:39.070 --> 00:38:45.356 in charge, uh has just been upended and it seems to me that's kind of a 00:38:45.389 --> 00:38:52.646 morality tale about. Let's be careful about the assumptions we're making. 00:38:52.679 --> 00:38:59.905 No, no, we are appropriately locked into a lot of planning on the river in 00:38:59.938 --> 00:39:07.546 terms of drought scenarios, prolonged, uh seemingly permanent droughts 00:39:07.579 --> 00:39:14.186 driven by climate change. And that's important. But let's not get too 00:39:14.219 --> 00:39:20.537 certain about any of our models and do the best we can. But let's always 00:39:20.570 --> 00:39:26.106 be looking uh kind of at the what if question 00:39:26.139 --> 00:39:30.655 uh You talked about the importance of getting better communication and co 00:39:30.688 --> 00:39:36.135 ordination between interior agencies. Another aspect of adaptive 00:39:36.168 --> 00:39:41.296 management and the Glen Canyon project itself is getting different 00:39:41.329 --> 00:39:45.695 stakeholders beyond the federal agencies, people who have an interest and 00:39:45.728 --> 00:39:50.296 a stake in the resource to come together to talk to each other, to 00:39:50.329 --> 00:39:57.267 collaborate on decision making. Um Can you talk about why you think that 00:39:57.300 --> 00:40:01.537 was important to integrate into the program and how you, what its unique 00:40:01.570 --> 00:40:06.106 challenges are and how you think it works out well. Look, the need to get 00:40:06.139 --> 00:40:11.845 people together is self evident. You know, there's no, no reason to go on 00:40:11.878 --> 00:40:14.916 about how important it is. It's, it's important and it's self evident. The 00:40:14.949 --> 00:40:20.747 question is uh how do you get it done? Well, I think all of us in this 00:40:20.780 --> 00:40:25.356 business have been through endless kind of Kumbaya stuff. We're gonna have 00:40:25.389 --> 00:40:30.727 another conference and we're all gonna get together and agree to do X. Uh 00:40:30.760 --> 00:40:38.385 And uh, you know, human nature tends to prevail who was there some 00:40:38.418 --> 00:40:43.977 enforcing mechanism in terms of a predictably better outcome that you can 00:40:44.010 --> 00:40:52.010 have a piece of or more money or a stick of Cooper operation. 00:40:53.019 --> 00:41:00.836 Is this a nice song? Mhm. Yeah. So, yeah, money is the obvious one. But 00:41:00.869 --> 00:41:08.467 there are others, uh, there are nice lessons in the administration of the 00:41:08.500 --> 00:41:14.796 Interior Secretary's administration of the Colorado River because, uh when 00:41:14.829 --> 00:41:19.546 the court set the Secretary up as Water Master with all of these 00:41:19.579 --> 00:41:26.686 unilateral unprecedented overriding powers of, there was a lot of fear 00:41:26.719 --> 00:41:31.956 that this was, you know, some sort of giant federal takeover. Uh It didn't 00:41:31.989 --> 00:41:38.747 happen, what happened was it became the incentive for a lot of really 00:41:38.780 --> 00:41:44.836 great collaborative decision making. Th this example is just state Federal 00:41:44.869 --> 00:41:52.316 uh because uh through successive administrations, um it has evolved a 00:41:52.349 --> 00:41:59.655 pattern in which collaboration is encouraged and there have been, there's 00:41:59.688 --> 00:42:03.956 been no big time litigation on the Colorado River for 50 years. Uh since 00:42:03.989 --> 00:42:11.989 the decision, uh the States have slowly at times, uh not quickly enough, 00:42:12.708 --> 00:42:18.425 but have continually worked out all these incredible uh differences and 00:42:18.458 --> 00:42:24.945 they done it not just out of goodwill but out of the knowledge that if 00:42:24.978 --> 00:42:30.635 things get out of hand, the secretary steps up and says it will be done 00:42:30.668 --> 00:42:37.135 this way. And so you create a balance of kind of, you know, incentives, 00:42:37.168 --> 00:42:43.615 all of the soft incentives plus some kind of real incentive, uh which is, 00:42:43.648 --> 00:42:49.037 you don't do it, it'll be done to you. So, uh it, it is important to kind 00:42:49.070 --> 00:42:53.385 of think those through in terms of how they apply to day to day 00:42:53.418 --> 00:42:59.936 collaboration and uh what goes on. I am, I've spent the last two years in 00:42:59.969 --> 00:43:05.956 California, uh advising Governor Brown trying to get parties together uh 00:43:05.989 --> 00:43:13.037 statewide into a management plan. Uh It's been very difficult because we 00:43:13.070 --> 00:43:20.017 don't have quite enough sticks. Um I not infrequently tell my audiences 00:43:20.050 --> 00:43:28.006 when we're doing all this sort of negotiation stuff. Uh I wish I were back 00:43:28.039 --> 00:43:32.717 doing this in Arizona because the reason we got uh the Groundwater 00:43:32.750 --> 00:43:40.195 Management Act of 1980 done is because I was in office and I had the power 00:43:40.228 --> 00:43:45.836 but to do something really bad if they didn't get together. So you got to 00:43:45.869 --> 00:43:49.767 kind of work all this stuff through in a context of, of realistically 00:43:49.800 --> 00:43:54.227 what's available. Um You're not the first interviewee to mention the 00:43:54.260 --> 00:43:59.175 importance of funding in the success of these Adaptive Management programs. 00:43:59.208 --> 00:44:04.186 Um The funding mechanism for the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management 00:44:04.219 --> 00:44:08.316 Program is pretty unique. It's a kind of an earmark of higher power 00:44:08.349 --> 00:44:13.646 revenues. Do you remember how that was arranged? 00:44:13.679 --> 00:44:21.679 Not in any detail. Uh But uh that the, what I do remember really is it was 00:44:23.199 --> 00:44:30.227 an obvious cash cow. I, I mean, it was just sitting there the source of 00:44:30.260 --> 00:44:38.126 the problem and the source of the revenue are one and the same. And the 00:44:38.159 --> 00:44:44.467 other thing that they made pretty easy is, you know, it's kind of, that's 00:44:44.500 --> 00:44:48.836 the Willie Sutton rule. You know, uh, the, the reason you robbed banks is 00:44:48.869 --> 00:44:53.445 because that's where the money is. Uh, and the other thing that made it 00:44:53.478 --> 00:44:59.626 easy is it's such a vast amount of revenue that, uh, in the budget process 00:44:59.659 --> 00:45:03.115 , uh, 00:45:03.148 --> 00:45:08.486 where you're dealing with these huge billion dollar figures, it's awfully 00:45:08.519 --> 00:45:13.546 easy to come in and say, look, we just want a few pennies, you know, $13 00:45:13.579 --> 00:45:17.086 million a year is nothing. It's a rounding error in the budget of the 00:45:17.119 --> 00:45:22.276 Western area Power administration. So there wasn't any real uh opposition 00:45:22.309 --> 00:45:27.885 but the reason it's so important and that we must get that back into the 00:45:27.918 --> 00:45:35.918 budget. But if I've always been impressed with the importance of making 00:45:37.059 --> 00:45:42.646 modest grants to bring people into alignment, you don't have to, you know 00:45:42.679 --> 00:45:49.615 , give out rivers of money. Uh There is something about just the reality 00:45:49.648 --> 00:45:55.517 of some support which generates more support. Uh And it'd be a shame to 00:45:55.550 --> 00:46:03.550 lose that and given this reality, we really got go after that and, and 00:46:03.628 --> 00:46:07.017 hopefully they'll keep it alive. It's been tremendously successful. I, I 00:46:07.050 --> 00:46:14.467 mean, the, the record, 00, work that has been done in terms of the 00:46:14.500 --> 00:46:22.500 understanding of these fluvial systems. I see that the, the fruits of that 00:46:22.840 --> 00:46:28.026 work or what I'm doing in California now. Um where you know much of the 00:46:28.059 --> 00:46:32.905 travail of, of all of these issues in California is generated in an 00:46:32.938 --> 00:46:38.615 interesting way, not by Glen Canyon Dam, but by Shasta Dam, which is the 00:46:38.648 --> 00:46:43.327 lynchpin, the storage lynchpin of the Bureau reclamation facility on the 00:46:43.360 --> 00:46:50.666 upper Sacramento river. And remarkably, uh the operation of that dam poses 00:46:50.699 --> 00:46:58.336 analogous issues all the way down the river in terms of the fisheries, the 00:46:58.369 --> 00:47:03.276 food chains, the seasonal hydra and how it spreads across the land and on 00:47:03.309 --> 00:47:07.566 and on and on. And all of this work that's been done uh in Glen Canyon is 00:47:07.599 --> 00:47:14.227 directly applicable to kind of defining uh how you go out uh addressing 00:47:14.260 --> 00:47:20.017 some of those issues in a totally different uh river system. So it's a 00:47:20.050 --> 00:47:25.345 model that can be applied in the region a few minutes ago. You were, you 00:47:25.378 --> 00:47:30.675 seem to be in um uh obliquely referring to the fact that the Trump 00:47:30.708 --> 00:47:34.526 administration in the last few months has swept the funds that used to 00:47:34.559 --> 00:47:38.655 support the Glen Canyon Adaptive Management Program requiring that all the 00:47:38.688 --> 00:47:43.816 hydro power revenue go back to the Treasury, I guess. Have you any 00:47:43.849 --> 00:47:49.095 knowledge of that having ever happened before when a dedicated funding 00:47:49.128 --> 00:47:56.155 stream established, you know, in one decade um gets swept or in the case 00:47:56.188 --> 00:47:59.477 of the Glen Canyon Dam program, do you know if it's ever been taken away? 00:47:59.510 --> 00:48:04.416 Look, I'm sure this is not the first time of the budget process in the 00:48:04.449 --> 00:48:11.916 United States Congress is not a tidy admirable uh process. All sorts of 00:48:11.949 --> 00:48:16.876 weird things happen. So, undoubtedly it has happened. Well, and that's 00:48:16.909 --> 00:48:21.977 just a statement that you gotta, you can't take it for granted. You gotta 00:48:22.010 --> 00:48:28.396 keep the constituencies actively engaged in making the case, excuse me, 00:48:28.429 --> 00:48:33.026 for, of maintaining the fun. I don't think it's happened before in the 00:48:33.059 --> 00:48:41.059 Glen Canyon, uh sort of context over the last 20 years, but 00:48:41.878 --> 00:48:46.977 it's, it ain't the first time and it won't be the last, uh generally these 00:48:47.010 --> 00:48:54.385 things happen. So some people may wonder, 00:48:54.418 --> 00:48:59.945 should every funded Adaptive management program be continued indefinitely. 00:48:59.978 --> 00:49:04.115 Um You know, maybe we should evaluate whether we're getting enough bang 00:49:04.148 --> 00:49:08.776 for our buck. Uh Do you have any opinions about this particular Adaptive 00:49:08.809 --> 00:49:12.175 Management program? Has it served a useful lifespan or do you think it 00:49:12.208 --> 00:49:16.546 should be continued and why? Look, I'm not close enough, you know, to draw 00:49:16.579 --> 00:49:23.175 a rational conclusion. But I do think it's important to periodically in, 00:49:23.208 --> 00:49:31.208 in any kind of ongoing program uh to think carefully about the direction 00:49:31.610 --> 00:49:38.845 and the cost benefit and the results and whether this function, excuse me 00:49:38.878 --> 00:49:45.416 to now be internalized uh into other uh parts of other programs. So that's 00:49:45.449 --> 00:49:51.517 a fair question. But in, in this particular context, obviously, um, can't 00:49:51.550 --> 00:49:56.807 tell you exactly what I think because I don't have the facts. 00:49:56.840 --> 00:50:01.356 Well, uh we're just about to wrap up. Is there anything uh that we didn't 00:50:01.389 --> 00:50:06.756 cover that? You'd like to say uh about adaptive management, about science 00:50:06.789 --> 00:50:10.717 and the federal government, about the Glen Candy Dam program specifically. 00:50:10.750 --> 00:50:14.856 Uh I have a feeling I've said too much already, some of this is likely to 00:50:14.889 --> 00:50:19.467 be quoted back at me in ways that uh I will uh be quick to say. No, no, I 00:50:19.500 --> 00:50:23.626 didn't mean that it was entirely out of context. I was led into that 00:50:23.659 --> 00:50:30.236 deliberately by an overreaching uh uh uh questioner. No, I think, I, I 00:50:30.269 --> 00:50:34.776 think it has been terrific and uh I understand the importance of this. 00:50:34.809 --> 00:50:40.497 I've always been a, a little shy about looking back and sort of going into 00:50:40.530 --> 00:50:45.967 this uh sort of, well, in the old days, we did it this way to an audience 00:50:46.000 --> 00:50:49.796 which is saying, come on, the old days are gone. Uh Let's talk about the 00:50:49.829 --> 00:50:56.695 future, but the past does inform the future and um what's happened uh in 00:50:56.728 --> 00:51:02.425 all of this program really does inform what it is we're doing elsewhere. 00:51:02.458 --> 00:51:09.336 Uh And what it is we've achieved and what more needs to be done. So, um I 00:51:09.369 --> 00:51:13.256 it's been a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. Thanks. Well, thank you very much, 00:51:13.289 --> 00:51:15.635 Bruce. 00:51:15.668 --> 00:51:18.546 We can. Uh 00:51:18.579 --> 00:51:20.579 Yeah.