Anthony Hauck: Audubon Conservation Ranching “Birds and Herds”

In this episode of Regenerative Renegades, host Matt Maier welcomes Anthony Hauck of the National Audubon Society to discuss the symbiotic relationship between grazing cattle and grassland birds. Mr. Hauck serves as Communications Manager of the Audubon Conservation Program, the organization's flagship grassland habitat effort to stabilize declining grassland bird populations in partnership with farmers and ranchers. 

Regenerative Renegades presenting sponsor Thousand Hills Lifetime Grazed recently earned the Audubon's Bird-Friendly Land Certification. Thousand Hills’ grassfed beef products—available at more than 2,500 retail locations nationwide—will begin displaying the Audubon Certified Bird-Friendly seal on the entire Thousand Hills grassfed beef product portfolio. The Audubon Conservation Ranching certification label recognizes products grazed on products grazed on land managed for birds and herds. Thousand Hills’ independent ranches were rigorously audited by Audubon, ultimately meeting the requirements centering on habitat management, environmental sustainability, and animal welfare to earn the Audubon Bird-Friendly Land certification.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey everyone, I'm standing here on the farm that I grew up on and all around us are cattle, just like how when I grew up, and many birds. I hope you can hear them, but trust me when I say there's many birds around here. There's sparrows which I just recently learned that are reducing in numbers quite drastically. I've seen this morning wild turkeys. Listen there. That's a bald eagle. There's a nest right up here. Anyway, there's birds all around us here because we're providing the habitat by properly grazing the cattle, meaning letting plants express themselves, grazing them easily, and then moving off and letting the plants resume their growing. And it's a process that always then provides wildlife habitat, especially for birds and pollinators. And the birds are helping with the flies at this time of year. eating the flies, off the cattle, flying through the air. Thank you. A little contribution there. And I want to announce that Thousand Hills Lifetime Grazed Grass-Fed Beef has been now certified by the Audubon Conservation Ranching Program so that we have bird-friendly land. And that introduces our next... Our next episode featuring Anthony Houck from Audubon Conservation Ranching to talk about our certification and the importance of birds and wildlife habitat and reversing the trend that we see from more tillage that destroys the grasslands And even with cattle overgrazing to a point where there isn't any cover left and no rest, that's the way I was raised. We'd put cattle in this pasture and they'd hold them all summer until everything was down to the ground and then we'd move them to another pasture. Our system is much different than that in that it's a one day grazing onto the next with still cover for the birds and wildlife. And it happens to regenerate the soil, sequester more carbon, improve our water retention, and all of those things. So on our episode of Regenerative Renegades, we'll be talking about this with Anthony Houck from Audubon. Love the Audubon folks. They're great people to work with, and they're doing great work. So I hope you enjoy. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Regenerative Renegades podcast. Really happy today to have Anthony Houck with us. We got to know Anthony a little bit through our certification process. I'll give you a little background here. We'll talk about Anthony so he doesn't have to talk about himself. Anthony is a proud native of the prairie with grassland and agricultural roots along the Minnesota and South Dakota border. His love for birds took flight at Salt Lake. a historic prairie basin and birding destination bordered by both states. Both states meaning Minnesota and South Dakota. You bet. All right. You betcha. Yeah. There, I covered both states. That's right. And not the Salt Lake we would think of, right? Right. Yeah. The other Salt Lake. The other Salt Lake, yeah. Anthony has dedicated his career to conservation communications with nearly 20 years of communications experience in news, media, state natural resource agencies, and conservation nonprofits. For the National Audubon Society, Anthony works in the Conservation Ranching Program. That's why he's here. Where he focuses on publicizing the value of the Audubon Bird Friendly Land Certification. This includes growing awareness for the Audubon-certified bird-friendly seal, a special package and promotional label on beef and bison products that tells consumers products were grazed on lands managed for birds and biodiversity. He also works to build a better public perception of grazing, specifically rotational grazing, as an essential grassland habitat management tool that's key to stabilizing declining grassland bird populations. All right. Well, Anthony, as I read that, I think about how amazing it is that Audubon got involved in grazing. But before we get to that, I'd like to hear about your journey and what brought you here and what passion drives you in this whole industry.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Sure. Well, thanks for having me. You bet. It's... It's easy for me to sit here as we're recording this in this farmhouse near Clearwater, Minnesota. Old farmhouse, and I say that in a very complimentary way. And it's kind of like the place I grew up. The town that I grew up in, most of my upbringing, Madison, Minnesota. Yes, there is a Madison, Minnesota. I say that all the time, and people say, you mean Madison, Wisconsin, as if I don't know where I'm from. Western Minnesota. Grew up on a farm. We call them farms there at least. You move across the border, they're ranches. It's a hard divide. And your hat has to change too. It does. It's cowboy country as soon as you cross the border. I grew up very close to the South Dakota border on a farm and it was just living back then in the 80s and 90s. Spent a lot of time outdoors. We had grasslands and wetlands and a river on our farm. We had livestock. I was outside all the time. Little to no supervision, and I mean that in a kind way to my parents. They just let us go. We were able to just have the run of the place. Consider that instrumental in my love of just the outdoors, wildlife, livestock, animals. Isn't

SPEAKER_01 6:21

it amazing, if I could just stop you for a second, how... When that's imprinted on you, nature, livestock, farm, any part of that or all of it, I was just thinking on my way over about how you just, you can't shake it. You know, like it's a part of you. And whenever you're in any of those environments, it feels like home. Is that right? It

SPEAKER_00 6:50

is home. You know, I did try to shake it, which I don't think is abnormal. No, I did too. I did too. Right. And by the time I was a teenager, I just, I wanted to get away. And you're kind of told to go see the world too. And there was a push. I think it's changed a bit, but you go to college. That's just what you do. You go elsewhere. I never thought about staying. And by the time I was done with college, it was... I just really missed it and kind of realized how good I'd had it. My brother has stayed home and taken over the farm with good reason. He's got more of that mindset and he's more mechanically inclined than I am. It does take. But yeah, I miss it. And I realized that I did have a connection to the land and the outdoors. And so, um, I did a little newspaper reporting and I was a little, I got burned out on that pretty quick. And that whole environment has changed too. And I, I guess the funny thing is I'd never thought about a career in conservation unless you were like a biologist. Um, and my, my dad had always been a volunteer for kind of the more of the hook and bullet sportsman's organizations, um, ducks and limited pheasants forever. Yeah. And he said, why don't you just do that? They need more than biologists. And that sent me down this path where I was hired at Pheasants Forever and worked there for a good while. And then the Minnesota DNR before coming to Audubon. And I imagine there's still people out there that think like, well, you just have to be a biologist to work at these places. And of course, you can You can work in communications. You can be an accountant. These types of organizations need a slew of talent across the board, and I've kind of found my way doing that.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Well, as a marketing guy, I remember the first time we met, and I think I asked you the naive question like, okay, what kind of degree do you have in biology? What kind of a birder are you? And you really shifted around and said, well, I'm actually in communications.

UNKNOWN 9:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

And I thought, that is so awesome to be able to pick up your career with that degree and that skill set.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

It's connected me, reconnected me to my home. I mean, I live in Minneapolis now, and we'll get into more of these conservation connections, but I've lived in Minneapolis now for 20 years, and I've always felt connected to my home in Western Minnesota, but also to the land and, and, uh, um, my profession is instrumental in, in maintaining that connection. I sometimes don't know if I'd have that if I wasn't working for the birds and, um, yeah, it, it, it, I get that a lot, you know, people, and I see that a lot with like Audubon employees. Well, they just automatically assume you're a bird nerd. I'm Kind of an amateur naturalist. Oh, I like that. Bird

SPEAKER_01 9:57

nerd. I'm going to use that

SPEAKER_00 9:59

one. Bird nerd. Every once in a while, it's dangerous turf because I think I'm really starting to know something about birds. And then I come across the rest of my coworkers who are, you know, like scientists and ornithologists, and they just put me to shame.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Yeah, that's all right. Yeah. So, so that brought you like, that's your background. And how long have you been with Audubon? I've

SPEAKER_00 10:22

been with, I'm in my fourth year with Audubon. Yep. And, uh, um, I just love it. You know, it's every place is a little different. I, I, I, uh, as, as I'm kind of, you know, maybe the midpoint of my career, I get to reflect on it. It's like, I'm, I'm glad that I've had, uh, an array of experiences now. Um, yeah. one for a more hunting-focused conservation group. When I was at the Department of Natural Resources, I worked in forestry. Oh, you were with the DPR. And I did love that, but what it really made me realize was that I like the prairie. Just a reminder that I like the prairie more than trees. And I'm not, don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-tree by any means, but I like trees in the right places and So I was missing the prairie quite a bit, although that was a great experience in public service. But Audubon is a fascinating organization. It's nationwide, coast to coast, Minnesota to Texas organization. do so many interesting things, and I love that, and we work with so many smart and talented people, and we'll dig in, but our Audubon Conservation Ranching Program, what I really love about it is it's really unique, and it feels like we're trying to tackle some serious environmental problems in a unique and different way, and I think that's what conservation needs more of is kind of changing Working to change paradigms, and it's not always easy, but it's been fun to be in kind of a different mode of conservation.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Yeah. Well, I'm going to say something, and it's not blowing smoke, but I will concur that all the people that I've met that work for Audubon, at any level, they share two things. One, a real passion for what they're doing in whatever form they're doing and whatever their gifts are and applying those. But then two, that they're very smart. They're just smart and they're good at what they do. And to me, Audubon as an organization, to make that leap from what we would say normal conservation or I don't know how you would term that. Traditional maybe. Traditional conservation to saying, hey, we're going to work with ranchers, farmers, grazing the land, Because if that grazing is done correctly, if it's adaptive, if it's managed, that is very good for the habitat, which is good for the birds. And I don't know how many times I've told people that. It's like when they kind of audubon and grass-fed beef, how does that work? And it's like, well, it actually works great because I've seen it with my own eyes. I've seen that when we manage correctly, and adapt to the environment, and to wildlife, and to water, and to the various forces that are changing all the time, the results are amazing. And so I was a believer before we ever met, or before I knew of the conservation program, just by watching what had been attracted, what wildlife had been attracted to our land since we started managing it in a more regenerative manner.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Right. It's... I've... I'm lucky to kind of witness a transformation that's taken place in the conservation community. I think over, yeah, I'd say this century. I mean, it's not like we, it's, we, uh, it's not like conservation organizations never worked with private landowners, but the strategy has really shifted from just protecting certain wildlife areas and sanctuaries kind of, I don't know what the right analogy would be. It's like almost like we were playing checkers on a chessboard and, um, You've got to be strategic to do chess, and if you want to be strategic in conservation, you have to work with private landowners. They own 90% of the land, right? I mean, it varies from state to state, but in Minnesota here, private landowners own 75% of the land. In Iowa and Kansas, it's probably closer to like 98%, 99%. And if you're not working with those people to... drive conservation forward, it's really hard to scale your success. The other thing that's really interesting, I guess, in terms of the work that I get to do is, even beyond just the Audubon Conservation Ranching Program, but there's two things that come to mind. It's like a lot of people don't even really know we have grasslands, right? True. And for a lot of my conversations and communication, it kind of starts there. We have grasslands. That can shock some people. Not only do we have them, but they're the most endangered biome on Earth. And it's kind of a weird dynamic that people know about the rainforest and the plight they face a continent away, don't even know that we have our own threatened biome right here. And then to your point, too, that once you kind of establish that factor, people know about grasslands. It's like any habitat. They have to be managed. And grazing is a great way to do that. But it's taken a lot of work to educate people, reconnect them to grasslands. I mean, only 40% of our grasslands are left. That's what we got. So we've got to do everything we can to protect grasslands. what we have left. And if we got 40% left, and we should add to that if we can, reclaim, but what we have left, we really have to manage it and make it the best it can possibly be. And that's the exciting part about working with landowners such as yourself, your network, and everybody else we work with, that they want to make the grassland habitat they have the best it can be for birds, but also for their animals, their livestock.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Yeah. You know, I want to go back to this... what I would say is set aside land that maybe is publicly owned. And historically, how do you manage that? You leave it alone. Right. For all practical purposes, that's what was done. So we have seen and witnessed CRP land that was set aside and supposed to be a good wildlife habitat. We've grazed refuges that have allowed some grazing. And so we've been able to see how effective was that set aside for the previous, that set aside land for the previous 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, however long until we arrived. And without exception, again, with proper grazing management, but without exception, we've been able to take what was pretty much a dormant environment with very little, wildlife to witness and see you know we'd see a lot of pocket gophers you know some squirrels and some deer but it it wasn't full of life you didn't walk into a set-aside piece of land that what that is either set aside for whatever reason and feel like you were in the middle of nature you just didn't quite feel that way but if you grazed and managed and got off it let it rest and let it Flourish. Regenerate. Yeah, and now you're regenerating the soil, and then what's on top of it, all this wildlife habitat, and pretty soon, you know, it takes two, three, four, five years, but you start to get that feeling of the chaos of nature taking place, and the birds overhead, and the birds on the ground, and you can just see that you're attracting in what wildlife needs to be able to thrive. And so there is, I say all that because I do think this mindset still needs shifting that just setting aside land and doing nothing with it is not what nature intended. And it's not the best for the wildlife habitat. It's not the best for our food system. It's just, it's a man created, just like conventional agriculture, It's a man-created way of kind of working towards something that at least says, we're not going to do this on the land. Instead of saying, we're going to do this, which is going to regenerate the land. Meaning, in our case, livestock on the land, which has existed forever. Some type of ruminants grazing on the land, helping to propagate that habitat.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Right, right. Well... It's interesting. I suppose the best part of my job is when I do explain to somebody who doesn't really have consciousness about what it is our Audubon Conservation Ranching does and our grassland work and maybe never even seen a grassland bird. When you explain that process, there's grasslands. They're really diverse places and they... they evolve to have disturbance with like fire or bison and cattle can do a pretty darn good job replicating some of that. And then you get into the bend. And if you explain it, the usual response is it, that's pretty cool. Actually, you just, it makes sense. It does. When you

SPEAKER_01 19:55

explain

SPEAKER_00 19:56

it, if you get the chance to explain it, that's the hard part, you know, to, to have, um, intentional, meaningful conversations with people harder online, but we try, but I love that part of it. And, and, you know, that's probably the most satisfying part of my job. I think too, about just, you know, what we, we're always trying to find, I think like the right terms for this work, you know, um, Words matter, right? It's regenerative agriculture. My program, we consider it like working lands. I think that's a pretty apt description. These lands, they're working. They're at work. The land is really never constant. It's going to change, to your point about CRP, which is a great program, and I think it's evolving, and there's more of a focus on management, but you can't just leave grasslands stagnant. They need to be at work. They need to have some form of disturbance. And it's just been a real education for me to learn even more about grazing and just how amazing it can be for bringing back diverse plants and then bringing back birds. And that's the whole gist of what we're trying to do on the land is... create a patchwork, a mosaic of habitat. And you think like about that CRP example, just 40 acres of just kind of one kind of homogenous, you know, maybe a few, after a few years, if it's just a few plants, if it's just the same height. Yeah, around here, it's

SPEAKER_01 21:27

smooth

SPEAKER_00 21:28

brome and cedar trees. If it gets to that, it's not benefiting a whole lot of, you know, but if you can take, if you can take that and have 20 acres of, at a mid-level, 10 acres low, 10 acres taller grass. I mean, it's about creating a mosaic that benefits a lot of wildlife, but definitely birds. Birds don't all need the same thing. And if we're not grazing or if we're not using fire, but grazing is what we focus on, and it might be the greatest grassland management tool we have. If we're not managing the land, it's just not going to do as good things for wildlife and probably not us either.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

True. Yep. And we get into words. I want to clarify a little bit. In our little circle of this type of grazing, there's a lot of terms for it. And I don't want people to think that there's one magic term because I've heard holistic, adaptive, managed, rotational. The list goes on. Right. To me, it all falls under the umbrella that someone's paying attention and they're managing that grazing and they're maximizing the ROI, the grander ROI of how are we going to replicate nature in a way that achieves that ROI? And then our byproduct in our case is grass fed beef that we can enjoy. But they're the tool that's actually doing the work to get the most out of that land and at the same time regenerate it.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

Can we just have Webster's Dictionary just take our terms then and just make it easy so everybody buys into this? I think we're in a sorting out period about that too. I think that's a great definition and I agree wholeheartedly. It's getting... System-wide. And maybe it is beneficial that not everybody has the same. Well, yeah, I think it is. I think I like all the terms. Right. And I don't think there's any one that's right. One doesn't have to be set. Right. Every once in a while, I wonder if it would be better if some were just set. But anyways. Oh, well, that's nature. That's nature. There's

SPEAKER_01 23:41

diversity. I like that. Yeah. So let's give props to some of the people that put together this program. You know, consulting with Audubon, the early people that were recognizing this. If you can go back in history, I know I met with Marshall Johnson, I don't know, 15 years ago, 12 years ago, 10 years ago. I don't know exactly how long, but a few years ago and talked about this topic.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Right.

UNKNOWN 24:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

The origins of Audubon Conservation Ranching probably date back 15 years that people were starting to think about it. Marshall, of course, now Audubon's chief conservation officer. For

SPEAKER_01 24:29

him, he was lost in North

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Dakota when I talked to him somewhere. Yeah, well, he's a big thinker. He's a visionary guy. You probably knew right then that he was going to be in a place like that. Yeah. So he was there, many other kind of partners, and I guess you'd call them luminaries, Roger Still in Missouri. I think the thing that's made it work is there was– you kind of talked about this kind of maybe almost like a figurative but literal fence between conservationists and ranchers at one point. They just didn't work together. And I think the smart thing that these– that are in the program's formative years is it brought in ranchers and not just from one region, from across the country, you know, Midwest, Intermountain West, the West, animal husbandry experts, right? Or animal welfare experts. As they built out practices and protocols for a program, they did their due diligence. That was important. Then I think like...

SPEAKER_01 25:40

Which is smart. Audubon does that really well. Right. Like they vet and they find who are the visionaries, who are the experts. Like I talked to Alan Williams the other day and he had input on developing this program and he really does know his stuff and has for decades and decades been, you know, a proponent of what we're talking about. Right. You know, so Audubon does that so well. They really find the experts.

SPEAKER_00 26:07

And... I suppose I should say so, in the program, once we work with private landowners such as yourself, and once they meet our standards around environmental sustainability, habitat management, and animal welfare, they earn the certification. I think another smart thing is that to earn that... to earn that bird-friendly land certification, we don't just rubber stamp it either. We have a third-party audit. Our outfit that does that is Food Alliance. And I think that's a smart check in there too, right, where it makes it really accountable. Also along this path, I think we saw that even– Even the people that kind of helped form the program were maybe even a bit ahead of their time. I mean, we've known for a while that grassland habitat and grassland birds have been in trouble. But about five years ago, there was a landmark study right as the program was kind of entering its kind of more public phase that showed that, you know, in about the last half century, 50 years, we've lost 3 billion birds.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

You know,

SPEAKER_00 27:24

I just read that. With a B. That's with a B, 3 billion.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Three billion birds. Do you know how many species?

SPEAKER_00 27:34

Well, what I do know is that grassland birds have suffered the biggest declines. And one thing that I think is important to point out too, it can be easy just to think, well, we've You lose birds and there's some populations that don't have as many and species just go extinct. We're talking about some very common birds too. It's not just like species that were on the fringe. Edelarks. Bobwhite quail. These are once common species that have really lost a lot of their populations. That's a bad sign. Of course, there are other species that maybe have smaller ranges, smaller populations, and there's a good number of grassland birds that are poised to lose half their population in the next 50 years.

SPEAKER_01 28:33

Can you attribute that to, of course, you want to know why. Is it habitat? Is it loss of grassland is the primary? Is there a chemical influence? Is it predators like domestic cats and, you know, do you have any way of quantifying?

SPEAKER_00 28:54

This report, which Audubon contributed to and was put out by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, cites habitat loss and fragmentation, which kind of the same thing almost. I mean, but... You lose habitat, that's not good. And when you degrade and fragment habitat, that can be just almost as destructive as losing it. So

SPEAKER_01 29:15

fragmentation just meaning there's like a grassland here and then 20

SPEAKER_00 29:19

miles away. Disconnected. You put up a house or a barn, a structure somewhere that can fragment and some species don't want to be near that. But chemicals too. Those are the two major causes. And And they're interconnected, of course, right? I mean, chemicals don't just... And when I say chemicals, when we're talking pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, it's not like they live in a vacuum. They end up on the land and... And so there's an interrelationship between habitat and chemicals. But habitat loss is probably the primary reason. Like I said, when we've lost 60% of our grasslands, that's just an unmistakable factor.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

So over what time period did we lose the$3 billion? I

SPEAKER_00 30:14

think it goes back to about the early 70s. So your lifetime. That's short. Right? That's a blink of an eye.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

Yeah. When were you born? Well, 60s. But, you know, I look like I was born in the 70s. You do.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

Well, wow. Youthful aura. But yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, this has happened in the course of your time here on Earth. Wow. And mine too.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

Yeah. That's really amazing. It really is. I mean, I'm thinking about a report that I put together in what must have been about in seventh grade. That was around the whole silent spring time period. Right. It was on magazine covers and things. And we didn't change much after what was supposed to be the big environmental movement that was going to change everything for the positive. And yet this has happened in that time period since that was the whatever, you know, Lake Erie on fire. Right. Those types of things that were happening back then. So, wow. Yeah. We've got, we've got some work to do.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

We've got some work. So that, you know, that, I think that put a, even a brighter light on the focus of our, our, our work. Like it's imperative that we do more. And, um, so obviously it doesn't hurt that Marshall's moved on to a higher position, I guess, to, you know, kind of wrap that thought is like, he's, he's, he's helped this program grow, um, Audubon Conservation Ranching is now... Someone told me this, so I hope it's not wrong. One of the other smart people at Audubon, but that Audubon Conservation Ranching is the biggest grassland conservation program that's not run by the federal government.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

Oh, well, that's great.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

So when you hear that bad news, we do have to look for signs of hope, right? Yes. And... I think this program is one of those things. It's 3 million acres. We work 115 or so ranchers, and the ranches have earned this certification. A collective that combines for 3 million acres of bird-friendly land that we've certified and is under that active habitat management that you so enthusiastically and aptly described earlier. That's a lot. That's a great start, but there's a lot of room to grow and improve. There's, it's, there's nothing, nothing but opportunity ahead. So that, that, that, that does give you hope. You got to have hope if you work in this world, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:52

For sure. For sure. You have to have something to point to. And so is there a date and a goal or goals for acreage or

SPEAKER_00 33:01

milestones? Right. I think like, you know, the next 5 million acres is kind of that, that, you know, that next one, you know, 10 million acres is, maybe talked about in the back room, corner offices. I don't think that's out of reach. Audubon does have pretty ambitious habitat goals overall. This isn't all just grassland habitat, but the organization is, this decade, focused on connecting 300 acres interconnecting 300 million acres of habitat under our strategic plan there's a lot of ways you know a lot of habitat you know if that includes like forests coasts etc but um you know that that habitat is is definitely a key focus because

SPEAKER_01 33:51

that's what birds need to live yeah you caught me at interconnecting so is there like a map that actually shows how the land is going to be interconnected. Cause that's really fascinating. Right. Cause you know, that gets away from the fragmentation. Right. You can interconnect. I'm guessing that's why it's

SPEAKER_00 34:10

important. I think that, I think those, those bird nerds, the scientists are working on developing that, see how everything's connected, but yeah, that's, that's, that's the goal. It's I, I do know that number 300 million acres of, of connected habitats and, and, I hope we get there. Yeah. And grassland work is an important component of that. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:31

Yeah. I'm just thinking about from where we sit in this farmhouse and there's a lake out there that's the mouth of a stream that goes to the Mississippi. And slowly we've been able to rent or lease or buy land that goes all the way to the Mississippi now. And that, and there is, I've never thought about it from a, what's that doing for habitat? But there is kind of a, a feeling of like, okay, this, this area we're positively impacting and, and we're connected to something bigger, the Mississippi river, and we're helping to diminish the dead zone in, you know, by reducing runoff. And I don't know, that's part of what gives me hope is like, okay, it's not, it's not just our little isolated world that we live in right here. It's how, how, and this is just like, how are we interconnecting with other land, whether it's grazed or some other conservation program, and begin to build those connections. That's, I hadn't really thought about it that way before. I felt it, but I never really thought about it. That's cool.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

I think those, I think those connections are, uh, you, you were just, you've just been like me growing up. You're just living. Right. But I think those are some of the most profound, like, uh, kind of points to get to when, when, I mean, I, like what you've done here, right. That this, this stream, not, not all that far from this farmhouse, right. No, no, just over the hill, just over the hill that, you know, Feeds down, weaves its way into the Mississippi River. It's like what you do here matters along hundreds, I don't know, a thousand miles of water. Right. And into the ocean. Yeah. And you can't discount that. You should be proud of that. But it's also like that stuff can influence that behavior that your modeling can influence, hopefully eventually, neighbors. Oh, yeah. People elsewhere along the way. Policy eventually. Yeah. That also doesn't live in a vacuum. So it does matter. I mean, sometimes it feels like this work is insurmountable. Sometimes it's lonely. It's lonely. Sometimes

SPEAKER_01 36:59

I'm lonely,

SPEAKER_00 37:00

yeah. Right? But it does matter, and people are paying attention. It just always seems to take a little bit longer than you want.

SPEAKER_01 37:06

For sure. I'm kind of impatient, and I'm not getting any younger. But you know what? Going through my mind is, so when I was a kid, you bring up being a kid, and we'd build little boats in the spring out of pieces of wood or whatever, and watch them go down the stream. Max, my son is here. He's also done the same thing. Remember that, Max? Yeah. He nodded yes. Yeah, he nodded yes. But you get the sense when you're doing that, you're like, wow, this thing, if it kept going, where would it go? And it's connected all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, but it's also connected moving and it's dynamic and it's connecting to the Mississippi and, you know, and there's, there's that bigger connection that like, let's, we all want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. And, and that moment just kind of helped me realize that.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

Yeah. Isn't that what it's all about? I mean, in some, some respect every day, you probably have a few moments like that around here, whether it's

SPEAKER_01 38:11

Yeah, outside of the frustration of something breaking where you need to be a mechanic and then you got to fix it. But yes. Don't call me, remember that. I'm not mechanically inclined. I'm not either. That wasn't part of the gifts that I received. So what do you see? Okay, so Audubon's working across the country on different ranches. So are there parts of the country or are there pockets that are kind of catching fire on this whole concept? And how does that look? You get the bird's eye view. Oh,

SPEAKER_02 38:48

wow.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

Right. No pun intended.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

Well, it's a good question. Looking at our program, you know, there's a lot of great things happening. Try to synthesize some of those. I mean, I We work basically west of this great river that we've just been talking about, the Mississippi, and then in Wisconsin. That's the focal point of our work. And it's not that there's not grasslands in the east, but that's where we're putting our resources and most remaining grasslands kind of that are intact and where we feel like we can make the biggest impact are kind of that center, inner mountain west, and then, you know, west coast we're expanding this year um to the kind of the last remaining holes on the map that we've had so we'll be hiring some people in arizona and new mexico We'll be hiring some or getting work going in Oregon and Washington, which was kind of a hole on the map. And we've just hired a new person to brought on, just started a week ago, who's going to be leading the show in Oklahoma and Kansas. So we kind of fill that in. And we'll have, you know, resources, which is what our ranchers that we work with need. We'll have resources in basically every state west of the Mississippi and then Wisconsin. You know, as far as like, you know, Montana is probably a state that we have to talk about. I mean, that's where a lot of grasslands are, a lot of ranchers. I think we've one-fifth of our certified ranches are in Montana, so like 20.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

So that's the epicenter.

SPEAKER_00 40:35

That's pretty good. But then there's 20 in the Dakotas. We've got probably 20 in the Rockies, that region, Wyoming and Colorado. We're just getting going. The thing is, some of the places like Minnesota, I think we have a newly certified ranch here we might want to talk about, but we've got a couple here. And probably what's exciting is that the wait list, I guess, or the people that are enrolled, I mean, there's a lot of ranches in the pipeline. So that's also very exciting is that we've got some areas that might not have a lot of dots on the map just yet, but get back to you in a year or two and it's going to look quite filled in, I think.

SPEAKER_01 41:23

Yeah. Well, I know when I talk to potential producers for our brand and I bring up Audubon because we're rolling out our certification that encompasses all the producers that work with us and talking to those potential producers, if I'm west anywhere near the mountains, they've either heard about your program or are already certified. And it's pretty amazing because they're also, like, they get it. They're enthusiastic about it and they understand why it's important. And that... And they just generally are steward-minded. Right. And it's wonderful to be around people like that.

SPEAKER_00 42:10

It is. I think... kind of storytelling when when you're a non-profit and like we are you you've you've got to be scrappy and storytelling is i think we've done a good job at telling our story to potential ranchers and that's why i've built a great program i think the next frontier of course what we're excited about with your own brand and going forward is um is is that making that conservation connection with consumers. I'm excited to see what kind of wildfire that starts. It's hard not to think about, you're probably in your mind going back to being out on your skis, living here. I'm going back to growing up these kind of idyllic scenes, but a lot of us either never had that or are far removed from it. And this is, I think, the great hope of the program too is like, How do we connect people? And I'm one of them. I grew up rural, but we've become an urban culture, right? More of us live in cities than in the country and on farms. We're disconnected from the land. Can this certification, is it a small yet important way to reconnect people to the land in some fashion? I think so. I think it's, I think it's a great model. I think there's a lot, a lot of room to grow. Um, uh, you said something interesting, interesting, just fascinated me once when, you know, I've been out here a bunch of times the last few years, but like, you know, it, we'd all like to know our farmer, right? Right. That's not possible. Right. Or really, or really darn hard. I shouldn't say impossible, but it's, it's hard. Right. You're not going to know. I mean, if you can, great. Don't, don't get me wrong. If you can know your farmer, you, You damn well should. Yeah, right. But we don't all have that luxury. Right. So what's the interface if we don't know our farmer? What's going to prove that farmers and ranchers are producing things on their land in a way that agrees with your environmental sensibilities or what we as a society should expect of how the land should be taken care of and to steward our resources, birds, other wildlife?

SPEAKER_01 44:28

Perfectly said. I mean, that... you know, that know your farmer, and I always add, and their practices. Right. because that's important. You can know a really nice farmer that has the best intentions, but really what are their practices? And I'll tell you, okay, when I started my career in marketing, there was no such thing as social media. Mass media was it. You could buy a billboard or an ad in the Super Bowl or whatever, and that was it. That was the only way you

SPEAKER_00 44:56

were going to reach people. And it was still expensive

SPEAKER_01 44:57

then. Yeah, it was still expensive, relatively speaking, then too. But now I think about that a lot when we're capturing people moments, stories on the farm or with our other producers that I want to so bad convey what it feels like, what it looks like, because I know not everybody has that opportunity. And I'm very spoiled and I'm very blessed to be able to enjoy that every day. I never tire of giving tours to people around and showing them the practices that we have. And I get tired of talking sometime, but what I never get tired of is the feedback. And people say, oh, I'm so glad I came. I learned so much and got to witness this. And I just, I can see the results with my own eyes. That never gets old because, you know, they don't, like you said, they don't have that opportunity every day to do that. So I want to really, I put the pressure on myself to try to share as much as we can to share that experience with them.

SPEAKER_00 46:09

I think that's great. I think you're a great ambassador. And this project of providing a podcast, providing information, you do a great job being an advocate, face-to-face conferences, things like that. And then it all has to work together. And our certification, of course, the work happens person-to-person. But that... that bird-friendly seal that goes on packaging, that's to represent, to say, yeah, we are doing the practices. That's to provide a true statement, essentially, to consumers that, yeah, we're doing these practices. We're managing habitat for cattle, but for birds and biodiversity.

SPEAKER_01 46:55

Yeah, and certifications matter. You know, there's... There's only so much room on a package, you know, and I'll do our shameless plug. We're putting out our certification for the Audubon Conservation Ranching. It's going to be on our package. And that's exactly why we're doing is because we want to convey what those practices are. And we know Audubon has consumers that follow what they're doing and care about, you know, birds and wildlife habitat. So how do we make that connection that the cow, managed correctly isn't degrading the environment. In fact, they're in this type of management, they're helping the environment, they're helping the birds. And so we're very proud to be able to have that out there. And consumers, you know, yes, connect with the land and the farmer, but also know that whether it's our brand of Thousand Hills or another brand, your dollar is what drives all of it. You know, what you eat derives all of it. What you choose as a reflection of your values really does matter. That's what, we wouldn't exist if the consumer demand wasn't there. Our brand wouldn't exist. And we have seen, well, you know, it started in 2020 with COVID and it's really built momentum that consumers are really looking for they're discerning about what food they're going to eat and what they're going to support and, and how they, how they're made that really food is a lifestyle. And it's amazing. I mean, uh, the phrase internally is the wind is at our back after 20, after 20 some years, the wind pushing the rock up the hill, the boulder up the hill, the wind is at our back. And now we have to responsibly go forward.

UNKNOWN 48:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:57

You know, like it's a moment that we have that I don't want to waste and I want to handle in a way that, you know, with integrity and deliver what people are looking for. And that's, you know, in this program, we're doing that together.

SPEAKER_00 49:15

Right. And I, it's hard for me to, you know, I don't have a crystal ball, but it's hard for me to see people demanding less of their food system. You know, that's the wind at your back. That's the, that's the trend line, which gets you excited to think about like, okay, you've been at it for 20 years. What about 20 years from now? Not that we're itching to grow older, faster. No, no.

SPEAKER_01 49:39

Today's good. Let's enjoy today. Let's enjoy. Let's, let's cherish that. But I, I mean, I feel the same way. I don't, I can't imagine reversing course. I just can't imagine that. in our collective society on what we're valuing as important. You know, there's some pretty major things happening right now around human health and how that connects to the land and to the practices of agriculture. And I think that's only going to be, you know, that's only going to raise awareness of this whole idea of regenerative agriculture. And, you know, there's just so many paths you could go down but you know we've all experienced disease and our families and and there's a reason why and it wasn't always that way and it's not normal in my view so there's things we can do about that we work together and have an open mind and support a different way of doing things

SPEAKER_00 50:44

right well it i think what i see too is just that that people want to make People like action, right? And you can, it does start with something small. You can protect, you can protect the stream that runs into the Mississippi. It's not a big stream back there, right? You can, you can decide, yeah, I was buying, I've been buying beef that's imported from Tasmania or Australia, but I can, I can purchase Thousand Hills beef or anything else with, with the Audubon certified bird friendly seal. Right. That's, we can make these small actions. You know, we have, we can vote with our wallet. We can, I mean, it's, it's hard not to be frustrated sometimes against an ag industrial complex that, you know, has, um, we're behind the eight ball on habitat and grassland birds are struggling. And, you know, the farmers in this line of work, it's not, it's not always as easy. It's not a, uh, it's not a field that's just laden with subsidies for now.

SPEAKER_01 51:49

None. None.

SPEAKER_00 51:49

Um, there's not, there's, they don't have all the built in advantages, but, but small actions that people take do make a difference and they matter. And eventually over time, you just have to believe that they add up. So that's, that's what gives me hope working person to person. So I hope we'll get there.

SPEAKER_01 52:05

You know, I was looking around for the newsletter that I got yesterday. It was, um, green backed Gazette. It was a part of Audubon. It's, it's, it's some form, some like a regional publication, uh, But when you talk about doing some little thing, they talked about changing the monoculture in your yard and not just having Kentucky bluegrass. And that's near and dear to my heart because my first business was an organic lawn care company. So back in the 80s, I was preaching organic. Don't worry about just having Kentucky bluegrass. Don't worry about the dandelions. You know, use organic fertilizer. Let there be diversity in your grass. But then, you know, it's like I didn't even make the connection. I knew we were going to talk today. It's like, oh, yeah. Well, then it's also bird friendly, too. If you have flowering plants and you have diversity in your grass and you're not applying chemicals, that's a huge amount of chemicals that could be just eliminated, right? If we just managed our lawns differently and that runoff, you know, it's easy to point at big egg. Sure. But we're doing that in our own. We all have, we all have, well, a lot of people, not everybody, but we have a little piece of land that we're managing.

SPEAKER_00 53:23

This is near and dear to my heart. Cause I, I, uh,

SPEAKER_01 53:27

I can't believe we are kindred spirits.

SPEAKER_00 53:28

We are. Well, I'm, you know, I manage, I manage about a quarter acre. Okay. In, in Minneapolis. But two years ago I tore up my front lawn. And it's all native prairie habitat now. You did? I did. Do the

SPEAKER_01 53:41

neighbors hate you?

SPEAKER_00 53:42

You'd be surprised. I mean, I shouldn't say you'd be surprised. Minnesota has this neat program called Lawns to Legumes, and I haven't gotten one of these grants, but they've incentivized people with some grants to just get this work started on their small... I mean, I think I remember this factoid correctly, but there's... there's more lawn grass than there, than there is corn in terms of acreage in this country.

SPEAKER_01 54:14

Wouldn't surprise me. Wouldn't surprise me.

SPEAKER_00 54:17

So somebody, when they see this can don't, don't quote me on it. Go, go fact check. But I, I'm, I'm about 99% sure that's right. But I guess that goes to the point of like, so my little project, right. My whole front yard, we moved in a couple of years ago. Um, I killed off the Kentucky bluegrass or maybe more crabgrass. Yeah, that's right. And now I've got a diverse little prairie. Now it's small, but it's what I can control. And you know what? Birds come back. There's bees buzzing. It's amazing. And in a way, whether you have a quarter acre, four acres, 40 acres, 400 acres, or 4,000 or 40,000, like some of our ranchers, you do what you can to manage habitat.

UNKNOWN 55:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:00

Well, guess what? I've got an answer for your trivia right here in the Greenback Gazette, Central Minnesota Audubon. So in the United States, it says we have 44 million acres of lawns. That's about half of the corn, but that's just lawns. And then there's 2 million acres of golf courses. 78% of the land is privately owned. We have paved an area over the size of Ohio. That doesn't help. Every 30 seconds, a football field of natural areas disappears to development. Wow. Okay, here's another factoid about your 3 billion birds. That's, according to this gazette, that's a third of the bird population.

SPEAKER_00 55:54

That's correct. I probably failed to mention that for context, but not insignificant.

SPEAKER_01 56:00

A third?

SPEAKER_00 56:00

A

SPEAKER_01 56:01

third. Wow. That is crazy. So I highly recommend the Greenback

SPEAKER_00 56:09

Gazette. Right. So the visual, right, is like if you saw, if you're 10 years old in 1972 or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 56:17

Right.

SPEAKER_00 56:18

And there's three metal arks on a post. Yep. There's two today.

SPEAKER_01 56:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:23

Just like that.

SPEAKER_01 56:24

And I, well, they used to be everywhere when I was younger. Now they are rare to find, you know, so it's, it's real. Um, yeah. So, and then they talk about this lawn too, um, reduced lawn areas, plant native species. I'll put a plug in for Minnesota native landscape, friends of ours down 94 and St. Michael. They have a whole bunch of different mixes of native plants. plants that you can buy enough to seed the area of this table if you wanted to so that you know native species are are great and we mix those in actually in our seed mix they're very expensive you can't really if the acreage we're grazing you can't really just put in natives but we put in about five percent natives into our normal cocktail of grasses and legumes just hoping that something will catch on and, and propagate from there. Right.

SPEAKER_00 57:29

Yeah. And eventually they do. I think that's it. Native restoration is hard. It's, it's a lot easier to just, it's been a lot easier for us to just like tear up prairies and pave them over. It's, it's hard work. You know, it's complicated. I have a bunch of friends who've, you know, who've tried to do, you know, manage habitat and bring back prairie. And some years it just doesn't, you need weather conditions to break. Right. Right. Just like you needed that snow to ski. We didn't have snow for a while. So things have to break, but if you stay at it eventually, like that seat, you can get that seed bed cooking again the right way.

SPEAKER_01 58:07

Oh, we've seen some areas, especially the areas that haven't been tilled for like 80 years. But if they were just periodically, like every 20 years or so farm kind of went and right. Usually it's, It's poor soil, gravelly soil that someone decided they didn't want to work anymore, so they put it in CRP. But in those areas, we have been able to get the native seed bank to come alive. And that's like magic when you see that. All of a sudden, it's there when the conditions are just right, the moisture, the heat, the soil, the trampling, the animal impact. And then here comes small bluestem popping up everywhere. Right. And you're like, how long was that sitting in the seed bank? you know, 50 years, 75 years?

SPEAKER_00 58:52

Just, you know, I know that that's good for birds, right? Like diversity is just important for birds. Diversity in terms of different kinds of plants, birds and different pollinators, right? They favor certain kinds, there's different seeds, different structure, right? Some birds like the plants that are shorter, some like them in the little mid, some like, you know, but... How does that go over with the cattle?

SPEAKER_01 59:21

It's interesting. That's a good question. At first, I noticed they would like, well, I don't know that plant. I'm not sure if I'm going to eat that plant. I've never seen that plant before. But then they come around, and then different plants have different uses for different types of the season. So those native plants are great for winter grazing because the stalks hold up. They're not buried in the snow. There's a, from what I've read, there's a good protein carbohydrate mix that's great for wintering. So that's where, they usually leave, in the case of the bluestems, they leave that until winter, and then they're more than happy to consume it. But in general, they love diversity. I mean, they're always searching out for, they'll eat leaves off a brush, they'll eat leaves off of trees, they'll graze, of course, on the ground. They'll graze some plants down lower than others. They'll leave some for the next time around. It's hard to predict what they're going to do because they select by what they need at that time. And that's pretty fascinating, I think, is that they're smart enough to know what they need. We don't need to tell them. And we don't need to force them. If we force them, well, then that's not in their best health. They innately know. And if you don't give them that room to choose, and that includes weather, you know, be like, oh, don't you have your cattle in a barn? No, we give them enough area in the winter so that they can find the spot that's out of wind in a tree stand or in a, in a valley or whatever's happening with the sun. They get out in the sun and get out of the wind. They'll figure it all out on their own. They know how to survive if you allow them to.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:14

Sounds like your cattle are me when I was a kid, right? Yeah. We started with just go figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:19

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, well, I suppose to close this

SPEAKER_00 1:01:25

up, is there any other thoughts that you want to share? I'd encourage, you know, Audubon is a great organization. If you're not familiar with Audubon, go to our website. Just take a spin. Yeah. I think that'd be great.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:36

A lot of good information.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:37

A lot of good information. I think the one thing I'd say before I give my own shameless plug is, maybe at a most basic level, we've been talking about grasslands and grassland birds, and some of that can get a little niche. I understand that. I think what I found probably the coolest thing about Audubon is birds are really cool and eminently relatable. Everybody's got a favorite bird. Everybody. Got a couple people manning. Manning, the tech in here, Max, Maddie B, they got favorite birds. I guarantee it. Can change day to day. Mine is the sharp-tailed grouse, but maybe tomorrow it'll be a different one. I bet you

SPEAKER_01 1:02:20

have

SPEAKER_00 1:02:21

a favorite bird.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:22

I do. Well, and it goes back to what I was thinking about. My mom loves birds, and she always has. She saved up something. I think it was off of baking soda. Arm& Hammer baking soda. You save up the seals. And she got her own set of Audubon trading cards. And so I just realized how much of an influence she's had on me being interested in birds. But, of course, in the winter, the male cardinal is just amazing. Yeah. Just stunning. Red on white. Yep. Red on white. Shy. Yeah. That, you know, they don't come around and let themselves be known very much. But if you put out black sunflower seeds, they'll come around. So that would be it. And it changes with the seasons. You know, I would say in the fall, it's the wood duck that I really want to see. I just want to see them. I had a little thought while you were talking about this too. You know, right across the driveway here, one day I came across two bald eagles entangled together.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:27

Oh, fighting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:28

And I thought something was wrong. You know, I'm like getting my chainsaw. I got to cut the branch down. I got to get them. Are they, you know, what's going on? Are they wired together? What's going on? And so I was able to get the branch off the tree. And as soon as the day felt the tree, fall the the talons came out and they both flew away we don't need your help yeah

SPEAKER_00 1:03:47

that's right i thought oh i should have known kids don't get involved see i mean this is it the birds birds everybody's got a bird story favorite that that's what i you know maybe this is my edit on the fly i mean that that's a really cool thing about representing audubon and just engaging people at a base level i want to tell them about all the cool stuff that we do but it can just start with like, what's your favorite bird? Sure. Everybody's got one. I was just, I was just on vacation in Mexico. It's good to be back, but I saw a hooded Oriole. I saw this bird up in a palm tree. I was like, kind of looks like an Oriole, but, and boom, I'm on my phone looking it up. What is it? And it's fun to connect with the world like that. So yeah. And conservation ranching, go to audubon.org slash ranching, check, learn a little bit more about our program, how you can support it. Um, see who the producers and some of the brands are that are involved and go from there but um yeah birds are cool that that that's that's my they're fun they're cool and and super relatable and and those just having that kind of small spark can can set you whether whether you're a kid and you're lucky enough to grow up on a farm maybe like we were or you're or or even you're older and you're just surfing the net and finding something new a new hobby to get into you going, going in, getting into, into birds can be a path to like just learning something new and really connecting with the world.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:07

And birds are everywhere. They're everywhere. You know, live in an urban area. There's birds. Backyard birds. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's cool. And most wildlife, that's not true, but birds, it's true.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:20

Right. It is. Yeah. They really, they, they span our world. I mean, one, you know, like, uh, Not to bore you with a strategic plan, but what we talk about, you know, you wonder what we talk about at Audubon behind the scenes. Yeah, what do you

SPEAKER_01 1:05:33

bird nerds talk about anyway?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:34

I mean, the scientists are just reminding me how little I know, but a lot of it is about hemispheric conservation, right? I mean, that sounds like heady stuff, right? Yeah, a lot of syllables there. A lot of the, some birds, I mean, some birds stay here. They ride out these winters, right? And a lot of them leave. A lot of them leave. Maybe the smart ones leave. Smart ones leave, yeah. But some of our favorite grassland birds, they go down to South America. That's

SPEAKER_01 1:06:04

amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:05

You can sit here. We've had this whole conversation. We haven't even brought that. I mean, they're just so cool. There's so much to learn. Man, I just find that ridiculously fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:15

Yes. Well, let's leave it at that, Anthony. Thank you so much for taking the time. You've been a great partner in this whole movement of regenerative and managed grazing and livestock impact. You've been out here. You've been a friend. I appreciate you hopping on the podcast and sharing all this great information with people today. It's just a pleasure. Let's do more of it. All right. Let's do it. The wind's at our backs. Have a good evening.