Guidefitter Spotlight Episode 02: Jenny Burbey, President of the Colorado Outfitter Association

Transcript

Bryan Koontz (00:02) Hi, I'm Bryan Koontz The following is a conversation with Jenny Burbey, co-owner of Highlands Unlimited, a hunting outfit operating in the San Juan National Forest in Colorado. Jenny is also the president of the Colorado Outfitters Association, which is a professional organization lobbying and advocating for the rights of guides, outfitters, and hunters in the state of Colorado.

I've known Jenny and her family for many years now, and it's clear that in addition to being a champion for hunting and guiding rights in the US, that Jenny is also a thinker, a thinker who understands the vital role that hunting plays in the much bigger wildlife conservation picture. So join me for this conversation with Jenny as we talk about what's going on in Colorado and other states, especially in the western part of the US, as it relates to guiding, outfitting, hunting rights, and more. Welcome to the Guidefitter Spotlight.

Bryan Koontz (00:02) I think we're on, Jenny Burbey.

Jennifer C Burbey (00:05) Bryan Koontz

Bryan Koontz (00:07) So good to see you. We really miss seeing you guys at the Harrisburg show. I think this is the first time I've been there this past year for a couple of years. I got COVID last year and then I think the show wasn't going on the year before, whatever. But it was kind of the end of an era because I couldn't believe you guys weren't there. Your kids weren't running around up the halls with all the outfitters. So and my dad says to say hello, by the way, he missed seeing you guys do.

Jennifer C Burbey (00:34) Well, we send hugs back the other direction as well. Because we missed our friends in Harrisburg, but it was time.

Bryan Koontz (00:42) Yeah, and we couldn't hang out on the bus, the awesome conversion bus with the guys from Maven Optics. Well, it was good, we caught up just for a few minutes a couple of weeks ago when I reached out and I think it was then we agreed let's just have this longer conversation because it sounds like in your role now as president of COA and just in general, there's so much going on that I certainly didn't know about.

I'm assuming a lot of others don't know about, and I'm hoping through this discussion with you that we can help get the word out a little bit about a lot of issues that are going on with respect to wildlife conservation, hunting, the outfitting industry, a lot of related things going on in Colorado right now. And as I understand, I was talking to Kerrie Romero in New Mexico and you, and it sounds like...

many of the issues that you guys are facing in Colorado aren't unique to Colorado that a lot of the other Western states the wolf issue and some other things are kind of common and so I would love to just spend as long as we need just kind of getting into it and You know, I'll kind of let you drive you know what topics you feel are the are the key issues and And I know there's some kind of meta issues to talk about too with leadership and things like that But anyway, where do you want to start? I don't know. There's so much to dive into

Jennifer C Burbey (02:07) Well, yeah, it's a hard thing. Where to start? Which part of the carousel would you like to jump in on? That we all end up in the same place.

Bryan Koontz (02:14) I think, yeah, you know, I think that, you know, we could dive into any one particular issue, like the wolf issue, there's a wolverine issue, there's all kinds of other things. But I think what's interesting that maybe sets the table is just, you know, leadership. And how is, like how are decisions made around, you know, laws and things that impact hunting more broadly and outfitters and all of that. Because I think that maybe sets the table for

kind of the broader picture, I don't know.

Jennifer C Burbey (02:47) Yeah, so a little background on Colorado. Colorado has a Parks and Wildlife Department. It actually spent 35 years where it was two separate departments, a Parks Department and a Division of Wildlife Department. They came back together, I think it's eight years ago now, and are run...

as a singular department or a singular agency. The wildlife side has been historically an enterprise agency, meaning it was self-funded and did not fund through the general fund or any legislative budgeting maneuvers. That seems, there seems to be a trend where that is.

Bryan Koontz (04:34) 68% so can you say that again? So 68%

Jennifer C Burbey (04:37) 68% of the wildlife funds come from non-resident elk hunters.

Bryan Koontz (04:44) Non-Resident Elk Hunters okay? Wow. All right.

Jennifer C Burbey (04:46) Yes. Yeah. It kind of comes down to we have we have the largest elk herd in the world and people like to hunt them. We have for lots of reasons and we're not sure why we've actually now we have some formal requests in to our wildlife commission currently asking to study because we have we're losing five to six thousand resident hunters a year and we don't know where

Bryan Koontz (05:16) Resident hunters a year, okay, right, right.

Jennifer C Burbey (05:17) resident hunters. They are not participating in the draw. They're not participating buying licenses and we need to figure out where they're going. It may just be a demographic change, maybe aging out. There's a lot of potential, but we ultimately don't know why or where they're going.

Bryan Koontz (05:35) Are there any studies or economic studies going on around that? Because I don't know about Colorado in particular. I imagine it's the same. But one of the things that one of the conundrums that I understand with states that have draws is that the residents always want preference. And I can see that. I live in Montana now. And as a Montana resident, I want preference over the non-residents. However, it's the non-resident hunting population that brings most of the.

the income as you just mentioned. So with dwindling resident numbers, where is that debate in Colorado?

Jennifer C Burbey (06:11) There's actually a fairly talkative group right now that is pressing for more resident preference. Two months ago, the Wildlife Commission just changed the full allocations to 75-25 for anything in the draw that takes less than six points. If it takes more than six points, we're sitting at 80-20. There was a minor...

it's a statutory obligation for the Wildlife Commission to note and plan for long-term fiscal responsibility. And when the motion to do the 80, 20, and 75, 25, really only part of that was studied. So now they're doing a little, not backpedaling, meaning changing the decision, but they're having to go back and look at it more broadly. And they're gonna look at the economic portions.

trends and such in the next big game season structure planning, which is currently starting and it'll be for a five year, five year plan.

Bryan Koontz (07:19) Gotcha. OK. Right. OK. Understood. OK. Sorry, I jumped in there on that. So back to the structure. So where were we with that?

Jennifer C Burbey (07:24) That's okay.

So I think structurally we have, you know, similar to other Western states where we have a wildlife commission and they make regulatory decisions for staff and for the public. And different things can change from different ways, whether that's a biological need that the biologists are suggesting license changes, whether it's a social and economic need.

like allocation changes for resident, non-resident, how many hunt codes, how many licenses per hunt code. There can be citizens petitions where literally any citizen can come and say, we have this many people that want X. That can be a trapping ban, which happened five years ago now, and was turned down by the Wildlife Commission. That can be...

It can be lion hunt bands, it can be specific manners of take, seasons, really anything any citizen would want and if they can get enough signatures to bring in a citizen's petition then the commission will have to hear that and make a decision.

Bryan Koontz (08:51) Let's talk about that lion hunt ban because, and I think, because that gets into some other unique aspects of Colorado. I was reading, I think it was back in early 2022, and I don't know where this law stands right now, but I believe there was a bill being proposed, I think, with support from the governor's partner, who, as I understand, is a known animal rights activist.

And I believe that there was a call for an all out ban of bobcat and mountain lion hunting in the state of Colorado. And the management of those species would bypass Colorado wildlife and parks. But I don't know where, I should have looked that up before we talked. So is that still on the docket or where does that stand?

Jennifer C Burbey (09:41) No, no, that was shut down at the Capitol, so it did not pass. That same year, we had quite a few that bill. We had allocation bills. We had quite a few wildlife things that tried to go through legislatively that were.

Contrary to traditional North American model in Colorado, we were effective in making sure that those did not go through and did not dictate to the Wildlife Commission and the agency as to how they're supposed to manage pieces or specific species. We do expect that there will be another ballot initiative similar to how the wolf was passed.

this year for Lion. We don't know yet if that will include Bobcat and Canadian Lynx like the bill prior did. It's just another legislative maneuver but it's asking the voters to say yes or no. And then there is constant pressure for less and less predatory management at the commission level and agency level.

Bryan Koontz (10:58) Well, how does so how do the proponents of those bills? What is their solution to, you know, the potential for increasing human animal conflict? Right. I mean, if those populations aren't being managed through legal hunting, what's the I mean, there is a potential downside. Right. I mean, everyone we all want to live coexist peacefully with apex predators. But but at some point, you know, there is there is an issue that

that happens there. Look at what happens in California from time to time. I see on social media, I like the ring camera videos of mountain lions creeping up on pets and kids and stuff like that. So what's the rhetoric there?

Jennifer C Burbey (11:39) I think that ultimately they don't necessarily have a solution. The kind of knee-jerk reaction on their part is that when and where there is conflict, that those animals would be trapped and translocated, and that everything would go on swimmingly after that. Problem being, we have almost 6 million people in the state.

and most of the people, most of the humans, live within migratory corridors and paths, and that's where predators have to frequent to get what they need to eat. And predators being territorial for the most part, there's an issue with translocating because if we have really high predator loads across all forms, wilderness, four country,

and municipalities, we're gonna have conflict. And when we translocate them, there may not be an open spot for them to simply move into and live out their lives. So it's a romantic vision, but it's not necessarily realistic. We do have.

Bryan Koontz (12:59) Well, I guess it also assumes that nothing bad happened before the opportunity to capture and translocate. There's a big assumption there. I think that Colorado is a big proponent as are most states. Let's do a lot more education around, I see that all the time here in Montana, just basic things. Don't leave trash everywhere. If you go camping...

Jennifer C Burbey (13:09) Correct. Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (13:29) And there are actually fines for not doing the correct things around bear control and all that. And that's great. I think that there should always be more education, especially, there's been a lot of relocation to mountain towns in the wake of COVID. There are a lot of people that have never lived in areas where there are wild animals like this, maybe literally in their backyard or on their back porch. So I think more education is good. But I do wonder when you completely shut down one of the mechanisms, which is...

lawful hunting, it seems like you're kind of pulling a major piece of the puzzle completely off the table. And that doesn't seem, I don't know.

Jennifer C Burbey (14:09) I think for those of us that hunt, we tend to have the same reactions, is that we are there first and foremost to maintain population levels, whether that's by not hunting them and allowing them to grow, or by hunting them and controlling their upper numbers. We have, Colorado has...

This is me speaking as a hunter, but Colorado has a predator problem. We have lots of human conflict. Bears and lions, we've had, you know, we had a five-year-old in downtown Carbondale, just outside of Aspen. A five-year-old was drug around by his face by a lion. His mom came, was doing the dishes, looked outside, oh, oh no, went out and pried the cat off of the child.

Bryan Koontz (14:55) Oh my god.

Jennifer C Burbey (15:03) And all of the media coverage was mother saves child from mauling, which is accurate, except that this is a five-year-old who will have physical, mental, and emotional scars and for the rest of their lives. They totally understand the predator-prey relationship on a very visceral level. And there were people that were like,

but that lion died and it was my mother and two kits. And there's this feeling of, well, the reaction is, well, we moved into their territory and that is true, but we also have prey bases that live within our territories because it's becoming sanctuary areas for them, because of recreation, because of hunting, because of a lot of things, but they can live.

in somebody's backyard and eat the landscaping and eat the apple trees and live a pretty cool life as far as an ungulate population. And then eventually predators are gonna move in there because it's going to be easy eating just like any municipal bear or lion. But it's really a touchy subject and it's really hard for people to talk about because it is very...

It's very real and elicits very strong emotions for how people react and are defensive or aggressive, depending on what their paradigm is. We had, last year, there was a woman eaten by a bear about seven miles north of Durango, eaten. And the same kind of feeling from the general public was,

Bryan Koontz (16:53) Well.

Jennifer C Burbey (16:59) Well, we moved into their territory. And while that's true, their natural reaction is not to go, oh, we have overabundance of these predators and the predators are needing enough space that they are moving into places that are not healthy for them, meaning into towns and into suburbs and those areas where we've got more conflict. And it's just,

it's just part of the process of having so many humans on the landscape and so many humans, frankly, in the forecountry and the backcountry that, not necessarily hunting, that are bumping around prey as well. So everything's seeking sanctuary and some of that's going to be conflict with human habitation.

Bryan Koontz (17:44) Yeah. I mean, the ..

Yeah. I mean, is the issue isn't also the issue isn't necessarily we just need more hunting as well. I mean, this is a very complicated. I mean, not necessarily. Right. It's such a complicated cohabitation with humans and habitat and the changing and then all of the personalities from the human side that come into play around, you know, like no hunting at all. And we need more hunting. And as with any complicated issue, you know, the correct.

The optimal answer is somewhere in the messy middle that requires people to have a lot of nuanced conversations and not just dig in on one side or the other How is how is all of this stuff and I know we've got Like I want I really want to hear about where things are with the wolves and I don't even know what's going on with The Wolverine that was a new thing for me, but like How does all of this play out for you know the outfitting industry you've?

been in the outfitting industry for a long time. You really understand that industry well. You're really seeing a whole other side of it with your role now at COA and things you've been doing. But how are all of these things coming together for the future of the outfitting industry? Is there a future for the outfitting industry? And what role does that outfitting industry play in wildlife conservation and economics? I mean, there's so many things here that come together.

Jennifer C Burbey (19:12) Yeah, I think that the...

The future of outfitting is changing, for lots of reasons, and it has to. There is less room for what we've traditionally done. And that's coming about for a lot of reasons. Permitting issues, the exponential explosion of general recreation on the landscape.

has made it so that our industry has to modify either itself or be modified by permitting issues, licensing issues, et cetera, et cetera.

Bryan Koontz (20:00) Are you talking about the same areas that are enjoyed by outfitters on public lands are also enjoyed by ATVers and mountain bikers and hikers and campers and horseback riders and we're all using the same trails, same public land, etc.

Jennifer C Burbey (20:14) Yep. Yeah, and we are, exactly. And as, especially as public, the public lands operators are the only possible at the moment that the permitting, whether that be BLM, Forest Service, we're the only controllable portion of that. They don't have on the broad scale,

They don't have permitting, they don't have kiosks, they don't have timed entry. While we are answerable to federal regulation and federal oversight, and should be, they don't have tools other than us to change those things at the same time that they are getting extraordinary pressures to permit and make available

hundreds of other multi uses. And oftentimes at the same time and obviously in the same locations. So that, you know, that is a chance, that's an industry challenge that until...

Bryan Koontz (21:29) I guess there are other types of guiding outfits. I would imagine, like hiking outfits, you could go on a guided hiking trip. So I guess they may be, I would assume, lumped into the same easier target or whatever, easier to legislate and control because there's an entity you can have strict permitting and all that. But I think what you're talking about is the individual, just anyone who wants to go out on their own and enjoy these things, that becomes.

Jennifer C Burbey (21:55) Yes.

Bryan Koontz (21:56) harder to regulate and that's where the demand is skyrocketing as well.

Jennifer C Burbey (21:59) Correct, the demand skyrocketing in all ways. It's skyrocketing from general individuals or individual parties that are utilizing the landscape, special interest groups, therapy groups, new and different uses, e-bikes, mountain bike. There's a lot of them. And if you really dive in, there's lots and lots and lots of pressures and most of those...

Bryan Koontz (22:19) Yeah, that's a whole topic.

Jennifer C Burbey (22:29) A lot of those, kind of the newer up and comers, will literally go to one of the federal entities and, you know, like, we want to do an event.

And that event means this, we need to build these trails. We wanna connect this trail to that trail. And there's just a lot of pressure on use and utilizing the public lands. It's just what it is. And when you add in kind of the overarching wildlife component, that personal opinion, that part gets missed because they're kind of the silent.

Bryan Koontz (22:42) Mm-hmm.

Jennifer C Burbey (23:11) the silent affected. And those of us that are trying to speak for the wildlife are doing so from a place that ultimately we want to do that so that we can harvest them. It's a point. So there's an odd balance there in communication. And it's a minority. I mean, right now, what I'm seeing is that federally or nationally, we have, you know, where we used to be 10 or 12% of the population,

Bryan Koontz (23:25) Sure, right, yeah.

Jennifer C Burbey (23:41) for the most part were like 4% of the population.

Bryan Koontz (23:44) You talk about the hunting population, a percent of population hunting, uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, and do you think that, you referenced the silent voice or whatnot, do you think that part of that is, the, I don't know, increased stigma of, all things related to hunting and guns and all this stuff that seems to, in this country, has, that part has gotten louder and therefore,

Jennifer C Burbey (23:46) Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (24:14) You know, hunters, as we know, have always played an incredible role in wildlife conservation. I mean, you can look back. RMEF did a, RMEF used to have this really awesome summary of like animal populations several hundred years ago, animal populations now, the turkey, the white-tailed deer and so on. And like those numbers are just, they speak for themselves. And then of course, there's all of the stats around funding. You mentioned how much funding, what was it?

from elk hunters at just in Colorado, if you look nationally how much money flows from hunting, the hunting population and tax certain taxes that are levied against certain products that aren't levied against certain products for other people who enjoy those same uses, which is a whole different topic. But it seems like that, while many hunters, I would say most, have that understanding around the role they're playing in conserving

the animal that they love to pay attention to, right? Hunters like a white tail deer hunter loves to harvest a white tail deer, but they also care very much about white tail deer in general, right? Because they're so connected to the thing. Same with elk hunting and kind of anything. And so some of the, I think, most passionate conservationists really are from the hunting population. I mean, they're out there all the time. They see the wear and tear on the land and they're looking at their...

They're just, you know, when there's a scouting season, they're seeing behaviors and they're, they invest so much of their lives in observing these animals because they like to hunt, but they're also seeing, you know, like, it's just so much that the normal typical person who is maybe anti-hunting or maybe they're not anti-hunting, but they just don't understand it, you know, never really gets to see. But I would, back to my point, I wonder if that hunters more and more are feeling marginalized because they carry this.

sort of growing stigma of like, oh, well, you're into guns and you kill things and you're wow, you know, I don't know, like, because it's harder to argue a position of I want to save the animal whenever someone can say, but you just shot one. So what is what do you. So this is back to the new on the nuance again comes into play, right? I think so.

Jennifer C Burbey (26:26) Yeah.

No, it is, I think that, I mean, you're so close to hitting the nail on the head, but I kind of equate it to, it's really, it's very difficult to talk about the connection with wildlife when ultimately part of the goal is to kill one. You know, we kind of can't get away from that.

portion where there's blood on her hands. It can be done in reverence, it can be done with love, and it can be done with respect, but ultimately something dies, and that is not necessarily comfortable for people that don't hunt and participate in those manners. And that's a really large portion of our society. It's also, you know,

I'm a mom, you know that, you know, my kids. It's way, when women talk about childbirth, it's much easier to talk about the discomfort and the pain. It's much more personal and uncomfortable to talk about the power and the femininity and the out of body experience that come with that birthing process. And it's similar to hunting,

It's kind of embarrassing to talk about the emotional side of it and what you get from it knowing.

what that animal gave to you, to your family, and the paybacks from that. It's awkward. It, for some reason, is less comfortable for all of us to talk about. And yet that's really where we need to be educating. And, you know, we could, It's somewhat easier to talk about the contributions that we have economically.

Bryan Koontz (28:11) Yeah.

Jennifer C Burbey (28:32) And the successes that we have economically Colorado has give or take a 230 million dollar budget on the wildlife side annually. And that manages 961 species Um all and you know 961 species 68 percent of that money is from non-resident elk hunters they're bringing to bring back the Boreal Toad the Humpback Chub the um

Bryan Koontz (28:45) Wow. Yeah.

Jennifer C Burbey (29:01) Flannelmouth Sucker. Like their part. That economic contribution, and to be real, the economic contribution made by people that don't go home successful, meaning having harvested, they come back the next year and the next year and continue to participate in the process, and that process filters down to all of these other species.

Bryan Koontz (29:16) Sure. Sure, right.

Jennifer C Burbey (29:29) That part's relatively comfortable to talk about, but most people.

hunters and non-alike, we tend to focus really small and only look at the pieces we're most interested in.

Bryan Koontz (29:43) Yeah. So back to the outfitting business in Colorado and its outlook. So you mentioned clearly there's a lot of competition for a shared resource, which is, I think it, so first of all, there's just the taxing of the resource itself and the degradation of the resource and all of that. I get that and its impact on animal.

populations. I wonder if that also now that more and more people who haven't traditionally hunted or even haven't traditionally lived in wild places, like there's been obviously with COVID there was a massive migration from the city centers to mountain towns and had side effects like driving up real estate. I know that well here in Montana. But I think there's a lot of those people that maybe now who don't come from a hunting background don't really understand hunting other than the quote embarrassing side of it, as you mentioned, or the

the blood on our hands side, that they may be having a bigger voice because they're like, wow, I love nature. I want to do whatever I can to protect it, but don't quite understand maybe, you know, aren't aware of concepts like the North American model of wildlife conservation. Are they getting, is that part of, like, is there a rising voice between people who want to do the right thing? They want to save wildlife and protect the environment, but just kind of come at it from a pseudo-scientific perspective rather than...

let's listen to the wildlife biologists who understand things or and is that is that causing a ripple effect in legislation that's impacting hunting and therefore the outfitting industry? I mean, it's I just I don't know.

Jennifer C Burbey (31:19) I think the answer is like so many things as you keep referencing it's nuanced, it's multifaceted. We do have the majority of people moving in are non hunters. We can see that through demographics. We can see that nationally in demographic breakdowns that there are less hunters. There are certainly less hunters than there are in total for general population. And so they don't have

a comfortable knowledge of the North American model. They don't have a comfortable knowledge that when they go out on their weekend hike, when they go out with their dogs, when they go out on a mountain bike ride, when in the spring as trails open physically and dry out where there still may be wildlife closures, they are innocently and ignorantly with...

said with the most respect, they will go into closed areas because they go, well, I'm not hunting. I'm not like, I don't have the intent to harm, but just our sheer being in proximity and having activity greatly changes wildlife patterns and therefore makes it harder for them to survive.

Bryan Koontz (32:18) Right.

Right.

Jennifer C Burbey (32:45) I met with our local CPW lands guide a couple weeks ago, and he was talking about some cameras that they have on a large BLM area right adjacent to downtown Durango. And they had over 10,000 photos, two weeks of game and non-game species, but two weeks prior to the closure being pulled,

And we had a heavy enough winter that they were actually at that point monitoring whether they would extend the spring closure or not. The very first mountain biker, and not to vilify mountain bikers, but it's just awareness. The very first mountain biker to show up on the game camera was two weeks prior to the original closure, or the original opening of the closure. And...

Bryan Koontz (33:39) Right, right.

Jennifer C Burbey (33:41) From that point on, there was no other game spotted on the game cameras.

Bryan Koontz (33:46) Interesting. Huh.

Jennifer C Burbey (33:47) Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Project is a really good, they've done a really good synopsis of scientific study of other activities on the landscape that affect our wildlife. When we are out on a hike, how a singular hiker will press game X amount away from the trail. Somebody with a dog will press it that much farther. A bicycle goes this far, people on horseback go this far. And...

Bryan Koontz (34:02) Mm-hmm.

Jennifer C Burbey (34:17) You know, those are scientifically quantified and yet we're still not addressing it on a broad scale way. Because the kind of overall is this innocent feeling of, well, we're not, you know, we're not hunting. We're not trying to hurt them. We're just doing our thing. And it's, you know, leave no trace. I make sure I take my toilet paper with me and things like that. It's just, it's...

Bryan Koontz (34:36) Mm-hmm.

Jennifer C Burbey (34:46) We've got a lot of people utilizing the landscape and that has an effect on our wildlife that isn't necessarily as broadly advertised as it needs to be.

Bryan Koontz (34:59) And so what does that really mean? So if a mountain biker comes in two weeks early, no more games seen on the animals, is that just kind of just disrupting a pattern that, you know, now it, and they move further up into the timber or somewhere like what, what is the implication? Like I could take the counter. I get me be like, well, so what, maybe the animals just went somewhere else. So like, but what is that?

Jennifer C Burbey (35:19) Yeah, so my simplest answer for all of those uses, any uses, is loss of habitat, right? If we lose a quarter mile to every trail that the animals stop using because they're perceived pressures, we're losing a lot of habitat every year just by use. Specifically in the spring, when we are pressuring those animals, whether that's

Bryan Koontz (35:27) I see. Yeah, right.

Mm-hmm.

Jennifer C Burbey (35:48) shed hunting, mountain pot, I mean, just use of any, you can insert any use. We're, you know, we're probably, we're gonna have more problems with dystocia, we're gonna have more birthing issues, we're going to have more stress issues on an animal that's already been stressed just surviving the winter. And then getting bumped around those little, those added amounts effectively starts bringing, making more and more problems, right? Southwest Colorado,

they're in the midst of a study because we have a less than 30% calf recruitment issue, meaning that we have high pregnancy rates, we have high birth rates, and the calves aren't making it a year. So they're not actually building the next generation. And a good portion of those, there is not a definitive cause yet.

Bryan Koontz (36:34) Hmm.

Jennifer C Burbey (36:45) But part of that cause is recreational use, loss of habitat, predator loads. I mean, it's migratory problems. There's a whole mix match, but each piece has its own importance in those. And probably goes up and down for a given situation. You know, in the Northwest last fall, I mean, last winter,

Redible, catastrophic winter kill for Antelope, Muleys and Elk. And where the first time in history, the agency actually pulled 48% of the available tags. And there are people on the ground wondering if that's enough.

Bryan Koontz (37:35) Mm-hmm.

Jennifer C Burbey (37:42) And how, you know, when you think about bringing back elk, we have a four point restriction statewide. So we have to have a certain age class before they are available to hunt. How many years it takes to get to a number that we have harvestable animals in that age class. And those are things the general public, if they don't hunt, it's just kind of, oh, things died, that's sad.

Bryan Koontz (38:11) Yeah.

Jennifer C Burbey (38:12) from an outfitting perspective, there's taking care of your own business maslow's and paying the mortgages, paying the bills, keeping employees employed, the heartfelt long-term of caring about the animals.

Bryan Koontz (38:21) Sure, yeah.

And that's kind of a...

Yeah, totally. And I guess that's one of those, if you're an outfitter, you understand the risks of being in that business. I mean, there's so many, you become an outfitter for a lot of very personal reasons. Typically, money isn't one of those reasons. And in general, I mean, there's...

Jennifer C Burbey (38:52) No.

Bryan Koontz (38:52) there's a lot of very successful outfitters. Don't get me wrong. But it's, it comes from more within and just, you know, so many outfitters have said, you want to know where my office is? It's right out there, you know, and, and all that's good. But, you know, in those areas where there's been just the excessive winter kill, I mean, I guess that, you know, if you're, if your business is guiding folks in those areas, which you've been mapping in your brain and literally mapping for years and years and years, and now you just can't take clients.

That's kind of one of the risks of being in the industry. I think the other thing that came to mind when you were talking is from the non-hunting public, not necessarily anti-hunting, just non-hunting. What's interesting is that being able to hunt an area, a species in an area, being able to have tags is an indicator of the health of a population, isn't it? I mean, if there's no hunting, then there's probably a population under pressure or in trouble.

Jennifer C Burbey (39:42) Yes.

Bryan Koontz (39:49) And so if there are tags and you know, like if in the next couple of years, those tags continue to increase and increase that in and of itself is evidence of a recovering population. Now there are those that would say, well, just ban hunting until we're absolutely certain. And so that that's when we get into the, well, you know, there is a, there's a balance.

Jennifer C Burbey (40:10) Well, there are, when those closures happened, there was public commentary about doing just that and outfitters that voluntarily canceled groups prior to the license pool, looking at their own picture and kind of micromanaging what they believe in their area was necessary. I think that...

You know, what I'm finding, traveling around the state and talking to outfitters right now in Colorado is that, you know, in the Northwest, they're looking minimum three, probably five, and people that have been in the business for decades, getting business loans and trying to reorganize in such a way that they can keep their employees employed, negotiating with Forest Service and with BLM.

Bryan Koontz (40:56) Mm.

Jennifer C Burbey (41:06) or state depending on where they operate and what services they can do differently to bridge those gaps because they're not yeah it's a similar thing to when a fire goes through and you have a closure because of the fire or if you're if you need to be hunting in those areas but the fire

Bryan Koontz (41:15) Interesting. Get through the tough years.

Jennifer C Burbey (41:33) closure because of live fire doesn't open soon enough, people have to adapt and change before they can go back to their normal operating procedures, if ever. And that's something that we're seeing kind of broad scale in a lot of places in Colorado, but specifically on the West slope, where we have the majority of our hunting outfitters.

Bryan Koontz (41:51) Interesting.

Yeah. When we, when we touched base just for a few minutes, a couple of weeks ago, you would also, I think you mentioned some labor laws that may be on the docket that could have an impact on the outfitting industry. Could you just remind, touch on that? Perhaps. I don't know if I got that right.

Jennifer C Burbey (42:17) Yeah, so there's an executive order that actually has come and gone federally from the president's desk. I'm not going to try and quote the number off top of my head because I will get it wrong. So.

It's something like 120, 45. But it has to do with minimum wage and overtime. And most outfits are paying, sometimes well above minimum wage, but most of our hunting operations or summer operations that have overnights included, you have staff in place, but they're not on.

Bryan Koontz (42:43) Okay.

Jennifer C Burbey (43:06) Whereas the federal laws and within this executive order would dictate that those people are on the clock because they literally, like, if you're on a wilderness pack trip or a wilderness hunting trip, your guides at eight o'clock at night aren't going to ride out, go home, and then ride back in the next day. It's not feasible in a lot of places.

Bryan Koontz (43:26) Go home. It doesn't make any sense. Right, of course not. Right, sure, sure.

Jennifer C Burbey (43:35) be paying time and a half, double time, et cetera, as the hours accumulate. So you're on 40 hours very quickly. Day two, you're in overtime. And it puts us in a position where to cover those times, you're, I mean, you're double tripling what the market value is, and you can't charge

Bryan Koontz (43:47) Yeah.

Jennifer C Burbey (44:04) the market isn't going to charge three times the cost to make it up and be somewhat competitive with private land operators who frankly do have the opportunity for somebody to maybe go home or leave premises.

Bryan Koontz (44:20) Sure. Oh, that's very interesting. I didn't even think about that, so you're right. You'd have to charge, if you could, if you raised your rates 3X, right, now you're on the Trophy Bull private land, very controlled, you're out of the market. Yeah, right, that's right.

Jennifer C Burbey (44:31) You're out of the market.

Yeah, yeah, and you've also gentrified the entire process because only the very wealthy can actually afford to do those things.

Bryan Koontz (44:45) Yes, that's right. Yeah. Well, I know that there are so many outfits, even the do hunt private land or a mix of private and public land. I as an outfitter have used north of Bozeman here a number of times that certainly has some great private land leases. They also in public land and a lot, you know, as guiding many guides are very seasonal. They come from the East Coast and all over. They they've come for years and years and they know the land. And so you get into really weird gray areas there where like they're

They're bunking there. They hang out in the lodge with the clients till all hours of the evening sometimes. And are they working or are they not working? So these are laws that I can see, in other words, leaking into other states that could become issues for the outfitting industry that interestingly has nothing to do with hunting or wildlife management. It's labor, which puts pressures on the industry from a different direction.

Jennifer C Burbey (45:18) Yep. Yeah.

Nope. You look at...

Fly-in lodges in Alaska. You don't get to leave. A plane's not leaving. Yeah, you might be able to walk, but that is something. We've actually watched that executive order where we were line itemed, not line itemed, line itemed, not line itemed, back and forth for over 12 years. And it just popped up again two years ago. So we're monitoring it. We've got...

Bryan Koontz (45:42) There you go. Yeah.

Jennifer C Burbey (46:07) multiple lobbyists in Washington asking them, hey, we know this is not your intent to either gentrify or run people out of business, but this is what it will do.

Bryan Koontz (46:19) And isn't that, I mean, this is, I think this is a great example of, I think what you do and others do in state outfitting associations, because I think there are, you know, I've talked to outfitters in the past that have said, I'm not paying, I'm not joining an outfitter association. All they want are my dues and all that. But I think this is a great example, right, which is to see examples of these bills coming up and seeing the potential impact to the industry.

and getting ahead of it, lobbying, making sure that lawmakers are aware of the unintended consequences, for example, and being the voice of the industry in things like this and so many other areas. I mean, I think I got that right. Who will, let's put it this way, if not you, who else is that voice in the legislature for the outfitter?

Jennifer C Burbey (47:03) There isn't.

There isn't, there may be individual outfitters who become aware of topic A and may go make comment to that. But the time and the effort it takes to elicit regulatory changes or make sure that regulatory changes are modified in such a way that it doesn't affect us is gigantic. And...

that isn't just a singular outfitter's job. And it certainly holds far more sway when one of the allocation bills that tried to go through a few years ago, literally they pulled it in Senate subcommittee when we filled the room. We knew about it, we filled the room, we set it up. They said, okay, the sponsors pulled it in the committee and they said,

since some of you had traveled so far, if any of you would like to speak, we wanna listen. And I was like, yeah, I wanna speak. And I went up as president and representative to all, in that instance, not even just members, but all outfitters in the state, and explained that our, you know, not necessarily by our design, do we provide services mostly to non-residents. It's just,

how it works. They need our services more. But if you're going to do this and affect these many businesses, employees, rural economies, we need to be at the table so you understand what the consequences of your decisions are. And that's very different than a me as representing an entire industry versus me going, Hi, this is Jenny from Highlands. And this would have really screwed me up.

Bryan Koontz (48:33) How does this the market? Right.

Yeah, right. Right, right, right. That's right.

Jennifer C Burbey (49:03) Um, you know, it's, it's as simple as, you know, in Colorado, we have a memorandum of understanding that, um, is a formal document between our parks and wildlife, US forest service BLM, our licensing board, Dora, and how they work with us as an entity. So they have to seek us out and agree to seek us out when they're

proposing or having proposed to them changes. COVID was a perfect example. 64 counties in Colorado and the office of COA gets a call. Hey, you guys need to be on this. Dora's inviting you to these meetings because we need protocols.

All right, I guess I'll go to the meeting. So I zoom, it's a zoom meeting, it was COVID. So you zoom in and you're sitting there going, what are we talking about? Well, they're talking about the fact that we need COVID protocols for all of our services before we can operate. And 60 out of 64 counties in the state actually had line itemed outdoor recreation services as something that needed to have protocols.

meaning self-certify, there's a whole variance of things. Anyway, I sat in there, finally I have to raise my hand and go, so never been through a global pandemic, kind of live in my own little green world, where do we find these protocols? And the mucky mucks from the state health department go, oh, well, that's simple, you go to your professional organizations and they'll have them for you. And I went.

Bryan Koontz (50:41) I'm sorry.

Right.

You're looking at it. Right.

Jennifer C Burbey (50:57) Yeah, and going, I don't have that background. I'm not, you know, there's some common sense background that we have to learn through first aid and wilderness first responder and those things, but it doesn't necessarily qualify when you're talking transportation, lodging, all of this. I actually teamed up with the River Rafters Association who have their own specialty. And we got on the phone and then literally started cutting and pasting from the lodging associations,

Bryan Koontz (51:07) Of course, yeah, right.

Mm-hmm.

Jennifer C Burbey (51:28) taxi and transport associations and all this. And we made up a conglomerate and then went, okay, what happens? Send it in and went, does that work? And they answered.

Bryan Koontz (51:31) You made up your own.

And so the, let me make sure I understand. So the implications were, if there were no policies and procedures in place, then it would have been unlawful, illegal to operate as an outfitter, right, without those, but yet there were no specific for the, right. So there again, that's where you guys came into play and huh, that's a great example.

Jennifer C Burbey (51:46) illegal.

Right, and we wouldn't have, there wasn't an avenue for people to necessarily know that was necessary until, frankly, until you got caught doing something wrong, which would have been its own issue. Yes, well, you know, you needed to self-certify in the Plata County. How, I don't, I actually don't, and this is me, my own business personally,

Bryan Koontz (52:11) Right, right. You should have done this. Yeah, right.

Jennifer C Burbey (52:25) I needed to self-certify COVID protocols in La Plata County because my business is registered in La Plata County, even though I don't provide any services in La Plata County. There's nowhere in my imagination that I would have gone, I have to talk to the local health department to continue taking deposits for trips, let alone providing services for trips.

Bryan Koontz (52:47) Right, right. For my clients I take over there in a different county. Right, yeah.

Jennifer C Burbey (52:52) Correct. So there's all of those things where I wouldn't have known about that as an individual had we not had this memorandum of understanding that the other agencies look to us and go, you, so it's just a, it's a communication network that is there and is utilized. So they go, okay, that's what it is. And then, we were able, literally we were able to as an association go here to the licensing board. These are the protocols that were

adopted and approved by the state health department. So send these out to everybody that has a license, whether they're in the association or not, because everyone needs them. So.

Bryan Koontz (53:33) Sure, right. But who would have defined it? That's the thing, without the association, it would have been free for all, every man for himself, so to speak, every outfitter for themselves, to go work it all out directly and yeah, maybe run the risk. If you get shut down, you get shut down. If you get fined, you get fined. That's interesting. I never thought about that. And I guess, you know, not every state has an outfitter association. So I assume, and it'd be interesting now to think about that and talk to

Jennifer C Burbey (53:38) Nobody.

Bryan Koontz (54:04) outfitters who operated in those states without an association. And I bet similar sort of things happened and they probably just had to figure it out. And I mean, we were all figuring a lot of things out, but that the fact. Sure. Right. That's right.

Jennifer C Burbey (54:12) Yeah, we all figured it with COVID, we all had to kind of go where the ball bounced. But I think that, you know, there are, I know there's a number of associations nationwide, primarily in the West, and there's more that are trying to form now as more and more pressures and more and more shared pressures are going on. You know, we all, like you mentioned, Kerrie,

Bryan Koontz (54:30) Mm-hmm.

Jennifer C Burbey (54:42) good friends work together on a very regular basis and generally meet a couple of times a year for various things, national issues, the executive order, we work together on those things. You know, it's just like any other professional organization.

Bryan Koontz (55:00) It's like, as I was about to say, I mean, it's like any other professional organization that has legal issues that impact them economic issues. I mean, we have, look, every, we have the national association of realtors. We have the American medical association. We have the bar association. I think there's even like the construction industry association. I mean, why not? I mean, the outfit, and I think that's what a lot of people don't realize. It's actually, it was a aha moment for me years ago when I was thinking about

an industry that is not well organized of tens of thousands of small business folks that are passionate about what they're doing, operating in a unique sort of a business, right, out hunting and fishing and all other aspects of Outdoor Rec. And so just like these other well organized industries with tons of lobbyists in Washington and so on and so forth, this industry needs to benefit from and is benefiting from that.

But I don't think very many people think that way, right? As a hunter, I grew up on the East Coast and my first guided trip was Montana. And I'm like, cool, I get to go on a guided trip. And I'm not thinking about broader issues of the industry and how all these things matter and minimum wage law. Like, we don't think about that. We just like to go hunt and we save up for it for years. And we...

Jennifer C Burbey (56:11) Yeah.

Minimum wage clause, what are required by the state to have in your contract that nobody knows, nobody knows why it's in there, it just somebody decided it was a good idea and it got stamped and now you have to have it. Yeah, no, property taxes paid by federal permittees.

Bryan Koontz (56:31) Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, what's

Yeah, interesting, right.

Jennifer C Burbey (56:40) You know, it's kind of nutty when you get into it. It's a very small, I actually just had this with one of the newer commissioners on our wildlife commission. He asked me this last week at the commission meeting, why aren't more outfitters showing up? And I said, I had to answer. I said, well, literally we're not even a week out of archery opening and multiple hunts have already opened. So people are in the field, but...

Ultimately in the state of six million people, we have 939 licensed outfitters. So we're just this little kind of blip in the radar of everything. So even if we all, even if we all shut up, it would feel busy, but it's not going to be as impactful as you may think it is because it's just not that many numbers when it's filtered out between six million. It's just not there.

Bryan Koontz (57:35) Yeah.

Yeah. You know, another argument I've heard, I read there was an article, we can probably link to it if we put notes on this when we post this, but there's an article that, I forget the publication, someone wrote an opinion piece that this organization reprinted, and it was someone from the fishing side of the world, and he was really lambasting pro-purchase programs and all these kind of stuff, and in that he was like, how dare a guy

guides should not get special treatment from outdoor brands. And because all guides do and outfitters do is, you know, rape the wilderness for commercial gain and you know, well, it was really like, Whoa. And I, we passed that around, guide figure and everyone was like, Whoa, like this, this guy is bold. We've never heard anything like this. Um, and, um, you know, we were talking about it a little bit more. And one of the opinions that came out was basically like a counter position to that is when your livelihood,

depends on, like you said, mortgages and feeding your kids and yourself and all that, depends on the health of the ecosystem, the health of the environment, the health of those animal populations. You really, really care by default and take an interest in, you know, and want to have a strong voice in those things. And so it's just strange to me how, you know,

Bryan Koontz (58:59) Yeah.

Someone could have that position. Now maybe he was just a keyboard warrior and pissed off at, you know.

Jennifer C Burbey (59:11) I think, well, I was gonna say, I think that there are a lot of keyboard warriors. There are a lot of people that don't, they don't understand the intricacies of this business, which in reality is extremely regulated, and that the majority of people get into it because of a passion and a want for a type of lifestyle.

and that provides services to clientele that want to partake of that lifestyle of those.

the services that enable them to do their hobbies that they can't do on their own or don't have time to do on their own or skillsets, et cetera. But there's bad apples in every basket. So there's going to be people that don't micromanage their populations that are fully happy to spend so much more in marketing that they don't have to worry about return clientele.

Bryan Koontz (59:56) Yeah, right. Yeah, sure.

Sure.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:00:23) that those are going to be available and they're gonna taint the whole basket. But far and away, the majority of the people in this business are trying to do this on a year to year basis and make it as something that is perpetual and that takes care of them in the least stressful manner as possible. It hurts when you have to lay off your employees. They may not be able to come back.

Bryan Koontz (1:00:51) Sure. Yeah.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:00:55) It hurts when something happens to the population, not the game populations, not only because you want to be able to provide services to harvest some of those game populations, but because you have a connection to them that you want to perpetuate. And far and away, most of the people that I come in contact with are doing that. That might also be

Frankly, that might also be because they're taking the secondary step of wanting to participate in a professional organization. You know, you don't go to a dentist that's not a member of the ADA. Maybe people do, because it's cheaper, but most of us are gonna be like.

Bryan Koontz (1:01:30) Mm-hmm.

Yeah, right, right. Sure, right, right.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:01:41) That's even on toothpaste, too.

Bryan Koontz (1:01:41) Right, right. Well, that's a good point. I know when we talked a couple of years ago about, you know, collaborating with COA Colorado Outfitters Association about, you know, eligibility for becoming verified as a guide within Guidefitter and all that. You sent me your criteria for maintaining, you know, membership in good standing. And it was it was it was impressive. You know, it has to be, you know, properly licensed, no outstanding complaints.

you know, on and on. And so to your point, right, if it's just an extra, if you, if you are a member of an association that has high standards like that, a client coming in, it could, should, should be one of the questions asked, are you a member? If not, why not? And it's just one more thing. And I didn't, I had no idea until you sent me those requirements a couple of years ago that you guys were doing all that. So, I mean, it makes sense in a state that requires, I think every state that requires license, first of all, well, that's a whole, that's a whole can of worms. Should state require licensing or not?

Yeah, probably, you know, should be should be more regulated in other states. And I know that there are states that have not traditionally had an outfitter license requirement that are considering it. Even states that do require like a captain's license to take folks out on a fishing trip in a boat that did not have a requirement for licensing for outfitters. But anyway, well, let me let me get back to if you have a do you have a little bit more time?

Jennifer C Burbey (1:03:08) Yeah, I have an appointment that I have to get out of here about 10 to one. So I've got 20 ish more minutes and we can hook up some other time too.

Bryan Koontz (1:03:12) Okay. Great. Well, yeah. Well, let's talk. There's a couple more things. I want to wrap in a few minutes about just summarizing your sort of sentiment on the state of the outfitting industry. Where is it going to be in five years? I want to come back to that question I asked. And then what are these issues that you're aware of that are, that other Western states, I imagine it's mostly the Western states, are also facing?

But before that and related to that, I wanna get into the wolf issue, because I know a lot of folks, this is a very emotionally driven topic area, living in Montana and living in Montana where I do, near the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. This comes up very often where I live. And I have heard discussions from both sides. I've sat through.

talks with folks that are very strong proponents and who make very good arguments, by the way, of reintroducing wolves and how it's really changing back the landscape. And yes, maybe there's an impact on elk populations, but that's good and here's why. And then I also hear perspectives from ranchers and outfitters. The shoot, shovel and shut up thing is a very real thing. And so anyways, I know that there's a lot of push and I believe that one of the

goals is to really reintroduce wolves by the end of this year. I think that was at least as I understood, I don't know where that stands now, but where, what is going on with wolf reintroduction in the state? What is the, from, from the representing all of the outfitters voices in the state, like what, what are your personal opinions? I would just love to hear your, your thoughts on this in Colorado.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:04:47) Yes.

So, like you said, it's a weighted topic and it's an extremely polarizing topic. For the most part, in Colorado, we and by 114's direct dictate, 114 is the ballot measure that changed our Endangered Species Act.

Bryan Koontz (1:05:26) What is 114? Is that the bill? The ballot measure, okay.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:05:34) allowing for reintroduction of the wolf and allowing that the interpretation right now by the governor and others is asking that those animals be introduced by the end of this year.

So where we are at.

Bryan Koontz (1:05:56) And by introduced, just so we're clear, by introduced, biologists will fly in containers full of wolves and let them loose into the, and open the door to the Colorado wilderness, whatever. Okay, right, okay.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:06:04) and open the door.

Yes, yeah, that will, we have an added layer of national ESA and the protocols that go along with that. So right now there is a draft EIS that is going through its process to environmental impact statement that the US Fish and Wildlife has to do

Bryan Koontz (1:06:29) What's an EIS, Jenny? I'm sorry. What's an EIS? Environmental effects. We've got it.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:06:37) in order to give the state a 10-J permit, which is what we, our officials have requested that would give them license to introduce, procure, introduce and release wolves in the state. And we as of

may have a fully adopted plan for management along with declassification numbers, when, where and how lethal management can be utilized, the permitting around that, compensation, what?

Bryan Koontz (1:07:20) Is that hunting? That's that's hunting you're referring to like legal hunting? Lethal okay, okay

Jennifer C Burbey (1:07:26) No, there's no hunting in it.

Lethal management as far as agency allowing lethal management and or private citizens utilizing lethal when there are livestock conflicts.

Bryan Koontz (1:07:40) Okay, got it. Okay.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:07:42) Right now, what was, it was termed phase four. Right now that was pulled from the plan. So we do not know, after we have 200 animals on the ground, counted animals on the ground, at that point in time, they will be legally class, reclassified as non-game. We don't know if at that point there is a state process.

to make them a game animal, but it is not a foregone conclusion at this point per the state plan.

Bryan Koontz (1:08:16) that they will be at some point. That's not even referenced in the plan, that they may be at some point. Okay.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:08:22) There's some language to that effect that might be talked about at some point, but it's relatively nominal. It was.

Bryan Koontz (1:08:32) And there, and just to be clear, there before this reintroduction, there are wolves now in Colorado, right? I mean, there are, I mean.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:08:38) Yes, there have been documented wolves here since 2004.

Bryan Koontz (1:08:41) Right. Okay. So this is so what is the I mean, you know, it's interesting that we want to let nature take its course. This doesn't seem like letting nature take its course. This also seems like an artificial injection. It seems like man. We're meddling once again. Maybe. I don't know. But I'm sure you again, you can take you can take so many positions on this. My knee jerk to this is like, I mean, I'm all for.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:09:02) We, that's,

Bryan Koontz (1:09:10) I love wildlife. I could sit and stare and take photos of every single animal all day long. But for those that say, hey, we just want to we just want to, you know, get things natural and back to where and I'm like, but aren't we meddling again? We're going to fly in containers of wolves. We're going to procure whatever, whatever and reintroduce them when we already have wolves. Couldn't we just let the wolves that are there mate and populate? And maybe that takes longer and maybe that's OK, you know.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:09:35) That, I think that.

Bryan Koontz (1:09:37) But you're going to jolt might as much like the Federal Reserve raise our interest rates so fast it had all these unintended consequences. You're going to inject wolf population into an ecosystem that hasn't had wolves like that rather than just letting it naturally. You know, I don't know. I'd love to hear their counter argument to why that's a good thing, I guess.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:09:52) So we had.

We had, based on what was going on in the Greater Yellowstone, we had, or Northern Rocky Mountains, however you wanna term it, we had a wolf plan in the state. It was first adopted in 2004, and then re-upped multiple times until 2016, when, and it says, if they come and they're not a problem, then we agreed that they're here, and that's...

Bryan Koontz (1:10:24) Yeah.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:10:25) how it should be. There were some caveats for loss and this and that, but they were nominal. That, quite frankly, that was not fast enough or in quantity enough for the wolf proponents that want wolves everywhere. And I've been living and breathing this, you know this, I've been living and breathing this for basically since 2016. And

Bryan Koontz (1:10:28) I agree with that.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:10:55) That was the first time that my husband and my son gave comment to the commission on wolves was 2016. And it's been quite the ride because when you talk, there's such passion on both sides, but specifically the people that...

They perceive wolves to be.

almost holier than thou, like they can do no wrong. Or that if there is wrong done, it's on such nominal pieces that it shouldn't even be accounted for. And I think that that's the hard part is that they're a predator and they're a being and they're just trying to survive. It's nothing against the wolf. I feel sorry, can you imagine? So right now, the lead.

Bryan Koontz (1:11:45) No, of course not. I mean, they're

Jennifer C Burbey (1:11:50) Donor populations, for the most part, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana have either said, no, hell no, or yeah, we really, really don't want to donate any animals to Colorado for the reintroduction. Washington and Oregon are a little more warm than that. Right now with Oregon being the lead of saying, yeah, maybe.

but they only have 176 wolves. And by plan, we need 10 to 15 for the next at least three years. I don't know how that's going to shake out, but in reality, let's take Oregon. With the way that the seasons are lining up and with the December 31st deadline, the areas in Oregon that have wolves.

Bryan Koontz (1:12:32) Yeah.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:12:48) will probably not have enough snow coverage to allow aerial netting or darting and netting. However, the capture teams would do that. They're going to have to be snared and trapped, which is frankly, it's abhorrent to many people in Colorado. Trapping is something that makes a lot of people very uncomfortable. But those animals, the only way to actually get their hands on a wolf,

Bryan Koontz (1:13:09) Yeah, sure.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:13:17) to get it into the box, to take blood, take weight, dose it, da da, do the full veterinary workup, make sure that it is not an animal that has had livestock negative interactions. All of those pieces, throw it in a box, put it in a trailer and haul its ass back to Colorado to somewhere up around Aspen and the Northern bubble of release. And then they're gonna be like, okay.

Bryan Koontz (1:13:33) Mm-hmm.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:13:47) probably drag it in somewhere on a snowmobile or snow machine type thing, and then open a door, this animal's gonna be like, holy crap, which way do I go? They don't know where water is, they don't know where other animals are of their own kind, they don't know where water is, they don't know where humans are for conflict, they're just gonna run like bats to get out of there because that was a traumatic experience. And the-

Bryan Koontz (1:13:52) Right. With the press.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:14:15) couple that they may or may not release close to each other. They're territorial. They're very black oriented. You'll have disseminated the packs that you pulled them from and you may not be creating a new pack. They may fight.

Bryan Koontz (1:14:27) Yeah.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:14:37) This is not the...

Bryan Koontz (1:14:38) Yeah, I would love to hear the other side of this. It would be great to hear there. I just don't like, because that sounds like one of the most unnatural things to do to an animal. It sounds very cruel. I mean, yeah, I didn't know that that's where I when you were mentioning the budgeting, acquisition and reintroduction process, that made me think the acquisition part, where do you walk down to like wolves are us? Like, how do you buy this one by a wolf? And I guess.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:14:41) We.

It's cruel.

Bryan Koontz (1:15:05) You don't, you do what you just described. And I didn't know that. I bet most people don't know that. Like the wolves have to go through a pretty horrible experience to be relocated into a home they know nothing about, possibly split up from the packs. And as we know pack wolves are pack animals.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:15:18) Yeah, no, I asked during the stakeholder process, I actually asked one of the strongest and most vocal proponents, like, how do you justify, you talk so much about their family makeup and the social, this strong social structure that the PACs have, how do you qualify that? How do you make it okay in your head to take pieces out of that in one area and maybe not bring that in another? And the only answer I got was,

Bryan Koontz (1:15:32) structure of the pack.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:15:47) Well, if it were up to me, I'd take the.

And I kind of went, I...

Bryan Koontz (1:15:55) Put that in the world peace category. Sure, yeah, that'd be great. Maybe.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:15:58) Yeah, and nothing against that person. It was just this such a romantic vision that they don't, they kind of, I guess.

Bryan Koontz (1:16:04) Right.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:16:09) I guess to be fair to those people, they can't entertain those harmful, hurtful things. They can't entertain the mortality rates within a hard release, and that's what's been chosen.

Bryan Koontz (1:16:24) Hmm. Is the, is, is one of their arguments that the, the pro wolf side is one of their arguments, Hey, once all this works and it's going to take time and blah, but once all this works and we have natural predation from a predator, a great predator, like the wolf, then we don't need human hunting anymore. Like we can scale back. We don't need humans out there mucking around in the woods, killing animals. And uh, so, you know, it's not that we're not, it's not that we're necessarily anti-hunting. We just think it's, you know,

animal population should be done how it was back in the old days, you know, thousand years ago, whenever it all just worked. So.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:16:55) I think that.

Yeah, for the broadest sense, most of these, as you talk to these individuals, they won't tell you they don't like hunting. They won't tell you that they are anti-hunting or that their focus is to stop hunting. It's an extra to what's going on. And really what's going on is a national movement of rewilding and having management that...

is non-management, it's an argument about management versus non-management and that agencies and predators will balance out with the available habitat, the numbers of game and predators that we have, that everything will be self-regulated and we don't have to participate in that process. And I'm a maybe broad enough thinker that I go, wow, that's actually really a cool idea.

I can see that. I love that wilderness would be wilderness and that we're not making sure trails are cut so that people can get in there and see it. And that we don't have to manage predators or manage ungulates because they all do that. It balances out and nature just takes its course. The problem being that it's from this voyeuristic human component.

that we don't affect those pieces. And wilderness, if we don't protect access and create access so that people can go experience wilderness, they will find no value in it and therefore will not protect it.

Bryan Koontz (1:18:40) That's what I get. That's what I said before with respect to hunting an animal or fishing, you know, anything. When you care about the thing, you care about protecting and preserving the thing. Right. I mean, and if you can't to your point, if you can't get back in there and experience, if enough people cannot get back in to the back country and experience the wilderness, then they're going to be like, well, why am I getting, and then, and then a bill comes up to increase taxes and a portion of those taxes are going to be to preserve it. They're like, well, I mean, it's, I'm sure it's beautiful.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:19:05) Exactly.

Bryan Koontz (1:19:09) I don't know. I can't ever see it. That's interesting. I think, I think, you know, I've heard, I've heard, I think it was when they had the, the meeting here in Bozeman about the grizzly bear, you know, topic. And I believe someone was quoted in that meeting, I might have this wrong about, well, we won't stop until the grizzlies population or the grizzly territory is reserved to its original area. And I think someone said, so you want, you want grizzlies like strolling down the, you know, the streets of San Francisco or that.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:19:39) And their answer is yes.

Bryan Koontz (1:19:39) It might help San Francisco these days. Yeah, and the answer is yes. And so I think the difference is for the folks that say, hey, we just wanna get back to the way things used to be 500 years ago, 1,000 years ago. Well, there weren't cities and there weren't people and we have to find out a different way to manage all this. But I would love to have a good, healthy debate with someone who really believes, because I know there are a lot of folks, most of them really believe this is absolutely the right thing to do for wildlife.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:20:06) Yes.

Bryan Koontz (1:20:07) And so I want to hear them out. I'm sure I would learn quite a bit from those folks. Last thing, and I know you have to go, just so we could end on your outlook for the outfitting industry in Colorado. And if you want to generalize it, great, but specifically Colorado, just, yeah, like next couple of years.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:20:28) The reality is, until the regulatory processes start spinning, we're going to be looking at a smaller industry. There is just no way around that. And, you know, I've told a lot of, very recently, I've told a lot of the bigger hunting and wildlife proponents.

the elk foundations, the SCIs, the Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Project, a lot of these bigger entities going, outfitting is gonna be kind of the canary in the coal mine for hunting right now. And it's going to be shrinking, it has been shrinking. And there are stop gaps in there, there are people...

Bryan Koontz (1:21:09) Interesting perspective.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:21:23) like me that fight for it. There are people like Kerrie Sy in Wyoming. There's multiples of us that are fighting to keep it.

in its space, but it's going to be shrinking because it's part of the use of habitat and habitat is shrinking. Just reality, we have so many people. You just referenced this kind of need to go, oh, we wanna go back. A lot of the Wolf Proponents will say, we wanna go back to pre-European settlement. And I'm like, hmm, I actually think that's cool. I have a skillset.

that I would be okay in those scenarios. Minus toilet paper and toothpaste, which I refuse to give up, like that's important. But that pre-European settlement, but I always look back at them and go, okay, so in Colorado, that means we're looking at less than a million people. So who's gonna be your five out of six that go? And where do they go? You know,

Bryan Koontz (1:22:08) Right, but how many people do? Yep.

Right. Yeah. As you said, it's a romanticized vision rather than a here and now vision. It's almost akin to the energy debate in the United States, which is we have to reduce fossil fuels, but yet we're also going to put legislation out on all of the other minerals we need to do batteries and solar. And it's like, well, we got to do something here. You know, like, yes, that would be great. You know.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:22:54) We are looking, no, it's an excellent thing. My sister and I have had the debate, you know the corn cups? Like you go to a festival and they have a corn cup. It's made out of corn and it has corn cobs on the side and it's supposed to be...

Bryan Koontz (1:23:04) The corn cups.

I don't know. Okay, I'm just gonna...

Jennifer C Burbey (1:23:16) it's more ecologically sound or perceived as such. And I go, and I told my sister, I go, Brooke, that's corn, which is, you know, it takes a lot of things to actually build that cup. And oh, by the way, if you actually look it up, it takes five gallons of water to create the process to biodegrade that cup. Not to diss the cup, but let's just put it in real perspectives. What are we really talking about here?

Bryan Koontz (1:23:19) I see.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:23:45) We have a 1900 acre solar farm in extreme wintering habitat, just a few miles from our house that is proposed right now. And it's high fence, denuded, graveled, complete loss of habitat for those 1900 acres. And I'm going, I'm all for, if a farmer's got ground that they wanna farm sun on, more power to you, that's awesome. Let's do that. But maybe instead of saying,

Bryan Koontz (1:23:54) Oh my.

Mm-hmm.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:24:14) either or we go, what are the compromises? Let's raise the panels, let's armor the conduits, let's put water catchment in. You can do domestic grazing, you can do, you know, you can do wildlife habitat. There's a lot of other tools we could bring into the process and make it better for many and the less harmful to the few that are really harmed. But those kind of, those don't come into our talks very often.

Bryan Koontz (1:24:18) Yeah, that's right. Compromises.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, compromises, like I said, with so many polarizing issues that are all in the news all over the place. It's it's so easy to tweet something on a snippy comment that's hard right or hard left of any issue. It takes a lot of work to get into the messy middle and delve into the nuance that we've been we keep coming back to. And so interesting. Well.

I know you've got to run. I really appreciate this time. And there's so much more we didn't get to. And I think that would tee up a really interesting follow on. I did talk to Kerrie. I'll see if I can invite her. I'd love to get her perspectives on similar issues that might be facing New Mexico and talk to you again sometime. But I really appreciate your time. And I hope that.

Jennifer C Burbey (1:25:25) No problem. And we, so you know, we, last year brought Starlink in with the bus. So we have some, it's not perfect, but we've got pretty good coverage in the evenings when we get back to the bus. So we can kind of play that game too if there's something to touch base with.

Bryan Koontz (1:25:46) Awesome. Sounds great. All right. Thanks, Jenny. Appreciate it. Talk to you next time. All right, bye.