Speaker 1  0:00  
ANNOUNCER. The following is a production of wild idea media.

Bill Hodge  0:06  
Welcome to the wild idea podcast, where, as you know, we are exploring that intersection of wild nature and our own human nature. We are excited to bring a great conversation today with Theodore Roosevelt the fourth where we are covering Americans for Alaska as an idea and as an organizational effort, and a whole lot more. Anders I'm excited about today. I'm sure you are too.

Anders Reynolds  0:28  
Oh, hi, Bill. I am very, very excited about this conversation, but before we get to it, unfortunately, it's morning announcement time, and I have two quick reminders for our podcast community. First, our special bonus series southern currents wraps up this Thursday with one last episode. If you've not listened yet, I hope you'll check out the available episodes wherever you're listening to this podcast. Bill put a lot of work into making them, and I've put a lot of work into criticizing his work, so please don't let all that effort go to waste. Secondly, and maybe more importantly, Bill flies to DC in a couple of weeks, where we are going to record our very first episode in front of a live audience. We've got a very, very special guest lined up, and if you're in the area, or are willing to travel, we'd love to have you there. You can be among the very first to register by going to our website, the wild idea.com and signing up for our newsletter, and information will follow very, very soon. Bill, that makes me curious, what was the first newsletter or magazine you ever subscribed to?

Bill Hodge  1:40  
I think the first magazine I got on a regular basis was boys life. It's either that or sports illustrated

Anders Reynolds  1:45  
for me, I subscribed to The Economist at a very early age.

Bill Hodge  1:50  
That would surprise me, honestly now,

Anders Reynolds  1:52  
my answer was boys life, too. I'm very fond of boys life. I wish I could stick with it. Is it still out there? Is it available? Someone from boys life call us. I remember that. Do you remember the Tom Swifties that were in boys? Like, oh, yeah, yeah. Those are fun. Yeah. I think that my favorite column was the one that was like, I forget it was called, but it was, there was always like a survival story, like a one pager where, like, a 12 year old had survived a bear attack or something, and always thought, oh, this will prepare me for when it's my time in the wild. So yeah, I

Bill Hodge  2:21  
always, always resonated with the Tom Swifties, the one that I have I've remembered my entire life was his toothpaste fell off his toothbrush. He said crest fallingly. So that's my that's my memory. So enough of our shenanigans. Let's get to our guest throughout his career, Theodore Roosevelt, the fourth has demonstrated leadership through his efforts to address climate change and preserve public lands, first connecting to the outdoors while growing up on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania, and then he went on to join the ROTC, eventually serving as an officer with the Navy SEALs in Vietnam. After working for the State Department on local improvement projects abroad, he became more interested in the role that investment banking could play in combating climate change. He served on the boards of organizations, including the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, The Wilderness Society and the Smithsonian American Museum of Natural History. Since 2015 he has chaired the clean tech initiative at Barclays, a firm that embraces Paris Climate Agreement goals and has committed substantial resources to global investments and business opportunities that enable the transition to a low carbon economy. Our friend Bill Meadows calls you Ted, but what should we call you? Theodore, Mr. Roosevelt, is it Ted?

Speaker 2  3:39  
Please call me Ted. Mr. Roosevelt died a century ago.

Bill Hodge  3:46  
Okay, we will. We will feel empowered to call you Ted. I love that.

Anders Reynolds  3:50  
Well, Ted, by now, our listeners are probably sick of Bill and me mentioning our trip to Glacier Bay last month, but I think Alaska stories are worth elevating in this moment. For one thing, Alaska's public lands belong to everyone. And for another, Alaska holds some of the most magnificent and vast landscapes we have left in this country. So before we get into some of the threats facing Alaska right now, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about your own connection to the state.

Speaker 2  4:21  
I love Alaska because I've had some of the most transformative experiences there, one of which was I and a good friend were planning to meet in Fairbanks. I was flying in from Denali, and the weather was so appallingly bad, we could not in our little charter planes get across the Brooks Range. So he was far smarter than I am. He said, Let's take go commercial. We'll fly up to Prudhoe Bay. So we landed there, and I actually visited the BPAY operation there. And it did make an impression on me when I saw we are a clever species, but our ability to destroy habitat is just seemingly infinite to. Finally, one of the Walter, who was a bush pilot, got us to cactobert, and two days later than we should have, we landed on the banks, the gravel banks of the congrete River. And they kept wondering, where have you been? We explained what had happened, and we had a few beers, and we were tired, so that night, I went to bed probably around one o'clock in the morning, still fairly light because it was summer, and I was awoken by this just weird but bizarre symphony, click, click, click, click, and I wondered, what on earth has had got out of my sleeping bag? Opened the flaps to my tent, and the cow caribou herd was coming through with their calves, and they were moving from the west to the east back towards Canada. And they would cross the cow mother cows would make a decision. They were crossing in Congo, where it's either wide and braided, no problem, they get right across, but if they chose to go where it was very narrow, but the water was deep and swift, almost inevitably, they're calf drowned, and it gave me an indelible impression. This is a harsh environment. It's hard for some of nature's most majestic animal to live in it, so we don't want to interfere with it. And I actually was wrote an article about that experience for the Explorer's log, which I can probably arrange to have sent to you if you want to read it. And the second one was my wife Connie, and our son Ted. We went along the outer shore of the finger of Alaska that goes south. And it was just wonderful, because you could go out a little further, and you'd be close to whales, so we're just swimming north, and then at night, we'd go ashore and camp and cook, cook a good meal. But I'll never forget, at one point we passed a river that we wanted to explore, and so my son and I went ashore, and I remember him walking ahead of me, and he was maybe 15 or 14, but I could track him because his son shone on his blonde hair. It was like a beacon, and it was a wonderful experience following my son as he was doing his own exploring, totally unafraid, but totally captured by the beauty of this extraordinary place.

Bill Hodge  7:21  
Yeah, I have, I have fallen in love with particularly Southeast Alaska. And I wonder if you could talk about the Tongass and the engine that it is for, for not just for Southeast Alaska, but our whole country. The the fisheries are some of the most productive in the world. But of course, they depend on the rivers and streams that flow through intact old growth forests, and those are obviously at threat now, particularly with the proposed rescission of the roadless rule. Can you talk about the you know, sort of now we're bouncing from Prudhoe Bay to to the Tongass, but could you talk a little bit about the significance of the Tongass? The

Speaker 2  7:54  
Tongass is an extraordinary habitat. It is the only temperate rain forest in the United States. And while we've got a lot of great habitat, it is just remarkable. And if you ever have the opportunity to get there and you see these magnificent trees, cutting any one of them down, is a travesty. It's a habitat where wildlife has the opportunity to thrive, and is not pursued. I'm a hunter, obviously, but there has to be a place where wildlife can have a real habitat, and this is one. And then the United States has done a pretty good job protecting the wild salmon fishery, and we've, as you know, if you know only too well, we managed to stop the Pebble Mine, which would have destroyed one of the most remarkable salmon fisheries. And globally, we've destroyed the habitat generally for The Atlantic salmon. There's still some Atlantic salmon that, luckily, still continue and to be found in parts of Canada, but there there's no real salmon fishery left in the United States. Atlantic salmon fishery left the United States. So protecting these great runs of the king salmon, and I will not eat if I'm aware of it, a farm raised salmon the threat it poses the environment. But there are now some salmon farms that are raised totally out of the sea in fresh water. And that's an interesting opportunity. And I remember seeing with the founder of Patagonia, a horrible movie where they had disease that came into one of these Farm Raised enclosures, and they had to with a big meat grinder type ship, inhale all of the salmon and grind it up, and the whole water just turned red. It was just a it was a very disturbing scene, and we have to go about these things with a lot of prudence and care. And remember, we are stewards. We. For our children and our children's children, and to not discharge that and not allow them to have the big bequest which belongs to them is criminal. And so if we allow a rescission of the roadless rule, we will destroy one of the best habitats left for and it's the only temperate rainforest in the United States. We just shouldn't do that. We should honor the obligations that we have to future generations. And that was passed when Mike dombeck was the Chief of the Forest Service, and when they wanted to put in the roads into the Tongass that got more, uh, opposition that the Forest Service has ever seen, I think in its history. I think that's what Mike told me, and that's what we want to do again. We we need to stand up and make sure that we just don't engage in Ray pillage and plunder. That's not what we want to do. I think I've been pretty clear about the need for us to be good stewards. There's no higher obligation that we have as citizens, is that we need to be good conservationists.

Anders Reynolds  11:15  
Speaking of stewardship, Alaska is facing threats to public lands, both internal and external. On day one of the Trump administration, they announced their intentions to betray the public trust and sell off Alaska's wildest lands to the highest bidder, and at the same time, its governor continues to cozy up to industries that could forever pollute the habitats of Alaska's fish and other wildlife. I wonder if you could walk our listeners through some of those threats.

Speaker 2  11:45  
Let's go back and look at it at a pretty high altitude. I've been a Republican for all my life. I'm obviously disenchanted with the leadership of the current Republican Party. They don't believe in international relations, they believe in a transactional approach. They don't believe in civil rights, which was for a long time a lodestar of the Republican Party. They don't believe in science, and they don't believe in conservation. And some of the greatest Republicans were ardent conservationists, whether you go back to even General Grant, who during his time, that's when Yellowstone became a national park, the Republicans are being very hypocritical. They recognize that the big, beautiful bill is going to increase our deficit to extraordinary lengths, and they realize that, but they don't want to acknowledge it publicly and say that it's it's it's fiscally irresponsible. So what are they doing? They're trying to find any way of getting additional money, whether it be through tariffs or whether it's to be selling public lands, which should never happen. And I'm proud to say, there was an effort by a senator from Utah to put in the big, beautiful bill that the federal government was obligated to sell off 200 to 300 million acres. And why are they doing it? They're doing it because they recognize that they're being fiscally irresponsible. But a handful of Republican senators, representatives Ryan Sankey, the two senators from Montana are also a senator from Idaho, they said no public lands must remain public. So there the Republican Party was showing some members of the Republican Party were showing courage, but a lot of them are really scared, with some good reason, as the CEO the president, unleashes thugs, and we saw two members of the Democratic Party that were assassinated, and this is unacceptable. We as a nation must learn how to engage in civil discourse, even if we disagree strongly with a person. We've become more primitive, if you will, in unacceptable ways as we try to engage in political activities, and it's deeply distressing to me.

Bill Hodge  14:02  
Yeah, I was recently rereading Douglas Brinkley's landmark book on Alaska, the quiet world, and sort of the arc of Alaska, you know, as it was, sort of brought into our country through the acquisition first, and then eventually through statehood. You know, if you look at all the efforts, you know, going back to your great grandfather's time. But then through, like a landmark piece of legislation, that I think it's one of even those who work in the public land space, maybe it's, it's one of the least understood pieces of legislation, which is Anoka, because a lot of things that are in Anoka seem to be being pulled apart. Now, as we've said by this, this current moment in time. There's, it's not just picking at the edges. I mean, some of the core fabric of Anoka. Could you help our audience a little bit understand Anoka, sort of, that evolution of going going back over 100 years to Anoka in 1980 what that, what that piece of legislation meant, and why it may become the bulwark we need, right? Now against these efforts to liquidate the state. Well,

Speaker 2  15:03  
Anoka was a was a complex piece of legislation in which a lot of our public land in Alaska was going to be protected, but equally important, we were going to treat the indigenous people there for the first time ever with a degree of respect and recognize that they had been living there for millennia and just a little bit of history for for the people who may be listening this, the United States would enter in a treaty after treaty with indigenous groups. And we use the same phrase, this treaty will stand in perpetuity for all time, and that was a phrase that we often, often use, and within relatively short periods, a lot of the treaties were broken despite the most the strongest language we'd given to the indigenous groups that we would so Anoka represents an opportunity for us to actually honor our word, which we haven't done. The last treaty that was broken goes back to 1962 when Jack Kennedy was running for the office and he needed the and the Pennsylvania primary, he needed the state to to support him. So he agreed and said that if you support me, I will undo a specific treaty which was made for the Seneca Nation, who were part of the Iroquois Confederation. And this treaty was negotiated by a Confederate, by a colleague of Washington, who Washington, at that time, wanted to keep the NorthWest Frontier, which basically was in Ohio and parts of Pennsylvania, safe, and it was the indigenous people went along with with that request. And then when Jack Kennedy got elected, he broke that treaty, and that was, ironically, the first treaty that we'd ever entered into with the indigenous people, specifically at George Washington's request. So this is a little bit of history. It's painful, but we need to acknowledge when you're dealing with indigenous people, we need to treat them with respect and with honor in the same way we would expect it to be retreated if we were in a similar situation. And that's a little bit gloomy, but that's why Anoka, in my opinion, because of what it protected, setting aside large parts of Alaska in perpetuity for the enjoyment of the public and for our children's children, but also treating the indigenous people in a way that I think showed that a certain amount of real respect

Anders Reynolds  17:50  
there's a belief widely held, and I happen to be one of the people who believes it that if the scope and majesty of what's been protected In Alaska by things like Anoka can be unraveled in this day and age, then there's not a place or policy in the lower 48 states that's safe. Do you feel that way? Alaska feels like it's been our proving ground for getting it right. You mentioned the opportunity that Anoka represented. Are we now in danger of getting it

Speaker 2  18:18  
wrong? We are very much in danger of getting it wrong, because this administration, and I'll be quite critical of it, there's something that the President Trump has done, has done very well. He's recognized, in my opinion, correctly, that nuclear energy has to be part of the energy mix, and he deserves credit for that, but he he doesn't understand the importance of wilderness, the importance of public lands. I would be surprised if he's ever gone on a camping trip and spent time in the wilderness. I think that some of the best times that I've been able to spend with my my son were when he and I went on camping trips with friends of his, seeing nature up close and seeing how wonderful it is, catching a trout and a scream that is relatively unknown to most people. It's small and obscure. This is really enjoying the majesty of nature, and so I don't think the President has ever had that as an opportunity. I would love to invite him to come on a camping trip with me. That

Bill Hodge  19:23  
might change our whole world. If you can make that happen, let's see if we can facilitate Ted Roosevelt taking Donald Trump on a camping trip. It might. It might just change things. Make sure you bring a gift along with you, because those seem to go a long way when it comes to currying favor there. I know you're involved. There's a lot of amazing work that goes on in Alaska. You know, the Alaska wilderness League and organizations like the Wilderness Society that have a really robust presence, particularly on stuff on the North Slope. But could you tell us a little bit about Americans for Alaska? I know you and our shared friend, Bill meadows are involved. Than that, along with a lot of other really important names and voices. But could you tell us about Americans for Alaska?

Speaker 2  20:07  
Delighted to do that. Well, Americans for Alaska, we've resurrected it because it was a group of people that helped get the original legislation during the Carter administration passed, and President Carter clearly understood the importance of this legislation and was 1,000% behind it. And it's to his credit, and I do remember it was an amusing scene at the White House when he was blessed by a an indigenous leader who put he was a massive man, the indigenous leader his hands on President Carter's head, and they were massive hands, and you could say President Carter wasn't diminutive, but he wasn't a big man. So watching this scene, it was very moving to see how the trust and the admiration each had for the other, and I'll never forget that scene, and Americans for Alaska have has a number of people, many of them that are Alaskans, whose knowledge of the state is so profound and so deep. So it's a pleasure to be able to rejoin them as we try to once again, save this, this extraordinary place in the United States, and the idea that we are considering destroying it is horrible, but it's part and parcel with our own history, where commercial interest we have to have this, we have to have that those are false economies. And if you destroy something that can never be replicated, you will be reviled throughout history, as history unfolds, so hopefully, the Americans for Alaska and we've been able to generate a tremendous amount of support in the hunting and fishing community, who I like to point out to my golfing friends were some of the first conservationists in this country, And they've done an immense amount of good work in protecting wildlife habitat. And when I get criticized by golfers because, gee, you go out and you shoot birds, and I said, Yes, but look what you do to the land. You cover it with an edible form of grass, put in excess amounts of fertilizer and insecticides and pesticides, and you destroy wild habitat. What have you done for wildlife habitat? And usually they're speechless. There's nothing wrong with golf, but I'm so happy to see once again, the hunting and fishing community has been aroused by what's happening in Alaska.

Anders Reynolds  22:36  
As you mentioned earlier, we saw some success in pushing back against bad provisions in the reconciliation bill, and we're seeing elected leaders back off some of their ideas to sell Alaska off piece by piece. What would be your advice for our listeners? How can they better understand their role in defending Alaska's public lands and waters?

Speaker 2  22:58  
Well, first of all, they are owners of Alaska. These public lands belong to them. So engage, get involved. Write to your representative, write to your senators, write to people in other states that you may know or you have some activities in those states, and express your concern and ask them to stand up and show courage, and I'll tell you another story, which may or may not be relevant. As you probably know, I worked for Lehman Brothers for a long time, and at one time, we were sold to Shearson American Express, and there were a group of people in the fixed income division that didn't like how Shearson wanted to put in new management over us, because we, at that time, were the most profitable part of the of Lehman Brothers. So a group were in a room, and the person who was our CEO, who was going to be replaced by somebody that Shearson was going to put in, and who would benefit financially enormously. The sale went by. He walked in the room. We were sitting. He knew, I think, exactly what we were doing. He didn't say a word. We said hello to him, and there was a little leather cylinder on the table containing a bunch of pencils. He tried to break all the pencils at once, couldn't put him back and stalked out of the room. He sent an unmistakable message to us, if you stay together, you cannot be beaten. And we weren't. We eventually got what we wanted, and that's a message that I'd like to send to the GOP senators. If they don't unite and don't fight together, they will be broken one by one, and they shouldn't allow that to happen. And so the people who are listening to this urge your senators and representatives to stand up and fight for what is right. And I have from time to time said, unfortunately, the GOP senators come. Collectively have the backbone of the chocolate Eclair.

Bill Hodge  25:03  
That's that's very illustrative there. I like that very much. You know, if any of our listeners downloaded this episode, obviously saw Teddy Roosevelt the fourth and thought we were going to talk about legacy. I hope what you figured out is we're talking about the legacy that we're going to leave, like we strategically didn't want to go and just look backwards 100 years. We want to look forward. And Ted, you've done such a great job with that. Can you talk a little bit about the legacy that we should collectively, as citizens, our elected leaders should be thinking about the legacy of this time period, and I don't even mean the Trump administration, but like the early 20/21, century, like, what? What should we be thinking about to try to leave as a legacy we've been we've inherited some incredible legacy, particularly when it comes to conservation and but what is the legacy you think we should be striving for? Well,

Speaker 2  25:56  
I think, I think the legacy we want to strive for is, I don't normally like to quote the old lion, is that we are stewards, and we need to be able to hold our heads high and tell our children our grandchildren, we were faithful to our obligation to act as stewards on your behalf. And if collectively, we say we can do that, and we were thoughtful, and we stood up and fought for what was right. We will all be able to hold our heads a little bit higher. And if we can leave that legacy, that future generation will say they did the right thing, we, too, have to do the right thing. And that's that's something that if we can pass that message on and so that people understand the importance the decision is in our hands, so let's make sure we get the right decision. I

Bill Hodge  26:50  
It's been so hard for me to resist referring to you as Mr. Roosevelt, but you gave us such clear instructions early on, so I'm going to say Ted, thank you for joining us. For the wild idea. Thank you for taking us through where we kind of sit with Alaska today, and what we need to be thinking about, the word stewardship is what leaps out to me from your remarks. Stewardship keeps coming back hard, and we inherited a stewardship ethic, and what we do with it, I think, is awfully important, and it's just my heartfelt thank you, Ted, for coming on and joining us for the podcast today.

Anders Reynolds  27:22  
Yeah, before we hit record, you warned us not to thank you until the interview was over, lest we jinx it. Well, now I think I can safely and sincerely thank you for talking to us today. It's been a big pleasure for both of us having you on

Speaker 2  27:36  
well, you're very kind to say that. How do you actually measure something whether it was successful? And how do you measure whether it the audience reacted in ways where they get engaged and it was meaningful to them? That's a

Bill Hodge  27:51  
great question. I think being part of you gave that example of trying to break all those pencils together versus individually. If I look at like our numbers were relatively new. We're four months into this, but you want to know when our biggest download times were and the biggest amount of listening to our podcast was, was when the big, beautiful bill was being debated, and so people were paying attention to our covering in the conversations we had about the proposal to sell off public lands as part of paying for that boondoggle, and but I also know that we played a small part in that. There were hundreds of organizations and hundreds of 1000s of people who made that but what I consider a success is whatever part we play in making sure that our audience is informed. They know what's at risk. And I think one of our goals is to make sure that it's a larger audience than the sort of maybe the narrow subset of us to pay attention to public lands every day understands that these are their public lands, but it's hard to say that there's this number equals success. It's just being a part of this effort to try to Anders and I both have prided ourselves in being stewards, not just being advocates, right, like we advocate for protection of public lands, but we also show up as stewards of those lands after they've been protected. And so that's what I think our success is sort of measured by. I don't know if that's a good answer, but that's my answer. Yeah,

Anders Reynolds  29:11  
I'd say, you know, there's an there's an old saw that the way to pass a wilderness bill is endless pressure, endlessly applied. And I think that's what we're going for here, endlessly applying pressure by using different voices every week. You know, not everybody who's listening is going to identify with the voice they hear, but eventually everyone listening is going to hear a voice like theirs. And I think just hearing someone like them talk back and say, these are the values. You know, you have them. They're inside you. You've got to act on them. I think that's what moves people to action.

Unknown Speaker  29:44  
I like that answer a lot. That's great.

Bill Hodge  29:46  
Well, thanks again, Ted for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Unknown Speaker  29:50  
Good Well, good luck.

Speaker 1  29:53  
The wild idea is a production of wild idea media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds production and editing. By Bren Russell at podlad Digital, support by Holly wilkoszewski at daypack digital. Our theme music Spring Hill Jack is from railroad Earth and was composed by John skeehan. Our executive producer and ringleader is Laura Hodge. You can find the wild idea wherever you listen to or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, please take a minute to give us a rating, and if you really like us, we hope you'll subscribe. Learn more about us at the wild idea.com you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai