Ducks Unlimited Podcast

00:00 Mike Brasher Welcome back everyone. One of the things, one of the questions that we've gotten, some feedback we've received here over the past couple of years is folks asking us to share a little bit about our experiences, our career paths. I guess a lot of you out there listening are sort of interested in this field of wildlife conservation, waterfowl, migratory bird conservation, and kind of wondering what are those opportunities and kind of how do people in this that are currently in this field, how did we get there? What did our path and what kind of advice can we provide to y'all? And we have an opportunity today to visit with, with a person who has a 38 plus year career in this space. He's here in studio with us. He's been on earlier episodes talking about the harvest information program. Our guest today is Brad Bortner. Most recently he retired as the chief of the division of migratory bird management for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. We're going to cover a lot more about his career and he's going to share stuff with us and with you about his experiences and his paths and opportunities. Brad, welcome. Thanks Mike, it's great to be back. It's great to have you here in studio with us. You're in Memphis visiting with Dr. Karen Waldrop and I think a few other people. Jessica Tyler too. Jessica Tyler on some of the other projects that you've got going now. You are retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service but you're currently working on as coordinator of a harvest information program project, improvement project. And you might touch on that a little bit as we get into this. That was the main focus of those earlier episodes. I want to say they were episodes 124 and 125. I looked at that the other day. So folks can go back and look at that and get sort of an education on the harvest information program from Brad and the work that he's been doing now. I thought this would just be a great opportunity to get you in studio, talk one-on-one about your incredibly successful career. You ascended to pretty high levels within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Certainly as it relates to waterfowl management, migratory bird management. And so you're going to have some great insight

02:02 Brad Bortner and experiences to share. Well, thanks Mike. You're pretty gracious with saying the highly successful career. But I did have a very rewarding career from my perspective. And I went places that I never thought as a kid that I would ever dream of going or nor did I ever really aspire to go to those levels. But when the time came, it was my turn to step up and take a leadership role. So I did end up in DC doing a lot of things that I would have never imagined I would have done

02:36 Mike Brasher as a entry-level biologist. Tell us about a young Brad Bortner, where you came from, what were your hobbies, what led you

02:45 Brad Bortner to an eventual career in wildlife conservation. It's a long story. I was the son of a career Navy officer. My father was a captain in the Navy. He had a unique story in that he started off in World War II as an enlisted man. And he worked his way up through a career, switched over, what they call a Mustang, switched over to an officer and went up through the ranks. So born in Massachusetts, moved to Florida, moved to Guam, moved to California, lived all over, ended up in high school years in Annapolis, Maryland, when my father was the chairman of the electrical engineering department, the Naval Academy. Went to school on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, watching flocks of swans and canvas backs. I can remember stopping on the athletic field in the middle of practice one day when I saw my first bald eagle fly over. Oh, wow. And so having that kind of exposure to the Chesapeake, one of my best friends or my best friend in high school lived on the shores, on a farm on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. My father wasn't a hunter, but my friend's family hunted and they invited me to go. And Mr. Rich was one of those role models for me. Took me out duck hunting, goose hunting, dove hunting, and I loved it. And I think I told you before, in 10th grade, was walking across campus one day and I looked in a friend's Jeep and on the front seat was a book said, careers and environmental studies or something like that. And I said, yeah, I'm gonna need to do something when I graduate. And what do I really love? I think I'd like to be a waterfowl biologist. I think I'd actually wanted to be a refuge manager. And I started putting things together. In high school, we had a kind of a senior project. As a senior project, I ended up volunteering with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and also Larry Heineman, Maryland Parks and Wildlife and banded Canada geese and ducks with Larry. And went off to school to be a wildlife biologist. Went to the University of Vermont. My major advisor there, Dave Capen, suggested at one point, gee, there's this research station up in Manitoba and you gotta look into it. It was the Delta Waterfowl Research Station. And wrote a letter up to somebody who had a long career here with Ducks Unlimited after Bruce Batt. And Bruce accepted me as a McMillan's, they were starting a new project on marsh ecology. And I was kind of interested in habitat aspects. And Bruce invited me up to be a McMillan fellow for the first summer of that project, working with guys who had long careers with Ducks Unlimited. And DU Canada, Henry Merkin and others. And I was exposed to a whole bunch of folks that I've worked with throughout my career. Dr. Al Afton, who you know, Dr. Frank Rohrer, who you know quite well. And a number of others, Jeff Nelson and Ray Alasauskas. And just was fascinated by all the different people focusing on waterfowl biology. And it really, I found it inspirational and went on to graduate school, started off at Johns Hopkins. I wanted to work on swans because of my early exposure to swans and spent a year at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Hygiene, studying with an ecologist there. And then finally transferred to the University of Maryland when I got a grant from the US Fish and Wildlife Service to study the food habits and habitat use of tundra swans and matamaskete. My real interests were in the bioenergetics and looking to see how they were acquiring food energy on the landscape and then utilizing it over the course of the winter. In a nutshell, that's how I got into it. I've been very fortunate in the course of my career to have meet the right people at the right time. And then sometimes you just have to, there's a dream out there, there's an opportunity and you have to be bold enough to grab that opportunity. Whether it was going out and doing something with a graduate student and they're saying, geez, there's a project going on or a fellowship opportunity or a scholarship opportunity, or even push yourself into, when there's different jobs out there that you're not quite sure you want,

07:20 Mike Brasher but it seems like it would be an interesting thing to do. It was, so would that be your number one advice to people that are thinking about this? Let's say they're maybe even in high school, but also early college, people are thinking about a career in this field, would your number one advice be them to somehow, some way make a connection with someone that's doing this kind of work and see if there are opportunities to volunteer or to work as a summer technician? What's that number one piece of advice for someone who's thinking about this

07:58 Brad Bortner to take that first step? I would always say build your network. I mentioned a bunch of names of folks. Whenever you can, introduce yourself to somebody, get to know them, get to understand them, get to find out what they're working on. If there's an opportunity to volunteer or maybe they have a paying position as a technician or something like that, be bold, take that opportunity and follow up on conversations. I've always told my sons when I was growing up is build your network and make sure that you follow up on some of those connections. And if something sounds like it was something you wanna do, explore it. Even if you don't have a great experience, you'll learn something and that'll help you go in the other direction.

08:48 Mike Brasher Yeah, that's right. I remember the first person in my professional network, and it was a very significant person when you hear this name, you probably know who it is, that I sought out at Mississippi State. I knew I wanted to work in this field. And somewhere along the way, as I was transitioning to Mississippi State, something clicked with me for waterfowl and wetlands. I'd always been interested in it, but it's like I thought to myself, that's what I want to try to focus on. And of course, there just so happened to be a professor at Mississippi State at that time who studied waterfowl, Dr. Rick Kaminsky. And so, your statement about being bold, just sometimes it's not necessarily, it's not outrageously bold, but it is sort of making a decision on your own accord to pursue something. And in this case, I went to Rick and asked him if I could switch advisors, because you automatically assigned an advisor whenever you enroll as a new student, really that's typically what happens. But, and I was assigned to a different advisor and I knew Rick studied waterfowl and I asked him if he would be, if I could switch to have him as my advisor. And of course, he said, yes, but you have to go talk with your other advisor first and explain to him why you want to make this change and so forth. And that was a very significant connection for me. That was with Rick as the person that brought me into the waterfowl space. The rest is, there's a lot more to that story, but that was kind of the pivotal moment for me. And I think there are pivotal moments for most people and you just kind of have to identify yours and find yours. And it sounds like you kind of did the same thing and traveling, taking a meal. I grew up in Mississippi and I never really traveled a lot. And so I took a big step by going to Canada one summer, worked for Delta Waterfowl as well. And then I went to California and worked there and you did this, you had moved around a lot. So the traveling for you wasn't as big of an issue, right?

10:51 Brad Bortner No, traveling was not that big of an issue. I did want to explore and go and see other parts of the country and see different habitats. Like I said, I was kind of always been interested in the habitat side of things. I picked up a Forester degree along the way also because I was kind of interested in more of the management aspects than the population side and then I ended up working as a population ecologist. But yeah, I went to Manitoba and enjoyed that. I had spent the summer before that working in Wyoming for the Bureau of Land Management. And again, just one of those things, there was an opportunity and said, let's go try something new.

11:32 Mike Brasher So on the traveling, this is, we're going to kind of go in a different direction here. On the traveling side of things, in your life through all the different phases of it and certainly in your career within the US Fish and Wildlife Service, you've traveled to a lot of places and seen a lot of waterfowl habitats, a lot of ecosystems, eco regions that are important to waterfowl. Which one do you think back on and are you most thankful for, which one was most fascinating or are you most thankful to have visited? Like which one of those, is there one that stands out more than the others? Not saying more important for waterfowl necessarily, but for you and the experience you had.

12:12 Brad Bortner Boy, that's a hard question. I mean, the Delta Marsh was obviously something new and different and getting to Prairie pothole country and roadside ditches when they're wet and full of green, blue winged teal. And I love the Prairie ecosystem, big wide open stuff, but the Intermountain West wetlands. And then I, you know- You're not going to be able to give me a single one. I can't, you know, I've from a new unique standpoint, even though I had done my graduate work in coastal North Carolina and had seen Cypress trees and everything else coming down. And I hunted in Wax Lake on the Chafalaya Basin with Fred Rutker in 1990 or so. And it was completely different and seeing the diversity of waterfowl that was present there at that point in time and seeing the Cypress swamp, completely something new and different for me. But then, you know, seeing waterfowl habitats in Scotland and Japan and Russia, they're all, you know, it's kind of hard to pick one that stands out. They're all kind of unique in their own way.

13:31 Mike Brasher So your research was on tundra swans. We're now going back to kind of your graduate school days and you've been around research, aware of research all throughout your career in one way or another. You may not be out there conducting the research, but you're helping to provide some of the funding to support research and things of that nature. How much has it changed? Like as you think back to the way, whether it be methods, topics, what have been some of the biggest changes, more notable, memorable changes that you've seen in terms of the research side of things over the years?

14:03 Brad Bortner Well, certainly technology has changed dramatically. I can remember as an undergraduate, I helped the University of Vermont put, and the Vermont Department of Wildlife put radio transmitters on wild turkeys. And they literally had a C cell battery on the back of them. And these, you know, big clunky things that went around the neck of the bird. My first advisor there at Johns Hopkins had put some of the first radio transmitters on migrating swans. And they weighed probably more than a green winged teal, you know, and they followed those birds by airplane, you know, because of the radio technology from Alaska to the Chesapeake Bay, you know, 5,000 kilometers. But, you know, it was huge. The technology change has been just amazing. And then I thought I was trying to keep up, and I was talking to someone here recently about the GSM technologies. And they said, well, we're onto LTE and everything else now. And I mean, birds are calling in from all over the place. So it's just been amazing. Some of the work that is being done now in Waterfowl, but I'd worked on previously with seabirds in the Pacific, with those little light capturing diodes that you can tell you basically where birds are spending their time, just by patterns of light and dark. Likewise, going along with that, the funding levels have just gotten crazy. I can remember, 20 or $30,000 project was, you know, big time project in the early 1980s. And now that wouldn't even pay for, you know, one semester of a graduate student stipend probably. But, so things have changed a lot. From an intellectual standpoint, I think some of the questions may be better. The hypothesis testing, probably a little more formal than it was, but the intellectual curiosity remains the same. I mean, people are still trying to peel back layers of the onion and understand the critters

16:12 Mike Brasher and what they're doing out there. So I want to kind of skip forward here in your career. You got to start as an ecologist with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Then after that, you went to the Fish and Wildlife Service. And there may have been some other stops along the way. We'll kind of touch the high points here though. And you eventually became the chief of the Population Assessment Section, and then went on to be like an acting assistant regional director, looks like for external affairs for the Pacific region of the Fish and Wildlife Service, and then a few other things. Actually one here that's kind of, I think, notable chief of the Division of Marginatory Bird and Habitat Programs in the Pacific region as well. And those positions within the Fish and Wildlife Service allowed you to see and make decisions that affect a lot of the monitoring effort to the Fish and Wildlife Service relative to migratory birds, the management and decision-making of migratory birds. And so as we were talking, I asked you about research and how it's changed. There are also certain core principles that go along with migratory bird management from a principal standpoint that haven't changed much. And that is the importance of data and monitoring to inform decision-making. One of the things that you saw a lot of, I know, saw growth of is more database decision-making. That had to have been, you were right there in the midst of adaptive harvest management, which became a, at least in terms of your career, where it became a highly informed decision process, USGS sister organization or Bureau to the US Fish and Wildlife Service has invested heavily in structured decision-making and informed management. How big did that become as a leader and decision-maker in the Fish and Wildlife Service? How much did that kind of change the framework of some of those decisions and maybe even your ability to be more confident in them? Any thing to offer there?

18:18 Brad Bortner It's been huge. As you mentioned, I was around in the bird office in 1988 when it was a drought on the prairies, things were bad. We'd gone through the 1985 drought. In 1988, the seasons were restricted again, down to a three bird bag limit and the Atlantic flyway 30 day season, same sorts of thing in the Mississippi, central and the Pacific flyway. It was time of great acrimony and a lot of hostility between managers at the federal and state level in the flyway system. A lot of concern out there. I can remember going to, we used to have public meetings at that point in time and having people testify, people from the waterfowl management community testify that we should close the duck season in 1988. And I won't mention names, but it was pretty startling. And then we worked on an environmental impact statement that talked about having stabilized regulations. And out of that, Fred Johnson, who you know, and myself and some others started talking, the flyway reps, Jerry Surrey, Ken Gamble, Jim Bartonek, and Dave Sharp, we started talking about ways to implement that. And what happened is Fred was reading some of the fisheries management literature and some upon this concept of adaptive resource management. And we started talking about how to explore that and how to broach it with the flyways. And we ended up developing what it became AHM. There's a long ways of saying that we came up with this system and it has, it's had good parts and bad parts. And the good part is, is it's taken a lot of that acrimony out of the system. As a little anecdote, I once had the opportunity to talk to Lynn Greenwald, who was a former Fish and Wildlife Service Director during the late 70s, early 80s. And Dan Ash, who was the Director in the Obama administration, and I asked them both the same question is, Lynn, how much of your time when you were Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, did you spend on duck regulations? And he said, oh, probably a quarter to a third of my time. And I asked Dan Ash the same question and he said, less than 1% of his time. And not all of that is due to AHM and everything else. So a lot of other resource issues demanding more time from the Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. But I also use that as an example of how we have quieted the waters to some extent, maybe too far, because some people just assume, okay, duck regulations don't matter and the process doesn't matter and it'll just, it's a little black box and it'll crank out a number and we may have lost some attention and some priority in people's minds. So that might be the con for the pros, but I think that the pros for adaptive harvest management and the introduction of structured decision-making and very clear guidelines for when to select which season has been a major advance in waterfowl management

21:55 Mike Brasher in the course of my career. Brad, we're gonna take a break right now. We will come back and we'll talk a little bit more about your career. But as part of that, I wanna ask you some questions about some more memorable experiences, some of the larger challenges. What were some examples of the things that really tested your resolve as a level-headed guy, being in those positions, especially once you got to the Chief, overall Chief of the Division of Migratory Bird Management. What are some of the more challenging issues that you had to work with and maybe a few other fun things in there, so stay with us, Brad, we'll be right back. Welcome back everyone. We're here with Brad Bortner, retired most recently as the Chief of the Division of Migratory Bird Management of the Fish and Wildlife Service. He's here in studio with us and we're just kind of doing a bit of a recap of his career and some stories and advice from him and some of the things that he was able to be part of. I have your resume here in front of me, a little short. I don't even know if this qualifies as a resume. You've actually gone, you've condensed it to four pages. Is that technically a resume? Maybe it's just a more condensed version of your high level accomplishments in your career. Regardless, I appreciate it because it makes it easy to sort through. One of the things I have to ask you first here is education credentials and significant training. There's one on here that I didn't expect. A master 50 ton vessel, inland waters, US Coast Guard 2013 to present.

23:22 Brad Bortner You got to tell me about that. Well, I grew up on the water and I decided I wanted to get a Coast Guard Captain's license. And so on long weekends in Washington, DC, I went out to an Apple school of seamanship and took the training. I had all the boat experience that I needed in order to get a captain's license. And I just thought, gee, I might as well learn some of the more technical aspects of navigation and everything else. And I went and got my captain's license. There's probably other things I could put on that resume that you would find interesting too. I've climbed all of the major volcanoes in Western North America. No kidding. Yeah. And I'm a member of a climbing, a mountain climbing club in the Pacific Northwest. And I've taken all of their climbing classes from basic climbing to high altitude, steep ice and snow. So just have a lot of interest, Mike.

24:19 Mike Brasher And that's just one of those things that's in there. That's pretty cool. I had no idea. Now, do you exercise that skill as sort of a captain?

24:29 Brad Bortner Primarily by chartering motorboats and taking tours around the sailor's sea. Puget Sound, I've sailed or cruised all the way up through Sitka, Alaska, Juneau. You're doing that kind of stuff now, those things now? Just mainly family and friends. I don't just charter a 50-ton boat or a relatively big yacht and go cruise around. And the rental companies and the insurance companies find it comforting, I think, that I'm driving their million-dollar boat and I have some sort of credentials that, not just, it's just one of those things. But most of your duck guides out there also have, if they're taking paying customers, have to have what's called a six-pack license, which is essentially the same license, but I've upgraded it a little bit bigger boats, not too many 50-ton duck boats.

25:26 Mike Brasher Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't think so. Although some can probably get close, elaborate portable blinds, right?

25:33 Brad Bortner No, just- If this retirement gig doesn't work out for me,

25:36 Mike Brasher I can drive a water taxi somewhere. That's right, that's right. Well, that's pretty cool. And your climbing interest and skill, had no idea of that either.

25:44 Brad Bortner What's any recent outings? Actually, when I got to one of my previous Labradors, I ended up spending so much time training and hunt tests and that sort of thing that kind of ate into my climbing season. And then when I got into DC, there just wasn't any time to do that kind of thing. So it's been a while. It's been a while, and I'm not nearly in the shape

26:08 Mike Brasher that I need to be to go to 12,000 or 14,000 feet. If you have a chance today, you should visit with our Chief Brand Officer, Doug Barnes. He was a big climber in the day. I don't think he's doing much of that anymore either.

26:20 Brad Bortner But do you know Doug? I do, I've met him and actually I have a meeting scheduled up right after this. Did you know he was a climber?

26:26 Mike Brasher No, I did not. Yeah, he used to be anyway. I don't think he does a lot of that anymore, as I would say. So from a career standpoint, as you look back across it, and as I said, you've culminated your career as Chief of the Division of Migratory Bird Management. And what all does that cover? You don't have to go into great detail, but what does that person do?

26:46 Brad Bortner Well, it's changed since I retired, but when I was Chief, I was basically in charge of all of the migratory bird personnel stationed out of headquarters, which is our pilots, our research scientists, or population ecologists that do all the assessment work, our regulations development staff, some communications. So we were involved in all sorts of, collecting data, analyzing data, making recommendations on regulations, not only hunting regulations, but other management regulations like black vultures and double-crusted cormorants and that sort of thing. And then that would go into the regulatory process. We also during my tenure developed a Raptor group and we're looking at Raptor conservation and management with the focus on renewable energy development. We spent a lot of time on coming up with regulations for the incidental take of golden eagles and bald eagles and a whole bunch of other things. We, during my tenure celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Migratory Bird Treaty with Canada, was involved in participating and they were leading the discussions that we have with Russia and Japan and Mexico and Canada on Migratory Bird Treaty Act, or the Migratory Bird Treaties and making sure that we're meeting our obligations under the treaties and having discussions of conservation issues. So it's soup to nuts, everything on migratory birds, also the national program leader to the point of allocating out the national budget to the regions, to the division, trying to make sure that we're meeting the priorities of the service and the administration

28:51 Mike Brasher in accomplishing migratory bird conservation and management. The setting of waterfowl harvest regulations that falls under that position, right?

28:59 Brad Bortner Yeah, now on that part, I want to be clear that what the chief does there and the division is we analyze the data, we make recommendations to the service directorate and also to the flyaways. And then when the recommendations come in from the flyaways, we evaluate those and make recommendations to what's called the Service Regulations Committee, which is a group of high level decision makers appointed by the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service who evaluates that, takes into account what they know about what's going on in their regions and they make a recommendation to the director. The division chief is kind of the chief science arbiter, chief science advisor on those recommendations and either recommends that the service adopt those or they don't adopt them. And sometimes the director decides to adopt what the flyaways recommend over top of what the professional staff says. Sometimes they agree with the professional staff. So I wasn't making the ultimate decision on the harvest regulations, the director and the assistant secretary

30:13 Mike Brasher for Department of Interior make those. But the Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey that's, we're sitting here in mid-May and if it hasn't started already, it should be soon. It's kind of a late spring, I know, but that was all under the supervision of you and your staff, right?

30:32 Brad Bortner Yeah, I ran a small airline.

30:33 Mike Brasher Yeah, that was another thing in your resume that I noticed, what was it you managed a $30 million aircraft fleet, I believe,

30:41 Brad Bortner is the way you have it written up here. Yeah, we have at various times, about a dozen pilots and aircraft. One of the challenges when I was chief was operationalizing the new Kodiak aircraft and bringing it into the fleet. I worked closely with Mark Conniff and his staff, wanted to make sure that we were being safe and that we could conduct those surveys. Safety is a huge aspect of that program. Anytime we put planes in the air, we wanna make sure that the aircraft is safe for people both in the air and also on the ground. And we had a whole fleet of new aircraft and we were trying to make sure that we could operate them safely and conduct the surveys

31:28 Mike Brasher and get the data that we needed. I've heard people refer to the implementation, the utilization of those new aircraft as a pretty significant moment, but I'm not aware enough of aviation and the capabilities of these different aircraft to know why that was so significant. What was the big advantage of having those new aircraft other than just they're new and maybe more reliable?

31:52 Brad Bortner What was the big difference? They're much more reliable. Also, the issue that we had, and recognizing that we're flying 44,000 miles of transect every year, and some places in very remote, spent the weekend with Fred, so you know about flying in the bush up in Northern Canada, and there'd be a long ways between fuel stops. And sometimes our aircraft safety folks were concerned that the planes were over gross weight. They were flying heavy, previous when we were flying smaller airplanes. So we had the opportunity way back in some of the economic stimulation days, 2009, to replace those aircraft with Kodiaks, and they were a high-performance airplane with a turbine engine, much more reliable engine than a piston engine. When you're flying in the bush at 100 feet, at 100 knots, you wanna make sure that your airplane is reliable. So they were a bigger airplane. They had floats that were bigger and drafted deeper than the previous floats on smaller aircraft. So we had to modify operations on some of the water bodies that we were operating on. A glass cockpit, so all of the screens were computer monitors, basically, as opposed to gauges. And then we had an exhaust system and propellers and fueling systems that we had to figure out how to fix. And so I was always going through my budget, trying to figure out where I could save money in this place and that place, and invest it in making some modifications to these otherwise essentially brand new aircraft. And I believe that the pilot corps appreciated the efforts, and I know that the safety folks did. One of the issues was, in order to fuel those planes when they're on floats, the pilot have to crawl up on the top of the airplane, on top of the wing, and fuel, and you're 15 feet off the ground at that point in time, at least, and that wasn't a safe place to have people. So we had to develop a fueling system where they didn't have to climb all the way up

34:04 Mike Brasher to the top of the aircraft to fuel it. All these different considerations and decisions all around data collection for the management of waterfowl in this, in case, and I know you use those aircraft for other purposes as well, but for our audience, and for their role in helping us understand, keep track of waterfowl populations.

34:24 Brad Bortner We just don't think about that. Yeah, I mean, for collecting that information, it is a huge task, and it's a huge operation, and I literally, I jokingly say it was running a small airline, but it was, and it was something that was very difficult to make sure that we maintained our almost spotless safety record, made sure that everybody we were putting up in those airplanes was safe, had the proper training, and they were current in the operations, they had all the qualifications, they passed all their check rides. You know Mark, Mark has a full-time job just keeping that going, and then he used to come to me and say, Brad, I need to find some money to do this, and I had to work with him to make sure

35:11 Mike Brasher that we could do that. Brad, we're very quickly running out of time here in our allotted schedule. So I want to touch on, I want to kind of talk about a couple of things, want to give reference to a couple of things. One, the person that's in the job, like now, that you used to have, Dr. Ken Richkus, and we've had Ken on before, he's a great friend of both of ours, and he'll probably join us for some future episodes and discussions, but I just wanted to kind of connect like some of the things that you're talking about with the person, the good friend, the one who grew up passionate and remains passionate about waterfowl, waterfowl hunting, and is trying to make all of these decisions to the best that they can, he can, and given all the constraints and limitations

35:56 Brad Bortner and resource issues, Ken is that person now. Ken is that person now. Ken was my deputy when I was in that position, and once I left that position, Ken acted for a while, and then they split the position, and so now there are two divisions. There's a division of migratory bird management doing all the operational surveys and that sort of thing, and then there's a division of permits and regulations, and Dr. Eric Kirchner is doing that aspect publishing all the EISs, the regulations, making sure the permit policies for every migratory bird permit in the Fish and Wildlife Service is consistent and has regulations and everything else. So Ken's doing a slightly different job, but many of the same components, and I'm sure that the other division is relying upon Ken's expertise and his knowledge after spending years as being my deputy

36:49 Mike Brasher to help guide that new division too. Yeah, well, thank you for all the service that you put into the Migratory Bird Program over the years, the same I extend to Ken and Eric and everybody else that's in that space. Well, I guess you were saying Eric is over permits. Permits and regulations, yeah. But yes, thanks to all those folks and the work that they continue to do. Looking back over your career, maybe these be a couple of fun questions here. What was one of the most challenging topics,

37:18 Brad Bortner issues that you had to work on? Boy, that is a hard, I've been sitting here thinking about it since you, You knew it was coming. Yeah, I did, and I'm trying to think, I touched on the aircraft issue and operationalizing these new aircraft. Folks were used to operating the 206s in the previous aircraft, but then standardizing the fleet and making sure that they were functioning and collecting the information was certainly a challenge. I guess the biggest challenge was, it's hard to put words around, but it was maintaining the identity and the reputation of the division at all levels. There was challenges from, certainly challenges from flyaways, from sportsmen, gee, is AHM working? Do we have fewer ducks and everything else? Most people don't know what they are talking about. All the way to folks in the administration pushing for development of a regulation and saying there's no way that the Migratory Bird Program can step this up. But when push came to shove, people would work extra hours. Folks that were working on duck regulations, and I'm particularly thinking of folks like Scott Boomer, some of the others, Kathy Fleming, some of the other staff, come up with new and innovative ways to analyze data and help inform decisions that they would have never thought that they were going to be working on anyway. But when we start thinking about, okay, how do we deal with overabundant cormorants or black vultures, it's essentially a harvest management decision. And I could extend on into bald eagles, golden eagles, there's lots of things. So there are lots and lots of challenges on maintaining the program that I have invested my life in and that I love dearly is the Migratory Bird Program and making sure that they were in a better place when I left than when I inherited. And I inherited in a great place from Dr. Robert Bloom, Bob Bloom.

39:32 Mike Brasher And I wanted to make sure I kept that legacy going. And just for people that may be wondering, a little bit of a separation here to help people understand some of the structure in the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the group that deals with endangered species, that's not under, that's not Migratory Bird Match, but that's ecological services, right? And then there's also the National Wildlife Refuge System, that's a different division. And so those, I mean, that would be like why you didn't name some endangered species as your greatest challenge,

40:03 Brad Bortner the one that you got beaten up about, right? Well, I mean, we did, when I was working in Portland, we did delist the Aleutian Canada goose and had to develop a management plan and figure out how we were gonna manage the species that went from the endangered species list to the harvestable species list

40:20 Mike Brasher in basically a very short period of time. So in that situation, it transitioned from primary authority under ecological services over to the Division of Migratory Bird Management? That's correct. Okay. I kind of figured that was the way it worked, but I wasn't entirely sure. And so then kind of on that, I think will be our last question, but it speaks to like accomplishment and things that you look back on most fondly. What are you most proud of? Your 35 plus year career of public service centered around management of migratory birds. What are you most proud of? What has been one of your, what is one of your favorite memories

41:05 Brad Bortner or proudest moments and all that? The people that I brought in, the people that I hired, the young person that you took a risk on, or I hired at least one of your classmates into this service right after completion of his PhD. And there's, my legacy is the people that I brought to the program. I'm not the best and the brightest, but I hired the best and the brightest that I could at the time. And what they brought to the program and what we'll leave is much greater than anything that I would have personally accomplished for the program. So I think of the team as being my legacy, my greatest accomplishment,

41:48 Mike Brasher not anything that I did individually. That's a great place to leave it. Thank you for taking some additional time here with us this morning. Thanks for sharing more of your stories, for providing some advice to folks listening, maybe young in their life, maybe at the very start of their career, thinking about a career in this. Hopefully they're able to gain a few pieces of information that's gonna be useful to them as well. Thank you for the service, to the resource over the years and all your staff as well that you brought in and the staff that are there now and can and everyone else that's kind of represented by that profession and your career in it. Thank you, Brad.

42:27 Brad Bortner Thanks for being here. Thanks Mike. I appreciate it. I didn't get a chance to talk about HIP, but I'll be back to talk about what we can about increasing Hunter's knowledge of HIP

42:37 Mike Brasher and the requirements at some other point. Yeah, that's right. You have been, you've been on a number of podcasts talking about the Harvest Information Program and we'll get you back to do another update on that. I know you're still working on that. I would be eager to learn the latest, but thank you, Brad. It looked like I was twisting your arm. It's all good, appreciate it. A special thanks to our guest on today's episode, Brad Borton, and we appreciate his time. Appreciate his service to Migratory Bird Resources, waterfowl regulations over multiple decades. As always, we thank our producer, Chris Isaac, for the great work he does on these episodes. And to you, the listener, we thank you for your time. We thank you for spending it with us and we thank you for your support and commitment to wetlands and waterfowl conservation.