Ducks Unlimited Podcast

Swell AI Transcript: Conoco Phillips NO MUSIC.mp3
Mike Brasher: Welcome back, everyone.
Mike Brasher: I'm Dr. Mike Brasher.

Mike Brasher: I'm going to be your host on this episode, and I am joining you on location in Houma, Louisiana, a really unique place.

Mike Brasher: It's a place that I've had the fortune of spending a lot of time in, well, whenever I worked down for the Gulf Coast Joint Venture.

Mike Brasher: I'm at the ConocoPhillips Coastal Wetlands Office.

Mike Brasher: It is an absolutely fantastic setting.

Mike Brasher: I'm here with a couple of great friends of mine, partners in conservation,

Mike Brasher: And we're going to be talking about Ducks Unlimited's longstanding and very exciting partnership, an unconventional partnership I think for many people, with ConocoPhillips.

Mike Brasher: A lot of people will not think of ConocoPhillips immediately as an entity that is heavily engaged in conservation, but in fact they are.

Mike Brasher: And it's something that we're really proud of and we want to share that story.

John Harrington: So, joining me to help with this story is… John Harrington, Director of Coastal Wetlands for ConocoPhillips.

Cassidy Lejeune: And Cassidy Lejeune.

Cassidy Lejeune: I'm a DU employee.

Cassidy Lejeune: I'm the Director of Conservation Programs for South Louisiana.

Mike Brasher: And Cassidy, you're over in Lafayette, Louisiana?

Cassidy Lejeune: I am, Mike.

Cassidy Lejeune: In Lafayette, Louisiana, we have office there.

Cassidy Lejeune: Got about a dozen or so people that report out of that office.

Cassidy Lejeune: We cover all of the southern half of the state.

Mike Brasher: You've been on the podcast with us before, talking about some of the work that we do here in Louisiana.

Mike Brasher: I think we might've even focused on a conversation with some of our state partners, right?

Mike Brasher: LDWF, if I remember correctly.

Cassidy Lejeune: Correct.

Cassidy Lejeune: Correct.

Cassidy Lejeune: It was for the state convention, not this past one, but the one before we set up a live stream at the state convention, talked about Conservation Louisiana, working with LDWF, working with state partners and all of our accomplishments there.

Mike Brasher: And kind of like we talked about in that conversation, Ducks Unlimited doesn't do any of our conservation work by ourselves.

Mike Brasher: Everything we do requires partners of some type, whether they be private landowners, whether it be farmers, ranchers, or state agencies, federal agencies, or in this case, a corporate entity that I think many people will be surprised to learn has some significant land holdings and very significant and valuable land holdings, not just from the

Mike Brasher: from the products that ConocoPhillips is invested in, but from wildlife benefits and a whole host of other natural resources.

Mike Brasher: And John, that's really the backdrop against which this partnership emerged is that, yes, ConocoPhillips is a corporation, but you're also stewards of the lands that you own.

Mike Brasher: and this is a really cool landscape, and I want you to start by talking about what you do here with ConocoPhillips, but then also help set the backdrop for where we are and the significance of the wetlands that ConocoPhillips owns and stewards here in Louisiana.

Mike Brasher: Sure.

John Harrington: ConocoPhillips is in a tremendous position to demonstrate

John Harrington: With this footprint here, it's commitment to stewardship and conservation.

John Harrington: We hold through our wholly owned subsidiary, the Louisiana Land and Exploration Company, LLC, about 636,000 acres.

John Harrington: It's a tremendous position spanning about 120 miles from the east to the west from the Mississippi River to the Atchafalaya.

John Harrington: And it's about 80 miles from its northern extent in the Desalmines area down to the Gulf.

John Harrington: So, tremendous footprint here.

John Harrington: My team here is about 11 of us, ConocoPhillips employees.

John Harrington: We manage all the surface related activity on the lands.

John Harrington: We lease some of the lands for recreational purposes, duck hunting.

John Harrington: There's other commercial activity.

John Harrington: There is oil and gas, but interestingly enough, that's not what we do here.

John Harrington: That's not our primary line of effort.

John Harrington: We don't operate on these LL&E lands currently as a

John Harrington: ConocoPhillips company.

John Harrington: One of our primary lines of effort is the conservation piece.

John Harrington: So when I say our team here at 11 and ConocoPhillips, it's really 12.

John Harrington: When I think of having the team, you know, really it's a unique position to be integrated and have DU share office space with us.

John Harrington: So when we work seamlessly on our conservation efforts, it's really as simple as walking down the hall and true collaboration, figuring out how do we best design and implement restoration and conservation efforts on the footprint.

Mike Brasher: Geography-wise, for people that may not be as familiar with some of the landmarks that you provided, we're in southeastern Louisiana.

Mike Brasher: A lot of times people will talk about southeastern Louisiana, southwestern Louisiana.

Mike Brasher: We're at the Chafalaya east of the Mississippi River.

Mike Brasher: That's southeastern Louisiana.

Mike Brasher: I mean, it's a vast landscape.

Mike Brasher: It's an incredibly productive landscape, but I think everyone else, most people will know that it's one of the most imperiled landscapes in North America because of the wetland loss rates that we're seeing here.

Mike Brasher: And that's

Mike Brasher: that is also occurring on the land that ConocoPhillips owns.

Mike Brasher: And that's one of the, if not the, primary reason why the work that we're doing with ConocoPhillips is so important, right?

John Harrington: This landscape just gives so much.

John Harrington: It provides so much.

John Harrington: It's challenged when you think of storms and other natural factors that can impact the landscape.

John Harrington: But when you think about the fisheries, when you think about the duck habitat and the resiliency that marsh provides in insulating low-lying coastal communities, it's a big deal.

John Harrington: It's huge on multiple fronts, so that's why it makes a ton of sense.

John Harrington: From our perspective, it means so much, and then also pairing with the right folks, you all.

John Harrington: Doug, I'd love to make sure that, again, we amplify as best we can.

Mike Brasher: And so, John, the place where we are, the land that we're on physically right now, it's an absolutely amazing place.

Mike Brasher: It's kind of like a, I don't know, I'd consider it a hidden gem.

Mike Brasher: Not anyone can come here.

Mike Brasher: You got to get through a gate to get here and all that kind of stuff, right?

Mike Brasher: But it's a beautiful piece of property.

Mike Brasher: Tell us a little bit about it, where we are.

John Harrington: Sure, you can come through the gate or the waterway.

John Harrington: We're really situated nicely on a point, on a waterway here and kind of tucked in the back of the middle of town under the oaks.

John Harrington: Really, really blessed to have this backdrop and again, work with the team that we work with on a daily basis where we work with them too.

John Harrington: Again, just continue to drive and collaborate as best we can.

John Harrington: Really, really pushing not just what we're doing as a team, but synergies with others.

John Harrington: How do we reach out to the state and local communities and other groups that are looking to implement projects and again, bring these together for Max Impact.

Mike Brasher: Cassidy, you're a native Louisiana.

Mike Brasher: Yes, sir.

Mike Brasher: And so it's gotta be pretty special for you to work on coastal wetlands restoration, conservation efforts in general, right?

Mike Brasher: Just given your personal background.

Mike Brasher: But I also know that you would have grown up being aware of the important role that companies like ConocoPhillips or Vermilion Corp or Miami Corporation, any of those other large landholding companies play

Mike Brasher: in stewarding this coastal landscape.

Mike Brasher: So is it, is this, how special is this kind of opportunity and your ability to work with John and his staff on our mission of coastal wetlands restoration, kind of given your personal background?

Cassidy Lejeune: Yeah, it's very special to me.

Cassidy Lejeune: I grew up in South Louisiana.

Cassidy Lejeune: I'm from Abbeville, Louisiana.

Cassidy Lejeune: Born and raised in that area.

Cassidy Lejeune: Went to school in Louisiana, both undergrad, graduate school.

Cassidy Lejeune: I had strong ties.

Cassidy Lejeune: I'm in my 20th year of doing work on the coast as a professional.

Cassidy Lejeune: And before the DU days, spent a good bit of time out on coastal refuges in WMAs.

Cassidy Lejeune: doing similar to work what we do through this partnership, but it's truly a great opportunity.

Cassidy Lejeune: Like you mentioned in the beginning of this conversation, that it takes a team.

Cassidy Lejeune: DU doesn't do anything alone.

Cassidy Lejeune: We don't work in a vacuum.

Cassidy Lejeune: I often say when I give presentations, it's like the old saying that it takes a village to raise a child.

Cassidy Lejeune: It truly takes a village to deliver conservation work.

Cassidy Lejeune: And Conoco is a great partner.

Cassidy Lejeune: They put their money where their mouth is.

Cassidy Lejeune: They have the resources.

Cassidy Lejeune: They have the opportunity.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's a good partnership.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's been great.

Cassidy Lejeune: Great 10 years and really looking forward to another 10 years and beyond and even expanding on what we currently are doing.

Mike Brasher: So this formalized partnership between Conoco and DU here in coastal Louisiana has been in place 10 years, you said.

Mike Brasher: How did that come about?

Mike Brasher: Were you with DU at that time or had you not gotten here yet?

Cassidy Lejeune: No, I came into this partnership probably about five years ago.

Cassidy Lejeune: I've been with DU for seven years now, and so of course it started before my time with DU.

Cassidy Lejeune: I do know a little bit of the history.

Cassidy Lejeune: It kind of came about through some of my co-workers that were doing work and had a presence in Louisiana.

Cassidy Lejeune: working with partnerships and that sort of thing.

Cassidy Lejeune: We were operating in Louisiana.

Cassidy Lejeune: The first project we did in Louisiana was in the 80s, and the mid-80s was a water control structure, actually two water control structures at Marsh Island Refuge and Iberia Parish.

Cassidy Lejeune: So DU's been operating in Louisiana since the 80s.

Cassidy Lejeune: But part of the partnership was built through a combined effort in Texas, in the Playa Lakes area of Texas, which is the southern Great Plains of the U.S.

Cassidy Lejeune: We had staff embedded in the Playa Lakes joint venture, working with state agencies, working with partners, working with ConocoPhillips, who had a presence there.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's an important area to them.

Cassidy Lejeune: had a good relationship through that work and decided to expand that partnership.

Cassidy Lejeune: Some conversations were had that, hey, we own 630,000 acres in South Louisiana and Coastal Louisiana that is vulnerable, that's being lost, that needs restoration, enhancement, protection, action.

Cassidy Lejeune: And so, that kind of expanded and started this 10-year partnership through what was happening in the Platte Lakes Joint Venture area.

Mike Brasher: And so, talk a little bit more about the nature of our partnership.

Mike Brasher: It's more than just saying, hey, we want to come work with y'all.

Mike Brasher: We actually have staff that have been located, co-located with Conoco staff here for a number of years, right?

Mike Brasher: I mean, so, how is this different?

Mike Brasher: How do we take it to this more formal hand-in-hand partnership?

Cassidy Lejeune: Yeah, this is different than what we do with other partners.

Cassidy Lejeune: You know, we work with everybody on the coast.

Cassidy Lejeune: We're happy to work with small landowners, big landowners, other nonprofits, state, federal.

Cassidy Lejeune: We do it all.

Cassidy Lejeune: But this is a unique situation where Conoco and Ducks Unlimited works hand in hand.

Cassidy Lejeune: We have staff in their office.

Cassidy Lejeune: We keep our boats and our equipment in their yard.

Cassidy Lejeune: We work hand-in-hand on a day-to-day basis to come up with projects, develop design, refine project ideas, go out and find funding for this work.

Cassidy Lejeune: Kind of that turnkey from concept to delivery, we're doing it kind of hand-in-hand.

Cassidy Lejeune: Like John mentioned, just right down the hall, you know, it's a day-to-day partnership.

Cassidy Lejeune: which is different than some of our other partnerships where it's more of a few times a year we're meeting and discussing options and trying to move things forward, but it moves at a much rapid pace through the ConocoDU partnership.

Mike Brasher: And so, John, you may have said this already, but so forgive me, you've been here how long?

Mike Brasher: About five years.

Mike Brasher: Five years.

Mike Brasher: And where were you before that?

Mike Brasher: Do you tell us a little bit about your background within within Conego?

John Harrington: Sure.

John Harrington: I'll give a little bit of personal high-level background and then the company piece.

John Harrington: I didn't grow up in Louisiana like Cassidy did, but we're kind of cousins, right?

John Harrington: I grew up in South Mississippi, so this landscape's familiar to me and it means something to me.

John Harrington: Went to school in Mississippi and then moved around out west for a couple different places with a previous company and then joined ConocoPhillips about 10 years ago.

John Harrington: and saw that this was something that was within the company's portfolio and again the commitment that the company was showing to the stewardship there and then what it meant to me personally.

John Harrington: So, it just seemed like a really good fit to take some personal interests along with what the company is putting to that and pack family up and move from Houston and come here and really enjoyed our time and seeing how this team effort has really kind of made some tremendous progress in the conservation space here.

Mike Brasher: Conoco has sort of field offices, I'm guessing, in other locations, key locations around North America?

Mike Brasher: Yes.

Mike Brasher: Okay.

Mike Brasher: What are some of those other areas important, some of the most important landscapes for Conoco?

John Harrington: We're based out of Houston, Texas, and it's a global company, but as far as lower 48, we think of the Bakken in the Dakotas.

John Harrington: We think of West Texas and Permian.

John Harrington: So you mentioned the JVs earlier, Intermountain, West JV, and then the Playa Lakes JV.

John Harrington: Gulf Coast Joint Venture for here, as far as this, and then the landscape into southern Texas.

John Harrington: And then Alaska is one.

John Harrington: So, when you look at just kind of the not just focus here, but the conservation effort and where we're interested, it's a huge, huge swath of landscape.

Mike Brasher: And Cassidy was telling me that he wanted to go work in Alaska.

Mike Brasher: Is that right, Cassidy?

Cassidy Lejeune: Right.

Cassidy Lejeune: I wouldn't know what to do in Alaska.

Mike Brasher: So, obviously, in those other landscapes, there is a lot of active oil and gas production, but you mentioned, this was a bit of news to me, that here in coastal Louisiana, there's not any, or maybe not a lot anyway, of active oil or gas extraction from conical properties.

Mike Brasher: Is that what you said?

John Harrington: So, there are from third parties, but as a company, we haven't operated in over 10 years in the state.

John Harrington: So, again, it's a very interesting position to be in, to have this footprint.

John Harrington: It kind of shows, again, the commitment to beyond what a lot of people would think would be our just basic blocking and tackling as an oil and gas company.

John Harrington: really demonstrates the importance of stewardship to the company.

John Harrington: And again, strategic key relationships with trusted and well-respected folks like you, like Ducks Unlimited.

Mike Brasher: So, fishing, hunting, alligator.

Mike Brasher: Do you do alligator harvest to sell those permits?

Mike Brasher: Cassidy, you'd probably know about how all that stuff works as well, but those type of sort of uses of the land are still in play here?

John Harrington: They are.

John Harrington: These are long-standing uses.

John Harrington: And as everybody I'm sure realizes, hugely important to the culture.

John Harrington: So, when you're looking at restoration and you look at the uses, you're really preserving culture.

John Harrington: Again, it's a huge impact when you think about how this all comes together.

John Harrington: It's good for ducks, it's good for people, it insulates communities, and it's good for other species.

John Harrington: And it just all comes together nicely.

John Harrington: There's just so many impacts from restoring the marsh.

Mike Brasher: And Cassidy, this type of formalized partnership is efficient for us for a number of reasons.

Mike Brasher: Like whenever we go out and we begin working with another partner, a new landowner, a new agency, there's a bit of kind of trust building that has to occur.

Mike Brasher: There's also issues with regard to permitting and all sorts of other things.

Mike Brasher: But this type of partnership on such a large landscape that's owned by one entity has to give us some efficiencies in trying to deliver

Mike Brasher: wetland conservation that benefits, because these are migratory birds or these are fish or these are other animals or whatever that move around on this landscape, work that we do in one location benefits a lot of areas around it, right?

Mike Brasher: So, talk about the efficiencies that we may gain in some of the conservation work that we do because of this particular arrangement.

Cassidy Lejeune: Yeah, so as partnerships, it's based on trust.

Cassidy Lejeune: There's no doubt about it.

Cassidy Lejeune: And there are efficiencies that are gained through, you know, repetitively working with a partner.

Cassidy Lejeune: And that's part of the beauty behind this.

Cassidy Lejeune: You know, we have that relationship, that trust, that we know.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've done this before.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've gone through the steps with our Conoco partners.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've been doing it for a long time.

Cassidy Lejeune: If we go and meet with a new landowner, and we've done this, we've done this recently on another project, there's a lag time to build a relationship to kind of explain to that partner that may not be as conservation-minded as the Conoco folks here in Houma.

Cassidy Lejeune: You know, the Conoco folks here in the home are 100% in versus another landowner might be a little hesitant about, well, what is DU?

Cassidy Lejeune: Is there anything beyond what they're pitching here that we need to be cautious of?

Cassidy Lejeune: You know, sometimes they look at us almost like as big brother, just like a government entity kind of thing, wanting to come in and change their property.

Cassidy Lejeune: It works.

Cassidy Lejeune: You go through the motions, you take the steps, you educate them, you show them, you take them out, give them examples, give them the data, give them the research, and eventually you could get there.

Cassidy Lejeune: But through this partnership, we're able to make things happen quickly.

Cassidy Lejeune: We get a lot done.

Cassidy Lejeune: We could crank grants out.

Cassidy Lejeune: We could crank projects out on the back end.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's a very, very efficient way to do business and it helps us meet our goals, our ACRE goals, just the objectives of what DU is trying to do down here.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's a good thing.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's a good partnership.

Cassidy Lejeune: It just works.

Mike Brasher: One of the most lasting memories that I have from actually this facility, we would occasionally have our Gulf Coast Joint Venture Management Board meetings here.

Mike Brasher: Y'all would host us here.

Mike Brasher: And there were a couple of those meetings where we went into the

Mike Brasher: the boardroom or the meeting room and up on the wall were still some of these large maps or photos of the Conoco property and it's where I think DU and Conoco had come together and identified opportunities for

Mike Brasher: for restoration or enhancement activities, mostly restoration, I think is the way we think about it.

Mike Brasher: Is that kind of how it is simple as it started, Cassidy, as you get together and you look at the property and you look at some of the places most vulnerable or that have already suffered the greatest amount of erosion of the marsh and you begin targeting those areas?

Mike Brasher: Were you part of that original kind of identification of potential projects?

Cassidy Lejeune: Not per se like years one, two, three, kind of coming up with a master list of these are priorities.

Cassidy Lejeune: Let's start here.

Cassidy Lejeune: Let's move here.

Cassidy Lejeune: Let's try this.

Cassidy Lejeune: Let's do that.

Cassidy Lejeune: But it's a revolving process.

Cassidy Lejeune: We do it all the time.

Cassidy Lejeune: We're all constantly planning.

Cassidy Lejeune: We're constantly discussing what is the next project?

Cassidy Lejeune: What is the next funding opportunity?

Cassidy Lejeune: Hey, this new no opportunity has come down the pipe.

Cassidy Lejeune: Where can we fit this in with what we do and be able to tap in and utilize those monies to move the needle in the right direction?

Cassidy Lejeune: So, it's a constant process.

Cassidy Lejeune: We meet with John and his staff regularly, both not only on updates of what's going on, what we're implementing, and how those projects are going, and what are timelines for delivering work, but also, hey, what is that next project?

Cassidy Lejeune: And what is the priority area?

Cassidy Lejeune: Hey, we're thinking about this.

Cassidy Lejeune: What do y'all think about that?

Cassidy Lejeune: Is this a priority to y'all?

Cassidy Lejeune: And that sort of thing.

Cassidy Lejeune: So, it's a team effort, it's working together, and it's constantly thinking about the next project.

Mike Brasher: I might jump around here a little bit in my notes, but we're talking about projects here.

Mike Brasher: Do you have a favorite project of the ones that have been implemented here?

Mike Brasher: Wow, that's a tough question, Mike.

Cassidy Lejeune: Yeah, I mean, first, I guess the political answer is they're all great projects.

Cassidy Lejeune: They're all fantastic projects.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've done a lot of good through the partnership.

Cassidy Lejeune: I would say one of my favorites, I would lean towards as being my favorite is some of the work we've done in the Cairncrow Bayou area, like one of our original Cairncrow Bayou projects.

Cassidy Lejeune: It was the installation of water control structure.

Cassidy Lejeune: It was doing some dredging, kind of some plumbing work in that Western Terrebonne Basin area, the Pinchant Basin, kind of that Western area where there's a lot of influence from the Chafalet River.

Cassidy Lejeune: There's opportunities to reroute water, that fresh water that's full of nutrients, that's full of sediment.

Cassidy Lejeune: that water that comes from the Mississippi River that has built coastal Louisiana, trying to re-plumb the system, move that water to where it needs to go to enhance some of those more saltier areas and nourish some of these areas that are deteriorating.

Cassidy Lejeune: I think that's really cool, but we've done other great things through the partnership.

Cassidy Lejeune: Marsh creation projects, we've done a couple of those.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've done a lot of earth and terrace work, which is quite beneficial and a very efficient means to doing restoration enhancement work.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've done some living shoreline protection type projects, which were pretty neat as well.

Cassidy Lejeune: And there's even more in the future to come that will try some new things and got some stuff kind of lined up where it would be neat to do a ridge restoration project at one point in time, and we're working towards that.

Cassidy Lejeune: But yeah, some of that plumbing work in western Terrebonne is really cool in my opinion.

Mike Brasher: But you're obviously fond of all of them.

Mike Brasher: Oh, absolutely.

Mike Brasher: Absolutely.

Mike Brasher: John, are you able to get out in the marsh as much as you'd like to?

Mike Brasher: I think the answer is probably no, right?

John Harrington: Absolutely.

John Harrington: Not as much as I'd like to.

John Harrington: If it's okay, I just want to back step just a little bit.

John Harrington: You know, Cassidy mentioned trust earlier, and he mentioned kind of the process of how we work together at a program level to make sure that there's synergies and we maximize our efforts.

John Harrington: it truly is one of the better parts of the of the program is the trust piece that hey look all the all the options are on the table all ideas are on the table and you really do have trust with the folks that you're working with to say how many bad ideas here let's just put it out and figure out where we go next so just wanted to touch on that because I think that's it's hard to quantify that value but it's there and it's real when we're looking at moving the program forward.

Mike Brasher: I'll also say that the very fact that we're here recording a podcast with you shows a fair bit of trust as well, right?

John Harrington: Getting me here on this is definitely you're showing a great deal of trust.

Mike Brasher: We appreciate you doing it.

Mike Brasher: Do you have, of all the different projects that you've seen implemented, do you have any that you get particularly excited about?

Mike Brasher: Whether it be a type of project or the location, anything of that nature?

John Harrington: You know, thinking about this, it's hard to separate the overall macro impacts because they're so massive.

John Harrington: When you look at it in 10 years, enhancing over 25,000 acres, 64 miles of terraces is tremendous.

John Harrington: And again, breaking that up, this all works in a system in a lot of areas, so it's difficult.

John Harrington: But if I'm going to pick a project that jumps out to me, it's the Gold Meadow Marsh Creation Project.

John Harrington: Where it's at?

John Harrington: It's at the toe of the South Lafourche Levee, so we understand that provides some critical blocking and insulation to critical infrastructure that protects Gold Meadow and the community there.

John Harrington: And then when you look at how it performed after Hurricane Ida, which was just a tremendously powerful storm, it took a bit of a haircut.

John Harrington: It did, but it performed incredibly well.

John Harrington: The terraces in that area as well, too.

John Harrington: So, I think the whole suite of work around the South Lafourche Levee jumps out to me as

John Harrington: you saw some extreme devastation to the habitat and you saw some resiliency with a nature-based set of projects that performed well and have healed nicely since then.

Mike Brasher: I wish we could take 10 minutes on each activity type, terracing, freshwater introduction.

Mike Brasher: marsh creation and just talk about the mechanics of that, but we don't really have the time to do that today.

Mike Brasher: It'll be a future episode, right, Cassidy?

Mike Brasher: We can talk about trenosses and crevasses and the distinction between those, right?

Mike Brasher: It's your specialty.

Mike Brasher: But, you know, you mentioned Golden Meadow.

Mike Brasher: That is a project that I'm real familiar with.

Mike Brasher: Later on, we're going to talk about

Mike Brasher: Conoco's partnership and investment in science, some of the research that Ducks Unlimited has done to evaluate the effects of the benefits of these different activities, terracing in particular.

Mike Brasher: A lot of our work

Mike Brasher: on that project occurred, I say project, I'm talking about a research project, occurred in that Golden Meadow marsh creation area.

Mike Brasher: So, I spent a lot of time on the water down there.

Mike Brasher: Man, I can't tell you how many times I wished I'd had a fishing rod with me.

Mike Brasher: Now, I think I would have had to have gotten permission to do that, to go fishing.

Mike Brasher: But man, it's a beautiful landscape, it's a incredibly productive marsh, there was no shortage of

Mike Brasher: of fish that I would see in the water or here and there.

Mike Brasher: I lived here for 13 years.

Mike Brasher: It's one of the things that I miss the most is despite how… I think this tells us two things.

Mike Brasher: So, what I'll say is despite how imperiled these wetland landscapes are,

Mike Brasher: It doesn't take very much to see, even in those degraded states, and of course there's a discussion there about as these marshes degrade, there's sort of a temporary increase in productivity and so forth.

Mike Brasher: But even in some of those areas that are still intact, it is so amazing how productive these marshes are from all the different critters that they support, the fish, the crustaceans, the birds, the mammals, the reptiles.

Mike Brasher: Man, it's unlike any other place that I've ever been.

Mike Brasher: Now, you have to pay.

Mike Brasher: You have to pay in some ways with mosquitoes and humidity and heat and all that kind of stuff.

Mike Brasher: There's no free lunch whenever you're living down here.

Mike Brasher: But it is a beautiful landscape and the work that y'all are doing to conserve that, protect and restore it.

Mike Brasher: I mean, it's worth everything that we put into it.

Mike Brasher: I think at this point what I want to do is take a break.

Mike Brasher: We're going to come back and then we're going to talk a little bit more about DU's philosophy of working with different type of landowners, different type of partners, and then I think we'll talk about Conoco's involvement in conservation beyond just coastal Louisiana.

Mike Brasher: We'll talk a little bit about migratory bird joint ventures beyond just the Gulf Coast.

Mike Brasher: So, y'all stay with us.

Mike Brasher: We'll be right back after this message.

Mike Brasher: Welcome back, everybody.

Mike Brasher: We are here in Houma, Louisiana.

Mike Brasher: I'm sitting down with John Harrington and ConocoPhillips in their coastal wetlands office here, as well as Cassidy Lejeune from the Ducks Unlimited office over in Lafayette.

Mike Brasher: And we're going to pick up talking about DU's philosophy of working with different types of landowners.

Mike Brasher: It's really a singular philosophy, right, in terms of finding the things that work

Mike Brasher: for our partners, finding the things that work for our mission.

Mike Brasher: Talk a little bit about that, Cassidy.

Cassidy Lejeune: Yeah, it's very singular, like you mentioned.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's wash, rinse, repeat a lot in some situations.

Cassidy Lejeune: We know the needs of the coast.

Cassidy Lejeune: We have some solid expertise with our coastal biologists and coastal engineers that know the needs of the coast.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's just a matter of making connections with landowners.

Cassidy Lejeune: Like I mentioned earlier, it's small landowners to big landowners, to other non-profits, to the state.

Cassidy Lejeune: We do work on state areas, state public areas, and even federal areas.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's everybody.

Cassidy Lejeune: We're inclusive of all landowners.

Cassidy Lejeune: We even have separate programs where we have a private lands program that we operate out of South Louisiana that are more specifically designed to enhance waterfowl habitat.

Cassidy Lejeune: And we more deal with the little mom and pop landowners through that program, and we deliver smaller projects.

Cassidy Lejeune: Then, if you kind of scale out, we're working with some of the bigger land companies doing some of these larger projects.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've got a few projects that are multi-million dollar projects.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've got one going on right now in Plaquemines Parish that's actually fixing to start where it's about $6 million worth of funding to do work.

Cassidy Lejeune: with a couple different landowners, including ConocoPhillips.

Cassidy Lejeune: So, it's big, small.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's everything in between.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's knowing the needs.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's coming up with concepts.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's finding funding.

Cassidy Lejeune: I hate to brag on us, but we are pretty efficient at finding funding.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's leveraging dollars.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's taking a little bit of money, a little pot of money that we're able to leverage through state and federal grants and make it a lot larger pot of money.

Cassidy Lejeune: I think we do a competitive job of putting out proposals and bringing money in the door.

Cassidy Lejeune: Just to give you an idea, for Louisiana as a whole, our last fiscal year that wrapped up in June of 2023, we had a record year.

Cassidy Lejeune: We actually spent $16 million on conservation work in Louisiana as a whole.

Cassidy Lejeune: And of that $16 million, $12 million was in South Louisiana.

Cassidy Lejeune: So, I think we're moving the needle, making a difference.

Cassidy Lejeune: When it comes to coastal stuff, it's a big issue.

Cassidy Lejeune: You know that.

Cassidy Lejeune: I know that.

Cassidy Lejeune: John knows that.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's really large-scale needs there.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've lost a lot of coastal wetlands.

Cassidy Lejeune: We stand to lose a lot more if you look at some of the predictive modeling that the state has done through the master plan.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's scary.

Cassidy Lejeune: It'll keep you up at night, but we're all in.

Cassidy Lejeune: We're working with partners.

Cassidy Lejeune: We're working with whomever will sit at the table with us to try to protect, preserve, and restore habitat.

Mike Brasher: $16 million spent in Louisiana on conservation work last year alone.

Mike Brasher: Last year alone.

Mike Brasher: So the Facebook comments that I read about people saying we never do any work in Louisiana, those aren't true?

Cassidy Lejeune: It's not.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's not.

Cassidy Lejeune: I got spreadsheets to prove it, you know?

Mike Brasher: Yeah.

Mike Brasher: I have to say that because I see those all the time and it's like, man, just go on our website, look at the projects that we're doing.

Mike Brasher: And then this is a great

Mike Brasher: opportunity to talk about the specific location and specific projects.

Mike Brasher: $16 million, $12 million in coastal Louisiana.

Mike Brasher: And again, it's these, from a waterfowl standpoint, or really any kind of bird that

Mike Brasher: that benefits from this work that uses these habitats, they don't just stay on the property where we're doing the work.

Mike Brasher: A lot of people are talking about, well, you do work on private land.

Mike Brasher: We do work on public land also.

Mike Brasher: And these birds use this massive landscape.

Mike Brasher: Whenever we do work on ConocoPhillips land, it benefits all the landowners all around it.

Mike Brasher: It benefits continental populations of birds.

Mike Brasher: I enjoy the opportunity to talk about those examples and reiterate that point.

Mike Brasher: I appreciate you providing those numbers, Cassidy.

Mike Brasher: So, I also early on talked about this being, maybe some people viewing this as an unconventional partnership, because typically people think of DU as partnering with state wildlife agencies or federal wildlife agencies.

Mike Brasher: or a private landowner that has real strong interest and primary motivation to do good habitat work for waterfowl or any other kind of animal.

Mike Brasher: But John, has this ever appeared as an unconventional partnership for you?

Mike Brasher: Not for me personally.

John Harrington: Because I do understand ConocoPhillips' genuine commitment, long-term, long-time commitment to conservation, and I understand DU standing in advocating for conservation worldwide and the ability to implement.

John Harrington: But I do understand the question from the outside.

John Harrington: It does take some digging into understanding this tremendous footprint we've talked about here, the platform to do this amongst other areas, and then also again this commitment

John Harrington: So, no, not personally, but I can see it from the outside why we may get that question.

Mike Brasher: But you have to take a fair bit of pride in talking about this partnership, right?

Mike Brasher: To kind of combat that maybe the view from the outside.

John Harrington: Absolutely.

John Harrington: It's something that we have to talk about.

John Harrington: We take a great deal of pride, and I say we collectively as our team here, our partnership,

John Harrington: and appreciate any platform to be able to discuss it, because we kind of, in a lot of ways, are quiet operators here and very successful, but we're very happy to keep talking about what we're doing, because it may encourage other folks, I think, to jump into this space, because as Cassidy mentioned, big issues, we need a big tent, we need every piece to come together to try to move the needle against some of the coastal erosion.

Mike Brasher: John kind of getting to that point about working with other people, coastal Louisiana is it's a big landscape, but it's a small community of people that probably feels like a small community of people when it comes to the folks that you work with all across this this landscape and so Cassidy with regard to other.

Mike Brasher: major landholding companies.

Mike Brasher: Has our partnership and the trust that we've developed and we've shown through the work over a decade with ConocoPhillips made any difference in the way we interact with other landholding companies or oil and gas companies in this region?

Cassidy Lejeune: Yeah, Mike, I'd say it surely has opened the door.

Cassidy Lejeune: Over the last 10 years, we've grown in what we've done, not only through the partnership, but as a whole, our DU presence in Louisiana and South Louisiana, we've grown drastically.

Cassidy Lejeune: If you look at the numbers, it's moving in the right direction.

Cassidy Lejeune: So some of the growth is expansion, but some of the growth is the doors that have been opened through our partnership with ConocoPhillips.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've had a couple situations or multiple situations where we've started work on new properties with new landowners because they heard or learned about or saw firsthand, oh, y'all did that work with Conoco at Golden Meadow or this, that, or the other.

Cassidy Lejeune: And they come knocking on the door and say, hey, can y'all work with us?

Cassidy Lejeune: We have needs too.

Cassidy Lejeune: Our marsh is falling apart.

Cassidy Lejeune: We need some restoration work.

Cassidy Lejeune: We need some stability in our property that we own.

Cassidy Lejeune: Oh, can we give you guys a little bit of money that you could put into a grant program to turn it into a lot of money?

Cassidy Lejeune: You know, those conversations came and will come more in the future because of our relationship with ConocoPhillips.

Mike Brasher: Jon, I want to shift a little bit here and talk about Conoco's efforts outside of coastal Louisiana.

Mike Brasher: also outside of the Gulf Coast.

Mike Brasher: One of the things that I can say about Conoco's investment in migratory bird habitat conservation in the Gulf Coast is that it's beyond Louisiana.

Mike Brasher: Y'all are an active supporter of the Texas Prairie Wetlands Project.

Mike Brasher: It's DU's… Well, it's the Gulf Coast Joint Ventures' flagship private land wetland restoration program on the Texas coast.

Mike Brasher: From my time in the Gulf Coast Joint Venture, I remember Conoco being a supporter of that, providing some funding to help deliver that conservation work every year.

Mike Brasher: You also supported some of the work that went on in our office, a variety of activities, but beyond the Gulf Coast.

Mike Brasher: We've talked about the Playa Lakes joint venture.

Mike Brasher: I think we referenced that previously.

Mike Brasher: Talk about some of those other places and other migratory bird partnerships where ConocoPhillips is active.

John Harrington: You know, as we mentioned, you know, we look at the productivity in the Louisiana program here for 10 years, but working with DU goes back 40, and that's in various avenues and places across the United States and into Alaska.

John Harrington: The JVs are a big part of how we collaborate the platform to be able to, again, kind of amplifying our impacts when we work with DU and through the JVs.

John Harrington: Gulf Coast Joint Venture here is keenly important to our footprint and throughout the Gulf South.

John Harrington: And then when you think of Playa Lakes and others again, it's figuring out where we can make some big impacts through the right collaboration.

John Harrington: And these are the right platforms.

John Harrington: Those aren't the only JVs that we participate in.

John Harrington: There are many, but they're very effective in being able to continue to help promote conservation across the U.S.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, I think we've talked about joint ventures on previous podcast episodes, but I guess just briefly, I could probably tell folks what they are.

Mike Brasher: Essentially, they were established out of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan back in 1986.

Mike Brasher: And they are these regional, formalized partnerships of state, federal, non-government, and in other instances, private.

Mike Brasher: entities that all share as part of their individual missions an interest in conserving habitat for birds, migratory birds.

Mike Brasher: There are, golly, what's the number, 22, 21, 22 joint ventures, habitat joint ventures across North America.

Mike Brasher: They essentially cover the entire North American landscape.

Mike Brasher: There are a small number of what we call species joint ventures, but it's a formalized vehicle within which conservation partners come together and make decisions around shared objectives and priorities.

Mike Brasher: And it's a way of getting everyone in a given region on the same page that cares about migratory bird conservation.

Mike Brasher: And ConocoPhillips is a huge player in a number of those.

Mike Brasher: And you guys can bring resources to that conversation and to those efforts in ways that some of the other partners can't.

Mike Brasher: I think that's one of the neat things about those joint venture partnerships.

Mike Brasher: Having worked on the inside for over a decade,

Mike Brasher: You see the members, because y'all are a member of the management board here for the Gulf Coast Joint Venture, probably I think the Playa Lakes also, Intermountain West.

Mike Brasher: Is there another one?

Mike Brasher: Probably missing one.

Mike Brasher: I don't know.

Mike Brasher: I can't remember them all, but I know at least those three.

Mike Brasher: And so, what you see in those management board meetings

Mike Brasher: is the individual partners bringing to the table, the things that are sort of unique to them that they're really good at and that, uh, where they can make a contribution that perhaps others can.

Mike Brasher: And, and Conoco has done that in a number of ways.

Mike Brasher: And so, so I think that's, that's pretty cool.

Mike Brasher: And it's a shining example.

Mike Brasher: I know a lot of our joint venture partners are super thrilled and proud to have ConocoPhillips as, uh, as a partner member on those management boards, uh, as a,

Mike Brasher: as a prominent figure in their joint venture partnerships.

Mike Brasher: And so, to me, it's, you know, your predecessor, Phil Precht here, he was a huge supporter and a big fan of the joint venture.

Mike Brasher: And I've had just a personal thank you to you and everyone on your staff for your involvement there.

Mike Brasher: I'm trying to think of, you know, kind of what else from a, from a, because, because I don't know, John, I don't want to put you on the spot too much here to speak about what's going on, what Conoco is doing with any of the other joint venture activities.

Mike Brasher: Cassidy, are you familiar?

Mike Brasher: Are we familiar with any of that, any of the Conoco work and other joint venture landscapes?

Cassidy Lejeune: No, Mike, I'm pretty much a kind of isolated regional guy.

Cassidy Lejeune: I'm not too well versed on, you know, stuff much beyond the Gulf Coast Joint Venture.

Cassidy Lejeune: I have some role in that.

Cassidy Lejeune: I'm not on the board, but I am a chairperson for the Chenier Plain initiative area of the Gulf Coast Joint Venture.

Cassidy Lejeune: So, I know the workings of that program a little bit, but beyond that, I'm just not too well versed on it, unfortunately.

Mike Brasher: John, do you have any, I mean, I don't know, one of the questions I guess I would ask is, like, as a company, do you ever interact with the people that are active on the other joint venture boards?

Mike Brasher: I have no idea what that might look like.

John Harrington: No, absolutely.

John Harrington: There's a lot of communication within team members, you know, just like the JVs themselves are collaborative platforms.

John Harrington: We're also doing that internally to make sure what are some learnings, where are synergies, what can we do to avoid any sort of wasted motion.

John Harrington: Again, the connectivity in all these habitats, you mentioned earlier the birds and other critters don't really care where our boundaries are.

John Harrington: So, figuring out where we can come together and max impact may be because we are collaborating on joint projects or whatever the case may be in a given area.

Mike Brasher: Well, that's cool.

Mike Brasher: And again, just my thank you.

Mike Brasher: And I know everyone at Ducks Unlimited thanks ConocoPhillips for their investment in our priority conservation work, wherever it is.

Mike Brasher: Louisiana's special to several of us here, so thank you for that.

Mike Brasher: I think what we'll do here as we begin to close out is talk about some more of the… Well, actually, we need to talk about Conoco's investment in science, in support of some of the science.

Mike Brasher: And the one project that I'm thinking about is a project that supported, I think, two master's students and a PhD student at Mississippi State.

Mike Brasher: It was an investigation of the benefits of marsh terracing.

Mike Brasher: We talked about how many miles of marsh terraces, 64 miles of earthen terraces.

Mike Brasher: on Conoco property over the past 10 years, and there's way more than that across coastal Louisiana.

Mike Brasher: It is a very prominent restoration technique that's been implemented by Ducks Unlimited and other entities going back to the early 90s.

Mike Brasher: And we've talked about that on a previous episode.

Mike Brasher: We don't have a whole lot of time here to talk about the specifics of it, but

Mike Brasher: It's a way of… Do you want to talk about it?

Mike Brasher: You probably… Casty?

Mike Brasher: You want to talk about terracing?

Cassidy Lejeune: Yeah, just real quick.

Cassidy Lejeune: I'll give you a quick… Yeah, we use that technique quite often in Louisiana.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've delivered many, many, many terracing projects across the coast from west to east.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've got stuff going on right now.

Cassidy Lejeune: We have stuff we just finished up.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've got stuff planned for the future.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's a very efficient way to stabilize an area, to restore an area, to diversify an area.

Cassidy Lejeune: If you compare it to like a marsh creation, which is a fantastic restoration technique, just the cost per acre is better.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's easier to implement a terracing project because it doesn't take 30 million dollars to do it.

Cassidy Lejeune: it might take a couple million or a million.

Cassidy Lejeune: You could make a big splash with a little bit of money on the terracing side.

Cassidy Lejeune: But the concept of it is kind of taking a deteriorated area that was historically marsh in most situations.

Cassidy Lejeune: You might have a thousand acres of open water that keeps getting bigger and bigger because there's so much wave action in a thousand acres of open water.

Cassidy Lejeune: And then plus the thousand acres of open water is a monotypic three feet deep.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's not too valuable for fish and wildlife anymore.

Cassidy Lejeune: Come in, we build these terraces, either grid or linear or more of a delta-shaped terrace.

Cassidy Lejeune: Basically, it's islands out in that open water to stabilize that thousand acres, protect the remaining marsh that's there, provide more diversity and habitat conditions that are good for fish and wildlife.

Cassidy Lejeune: We're creating islands.

Cassidy Lejeune: There's a lot of edge habitat along

Cassidy Lejeune: along the perimeter of the islands.

Cassidy Lejeune: We plant vegetation.

Cassidy Lejeune: Birds use the tops when they're void of vegetation.

Cassidy Lejeune: Afterwards, some birds use the top for nesting within the vegetation.

Cassidy Lejeune: Fish use the edges.

Cassidy Lejeune: Wading birds use the edges.

Cassidy Lejeune: It just provides diversity in habitat.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's a good cost-effective way to stabilize an area and make it more productive.

Mike Brasher: And a number of those projects have been implemented here on Conoco property.

Mike Brasher: And we partnered with Mississippi State University on that research project to investigate the benefits, quantify the benefits in terms of, we didn't do a fisheries aspect, it wasn't a fisheries component, but we did for aerial surveys for waterfowl during fall and winter.

Mike Brasher: We also did what are called secretive marsh bird surveys.

Mike Brasher: We collected information on submerged aquatic vegetation, trying to measure these benefits.

Mike Brasher: And so also I think there were some projects, some part of that research was looking at sort of the optimal designs for the terracing to reduce that wave action and minimize the erosion of the adjacent vegetation.

Mike Brasher: So that was a multifaceted research project is one I was involved in.

Mike Brasher: And a number of those sites that we studied were on Conoco property.

Mike Brasher: And so that type of access and that type of cooperation is incredibly valuable.

Mike Brasher: We wouldn't have been able to do the project without access to that land, to collect the data, to be out there on the boats collecting various pieces of information.

Mike Brasher: Are there other types of projects that y'all have, science research projects that y'all have

Mike Brasher: partnered on or allowing access to other researchers to come in and collect important data related to some of this work?

John Harrington: There's been a wide variety and a ton of research done on the LL&E lands.

John Harrington: Again, we open up access for a variety of research institutions.

John Harrington: You mentioned Mississippi State.

John Harrington: Encouraged by those findings there of durability on the terraces and also looking at ways to fortify and armor them and just learn from that.

John Harrington: It's just constant learning and evolving.

John Harrington: Access over the years to LSU, University of Louisiana, Lafayette, and Nickel State.

John Harrington: We continue to, amongst many others, not just here, kind of our backyard schools, but really regional and national, has many different research efforts that go into this conservation space.

Mike Brasher: So, what's on the horizon for the Conoco Ducks Unlimited partnership?

Mike Brasher: Anything new?

Mike Brasher: Anything exciting?

Mike Brasher: Who wants to take that first?

Cassidy Lejeune: I could kick it off.

Cassidy Lejeune: So, yeah, the horizon, you know, we've got projects that are at various stages from planning to completion or nearing completion.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've got a number of projects that are ongoing.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've got a project at Port Fouchon that's fixing to kick off here in the next couple weeks, which is a great project.

Cassidy Lejeune: It's a, you know, over $3 million project.

Cassidy Lejeune: We're actually kind of restoring or rebuilding some kind of stranded beach ridges that historically were present in the area.

Cassidy Lejeune: We're planting mangroves, which is kind of new to the partnership.

Cassidy Lejeune: That's something that interests us.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've got that.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've got a number of other projects.

Cassidy Lejeune: I have a note here that we've got funding secured for over $9 million in future projects, money in hand, in our pocket, in the process of going through design and permitting and getting ready for the future.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've got some money here recently through a National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant, about $800,000 to do some design work, some needed design work in the heavily impacted Hurricane Ida area where we're going to design a ridge and marsh creation project.

Cassidy Lejeune: We're going to design a large terracing project.

Cassidy Lejeune: We're going to design a living shoreline project.

Cassidy Lejeune: to have kind of some project shovel ready on the shelf.

Cassidy Lejeune: And the beauty behind that is we're not paying for it.

Cassidy Lejeune: We were able to go out and get a grant to help pay for those expenses.

Cassidy Lejeune: We use a little bit of the seed money through the partnership as leverage and we get someone else to come sit at the table with us to help design and develop projects.

Cassidy Lejeune: So, yeah, there's more to come.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've got also some pending proposals for future projects, a couple of marsh creation type proposals, one we've already submitted, one we plan to submit to kind of duplicate what we did with the Golden Meadow Marsh Creation Project, kind of make that bigger and do more of that, kind of diversifying our portfolio of projects.

Cassidy Lejeune: and just getting more out there and doing more of the different techniques that we've done in the past.

Cassidy Lejeune: But yeah, there's more to come.

Cassidy Lejeune: There's a lot more to be done.

Cassidy Lejeune: Like we mentioned earlier, there's a great need in coastal Louisiana.

Cassidy Lejeune: The great thing about the ConocoPhillips partnership is we've got 636,000 acres to go figure it out, right?

Cassidy Lejeune: So, there's more coming in the future.

Cassidy Lejeune: We've had conversations about ramping up our presence, doing more.

Cassidy Lejeune: And trying to figure out ways to do that now is a good opportunity.

Cassidy Lejeune: There's a lot of money out there that's available to grab to do good work.

Cassidy Lejeune: So yeah, that's it in a nutshell.

Cassidy Lejeune: More to come.

Mike Brasher: That sounds exciting, man.

Mike Brasher: I'm happy to hear that.

Mike Brasher: John, from your perspective, kind of as we close out here, any

Mike Brasher: I guess most salient memory or talking point that you think of when you think about Ducks Unlimited and this partnership and what it means to ConocoPhillips and what it means to your staff and the work that you do on a daily basis.

Mike Brasher: You can even tell some fun stories on Cassidy if you wanted to.

Mike Brasher: When you think about this partnership, just kind of summarize, sum up what it means, and has there been any kind of, I don't know, what does it mean to you?

John Harrington: The first word that comes to mind is really everything, and I'm gonna try to unpack that a little bit.

John Harrington: We talked about the culture impacts, we talked about the resiliency impacts, and when you're dealing with the habitat here, the impacts to the people, the impact to the birds, the other critters,

John Harrington: It's hard to not see where these tremendous benefits are for the culture in the community.

John Harrington: What it's meant to work with a trusted group, work with a group with NDU, the standing of international conservation advocate is there, but getting our hands dirty as a team and implementing these projects.

John Harrington: And then the planning, I really truly enjoy the planning part of this with Cassidy and Amanda and others thinking about where can we bodybuild on existing projects?

John Harrington: How do we make them better?

John Harrington: What do we learn from research and partnering with others?

John Harrington: And then really working with the parishes I think jumps out how closely we get together with Terrebonne and Lafourche to figure out where leadership there, what are your priorities?

John Harrington: Do they align with our priorities?

John Harrington: How can we get them to align if they're not?

John Harrington: But often the cross section is there on where we want to be.

John Harrington: So, on the lighter front, I think I have two stories that come to mind.

John Harrington: One involves getting on the Lafourche, South Lafourche Levee.

John Harrington: The other one involves getting and looking at a water level view of some of our Island Road terraces in the Pointe du Chien area.

John Harrington: I'm going to have to hold the details on this.

John Harrington: I think I am relieved that Cassidy and his predecessor, Mike Carlos, who has retired and we miss him a great deal working with him, two of the most photogenic people I've ever seen.

John Harrington: So I'm glad we're not on camera today.

John Harrington: It takes a lot of pressure off.

Mike Brasher: I think Mike Carlos is like HBO famous too.

Cassidy Lejeune: We call Mike Hollywood from back in the day.

Cassidy Lejeune: He was always a good guy to put in front of the camera.

Cassidy Lejeune: Yeah.

Mike Brasher: Well, guys, this has been really cool.

Mike Brasher: It's been great to come back and visit, seeing familiar faces.

Mike Brasher: I mean, that's the other thing is that you've made friendships, the people that you work with as part of this partnership.

Mike Brasher: I know those friendships mean a lot.

Mike Brasher: I know that's…

Mike Brasher: those are the relationships through which that trust is built.

Mike Brasher: And it was cool for me to walk in and see familiar faces after having been gone for five years.

Mike Brasher: And I miss my time down here working with y'all, calling on your staff.

Mike Brasher: I think some of them may have retired by now.

Mike Brasher: But fortunately, we all get to that point and get to retire.

Mike Brasher: So, those changes occur, but nevertheless, being able to see this property again, seeing a few familiar faces, just reminded me of the tremendous work that y'all are doing through this partnership and how much pride there is from Ducks Unlimited's perspective of being able to work with a partner that, well, it's more than just working with.

Mike Brasher: It reflects our belief, our core belief, that if we approach an entity or an individual honestly, looking for ways that we can work together, looking for shared interest, I truly believe that nearly everyone that we have an opportunity to work with, if we try hard enough,

Mike Brasher: And if we're honest enough, we'll find common ground.

Mike Brasher: And if we find that, we can work together despite what our other differences may be or how different our core missions may be.

Mike Brasher: And this is another great example of that.

Mike Brasher: And so it's a testament to Ducks Unlimited.

Mike Brasher: It's a testament to ConocoPhillips for recognizing that as well and sharing that philosophy of wanting to work with people as opposed to working against people.

Mike Brasher: So, thank you for your time.

Mike Brasher: Thank you for all your investment in coastal wetlands conservation and science and your friendship.

Mike Brasher: John, you and your entire staff just mean a tremendous amount to Ducks Unlimited, so thank you for that.

John Harrington: Same Ducks Unlimited means a ton to us, not just here in Louisiana, but elsewhere as a company and appreciate the opportunity to sit down and visit with you today.

John Harrington: Sounds like we're going to need to find some new reasons to get you back down here pretty soon.

Mike Brasher: So just keep working on that.

Mike Brasher: I'll make sure you have my phone number before I leave.

Mike Brasher: Excellent.

Mike Brasher: And Cassidy, it's always great to catch up with you.

Mike Brasher: Thanks for everything you're doing down here, man.

Cassidy Lejeune: Yeah, thank you, Mike.

Cassidy Lejeune: Thank you for doing this.

Cassidy Lejeune: You always do a great job with the podcast.

Cassidy Lejeune: I appreciate you inviting us to be on it.

Mike Brasher: A special thanks to our guest on today's episode, John Harrington, Director of Coastal Wetlands for ConocoPhillips down here in Houma, Louisiana.

Mike Brasher: Also, we thank Cassidy Lejeune, our Director of Conservation Programs in South Louisiana.

Mike Brasher: We thank them for their time and their commitment to conservation here in this important landscape.

Mike Brasher: As always, we thank our producer, Chris Isaac, for editing these episodes and getting them out to you and to you, the listener.

Mike Brasher: We thank you for your time.

Mike Brasher: We thank you for your commitment to wetlands and waterfowl conservation.