hi and welcome to the national park
service connected conservation webinar
series
we are excited to have another great
presentation today
uh today's presentation is focused on
eco-cultural restoration
of bison to the blackfoot confederacy
and watergl
waterton glacier international peace
park the initiative is called the eenie
initiative
and we're thrilled to have a panelist of
folks who've been involved
in in this effort will
my name is cass bismeyer and i serve as
the co-lead for the connected
conservation community of practice so
i'll be your facilitator today
my colleague brian feyner is also on so
we'll be co-facilitating
throughout the presentation we do have
just over 100 participants on already
and the number continues to climb so we
will maintain
all the phones on mute throughout the
presentation if you do have
questions please feel free to use our
question box and we'll open up the q
a following the presentation today
so just a quick introduction to our of
our presenters today we have jeff mal
the superintendent of glacier national
park
and then we also have christina mora
maruni the wildlife conservation service
director of field conservation program
and the rocky mountain program regional
director we have helen carlson
and sheldon carlson both from the
blackbeat tribe
we um they're also cultural beaver
bundle
and painted lodge holders and have been
involved in the e
initiative and then we'll wrap up our
presentations with brennan mayan
from the he's with the national park
service and the cesu program
he also serves as the doi bison
conservation chair
so with that said jeff i'm going to go
ahead and turn it over to you to
kick off our presentation and we will
get started
just a reminder folks that if um if you
do have questions throughout the
presentation feel free to
go ahead and use that chat box
great and uh what i think i will do is
um
it's great to be with all of you here uh
on the webinar not sure
you can see my screen but i'm going to
leave it there because
i'm going to help facilitate uh this
panel a little bit i'm going to start
off by setting the stage but really to
set the stage
i would like helen and sheldon to share
a prayer with us uh to get us started so
over to you helen and sheldon
hi um i'm helene ojair carlson
okay otos
my indian name is mountain horse and my
english name is sheldon carlson
nice to meet you all um
i've been asked to um start off the
session with
a blackfoot prayer and
um in our way we call upon the creator
the
sun the moon the morning star um
so i will go ahead and and start the
prayer
i always about to be obvious
[Music]
we thank you for this day we thank you
for
the many blessings that you bring to us
we ask that you hear our prayers today
that you help us and guide us that you
protect our homes and our children
and grandchildren that you watch over
our elders
that they have the support they need
from their families to
continue to live a long healthy life we
ask that you
continue to help us and guide us through
this pandemic
and that you keep our homes safe and
that you
guide us as we continue to try hard to
find opportunities through this
challenge and time
we ask that you hear our prayers for
those who are suffering the ones with
cancer diabetes who are
suffering from addiction the ones who
are suffering from heart and lung
disease we ask that you take pity upon
them
help them through their challenges we
ask that you hear our prayers today for
iniwa for the relationships that we
carry
forward with in me and
for our future generations the
reconnection to the land and
to help us to continue to grow strong
together to help one another so that we
may bring back
the need to the landscape we ask that
you
guide us in this process and that you
help us to make good decisions with a
good heart and a good mind god moved on
thank you jeff great thank you helen and
sheldon
appreciate you doing that for us i mean
i think it's so important as part of
we talk about an ease to not uh to
recognize that it's it's
not just a conservation restoration
effort it's also a huge
cultural restoration piece for all of us
involved
i would like to go ahead and set the
stage a little bit
highly uh jeff mao superintendent
glacier national park
it's certainly been an honor and a focus
for me
uh during the almost seven years that
i've been here as a superintendent at
glacier national park
to work with our blackfeet and
salish kootenay neighbors to
do what we can to enhance relationships
and and
and part of that is as this journey has
gone along is that i've learned about
the history of glacier national park
and that even in its early days there
was a time
when many many of the visitors that came
to glacier national park
would come by train from the east and
when they got off
there were the blackfeet to greet them
as they got off the train
and i think you know some of us may feel
that it would be that was somewhat
shamelessly
uh promotional on the part of uh james j
hill at the time
uh when he was uh promoting tourism to
glacier national park but i've had the
opportunity to spend time with some of
the elders
uh who were small children then and who
remember spending
uh their childhood summers living in the
ho behind the hotel the glacier park
hotel in east glacier um
and and you know listening to them talk
about it and
realizing that first for a number of
years our visitors
always when they came to glacier we saw
the blackfeet and they saw the park
juxtaposed together and that's just
something i've realized that we've lost
um you know with the advent and the
opening the going to the sun road the
advent of the
automobile our visitation patterns have
changed but
so we've been looking at at how
we changed that relationship and and
we've engaged with the blackfeet on
several opportunities to make their
presence
more widely known uh in the park either
through
special ceremony early in the season
through our native america speaks
program which
which helen is part of several other
ways that we can make our visitors more
aware
that this was the homeland uh this
continues to be the homeland
of uh indigenous cultures uh that were
here long before
uh western europeans came so
that's been part of that journey um
i'm here to set the stage a little bit
about sort of the landscape in which
um this ani initiative uh this
collaboration
exists uh let me start first start
talking about the
crown of the continent a name that uh
some would attribute to george burnell
uh george uh bird grinnell when he was
here
but uh this crowd on the continent
landscape
which the blackfeet called mistakas
meaning backbone of the world
um is is about 33 million acres in size
stretches uh just north of the
yellowstone ecosystem and stretches
almost all the way to banff national
park
canada it's a trans boundary landscape
um
it's a landscape that incorporates
prairie incorporates uh high alpine
peaks and it incorporates pacific
northwest
forests it's called crown of the
continent because there are rivers
that originate in glacier national park
which is at the heart of the crown
and those rivers will flow to hudson bay
gulf of mexico
and the pacific ocean and because of
this recognized landscape there are many
of these collaborative groups that focus
on this landscape level
crown managed crown manager's
partnership being one
round table on the crown of the
continent being another there's a
crown of the continent geotourism
council um
all these groups sort of work on this
sort of large
landscape level this a knee initiative
is actually a little more focused
to what i would call the heart of the
crown
immediately and involving with waterton
glacier international peace park which
is shown in green on the on the map on
the right
uh the trans boundary uh setting of it
to the to the east or right of glacier
national park you'll see the blackfeet
reservation
and uh to the north of the boundary and
north and
east of waterton lakes national park
you'll see
uh several of the um uh indigenous
reserves
of as part of the blackfoot confederacy
in canada
so um at the heart of the cine
initiative
are these um the two park agencies from
canada and the united states
wildlife conservation society which
we'll hear from here
uh as well as the entire blackfoot
confederacy
both north and south of the border so
i just wanted to set that stage at this
point i'm going to turn it over to
christina from the wildlife conservation
society
because without their foundational work
in working with the blackfeet and the
blackfoot confederacy
i wouldn't be sitting here talking about
this collaboration
that we have moving forward so christina
i'll turn it over to you
hey thank you so much um for this
opportunity and
for inviting us to be a part of this
really important and really thrilling
conversation honestly
um i've had the privilege of working in
global conservation for
over 25 years and i will honestly tell
you that the work
that i've taken on in the last couple
years as the regional director for the
rocky mountain program
for the wildlife wildlife conservation
society
and the work that we're doing around the
emi initiative and the buffalo treaty
and more broadly our work to advance
indigenous lead conservation is some of
the most incredible work i've ever had
the privilege to be
involved in and finally as a old lady i
think i found my
my home so it's it's really
exciting work and what i've been asked
to sort of speak to
and present today is essentially
give people a little bit of a flavor of
who the wildlife conservation society is
or global organizations to sort of give
you a global flavor
and then drill down a little bit into
the regional
what the rocky mountain program is all
about sort of our why what and how
as we say and then talk a little bit
about wcs's buffalo origin
story our origin story is inextricably
linked to buffalo
and then how that really has led us to
the point where we are today
where we are actively working to follow
the buffalo way
if you will through our work on the e
initiative
our collaborative work on the uni
initiative i will say and our
collaborative work
around the buffalo treaty
and so just to kick us off just really
simply stated
you know what the sort of vision if you
will of the wildlife conservation
society globally is
is to save wildlife and wild places
worldwide
through science conservation action
education
and inspiring people to value nature
and we now we got founded actually this
is our 125th year anniversary
and so we were founded obviously in new
york
in as the new york zoological society um
closely linked with the bronx zoo and
since that time 125 years ago we've
expanded our work to
over 60 countries we work both
terrestrially
and in marine systems and the way that
we organize ourselves is through these
regional programs so we've got 14
regional programs
around the world and i would say that
one of the things that really links us
across the globe is the fact that we
work really deeply
in partnership with people and
communities in the places that they call
home
and we're there for the long haul so for
many of our programs we've been there
for decades
and the rocky mountain program i wish
you could see my map
my beautiful little map of where we work
but we essentially work
from the sort of northernmost rocky so
sort of the alberta bc
and we work down into the southwest
borderlands and the grasslands of
chihuahua and sonora
in mexico we have three priority
landscapes that are actually in the
process of sort of being fine-tuned
but one is the crown of the continent
the high divide so the northern rockies
and then we've got a body of work that
we're rolling out in the southern
rockies that's our
sort of brand new geography as is the
southwest borderlands
and again rolling out a body of work
there and the thing that really does
tie it all together is bison we work and
on bison issues across the entire
continent
um the program we spent so i took on
this role about two years ago and we
spent a bit of time really thinking
about
you know who we were i.e looking back to
the past
but really thinking about who we want to
be in the future
and one of the really interesting things
is this was two years ago before our
current reality
but even at that time we we really
recognized
that conservation needs to change and we
essentially set
um on a path of decolonizing
conservation
putting conservation on its head and
thinking really deeply
about how do we go about doing the work
of conservation in a way that makes
sense in the modern world
and so we thought about things like
biocultural approaches
the need to think systemically can't
just think about western science for
example or ecology even more deeply
we need to think about you know multiple
knowledge systems we need to think about
things like
human communities and culture and
society and politics and economy and
governance
we need to think about a whole lot of
things to really be able to approach
these problems that are systemic
problems with systemic solutions
and so our program y landed on
sort of three words to protect reconnect
and rewild and we use that both
in the sense of sort of ecological
rewilding
and reconnection and protection but we
also really
use it in this context of thinking
through the lens of culture
and thinking through the lens of
socio-political realities
and so what we do is to really focus on
catalyzing
ecological sociopolitical and cultural
connectivity to advance
conservation at a scale that makes sense
i.e big
big scale and then our how
is defined in sort of four intervention
pathways or kind of four pillars of work
and that is science and cultural
knowledge and we really talk about
indigenous science alongside western
science and alongside traditional
ecological knowledge
other forms of cultural knowledge
strategic partnerships is another big
body of work of how we bring about this
vision
and then policies with really advancing
systemic conservation policy and then
how do we activate
people to get involved and to to be
involved for the long haul
so thinking about civic engagement and
movement building
and as i mentioned that the get-go bison
formed the heart of wcs's origin story
as we all know at one time there was i
don't know the estimates range that i
have in front of me from somewhere
between 30 million buffalo to 60 million
buffalo
and america what would that feel like
what would it smell like what would it
sound like
and this image here on the slide just
shows from
from sky to land covered in
in buffalo what did it feel like to have
these 30 million buffalo on the land and
and we really
know that this has sort of formed who we
are as quote unquote north americans
um and if we'll switch to the next slide
now this slide here
sort of documents what what many of us
already know we know the story of the
buffalo slaughter
and it seems particularly relevant
nonetheless to really focus on these
images and
and really um sink into what i'm calling
kind of a reckoning for conservation
i feel that we all need to kind of wake
up and begin to do this hard work
of decolonizing conservation even more
deeply
make an even larger commitment lean in
even harder
and conservation really can be a path to
reconciliation all we need to do is look
to our
our northern brothers and sisters and
see it in action
but we need a new approach and we need a
new conservation paradigm
and i think buffalo really creates a
phenomenal platform to figure out what
that looks like what that means
how we do it because the decimation of
bison was clearly
an ecological transgression but even
more significantly it was a horrific and
incomprehensible act of cultural
genocide and so the biocultural
restoration of bison
authentically grounded in cultural
revitalization
and the leading edge or cutting edge of
ecological rewilding
that really is a path to justice a path
to reconciliation
a path to a new way of doing
conservation that will endure over time
and so this next slide here really
captures um
kind of wcs's story and and linked to
the extermination of the american bison
um our founders leaned right in
um and they decided that they were gonna
what i would argue
um it was the first rewinding experiment
in history and they took 15 bronx
zoo bison and they literally loaded them
on a train in grand central station
and they shipped them out to wichita
mountains and that was
the beginning of our deep deep
commitment to this land
and to these animals and we continue to
work towards the ecological and now
cultural restoration of bison across the
north american continent
again through those four pillars of work
through science broadly defined
knowledge systems maybe is a better way
to say it policy
partnerships and really engaging the
public so civic engagement
and if we can go to the slide that has
the ini initiative it's slide 10
um so as i said bison is the heart of
our
origin story our 25 year history it's
also the heart of our relationship with
the blackfoot confederacy in the lands
that make up the confederacy
traditional homelands what we now refer
to as the crown of the continent
and i was not a part of this incredible
origin if you will this original
partnership
that landed landed all of us with having
the privilege of something like the
eenie initiative in the world and
something like the buffalo treaty in the
world
but as the story has been told to me
about a decade ago
the wildlife conservation society was
searching for a place
to ground our bison efforts to to ground
our bison conservation efforts
and if we can go to the next slide and
we were searching
even at that time for a way to do
conservation differently
both ecologically thinking about how do
we work in large
high integrity matrix landscapes
that can really serve for serve as a
platform to talk about
large landscape conservation to
recognize the impacts
of things like climate change to
recognize the significance
and vitalness if you will of
connectivity
and we were also looking to work in a
landscape where we could really
ensure that the work was community
informed and community driven
indigenous led and that it was grounded
in commitment
and relationship and partnership and at
the same time
the elders of the blackfoot confederacy
were beginning to have conversations
about bringing buffalo home
and how best to achieve this vision and
what partners to work with
so if we can go to the next slide and
and really what resulted from kind of
this
synergy centrum on high i will say
was a launch of something called the
elder dialogues
and helen and sheldon i know you all
were a part of that and i would love for
you to
be able to give people a flavor for
those i was unfortunately not
there and they they sound from all the
stories i've heard
absolutely phenomenal and these
dialogues were structured in such a way
as to create a space for visioning
a space for discussing the possibilities
of what it meant
to bring buffalo home how to bring
buffalo home
they kicked off in 2008 and i was just
talking with leroy little bear last
night who
informed me that they didn't even
conclude till 2014.
he he honestly told me he has no idea
how many happened
other than they were many many many and
some of them were really big
um 100 plus people some of them were
small
and intimate maybe 15 even 10 people
they stretched across the territory and
one of the things that i have heard
many times now is that at every single
meeting a seat
was left open for buffalo and buffalo
was there to help guide the work
and inform the vision and
what i have been told is that the
message that came through loud and clear
that really is sort of a pinnacle point
from which everything else flowed
was that buffalo said i never left you
it was you that left me if we can go to
the next slide
and the the big thing that actually two
big things
actually probably more than two big
things but two very very big things that
i'm supposed to be talking about today
came out of these dialogues one was the
eenie initiative
and then ultimately the buffalo treaty
and they were
expressions of the conversations of the
vision
um of a dream really
um and in many ways the ini initiative
is really now
um and i don't know if i'm sure you
can't see on the slide the articles of
the treaty because it's a small image
but the articles of the treaty are very
clearly articulated in what the eenie
initiative is doing on the ground today
and even began you know several years
ago to begin to really think about how
does
how does the initiative really capture
this large vision that the buffalo
treaty holds for buffalo
across the continent and also i think
it's important to
to share that you know the e initiative
is something that is alive and changing
and
iterative and responsive and it also
really represents
something that i i hold really dear and
take very very seriously in the
and that is that this is a commitment
that
the wildlife conservation society has
made to buffalo
in partnership with the nations of the
confederacy and it is a commitment not
only to buffalo
and to all of these principles that we
all hold dear expressed in the treaty
but also it is about a commitment to
co-creation
and a commitment to an approach to
restoration and rematriation of buffalo
that's integrated
that's systemic that's biocultural
and that is deeply grounded in
relationship
and reciprocity so again a new way of
approaching conservation at least from
the western conservation perspective
if we can go to the next slide this is a
sort of a visual representation of what
we talk about and
what we mean when we talk about
integrated or holistic
approaches to conservation holistic or
integrated world views
and the initiative in sort of embodying
this vision or this aspiration
initially had three goals one was to
connect with youth
the other was to dissolve boundaries and
the third was to heal the land and
people and
over the last decade you know these
various pieces of work have been rolling
out so work with youth has focused on
internships and school programs and
cultural exchanges
the work around dissolving boundaries
has a very practical component so wcs
facilitates an agency working group
which is really focused on developing
rapport and connection and creating
opportunity for deeper dialogue and
ultimately collaboration on projects
related to ini's restoration
there have been a series of ongoing
consultations and community meetings
celebrations like eeny days but this
work also operates on more of what i
like to
kind of think about as a metaphorical
level so
thinking about building and bridging
divides or building bridges to bridge
divides that is very redundant
but resolving design divides let's say
and so
you know that can look at things like
how can we
facilitate conversation to break down
jurisdictional boundaries
how can we think about and work to
create models for braiding different
knowledge systems and world views
together
how do we approach conservation in a
different way so it's not just about
single species or designations
so there are lots of ways in which we
think about dissolving divides and that
really
continues to be a body of work that we
get very creative about and feel
is very very important and then that
final goal the
the third goal of healing the land and
people i mean that's very much centered
in bringing back wild free roaming
buffalo across the confederacy
but it also is focused in things like
you know ensuring that youth are
connected to their elders
and that there is knowledge sharing
support for
cultural revitalization efforts for
ceremony
so all of that body of work sort of sits
in in that third goal
and then switching to slide 15 my
my um last slide and if you could hit it
twice it'll play this video at the same
time cast thank you hopefully that works
on slide 15 there
so the this is uh the blackfeet nations
buffalo herd that sheldon knows so well
he probably knows them all by name
i've heard from you sheldon that you can
recognize them all which is incredible
and so what i wanted to kind of wrap
with is where we are today so where is
the eenie initiative
initiative ready to roam
and basically over the last year or so
we've been hearing lots of interest
calls if you will to really broaden and
deepen the work
of the eenie initiative to broaden its
impact um through broadening its scope
and so we've created kind of a stand-in
name it's not a very um
it's not a very great name but it is
where we are in right now which is the
eni initiative 2.0
and so we've had probably three or four
conversations now strategic planning
conversations to really think about how
do we co-create
an expanded vision for the eenie
initiative and one of the things that
has come through loud and clear
is that everything needs to start with
the youth
and so if you imagine a spiral with
youth and eenie at the center
then three bodies of work over the next
sort of year
18 months will roll out linked to that
one is a body of work centered in
horsemanship
and deep cultural learning about horses
and the importance of horses
to blackfoot but also just practical
like
how do you ride a horse how do you pick
a horse's feet
and obviously bringing elders into that
conversation
as well as community members that have
deep knowledge about horsemanship and
horses
there's also a body of work that we're
building out around science and
conservation planning
that's really centered on something that
we've been calling the indigenous
scholarship hub
which is about mentoring
supporting and elevating the voices of
young blackfoot scholars
bringing them into conversations around
research priorities and research
planning
working collaboratively to figure out
how we can braid knowledge systems and
how we can actually demonstrate what
biocultural conservation really looks
like in the crown
and then the final piece is around
storytelling and that's really just
about
obviously stories are core to culture
but it's also about building awareness
leroy loves to call it pr in buffalo so
building a pr campaign for buffalo so
that there is greater recognition
of the importance and the power of
buffalo consciousness
and the buffalo way and that this really
is a pathway to cultural revitalization
and healing and cultural integrity as
well as
growing the ecological integrity of the
landscape
and i'll just stop there
and we can obviously pick up questions
later on so thank you so much and cass
thank you so much for
handling my technical challenges
okay at this time i think we're going to
move into sheldon and helen
you guys have the floor
[Music]
okay um so
we were asked to be part of the webinar
today to
just talk about our experiences with
any initiative and also
the cultural connections that we have
with the relationships that we have with
me
and so um a little bit of background
on myself is
i worked at blackfeet community college
for
over 20 years now and
working with stem education with the
youth
um we have founded together with the
team
of melissa weatherwax and alicia
yellowell
and various community advisors
who have helped to design outdoor field
programming
opportunities for the youth and
when the first discussions
around um
the buffalo conservation
with the wildlife conservation society
came about paulette fox and
irvin carlson and keith ani
brought it to blackfeet community
college and
and with that they had um
brought down a lot of
various elders to the
uh college campus and and then
we also had our elders from here and
and on the blackfeet nation come
together and
um just have those discussions
um around our spiritual relationship
and and again what would it take
for us to to have that physical
relationship
and have a strong physical relationship
again with a knee
and so um leroy little bear he
he facilitated a lot of those um
initial discussions with the elders
and then we went ahead and we did a
strategic planning session
up in waterton which was a a pretty
big gathering of elders and youth and
um cultural knowledge holders
um to kind of plan out how
how do we work together and build
partnerships so that
we can strengthen that relationship not
only with
uni but to the landscape
the blackfoot territory which runs
from saskatchewan river up in in alberta
all the way to yellowstone
river here in montana
and it was really really empowering
for me my personal experience
being part of the group
to envision that you know growing up
we used to have a a tribal herd that
kind of free range they were managed but
they
you know they just pop up every now and
again and
it was very seldom i think growing up
i've only
got to experience that twice out on our
ranch and
medicine and it was so amazing
back then as a child to you know wake up
one day and all of a sudden you see or
heard a buffalo
but yet knowing growing up that
the buffalo is always with us like a
knee is
is in our ceremonies and our songs
in our stories and just knowing you know
when you look around
your family's homes um
that you see those those different
things that ani
has given us and so you know spiritually
we
we know he's there but
through this initiative and and through
these discussions
that was one of the goals that we said
was
was how do we um
work together and and have the physical
animal
strong back into our
our landscape so that our children um
will always have that relationship and
you know i
i i feel really good now
knowing that my children and my
grandchildren will never
know what it's like not to have any
and a lot of that
is coming from the work that we're doing
today like
that that is their reality is to have
that relationship
and it creates those opportunities now
to reconnect to all of these places
throughout the territory
because with the the bison restoration
effort and looking at how important the
species is to the
to the um landscape to the
ecology and all of the
benefits that he brings when when he's
part of that system you know it's
overwhelming to
to just think of the possibilities that
it brings for our people to prosper
so um you know our elders were
very they are very wise and very
knowledgeable in
the way that they motivate and and build
that passion within
the people to to really have dedication
and commitment to you know taking care
of the animal
and making sure that yes we have all
these other
areas policy economics you know
the business pieces but
staying really grounded in in the health
of the animal just like the health of
the people
and being able to um
always have amy even though it was that
empty chair
he was always there with us continuing
to push us
and ask us what are you gonna do to
to make sure that my family my
children are are taking care of if i
come back to you
so okay my name is sheldon carlson so
when i used to see the buffalo a long
time ago i was probably about 14
15 years old when i first seen him onto
medicine
and i actually woke up at my mom's one
night and
seen him out in front of her house and
she was like all scared thinking they
were gonna jump through the windows and
break up everything but you know just
seeing them later early in the morning
and stuff like that was pretty neat
so i always like you know it was all
young bunch of us we
one day we sound like our horses
and chased them around for a little
while just to see how it felt you know
and when you was talking about earlier
about you know horses
buffalo horses and all that well we've
been raised around horses all of our
life
pretty much because we ranch out there
on tomatoes in two and um
you gotta have a horse that knows how to
run on the planes because you got
uh we call them badger towns but it's a
it's a little area where badgers like to
really dig a bunch of holes so when you
do choose a horse that you're really
familiar with
and trust and then that's how we
we knew how to chase some buffalo
because our horses could go across them
hills and little coolies like
but anyways so later on down the road it
was it was pretty neat to see them that
you know it was pretty exciting that we
knew we had them you know because we
never seen them
when i was younger you know and so then
when i moved back from uh missoula when
she was uh
going to college over there so i was
still doing construction for a while and
i wanted to be home with my kids
so then the blackfeet tribe irvin
um called me him and mark mcgee
mark mcgee works for the land department
and irving is the um
director for the um buffalo program for
the blackfeet tribe so they
called me in because i was kind of out
job search on a reservation and then um
they asked me if i wanted to work and i
thought yeah
they said was pay a problem i says no it
ain't i said well what would i be doing
they said what do you want to work with
the buffalo
well right there my hand is kind of like
call me wow i get to be around these
you know and it was a it was a
real strong learning i guess but you
know
just being out there for a little while
it took me a bit to kind of
kind of figure them out after a little
faster you know a little quicker than
everything else you know and
mean so i really pushed hard
to really know him fast but then working
with people that don't have patience
we really kind of like pushed them real
too fast
and then we start destroying fences and
all that and having our neighbor
ranchers get
mad and all that so then one day i just
sat back and i had to sit there and sit
there and really think
about how we can work with these animals
without
damaging people's properties and fences
and all that so
one day i asked if i can just start
moving them around working them with
horses
so then i would go out and ride right
fence and all that and ride by them and
all that and you know there's no problem
so we had a big idea you know
same time i would sit there and i would
study them early in the morning like 5
30 in the morning when sun was just
coming up
and i start trying to you know learn the
animal itself its behavior
and all that and its love what it has
for itself and its own clans and stuff
like that because that's where i started
seeing that they were clannish because
there was like three bunches out
bunched up but they wouldn't stay too
far from one another excuse me
so then i just kind of you know started
getting all my
elders involved and i say hey man you
guys need to come out here in the
mornings and i'm sitting here
going to work i said because there's
some things that
i see that we do in our ceremonies and
how we do living on our life so then it
was just like
uh so i'd go home just all excited
because there was to be something i just
seen today and i just go home and
explain everything how i looked at it
and i would tell helen you know
i just visited her about it and there
was times where i just stayed until late
at night you know it got dark or i
couldn't see them no more but you could
just hear them
you know communicating with one another
and you know but that was about the
really neatest thing
so then life goes on later and later
down the road and all that and then
when urban start pushing to um
for the um treaty
so then that's when we he asked us if we
would um
a whole group of us if we would go all
along the high line of highway 2
all the tribes east of us and then some
he sent some
west to the west coast tribes and all
that to get involved you know and so
that was one of the biggest steps that
we did because we
the way our life is we we we pray with
pipe and that's the way we pray
you know that's that's one of our main
things of um
our cultural ways and our beliefs and
all that so
so we'd go to other tribes and visit
with them and sing songs and we would
sit down and would smoke
smoke and you know
it was pretty neat so once that was all
done like that and that's him we did the
treaty sign he said well do you think
you can get a cap put up for us to um
so we can get all these uh all these
head people here
to um you know get involved and start
signing this
treaty and stuff like that and then it
was pretty neat because
that's the way my life is i i i live
so like um we did it
and we pulled it off and i tell you that
was the greatest thing is is
you know being part of it and actually
set it up the way they wanted it and all
that you know
and so that was like
well you know i don't know it was just
kind of
so then we kept on going on going on and
we kept pushing more and more and you
know
i sit in meetings and stuff like that
and then they start talking about the
elk island
buffalo when they left here as cavs
and that was um like the dugout or
heard so then
i got involved in that and i started
working with well i worked with keith on
in pretty good there was a lot of times
i had to sit down and talk with him
about a lot of things you know
in terry tatsy and um
there was be a bunch of us that was you
know really had the heart to see the
buffalo coming back
with urban leona
just a bunch of our workers that work
with us and all that because we had the
patience and we had you know we did that
was our heart
we wanted to see them here so then once
we got the um
the elk island here
it was okay now we got to start doing a
different plan you know
so then that's when i started talking
about
putting them back in the badger to
medicine and glacier park here
on the seated strip and stuff like that
and my heart was for it
so i had a few people kind of ask me one
time i'll just just take a whole bunch
of them and run them up there
you know and just turn them loose and i
said well yeah i'd like to do that
that's what i want to do but i don't
want a room like making them sound like
they're running games and they just
we just did that i'd rather have it
documented in papers that it was right
for them to go in there and be in there
and then just live
life you know and have a plan for them
for the future
of managing them and all that you know
and
same time i was working on um safety
of teaching people and i was talking to
quite a few people down to college about
you know we should start doing a class
somebody should do a class for like
maybe a semester or something to um
learn safety about these animals and
their signs of
you know they um because they are pretty
mean if you don't know them that good
you can get hurt pretty bad because i
i've learned that
the hard way and that's why i always
talked to people i talked to urban
talked to mark mcgee talked with a lot
of the council people herb
and told them that we need to start
doing some kind of plan for this uh
because if we're gonna have more buffalo
and we're gonna it's probably going to
take more people but they need to
understand that um
there's a safety in there that you need
to know
and a lot of times i learned the hard
way was
one cow that just totally didn't like
nobody and she was always trying to hurt
me all the time or i should run me over
a couple times but you know
so i knew that needed to be part of it
so one time
we um asked fish and game to help us
[Music]
and that's when i first started seeing
people scared but it was their job to be
out there to help
but then i see them scared and i told
him if you guys are too scared just you
know just stay back
you know just take our time you know
don't push him so hard
just let him just stay behind this
little know you're behind them you know
so
but it was still a lot of people that
were scared we hired a few other people
with
with the program and they were scared
and then um but otherwise you know i
my question all the time when i see jeff
is like you know
what's the plan of you know putting them
in here
and he said well i just need to open the
gate you know and that was pretty cool
but yeah nice oh heck i'm gonna go steal
that person's key and unlock that gate
just push them in there
but it is you know i i really want to
still stay involved a lot and i really
like to
be part of it if we do put them back up
in the mountains you know
and aren't a
yeah and the seated strip and stuff like
that because it's just you know it's
it's their territories like it's ours
you know
and i would like to see more you know
but otherwise like when i um
people wanted buffalo meat there was
just a very few here
that had the taste for it those older
ones
so it took me about three years to
almost get maybe almost half of our
reservation
people now so i want buffalo meat was
trying to get into our schools our
merchant schools
uh we were trying to do local um
restaurants to
you know get them meat you know for
their restaurants to sell and stuff like
that but yeah
i'm i'm here for a lot you know
i just like to um honor the people that
was there with the buffalo before me
johnny tail feathers he taught me a lot
but he he was an influenced speaker he
was quite older than me and
we one time we planted um
tourism with lewis and clark in uh
cm russell tours so i made sure i made
even
up there with me when they bring in the
bus and we put them on a
flatbed wagon and we
pushed them out there and i tell you a
lot of people they're pretty old you
know they're
60s and 70s but they enjoyed that
and i think there's a lot of um i would
say like a lot of potential there for
like tourism on wagons
and buggies um tour buses and stuff like
that if they ever
got that goal and you know in the future
but yeah so i'm i'm happy to be part of
this and visit with you guys here and
kind of tell my story a little bit i
still got
a lot of stories but i don't want to be
yeah
too too hard
well thanks sheldon uh that's great we
certainly appreciate
uh getting your perspective helen ii
um i think we'll transition a little bit
because i think this is really an
interesting time
you know with this initiative and also i
think with the interests of the
department of interior
and where they're headed with bison and
i i've attended several of the doi uh
bison working group meetings
um and the park service was always at
the heart of that
and uh i think we'll we'll turn it over
to brendan now to
to give us a little bit of that
perspective of how the department views
these
uh bison conservation efforts that are
going on uh
throughout the country
yeah thank you um am i coming through
loud and clear
yep yeah
well i thank you for the invitation to
be part of this um i'm coming to you
from our
covid camper out in the hills of montana
i'm based in missoula and i work for a
cooperative
research program called the cesu program
but
in in that role working as a science
advisor for the national park service i
also
advise nps units in both the rockies and
the great plains
on bison conservation issues um haven't
been working on this topic for a number
of years and a
few years of experience working as the
supervisory biologist at the national
bison range
um but the last year of of this
work connected to bison has been um as
um as productive and fruitful
and fast-paced as as any i've
experienced
um and the reason why is that we've i i
think we've achieved
or or arrived at this point and i'm
talking very broadly now not just
glacier and the blackfeet con
confederacy but thinking about bison
conservation
more broadly at a national and even
continental scale
we've arrived at this point where
we have completion of a number of key
scientific endeavors and and reports
have an incredible breadth of
partnerships
across not only
tribal federal and state governments but
also ngos and
and various interest groups and
communities
we have buy-in from individual
uh herd managers to approach a more
cooperative
and and connected type of bison
management
and then just very recently we we were
able to secure
the the support of the federal
government at the highest levels
and that's what i want to talk a little
bit about today i'll be brief but
um as the chair
advice and working group that that
group's been in place for 12 years now
was chartered in 2008 and it has seated
members from
national park service fish and wildlife
service bureau of land management
uh bureau of indian affairs and the u.s
geological survey
and the chair of that group switches
back and forth periodically between
national park service and fish and
wildlife service being the two
principal bison managing
agencies within the federal government
um in the last 12 years there's been a
tremendous amount of work accomplished
through that bison working group
um looking back on it now uh all of that
was completed
under a bison conservation initiative
that was signed in 2008
by then secretary kemp thorne and a lot
of that work was directed toward
uh really two focal areas
above all we did a tremendous amount of
work
trying to improve management and
understanding of the genetic
conservation of bison across federal
herds
and then also the second thing was to
try to
step the groundwork for more
collaborative
um and cooperative conservation of bison
both within the department of interior
but also with partners outside of the
federal government
and um and that initiative you know now
again 12 years old um has been a great
and productive touchstone for us
uh but just last fall um after having
presented um the preliminary results of
the new
uh analysis on on bison population
viability
we had the chance rather suddenly with
some press coverage of that presentation
to have the attention of secretary
bernhardt and um
i had the chance to brief the secretary
directly on
uh on his questions as to what the
department
was doing to demonstrate and continue
its commitment to bison conservation
across the department of interior
holdings
there was interest in putting forth a
couple demonstration projects
to to publicly show that commitment
but for those of us that have been
involved with the bison working group
for a number of years now
we saw his attention as an opportunity
to try to do a little bit more
than just the demonstration projects and
so we pitched
uh to the secretary's office and got
immediate and enthusiastic support for
the idea of a new doi bison conservation
initiative
we put that together in short order over
the course of five or six months and
just had that announced
by secretary bernhardt in may of this
year
um i want to highlight a couple
aspects to the initiative itself um
right now the initiative is available at
this website if you just google
national park service bison you'll
you'll find the
central bison page for the national park
service which has the outlet for the
initiative itself and
some of the ongoings with other bureaus
as well um
uh but could you advance that please
cass next
next image yeah thank you so so the two
things
if i could point out two central aspects
to this
initiative and um and and these two
um really are what's new to the 2020
initiative relative to
where we've been for the last 12 years
with the prior initiative
and it and these two dovetail in
beautifully with
everything that's being undertaken and
proposed through the ani initiative that
we just heard a lot about
two major accomplishments in this new
doi initiative one is that we have the
the department of the interior the
secretary
going on record recognizing bison as
native north american wildlife and
making a commitment that we're going to
manage bison in that regard
um that may seem to to summon the
audience as
as uh nothing monumental but
in the bison conservation world which is
incredibly complex
and incredibly political um and uh
in some quarters um uh
experiences a high degree of of conflict
among different user groups
um having the department on record with
recognizing bison as wildlife is
is incredibly consequential some states
only recognize bison as livestock
some recognize them as wildlife some
have two
or three different designations for
bison and so
having the single largest holder of
conservation herds of bison in the
united states saying that
we're we're going to recognize and do
everything in our
in our management systems to treat bison
as wildlife
is a big deal and i think it's going to
move move that discussion forward in a
really positive way
um the second thing and it's it's no
accident that that i i highlight this
here
the the new bison conservation
initiative goes a long way
to highlighting the importance of
thinking of
this next leap in bison conservation
as linking ecological and cultural
restoration
and so this eco-cultural context is in
the title of today's
webinar and that uh jeff and christina
have talked about
um in the carlson's too um
it's it's really important there are
very very few
wildlife species that have the both the
breadth
and the depth of connection and
influence
across both ecological and cultural
realms
and for federal agencies that manage um
to a large degree piped between natural
and cultural resources
this is a tremendous opportunity for us
to do something that we know we need to
do
and that we know we want to do which is
to do a better job of integrating across
those two disciplines which which need
not
be distinct and certainly for bison
conservation should not
be distinct so we have um you know quite
a bit of
um of uh of standing
now at the department to move forward
in this ecocultural context which is
really important
uh next slide cast please
and i'll highlight just very briefly you
know the initiative itself is
intentionally written to be um
broad and and forward-looking and also
open to the work that we know needs to
come with the implementation side of
this but i will i will highlight the
four actions that we
that we are moving forward with the
first one
starting right now in fact this summer
is the development of a meta population
strategy and so this is essentially the
cold science side of things for how
within department of interior herds we
are going to
manage bison as a species
um recognize genetic differences
recognize
some issues with cattle introgression
into the bison genome um respond to and
manage wildlife health
uh respond to these diseases or
pathogens where we need to
but um we're gonna be undertaking that
starting this year and we'll complete
that within the next
two years and that's again within the
sideboards of department of interior
um a critical next action is going to be
development of a shared stewardship
strategy and that strategy really speaks
to the partnership that
all the other presenters have talked
about today um
and and it speaks to the ecocultural
framework for
bison conservation so we intend to
um highlight where appropriate
department of interior
in particular nps and fish and wildlife
service can lead
in bison conservation but we also intend
to highlight
where we can step back and support the
good work
that is afforded by opportunities that
others have so in particular
tribal partners are going to be huge
leaders in the in the on the stage for
bison conservation
for the decades to come ngos like
wildlife conservation society are going
to continue to
have incredible impacts and so we
recognize within department of interior
that we don't have to do it all
um we can support the strong work of
others
our third action is to is to strengthen
and improve
mechanisms for delivering live bison to
tribes
so all of all of our federal birds
including our wild free roaming herds
like
yellowstone or henry mountains or book
cliffs all
of those at some scale are constrained
in space
even even yellowstone when those animals
leave the park
so virtually all of our herds
are managed to a certain target level
and we
annually have hundreds of bison and doi
to distribute to partners
partner both for cultural restoration
but but to support tribes starting up
their own herds as well
and then uh the next one action four is
really kind of an institutionalization
of uh of uh development um
kind of improved philosophy and
management for handling bison which is
to adopt low stress tan
low stress low stress handling and to
make sure we bring our management
in line with the recognition that we're
considering bison and managing them as
wildlife and not as
a glorified livestock operation um
next slide final slide i'll highlight
two specific actions
for 2020 that will be involved by some
transfers this year
uh the first is to demonstrate to the
secretary's interest
that we within doi agencies
are coordinating and and
collaborating well internally we're
going to have the first
ever movement from a national wildlife
refuge herd being the rocky mountain
arsenal outside denver
to a national park service herd which is
which will be theodore roosevelt
national park
and um it'll be a small number about six
or eight
young female bison that will be brought
in
we'll have blood tests and we will fold
them into a much larger scale
genetic study to um to to understand
better understand the integration
uh integration of of translocated
animals um
because they have incredibly uh
complicated social structures that we
are still learning about the second
project which really speaks to this
commitment to ecocultural restoration is
um is the fact that uh dui
bureaus are going to send quite a few
bison over the next five years
to help establish the woe lakota project
on the rosebud sioux reservation in
south dakota
um it's a new tribal herd that's being
stood up when fully operational it will
be the largest
tribally owned tribally managed herd
anywhere we anticipate sending about 150
to 200 bison just this year to kick that
off
to to get the first bison on the ground
on that project
and the project really is tribally led
it's
oriented towards economic development
cultural renewal job opportunity
food security and meat production and
also an educational center so it hits
all the marks for
everything we could dream of supporting
that another would undertake so i'll
stop there and and be happy to take any
questions but i
i i'm thankful to join the presentation
today and i
um i want to make it clear that that the
people that you heard from today
who have been working on the initiative
for so long on these trans boundary
issues
even if not mentioned by name in in the
much larger scale
doi bison conservation initiative these
concepts
and these uh principles and and
philosophies
of linking ecology and culture
very very meaningful way and um and i
anticipate that
that the initiative is going to continue
to be an extremely
influential project to keep an eye on
and to and to learn from
as we all do our best work for bison
conservation
great thanks brendan appreciate that hey
can i get uh
control to just show uh two last slides
two minutes just to wrap things up
before we go to questions
and i'll show my screen
let's see where am i
see listen they're not showing
okay are you guys seeing my screen at
all or are you just still seeing me
yeah we can see your we see your desktop
jeff
okay well let's see here i just let me
try this
yeah okay that'll work for now i guess
um and um
two last slides i wanted to show i mean
what you heard from today with the anime
initiative
are sort of the primary partners
actually
honestly we weren't able to include any
of our partners
on the other side of the medicine line
in canada
but there are many many other partners
that are part of this and i just didn't
you know we couldn't invite them all
needless to say but
there are many many other agencies other
tribes
uh other jurisdictions
states provinces that are coming
together
to look at the initiative to work
together and try to work through some of
these issues it's
it's um you know as you've heard it's
it's uh
very audacious it's transformational and
sort of
how we might normally work as agencies
but it really does require that
certainly requires funding philanthropy
recently glacier national park was
awarded two hundred thousand dollars
from
the national park foundation through
some special interest in in seeing this
uh
project move forward and and trying to
address some of these uh landscape
conservation uh
needs and uh i have my own version
of oh geez what happened um
of uh what um
what you've been hearing throughout this
and this is a mind map i use mind
mapping uh
quite a bit uh to think about very
complicated issues needless to say this
is one but
i think uh it summarizes very much what
you've heard throughout this
presentation about you know this is more
than just conservation this is
actually to me this is even more of a
cultural
initiative than a conservation issue it
also has
a huge community potential economic
um opportunities that come with that and
and
this idea this mind map is to show those
relationships show how things are
intertwined
uh as an initiative um how they link to
each other
i think you know some business people
think of of the bottom line and i like
to think of this as kind of that triple
bottom line being
you know the financial the social and
the environment
you know how these three three things
can come together under this
as as brendan talked about it doesn't
fit our normal way as an agency
working in within stovepipes working
within
natural resources working within
cultural resources working within you
know
you know what we do with with tourism
and communities it's really
forcing us to bridge all those things uh
in a significant way so um this is
something that that that helps me sort
of
keep keep all the pieces straight and
and
think about um um you know how
the different roles that that different
uh partners play
in in something as complicated as as the
uni initiative so
with that i'll i'll just say thank you i
know we run along here um
but um i don't know how much time we
have for questions
for folks who are still with us thank
you
yeah thank you so much jeff and thank
you to the rest of the panel as well
this has been an
incredible discussion and presentation
um we do have
just about 20 questions in the in the
queue we'll only
uh take a couple of them and then we'll
follow up with the individuals who ask
the questions
i think overall a lot of the uh comments
that we received in here just
really appreciative of everyone's time
and thought that's gone into this
project um to sheldon and helen a lot of
comments to both of you for
for being with us today and sharing from
your perspective as well as
the beautiful prayer and song at the
beginning so thank you
um on behalf of all the participants for
that is really special
uh to have that be a part of this
presentation um i'm gonna ask a couple
that that i think
kind of stand out a little bit here and
then again we'll follow up with the
specific questions to
um to the specific speakers
following the presentation um jeff just
while you had that mind map up there one
question is where does the park
management fit on this mind map
well uh that mind map is
uh how we as the park look at that i
mean
in that and and when i look at that you
know all the boxes in the different
places there are different
staff members who sort of manage that
or work with our partners on those
particular aspects
so um you know those mind maps sort of
help us
uh you know make sure that there aren't
any pieces that are getting dropped in
terms of
what our responsibilities are and i'll i
won't tell you that
we're responsible for all those boxes
but
that um certainly the ones where
are the ones that are in our interest we
do
have responsibility for and and work
with so it's
it's just a way of organizing things and
you know i use that mind map to check
back in
to uh just make sure that we're not
we're not dropping something that's
important
great uh another question here
for both kind of the wildlife
conservation society as well as
um sheldon and helen as far as engaging
youth and specifically tribal youth on
such projects um can you talk a little
bit about that and the benefit to bison
overall
helen and sheldon if you guys want to go
first that'd be great and i'll chime in
after
okay um so
i think i can talk to some specifics
when
so we used to be um
partner with jim higgins and
the the pish gun the way that we do the
buffalo drive
um we've been able to put together an
a field activity where the youth can
um we set up a pish gun
and we have we use the hides so that the
the youth can they turn into the cairns
on the side
they turn into the with the hides become
the buffalo themselves
we play the the game run and scream
to identify the buffalo runners
the the ones who have the endurance to
be out in front of the herd
to guide them into that pitch gun and
then
over into the corrals and so
um we've designed several uh
traditional activities that we can do
to help build that relationship again
with with the physical animal by role
playing
in that particular um
we call it the the mock buffalo drive
and then we also have um done
field programming on and at
the buffalo
ranches um being able to use the
landscape where we rotate
the students through different stations
and they
hike to various areas
and learn about you know buffalo
identification
um in this skim the buffalo stones
the story that goes with the inniskim um
plant identification um
looking at even the landscape itself and
you know our our winter ranch is down on
the
the um the buffalo calf winter ranch is
down on to medicine
where there's several um buffalo drives
facing different directions and so we're
able to point those out
and and identify how
the sun when it rises or when it sets
and how those
drives are used throughout the seasons
um
there are several things that you know
with
sheldon when he he worked pretty much 24
7 with the herd and so he was able to
advise us with the youth programming on
you know well let's add in the wool
let's add in
you know what are the benefits of the
wool when they shed
in in the um springtime and
he was able to add in like observation
when we started thinking about ceremony
and how our societies
work together and and also our social
clans and
the way that our tribe and and the
confederacy bands work together
and thinking about observation labs in
the sense of
what what are what are the buffalo doing
on the ground how how are they um
how are their social structures and and
how do we compare that to what we're
seeing in the ceremonies and
what we're what we're learning um
just by reconnecting with this
relationship that we have
and so being able to have
that information available to the
students when they're out there
you know and and they see the physical
animal
but really being able to notice okay
this is what the cavs are doing and this
is what the cows are doing and oh that's
the bachelor herd
and and oh those are the bulls are
coming back
into the herd and um and then also
i think a big part of the growth
with the youth component is the harvest
and being able to to have that
ceremonial harvest
where you know it's spiritual in
connection but it's
also you know that close relationship a
life for a life
and being able to respect and honor the
animal
when it gives its life so that the
people will benefit
and and having youth participate in that
those harvests to know you know we don't
waste anything in
and it's so amazing to
now see our youth out there gathering
the fact and saying oh
auntie needs the fat make sure you get a
bag for her or
you know so and so needs the bones and
you know just helping them to
to know what different parts of the
animal can be used for what and
who who needs those you know for
for just whether it's just healthy life
whether it's ceremony whether it's
the crafts that they're doing
or again you know we we've have people
who are now
looking at the traditional high high
teepees the the hyde lodges
um so there's all sorts of
reconnection that we're we're able to
see when we engage the youth into
you know being part of
managing you know when say when sheldon
talks about safety
you know managing what it takes to to
manage the hurts but also what it
takes to just live with them and what do
they need as far as a healthy ecosystem
the grasses they need and how do they
help the soils and things like that so
you want to add anything else
i just like to talk about like when um
when we was taking students out in the
field doing a harvest
i've sat in a lot of different
ceremonies to where
when the animal offers his life so
okay oh i'm sorry okay well anyways
it was it was really a good thing to do
because i actually worked with the high
school students
and um i took them out in field and got
the harvest five animals
so i explained to kids and we prayed and
all that and i told him i said you know
that animal is going to step
out of his life and i mean i want you to
use that
to ask for prayer or prayer for our
people or for somebody in your
family that's suffering from sickness or
something like that so then
what really caught my heart is i bring a
girl up there and she
put down one of the animals and then she
started crying you know
and i left it alone you know but later
on year later she told me why
and then that was why that i pushed a
little harder for the kids to um
start helping me go out in the field and
do harvest you know but
that was a good thing that you know the
scene that the kids
learned a lot i guess you know and
like helen was saying you know our kids
and we did take them out there they
they took some certain bones home for
their aunties or uncles or grandmas so
but yeah it was it was good
and i would definitely like to continue
working with people out there that's
trying to start a herd or just you know
want help to
understand our blackbeat ways how we tie
with the cultural and the buffalo
so okay
great thank you and i think
um since we were going into our 90th
minute or so here
i think we'll um wrap it up with those
notes
i i will say one comment here says this
made my spirit fly high
and i feel like that's a great note to
end on congratulations to all of you on
this
incredible work that you've all been a
part of for so long
on behalf of the national park service
thank you for your time and
participating not only as panelists but
all
all of our participants for tuning in we
will follow up with
specific questions that didn't get
answered to our our panelists
and we will have a recording available
by the end of this week you can find
that on our
our website nps.gov forward slash
connected conservation
as well as all of our future webinars
and our past recordings
which make you should make a note we are
a part in
in the midst of a mini series focused on
working with tribes and conservation
our next uh webinar is focused on uh
september 2nd on tribal tourism and park
conservation in alaska
and then september 16th we'll have
another
webinar as a part of our series state
tribal and cultural resources plans and
grants for local governments
we do have a webinar on august 26th i
should mention to you that's not a part
of the mini-series but it's called
creating a park at home
where we'll be learning about how people
can create their own parks
in uh in the midst of a pandemic while
we're all at home
so just another great way of figuring
out how to
help create and connect corridors of
conservation efforts
across our nation so again thank you so
much for tuning in today
uh we will follow up with some some
additional questions as well as the
recording
and we appreciate your time today thanks
again
thank you cass thank you
thank you bye all thank you