From Hops to Habitat: Salmon Safe and the Quiet Conservation Movement Across the Northwest

What do your favorite craft brewery, a family vineyard, and a city park in Spokane have in common?

They might all be doing their part to protect wild salmon—and you might not even know it.

In this episode of the podcast, we spend time with Brian Muegge, Farm Program Manager at Salmon Safe, a nonprofit working to restore the health of our watersheds, one acre at a time. But this isn’t your typical top-down environmental effort. There’s no enforcement, no finger-pointing—just a growing network of farmers, developers, and even universities making voluntary changes to help salmon survive and thrive in the Pacific Northwest.

That means rethinking how we manage runoff. Planting cover crops. Swapping out chemicals. Creating buffers around streams. And it’s all being done with one shared goal: clean, cold water and better habitat for salmon to return to.

It’s easy to forget how closely our choices—what we build, what we drink, how we grow our food—connect to the health of our rivers. Salmon Safe bridges that gap. The certification now covers thousands of acres across Washington and Oregon, and it’s gaining traction in places you might not expect—from hop fields in the Yakima Valley to housing developments in urban Puget Sound.

Brian’s story is a good one: part science, part stewardship, and deeply connected to place. You’ll hear how a passion for fly fishing turned into a career supporting landowners who want to be better neighbors to the natural world.

If you care about where your beer comes from, how your food is grown, or what kind of environment we’re leaving behind for the next generation of Washingtonians, this episode is worth a listen.

Because in a region defined by rivers, the salmon’s story is our story too.

Brian Muegge Salmon Safe Episode Transcript

Scott Cowan [00:00:05]:

Welcome to the Exploring Washington State Podcast. My name is Scott Cowan and I’m the host of the show. Each episode, I have a conversation with an interesting guest who is living in.

Or from Washington state.

These are casual conversations with real and interesting people. I think you’re going to like the show. So let’s jump right in with today’s guest. All right. Welcome to this episode of the Exploring Washington State Podcast.

My guest today from Salmon Safe is Brian Muegge. And Brian is the farm program manager, which I’m going to make him explain. But before I let Brian talk, Brian is here because Michelle McGrath was on the show when she was with the American Cider Association.

Scott Cowan [00:00:44]:

I reached out to her when she took her new position at Salmon Safe and she said, I don’t ever want to talk to you again. I’m going to make you talk to Brian. I’m kidding. She was actually very complimentary about Brian. And we’re sitting here in the Wenatchee Public Library’s meeting room today recording this. So, Brian, welcome.

Brian Muegge [00:01:01]:

Thank you. I really appreciate it. And thank you, Michelle, for putting us together. And we’re very excited that she has joined our team and brings such a wealth of knowledge and. And leadership. So, yeah, couldn’t be more excited to work with her.

Scott Cowan [00:01:15]:

So my first question is before we talk about you, so I want to hear about Salmon Safe kind of give us. Because I didn’t really, and I don’t know much, but I really didn’t know anything before. And I saw some things that made me go, huh? In a good way. In a good way. So. But I want. Can you explain to the listener the overarching view goal of Salmon Safe and how it got started?

Brian Muegge [00:01:38]:

Totally. Yeah. Well, I’m curious as to what made you go, huh. You know golf courses, right? Yeah, we don’t work. We’ve actually been sunsetting that golf course work now. But, yeah, maybe it’s probably appropriate to start maybe from the beginning and get to golf courses. But spoiler, they do have an impact on the watershed. Right.

Brian Muegge [00:01:57]:

Like, a lot of golf courses are just really rough on water quality and habitat. But anyway, so Salmon Safe has, a nonprofit, was started in the late 90s in the Willamette Valley of Oregon through another nonprofit called Pacific Rivers, which is an advocacy and policy nonprofit doing a lot of work on river conservation, on forest conservation. 

That era, in the late 90s, there was a lot of spotted owl legislation and contention, particularly with landowners and policymakers. And so Salmon Safe was spun out of that organization with the thought and the goal of working more collaboratively with landowners to enact conservation practices on land in a voluntary way. 

Right. So how do you incentivize landowners to become better stewards? And how we. We. This is before my time, but Dan Kent, who’s our current executive director and co founder, you know, is able to tell this story pretty regularly.

Brian Muegge [00:02:59]:

But really it was setting out to work collaboratively with, with at first farmers in the Willamette Valley and then working hand in hand with technical assistance providers, technical experts, so WSU, OSU extension, other research scientists to certification around the needs of Pacific salmon as a landowner. So what can you do across your entire land that can be a net neutral on the watershed so that salmon can thrive? So yeah, we set out to do that in late 90s and we created the first iteration of our Salmon Safe Farm program, our farm standards, which we’ve updated several times over the the course of our organization just embedding more up to date research on things. And so as an organization  today, we are an environmental certification organization that works with landowners to help transition their practices to conservation practices through certification.

Scott Cowan [00:03:59]:

Okay, so I said what I didn’t understand was the golf course. You said you were sunsetting it, but on the main page of the website it says you guys have worked with 719 parks, golf courses and natural areas that have been certified. That’s a staggering number to me.

Brian Muegge [00:04:16]:

Most of those are within park systems that are open space. So like Portland Parks as an example, has so many parks, you know, and then they have one of the biggest parks in the country, right, which is Forest Park. 

And so that is how we work with those entities. So like I was speaking on the farm side and I guess. Let me finish the historical journey. So after, you know, a few years of working with farmers in the Willamette Valley, firstly with wine grape growers, and then to other sectors of row crops and hops and that sort of thing. Very quickly we realized that there are other impacts on the watershed that are not just agricultural impacts. Everyone, wherever you are in the world where you’re standing, you’re in a watershed, whether you’re in the upland or the lowland or right in the middle.

Brian Muegge [00:05:07]:

And water eventually flows downhill into a river or through the soil into an aquifer, and then enroute into the ocean. And so anything that we do to the landscape has an impact. And so with that, with that, you know, understanding, that’s when we started to build a framework for green infrastructure and urban development. And so we work, we still do a lot of that. Work today, it’s. It’s very busy. We do quite a bit. We’ll either work with a new build, so say there’s a new fire station going in.

Brian Muegge [00:05:41]:

In Spokane as an example, if we have a partnership in place with the City of Spokane, we would bring our contract assessors. So that’s how we proctor. Our certification is we have a network of independent experts that will conduct the assessment, farm assessors who will conduct our farm assessment. And then on the urban and green infrastructure side, we have a team of assessors who are stormwater scientists, fish biologists, landscape architects. And so that is basically us bringing our own environmental, quote unquote, nonprofit environmental consulting firm to a design. So, like, if that new fire station being built by the city of Spokane, if we’ve already established a partnership with them, our team would review designs and give feedback the entirety of that process to ensure that water quality and habitat are being conserved. So, like, as an example, I believe we did one in. I think it was in Tacoma recently.

Brian Muegge [00:06:42]:

No, Bellevue. Excuse me, Bellevue. And that one, like, if you look at it now, it’s finished. It has what’s called a bioswale in front of it, which is how instead of just building cement surfaces everywhere that are impervious with rainfall, like, that’s a way in which you can design land that mimics the natural flow of water in which water flows downhill into a drainage or a reservoir. So that would be an example on the green infrastructure side of things, from the parks perspective, like Portland parks, King county parks, we are looking at how the entire park system is managed because there is generally a plan holistically across that, that many parcels. And we are looking at things like integrated pest management. How are they, how are they using irrigation and other inputs, and how are they protecting water quality on those parks? So do they have a gigantic green space right adjacent to a critical stretch of the river that they probably shouldn’t have that much water or that much fertilizer on? That would be criteria that we’d look at. And college campuses as well.

Brian Muegge [00:07:50]:

We just finished a project with Gonzaga University that took a couple years. And they are the first campus east of the Cascades to attain SAINT and SAFE certification. So with their, their particular example, they have a pretty good swath of river frontage on the campus. And so they are going to be doing a lot more work on the input and water conservation front moving forward. So, yeah, so anyways, yeah, that was kind of just to finish the story of our work. And then the golf courses is maybe to get back to that. Not to spend too much time on that as that is. We started working with golf courses with some city municipalities in that regard.

Brian Muegge [00:08:29]:

It’s just. It’s just difficult to work and sustain golf course certification because there are so many inputs and so many things that go into keeping a golf course nice and green. So, yeah, it’s just. It really difficult for us to sustain that work.

Scott Cowan [00:08:47]:

Okay. You went to Gonzaga. You grew up in California. You told me earlier you went to a lot of San Francisco Giants games, which we can agree is an excellent baseball team. Not the Mariners, I mean, but as a kid, I grew up as a Giants fan, so Tacoma, the Giants. So I grew up. I grew up as a Giants fan. Here’s my quick Giant story.

Scott Cowan [00:09:08]:

My mom and dad took me to my first major league baseball game at Candlestick Park.

Brian Muegge [00:09:11]:

Wow.

Scott Cowan [00:09:12]:

Here’s my memory of it. Willie McCovey hit a grand slam home run. The next game, not the game I was at.

Brian Muegge [00:09:19]:

How cold was it?

Scott Cowan [00:09:22]:

I. I just remember being windy and that. That just that it was just. Yeah, it was not.

Brian Muegge [00:09:28]:

People bring sleeping bags to Candlestick.

Scott Cowan [00:09:29]:

It was really fun. It was fun, but it wasn’t, like, awesome. But it was so cool to see. You know, like I said, I’m a kid. McCovey Mays They were playing, you know.

Brian Muegge [00:09:42]:

That’s cool.

Scott Cowan [00:09:43]:

Yeah, I was inherently.

Brian Muegge [00:09:44]:

That’s pretty mean.

Scott Cowan [00:09:45]:

So my parents took me to that. That was. That was. It was a Giants Dodgers game. So it’s kind of fun.

Brian Muegge [00:09:49]:

Yeah, of course. Been to my fair share of those as well. Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:09:52]:

But that was my first. My first exposure to Major League Baseball live. But as a kid growing up, I’d go to Cheney and see. Well, I’m a little young for the Giants, but like the Tugs, the Cubs, the Yankees, the A’s, the Tigers. I mean, that was all Tacoma teams through the years.

Brian Muegge [00:10:09]:

Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:10:10]:

And. And the Twins for one season.

Brian Muegge [00:10:12]:

Oh, wow.

Scott Cowan [00:10:12]:

Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, but you grew up in the. In the Bay Area. What brought you to going to college at Gonzaga?

Brian Muegge [00:10:22]:

Well, I had. You know, I’ve mulled over this. This thought for a while, and how did it actually happen? So the first time I heard about Spokane was through my aunt. She had grown up in Spokane. She herself has a very interesting history of Spokane, she used to be a paralegal for Carl Maxey, who was one of the first, if not, I believe, the first African American attorney in Spokane. She has this really interesting history of Spokane through growing up in a time when it was maybe not as pleasant. And then also, you know, working for A leader such as Carl Maxey. And then she left Spokane to come to San Francisco.

Brian Muegge [00:11:01]:

She met my uncle, who’s a bartender, and then they’ve lived in San Francisco since. So that was the first time I’d heard about Spokane. But it was kind of just this, like, oh, it’s like somewhere up there. I don’t know. I don’t really know where that is. And then I do remember watching March Madness as a middle schooler, and I remember seeing a guy crying on the court. And I was like, who is that guy with the long hair crying? And it was Adam Morrison. So that was another time that I remember kind of Gonzaga, but I didn’t know if I necessarily associated them together.

Brian Muegge [00:11:31]:

Yeah. And really how I found out about them was I took a trip in high school with my former high school, old high school girlfriend’s family, and we went and hit a couple Pacific Northwest schools. And I remember going to Gonzaga, and I was like, oh, this is a nice campus. And then I went to a Catholic high school, and one of my religion teachers was a Gonzaga grad. And I remember he would talk every now and again about Gonzaga. And then I also remember we went on a trip to LA for a social justice trip that was through my high school. And we met with Father Greg Boyle, who is a Jesuit priest who founded Homeboy Industries, which is a social services and gang rehabilitation center. And he’s just this really innovative guy.

Brian Muegge [00:12:22]:

And coincidentally, they both went to Gonzaga together in the late 60s, I believe. So I was like, okay, well, that’s an interesting college. It’s all piecing together. And then the admissions counselor, the associate admissions counselor, Erin Hayes, I remember she visited my high school, and I couldn’t meet her at the time allocated. And I was really interested. And she was like, well, let’s just meet at the Starbucks after school. And I was like, sure. So I met, and things were great.

Brian Muegge [00:12:49]:

And I was like, you know, I’ll probably apply here. So I applied. I actually got wait listed. And I was like, well, I’ll probably not go then. It seems kind of like a, you know, maybe a long shot now at this point. And then I ended up getting off the waitlist with a grant that was substantial enough that it was the cheapest option of any college I was looking at. And I. I think that was probably the moment I am most thankful for.

Brian Muegge [00:13:14]:

And Erin Hayes, if you are listening, she knows this story because I’ve said thank you many times to her. But, yeah, I am unbelievably grateful and so honored that I was able to get that grant, and I feel like I really made the most out of my time at Gonzaga. I ended up living on the international floor, so I had an international roommate my freshman year. I ended up studying abroad at our Gonzaga in Florence program. Played in your murals. I was on the cover of Sports Illustrated with Kelly Olenek my freshman year when he was on the cover for March Madness. You could see half my face and part of my fist in the background. There’s a bunch of fans behind him, so.

Brian Muegge [00:13:53]:

So, yeah, and I really just did.

Scott Cowan [00:13:56]:

Did you get a bunch of those and give them out to friends?

Brian Muegge [00:13:58]:

No, but my mom actually emailed Sports Illustrated and was like, can you send me this regular photo because I want to see my. My son, because you can only see half his face. And so they have one. My mom has a picture in their house.

Scott Cowan [00:14:09]:

Are you saying that Sports Illustrated cropped?

Brian Muegge [00:14:12]:

No, no, no. So my face was behind the sports. The R in sports.

Scott Cowan [00:14:16]:

They cropped you out, man.

Brian Muegge [00:14:17]:

They did. Well, I was in the top row. I mean, I’ve been told I have a face for radio, so that’s why we’re doing this, Scott. But no. So I feel like I’m getting really. I’m waxing poetically here about my time at Gonzaga, but I do really appreciate everything that led me to GU because I really think that is what has continued to fuel my fire and light my spark as it relates to conservation. And I really developed that at Gonzaga, studying biology, doing undergraduate research, which I was lucky enough to do with yellow bellied marmots with Dr. Addis, which still makes me chuckle whenever I see one of those things around town.

Brian Muegge [00:14:53]:

And then now, full circle. I moved back to Spokane last March after about six years in Seattle, two in San Francisco before that, and I am now joining the College of Arts and Sciences Advisory Committee in September. So full circle, for sure.

Scott Cowan [00:15:07]:

So you went. Okay, so you. You grew up in the Bay Area, Northern California. You go to Spokane. That. That had to be some culture shock.

Brian Muegge [00:15:16]:

You know, it was. But like, my. But growing up, I kind of led two different upbringings. My dad was from Placer county, which was more rural. And then my grandparents lived also in rural Placer county, so we’d go up and visit them in, like, pretty rural Sacramento. And then he had. He had family in Reading, which, like, I mean, I’m not saying Spokane is Reading, but there are some similarities, whether you like it or not. So I spent a lot of time up there, but then, like, the other weekends were spent in San Francisco.

Brian Muegge [00:15:43]:

At my grandma’s house, you know what I mean? So I had like a good mix of both. So I was prepared, I would say.

Scott Cowan [00:15:47]:

But you graduated and then you went to settle in San Francisco after, you know, your first career stops. But you came back. So what brought you back? Was it the job? Was it you wanted to be back in Spokane? Was it you had parking tickets that you were running from? I mean, why’d you go back?

Brian Muegge [00:16:10]:

Yeah, that’s a good question. I think Spokane, I’ve always wanted to come back and revisit as a place because as I said, it was the place where I really became a man, really became an adult. I came in as 18 year old kid and I left as a 22 and a half, 23 year old, still a young man. But like I had global experience, I had research experience, I had very formative years. Yeah. And I had like some of the best friends that I could have ever had and could have asked for, who I still talk with every day. You know, if there’s anything that you. My money that are my parents, money that I, that we.

Brian Muegge [00:16:48]:

That was spent, it was buying friends for life, which is a very interesting way of thinking about it. But I was not in a fraternity, sorority. Just the fact that like, you know, you, you hang out with people who you like. So. So yeah, I’ve always wanted to revisit Spokane and I wanted to live in San Francisco because there’s so much history. Like right after school I wanted to work in conservation but couldn’t really find a job. So I actually worked for Impossible Foods, which is. Was a food tech startup.

Brian Muegge [00:17:14]:

Still is a food tech company. But my mom comes from a very proud multigenerational San Franciscan family in the neighborhood of Noe Valley, which was historically a immigrant working class neighborhood adjacent to the Mission and the Castro. So my mom, I’m half Mexican through my mom’s side. So there’s a lot of really a. It’s a huge family Catholicism. My grandmother had eight kids in 29 years. Yeah. Which my mom being the last one.

Brian Muegge [00:17:44]:

Fascinating. But so I, I have so much family and history and pride in San Francisco that I really wanted to experience living there. So I literally lived two blocks from my old grandmother’s house, which was my. My uncle and aunt lived there when I was there. But so I just needed to kind of get that out of my system from a long term feasibility perspective. The fact that I didn’t work and found some tech company, like the time in which I was living in San Francisco could not be More different from the time that, like, previous generations of my family had lived there. You know what I mean? Like, before, like, my grandfather was a boilermaker for Union Pacific during the war. Right.

Brian Muegge [00:18:22]:

Like, that is different than 2017, you know, with tech dominating the city. Right. Or like, even before that, my. My great grandmother came from a ship in Mexico. She was a cook, and then she ran a boarding house. Then the 1906 earthquake happened, and then she. Well, I think she ran the boarding house after that because so many laborers were needed to rebuild the city. And that’s how she met my great.

Brian Muegge [00:18:47]:

My great grandfather. And anyways, but so I bring all that up to say, like, the reason that I chose to live in San Francisco was I felt like I really wanted to experience that connection. And I did. It was great. It just was not affordable. And that was like, really the main reason was it was like kind of just a temporary experience. Stop. And.

Brian Muegge [00:19:05]:

Which was really fun. And I still really enjoy San Francisco. And I get quite defensive when people speak about San Francisco without experience. Again, similar to Spokane. When they say stuff about Spokane and they haven’t experienced it, it’s like, okay, well, you know, the Seattle thing was an easy answer of why I wanted to go there as friends. As I said, most of the friends I made at Gonzaga moved to Seattle after school. That was just kind of like a natural migration of Gonzaga alum. So I live for six years with some of my best friends, and then I lived another couple of years with my.

Brian Muegge [00:19:38]:

My. My best friend who still is in Seattle. But what are.

Scott Cowan [00:19:43]:

What area of Seattle?

Brian Muegge [00:19:44]:

We lived in Ballard and Queen Anne. And so that was. Those were fun.

Scott Cowan [00:19:48]:

Yep.

Brian Muegge [00:19:49]:

Then the pandemic, and it kind of altered the trajectory of things. That was my. I had been doing a side quest into selling craft beer away from conservation, and then the pandemic hit, and then I ended up becoming a volunteer for Salmon Safe because I had heard about it. And that’s how I moved away from selling beer.

Scott Cowan [00:20:08]:

What beer?

Brian Muegge [00:20:09]:

I worked for No-Li Brewhouse, which was a Spokane based brewery, but in the west side, just as our west side sales rep. And then I worked for another smaller craft brewery in Seattle called Urban Family.

Scott Cowan [00:20:20]:

Okay. All right. So you started Salmon Safe by volunteering. Okay. But you. Obviously your college background kind of put you on the trajectory to go here. So what was your first role as a volunteer?

Brian Muegge [00:20:35]:

Yeah, well, I guess I. I’ll answer that question. But I didn’t really quite finish my journey of why I wanted to come back to Spokane, because it’s all Related to that. So Spokane is always in the back of my head of the place where I became a adult. Right. So it also is coupled by the fact that it is affordable still. And as someone who’s younger, as a millennial, there are not a lot of affordable housing options. Unfortunately, if you’re not working for Meta or some other big tech company.

Brian Muegge [00:21:04]:

Right. Like, that’s just the economies are not quite there. And so Spokane was one of the options where I could go, you know, I could buy a house in this market at some point if I do it right. And it’s not that unobtainable. And so that brought me back. Another reason that it brought me back and this ties more into Salmon Safe is after that jaunt in the beer industry and the pandemic hit, I started volunteering for Salmon Safe because I had heard about it right through the, through the beer industry and the work we do with hop growers and grain growers. And so I started volunteering and that looked like doing outreach with breweries because we started working in the Willamette Valley. We have a really good core older, like long term partners with hop growers in the willamette Valley.

Brian Muegge [00:21:48]:

So 80% of the hops that are grown in the Willamette Valley are Salmon Safe certified. Over 80%. So we’ve, we’ve, we’ve done a lot of work within that sector. And so anyways, long story short, because of that, that’s how I found out we’re working in beer. So my role as a volunteer was to connect Salmon Safe to breweries to talk about sourcing Salmon Safe certified hops. And then from there I became a contract employee and then I got converted a full time in September of 2021. So awesome.

Scott Cowan [00:22:18]:

On your website it says 12% of all global hops are Salmon Safe certified.

Brian Muegge [00:22:22]:

Yes. Yes. So I think that we are still like America and Germany are like almost equal in terms of hop acreage production. I think we kind of fluctuate each year of like they maybe have more, we have less or whatever. The Hallertau, that’s their, their big hop growing area. So within America, we have three hop growing regions that are of size. So we have Oregon’s Willamette Valley, we have the Treasure Valley of Idaho, and we have the Acoma Basin. The Acoma Basin has probably four to five times more acreage than both of those places.

Scott Cowan [00:22:58]:

Yeah, it’s huge.

Brian Muegge [00:23:00]:

Yeah, like mid 40,000ish acres. And that has been reducing over the past couple years. There’s some, there’s an oversupply and craft beer is also kind of flattening out. So there’s been some unfortunate reductions that are happening. But. But yeah, so that’s how, like within those hop growing regions, that’s why we have up to 12% of the global market, because we have about 80% of the William Valley certified, about a quarter of Yakima, and then about a fifth of Idaho.

Scott Cowan [00:23:29]:

Okay. So when I think of salmon safe, you know, I think of water, I think of the river, and I don’t think of things like golf courses. But it does make sense when you say, you know, they’re massive consumers of water and what they do with it and the chemicals that they put on it, etc. Etc. I do see that you guys do vineyards with, you know, there’s. Is this right? 425 vineyards are now certified salmon safe. That’s pretty crazy. And in a three year window, it looks like you’ve done 225,000 acres of the Columbia Basin.

Scott Cowan [00:24:02]:

Yeah, that seems. Did you cheat? Was that one big, big. I mean, come on, Al, tell us the secrets. Was it one big agricultural company that you got to work with?

Brian Muegge [00:24:14]:

No, no, it was not. And in fact, traditionally that’s been a really. That has been not the size of farms that we work with because it is so difficult to implement our program at scale.

Traditionally, we’re working on figuring out better collaborative ways, but the secret to that is through collaboration and integration. So we are not just a here’s the Salmon Safe certification, you know, take it or leave it kind of thing. It’s. We have actively tried to embed our program with other certifications to make it easier for farmers and other landowners to join and get more bang for their buck, so to speak. 

So, like, those statistics of acreage include acreage that our partners who are working as well, concurrently, who have embedded our program, we count those as well because it’s true.

Brian Muegge [00:25:02]:

I mean, they are. Those practices are getting implemented and we have found a gap. We’ve reached partnership on a gap analysis of our standards. So, like, we do that with live certified. That’s another wine, vineyard and winery certification. We just work on the vineyard, the land side of it, but they’ve integrated our program into there. So every live certified vineyard is now salmon safe certification. Certified vineyard, as an example.

Brian Muegge [00:25:26]:

Sustainable Washington, it’s another one. So the Washington State Wine Commission developed their own certification framework recently. It’s over the past couple years that it’s been finalized and we have set up a partnership with them in which if A grower is able to score a certain number, which is the way they’re scoring is numerical. Like if they reach a certain number, meaning they’ve scored highest in the best category in the categories that we deem applicable to our program. They can achieve salmon safe certification with that certification, too. We do that with Oregon Tilth, which is an organic certifier. Very similarly, Global Gap certification, which is more of a food safety one. So we’ve really done, over the 20 year history of our program, we’ve really tried to integrate and overlay our program where we can.

Brian Muegge [00:26:15]:

So that’s where we’re able to make those claims, so to speak, because that is getting salmon safe practices on the landscape through partnership.

Scott Cowan [00:26:21]:

So I just bounced over to the featured products. I see Wilcox Farms. So can we use Wilcox Farms as an example? Are you familiar with them?

Brian Muegge [00:26:28]:

Yeah. Their home site, their organic home site is not all of Wilcox Farms.

Scott Cowan [00:26:33]:

Okay.

Brian Muegge [00:26:33]:

Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:26:34]:

So what did Wilcox have to do to become at that, at that point facility? What did they have to do to become salmon safe?

Brian Muegge [00:26:46]:

So at that facility, that area, the. Their home, like organic farm is on the, I believe, the Nisqually River. So they do have quite a bit of river frontage. And that was the impetus for that. Them to join our program was because of that. So they’ve been in our program for close to, I think a decade, if not more now. And so they had done quite a bit of riparian protection work that reduces erosion and sediment into the river. That was probably the biggest thing that they’ve done as it relates to our program.

Brian Muegge [00:27:15]:

And then. Yeah, making sure the manure is managed on site. Because chickens, As a former 4H man, I know, and I only had four to five birds, but they poop a lot, so they do. So ensuring that you have safeguards in place for big flush events or big flood events, that doesn’t that make sure that you’re okay, isn’t flowing into the river?

Scott Cowan [00:27:34]:

Yeah, that would be a big shock to the river. I mean, you know.

Brian Muegge [00:27:36]:

Yeah, no, I mean, it’d be a big, big, big flush. Events are always a big shock to the river. I mean, it’s just wherever you are, it’s either stormwater erosion. I mean, it’s. It’s pretty nasty.

Scott Cowan [00:27:47]:

On your website it says get certified. Who is the. Where’s your wheelhouse? Where Salmon Safe’s wheelhouse. What do you guys work with? Because like you said, you know, you were saying golf courses kind of can be a little unwieldy. Things like that.

Brian Muegge [00:28:05]:

Sure.

Scott Cowan [00:28:06]:

What? Who benefits in your opinion? Who benefits the most by working to become Salmon Safe certified?

Brian Muegge [00:28:16]:

I mean ideally the salmon benefit the most.

Scott Cowan [00:28:20]:

Touche.

Brian Muegge [00:28:21]:

What should you know. Yeah. Yes, they should benefit the most. But if we’re talking about who as partners benefit, you know, we work, you know, with developers, city, municipalities and farmers. Those are kind of the big three. So family farmers I would say are like maybe mid sized farming business.

Scott Cowan [00:28:45]:

What do you mean by mid sized farm? What do you define as mid size.

Brian Muegge [00:28:48]:

Cooperatives, you know, or like I mean Stemilt would not be mid sized as an example, but there are smaller Stemilt type.

Scott Cowan [00:28:57]:

So let’s. Because we’re here in Wenatchee. Right. And my audience probably doesn’t know. I didn’t know. So I moved here eight years ago. I did not really understand just how gigantic Stemilt is. It’s a multibillion dollar a year conglomerate.

Brian Muegge [00:29:12]:

Right.

Scott Cowan [00:29:12]:

It’s. It’s massive with all their. Okay, so to me that’s not a mid size.

Brian Muegge [00:29:17]:

To me that is not mid sized by any definition.

Scott Cowan [00:29:19]:

What do you. Help me, help me, give me, help me define a mid sized in. In your loose interpretation.

Brian Muegge [00:29:29]:

Yeah, now that is a good question. I’m trying to think of examples. Well, okay, well here’s one like Roy, like here’s a farm we work with is Roy Farms in the Yakima Basin. They are a hop growing operation, but they also grow tree fruit. Right. And so we’ve worked to overlay our program with their organic acreage and then their hops acreage which may be conventional. So that would be one where I would say is less on the small side because are, you know, few thousand acres. Okay, right.

Brian Muegge [00:30:00]:

So I would say that would be more of like to me that mid size. But at the same time it’s still like a family farm. Like it’s.

Scott Cowan [00:30:06]:

So we’re talking a few thousand acres. We’re not talking somebody with a five acre plot.

Brian Muegge [00:30:10]:

No, well, we’ve worked with farmers that small. Yeah, yeah. I mean there are still farmers within the same safe program that are 5.5acres of production land. Yeah, totally. And then the biggest single contiguous parcel is one that we’ve recently worked with which is just over 20,000 acres on the Zumwalt Prairie, which is our conservation ranch operation. That’s. Yeah. In partnership with TNC Oregon as well.

Scott Cowan [00:30:34]:

Yeah. Wow. So 20,000 acres, that’s.

Brian Muegge [00:30:36]:

That’s, that would be large. I would say that’s large.

Scott Cowan [00:30:39]:

That’s huge.

Brian Muegge [00:30:40]:

But it still is a family that owns it. Right. Like it’s still, we, we really do work mostly, I would say, with families, farmers. Okay. Or like cooperatives that are from family farms.

Scott Cowan [00:30:52]:

Right. Is it. Do you have measurable’s that say that can show these efforts that are being implemented by you and your, your quote, you know, partners and all that, how it’s impacting salmon, quote, unquote, downstream, if you will. I mean, is, is that even possible to measure that?

Brian Muegge [00:31:14]:

Yeah. I mean, if I could wave a magic wand and, and say, like, your practices have equated to like, x amount more salmon being viable or like fecundity, which is what you call, like, how, how viable salmon is. Right. Like how many babies you can have. We don’t. We haven’t been able to find a metric that we can measure because when you’re dealing with non point source pollution, the reason it’s called non point is it could come from 50,000 places. Right. So like, you could be a farmer on 50 acres in our program.

Brian Muegge [00:31:50]:

You could be surrounded by someone who’s conventionally farming and using a bunch of inputs and not necessarily being a good steward. And if you tried to measure water quality or if you tried to measure this or that, like, you wouldn’t necessarily have accurate representation of that farmer specifically. So, yeah, I would say it’s difficult. One thing that we are doing, which I’m really excited about, is we’ve partnered with the Coeur d’ Alene tribe on a project we got funded through the Paul Allen Institute, or, excuse me, the Paul Allen Foundation. So that project is kind of getting to that question of will these practices in the landscape. How. How much more climate positive are they? And so with this project is, we are piloting close to 20 acres of Kernza, which is a perennial grain, on tribal farmland. And then we’re measuring carbon metrics, sequestration, et cetera.

Scott Cowan [00:32:49]:

Okay.

Brian Muegge [00:32:49]:

And then at the same time, the Coeur d’ Alene tribe is leading a restoration effort of a part of the reservation that’s Palouse Prairie Restoration, which is one of the most. It is the habitat, the endemic habitat of the Palouse is Palouse Prairie. So a lot of these, like when you probably have seen an idyllic picture of a prairie with flowers, that’s our version of it. And there’s not a lot left just because of habitat, you know, that’s habitat loss. So that program, this grant, is also looking at monitoring carbon sequestration on Palouse Prairie Restoration and comparing the two just to get more measurements of both habitat conservation and how it relates to carbon and farming. Perennial grains and how it relates.

Scott Cowan [00:33:36]:

You mentioned the Paul Allen Foundation. I’m joking when I say hopefully the grant didn’t cause them to have to sell the Trailblazers. Just kidding. Just kidding.

Brian Muegge [00:33:45]:

No, it’s recent. It wasn’t. It wasn’t at that era, so.

Scott Cowan [00:33:48]:

No, that was what Jody, she just.

Brian Muegge [00:33:50]:

Oh, is that recent?

Scott Cowan [00:33:51]:

Yeah, they just.

Brian Muegge [00:33:52]:

Oh, man.

Scott Cowan [00:33:52]:

Team up for sale.

Brian Muegge [00:33:54]:

Yeah. Yeah. Actually I’m. I’m not as big as an NBA fan, so that was new.

Scott Cowan [00:33:58]:

I’m not since. Since we don’t have a team here in the state. Totally touchy subject.

Brian Muegge [00:34:03]:

Understood.

Scott Cowan [00:34:04]:

Okay. But I was going to ask funding for all of this. So we’ve got the large Paul Allen Foundation. Where else do you guys. As a nonprofit, you always got that constant source of funding. You probably have a team that’s their job, is finding funding and it’s tough. Right. How does Salmon Safe Fund go about soliciting funding and who have been good partners for you in that respect?

Brian Muegge [00:34:40]:

Well, we do not have a team that specifically works on it. We have a small staff, so everyone wears a lot of hats or our director does a lot of our development work. But we as staff all kind of contribute. Like I have directly contributed to some development work, whether it be connecting with funders, whether it be writing a grant. So, yeah, so we all, we all play our part. We do work with some third party consultants to help with some of that as well, which is really important. But. But yeah, so how we have been funded over the years, so we.

Brian Muegge [00:35:16]:

There are nonprofit foundations across the country that will fund smaller environmental nonprofits, whether that be like some of the climate work like I’m talking about, or whether it’s tribal work, whether it is like river cleanup work, like if you’re a riverkeeper organization. And so there’s. There’s a lot of different criteria that funders will fund for over the umbrella of conservation. So for us, it was a little bit nuanced because it was a bit unique in what we were doing in terms of like environmental certification, working with farmers. So, like, finding the funding initially I think was a little bit difficult. But folks like the Bullit foundation in Seattle, they were a longtime funder of ours, so they similarly were a nonprofit foundation. Right. So that was probably how most of our funding was for most of the history of salmon.

Brian Muegge [00:36:07]:

SAFE was like 80% private foundation funding like that, or 20% state or federal grants. So USDA, WSDA or ODA, or, you know, Oregon or Washington. We recently have been since the creation of the EPA Toxics Reduction Plan program, which is Region 10, EPA, which is our Pacific Northwest region since the beginning of that program, which I think was, I want to say seven years ago, ish, maybe a little bit less. We have developed some strong partnerships with EPA, Region 10, with our leadership to loop them in on the work that we’re doing because they’re, you know, traditionally EPA is struggled with that like voluntary incentive work, the non regulatory work. That’s just not really what they do. Right. They’re more regulatory. That’s how the EPA was created.

Brian Muegge [00:37:01]:

And so we have now been funded by the EPA. This is our third grant that we’re on. And this most recent grant that we have been funded by was through the Biden infrastructure bill. So that bill got appropriated $79 million by Senator Merkley of Oregon. And with that we put in a grant with EPA to basically have a, called a lead entity grant. So we said, hey, we work with a lot of boots on the ground, play space partners, conservation districts, et cetera. We’ll apply for this grant and then we will pass the funds through to our partners on the ground so they can pass it through to farmers. And so we applied, were successful and that was the most recent grant from them.

Brian Muegge [00:37:49]:

And so now that funding paradigm, funding pie chart has shifted from maybe you know, 70, 30 the other way around. So that could very well change. Yeah, you know I could talk for a while about the current administration and their view on some of funding through USDA or things like that that have either been cut or getting reworked. So I anticipate that pie chart balancing out I think over the years. But yeah, and then we have like private donors every now and again. We’re not a non profit that has a lot of like individual donors. It’s just not really our like we don’t have like membership donors or anything like that like the Sierra Club or folks like that. Not to say it’s not a good model.

Brian Muegge [00:38:34]:

It’s good for some folks, but for.

Scott Cowan [00:38:36]:

Us it’s not the model.

Brian Muegge [00:38:37]:

Yeah, for us. Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:38:37]:

Yeah. Okay, I’m going to put you on the spot with this question, please. I want you to. How well do you know your last week’s activities?

Brian Muegge [00:38:50]:

Yeah, I mean I haven’t been doing a lot so I could probably name a few. Yeah, sure.

Scott Cowan [00:38:53]:

That’s not good.

Brian Muegge [00:38:54]:

I just bought a house, so it’s all like menial house stuff.

Scott Cowan [00:38:57]:

Okay, so what’s a typical day of work for you with salmon? Safe. So go back to last week and were you working last week or were you, are you moving I was working. Okay, so what, what’s a, what’s a kind of a just a average typical day?

Brian Muegge [00:39:13]:

So this. Thank you for asking this question, by the way, because I do really, when I, when I think about it, I do have a pretty unique experience within my day because my job while I am the farm program manager is so much more than that of like, yes, I do manage our farm program, but I’m also, I could be sending emails to retailers and breweries to say like, as an example, I sent an email last week working on a collaboration with some breweries in Boise around. They have a really strong Basque culture in Boise. It was one of the Idaho Central Idaho is one of the areas where a lot of Basque immigrants move to. So like Fresno, California, they kind of have these hubs of where a lot of the Basque would, would immigrate to. And they have a really rich culture within Boise. And I was, we were collaborating with one of the local breweries there that wants to highlight that connection. And so anyway, so like, I’ve been emailing about some fun conservation beer collaboratives.

Brian Muegge [00:40:07]:

Like, that is one of the more fun parts of the role that I do is like, while I’m talking to breweries to promote salmon safe certified hops and grains and elevate this message of conservation stewardship within beer, basically, or other food products. Like, I’m able to loop in other nonprofits either who I know well, who I might be on the board of or who I am just friends with or fans of and to do something really cool. So I could do that for like a morning. Like, I could send out a few emails there. I could be looking at a grant through WSDA, like a specialty, specialty block grant, right? Like, I could be finding one of those and go, you know, we should put in a grant for WSDA for this integration of this project. And then another thing I could be doing simultaneously is like planning field Day helping our partners in Idaho, which one of the partners we work with, the Nature Conservancy in Idaho, they have an ag program which is relatively unique across the Nature Conservancy chapters. But we’re planning a field day later this month. So there were some of work that I was doing to support that.

Brian Muegge [00:41:11]:

I was also recently given the task of finding out endemic salmonid populations in Kobe, Japan. We have been, this was, you know, this is related tangential to our Columbia Basin focus work. But as an organization, we have been cultivating relationships in Japan kind of at a basal level for the probably close to a decade now. One of our, one of our colleagues has a lot of connections there. So we’ve worked with Japanese professionals around certification because they, particularly with rice, they’ve done a lot of work to steward rice with European white storks, which is a really revered species over there. And so we have been working on piloting a cohort of their rice growers into a co op. And so we just wanted to kind of get a sense of, like, Kobe is kind of on that southern end of Japan where it gets a little bit warmer. Like, is that still salmon and habitat? And so that was something that I was able to dig in and connect with a couple folks.

Brian Muegge [00:42:14]:

So. So, yeah, so I did that. That, that. Yeah, I might, I might. Yeah, I already said, talk to a retailer, call a farmer about. Share. Share a resource to a farmer. Like, I, you know, if there’s a research paper I found that talks about, like, the benefits of native plants or pollinators or wildlife on farm, like, I can share that.

Brian Muegge [00:42:36]:

You know, I’ll usually receive a text from a farmer about wildlife. I have a growing list of farmers who I work with who will text me photos of everything from pronghorn to birds of prey to all sorts of things on farm. And I, I do really appreciate those. So please keep sending those. But yeah, there’s a lot.

Scott Cowan [00:42:55]:

So what I’m hearing is that I’m going to guess that every day is maybe similar, but you’ve got a wide. You’re wearing a lot. You brought in multiple hats here with. He’s actually got. No, I’m kidding. He’s got just one hat.

Brian Muegge [00:43:06]:

Yeah, but in my head, you really.

Scott Cowan [00:43:08]:

Wear totally multiple hats. And sounds like the organization wears multiple hats. All right, we’ve got. Trout Safe is a newer initiative. What? A, I, I don’t fish. B, I’m not an outdoorsy guy, so I’m the wrong guy to ask this question. So I might be really.

Brian Muegge [00:43:32]:

No, no, this is.

Scott Cowan [00:43:33]:

You might, you might just look at me and go, you’re not alone.

Brian Muegge [00:43:35]:

I mean, really, do people that don’t know.

Scott Cowan [00:43:36]:

Okay, so hit me. What are the similarities between Salmon Safe and Trout Safe? And are there any noticeable differences between the two? Does that make sense?

Brian Muegge [00:43:49]:

No, there are. So there are no differences. So the reason that our Trout Safe program was started was we had several partners in the upper reaches of the Columbia Basin, Teton Valley, who were wanting to bring our program to that area of the basin. But they do not, in that valley have historic salmon because of natural falls barriers like Shoshone Falls, etc, so they Just didn’t. Salmon just didn’t come up that far. And so, but of course, trout, which are salmonids, they’re in the same family of species. So salmon, char and trout and some whitefish are also. They’re all within the salmonid family.

Brian Muegge [00:44:30]:

And so across the entire family of species, the common thread that is needed is cold, clean, and abundant water, highly oxygenated water, which. That’s what happens when all those things work together. And so by building our initial program over the needs of Pacific salmon and those five species that we have in the Pacific Northwest, they also benefit their cousins trout, advantageously as well. So that’s where, when we. We didn’t bring the Salmon Safe program to those upper reaches of Columbia Basin, we just created what we call the Trout Safe program. Same farm program, same everything, but just focusing on trout. Totally. Yeah, totally.

Brian Muegge [00:45:09]:

It’s more regionally specific.

Scott Cowan [00:45:11]:

And, yeah, there’s so many directions we could go here.

Brian Muegge [00:45:17]:

You could ask more fish questions. I always like those ones.

Scott Cowan [00:45:19]:

We’re gonna. We’re gonna. When we wrap up Salmon Safe, we’ll talk about you and we’ll. We’ll go there.

Brian Muegge [00:45:24]:

Sure.

Scott Cowan [00:45:24]:

I’ve got a marmot question.

Brian Muegge [00:45:25]:

Oh, yeah, happy to.

Scott Cowan [00:45:30]:

You mentioned something, though. You said you reach out to other nonprofits, that you might be on the board. Did you say you’re on the board of other nonprofits?

Brian Muegge [00:45:37]:

Yes, I’m on the board of one, soon to be two, and then the Gonzaga Arts and Sciences Committee, which starts in September. So I’m only currently on one, but that is set to change soon.

Scott Cowan [00:45:51]:

And are those Spokane area or these Gonzaga, obviously. Spokane area?

Brian Muegge [00:45:57]:

Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know if I want to spend too much time away from Sam and Safe talking about this, but I’m happy to, like, I come back to Spokane with a lot of respect for the community, for a love of the community, and for wanting to see the community be part of the positive change moving forward as it relates to climate and conservation. And so with that, as I, you know, the reason. One of the reasons I moved back to Spokane is the affordability. But also this grant that I was just talking about that we got awarded, which was very transformational, and is interior Columbia Basin focused, which that is basically east of the Cascades, is the interior Columbia Basin. And so that’s why I moved back. But one of my goals, moving back to the community is trying to be the connector of things with folks that may not be talking to one another.

Brian Muegge [00:46:52]:

And I feel like that’s something I’ve done really well in my Life. And it’s like, if you’ve ever watched the movie, Mulan, like the matchmaker scene.

Scott Cowan [00:46:59]:

Never watched that.

Brian Muegge [00:47:00]:

Well, this is the end of this interview then, because you should come on now, Scott. But there’s a scene all my millennials people will know, but it’s like the matchmaker scene where she’s dressed as a geisha. It’s like, to me, if I could do that as that matchmaker, not necessarily romantically, but like a connector, you know, connector, that makes me feel really good. And I would rather channel that into something that is positive from a conservation perspective. You know, if I was just in the connector to be a connector, I’d probably try to be a politician. You know what I mean? Like, that’s more the natural trajectory. But, like, if I’m going to do what I do and what I think I do, well, I would want to do it for a climate and conservation benefit. And so that’s like the.

Brian Muegge [00:47:45]:

The base of me coming back to Spokane. And then. Yeah. So I’m on the board of one nonprofit called Washington Wild, which is an advocacy and policy nonprofit. They largely focus on protecting public lands and open space. And one of I think the really cool things that they do as an organization is they have what’s called the Brew Shed Alliance. So they have. And this is kind of how I found out about them.

Brian Muegge [00:48:06]:

So they have an alliance of breweries that will sign on to coalition letters of policy, sometimes state level policy, mostly federal policy. And that could be anything from like the Pebble Mine or like something impacting Washington more specifically, I guess. So, like, there was a mine, proposed mine in the Skagit Headwaters as an example. This is probably three years ago. And Washington Wild put a coalition together of a lot of both local Skagit Valley breweries, but others across the state that were all saying, like, look, we care about cold, clean and abundant water. We don’t want this because it’s going to impact us downstream. And so they do a lot of that type of work. And they do have a really positive relationship with growers.

Brian Muegge [00:48:47]:

Right. Like with farmers. Because me, you farmers, we all have a vested interest in protecting the uplands because that’s where the snowpack is and that’s where the clean water is. So if you screw that up, we’re going to get impacted, and farmers absolutely will get impacted in an outsized way. So that was exciting for me to be able to volunteer my time with them as a board member, but still have it relate back to farmers and clean water.

Scott Cowan [00:49:12]:

Right.

Brian Muegge [00:49:13]:

So that’s been really fun.

Scott Cowan [00:49:14]:

So it’s. Yeah. There’s a synergy between what you’re doing.

Brian Muegge [00:49:18]:

And Same with GU. Right. Like they. I was not a part of the certification Salmon Safe certification program because I am with Salmon Safe. Like there’s a distance there. Right. But I was the reason that it probably happened, or at least the conversation started, was me as an alum saying, hey, I studied biology on this campus and I have thought a lot about this footprint of this campus as it relates to the adjacency of the river and the inputs. So.

Brian Muegge [00:49:47]:

And that led to their sustainability department really taking that and running with it. And it’s been great. But. But so my involvement with Gonzaga is more wanting to see that campus transform over time as a conservation hub, both on campus and then with research and how that relates back to the river and fish. Because Spokane, if you’re not aware, you may not be this Upper Columbia United Tribes Group, which is a consortium of the Upper Columbia tribes in our area, are collaborating to reintroduce salmon into the Spokane river, which historically there were chinook salmon that made it all the way up to the Spokane before any impediments downstream. And Spokane specifically was a culturally significant site for many of the tribes who would come to fish. And so they got extirpated with lower dams downstream and other habitat, water quality issues. And so there is currently the habitat and the fisheries biology team for a couple of those tribes are working in tandem to at the current phase figure out if when they reintroduce adult chinook salmon, can they survive? Can they spawn naturally in such an altered drainage a hundred years later? So anyways, with all that, Spokane is working on some really like they’re releasing fish.

Brian Muegge [00:51:08]:

Excuse me. Right. Basically right next to Gonzaga downstream. So like it’s. Yeah. So anyways, long story short, like, those are kind of how my involvement with those organizations kind of weave together.

Scott Cowan [00:51:20]:

Yeah. It’s kind of like they do overlap with.

Brian Muegge [00:51:22]:

Yeah, totally.

Scott Cowan [00:51:24]:

I love to ask this type of question to. For organizations is. And we’ll go out. I’m going to let you tell me how far in the future you want to go. What does the future look like for Salmon Safe. What do you guys, you know, two years out, five years out, probably going beyond that. The crystal ball is really, really foggy and we don’t know. But how.

Scott Cowan [00:51:45]:

What’s on the horizon for Salmon Safe?

Brian Muegge [00:51:47]:

Well, as I mentioned, probably diversifying some funding so, you know, maybe firing back some. Some conversations with other foundations. Right. Like, I think that’s more of the immediate future. And, yeah, so I think that’s. That’s probably our goal from a funding perspective, programmatically continuing to expand and dig deep within the Columbia Basin. There’s a lot of. Lot of areas that we could be working further in.

Brian Muegge [00:52:17]:

So I would say our focus would be finding areas and those partners on the ground to really help extend that, and then I think, further integrating our program within channels that are already existing. I’ve developed a pretty good relationship with the Washington State Conservation Commission. They are the commission that is that lobbies for funding for our 45 conservation districts in the state of Washington, which basically provide cost share and offsets to farmers to promote conservation on working lands. And so. So I would like to see our program further integrated with folks like that, whether it’s through, you know, a grant or whether. Like, just more statewide integration in Washington and Oregon and institutionalized integration.

Scott Cowan [00:53:05]:

So. Okay, we could go on and on and on, but did we overlook something? Is there something glaring that we didn’t bring up?

Brian Muegge [00:53:17]:

No, I think. Well, I mean, we didn’t really talk much about what’s comprised of the farm standards themselves. You know, I mean, I did say they’re built upon the needs of Pacific salmon. Cold, clean, and abundant water, but.

Scott Cowan [00:53:27]:

Right.

Brian Muegge [00:53:27]:

But really on the landscape, that’s looking at, you know, I’ve thrown around the term inputs, but that’s pesticides or herbicides.

Scott Cowan [00:53:34]:

Right.

Brian Muegge [00:53:34]:

You know, all those. But that’s also fertilizer. Right. How are you applying fertilizer? Because that can run off. How are you using your water? That’s a big one if you are. Some of the farmers that I work with, they just don’t have some. I mean, some are obviously, take fantastic diligent notes. But there are some folks that I begin working with who our program is a way for them to really start monitoring and tracking things.

Brian Muegge [00:54:03]:

And I think that’s the value for, you know, for farmers that we work with who have done this for 20 years, like, our program is more of just like, checkbox. Like, I know I’ve been doing all this great work. Now I’m gonna get market. You know, like, I’m gonna get rewarded in the market from it. Whereas, like, there’s kind of a spectrum, a continuum of growers who are maybe the early adopters, but then kind of middle of the pack. And even, like, you know, ones that are just starting. Right, right. Those are the ones who, you know, I.

Brian Muegge [00:54:33]:

I get really excited too, because it shows generational change or thought change, and there’s. There’s a way that we can come in and provide a framework that’s helpful for them. So. And that’s where they can start to like take better record keeping. They can really start establishing like thresholds as an example of like pesticide usage if they need to. And just like really start like at the ground level of farming operations to hone in these practices over time. So. So yeah, I would say, yeah.

Brian Muegge [00:55:00]:

Irrigation efficiency, the habitat, like we mentioned before. Yeah. Inputs, pesticides, animal management, if there is one, manure management.

Scott Cowan [00:55:10]:

Right.

Brian Muegge [00:55:10]:

These are all important things. And of course, riparian protection, that is like number one. Right. If there are, if there are farms that have a riparian area and riparian meaning near a body of water, whether that be a lake or a river, how are those areas being protected? Because they are highly, highly critical for water quality, but also species.

Scott Cowan [00:55:31]:

Right.

Brian Muegge [00:55:32]:

So.

Scott Cowan [00:55:34]:

Well, let’s talk about you again. You know, you. When you’re not doing all this work, what do you like to do? Let me reframe that question. You move back to Spokane, it’s Saturday morning, got the weekend in front of you before you bought a house. And because you’ll never have a weekend in front of you. I don’t know if you’re, I don’t know if your agent told you this.

Brian Muegge [00:55:58]:

Yeah, he lied.

Scott Cowan [00:55:59]:

He lied.

Brian Muegge [00:56:00]:

Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:56:02]:

No shade on real estate agents because I am one. But what’s an ideal weekend for you? Like what? Like, what do you like to do?

Brian Muegge [00:56:10]:

Yeah, well, I’ll put it like spring to fall because in the winter I don’t really do much ski sports, you know, so I’ll just kind of like hibernate. Yeah. Hunker down a little bit or that sort of thing. But the best, One of the best ideas that I think the city of Spokane has had over the past 60 years is the Centennial Trail, which is a nearly contiguous 40 mile stretch of protected trail to Coeur d’ Alene from west of Spokane. Now in parts of Idaho, it’s not officially connected yet, but eventually it will be. But to me that is such a good idea because it connects the city by foot or bike or rollerblade. You know what I mean? Not motorized vehicles much to. Yeah, all the lime scooters that I see on there, which is stupid, but, but I really enjoy going on the trail.

Brian Muegge [00:57:01]:

Whether that’s jogging, biking, birding, looking at plants, I really enjoy that. Like, I’ve been getting more into cycling, which has been great. But yeah, I, I also am a fish person in general. You know, I. My number one hobby from ages like 22 to like 20, 28 was like fly fishing.

Scott Cowan [00:57:23]:

What? Okay, you’re older than 28. So what bumped it or what got in the way of life?

Brian Muegge [00:57:28]:

The fully functional male frontal lobe of our brain down. I’m just kidding. Although it’s been nice to have it. I’ve really enjoyed it so far. But no, I mean, I like, I. I really just needed to like investigate that fully. Like, I was just. And I still am really like enamored by the fact that like, you can just like tie on this little thing that, that is mimicking a food of a trout or some other species of fish and cast it in a way that is not going to scare the fish away.

Brian Muegge [00:57:55]:

In fact the opposite and entice it to eat it. So like, to me, I was really intrigued by that. And what a good place to start that in college too. Like in Spokane. The Spokane river has our native red band trout, which historically were steelhead, so that those same fish, prior to downstream blockages, would migrate to the ocean. They were Steelhead, which is rainbow trout. Anchor Onchus micus is, is a scientific name. But when a Rainbow Trout has its.

Brian Muegge [00:58:28]:

When it decides to become a steelhead and go out to the ocean, it’s called a Steelhead. And we still don’t quite know why, but they’re just the ones that are metal. You know, they’re like, you know, the river’s cool, but like have you about the ocean and then they of course, like come back and they’re huge. Right. And that’s if you ever see a picture of a steelhead. But so anyways, like, I do really like fishing in the Spokane. We’ve got red band trout. Definitely should have more populations and we should.

Brian Muegge [00:58:53]:

But our river is highly impacted from mining history and on point source pollution and that sort of thing. But also in Idaho, Idaho, just north and east of us, has some incredible rivers. The St. Joe, the St. Mary and the north fork of the Coeur d’ Alene. These are all really incredible rivers to fish. We have west slope cutthroat trout, which are native to like the panhandle of Idaho and western Montana.

Scott Cowan [00:59:17]:

Okay.

Brian Muegge [00:59:18]:

And they’re awesome. Like, they’re really cool fish. So yeah, I like getting out and fishing still. I’ve kind of been distracted by birds too. You know, I’m a part of Spokane Audubon I do really enjoy birding and with the new house that I bought, I’m restoring part of my backyard to native plants. So. So yeah, I’ve been doing a lot of plants and, and bugs.

Brian Muegge [00:59:41]:

So yeah, it’s just kind of like I’m perpetually intrigued by different parts of the natural world, you know. But I always come back to like, it’s not like they ever go away. Like, it’s not like I’ll never. Not like fly fishing. Like, I’ll probably go in the next like two weeks because we’ll probably hit the Spokane and it’ll be great, you know. But instead of just being like hyper focused on fishing and locked in, like, I probably will be looking for monarchs because they’re starting to. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, but like before maybe I wasn’t as interested in like the plants and insects around me as much and, and fly fishing helped with that because you do need to have an understanding of like, okay, what is flying around me? What fly can I tie on to mimic that? But I still didn’t have that same level of interest as like I might now have, knowing more that I know about plants and insects that. That inhabit them.

Scott Cowan [01:00:29]:

So, okay, see, I lobbed you a softball and you whiffed. I said it’s Saturday morning.

Brian Muegge [01:00:36]:

Oh yeah.

Scott Cowan [01:00:37]:

And you didn’t take the, you didn’t.

Brian Muegge [01:00:40]:

I was I supposed to say in Indaba Coffee if I was, if I.

Scott Cowan [01:00:43]:

Was a fly fisherman? I just, I missed. Yeah, I just. The cast went bad.

Brian Muegge [01:00:47]:

Yeah. Okay, so you hooked me in the cheek on the back cast.

Scott Cowan [01:00:50]:

Yeah. So one of my standard questions, which I was trying to get to differently, but nope, we’re going to go back to clubbing you over the head. Where’s a great place to get a cup of coffee?

Brian Muegge [01:01:00]:

Spokane. I knew that was coming. Yeah. My personal and. And shout out Spokane. We do coffee shops. Great. We’ve got a lot of great small roasteries.

Brian Muegge [01:01:12]:

My favorite. I really like Atticus Coffee. That space is really great. They’ve got just a really cool little storefront and then some great coffee. But I have always been a fan of Indaba Coffee. Their downtown location is a really great area. If you want to meet with friends, study. It’s got great AC when it’s hot.

Brian Muegge [01:01:33]:

All of them I think do actually. But I just bought a house in the west central neighborhood of Spokane and there’s a Indaba on Broadway and it’s walking distance from my house. It’s great. I’m very lucky to have two coffee shops within like five to seven minute walk of me.

Scott Cowan [01:01:50]:

That’s like a requirement of homeownership.

Brian Muegge [01:01:52]:

I know. It’s amazing and it’s almost a running joke with the Indaba guys because. Or the people that work there because one time this happened like two, three weeks ago, I ordered coffee and a burrito and sometimes, as you may have tell, I get kind of excited and interested in wildlife and we’ll get kind of on a heater and then forget about whatever the hell we were just talking about. But I remember I ordered a burrito and coffee and then I took my coffee and walked out. The guy working and like, as I cross the street, he goes, I just hear this. Sir, sir, you forgot your burrito, sir. I just turn around and this guy’s like sprinting with a burrito in his hand like a football. And, and so now I, I, whenever I go in there again, I’m like, let me get, let me get one of those burritos.

Brian Muegge [01:02:38]:

Are you wearing your running shoes? Like, let me, yeah, let me make sure you’re, Let me make sure you’re ready for this.

Scott Cowan [01:02:42]:

You got your track spikes on.

Brian Muegge [01:02:43]:

So, yeah, it’s been a fun, it’s fun to build community that way.

Scott Cowan [01:02:46]:

So what’s your, what’s your go to coffee drink?

Brian Muegge [01:02:48]:

I drink cold brew. Maybe like 345 to 50 days of the year. Yeah, I mean, if it’s really cold, I’ll, I’ll break, but. Yeah. I don’t know.

Scott Cowan [01:03:01]:

You’re just a cold brew guy.

Brian Muegge [01:03:02]:

Yeah, the, and I used to drink it a lot with cream. I still do at times. I used to think that it would be better for my teeth and my stomach if I did that, but neither of them seem to. Maybe my teeth. I’m not, I mean, they’re fine, but like, I now really just only drink cold brew. Straight 16 ounce cold brew.

Scott Cowan [01:03:20]:

And what do you think of Nitro Coldbrew?

Brian Muegge [01:03:22]:

Not as big of a fan. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the foam, but maybe I just haven’t had one. That I’m all right with coffee.

Scott Cowan [01:03:29]:

Yeah, there’s one wrong answer with coffee.

Brian Muegge [01:03:32]:

Which is what?

Scott Cowan [01:03:32]:

Pumpkin spice. Like, that’s just, that should be like banned. I, you know, I’m sorry. No, I’m not.

Brian Muegge [01:03:40]:

Yeah. And I, I definitely frequent Starbucks too. Like, don’t think that I don’t. I’m on the road so much that I know exactly what I’m getting.

Scott Cowan [01:03:48]:

Look, the thing about Starbucks is. Yeah. The consistency of it. If you’re here and you’re here in Wenatchee today, right, and you want to go get a cup of coffee, do you know where to go?

Brian Muegge [01:03:57]:

No. I literally almost went to a Starbucks to get lunch and then I passed by Jimmy John’s and very similarly. I wish I had done my diligence.

Scott Cowan [01:04:04]:

But if you don’t know and you know, when you want. When, when we want coffee, we want co coffee. And Starbucks serves a point.

Brian Muegge [01:04:11]:

Yeah.

Scott Cowan [01:04:12]:

Okay. So speaking of lunch, and please don’t answer this with Jimmy John’s, but where’s a great place to get lunch in Spokane? When you’re prepared.

Brian Muegge [01:04:19]:

When I’m prepared. You know, I will say there’s some really fantastic food options in Spokane. Like, I think that is one of the. You know, if. When someone’s like, what should I do in Spokane? I’m like, well, we’ve got great food. Because I think it is generally cheaper to have a restaurant in Spokane than Seattle. So like, if you’re a younger restaurateur, you know, it’s still expensive regardless as a restaurateur, but like it’s. It’s not crazy.

Brian Muegge [01:04:43]:

So you can kind of get a start there. And I think that’s really developed like a really strong cohort of. Of food in Spokane. I mean, I. Wooden City is an example. They’re a relatively newer restaurant. They’re not quite lunch, although you probably know they’re not lunch. They’re more like happy hour and dinner.

Brian Muegge [01:04:59]:

But they’ve got amazing food. I really like the grain shed too. The grain shed is a. It was co Founded by a Chef Jeff, now a real estate agent and also a business person and then a farmer based on the Palouse. And so the grain shed sources grain, chickpeas, all sorts of things from a co op that sources from Palouse farmers. Many who I work with. So it’s nice to be able to support.

Scott Cowan [01:05:32]:

Close that circle.

Brian Muegge [01:05:33]:

Totally, totally. Yeah. And they brew beer too, which is great. And yeah, so can’t. Got a couple really cool cooperative models of like Link Foods, Link Malt, the Grain Shed and then Wild Grain Co Op, which is. Those two are breweries. But so, yeah, I would say the grain shed. Flying Goat Pizza is always good too.

Brian Muegge [01:05:53]:

Up Northwest and then Wisconsin Burger is good. Shout out Iron Goat with the burritos that they have. Perry Street Brewing and Iron Goat Brewing have two really, really good burrito and wrap. Really deals. Oh, yeah.

Scott Cowan [01:06:08]:

Okay.

Brian Muegge [01:06:08]:

They’re good.

Scott Cowan [01:06:09]:

Yeah. Don’t normally ask this question, but I think in this case it might be kind of fun. Okay, so we’re going to recap your life. Northern California, Spokane, San Francisco, which is still Northern California. But you go back, you go to Seattle, you’re back in Spokane. I’m going to give you the ultimate power. You can Pick one new thing to add to Spokane that you want. What would be that thing you would add to Spokane? No shade to Spokane here, folks.

Scott Cowan [01:06:37]:

It’s just like, what would be. Like, what? Spokane.

Brian Muegge [01:06:40]:

This is a great question, because I have so many ideas. You know, I used to think Zoo or Aquarium, which we don’t really have either of those. We have Cat Tales, which is a big cat rescue up north. And then we have, like, some strip mall like, thing that’s not accredited. But the more I think about that, the more I think that a robust natural history museum.

Scott Cowan [01:07:04]:

Okay.

Brian Muegge [01:07:05]:

Now, we have some areas, like. I mean, we have like, the Doris Morris center on the valley on Saltese Flats. That is like a. Not open necessarily to the public, but it’s got, like, they do a lot of, like, education and outreach. There’s a couple other smaller centers, like the West Valley Wildlife center that do, like, they talk about wildlife and conservation, but, like, I’m talking about, like, the Burke Museum in Seattle, if you’ve ever been, like, a institution that does research on our native landscapes.

Scott Cowan [01:07:40]:

Right.

Brian Muegge [01:07:41]:

But also one that is incorporating traditional ecological knowledge.

Scott Cowan [01:07:46]:

You just wanted to be the director of Marmot.

Brian Muegge [01:07:49]:

Yeah, well, I’d love to be the director of that whole facility, but, yeah, man. I think when you talk about the region of Spokane, it’s hard not to talk about the uniqueness of the fact that you’ve got a city that’s basically smashed in between the Northern Rockies, the Channel Scablands, and the Palouse.

Scott Cowan [01:08:05]:

Yeah.

Brian Muegge [01:08:06]:

So between all those places, Spokane just swirls and spoiler. It’s just a bunch of rocks, like, basically glacial Lake Missoula just was like, hey, you want rocks? Here they are. Here’s all the basalt. You ever one bigger one? Yeah, here it is.

Scott Cowan [01:08:16]:

All right.

Brian Muegge [01:08:16]:

But, like, within that is just, like, such a unique place from a. From a geology, from a plant, from a wildlife perspective, but also from a, like, human perspective. Like, we, like the. The humans that lived in the Columbia Basin Plateau in our area. Like, it was tough, you know, I mean, it was hard, right? I mean, it was. I mean, it was nice to have the big giant June hogs is what they called spring chinook. Right. Like those gigantic, you know, huge salmon that would come up.

Brian Muegge [01:08:43]:

But, like, it was tough. And they really had to be resourceful and innovative. And they just think there’s just such a experiencing, like working closer with the Coeur d’ Alene tribe and a lesser degree of the Spokane tribe. It’s just been really inspiring to hear their story. So I think a center like this, talking about. And actively incorporating tribal knowledge and tribal stories, but also talking about just the richness of wildlife and species here. I think we go a long way because something that I really get frustrated with is like. Like, you’re letting.

Brian Muegge [01:09:18]:

You’re really giving me an opening to tangent here about this. But I was just having a conversation with this about a friend of mine where, like, as a society, we’re taught, especially as men. I’ll speak from the men the man perspective as someone who’s like, consumed media, sports media, as a football and baseball fan growing up. Like, all the commercials as a kid watching those shows were trucks, lawns, steak. Like, it was just like.

Scott Cowan [01:09:46]:

And beer.

Brian Muegge [01:09:46]:

And beer, right? Which, you know, that one’s fine. You know, we’re okay with beer. But like, the. This idea that, like, as a man, I need the biggest truck and the nicest lawn and I need to, like, have dominion over things, right? Which, like, you know, has its roots in the Bible, I guess it’s not a new thing. But, like, I think that has translated to people not recognizing the beauty in like, the urban home. You know what I mean? Like, so many people, particularly in Spokane, right? Like, we have the Spokane Valley, Rathrum prairie aquifer, amazing aquifer, but it is becoming more and more depleted. And we still have people who are so entrenched in this cultural. Like, I need my lawn to be green and pristine.

Brian Muegge [01:10:35]:

It doesn’t matter if it’s in August when it’s 100 degrees. I’m going to irrigate my sprinklers at 2pm when it’s 95 degrees, like a guy I saw on the drive over. But, like, I really wish that we could have an institution like a natural history museum, but also have it part of that education, be K through 12 education about, like, championing our endemic species and how beautiful they are and how you can support that because, like, you as a person can. You can plant native plants in your yard and spoiler, they’re super easy, right? Like, literally, they. They adapted in high desert, right? Like, you can literally, like, you know, some like to be irrigated a little bit when they’re young, but, like, really, like, at the end of the day, like, so I like. I guess if I’m putting it all together of, like, what I wish, it’s kind of related to former question you had. It’s like I could wave a magic wand and have more people in the Spokane region appreciate and understand just how bloody amazing the geological, biological histories of Spokane and know that you can support it in your own backyard by doing, you know, supporting pollinators and plants, etc.

Scott Cowan [01:11:46]:

All right, now, I warned you there was going to be the last question.

Brian Muegge [01:11:50]:

Oh, boy.

Scott Cowan [01:11:50]:

Yeah, yeah. And now you agreed the rules are. I’m going to ask you the question you promised you would answer it and give me your reason why.

Brian Muegge [01:11:57]:

Okay.

Scott Cowan [01:11:57]:

Remember those rules?

Brian Muegge [01:11:58]:

Sure.

Scott Cowan [01:11:58]:

You signed the pledge.

Brian Muegge [01:11:59]:

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure.

Scott Cowan [01:12:01]:

So here it is, really simple. Cake or pie? And why?

Brian Muegge [01:12:05]:

Depends on the type of cake and pie. But I’ll probably go more towards pie than cake.

Scott Cowan [01:12:10]:

It has to be cake or pie. All right.

Brian Muegge [01:12:13]:

Pie.

Scott Cowan [01:12:13]:

Pie. Why?

Brian Muegge [01:12:15]:

I’m not a big, like, frosting. Like, there’s a lot of sugar in cake. There’s a lot of sugar in both. But like, I just. I don’t know. I don’t like that fruit gets thrown into cake sometimes too. I’d rather eat my fruit and then eat my cake, but I don’t want to eat cake and fruit together.

Scott Cowan [01:12:28]:

So what type of piece?

Brian Muegge [01:12:29]:

Pumpkin pie. Yeah. What do you think?

Scott Cowan [01:12:36]:

That hurt.

Brian Muegge [01:12:37]:

Yeah, I mean, I’ll. I’ll eat berry pie, too. I mean, I’m not. Not necessarily picky.

Scott Cowan [01:12:42]:

Well, obviously. Could you eat pumpkin pie?

Brian Muegge [01:12:44]:

Yeah, of course. Because I’m. Yeah, because I’m a loser. What’s the cheesecake? No, there’s a. What’s the type of pie that’s like a cheesecake pie, but it’s cheesecake. Right. What’s the. Is there another name for a piece that’s like a cheesecake?

Scott Cowan [01:12:57]:

I don’t.

Brian Muegge [01:12:58]:

I think it’s cheesecake.

Scott Cowan [01:12:59]:

It’s called cheesecake.

Brian Muegge [01:13:00]:

I don’t like that.

Scott Cowan [01:13:00]:

You don’t like cheesecake? No.

Brian Muegge [01:13:02]:

Really? I don’t want cheese on my cake. I want to eat cheese, then I want to eat cake.

Scott Cowan [01:13:06]:

Okay.

Brian Muegge [01:13:07]:

So I’m a simple man.

Scott Cowan [01:13:08]:

I’m. I’m trying not to. I’m trying. I’m trying not to judge you for the, the worst pie choice possible, but. So I’d follow up question. No shade. Okay. As.

Scott Cowan [01:13:18]:

As a kid growing up, go back to your family festive events. Cake or pie?

Brian Muegge [01:13:28]:

Tamales, definitely tamales. But probably cake. Yeah, I mean, that was just way more of a. Yeah.

Scott Cowan [01:13:36]:

You know, And I keep beating that. This has got to be some correlation between what we grew up with and what we like as adults, and you guys are guests, are proving me. I have to give up. I am wrong. It. Almost everybody has the. If you’re saying pie and I go, well, as a kid, you’re like, oh, cake. If they say cake.

Scott Cowan [01:13:53]:

Yeah, we Had a lot of pot.

Brian Muegge [01:13:54]:

It’s like there just wasn’t a lot of, like, pie birthday parties, like, with kids. Like, that’s what I’m thinking. It’s like, oh, like whoever’s turning 12, it’s like, if you show up, they’re not going to be eating pie, they’re going to be eating cake. Correct. You know, correct. But, like, if it was up to me, like, when I got, like, I just. The last cake I ate, my brother passed the bar, so we had a party for him, which was great.

Scott Cowan [01:14:15]:

Okay.

Brian Muegge [01:14:16]:

I remember it being actually one of the better cakes that I’ve had, but I still only, like. I don’t like a big piece, you know, just like a little.

Scott Cowan [01:14:24]:

Just.

Brian Muegge [01:14:24]:

Yeah, but if it’s pumpkin pie, like, I like. Yeah. Does it matter? Whipped or not whipped? Like the whipped cream, like, it could be. No, that doesn’t change your judgment.

Scott Cowan [01:14:33]:

No, I.

Brian Muegge [01:14:38]:

Because I do. I could do both, that is.

Scott Cowan [01:14:42]:

Anyways, Listening’s heard me pontificate on how awful pumpkin is. So why.

Brian Muegge [01:14:46]:

So why, may I ask, you switching to me as the podcaster host and you’re the guest? Why do you not like pumpkin pie? Why. Why so much judgment?

Scott Cowan [01:14:53]:

I just the. The flavor of it. The. It’s just there’s so much variety of.

Brian Muegge [01:14:57]:

Flavor of pumpkin pie. I mean, you can get the, like, can whatever, you know, and I’ll certainly eat that. But, like, there’s some incredible homemade pumpkin pies that I had with, like, cinnamon. Like, there’s some, like, there is some more unique pumpkin pie out there that I also love.

Scott Cowan [01:15:11]:

I’m not a fan of pumpkin almost in general. I’m not a fan of.

Brian Muegge [01:15:14]:

Totally understand squash and all that, and I’m not really either. Let me. I’ll join you on that.

Scott Cowan [01:15:19]:

But it’s. I’m mostly giving you a hard time just for the sake of.

Brian Muegge [01:15:22]:

But it’s all sugar anyway. I mean, that’s really what it is, just a bunch of sugar.

Scott Cowan [01:15:26]:

Okay. So the story that I’ve told most of us as a kid growing up, I was an only child and my mother was an only child. So I have a really, really small family. So it’s not like people are getting confused by, who’s this guy? But my gr. Grandmother, you know, and I’m thinking I’m probably 8 to 10 years old at this time. Do you want some, you know, Thanksgiving. Do you want some pumpkin pie? No. No, thank you.

Scott Cowan [01:15:46]:

Well. Oh, okay. Next year. Would you like some pumpkin pie? No, thank you. Well, you ate. Since when don’t you like pumpkin pie forever. It’s like, I don’t know. I used to think that she was incredibly forgetful.

Scott Cowan [01:16:00]:

Now I’m just wondering if it was a well designed ruse to, like, jerk my chain as a child, you know, and just to make me get real defensive. Offensive.

Brian Muegge [01:16:07]:

Yeah.

Scott Cowan [01:16:08]:

I don’t know.

Brian Muegge [01:16:08]:

That would be a wild grandma move. I mean, you know, maybe every grandma’s different, but, like, that could be a fun. I don’t know. I don’t know enough about your grandma’s personality. Maybe she.

Scott Cowan [01:16:17]:

I don’t see. Here’s the thing. I don’t know either. And I don’t know.

Brian Muegge [01:16:20]:

I’m gonna guess just a wild guess. Probably forgetfulness, just given the age, you know, and the fact that most grandmothers are not sociopaths. You know, some perhaps, Some maybe. Well, she might have been. We talk more about that off the air.

Scott Cowan [01:16:34]:

Awesome. Brian, thank you so much. Of course, I’m gonna put links to Sam and Safe in the. In the show notes so people can ch. Do you have anything you want to close with?

Brian Muegge [01:16:43]:

No. I definitely was waxing poetically about the fact that people need to find the beauty in native species more so. But yeah, if there’s just one thing that I would say is that like, just if you. If you end up in a place that is kind of off the beaten path, sit down and listen because you will be shocked how much diversity of things that you’ll hear from a wildlife perspective. So, yeah. Anyways, thank you for having me.