President Elect Mike Howe called our hybrid zoom/in person meeting to order promptly at 12:12, and welcomed everyone to today’s meeting.

Laurie Morgan and Megan Bratton were our greeters and Megan introduced the members who brought guests.

Doug McLaughlin is back today after recovering from back surgery.

Gena Jensen let us know that the celebration of life for Bill Mortimer will be June 26^th from 2-4 at the National Historic Trails Center.

Vickery Fales Hall nominated everyone for all they did at the Crossroads Adventure Park Cleanup on Saturday including Kyle Gamroth (for taking the chair position that day), Mike Morrisey (for offering to take over if Kyle was unable to be there), Bill DeGraeve, Guy DeWitt, Dick Jay, Deb and Gene Theriault, Eric Easton, and Kyle Gamroth’s Mom. Gene and Deb were double nominated for buying lunch for everyone on Saturday.

Steve Loftin nominated everyone who helped pack meat at the Food Bank last week,  Jim Allison, Becky Byron, Guy DeWitt, Tim Havasi, Ryan Jackson (Five Trails), and Steve Loftin.

Gena Jensen and Mike Howe nominated Sabrina Kemper for the fabulous festival for the City of Mills Anniversary Celebration. 

Miamie Sleep nominated everyone who was at the Mills celebration to help sell Duck Derby tickets, Michele Wistisen, Jackie Hotle, Gena Jensen, Linda Blackstone, Lori Klatt, Fred Feth, Randy Hein and Connie Brezik. She then let us know that we will need help selling tickets up at Bear Trap Festival there are signups on the table.

 

Dan O’Dell sputtled the announcement that the Golf Tournament will be July 31, please sign up to sponsor or golf.

Maribeth Plocek announced that there is information on the tables about the Toast Masters event and meeting. Please call her if you have questions.

PE Mike Howe announced that on the tables is the proposed budget for the club for next year that they will be going over at the next board meeting so look it over and if you have any comments or questions, please let a board member know. He said to notice that there is a proposed $50/year club dues assessment to each member to help pay for operations since we made the change in the bylaws that we can’t use donations from our fundraising to pay for operations costs.

Dave Hefflin, sponsored by Jim Grenfell, gave his classification talk today. He started with the important stuff; he has two grandchildren. He showed us pictures of a family gathering with everyone, his wife of 33 years and his siblings. Then more of the grandchildren. The best was his Grandson grabbing a crab out of the bucket and the crab latching on to his left hand, ouch. He started his career as a CPA with Arthur Anderson, served as the President of the Chamber of his hometown in Mississippi. He worked corporate finance for years with several companies, then he spent almost 20 years in Higher education as CFO, COO, and President at different schools. He has had some great opportunities. He got a call from Jim Grenfell offering him the opportunity for a job and most importantly to serve through working at Wyoming Housing Network. He is also an author who has written two books and is working on his third, a mystery thriller. You can see his books and buy them at davidhefflin.com

We also had a new member induction today, Ed Haller, sponsored by Megan Miller, welcome to the club.

Miamie Sleep introduced Ryan Lance, President of Pathfinder Ranch LLC. He is here to talk to us about the first conservation ranch established in Wyoming. He had a great slideshow and started by telling us that the Pathfinder brand has changed and evolved as they started acquiring ranches around Wyoming. They originally wanted to build a huge windfarm out around Pathfinder Reservoir. However, because of all of the Sage Grouse and other wild life and transmission issues that fell by the wayside. The investor group decided that they would look at the Sage Grouse issue as an opportunity rather than a problem so they accumulated more land and more ranches around the State. Salmons Corporation then bought out the other partners and so they are operating under that umbrella since 2016. One of the charges that the corporation gives is to give back to the communities they are in, so they do that. They have found great partners in Casper as well as around the State, they try to donate between $20,000 to $50,000 annually to causes that are important to their staff and community partners. They also host terminally ill hunters through Bitter Sweet and other charities.

They have about 638,000 acres, over 100,000 deeded, 30,000 State trust lands and the balance BLM and Bureau of Reclamation Property. The cornerstone is still cattle ranching, they maintain 4 grazing associations, which encompass 29 Federal allotments, and 22 State grazing leases which all roll up to 92,000 animal unit months. They have over 6,000 irrigated meadows which they also use for leasing the water to downstream users. They released interest for all animal units’ months for 2023, they have been getting calls from all over but are unable to help everyone who has been calling from States with drought conditions. The benefit of livestock grazing is the best way to manage that large of land mass. They have made significant investments in weed control; they have a lot of test plots going on right now for various products to treat different species of weeds. They are working with Bayer company on some of these especially with Cheat Grass as it is a very invasive species. They are also working on some native plant seed production, with the fire activity the federal agencies have asked to use some of the parched landscape that they irrigate once or twice a year, to plant things like the Rocky Mountain Beet Plant, it is very important plant and the seed sells for quite a bit of money.

The Sage Grouse has been supposedly going extinct since 1916, we have made great strides in protecting them for the past over 100 years but the demands to protect them keeps coming from the rest of the country. 1973 endangered species act protects them so with that regulatory burden we have to care and protect and manage them. In 2008 we were booming in energy which endangered the species so Governor Freudenthal put together a team to look at a system to balance the energy production with the conservation of the Grouse. There was a catch that we had to have an adequate regulatory mechanism, which isn’t well defined but they will know it when they see it. The Sage Grouse range in Wyoming was very much spread into 63% of the current oilwells and potential permits for new wells, they were right in the middle of Sage Grouse habitat. A listing would destroy the energy industries so they came up with a plan to avoid and minimize the impact on the Grouse. They limited exposure and incentivized drillers to stay outside of the core areas, this was the core area strategy that was developed. That lead to going from 65% to under 10% of drilling etc. impacting the habitat to help minimize the possibility of them being listed. It took a lot of meetings and a lot of work but they came up with a good plan that avoided a listing in 2008 and again in 2015. This led to the creation of Compensatory Mitigation, a new term that was born out of the Jonah field with all of the intense development in the field and there was no way to clean up on site. In the Grouse sense Pathfinder worked with Governor Freundenthal to work a mitigation plan, in Core you can still go in there but there are stronger rules. They were able to craft together the habitat bank at Pathfinder and as a result where it used to be almost impossible to get into one of those restricted areas, they can now turn a permit in less than 24 hours compared to years before. With this they have gotten 15 pads approved saving about $5 million to the industry and have accelerated the construction of pipelines etc. for the energy industry. Whenever they sell a credit then they have to put a certain amount of their land at Pathfinder under conservation easement. With that they have secured over 16,000 acres not only for Grouse but for other habitat as well. Out of every credit they sell they contribute 6.3% of that sale to the State Board of Land Commissioners and with this they have funded to the State about $1 million. They have tried to extract as much value as they can from the land and fit well with the Wyoming landscape, through their conservation efforts. They are currently working with the US Army Corp of Engineers on developing wetlands, they are currently working on 7 miles of the Sweetwater to fix the run from Independence Rock to Devils Gate. They are trying to build dams similar to the way beavers do it as the Sweetwater used to be a beaver dam complex. They will be selling the credits from this project to anyone who disturbs wetlands. They are also working on Charismatic Terrestrial Carbon Sequestration, which basically is preserving land and that land sequesters carbon. They are working with a gas producer to pair the carbon in Pathfinder’s land mass with their natural gas supply so that they can sell their product in other areas. Wyoming is perfect for this type of offset bank for the environment.

He then opened it up for questions.

They are also hoping to grow more trees along the Sweetwater to repair the prairie with cottonwoods and willows.

He was asked what happens to the credit if the other area is restored? He said that it is retired in perpetuity so that even if the reclamation or something did not go right the company will not be on the hook due to the purchase of the credit. Less Liability issues.

He was asked about the incubator to hatch more Grouse and he said they are focused on helping the habitat but they are also watching this project that is going on to see how it does and maybe in the future they may see what they may be able to do there but not right now.

He was asked about fire mitigation, they have spent time with the State forestry service for training on wild fire mitigation and fighting, they have a State Forestry fire truck available and they work with the fire districts. As far as drought they have a drought plan that the level of drought dictates what they shut down or move.

He said that the biggest factor on Grouse predation is Crows and Ravens and since Ravens are migratory birds, they can’t be hunted so it causes a double whammy.

 

President Elect Mike Howe concluded the meeting at 1:05, he let us know that next week, we will be at the Hilton Garden Inn and on Zoom. The speaker will be State Superintendent of public instruction Jillian Balow.  

“Rotary Opens Opportunities”