Agencies

Something I don't do much is talk about my personal life. I am a professional in some sense of the word, working for a land grant University. Recently, I rewrote my job description. It is one of the perks of being a UC employee is you get to determine what your job description is. As part of that I added a clause "to work as a facilitator in bringing diverse groups of people to work together to discuss issues, and possible solutions. Basically, I help producers that are having problems with state and federal agencies. Somedays it raises my blood pressure WAY WAY up. I shouldn't let that happen, I really have nothing to gain or lose by the outcome of most of these meetings besides maybe - RESPECT.

So, today I spent 3+ hours discussing monitoring protocols and trying to convince federales that we do not have to reinvent the wheel. The information is out there. We just need to use our collective resources to do it. The funny part of the whole situation was you could see the look on many of there faces change the closer we got to quitting time. The also became more compliant. Note to self- schedule meetings with BLM and USFS close to three. The are much more congenial. :)

I was upset though, besides the wasting of time, the guy in charge of the meeting blamed livestock for juniper encroachment. Not quite sure how that all works but I am going to do a little research on it. I will keep you informed and if HE IS WRONG rest assured he will definitely be informed at 2:59.