My Week in our Nation's Capital

As most of you know, I flew to Washington, D.C. last week for the National Wildlife Services Advisory Committee meetings. I was appointed to the Committee earlier this year, and was very excited to be able to join in the conversation with ag producers, veterinarians, biologists, and other stakeholders from around the U.S. as we made recommendations to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue.

My sister, Crystal, and I on the plane headed out of Great Falls.

Flying in itself is a major issue for me – it scares me to death. But, I can proudly say that I did not shed a tear on this trip, even though there were times the turbulence made me clench my knuckles and pray. After flying all the way across the country and back, I am hoping the next flight will be a little less terrifying.

The first day, the Committee met at the USDA building in D.C., where we had to first pass through security to even enter the building. Of course, I set off the alarm and had to be “wanded.” Turns out, it was just my personality.

Those of you that know me well know that I am severely shy when it comes to talking to new people. Thankfully, I had a “mother hen” that I had previously met through Facebook, and she took care of me for the majority of the trip. Once the ice was broken and I was brave enough to speak my opinion and talk to the other committee members, all was well.

The majority of the first day was spent getting updates from various Wildlife Services personnel, including regional updates, feral swine updates, and rabies updates. We received a TON of information in a short amount of time, and I am still trying to process all of it.

Once the updates were complete, we were tasked with reviewing the 2016 recommendations written by the previous committee, then deciding whether to keep, edit, or remove them from the new list. With a committee of 19 people, you can imagine that nothing happened very quickly, but we did get through the list and prioritized those recommendations that we wanted to keep.

The second day was filled with rewriting recommendations and drafting new recommendations. The committee is made up of people from all over America, and it was really interesting to hear the issues that other people are having that relate to Wildlife Services. For instance, I had no idea that Double Breasted Cormorants are so devastating to the south’s fish farmers, costing some of them upwards of $10,000 a day!

In the end, I made some new friends, met some valuable contacts, expanded my knowledge of Wildlife Services and the numerous roles they play, not only with wildlife, but people as well, and came away with a better understanding of how our government agencies work.

Selfie with Representative Greg Gianforte!

On my last day in D.C. I had several hours to kill before heading to the airport, so I made a trip to the Longworth Building to see Montana Representative Greg Gianforte, who welcomed me to his office like an old friend. We talked bears and wolves, and discussed the possibility of Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt coming to Montana to visit ranchers on the Front and get a picture of just what it is like having to live with grizzly bears.

The Washington Monument

Overall, it was an amazing trip and an experience I will not soon forget. There weren’t a lot of free hours in my day to take in the sights, but I did get to tour the monuments after dark, which was super cool, and I even convinced my baby sister to rent a motorized scooter with me and cruise around the monuments for a while!

If you have specific questions about what we talked about or what our final recommendations were to the Secretary, don’t hesitate to ask!

This week, I will attend the Public Lands Council Convention in Great Falls on Thursday, then participate on a predator panel in Dupuyer with the PLC.

Next week I'm off to Helena for the first meeting of the Governor's Grizzly Bear Advisory Council! I'll try to keep you all posted on all the issues!