In this episode of The Articulate Fly, host Marvin Cash welcomes Robbie Kroger, founder and Executive Director of The Origins Foundation, for an in-depth conversation about hunting advocacy, wildlife conservation and the sustainable use model that's shaping the future of global conservation efforts.

Guest Expertise: From Wetland Scientist to Conservation Advocate

Robbie Kroger brings an unconventional background to hunting advocacy. With a PhD in wetland ecology and aquatic biogeochemistry from the University of Mississippi, six years as a professor in the Wildlife Fisheries Department at Mississippi State and over 100 peer-reviewed publications, Robbie served as chief scientist for the BP oil spill restoration framework. His science-based, measured approach to communication sets The Origins Foundation apart in the hunting advocacy space.

What You'll Learn: Reframing the Conservation Conversation

Discover how The Origins Foundation communicates with non-hunters (not anti-hunters) using honesty, respect and scientific reasoning rather than emotional arguments. Robbie explains why sustainable use of wildlife isn't a silver bullet but rather one of only seven critical tools in the limited conservation toolbox. Learn why value-based wildlife management - whether protecting elephant habitat in Africa or managing wolf populations in the American West - creates incentives for local communities to coexist with wildlife rather than eliminate it.

Featured Conservation Projects: Global Impact Through Action

Robbie details the world's largest cheetah relocation project, having moved 17 cheetahs into 500,000 acres of Mozambique habitat buffered by 10 million acres of protected land, with three more relocations planned for 2026. Hear about upcoming documentaries including "Sauvons Bambi" (debuting June 2026 in Paris) about European hunters using thermal drones to save roe deer fawns from farm equipment and "In My Footsteps" profiling the first scholarship recipient from a South African hunting charity who became a successful architect. The Foundation is also building schools and clinics in South Africa and Zambia while working on rhino and lion conservation initiatives.

Public Lands and Management Philosophy Insights

Drawing on his experience growing up under South Africa's private wildlife ownership model, Robbie contrasts it with America's revolutionary public trust doctrine where wildlife belongs to everyone. He discusses the chronic underfunding of agencies like USFS, USFWS and BLM, arguing that public-private partnerships, biodiversity credits and creative funding models could dramatically improve stewardship. The conversation explores complex topics like fair chase ethics, social media responsibility for hunters and anglers, wolf management controversies and why both sides being upset with you often means you've found the right position.

Join the Conversation

The Origins Foundation actively engages with supporters across all social media platforms, typically with Robbie responding personally to messages. Whether attending major hunting shows from Wild Sheep Foundation to Safari Club International or meeting supporters for roadside coffee in Australia, the Foundation maintains an accessible, ego-free approach focused on lifting up the entire conservation community rather than self-promotion.

Sponsors

Thanks to TroutRoutes for sponsoring this episode. Use artfly20 to get 20% off of your TroutRoutes Pro membership.

Related Content

S7, Ep 98 - The Fight for Our Future: Land Tawney on Grassroots Advocacy and Public Lands

S6, Ep 97 - Fly Fishing Wisdom and Industry Pet Peeves with Greg Senyo

S7, Ep 2 - Nomadic Waters and the Allure of Amazonian Peacock Bass

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Helpful Episode Chapters

00:00 Introduction

04:50 A Non-Conventional Advocate

08:33 Understanding the Public Land Model

12:10 The Birth of Blood Origins

19:14 Engaging Non-Hunters

21:40 Management Philosophy Explained

25:16 Reaching the Persuadable Middle

33:48 Balancing Perspectives on Wildlife

38:08 Upholding Ethical Standards

43:40 Upcoming Documentaries and Projects

51:41 Managing Public Lands

59:07 Engaging with The Origins Foundation

Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly. On this episode, I'm joined by Robbie Kroger, the founder and Executive Director of The Origins Foundation.

Robbie's vision is to advocate for hunters by promoting sustainable use of wildlife and communicating specifically to non hunters. Join me as Robbie shares his hunting journey, the underpinnings of his approach at Origins, and the great work Origins is doing around the globe.

Think you're really going to enjoy this one, but before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items. If you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating and review in the podcatcher of your choice.

Help figuring out how AI can boost.

Your bottom line, or just need help with some old school blocking and tackling, we would love to hear from you. Check out the link to our consulting page in the show notes. And finally, a shout out to our sponsor.

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With over 350,000 access points mapped across 50,000 trout streams and much more, Trout Routes has all the data you need to help you find angling opportunities that others will overlook. Up your game and download the app today.

Use code artfly20art f o y20 all one word for 20% off of your Trout Routes Pro membership at maps.troutroutes.com now on to our interview.

Well Robbie, welcome to The Articulate Fly.

Marvin, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. I know it's been a little bit of a schedule mumble jumble to try and get me to this point and I appreciate the patience.

But here we are.

It's all good. I mean, you were telling me your travel schedule. You're going to be in multiple continents for just a span of about two weeks.

I know you're traveling. You're probably a million miler on some airline, right?

I'm not a million miler yet because I was in the beginning of our travel I wasn't very loyal to one airline. I just sort of picked wherever we could go because we had no money, right?

So it was I would get the cheapest, cheapest, cheapest ticket or we would drive everywhere really. I put you talk about Million Miler. My truck had 230,000 miles on it. And it was like an eight year old truck bought brand new.

So we put the miles on the road. But yeah, I think I'm a Delta guy. So Delta is my hub. Out of Memphis, head into Atlanta that way. And we're certainly loyal now.

And every year we're probably diamond medallion by the middle of March. So we travel a lot.

Yeah, well, the important thing is to get those flat seats for all that transatlantic flight.

Right?

Well, I don't get those. We are not that kind of nonprofit. So I get a nicer seat than the cattle class, but that's about it.

Fair enough. Well, before we dive into the Origins Foundation, I wanted to learn a little bit more about what initially drew you to the outdoors.

You know, in South Africa, a boy growing up in South Africa, you know, you, you love the bush, you love nature, you love seeing all these, all the wildlife. And you know, kids in America aspire.

Young boys or young girls aspire to be, I'll just call it young boys aspire to be firefighters and policemen and all that kind of stuff. But so in South Africa, we want to be the same thing, but we also want to be a game ranger.

We want to be that guy that drives people around, drives American tourists around and shows them elephants and shows them lion and on walks, you know, stops at a certain bush and says, if you chew this leaf, it's going to give you a numb mouth. So you've got a toothache, you can chew on this leaf. And so I wanted to be that person and I became it.

I did a little bit of that, but that's where my love of the bush sort of started and my love of wildlife, I studied it. I fell in love with swamps at 16 years old. And that's what led me down my career. I got a PhD in wetland ecology and aquatic biogeochemistry.

But my family just loved the, you know, loved the outdoors. My grandfather was a huge hunter, lived everywhere in the world from Russia to northern China to, you know, his final years in Mozambique.

Uh, my father the same and you know, grew up, he grew up in Germany, spent his time in Mozambique and South Africa, opened the business in Brazil. So it's just, you can see all the things like that you see, you hear from me today is almost like this product of my family up until now.

Yeah, it's really neat. But I want you to expound a little bit because I mean, you have a very non conventional background for a hunting advocate.

So, I mean, let our listeners know a little bit more about kind of your educational background and then kind of all of the field work you did before you started Blood Origins.

Yeah, so I didn't, I didn't hunt at all. Okay. So when I was, when I was growing up, I grew up in a town called Johannesburg, South Africa. Eight and a half million people.

We didn't talk about hunting. My friends didn't hunt. I wasn't thinking about hunting. I was the exact audience that I speak to today didn't have an opinion about hunting.

I knew that my grandfather hunted. I knew that my father had hunted. I'd read stories of theirs. I've seen trophies on the wall like up behind me right now.

Those are my grandfather's trophies. But that was it. And so I have an education in environmental conservation biology. I have a BSc, a Bachelor of science in that.

I have an honors in botany, I have a master's in botany and then I have a PhD at the University of Mississippi in technically in biology but specializing in wetland ecology and aquatic biogeochemistry. Have been a professor at Mississippi State for six years in the Wildlife Fisheries Department. I published over 100 peer reviewed articles.

I was the chief scientist of the BP oil spill that happened. The biggest ecological disaster that's happened on this planet.

I was the chief scientist in charge of standing up a restoration framework for the first billion dollars from Texas to Florida. And in that entire time I was starting to hunt. I was exposed to hunting here in the United States through friends.

And it was just, it was just this natural sort of occurrence. I started getting better, better, better jobs. My resources were a little bit more.

And so I started traveling more and I started traveling more to hunt.

And I guess it's just this idea of, I don't know, it just came to me like I have two small boys, five years old and three years old at the time or four years old at the time. And I wanted to take them hunting because I never got to experience that when I was a kid.

And I wanted them to see deer hunting and I wanted them to experience it and experience trapping and all the things. And I could explain to them biologically why we were doing it, but I couldn't explain to them like from my heart while we were doing it.

And so I had to learn that. And for some reason instead of just talking to people and instead of just reading or watching videos.

Well, actually the reason I did it was because I couldn't find anything reading, I couldn't find anything in videos. So I said, well, I'll just start project a side project A hobby, a passion project on understanding the heart of a hunter.

That's what started Blood Origins. And yeah, I would say you're right. It is a very non conventional. I am not American, I have an accent, I have a PhD.

So I have the acumen to defend positions, rhetoric. I use science a lot. And yeah, now it's, you know, we've changed the name to the Origins Foundation.

Now it's more sustainable use of wildlife which, you know, 90% of which is hunting. And our voice is the same. Our voice is science based. Our voice is very reasoned, our voice is very purposeful, our voice is very measured.

We don't get upset, we don't get, we don't, we don't resort to name calling. And again, we're rooted in essentially the truth and an unbiased look at what we do and how we do it.

Yeah, really interesting.

If we back up a little bit, I think it'd be interesting for our listeners to understand why you had to wait until you came to the United States to have your first hunting experience when you're kind of in the Mecca of big game huntings where you grew up. But also too. What about that first hunt that really lit the fire for you?

Yeah. So South Africa is a very different wildlife model than the United states. It's actually 10, it's 180 degrees away from the American model.

The American model is a North American wildlife management model which is a public doctrine. The public, the resources, the wildlife resources belong to the public. In South Africa it's the opposite.

The wildlife resources belong to the private individual.

If you've got an enclosure of adequate stature, they call it adequate enclosure which is high fence or an appropriate low fence, then the animals belong to you. You can do with what you want. So there's no public grounds, there's no real access to public wildlife in South Africa to hunt.

So it's not that I was chasing that.

Just number one, wasn't available to me or anybody in South Africa and two, I just didn't, you know, obviously based on my background, wasn't going to be exploring that. My friends didn't explore it either.

So, you know, coming to the United States and understanding public land and understanding the freedoms that we have here, the rights that we have here, it was pretty amazing to know that I could, you know, from where I'm sitting right now, I could drive 30 minutes and in the appropriate season have a loaded weapon. Walking on ground that belongs to you, Marvin, belongs to me and actually belongs to the world.

Because anybody in this world can go and walk on it, which is just an amazing, absolutely amazing situation. And so when I started hunting, I didn't start. I didn't start hunting on public ground. A lot of people do.

I started with a friend inviting me to go deer hunting, whitetail deer hunting, and it was Mississippi, so it was the classic sort of redneck Mississippi hunting, which was stuck under a tree with a lawn chair. And he said, here's your gun. This is how it operates.

I'd obviously got my hunter's education class, and I'd done everything I needed to do, had my license. And he said, if something walks by, shoot it. And so I can't say that.

Like, I had this sort of romantic, like, amazing first hunt, and that's what sort of sold it to me, and that's what I wanted to do. It was just the thing to do. It's the thing that everyone did in the Beats. It was almost like akin to, as I said in my.

My group in South Africa, we did things that everyone did there, right? You played sports, you went out, you did all those things. Well, the same group of friends that now I had established in Mississippi, they hunted.

That's what they did. So actually, I'm gonna hunt and I'm gonna participate. And that's just how it started. And then it just grew and grew and grew.

I can't say that, like, now my fire is completely, like, lit, because I guarantee you the next hunt that I do is going to add a log to that fire, because there's things that I've never experienced. I'm still a very, very nascent hunter, so. Yeah.

Yeah, very interesting. It's kind of funny. So I grew up in central Virginia, and it was not uncommon for people to skip school the first day of deer season.

Yeah, Pennsylvania, they. They give it all. In Pennsylvania, first day of deer season is off, school is out. Yeah, amazing.

Yeah, that's how it is in the western part of Virginia. But, yeah, it's an interesting thing. And so, you know, so you kind of get that first taste. You're in graduate school.

You know, you're progressing in your career. So you get to kind of range about a little bit more as you're hunting. You're having kind of more and more sophisticated experiences, I guess, to say.

But, you know, do you remember that light bulb moment when you said, hey, I'm going to kind of create this little side thing called Blood Origins?

No. Like, it wasn't actually tied to hunting. It was more.

Again, it was more tied to my boys, was More tied to, like, reading my grandfather's stories again. My grandfather was a prolific writer, so I just picked up some of his stories and started writing, reading some more of his stories.

And I was watching outdoor television and Sportsman's Channel and all the things that we all watch. And I guess in my mind I was like, man, I could do that. I could be that creative.

Maybe in my brain I was like, man, I see a niche here that nobody's filling, so why don't I try to fill it?

Not knowing anything about what I was stepping into, didn't know anything about, and I still don't about cinematography or photography, and I leave that to the professionals. I just had an idea, and I had an idea of how I wanted to communicate and I. And I had an idea of how I wanted it to look.

And then I just had to learn everything else. Like, you know, what is the distribution strategy when it comes to media? I didn't know I had to Google that.

You know, how do you, how do you do Facebook and Instagram and how do you, you know, all of this stuff? We just. We're still learning, Marmont.

We're still learning, even though we're, you know, we started with nothing and we're over like 450,000 people across all of our platforms right now.

So, yeah, it's interesting because there are kind of two things you said that really resonate, you know, one, I kind of.

I fished as a kid, but I came to fly fishing probably in my early 30s, because I wanted to have something to do with my boys that would compete with video games and soccer. Right?

Yeah.

And so, so that was part of it, but also too. I mean, I've kind of had the same experience at the Articulate Fly, where you're like, well, let's try this.

And then, you know, if you're relatively bright, I mean, we've put out a thousand episodes, so I mean, that's amazing. Yeah.

But I think, you know, to your point, if you're kind of bright and motivated, you know, like, this isn't like when we were kids and you were getting stuff in the mail, like you can literally, on a thousand dollar supercomputer in your pocket, talk to anyone in the world and find out anything that you're interested in. And so there's really no excuse for trying these experiments.

No, it isn't. And honestly, Marvin, I'm living the epitome of the American dream.

There's no other country in this world that you could have an idea brain, fart it out and Work hard at it. Right. You work bloody hard at your podcast. We work bloody hard at what we do and just nose to the grindstone every single day.

And now it's my full time job and I travel around the world.

Yeah.

Who else can say that? Who else can build something like that? Only in a place like America. It's just like it's.

And the fact that we're a nonprofit, a charity now, that's what made it happen. That's. And it's the philanthropic heart of Americans that allows something like that to happen.

Yeah, it's super interesting and I know it's an ever evolving thing. So the challenges never go away. They just get different and bigger.

Right.

But so you're about five years in.

You know, can you share maybe like your biggest surprise or one of your biggest challenges as you're kind of building out things to get to the Origins Foundation?

Yeah, I think we do things differently, Marvin. And it's, it's a, it's a. In our industry, probably the same thing in the fly. In the fly fishing industry. There's a lot of ego in the industry.

We have no ego. I could, you know, if it, if I just happen to be a face in the voice of the organization and because we need one, that's. It could be somebody else.

I just happen to have an accent and the acumen. So, like, all right, you're the person. You're the face and the voice. But I don't have to be in. In all of our videos.

I can hire other people to be in other. In our videos.

We just don't have an ego and we have an ethos which is on I am second ethos, which is if you, Marvin, are doing great work, I'm going to lift you up. I'm going to tell everybody about how good a job you're doing.

And I'm going to look at the guy next door to you who's your competitor in your space, and I'm going to lift him up too, because he's doing good stuff. And that's an anomaly. Nobody does that. That's just, that's altruistic. I want to be altruistic.

We want to have a rising tide that rises all ships, and that's what we are and that's what we do. And that has been surprising to the industry.

And so because that's surprising to the industry and it's unique, that was the biggest hurdle to climb over, is that you're not doing this for yourself or you're not doing this. Just you Know, I was like, no, we're doing this for the betterment of the community that we're all a part of.

And then secondly, to raise money, we had to break the typical marketing model, which was a company A gives you X amount of dollars, and in return they get Y. Well, I. Before we turned ourselves into a nonprofit, every time I asked for money, they would say, well, we need Y. And I would be like, I'm not.

Why would I give you. Why? Think about what we're doing. We're changing this narrative and this perception around hunting for the world. It's good for us.

It's good for our community. You should believe in me and do that. Well, everybody said no to me. Everybody. Marvin. I didn't get a single dollar in three and a half years.

And because of that, we didn't belong to anybody. And we could say whatever we wanted and we could talk to whoever we wanted.

And so then when we turned ourselves into a charity, now I could go to company A and go, I'm a charity. Would you give us X to help support what we're doing and you're not getting why?

And they said, yeah, we'll do that because we have proven ourselves now. Right. We weren't just a fly by night. We had proven ourselves. And now it's. It's just standard.

Like, people know that, like, when they give us money, we're going to be thankful. Don't get me wrong. We're going to talk about them, but we're not delivering. Like, you have to give us, you know, four posts a week or whatever it is.

So those are the two things that I think we've sort of upset the apple cart a little bit, but that were a couple of challenges that we had to climb over.

Yeah. It's always interesting when you try to do things a different way, and it's almost like you're speaking a different language, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so for.

Obviously you're.

You're, you know, you're a hunting advocacy group, but, you know, you focus on non hunters and, you know, why should non hunters care about what you do?

Yeah. So we are obviously heavily advocating for hunting. However, we do say that it's not the golden. It's not the. It's not the panacea.

Hunting is not the silver bullet to wildlife conservation. It's a very important tool in a toolbox. That's very limited, Marvin.

If you think about the things that you can do in this world for wildlife conservation, it comes down to like, seven things, one of which is Hunting. And so a non hunter, the general public that we speak to needs to understand that we're on the same team, we're after the same thing.

I think most people in this world, the vast majority, would, when you ask the question of what is your goal, what would you think around wildlife conservation? Is that good thing or bad thing? I reckon half, you know, not half, the vast majority, 90% or more, would say it's good.

We want to protect wildlife, we want to support wildlife conservation, we want better wildlife in the future. And we agree.

And we just want to educate you about this tool that has a bad rack around, it has bad PR around, it is malaligned to say it's not as bad as everyone portrays it to be. There's a sector of our world that hates what we do because it doesn't fit philosophically with the way their beliefs.

And instead of saying, we don't like your activity, but we can still see the benefits that come from it, I. E. Wildlife conservation, habitat protection, they choose to try and get rid of the tool. And so that's why we speak to that general public, we speak to that non hunter and say, hey, that non hunter. Let's just make sure we, from a.

We're clarifying from a definition that non hunter is a non hunter, it's not an anti hunter. So we just want to, we just want to sway their decisions towards the more positive side of, of sustainable use, I. E. Hunting.

Got it.

And so it's interesting too, because kind of, as I was doing research for the interview, I sort of think of the Origins foundation as a management philosophy and a communication strategy.

Right.

And I, and I think of the management philosophy as sustainable use.

And I would really like you to kind of expound on that and like, kind of why that management philosophy is kind of the bedrock of what you're doing at the Origins Foundation.

It's the bedrock. And to me, the reason we're focusing so hard on it is because we believe it's the future, it's the future of wildlife conservation in this world.

The reason it's the future of wildlife conservation in this world is that the human population on this planet is burgeoning.

Yeah.

There's certain countries that definitely the human population is starting to trend down, but there's no place in this world that the pressures on habitat and wildlife are not being felt because of humans.

And because of that fact, we as humans have a greater responsibility to steward the remaining habitat and wildlife that we can look after, which means sustainable use needs to play a role in making sure that we protect habitat and protect wildlife in the future.

Because if wildlife has value to Joe the farmer and an elephant raids his crop every fortnight and that elephant has no value, what's going to happen to that elephant, Marvin?

It's just going to keep on doing what it's doing.

It's going to get poisoned or it's going to get chopped.

You know, it's hamstring chopped by the local villages and they're just going to slaughter it because they're sick and tired of their crops being raided.

But what if there was a sustainable use model in that area where that elephant could potentially be hunted by someone and money generated for the community and the village, what then? What has just changed in their mind? The change is a value.

So I'm willing to accept some risk and crop damage because I know that that elephant's actually doing more for me alive when somebody comes in and hunts it appropriately than not. Nobody hunting it, nobody using it sustainably. And I just hate that animal.

So that's the premise, that sustainable use provides more value, not all of the value. Again, it's not the silver bullet, it's not the panacea.

It provides more value to wildlife, which means wildlife will be looked at in a way that will be sustained for our kids and our grandkids one day.

Got it. And you know, and then the communication strategy and we talked, you know, you focus on not anti hunters, but non hunters. But you're also.

Your storytelling is a broader arc of the hunting experience or it focuses on, you know, the human experience. Kind of like planning all the way through to the harvest and after the harvest. And that's one.

It's very different than most hunting communication strategy.

Right.

Like, you know, if you go to Outdoor Life Network, that's usually not what's going on, but the other.

Speaking to a hunting community. Yeah, their communication strategy, their communication strategies.

We talk to hunters, so we're going to show hunts, we're going to show people killing things.

Yeah, it's.

Yeah.

And so the interesting thing too is that's also a very different strategy from kind of your professional background. Like that's not a, like a, that's not the way you generally talk to people about what's going on.

And so I was kind of curious how you settled on, let's just call it the persuadable middle for your communication strategy.

You know, it's not that far different from what I was doing from a science perspective.

My science was all management based, so I was using my science to sway politicians and politics and almost the general public to say, and back then I was in the farming space, agricultural farming space, and using wetlands. And so I was using my science to convince others that this is good. Same thing.

Now I'm using communication strategies, whether it's science, whether it's blog articles, whether it's podcasts, whether it's films, whether it's documentaries, whether it's, you know, commenting on social media as a means to sway opinion on this thing that I think is good.

Yeah, I get that.

I guess what I'm saying though is most people generally, they try to kind of preach to the choir as opposed to finding the people whose minds they can change. And that's a, you know, I wouldn't say it's singularly unique, but most people are not that sophisticated in their advocacy.

Yeah, no, you're, you're absolutely right. I think you, you've got to, we've got to, we, we are constantly looking at it through a lens that this person that we're into.

So a couple of, couple of lenses. We look at this when somebody engages us and calls us every name under the sun. They typically are not a non hunter. They typically are an anti hunter.

And so what the lens that we immediately go to is one of honesty. We very, are very upfront.

Like if they're commenting on a picture that looks terrible, everyone's seen those terrible hunting photos, we gotta be honest and go, yeah, you're right, that's a terrible photo. We agree with you. And so you're disarming them immediately.

And then secondly, like, then you say, well, let me, let me just for a second, let's talk about the things that came because of that, that hunt. Let me, let me talk to you about the village.

Let me talk to you about the person, Let me talk to you about the community upliftment that came from that hunt. That individual that I'm engaging with is not going to get his mind changed or her mind changed.

Okay, but depending on the account, depending on the situation, there could be fifty thousand to a hundred thousand people that read what I wrote. Most of them are non hunters and, or hunters.

And so for the non hunters, we have just put our, ourselves in front of them because again, you can't believe the voyeurism in this world when it comes to social media. There are lots of people that don't engage, they don't like things, they don't comment things.

They just, but they want to read, they want to be in the know. The FOMO is big, right? So I want to be involved. I want to know. Well, they're seeing me do a couple of things. They're.

They're getting information out of my comment.

They're seeing a character of a hunter interacting with an anti hunter, keeping his cool, keeping his character, keeping respectful, all of those things. And then the hunting community that's watching me is looking at it, going, oh, I want to. I want to interact like him.

So it's almost like a little peer pressure system that we're building. And I see it every. Like we've been going now, you know, as a nonprofit for five years. I see posts where I get tagged into things.

We get tagged into things. That sounds like us, but it's not us writing it. So there's definitely a pervasiveness that's happening in how people engage, which is huge.

It's very, very, very important in how you engage online because it shows, you know, it's a. It's a broader look at what the community's character is like.

Yeah, it's interesting, too, because, you know, I know this is your criticism of social media. You know, the harvest, whether you're hunting or fishing, is such a little part of the entire experience. Right.

You know, like, even for me, like, I do a little bit of upland bird hunting, and, you know, I don't really care about the birds. I love just watching the dogs work, right. Because they're just so happy, and they want to make the. The people that are on the hunt.

So, you know, they want to be, you know, good servants, basically, and they just. They're so enthusiastic.

Like, to me, that's like, you know, if you get to go out on a brisk day and walk around with a shotgun and watch the dogs go, that's an amazing day.

Amazing day. Yeah.

So the reason why, you know, I. I rack my brain all the time, like, why are we, as a hunting community, not talking more about the things that I want them to talk about? And the reason is because they're communicating to their. Their peers, their community. They're communicating to hunters.

And the way that hunters communicate with one another, just like fishermen. How do fishermen communicate with each other, Marvin? They send pictures of their fish.

Yep. Size and size and number. Right?

That's it. Same thing with hunters. And so back in the day before social media, before the advent of social media, that's what you did.

You send photos in the mail. You put your photo up in the. In the. The local outdoor shop. Right. You had that pin board. Same thing with fish. Everyone checked it out. Why?

Because the people that were going into those stores were your people. Now think of those, those little things, those outdoor shops as greenhouses. Those greenhouses now exist in this world of social media.

They still exist. You still share your pictures, right?

But now they're on devices and the world is looking through the glass of the greenhouse and seeing everything that you're sharing. And they're like, we don't like that greenhouse. Look at the stuff that's happening in that greenhouse. It's not anonymous anymore.

It's not just tied to our community anymore. It's out for the world to see. And so we have to change some of the imagery. We have to change some of the things that we talk about.

And it's difficult because the community upliftment, the person you just employed, the schools, the medical, the meat distribution, the sunsets, the camaraderie, the fire, that's all not very sexy communication to our peers. So we don't naturally do it.

Yeah, it's interesting. And from my perspective, that's all the most important stuff to talk about, right?

Yeah. But I'd even challenge you, like, if you do hunt and you do all those things, how many times have you spoken about it?

I talk about it, but I also, too, I generally don't share, like, fishing and hunting pictures. Right. Like, I was just up in Pennsylvania, I just shared a cover bridge picture.

My theory on that is not that I've got any great communication strategy. My theory is that I have enough pictures of me holding fish and that they're plenty, they're plenty for my kids.

And when I can't remember anymore, it doesn't matter. So I don't need to take the time and, you know, do all that sort of stuff. And so I generally just try to kind of stay out in the moment.

So it's no great, you know, insight on my part.

Although I will say, you know, you generally now, with Instagram Carousel, you can have some really nice kind of storytelling montages if you're deliberate about collecting the pictures. But, you know, it's interesting too, right?

Because your management philosophy, I think I remember doing research for the interview that, you know, you were pointing out how incredibly complicated the wolf management issue is out in the Rockies. Right.

And you have, you know, it's not just a hunting, not hunting, you know, one of seven management tools, but also you have, you know, an incredibly broad cross section of interests.

Right.

Ranchers, BLM managers, you know, and to say that we live in polarized times is a pretty much an understatement.

You know, how do you kind of keep the fortitude to have this nuanced approach for sustainable use and communication and the onslaught of this, like, you know, it's either good or bad. There's nothing in the middle. There's never any gray. Because I think, I think that's a really challenging place to be as a communicator today.

Yeah, it is. And. But I think we have, if you. I think in any issue. And we'll use the wolf as an example.

I think in any issue there's enough data and logic to show that, hey, where I live, that isn't the shoot, shovel and shut up of wolves. And the other opposite side, which is never shoot a wolf, ever. You sit in the middle and you go, I think you're wrong. And I think you're wrong.

And so if both sides are pissed off at me now, I've actually found the place where I need to be. So let's just talk through it. With wolves. I like wolves, so that means I'm on this side. I like them on the landscape, which means I'm on this side.

But I also believe that states have to have the ability to manage wolves, which means I'm on this side.

Now I think that you look at the data and the science of wolf reintroductions and wolf repopulations across the west as well as in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, those objectives have far been exceeded in terms of recovery objectives for Fish and Wildlife Service, which means they do not need protections anymore, which puts me on this side again.

But I'll also say that I believe that because of all the policies that we have, all the regulations that we have, the ESA and all the things that come at a state and federal level, that we will never go back to wolves being extirpated from the landscape which sits me now and very much now in the middle. And they say, well, how do you know, Robbie? There's an example. Look at Idaho. Idaho has a thousand two hundred wolves.

And so I think there's this, there's heavy, heavy emotions on both sides. I think sometimes I look towards more of our side and say, man, this should shovel, shut up rhetoric is not good for us.

Like every time you say that, that's sort of like a dart that I have to pull out of our skin because this side is saying, see, see, look at you guys. You guys don't care. But I think that there's more and more of me in the, in the digital media landscape than there was.

And I think that that sentiment is growing and growing. Look at the ranches in Colorado. The ranches in Colorado before the wolf reintroduction happened were totally against wolf.

Wolves being on the landscape. But wolves are on the landscape now. Are they still in the shoot, shut up and shovel model? No, they are. Okay, we have to deal with this.

How do we deal with this? We need to have.

We, we're trying, doing our best here, but we also need the opportunity and the ability for lethal management because it's going to get to a point where it's like, we've tried everything. Help us. Like we need help. And that help could be pay us, we've lost 50 cows. Pay us half a million dollars. We'll live with the wolves.

Same as the elephant example. Marvin. So there's obviously very, very, very divisive topics, but we approach it every topic the same way that just described it to you. Wild horses.

Hugely divisive topic. Maybe the one I don't approach, the way that I just described is feral cats.

I think feral cats are just terrible on the landscape from a biodiversity perspective. Luckily, we don't have a much a big issue here in the States, but Australia, like, it's a. Decimating.

It is the number one decimator of biodiversity in Australia. Yeah.

Interesting.

Do you ever worry about, you know, hunters that don't share the values you're trying to espouse of the Origins foundation kind of riding your coattails and kind of using you as kind of a useful mouthpiece, but not, you know, kind of standing behind the values that you want to embody?

It's a good question. I don't think we've ever experienced that yet. The people that will be with us are our kind of people.

But the people that do say, that's hypothetically somebody goes, yeah, we're with you, we're with you, we're with you. And then do something unethical. You know, we, we, we're getting to points in our community that people are starting to say things.

And in that scenario, if I knew the person, I'd be like, dude, you've got to say something like, that's even, that's even worse when you're unethical and don't say anything or, or like, no, no, it's fine when you know it isn't. So I think also a sign of maturity and a sign of character is, yep, I messed up.

Like, that was wrong and sort of just you know, put a flag in the ground. Yeah, it's, it's you, you are bringing up a great point. And we are very cognizant of.

We have an image, we have a character, we have a thing that is what we do and how we do it. And if somebody like, oh, that's me, I do that. And then they go and do something counter to that.

As long as they're not, you know, one of my board members affiliated with me, hired by me. I think there's enough gap there to say, okay, you said you believed, but did you really?

Yeah. Whether it's over commercialized and I mean that in the sense of like not embodying kind of fair chase in the process or things like that.

I could see, you know, times to basically say, hey, this isn't how we do this.

Right?

Yeah. There are things that they're very clear like that's not us.

Fair chase, you know, even though defined by Burchase, is very, a very gray, slippery slope in multiple directions. In those kinds of situations, we prefer to talk them out to try and understand.

So for instance, somebody would say, I think Boone and Crockett even has it in their definition. You have to be within the radius of the animals like purview for it to be fair chase. So what does that actually mean? It's a very gray area.

So for a white tailed deer, does that mean I have to be within 50 yards of that deer before I kill it? So what happens if I shoot it at 300 yards? Did I just exhibit non fair chase principles in what I just did?

So we, we will always have that thought process. We'll always talk it out. We'll always ask big questions. Because I want people to think about it, right.

I want people to really question if you're saying someone's unethical because they shoot game at 500 yards because they're a long range rifle shooter. Why is that unethical in your mind? I want to understand, I need to understand why you stand where you stand.

Oh, because the animal doesn't know you're there. Okay, so what if they went to 320? What's that number? That. And how do you know it's that number? Is.

Has science proved that deer can only see this far or they can only smell this far?

What if I did a really good job and got, you know, upwind and if there's just lots of questions in that, in that scenario, we will always talk it through is what I'm trying to say.

Yeah, it's interesting.

It's almost like you have to kind of come back and ask yourself if the way you're pursuing the animal is plugging into that broader story arc that you kind of philosophically agree is kind of, for lack of a better words, the hunt. Right. But, yeah, I mean, it's a complicated thing.

But, you know, we have that in fishing too, where, you know, you'll see people, whether it's an etiquette issue or, you know, I mean, people don't read anymore. Right.

So, you know, God forbid you would actually know what the fishing regulations were in that whole way of, like, how do you talk to people on the river in a way that's constructive? Right. That's not. Or even like, you know, younger kids. Right. They're on the river, they just don't know.

Right.

And you have an opportunity there to help, to help them and not educate them in some really kind of nasty hierarchical way. But, you know, you give them an experience, it makes them appreciate the sport more and actually want to fish more.

Kind of, I guess, in consistent with the norms.

Right.

Yeah, it's, you know, you hope that youngsters are learning from their elders or others that have decided to mentor them. And my job is to help, I guess, mentor those mentors. Right. Is help. Like, here's. I want you to. I want you to think about these kinds of things.

I want you to think about how you interact with people. I want you to think about character and your interactions and respects and.

Things like that.

Yeah, well, we're going to go to the lighter side now. We're going to talk about the fun stuff. Right.

So why don't you tell us about some of your kind of recent and upcoming documentaries and conservation projects, because you got some really cool stuff that's, you know, I don't know what's in the pipeline, but I see what's on the website and you got some really neat stuff. You want to share that with our listeners?

Yeah, we've got some, you know, we work all over the world. We've got, I'll tell you a couple of things. Working on, obviously, the world's largest cheetah relocation project right now. We moved 17 cheetah.

I geek out every morning. Our cheetahs have satellite collars on them, so I can see their movements every day.

I can think about like why they're moving, why they're moving, what are they doing here? Why do they split? Please don't go across to that area. We don't want you to be in the human habitation.

But then at the same time we're like, you're going to have to learn, like, don't go in that area. So that's cool. That's at least a five year project. We're at the end of year one right now. We have a documentary coming out in June of next year.

It'll debut in Paris, France called Savon Bambi. And Savon Bambi is about the original narrative that sort of started an anti hunting rhetoric, which is Bambi. And it's the.

A lot of people don't realize that the deer in Bambi is actually a roe deer. It's a very common species of deer across Europe.

And roe deer babies, baby fawns have spots on them and they get hidden in hay fields between the middle of May and the middle of June. They're typically born in that timeframe. And so mom hides them in the fields.

Well, it's also the same timeframe, based on weather conditions, that farmers cut their fields for the very first time. And so they chop Bambia. And so the only people that actually care in this scenario are hunters and hunting organizations.

And so these guys go out every morning with thermal drones and they find baby roe deer and they pick them out of the fields and move them. And the guys come in, the farmers cut the fields. There's no PETA, there's no Humane society, there's no NSPCA doing any of this work.

In my footsteps about an individual who received the first education monies from a hunting charity in South Africa. And because he was number one, he had to be successful.

If he wasn't successful, then the program would have collapsed because what's the point in investing in kids if nothing's coming to fruition? Well, this individual is now a very accomplished architect in a very accomplished architectural firm in East London in Port Elizabeth. Sorry.

And we followed, we went and told his story and then we took him back to where he started and made him walk the same streets that he walked as a kid and the hostels that he stayed in. And it is a powerful, powerful piece. We got a veteran turkey hunt coming.

That's again a very powerful piece about how healing helps these veterans, helping in the outdoors helps them. We've got work on rhino trade, we've got a lion conservation piece.

We're investing in building schools and clinics in South Africa and Zambia next year. We've got a lot on the go. Marvin.

Yeah, I think the interesting thing too about the cheetah relocation is that, that you're not relocating them to then harvest them later. You're relocating.

No hunting.

Yeah, so it's. There's no hunting, you know, there's no harvest there. You're actually moving them because the species is incredibly endangered.

Yeah, incredibly endangered. Requires new habitats, requires open range systems to be repatriated into. And truly it's a range expansion project.

You want cheetahs to be in broader habitats. And we know that there's a couple of transient cheetahs in this system, not very many.

And we probably think there's probably six to 10 in the area based on all of the anecdotal information that we've gathered. And now we've put 17 into the system and we plan to put more into the system.

And the system, really, our area is a 500,000 acre area just on the border of, in Mozambique, on the border of Zimbabwe.

But it buffers up against probably 10 million acres of adequate cheetah habitat that's all protected, whether there's some hunting concessions, there's some photographic concessions, there's some national parks. So it's a really beautiful blend of all the, as we mentioned in the beginning, all of the uses.

Sorry, all the tools for wildlife conservation in this landscape.

Very neat. And so as I kind of come back. Right. So I'm a, I'm a fisherman first and we have similar issues.

There's a little bit of difference, you know, so we've got like wild fish hatchery, we've certainly. There's a lot, particularly on the saltwater side, like with striper and redfish. You know, there's a lot of commercial recreational divide.

And you know, we've got the public private issue and kind of catch and release versus harvested, but all that stuff kind of goes in the soup.

And I was kind of curious, you know, your thoughts on how we, the fishing and the fly fishing community could use your approach to kind of open the aperture to get better solutions. Right. Because it's not, you know, there's some places that have to be private to be protected. There's some places where you have to harvest fish.

You know, people have to make a living. So, like, how do you. Moderate commercial versus recreational harvest, you know, Kind of.

Any thoughts about, you know, how people can apply what you, you know, you've learned and you're implementing on the hunting side to their fishing communities?

I think we've already, we've already sort of worked through that, which is you need to.

We need to get away from just sending and talking about the number of fish you've caught and how big the fish is, to really taking the, the, the idea of all those things by the scruff of its neck and saying, here, like, make it public. Like, this is what happens. Like, this is why it's private. Anybody know why it's private?

Has anybody talked about why it's private, why it needs to be private here? Let's talk about it. Let's have a podcast about it, let's have a field day about it, let's have a documentary about it.

Let's build some infographics that show the changes in biodiversity as a result of that effort. Hey, let's talk about the economic upliftment that comes because of this.

Hey, let's give you the data of the fishery and how well it's doing, because we did X, Y and Z, and that's why we need X, Y and Z implemented in, elsewhere, because the same thing's going to happen.

And I'm sure CCA is doing stuff like that, and I'm sure there's other organizations, Trout Unlimited, doing things like that, but maybe not at the scale of what's needed like we're doing. And so it's just, it just takes a different mindset, Marvin.

That's all it's going to require is somebody approaching it from the mindset like we do, which is we're not actually interested in the fishing, but we're in your camp, we're in your community. Like we. I'm not interested in the hunting. I'm interested in all the things that come as a result of you doing what you're doing.

And how do we take all of that information to defend why you do what you do and help you keep what you do, protect what you do, grow what you do?

Yeah, it's interesting.

I think we're going to have to fight a similar battle on the social media front, because I don't think that, for lack of a better word, the influencer culture we have going on in the fly fishing community is really lending itself very well to that richer narrative.

But they could, they could. They're prime, too.

Yeah, well, something on the list for 20, 26. There we go.

So to sort of come full circle, you know, you, you had this great public land experience as your first hunting experience in the US and, you know, obviously there's a lot going on in terms of access. Public. Public land access in the United States.

But also too, I think there's a lot going on in terms of funding the infrastructure to manage the public land. And so I was kind of curious if you kind of had some thoughts.

I think it would be great, you know, given what you do, but also the fact that you kind of have this benefit of knowing, like, what it's like to grow up, for lack of a better word. I know you were in South Africa, but that's kind of the European model, like the king owns land and you don't get to go on.

On the land, but kind of share your thoughts about where we are in terms of managing public lands and funding the stewards that we pay to basically make sure we, you know, sustainably, basically reap the benefits of those lands.

Yeah, as I said, the public land system in America is what makes it amazing, what makes it great. I think, obviously we've seen on this administration a constant attack on public lands and changing potential uses of public lands.

And again, you'd expect this from me. I, I sort of get it, which is this whole energy independence component of the strategy. Like, hey, let's take care of our own. We've got things here.

But we shouldn't sacrifice what we have. The greatest riches in which is public land and the ability to access public land. All the benefits that come from it.

Spiritual, physical, mental, feeding yourself, that kind of things. I do, though, believe that we have forgotten about the management. We've forgotten about the stewardship component of our public lands.

The agencies that are in charge of our public lands, usda, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, blm. Those agencies are severely underfunded to do the work to maintain these areas. Right. You just look at catastrophic fires.

That's just the reason we have catastrophic fires is because we just don't have the money and infrastructure to implement a fire regime that is, from a management lens, that's it. So if we gave them more money, we'd have better public lands, we'd have better wildlife, we'd have better resources. To me, that's. It's a huge.

It's a huge thing. The management element is huge. Think outside the box. Let's think really outside the box a little bit.

We can think a little bit of the public private partnership. The public private partnership works very, very well all over the world.

Are there small, like, are there small wildlife refuges no, that are duck refuges that an ngo, local NGO can take over the management of and they co manage with the feds and the private entity. It happens everywhere.

We shouldn't be afraid of that model, we should embrace it because now you've got access to money and people who are interested in doing the work.

So there's, you know, carbon credits, biodiversity credit schemes, tapping into the world banks, tapping into big companies that need those biodiversity credits or carbon credits. Could we not again create a public private partnership there to help our public lands get better, become healthier? That's where I stand.

Yeah, it's interesting, right, because I always, I'm always so disappointed that the framing now is so simplistic, right. It's either A or not A. And there's like all, I always tell my boys, like all the hard work is in the middle, all of it like.

And so, you know, we can walk and chew gum at the same time, I think. And you know, I think it's kind of, I mean where we are now is, you know, people are, some people are scared to death.

They want responsible management but things are being so aggressively moved in the other direction that they're, they're becoming maybe overly protective and not as thoughtful as they could be. But I think it's a, I think it's a super complicated issue.

I mean, you know, I've, I mean, gosh, I, you know, rarely, you know, fish on private land, right. Go get to go out west, right. You just buy your out of state fishing license in Montana. You can go all over creation. It's an amazing thing.

You know, as we kind of wind down, I know you're not speaking because you're going to be hunting for the next three or four weeks.

No, I'm not, I'm not hunting. Oh, I'm working business. It's all.

So this time of the year in South Africa and in the southern hemisphere are all the annual general meetings of all the professional hunting associations.

That's why every year I miss Thanksgiving because the professional hunting association meetings of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Zambia, all happen almost like in a three week back to back. So yeah, I wish I was hunting.

Yeah, well, so, so you're not hunting. So you know, obviously none of my listeners will be able to join you in South Africa for any of those.

But you know, as we kind of look, you know, in the fly fishing world, you know, the wintertime is a big show season for consumer and B2B shows, you know. Or do you have any speaking engagements in the States or Any trade shows, I know you like to go to those as well.

Anything like that, you want to alert folks to where they maybe get to kind of come out and talk to you about this stuff a little bit more, shake your hand, all that kind of good stuff.

Yeah, we're at all of the shows, like, you name it, we're at it.

You know, small chapter shows to the Wild Sheep foundation, to Dallas Safari Club, to Safari Club International, to NWTF, we're pretty much 90% of them. So you, you will see on our socials when we're moving and how we're moving around this world.

And you know, if we're in your area, if you're in your neck of the woods, we'd love to have a coffee with you. We'd love to shake your hand. I just had this experience in Australia.

I was doing a road trip through Australia and I just put on my social, like, this is my route today. Anybody on my route have a pie or a coffee together. And I had multiple people that I stopped on the side of the road. You know, we just.

And they had, they had bought the coffee already and we stopped and we had a coffee together and chatted and took a selfie and off I went.

Yeah. It's kind of cool too when that happens because it kind of tells you that all that hard work of the last five years, you're not crazy, right?

That you're actually reaching people.

Marvin, we were halfway around the world.

Yeah.

And that happened. Which blew my mind.

Yeah.

Which again is.

I always say, folks, you got $1,000 supercomputer in your pocket. Don't look at cat memes on Instagram. Go. Reach out and connect with people.

That's right. That's right.

Before I let you go, is there anything else you want to share with our listeners?

No, I would just encourage everyone.

If you are in the hunting space or even if you're in the fly fishing space, you know, think about those things that sort of made you become a fisherman or love fire fishing or love hunting and, you know, talk about them. Talk about them on your social media, on the digital media. Learn about them. Learn about your why.

Learn about the upliftment that comes as a result of the activities that you love to do. Because you never know when you're going to be in a situation where you have to defend.

May be a dinner party, it may be your mother in law, it may be Thanksgiving dinner, it may be on social media.

And if you've educated yourself enough and you've watched videos, if you Listen to people, you'll be confident enough to make your point and know understand why you're making your point. And I think that'll go a long way in our community. I'm seeing it happen every single day.

So I just, I would challenge people and if you feel like you have a question, you're like, man, I just don't quite understand this. From a hunting perspective, we are not hard to find. You can find us on all the social media platforms.

You can direct message us on all the social media platforms. 90% of the time you're going to be talking directly to me. So it's, it's, I like that personal interaction.

I'm not going to give up that personal interaction. So yeah, reach out.

Very neat.

And so if folks want to learn more about the Origins foundation, support your work and kind of follow your adventures in the field, where should they go?

Just type in the Origins foundation into every platform will come up Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, you name it, you'll find us.

Well, I will drop all that stuff in the show notes folks, so it'll be a whole lot easier for you to find those links.

Well, I appreciate that, Marvin, really do.

Yeah. Well, I appreciate you carving some time out before your, you know, your multi week conference expedition to South Africa.

Yeah, I'm one of those procrastinators. My wife said to me this morning she's had you packed. I said, I haven't even started.

That's because you're a seasoned traveler.

Three and a half weeks of traveling packing is going to happen the next two hours.

Well, thank you so much for making the time. Safe travels.

Appreciate you, Marvin. Thank you.

Well folks, we hope you enjoyed the interview as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Remember, links to all this episode sponsors are in the show notes. Check them out. Tight lines, everybody.