2025: a year in review with the chief and assistant chief of the Wildlife Division.

In this episode of the Wildtalk Podcast, we have a lengthy conversation with Sara Thompson, Wildlife Division chief, and Keith Kintigh, Wildlife Division assistant chief, about where the division has been this year and where it is going in 2026.

Episode Hosts: Rachel Lincoln and Eric Hilliard
Producer/editor: Eric Hilliard

• All things habitat
  • Karner blue butterflies 
• All things feathers
  • Wilson's snipe
• All things fur
  • Michigan.gov/Deer
  • Report your harvest
  • Disease and testing info

Questions or comments about the show? Contact the DNR Wildlife Division at 517-284-9453 (WILD) or email dnr-wildlife@michigan.gov.

Transcript

Speaker
You know what that sound means. It's time for the Michigan DNR WildTalk podcast. Welcome to the WildTalk podcast where representatives from the DNR Wildlife Division chew the fat and shoot the scat about all things habitat, feathers and fur. With insights, interviews and your questions answered on the air. You'll get a better picture of what's happening in the world of wildlife here in the great state of Michigan.

Rachel
Hello everyone, and welcome to the WildTalk Podcast. This is your host, Rachel Lincoln, bringing you the December episode. And here with me today, as always, is my co-host, Eric Hilliard.

Eric
You're like a regular Santa Claus coming down the chimney with a brand new episode, aren't you?

Rachel
Yes. My. Oh, what does Santa have? A toy full of—a toy full of gifts—no that doesn't.

Eric
A toy full of bags? Santa has a toy full of bags!

Rachel
Bag full of toys, and a Christmas miracle.

Eric
Santa is really cutting corners this year. You know, he just can't afford the the batting and whatnot to fill stuffed animals. So he's just using...

Rachel
The recycled bags that your grandma has passed down for decades and decades, and you finally end up with it. 

Eric
Yup. 

Rachel
Yeah, yeah. Been there.

Eric
This is actually kind of a special little gift episode today where we're changing the format up a little bit, aren't we?

Rachel
Yeah we are. We're pretty excited to bring this show to the listeners. We've got our very own wildlife division chief Sara Thompson is going to join us. In addition to our assistant chief, Keith Kintigh. We're going to spend the hour chatting with them about really all things wildlife division and kind of what this year looks like for us and what we are excited about moving forward into next year. So we're pretty excited to chat with those two and kind of have a candid conversation about the state of wildlife conservation, right now.

Eric
Yeah, I think I think our listeners will get a lot out of that interview with those two. So definitely worth sticking around.

Rachel
Most certainly. But before we jump into the show, we do, of course, want to take a moment to recognize those who have donated to the Nongame Wildlife Fund to support conservation of Michigan's rare species. We have two new donors, Mark and Maureen Schultz. Thank you so much for your donations to the Nongame Wildlife Fund. This brings the total donation amount to $2,400 since, oh, let's see, September of 2024 is when we started reading names of recent donors. So thank you, Mark and Maureen for your recent generous donations and thank you to everyone who has donated to this fund over the last couple of years. That money goes directly into paying for projects and staff that focus on rare wildlife species and rare wildlife conservation. Don't forget to stick around after the interview today for your chance to win a podcast mug. But before we chat with Sara and Keith, here's a word from our warblers.

Speaker
Hey, Michigan drivers, a little bird told me your license plate can do more than just tag your car. The wildlife habitat plate featuring the iconic Kirtland's warbler helps protect Michigan's non-game fish and wildlife through the Nongame Fish and Wildlife Trust Fund. But hurry, this plate is changing soon. Want to keep the warbler flying? You can even get one as a collector's item. No car required. Support Michigan's wildlife and get your plate before this bird flies away. Visit michigan.gov/SOS.

Rachel
Well, today we welcome to our show the Wildlife Division Chief, Sara Thompson, and our Assistant Chief, Keith Kintigh. I'm so glad you both are here to chat with us. I personally enjoy speaking with both of you very much, and so we're super happy to have you on the podcast to talk really all things Michigan wildlife and to kind of recap this past year and see what we're heading into next year. So thanks for making time to fit into the podcast today.

Sara
Happy to be here.

Keith
Man, it's great to be here.

Rachel
We'll we'll start by helping listeners get to know you both just a little bit better. So how about you both share what your role in the Wildlife Division looks like and what your day to day is like?

Sara
Well, I'm the Wildlife Division chief and I've been in this role for about three years, and I spend the majority of my days in meetings and sharing information from staff and them sharing information with me so that we can make informed decisions and so we can give them guidance and whatever they want to do. I often say that I spend my whole day saying no or signing things. That's about all I do is make decisions. And those are the two choices.

Rachel
And Keith?

Keith
So I'm I'm the assistant chief for the Wildlife Division, and my job is to support the chief and to support our statewide programs. And that includes our wildlife health section, our species management section, and our planning and adaptation and research sections. As Sara mentioned, we we sit in a lot of meetings together, and my job is to act as an advisor and a sounding board for her as we make decisions together. We have great teams in our division with very passionate and dedicated folks. So this is mostly really, really gratifying work.

Rachel
Yeah, I feel like I just want to re-emphasize the number of meetings that you two set in. I tried to schedule our podcast recording like six weeks in advance. And you are really involved. You're very involved with your staff. You're very involved with partners, and you do attend a lot of meetings. It was amazing to schedule this. I was surprised, but not because—you're great Chiefs and you make a really good leadership duo. So the two of you, you work really closely to make decisions for the division. How do you how do you like working together?

Sara
Well, this is a two person job. I could never do it alone. It's it's way too much work. And I had the benefit of hiring the assistant chief that I wanted to work beside. And there's strategy involved in that. And I purposely chose a strategy of choosing someone that's in a lot of ways opposite of what I am. So Keith brings strengths to the table that where I'm a little bit weak and maybe and then I have strengths where maybe he isn't necessarily as strong in those strengths. And then there are places that were both very strong. So it actually works out so wonderful. Like and he has a different perspective. He's had different experiences out in the division than I've had. And so it works very well that we like draft whatever we want to do. We run it by each other, get the other's perspective, and the end product is better than either one of us could have done alone.

Rachel
Yeah. That's great. That's that's what you want to hear from your leaders. It's awesome. You both have been with the department for you have a storied history with the department, and you've been here for a little bit. What got you started on the conservation tract or with Wildlife Division specifically?

Keith
I as far back as I can remember, I wanted to be a field scientist, and I spent a lot of time in the woods and run around in streams and ponds, and never got tired of learning about things like spiders and figuring out animal tracks and that sort of thing. And got to college and was studying, you know, field sciences and didn't realize that wildlife management was even an option, and then took a resource ecology elective with the Fisheries and Wildlife Department and discovered, like, wow, you can do this in Michigan. And so switched my major to Fisheries and Wildlife. And I spent some time out west and considered becoming a research scientist, wildlife research scientist. We were young parents, my wife and I, and it didn't seem fair at the time, but worked out West for a while and then had the opportunity to come back to Michigan and after four tries, got into the department.

Rachel
After four different attempts at positions. 

Keith
Yes. 

Rachel
Yeah, it takes a while sometimes.

Keith
Right. And that was that was 25 years ago.

Rachel
And since then you have been in several different divisions, right?

Keith
Right. I spent most of my time with Wildlife Division over those 25 years, but took a little hiatus with Forest Resources Division, where I worked a lot on conservation programs and sustainable forest certification.

Rachel
Awesome. Well, we're glad you ended up in wildlife.

Keith
Me too.

Sara
So I grew up as a farm girl, so I was outside my whole life. I didn't really know I was studying spiders and bugs and animals, but I was, but I didn't know I was. So I've always had a love for animals. When I was in high school, my biology teacher was my hero, and so I went to college to be a biology teacher because I just wanted to be just like him, and just happened to have to take in an elective class in science. And there wasn't one that fit into my schedule except for introductory wildlife biology. So I took it and the whole world opened up to me. And before I was even done with that semester, I switched my major to wildlife management. And that's kind of what laid the the work for me, being in the division. So then I didn't know it was a career either, just like Keith. And so finally finding out exactly what I wanted to do and that you could get paid to do what I love which is being outside with critters. It just really took off. So like Keith, it's hard to get in with Michigan DNR right from the start. I ended up having to go to Wisconsin for a while, and then I went to Iowa for a while before I could get a job. Basically have enough experience to to compete for a job here in Michigan.

Rachel
I have a few rapid fire questions for the both of you so that listeners can really get to know you. So we'll just go back and forth between the two of you, starting with do you have pets? 

Sara
Yes.

Rachel
I know, how about the the person who has brought a dog into the recording studio goes first.

Sara
Yes, I'm a dog person and I have dogs now, previous to the last, you know, ten years, I also had a small hobby—well, I call it a small hobby farm, but I guess having like 200 rabbits and, you know, 50 sheep and all that isn't really small. But on the large agricultural side it was small. So I'm all things animals, domestic, wild and livestock. Yes.

Rachel
Very good. And Keith?

Keith
We are in between dogs.

Rachel
Okay.

Keith
I, I travel a lot and so it's not fair to my wife right now to get a puppy.

Rachel
As a wife whose husband is thinking about getting a puppy, I appreciate that.

Keith
I have I have grand dogs that I see a lot. So that that scratches that itch.

Rachel
Good. All right. What was your first job?

Sara
I worked at Charlton Park, which is historic museum in Barry County, and I was 15 years old, and they put me in charge of the Stagecoach Inn, cooking meals for staff on a wooden stove. And I learned a whole lot, and I was really good at it, and they just couldn't believe it. And so they kept asking me to come back. So I actually did that for a couple of years. So we actually like, dressed in costume and served lunch in the parlor as if they were Stagecoach residents. And so that was fun.

Rachel
Nice.

Keith
My first job was delivering a weekly newspaper in the Grand Rapids area called The Advance.

Rachel
Classic first job.

Keith
Yeah. And then I promoted to delivering the Grand Rapids Press, which was fine until Christmas morning when you had to go get up and deliver Christmas papers. While you know, your rest of your family was excited about opening presents.

Rachel
Yeah. No kidding.

Eric
Now, did you ever have to knock on anybody's door? And you may or may not get this reference, but and I have to say to them, two dollars.

Keith
Yeah, better off dead.

Eric
Yeah. There we go. He got it I know that...

Rachel
Finally someone gets Eric's reference.

Eric
Finally somebody gets my movie references. I know that oftentimes I will bring up a movie reference and Rachel will be like; Huh? What are you talking about?

Keith
Yeah. As a paper boy, if you wanted to get paid, you had to go collect. So there were subscribers who regularly would not answer their door. I could hear them in their house. They knew it was me. They would not answer. So yeah, I get that and appreciate that reference.

Sara
Well, and I want to tell you what my real first job was. I mean, farm girls work hard, so there are pictures of me feeding calves when I could hardly walk. And yet I had this bottle and the calf was bigger than me. So by far that was my first job. All that calf feeding that I had to do on the dairy farm.

Rachel
Fair enough. Last question. What's one wildlife species you think is underappreciated?

Keith
Crab spiders. 

Rachel
Ohhhh.

Keith
Yeah. They're they're they're bad *** I know I can't—so they're they're cool.

Rachel
I've never heard crab spiders describe that way, but that sounds good to me. Sara?

Sara
I think that chickadee, it's a happy little bird. Everybody likes it, everybody notices it. And we we don't often talk about it.

Rachel
I don't disagree. That's. Those are two good species.

Eric
You know. And I got to say my my aunt would probably be upset if I didn't mention this. She thinks that the Black-capped chickadees should be Michigan's official state bird, because you notice them through all the seasons and, you know, not just in the spring. Granted, robins don't all leave Michigan for the winter, but you don't see them during the winter, really.

Sara
I think that's a great idea.

Rachel
Well, now that listeners have a sense of who you both are and what you do, let's talk a bit about the wildlife division and what makes it so great. If you could explain it in a nutshell, who is the wildlife division?

Keith
The Wildlife Division's purpose is to manage wild animals in the wild places that they live, in the simplest terms. It's a lot more complicated than that. We do our work in cooperation with the rest of the department and the Natural Resources Commission in the legislature. We manage 450,000 acres of of public lands that are specifically managed for wildlife conservation. And then we co-manage 3.9 million acres with Forest Resources Division to ensure that wildlife benefits are maintained on our state forests as well. And another thing that a lot of people don't understand is that we do all of this work in cooperation with the federal government through federal statute that includes the Pittman Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act, the the Federal Endangered Species Act, and the Migratory Bird Act. For example.

Rachel
You mentioned 3.9 million acres of land. You've mentioned several different partners and programs and different things that we're working on now. That's a lot. That's a lot of business that has to be paid for somehow. So how is all of that funded?

Keith
Our funding relies almost exclusively on hunters and sports shooters, and this comes from the sale of of hunting and fishing licenses and excise tax on ammunition and firearms and archery equipment.

Rachel
And does that funding shape the particular types of work we do then?

Keith
Yeah, specifically there there's federal and state statute in place that protects the use of these funds to ensure that there's they're spent on wildlife conservation purposes. And so that federal and state statute really directs the type of work that we can do with those funds.

Sara
So we get asked by all kinds of Michiganders to do customer service, provide them service, and we try to do so. The best we can. However, we're only funded by a small percentage of Michiganders, so we're limited in how much we can do. And there's definitely a gap there between the amount of service that we're being asked to do and how many people we have that can provide that service.

Rachel
Yeah, I think that's certainly worth mentioning. So we're we're receiving funds from one group. We're serving a much larger audience. How does that impact the goals of the the work of the wildlife division?

Sara
So we have to give higher priority to the goals that are important to the people that fund us. That doesn't mean that we don't take into consideration the goals of others. And of course, there's overlap, there's lots of overlap, but we try to do the best we can with our limited funds, like we do have some nongame funding that we can put towards those other projects, and we try to make that money go as far as possible so we can provide as much as that service as possible. But there's no doubt that we try to emphasize game species because that's where the funding comes from. Now, a lot of the work that we do with game species benefits every wildlife creature. So it's not mutually exclusive.

Rachel
Yeah. To take it back to our mission. Right.

Keith
We have a responsibility to manage all wild animals and our nongame funding, as it were. Our nongame programs are woefully underfunded. It's our nongame funding is less than 5% of our budget, and our general fund dollars, we receive some. It's less than 8% of our budget. It's mostly spent on wildlife disease management. Even though everyone benefits from the work that we do. Our general fund dollars are only 8% of our budget.

Eric
Considering the lack of funding we have, what type of impact does that make when it comes to managing these nongame species?

Keith
We we prioritize conservation work for nongame species in a couple different ways. The the the most urgent work is with state and federally listed species. These are species that whose decline is significant enough where they're regulated under state or federal endangered species law. And then the second group of nongame species that include these threatened and endangered species are—the term is—species of greatest conservation need. And so these these are other nongame species. In most cases that have an identified conservation need. Meaning we need to work more intentionally on their management to help them either remain common, prevent declines that are occurring, or to recover them.

Sara
So, for instance, the the Monarch butterfly, everyone knows that. Everyone knows that their populations are declining. They're in the news as declining. They're on the cusp of being on the threatened endangered species list. If we maybe would have had more money to put towards their habitat, we could have kept them from declining. And so that's an example of if we had more funding to do more pollinator habitat, we could benefit a whole bunch of species like the monarch butterfly.

Rachel
While we're talking about budgets, we've had to navigate some adjustments. And one of those in the last year was restructuring and redistributing work. Can you speak more on?

Sara
You know, our last restructure was in 2012 and things have changed since then. So we've made some adjustments and structure to be more efficient, more effective with the resources that we have, and also make it easier for our staff to manage our public lands, because there's so many acres in relation to how many staff we have.

Rachel
And how many staff are there, what is the size of the division?

Keith
Wildlife division is one of the smaller divisions in the department. We have currently we have 160 or so permanent staff. That's that's down from almost 200 in the early 2000s.

Eric
Earlier you said we're managing 3.9 million acres, and we're doing that with 160 staff, roughly full time staff.

Keith
We're doing that with about 100 field staff of that 160 permanent staff. And just just to clarify, we manage most intensively our 450,000 acres of state wildlife areas and then mostly in the southern part of the state. And then we co-managed 3.9 million acres of state forest in the northern part of the state. So just for perspective, that's more acres then our our parks division manages.

Keith
And we do that with one tenth of the people. Of course, we're managing. We're managing our state wildlife areas very differently than parks division manages state parks. But for perspective, our we're organized by field offices in the field and field offices generally include a wildlife biologist, a wildlife technician and wildlife assistant. And in the southern part of the state, if you are in the southeast as a field office, you're managing about 35,000 acres of land and you're managing a population of a million people. If you're in the southwestern part of the state, same thing. You're managing about 35,000 acres of land, but and you're managing 500,000 people on average.

Eric
So basically, each one of those three staff has about 10,000 acres. They've got a—

Keith
Right.

Sara
Well, and don't forget, while they're managing the state land, they constantly have people stopping by and having to provide customer service as well because they don't have their own administrative staff. They're both administrators and public land managers.

Keith
Of course, we're not representing the entire department. There are other department staff in these areas that are handling other department issues, but a lot of those wildlife issues are coming through us or our our law enforcement division.

Sara
Yeah, we do have other divisions that provide some customer service for us in our customer service centers and others. And any calls that require more scientific emphasis are shipped out to the field to to give more scientific answers and things. But we definitely rely on some of the other divisions.

Rachel
Now, this at the start of this fiscal year, which began on October 1st, that's when we receive our new budgets. And we did have cuts to our budgets this year. So how does that affect the work that we do?

Keith
Yeah, we we incorporated an 8% cut into our budget this year. That's on top of a 13% cut from the previous year and 13% from the year before. So that means that we are not filling vacancies. We're not replacing vehicles. 40% of our fleet is eligible to be replaced based on miles, and we're holding on to those getting as much out of those vehicles as we can until they break down, basically. And we're limiting a out of state travel. So our, you know, our specialists aren't going to conferences out of state to talk to other specialists and share information about, you know, deer management and turkey management and those sorts of things. We were delaying infrastructure repairs. So the division has 20 or so office buildings. We have 100 or so storage buildings with a few staff houses. And almost all of these structures were built in the 1940s and 50. So you could imagine if you were living in a house that was built in the 1940s or 50s, the updates that are needed.

Eric
I live in a house in the 1950s that I can tell you from the brick work I just had done that. Yes, upkeep is important.

Keith
And on top of that, we have 101 dams that are providing important wetland habitat. The average age of our dams is 62 years old. They're eligible for social security. The engineered lifespan for for these dams is 50 years. So on average, our dams are ten years beyond their engineered lifespan. And so all of these, all of these, all of this infrastructure requires, requires money to update or repair repairs, prioritizing the most important projects and delaying all the rest.

Sara
But eventually that's going to catch up with us and we're going to have to divert some more money towards those projects. And so we really need a more stable funding source so that we can do the repairs that are needed. And we realize that we can't keep all the dams. We just can no longer afford the maintenance, and we don't have the staff to put that much management into those that it takes to keep those in good working condition. So all of that to say that we are in a process now of evaluating what we're going to do with all of our infrastructure and decrease it where we can, fix it when we can, and try to get some stable funding. Even if it's one time funding of general fund from the legislature, so that we can get our repairs on all our infrastructure up to speed, because these are our assets and we need to take good care of them.

Rachel
On alternative funding sources or other funding sources. You just mentioned one from the legislature, but are there other sources we may be considering or pursuing at this time?

Keith
Some other states provide examples for more sustainable and broader conservation funding. So Missouri and Minnesota are the two examples. Missouri has a sales tax contribution to their conservation programs. We've been approached by stakeholders, and stakeholders are starting to ask a lot of questions, as are legislators. So we're hopeful that discussions on alternative or broader funding or supplemental funding will continue.

Rachel
All right. So that's the year ahead. But let's reminisce for a second on the year that we just had being it's the end of the calendar year. When you think back on the year, is there anything that stands out to you is particularly meaningful or successful?

Sara
I have a couple of them. One is we developed a new leadership team this year of all the supervisors, and we really wanted a team of diverse people, and all of our supervisors cover a different part of the organization. So we just on this team, we discuss issues and talk things out, and then they give advice to the chief and assistant chief on how we should move forward or implement things. And it's really a large group because of the it's all the supervisors that we have. And we at first were afraid that this group would be too unwieldy and we would have trouble, you know, sticking to topic. So we brought in a facilitator, and the facilitator has done a great job of keeping us on task. And the people have really embraced this group and they show up. They're prepared to talk about what we told them we were going to talk about. They're working well together. The relationship building has been wonderful and there's a lot of trust, which means they're creating great product. They provide wonderful advice to Keith and I so that we can make good decisions for the division. So I'm really proud of this new team and how they're working together. And the wonderful work that's coming out of it to aid in the division.

Keith
Some things that come to mind for me, we've been working really hard on creation of a new state game area in Lenawee County, and this has been in partnership with Ducks Unlimited and some other groups, and will include the restoration of some tiled agricultural land that will be returning it back to wetland, you know, like it was historically before. It was before it was ditched and drained. Our deer team has been putting a tremendous amount of work into improving deer hunter engagement. And so we had this incredibly involved effort last year with it's called the Deer Management Initiative. Just tons and tons of meetings. Sara participated in almost all of those as well. That's transitioned into a U.P. and a Lower Peninsula deer advisory team. And then I think another thing worth noting, after a little bit of a rocky start, like we've completely redone our regulation summaries, which a lot of people call hunter digests to make them much more useful product. And that was on top of some challenges from some changes that are occurring in the commercial printing industry. But those were all published ahead of schedule last year. And and we've got all of these processes in place now to ensure that we continue doing a really good job with these new and improved regulation summaries or hunting guides. There's so many others.

Sara
I can think of, a few others. We had a major ice storm in the north this year. It affected over 900,000 acres of state forest and there were there are thousands of miles of trail that needed to be cleared of debris. Well, all the staff up north could not take over this huge project. And so staff from the south volunteered to go up for a week at a time and leave the work that they had to do behind the work that they had planned to do to go help their colleagues in the north. And the comradery was wonderful in the fact that we cleared the amount of land that we did in the small amount of time. Just goes to show how hardworking our staff can be. So I was very proud of that effort and how everyone picked up to help everybody as a team. Another teamwork thing that I'm really proud of is that our staff have had a lot of controversy this year thrown at them, and our staff, you know, they whether they've weathered it well, they shrug it off. You know, sometimes it makes them feel bad, but they stand back up and do their jobs day in and day out and continue to make good product. So I'm really proud of them. They're they're doing the work they love and that helps keep them going even in times of adversity.

Rachel
Yeah, you both sound very proud of your staff. In a word or two, how would you sum up this past year for a wildlife division?

Sara
Overwhelming obstacles. We've just had a lot of things thrown at us this year. You know, things that we normally do, we've been told we can't do. We've been told we have to do things differently, and we've been asked to do things that we normally don't do. And so this has been a year of like we're trudging along like we normally do and obstacles thrown in front of us. We have to adjust. And then that's the new norm. And then a couple weeks later we get another obstacle. So it's just been like that all year, but we've adjusted and I feel like we're going in a good direction. What about you, Keith?

Keith
Perseverance.

Rachel
Yeah, you can tell you're the leadership duo. Those are very complimentary sentiments. Well, wonderful. Thank you for sharing and basically what makes the wildlife division so great. It's those are perfect examples of the good work our colleagues do. Now looking ahead into this next year, what are your top priorities for the wildlife division.

Sara
So my top priority this year is to look at division assets and infrastructure and work on making some headway in our backlog and so that we can make sure that we take good care of our our assets into the future. So that's one of the top priorities that we're going to do. And then another thing, our public land management has gotten a little bit behind as well, you know, making sure our areas are signed. And that's important because we want to make sure that we avoid trespass and things like making sure our roads are clear, our gates are in good order, things like that. So I'm also want to prioritize that kind of work. And that's just the land management work. There's many other priorities that we could do for the division. I'd also like to look at how we can maybe expand our work with partners and see if we can do more work with partners to make our money go further, and also to get more people involved in the work we do. And hopefully there's some volunteer groups that would like to come on and also help us do the work.

Keith
I'll add one priority to to the priorities that Sara listed, and that we will continue to be advocating for the value of the work that we do to the general public in that that we're worth investing in, in, in some way, you know, either through a hunting license fee increase or some and or some broader funding. So and until we get more funding, that's going to be something we're going to continue to spend a lot of time on.

Rachel
Clearly, there are some challenges we're facing in the face of those challenges. What keeps you optimistic about the direction of conservation in Michigan?

Sara
You know, we currently have just a wonderful staff that work hard and they can overcome obstacles and I'm confident that they'll keep doing their job even as things reduce until a time comes when we have some stable funding and then the whole world will open up into a whole bunch of different opportunities for us to do when managing wildlife.

Keith
Yeah, I, I agree with Sara, and we're the right organization to lead conservation in the state. Our strength is our people. As she mentioned, you, you have to want to work for wildlife division. We both mentioned how many times it took for us to get hired here, and most of our people could make more money doing something else. They work here because this is work worth doing. They want to be here. So that's our most enduring asset, is the great people that we have. And the fact that we're we're the right organization to continue leading conservation in Michigan. The the fact that, you know, these wild animals in these wild places are so core to our identity as a state. And as Sara mentioned, sometimes people just need to be reminded that these things don't come for free. People have to work on them every day. And it takes resources to do that.

Rachel
Sara and Keith, thank you both so much for joining us. It was a real delight to get to pick your brain on a couple topics and hear from you, and the direction that we're heading into next year. So thanks for joining us for the last episode of season eight. And for listeners, stick around for your chance to win a mug.

Speaker
A base license for $11 is a fair, fare to go hunt hare or even a squirrel or two if you care. You hunted deer last month. The license is already there, so no more money from your pocket or your billfold square. To get your share of squirrel or hare, to eat yourself or share with flair and fanfare with a nice set of flatware at a table you prepare just bundle up warm with something to wear. And don't miss when you shoot, or you're liable to swear and possibly despair if you see no more signs of hide nor hare. So happy hunting to all and y'all, take care.

Rachel
Every now is your opportunity to win a WildTalk Podcast mug. As a thank you to our listeners we are giving away a mug or two every episode. Our winners this month are Bob Bolinberg and Laura Brodsky. They answered the question: What is the name of the reflective layer in the eyes of whitetail deer and many other vertebrates that enhances their ability to see during the night? The answer is the tapetum lucidum. And that's a layer that is located behind the retina and reflects light back through these photoreceptor cells, which really improves night vision of these animals. Pretty incredible. Now to be entered into the drawing this month. Test your wildlife knowledge and answer our wildlife quiz question. 

Rachel
This month's question is: What Michigan mammal can rotate their hind feet 180 degrees to help them climb down trees? Head first. Once you've got your answer, go ahead and email us at DNR-Wildlife@michigan.gov to be entered for a chance to win a mug, be sure to include the subject line as 'Mug Me' and submit your answers to us by December 15th. We'll announce winners and the answer on next month's podcast, so be sure to listen in to see if you've won and for the next quiz questions.

Rachel
Well, thank you everyone for joining us for another year of the WildTalk podcast. We hope that you have loved it, and we'll stick around for the launch of season nine on January 1st of  2026. I can't believe we're already in the season nine. Remember, if you have questions about wildlife or hunting, you can call (517) 284-9453 or email us at DNR-Wildlife@michigan.gov, we will see you back here next year.

Speaker
This has been the WildTalk Podcast, your monthly podcast, airing the first of each month and offering insights into the world of wildlife across the state of Michigan. You can reach the Wildlife Division at (517) 284-9453 or DNR-Wildlife@michigan.gov.