Ep. 13 Leaky Weirs with Will Masters from Ogallala Life

Join us as Will Masters from Ogallala Life discusses how regenerative finance can breathe life back into landscapes. Will doesn't just talk theory, he and his team are  actively building methods of landscape hydrologic restoration on the ground at the Wildcat Bluff Nature Center in the Texas panhandle.

Ogallala Life is at the intersection of nature, technology, and finance, navigating the rollercoaster of fundraising through cryptocurrency markets. Will discusses the nuances of landscape restoration, from the implementation of leaky weirs that rejuvenate creeks, to adaptive multi-paddock grazing that mimics the grazing patterns of the once prevelant bison that were the original stewards of our prairies.

Our conversation uncovers the challenges of carbon contracts and the much-needed narrative shift toward water stewardship that resonates with local landowners. With Will's insights, we explore the frontier of ecological monitoring, where blockchain technology can provide a new era of trustworthy environmental data. 

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Wild Cat Bluff Rehydration Campaign (Donation Link)

Transcript

Will Masters: 0:05

I regained hope. There are things that we can do that don't require political consent. We don't have to get like seven different states to get on board to do something. We can just go do it and if the people want it, you know, like if there is support, you know we can create instruments that incentivize changes of land use or all kinds of things.

Cash Upton: 0:36

Welcome to ReFi Generation, the podcast that talks to experts and leaders in the new frontier of regenerative finance to examine how blockchain technology is creating the next generation of environmental and humanitarian initiatives. I'm your host, Cash Upton. In today's episode, I talk with Will Masters of Ogallala Life, who's calling in from the Wildcat Bluff Nature Center in the Texas Panhandle. Will, who's originally a lawyer, has found inspiration in regenerative finance and is on the ground with his team creating leaky weirs, aka methods of landscape rehydration. Will discusses the need to engage in landscape management practices that are both bioregionally and locally relevant. We get a quick anthropological history of the high plains aquifer and the abundance it offered to semi-permanent settlements. Will's team is seeking to restore the creek to a condition where it can support beaver and other natural hydrologic processes.

Cash Upton: 1:43

Will discusses the nuances of how the Playa wetlands have intentionally been filled in over time in order to maximize profit for ranching, while destroying vital riparian habitat. We learn about location-based mesh networks that can be validated through blockchain technology and are thus more reliable and less prone to being hoaxed compared to traditional GPS. We finish our conversation talking about the different ecological benefits that bison can provide to the landscape versus the more intensive ecological footprint of cattle. One thing lacking the demand for regenerative bison. So next time you see bison on the menu, go and order it. Hope you enjoy this episode. Hi Will, how are you doing today? Where are you calling in from?

Will Masters: 2:34

Good morning, I'm doing good. I'm calling from Amarillo, texas. We're in the panhandle of Texas, so kind of halfway between Dallas and Denver.

Cash Upton: 2:44

Okay, all right, I've been in the panhandle once or twice. There's actually well, yeah, I've been to the Oklahoma part too of that area and climbed on some granite there. Well, I'm really glad to have you on today. A few topics I want to cover are how you got into ReFi and what you're currently working on, really like to highlight the in real life environmental projects that are happening. If someone asks you what ReFi is, how would you describe it? Talk about the work you're doing at the wildclat bluff and then talk about the acre NFT project for Agala life, which I talked about with Scott when he was last on. When we start with how you got into ReFi and what you're currently working on.

Will Masters: 3:24

So, yeah, how I got into ReFi? I am a lawyer by background, at practice law for I don't know, 14 years or something. The first half of my practice I was in the Permian Baytian, where the small towns and it is Yocum and Gaines County which are always like among the top five, all the producing counties in the state of Texas immense wealth, immense pollution, it's just. It's just. It's hard to comprehend the state of Texas and what feels. Anyway, I became a lawyer, thinking I was going to do some good. I was very privileged to grow up and get it like go play in the outdoors, like most of Texas is private property and so if you're not, like you don't know landowners, you don't get to go out and enjoy nature. But I was very privileged in that respect and just kind of grew to love this country. And if there's water, there's life, if there's not, there's not. Anyway, went to law school, kind of learned how our legal system functions and really grew to despair Like our, the political and legal system does not offer tools that allow us to like address this crisis. In fact, I think it's kind of like the root of some of our problems. And so, yeah, like, what are you going to do. I'm just seeing, like you know, our, our, our country is just kind of ailing and nobody is trying to change it, or people are trying, but without likelihood of success. Anyway, yeah, I despair and yeah, circa like the 2020 or something I was talking to. Uh, yes, scott, who you've met and and we're talking about crypto and we just really got into crypto a lot. There was a group here, um, like Sethi is a big Twitter personality and and he had some like in-person crypto meetings and so I got to learn about, like blockchain, smart contracts, et cetera. So from some like pretty sophisticated people.

Will Masters: 5:23

Again, I was like very privileged, um, to get that the kind of education I did, because it's hard to like wrap your head around. You know what, like, like, why is this technology so transformative? Um, and and I just uh it, I don't know I regained hope, like like there are things that we can do that don't require political consent. We don't have to get like seven different states to get on board to do something. We can just go do it and if the people want it, you know, like, if, if there is support, you know we can create um instruments that incentivize changes of land use or all kinds of things, and so, yeah, that really kind of lit a fire, um, under us.

Will Masters: 6:01

And then we region blockchain had a brand opportunity. I think it was at the end of 2021. And so we'd been talking to a group at West Texas A&M University about water, um, and yeah, blockchain too, because why not? And uh, anyway, they encouraged us to kind of do something about it. And so we started, uh, looking into form on our own nonprofit, which ended up being Ogallala Live Conservation Inc. And we applied for a $5 million or equivalent grant from Regen Network.

Will Masters: 6:36

We didn't get the grant in hindsight it's like no duh, but we had formed a team, we had just started the process, started the ball rolling, so that's really how we got into it. Then, a few months later, scott and some others on the team came up with this NFT concept Acre NFT and we launched it in March of 2022, maybe February, I don't know early 2022. And I say we like there were a lot of anyway, it was just really kind of neat heme effort. A lot of the kids or students at the university were involved and we raised a pretty good amount of money, like 200, some $1,000. And so we were off. We had an entity and we had some money and we had some dreams or some concepts. So, yeah, we were off and that's how we got into Refi.

Cash Upton: 7:39

That's really cool, yeah, and with the Acre NFT, that was like a unique acre of land that was represented by a blockchain that people could buy as a fundraising effort.

Will Masters: 7:52

Absolutely. Yeah, it was kind of cartoonish, like it wasn't meant to be realistic, but, yeah, you meant an NFT and so it corresponded. It was one of the Genesis projects on Stargaze, and so Stargaze was like the NFT I don't know what you call it like minting platform and market platform on the IBC, which is kind of like where we came from, or the Internet of Blockchains, like Cosmos inspired stuff, and so, yes, we were one of the Genesis projects and you meant an NFT, and the NFT is like a graphical representation of an acre of land, and some of your land might be kind of barren, it might not have anything, others might have endangered species or trees or rain, climate, et cetera, and really just kind of like a fun. Yeah, like kind of like a fun, simple project where we're just kind of exploring the space, and I was honestly shocked at its success. We sold out pretty quickly.

Cash Upton: 8:53

That's so cool. So what's O'Gallala been doing since?

Will Masters: 8:56

and you're over at Wildcat Bluff right now, right, yeah, so O'Gallala, life O'Gallala and yeah, it's not an English word or whether it's like an English transliteration, or whatever you call it, of an indigenous word or words, and I'm not even sure about that. It's so the O'Gallala aquifer is the primary aquifer that is part of the High Plains Aquifer System and it underlies like seven or eight states within the United States. I mean many, like hundreds of thousands. Well, let's see hundreds of thousands of square miles. I think I used to know those figures. It's like of immense importance. And so, like the communities on the High Plains, we put like our water comes from the ground and that's through from like communities that stretch from central Texas to Dakotas. I mean just all of our water. Whenever it's dry, the only water that's here is underground, part of the High Plains Aquifer System, and so it's just like a huge importance. And so that's where our name came from, so acre and Ft.

Will Masters: 10:00

Once we raised some money, that money was was put into our smart contract endowment, which was on Angel Protocol. Angel Protocol was built on Terra and so we were kind of on top of the world. We just raised a bunch of money and then a few months later all our money was worth very little, because Terra depagged and it crashed. I mean, it was just, it just sucked. And yeah, for a while we were kind of like the question, like, do we continue? You know, what are we going to do? Angel Protocol ended up landing on their feet and they relaunched on Juno and I'm really like they told us that they were going to try to get some of our money back. You know, I'm like sure, cool, please. You know, but I really didn't expect them to. But sure enough, I think the depag happened to like May and anyway, in October we heard from them and sure enough, they'd gotten, yeah, the sizable chunk of our money back, which was just awesome. And so that was yeah, yeah, and yeah, they rebranded as Angel Giving.

Will Masters: 11:03

So, anyway, we had money and we needed to do something, and so we launched a project. We broke ground in early 2023. And what we did was we installed natural infrastructure in dry land streams, along different kinds of creeks that are like hydrogeologically significant, on private ranches just north of Amarillo, and so, yeah, five different creeks and they flowed over, through or under the main aquifer system or the main geological strata, the Ogallala. And then what underlies the Ogallala is called the Dockham, and the Dockham consists of I want to say it's like tertiary age strata, and so, anyway, we just had these streams that 100 years ago had water, and this water was natural discharge from the high plains aquifer system. Whenever it rains a lot, these streams flood, and we built structures to slow that down, cause the water to sink and measure either how much more moisture retention we've accomplished and or recharge through the regional aquifers, and so we built those in February of 2020, yeah, 2023. And then in May and June of 2023, we got like 20 inches of rain, and so our annual average is less than that. Our annual average is about 16 inches, and so it just dumped rain and we got a lot of feedback very quickly. Most of it was awesome. I mean, in fact, like it's, it's just a really inexpensive, low tech way of regenerating semi-arid landscape Go out there and spread slow and sink the water, and so we're very pleased by the successes.

Will Masters: 12:49

Our community, however, was kind of like less than enthused and and I think that's because the work was done on private land Like they can't go out and see it. It's not accessible. It, you know, it might be good for our region because, you know it, it recharges the aquifer, although it's not recharging fast in the irrigator, anyway. So there were at least problems, and so it was. It was great, but it was suboptimal. And so we started looking around, like how can we, we do this in a way that is more accessible to the community? Because, like this fast region, we're not ever going to be able to like fix, you know, or rehydrate this, this landscape. It's too large and we don't have access to much the property. The way to fix it is to empower others to go out and do it themselves, and where Refi comes in is incentivize them.

Will Masters: 13:33

So anyway, we needed like a better, more publicly accessible demonstration project, and this is where Wildcat Bluff comes in. So Wildcat Bluff nature center was, uh, it was like donated, or 501c3 was created in the nineties, kind of given to the public for purposes of a nature center and like bio literacy I guess. And uh, they kind of, well, they did, they did okay, um, but anyway it ended up getting taken over by a regional like innovation, science and technology hub which is called the Don Harrington discovery center, and they've been around for over 50 years. They're kind of like institution, um, and they're like an awesome partner. We're super pumped about it.

Will Masters: 14:17

So, anyway, we approach the discovery center, uh, early this year about, or early last year, about doing, well, I guess, after our project last year, forgive me about doing the same thing building a bunch of natural infrastructure and dry land streams or nids is one one term for it on West San Marlowe Creek which flows through Wildcat Bluff, and at first they're kind of skeptical. You know it's it's, it's a nature center. You know they don't want a bunch of noise and whatnot. But we showed them what we did, we kind of showed them what others have done around the world. It's similar and we are in their trust. And so, yeah, this year we've launched our project at Wildcat Bluff and we're going to build about about 70 structures along approximately three miles of Creek channel and these structures like we're the terminology has been a problem and so like, I really like, like what we do has landscape rehydration, I like that.

Will Masters: 15:14

But like what does that mean? And so, like the primary tool, really, I think my favorite term is nids natural infrastructure and dry land streams, but those acronyms are silly. The Maloon Institute really kind of pioneered some of this work and they're out of Australia, the terminology they use is leaky weirs and related works, and so that's kind of what I'm trying to use now is the term leaky weirs.

Cash Upton: 15:38

So I saw that the ABC article that highlighted you guys and talked about leaky weirs I learned something new. I love it Cool.

Will Masters: 15:47

Well, yes, so did the the news anchor or whatever. It's funny, but that's like. The whole point is education Like most people don't read about, you know, like landscape rehydration techniques in Australia or in Rajasthan, india, you know we do, but like we have to, we have to make it bioregional and locally relevant. And so, yeah, that's what we're doing, and so we're going to build about 70 leaky weirs along this Creek channel. And then there's some related works too. We're going to do some like infiltration earthworks. We have plans to do a pretty long series of swales, kind of like key line oriented, and so they're approximately a long contour, but not not exactly. And then, yeah, we're, we're smooth in some slopes, just kind of experimenting with landscape rehydration techniques in a publicly visible and accessible way. And I knew it was going to be higher profile than our work last year, and it's certainly, I mean, like we started our work last Friday, and so I'm I get to be inside in the heat the rest of our team, and we've hired some crew from out of town too. I guess we have like, yeah, six people out there right now working in the cold and I'll go join them later this afternoon. And yeah it is. It's proving to be much higher profile.

Will Masters: 17:04

We've gotten a lot of interest. Part of that is because we have an awesome partner in the discovery center, but, yeah, part of it is just like their members of our public have a connection to this property and they've heard there's like an oral history that talks about live water and like, if you've, if you've seen this country, particularly when it's dry, like live water in a creek. That doesn't sound right, like it sounds crazy, like surely that's not true but it is. And and we were able to go back and look at some really historic aerial imagery and and you can see water in this creek at Wildcat Bluff the earliest photo, I think, was 1953. And the creek was like clearly degraded, it had been eroded, it was in size. There's Dan that was built upstream but there was water in it and that's because groundwater depletion hadn't happened yet, like our aquifer was still in okay shape and and so you look at pictures in the 60s. There's still water. That water disappeared in the mid 70s and that corresponds very well with our, with our oral, yeah, like history.

Cash Upton: 18:13

Interesting and, and I assume, like beavers, were also doing a lot of the work that leaky weirs were doing before beavers got overhunted.

Will Masters: 18:21

Yes, so that's how how much I'll try to give a short land history, if that's okay, please. Yeah, All right. So this part of the United States was just about, like, like, we were very late to join the United States and so, like ours, this country did not join the United States until after the civil war. So, in anyway, like, like we all kind of know, like you know, pre-columbian Americas, there's a lot of uncertainty, but there were, there were certainly villages along like the Canadian river basin, and the villages were sustained by the natural discharge from the high plains aquifer and they cultivated different plants, like, like they, they cultivated rice in the creek bottoms, grape plum, all kinds of different stuff. And some of the earliest Anglo explorers would talk about how, when they finally got to, you know, they'd like starve and get lost crossing the plains, and they finally get to, like a dip or depression or a draw, and encounter an Indian village, and then they just like gorge themselves on on fruit and make themselves sick and whatnot. But anyway, there were these, you know, semi permanent settlements that were sustained by natural discharge. And then we have, like, the disruptions of Columbus and we had the introduction of the horse and so the Comanche kind of took over this part of the world, the southern high plains, and it was Comanche area and it was a buffer between the Spanish Empire and the United States. The Comanche had huge horse herds and so like 3000 horses, 7000 horses and, and these horse herds and the people that took care of them would winter in the riparian bottoms. And so there are very few riparian bottoms that crosses the southern and central high plains, but those few were of immense importance to the people and to the animals. The horse herds would winter down there and the they were fed tree hay or fodder, and so the people that like were captured by the Comanche would like whenever they were returned to the US they would report like like they were put to work cutting down cotton woods and stripping tree and stripping bark. And so there is, it's theorized, that there was kind of like a large scale riparian deforestation event that happened during Comanche area, interesting, yes, and and so like.

Will Masters: 20:55

And then, you know, the white people came along, or Europeans came along. They were defeated in the late 1800s, the Red River War. There was a trapping expedition that came through in the early 1800s and they reported very few beaver, which was a surprise. Of course they also thought they were on the red, like they were on the wrong river. They kind of got lost as a a messy expedition. So there's like a very unknown history of beaver here which is kind of different than a lot of American West. So, anyway, all right. So we had the defeat of the Comanche in the late 1800s.

Will Masters: 21:30

We have a few decades where, like a Spanish influenced people came in with sheep and they had like big sheep herds and then this became beef country and we had these big cattle conglomerates. I mean just state claim to like 500,000 acres of land, 800,000 acres of land, just these like immense ranches and introduced beef cattle and that's what like. Like the rough country here has been devoted to pasture, basically a rangeland really, ever since, and so like the flat part of planes up up top, where it's flat, you have farming, and then, yeah, all the rough country, you have beef cattle and so this land use kind of like there's a lot of disturbance and there is no, like you know, like Edenic pre-settlement conditions to revert to and there's no going backwards. And so this is just anyway, I find it super interesting. But yeah, there are behaviors, what we're talking about, there are beaver in this part of the world, which is kind of contrary to popular belief. There are a number of beaver along the Canadian River North of Amarillo and then there's a number of beaver kind of towards Lubbock along the southeast part of the Caprock, and there's a researcher in Lubbock that's gotten a little bit famous writing about the beaver there, and there's academic disputes about how long the beaver have been there, what not. But yeah, we absolutely want to emulate what beaver do.

Will Masters: 22:58

Problem is most of our watersheds are degraded to the point where they can't support beaver. Like you can't just leave them alone and let the beaver come back, you can't trap them and bring them in because there's not enough well, there's not enough water and there's not enough food. Like we need willows, we need cottonwoods, and so our challenge is really restore the creek to a condition where it can support beaver and other natural eco-hydraulic processes or hydrologic, I don't know the right term is. And so, yeah, like the work that we're doing in this creek early on, it's pretty intensive. There's a lot of work that we need to do. We need to capture and store a whole lot of water. We need to plant a whole lot of trees. We're going to have to monitor, we're going to have to maintain.

Will Masters: 23:44

We have about five, 10, 15 years down the line. The vegetation takes over and we have a lot of willow, a lot of cottonwood, the beaver come in and, yeah, you kind of restore natural processes which can attenuate our hydrograph. And so, like our country, it's either dry I mean just bone dry or it's, I don't know. Drought and flood are kind of two sides of the same coin and the work that we're doing alleviates both. And so, like, whenever it's wet, de-energize the floodwater, you spread it out, soak it in the ground and then, yeah, whenever it's dry, that floodwater is still there and so there's still some moisture in the ground, there's still some flow. That can happen.

Cash Upton: 24:31

That's really interesting. I love that drought and flood are the same sides of the coin. That is essentially yeah, when it rains, it pours. One thing that I've been looking into more one of my past guests was Douglas Skatin of the Lexicon Foundation. They're doing a lot of the ecological benefits framework, so what you guys are doing is essentially making me think about not just the carbon sequestration that we need to do in this world, but also groundwater, species, biodiversity, soil, health, water. So does that play into what you were talking about incentivizing landowners to do this on their own?

Will Masters: 25:11

Absolutely, and so that's kind of part of our journey to REFI that we didn't really get into. But yeah, a few years ago so for 10 years I've been reading about these carbon credit contracts and carbon grazing and all this has been happening in New Zealand or Europe or whatever. It hadn't been relevant to this part of the world. A few years ago, however, we started to see some developers poking around making offers trying to lease or acquire options to lease the land for some type of carbon sequestration development. And yeah, one of our advisors is like this old school GIS guy. He's got a huge network of farmers and ranchers. I'm a lawyer, scotch data scientist, but anyway, we were able to get our hands on some of these contracts.

Will Masters: 26:03

Like, actually look at the terms and I can't tell you how disappointing that was. I mean, it was disappointing from like a professional perspective, like whoever wrote this contract. I just expected like a sophisticated instrument In the oil field. We have these contracts where, like, if you're going to acquire a lease, there's a bunch of language that is in every lease and there's a bunch of due diligence that needs to happen. And here it's like anyway, it was just disappointing for numerous reasons and what was missing was like a good faith, intent to do better. I mean, it's like that didn't matter. In order to get the money, you need to just show that you went up and you spread a bunch of seed or you did whatever the additional requirements were, and, yeah, it was just disappointing in multiple respects. And then MRV too. So, yeah, we need these incentives. So bad Another was a.

Cash Upton: 26:56

Yeah, well, just to finish that. So there wasn't any like capture of data. The MRV part was missing, so that they couldn't actually prove that they were doing what they said they were like because of the loose contracts.

Will Masters: 27:10

No, it was more like like they only had to prove that they were doing what they said they were doing. And so they had to prove that they like sent a plane up to go disperse bunch of seed, but nobody cared what kind of seed it was, nobody cared if it was even really seed. Somebody just had to verify that like the events took place. A plane took off, basically yeah and and yeah, and it's immensely expensive, the MRV and you know, since then we've seen some like slightly better offers. Like I don't mean to be like there's like grassroots carbon, which is kind of probably the most popular project developer in Texas and their contracts not terrible, but anyway it's. So. Let's say we have this like 10,000 section or 10,000 tract of land. Like 10,000 acres is a big area. You know, 95% of that might be best treated under some kind of intensive adaptive paddock grazing scenario, right, like get a bunch of cows, move them around fast, get them off, just take care of it and treat it for grasslands. But there's certain parts within that area that need to be treated differently because they're important in terms of like hydro, hydrology, you know, like springs, repairing areas, et cetera. And these contracts just kind of like lumped it all in under the same and said, you know, do paddock grazing and there was no special treatment given to wetlands or to repairing corridors, and that is a huge omission. Like repairing corridors and wetlands and drylands are, of like, immense importance. And so, you know, numbers vary but anywhere like like 80 to 98% of our biodiversity depends upon these areas with, like, significant surface groundwater interactions, and we're not doing anything about those. And then also, like you're not going to grow any carbon if you don't have any water. It's just, it's a carbon centered approach and it doesn't make sense to our narrative, like our farmers and our ranchers. It's really kind of funny. We see some project developer come in, maybe a European, maybe somebody from California, and they go and they try to talk to a rancher and before they meet I can tell you like they're not going to make a deal. It's not going to happen. There's there's this culture mismatch and the carbon centric narrative just doesn't resonate and that's for, like that's kind of a complicated issue, but the water centric narrative does, like they want to talk about water, water makes sense and yeah. So, yeah, we have a lot of criticisms of the carbon centric approach.

Will Masters: 29:48

You mentioned, douglas, and the eco benefit framework. We were blessed to be a part of that. So, like the first cohort, I think, started early 2023, and they did a number of case studies. And one of those case studies looked at our project here last year and it was awesome Because, like at first during this kind of EVF framework, the case studies were like I don't know what. There weren't very many looking at like fresh water, particularly dry land, wetlands or repair in you know, but like it's important. So, anyway, I like think that we kind of helped guide their work and it really was a very, very impressive effort. So, yeah, evf is awesome, but, yes, still, how do we incentivize this? And and that is a tricky question and I guess like the best I can answer is we're working on it we have a few different concepts, so there's kind of like two big surface groundwater interactions.

Will Masters: 30:48

There are the watersides, like the Canadian River, the upper tributaries of the Red River they call it the Red River, the South Semeron River, like, like there are these opportunities along waterways, but then the other big big flux point is the Playa wetlands and so, where the plains are so flat that they don't form drainages, whenever it does rain, the rain goes to these ephemeral Playa wetlands and they are again of immense importance. The majority of our wetlands have been well pitted and so like if it's wetland, if it's a swamp, you can't grow corn, grain, cotton, you can't put your cows out there, and so you don't want it to be a swamp. And so for the last 50 years, people have been going out with with power equipment and digging a big pit and that way when it rains, the water concentrates in the pit and you can still farm or graze the rest of the wetland. We've destroyed the Playa wetlands intentionally because that's what our economic incentives drive people to do, and that's disaster.

Will Masters: 31:50

There are some public, private attempts to remediate that where they like, hey the landowner, like a third of the value of the land approximately to refill the pit and treat it like a wetland for 10 years. That's great, but it's not enough, it's not enough money, it's just not. It's not going to scale, it's not going to cause like a radical transformation of our bioregion, but it's a really cool concept. And so this concept, the old concept, like this, playa Lake joint ventures and Oklahoma Commons have really been piloting this and we're encouraging. Let's take this to the blockchain.

Will Masters: 32:33

And so we've proposed or discussed a concept like apply a lake eco-credit with Regent, where if you have a playa and you fill on the pit and you treat it like a wetland and you do certain things, you mint credits and you can sell those credits for value and it's kind of create a structure that incentivizes treating a wetland like a wetland because our political and regulatory persons are not like, again, it's just not gonna, the solution isn't gonna happen from our politics or legal structures.

Will Masters: 33:07

And then Regent they further. They have this like they have a number of working groups. One of those working groups is landscape rehydration working group and I'm like so honored to be a part of that group because there's some really awesome people like the Maloon Institute. A bunch of them from the Maloon Institute are part of that group. Swift Water Design out of California are in there, and what we're talking about is like yeah, how do we craft like a credit class type or different methodologies that are water-centric, such that they're marketable on something like Regent? And that's been it's been fruitful. There's a lot of work that still needs to be done and so, yeah, again, like that kind of gets back to my short answer, which is we're working on it.

Cash Upton: 34:00

I love it, man. That's such awesome news, though, to hear that optimism of the agency that blockchain tech is helping you to have. I, too, was very, you know, depressed and with the state of affairs and then learning about REFI, it's like, oh wait, there are these mechanisms that can be leveraged and incentivized, that are outside of the traditional political economy that we find ourselves in. But that's really cool. You did mention DMRV measure report verify, and I'm wondering if you have any updates on how that's developing, cause a lot of my guests say that that's one of the biggest, you know, bottlenecks right now is the MRV part.

Will Masters: 34:36

So, yeah, I'd say it's a big hurdle. So, traditional MRV, the cost is just outrageous and I don't think they're like measuring the right things. And so, yeah, we kind of have like a different vision of MRV and really like what it it ultimately comes to, like what is the intended outcome? And if we just focus on carbon sequestration, you know like biodiversity takes, you know like a lower precedent. Water is a lesser priority, it's all about carbon and that distorts incentives. And what I really think that we should be measuring is ecological function, and biodiversity is a part of that, the water cycle is a part of that, the carbon cycle is a part of that. And so like like there's this work that needs to be done on what are the aims or what is the subject of MRV. And then there's also like who is who's paying, which is like a most important. It's like who's going to pay to do the MRV? And then who is going to do the MRV? And right now, you know if we have to get like an engineer from Dallas to come out and take a soil sample, well, that's one reason the MRV is ridiculously expensive and I think it's totally unnecessary and so and it's also like kind of antithetical to these concepts of local sovereignty. Like, really like, our community 100% relies on the landscape that surrounds it. We don't own the landscape, we don't have much agency within the landscape, but we need that landscape, we need the ecology on that landscape to function, to provide water and to provide clean air and to well, I mean, yeah, food, et cetera. And so we need to reconnect our communities to the landscapes that sustains them. We need to recover agency so that our communities are empowered to improve the landscape that sustains them, and I think that that extends all the way to MRV or to DMRV. And so we got pretty involved with an effort called Demeter last year and it was really like pushing like the, the like politically decentralized aspect of MRV and like it doesn't matter who verifies that a certain condition has occurred, so long as they're like gets verified, and the best actor to go out there and verify it is somebody that already lives there, Cause they know, like, what the conditions are like and they're going to be cheapest, and so it's really like students in science kind of thing where you just empower yeah, like empower the locals to go out and measure and report and verify certain conditions and yeah, you still need to. You know, like make sure that person you know is using a sensor that's been calibrated to these other like. There's still a lot that needs to be worked out there, but again, it's ultimately about sovereignty.

Will Masters: 37:27

We've done a lot of work. We have a like a pilot foam mesh network, and so foam is a blockchain project. They call like proof of location, and so they've got like these we have these four nodes, like these long range wireless access nodes, each a few miles apart, and then, if I get my dynamic node that moves around, plug it into a sensor, plug it into my computer, go out there and take a reading that readings report for other nodes and by determining how long it takes like the signal to get there, they can determine the location within that mesh precisely without resorting to GPS. And there's just there's a lot of problems with GPS, both from, like, a political centralization perspective, but also it can be spoofed and it's not bidirectional.

Will Masters: 38:21

And so, anyway, foam has this like really cool, not fundamental technology, and they think that like one big application for it could be in the field of DMRB, and so we had this little pilot experimental mesh. It's up and running, it's pretty cool. We're not using it for anything Like. We're not using it to substantiate credits or anything right now, but we are experimenting and helping that team get it developed. So that's an example of, yeah, like concrete DMRB work.

Cash Upton: 38:53

Yeah, that's really cool. I especially like the nuance of GPS. That's a really interesting take. And, yeah, that someone controls those satellites at the end of the day. And so then the blockchain tech, like the underlying blockchain, would be what can verify that the local person on the ground didn't spoof something right? Is that kind of like where the blockchain comes in with DMRB?

Will Masters: 39:17

Yes, well, so with foam would be like proof of location, right. And so it's like and they're talking about God, I can't remember the word but like a certain type of sensor gets like a well, like a soulbound token or whatever, and so, like there's like a unique identifier for this sensor, and then that sensor reports within the foam mesh, and the location of that reporting can be like it's just accurate, it's right, we know, but kind of for certain, that this is where that reporting was done, and that sounds simple, but it's not, and we know that in a GPS agnostic way. Phone by itself, though, is not enough, because we need to like, yeah, activate members of community, like we got to get people involved, and so there's few other efforts here. Orgo is one of them.

Will Masters: 40:08

Orgo is really cool, and then there's Bloom Network, and Bloom Network is like kind of part social network, but they're also really involved with MRV, and I would encourage you, like Magenta is one of the founders of Bloom. I think she'd be a great. Well, she'd talk about their work better than we. But we are a little hub on Bloom and we're trying to use it more to document our work, and then Bloom intends to have that like verifying function. So yeah, like it would incentivize somebody else to follow up and go out there and say, yes, this did happen.

Cash Upton: 40:45

Okay, I love it. Yeah, I'm gonna definitely dive into that more. I was just looking at foam and, yeah, it's on, it's on Ethereum, so they are, you know, underlying blockchain. That that's really cool. And yeah, I'm gonna talk to Demeter in a little bit too. So it's really cool that you are working with them and have been part of the ecological benefits framework co-works cohort. So awesome to hear that one, the boots on the ground. I mean you're actually restoring groundwater, so give you big kudos. I love it. When I heard about what was happening in the Ogallala aquifer, it's just horrific, and to know that you know you guys are helping address that is really inspiring. One thing that I sent you a link to check out you know I'm really passionate about the American bison restoration and specifically with groundwater, they can cause hard, hard packed dirt through their wallowing, which can create like some vernal pools, and kind of makes me think about some of what you're talking about when it floods. Is there any conversations with locals about any bison restoration programs?

Will Masters: 41:47

Yes, they're, they're preliminary, but yes, like and really like, we are not leading that work, but some really interesting things are happening in the Southern High Plains regarding bison. So, like, like, first let's get to like the, the the cases to why or how, and really so again, for the last hundred years there have been cows on most of the rangeland out here. I mean just like millions of acres. There have been cows and I'd say, like the typical land user or grazer, it's relatively low volume, like like it's not high density but it's perpetual, and so there's just like there's always cows out there and whenever it's hot and it's dry, those cows are always. I mean, if you have like 10,000 acres and you have, let's say, 50 acres that are repairing with cottonwoods and it's wet, all those cows, if they can, are going to be in those 50 acres. Like they go to where it's wet, cool and green, because in this spot, dry outside, and that over years causes huge problems, it degrades our watersheds and it just it leads to a lot of erosion. Bison don't do that. They graze and move differently, and so we can just like you can, you can manage your cows in such a way so as to avoid that watershed degradation. But that's expensive, it requires a lot of infrastructure. You either have to go out and build permanent fence or you have to transition to intensive adaptive paddock grazing and you have to manage it correctly. It's just a really kind of tough sell, right and? But with bison you just got to put them out there and and you don't have to push them around and keep them out of their parian areas. But there's like a big cultural issue and the problem with bison. So there's a few like grass fed beef producers out here and they do a really good job Like they. They move their cows around, they do a great job, but it's just like a few percent of the market. If that it's really a boutique deal, it's niche and that's because there's no like universal market, whereas if I just go out and, like you know, grow beef like everybody else, I can take it to the feed yard, I can sell it. There's commodity prices. Just the vast majority of beef is, um, yeah, a part of the commodity market and that's the number one problem with bison and that is there is no market Like and so you have these bison on our land. How did you get money for that bison Like, or how do you get money when it's time to sell it and how do you finance it? Like the banks, I can go out and finance bunch of cows, but like, there's no, we just we lack all of these instruments that allow for the economy to function. And so, again, those, those need to be built, and I think that is a use case or an application for refi. Um, it's a really big hurdle, um, but anyway so it.

Will Masters: 44:38

While, pat Bluff, this, this square mile of land, has historically, like last hundred years, been used, um, for grazing. There've been a bunch of cows out there and the creek is definitely degraded. Um, they took the cows off last year because we were talking about this project and for other reasons, um, but there's, but cows aren't necessarily bad for the landscape. Like, sometimes we want larger rewards out there. Like we want them to go and to eat grass, you know, to stomp vegetation, to disturb things, it's good. And, and you know, they, I guess, pull nitrogen out of the plants and poop it back, and it's just, it's not a bad thing until it becomes a bad thing, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. So, anyway, we have this, this land. It needs larger, or more, it needs larger rewards eventually.

Will Masters: 45:24

And so what is that reintroduction plan going to be? And if we go back to just putting cows on it again, we need to install expensive infrastructure to protect the gains that we're making with our watershed focused works. And and so, as an alternative to that, we had kind of preliminarily discussed introducing bison, and you know. So what, like where do you get bison? Um, and it's becoming easier, and one of the reasons, well, yeah, there's just like a long history in the Southern High Plains with bison Um, you know they, they nearly went extinct, uh, in like the late 1800s and this guy, charles Goodnight, his wife, kind of convinced him to not kill, you know, some of the last few bison that they found on their ranch and and I think really are responsible in large part for kind of maintaining whatever genetics still exist. And then those bison were removed from that ranch in the late nineties. They went somewhere, I'm not sure, but, but I don't know, maybe 10 years ago a herd of bison was reintroduced to this area and they reside at Caprock Canyon State Park, and so we had these state agencies that are really excited about restoring bison to the landscape, and that effort has grown, and the guy that manages it. I can't remember his name right now, he's just, he's really awesome. I mean he's like he's Mr Bison and he's responsible for I don't know, I'd say thousands of head and he manages that herd that is on the public park. But also a number of private landowners that are adjacent to Caprock Canyon State Park have gotten interested and so that that herd is growing and if and when a property is ready for bison, there are people that are that like have bison and want to put them on that landscape, and so that's a good deal.

Will Masters: 47:20

There are the biggest hurdle like it makes a lot of sense from like a recreational and aesthetic and ecological perspective. It makes less sense from an economic perspective, like how do you raise bison to support your family and to pay your mortgage and to pay, you know, your debts, and that's kind of an unanswered question. There's a few operations that have like a mobile, like processing lab, and so they and they sell hunts and so, like somebody like pays a bunch of money to go out and hunt a bison, they go out, they shoot it and then this like semi trailer mobile processing lab drives up the dead bison and it's USDA certified and they break it up and turn it into meat and sell it for premium, and that has had. There've been some successes, there've been some failures with that approach. But yeah, bison, it's really cool and there's a bunch of ecological benefits, like you've mentioned.

Will Masters: 48:25

Something else is kind of like culturally like, like like it's not mainstream would be goes, and so there's just, I mean, I don't even know how many millions of dollars get spent to spray herbicides like areally, just general application of herbicides on just hundreds, probably thousands of square miles to kill encroaching woody vegetation, and so some of those are invasive, like salt cheetah or Elm, and then some of them are like native, like miski or juniper. But our agencies, like they have a mandate to do something because they're running out of water. Well, what are they gonna do? There's a whole bunch of trees out there that are drinking a lot of water, so let's go kill those trees and then we'll have more water in our rivers, I guess the thinking goes. And so, like the government subsidizes it too. And so there's praying, like 600 square miles of the upper Brazos, which is not far south of us, to kill the trees that are encroaching on the grasslands for the water benefits, and the whole thing just drives me crazy. Like our reliance on chemicals is hugely problematic, causes huge problems for human health. There is a lot of benefit to bringing goats in and so, like goats can come and eat a lot of this woody vegetation and kind of help us manage it without recourse to chemicals. And that is another conversation that we're having in regards to Wildcat and that is, let's bring in goats and let's let them work on these, these mesquite and these salt cheater, and then we have, like kosha, some kind of invasive annual. It's just really. It's just really kind of predominant and anyway, so we're hoping to experiment with introducing goats this year and kind of measure the impact that they can have.

Will Masters: 50:12

Yes, and I think kind of gets back to like like that, like what do you want in land management? And I think you want diverse, like you want a lot of different land uses happening that are complementary, and so like agroforestry can benefit the cattle grazing and the goats can benefit the cattle grazing, the cattle grazing can benefit the grasslands, et cetera, but that that paradigm is in conflict with our single use paradigm, which is predominant and most cattle operations. For example, you have a ranch, you have a grazer, that grazer pays a few bucks per acre per year for the right to put his cows out there. Nobody else gets to do anything out there. You don't get to go out and you don't get to grow trees. You don't get to go put goats, it's the cows and that single use paradigm. Yeah, like I said, it's problematic.

Cash Upton: 51:04

Absolutely. Yeah, that's a really interesting take. And then, just to finish up, what we're talking about how, like what you said, there's not as much of an economical incentive for bison, and so if, like, the ecological benefits framework could be applied. Essentially, what we're getting down to is there could be some tokenization of these eco credits, because there is a value to clean water and clean air and species biodiversity. That could be monitored through DMRV and then monetized in a way where landowners could be rewarded for restoring land and having bison and other restorative processes happening.

Will Masters: 51:45

Yeah, absolutely. For like recovering natural capital, for recovering ecological function yes, absolutely.

Cash Upton: 51:54

Okay cool, I love that. I love the, the in real life restoration you're doing, as well as the Ford looking like blockchain, you know, democratization of citizen science, stuff. So this gets me really excited. Well, I think I've asked most of the questions I wanted to today. Is there anything we didn't cover that we should kind of send our listeners off with?

Will Masters: 52:16

I don't know. I'm sure I'll think of it as soon as we get off the phone, but no.

Cash Upton: 52:21

How can we support the work you're doing, anything that we can do right now, while you guys are in the midst of this project.

Will Masters: 52:27

Well, if any of your listeners are like anywhere close to the Texas Panhandle, we've got volunteer days happening in the next few months and we need people to plant trees and to help us with these structures. All volunteers would be fantastic. And then we are also we're a 501C3, we're a nonprofit and we need money. Yeah, that Acre NFT it really. It gave us a great start, like we've been able to accomplish a lot with it, but we even need to grow. I mean, there's a whole lot of work yet to be done, and so, yeah, send us money.

Cash Upton: 53:02

Amen, yeah, I love it and the work you're doing is very important. So thanks so much, will, and thanks for taking the time to talk to us today, and definitely we'll keep in touch and see how things are progressing.

Will Masters: 53:13

You're cool. I sure appreciate it. Thank you for having me and good work.

Cash Upton: 53:16

Thanks, sir, All right cheers. Thanks to Matthew Patrick Donner for the Refi Generation production, including the music mixing and editing. As a reminder, none of this is financial advice, and feedback is the breakfast of champions. Please subscribe to our show and send your thoughts, critiques and ideas for future content. Be well, take care of each other and do something good today.