Lori Walsh: South Dakota outdoor lovers are challenged to find ways to connect with nature during this pandemic. What are we doing to keep people safe in outdoor facilities? South Dakota's Secretary of Game Fish and Parks, Kelly Hepler, joins us with an update. Secretary Hepler, welcome, thanks for being here.
Kelly Hepler: Well, thanks Lori and thanks to your listeners and it's been a little while, I'm glad to be back on your program.
Lori Walsh: We're glad to have you here. Hope you're doing well. And one of the things I want to start with here, we've got some listener questions about what's allowed and what's not allowed. But you can just feel when people talk about what they have lost or what they are waiting to get back to when things return to normal or what they didn't realize that was the most important thing to them. Boy, South Dakota's outdoor places is really, it's pretty high up in the list. Are you feeling that longing from people too?
Kelly Hepler: Absolutely. I mean, we have one main statement we're going to tell people, the outdoors remains open. We really need to get people outside and recreate. I can just tell you personally from Carolyn and I, my wife and I, are both in the state park here, local and Farm Island yesterday and the parking lot was full, but there was very few people we saw on the trails and when we did are young families and lots of those kids were smiling and Redwing blackbirds were singing. It just kind of brings joy to your heart. And that's so important because right now there's so much anxiety and almost like you feel like there's such a loss of control that you're alluding to. So for mental health and just good of your family, we really do urge people to get outside and enjoy this great State we call South Dakota.
Lori Walsh: Right. Know what to do and what not to do. Know what's safe and know how to protect your family, obey the CDC and the governor and then put it all down and go take a step outside because it's Spring out there today at least. I hear it might snow on Friday, but we've got a pretty nice day here. All right, so Secretary Hepler, what's open and what's closed?
Kelly Hepler: Well, basically everything is open. I mean all our state parks are open. We don't have people manning the stations, so we're letting people go without a new park pass. We just ask, once we are back up and running again, come back in and buy that park pass. And so this was a good grace period.
We don't have our comfort stations open, but we do have all our potties are all open for people to use. Certainly all the trails are open, like say around here in Pierre, we have our shooting range and our archery range. That's true in a lot of the places around the state. We don't have, like say some really popular places, like an indoor/outdoor campuses, those are closed just for the benefit of the public and our staff. But you can go on Facebook and both of those locations, as well as many of our parks, has Facebook activities. So when you are stuck inside, like Friday when it was snowing outside, you can't get outside, go to Facebook and look at those things.
Fishing though, I mean prime time for fishing right now. We're watching people catching fish in front of our house this weekend on our [inaudible 00:02:46]. The Walleye are picking up and the Pike are picking up, so we urge people to get outside and go fishing. And spring turkey season, one of my favorite things of all time, all my stuff stacked neatly in my garage, or sort of neatly, waiting to go.
But in every one of these things, this only works if people are smart. They think about it, they follow those CDC listings that you talked about. Social distancing is so, so important. And people just got to be smart about it. They can't congregate. And we have some graphics we put on our website with a fishing pole. And some of these are meant to be fun, but they send a serious message, pay attention to people. And we want you to be positive, we want you to get outside, but these opportunities last because you're being good about it. So hope that it helps Lori Walsh.
Lori Walsh: Give me an idea of, because there isn't a sanitation on a picnic table or there's not going to be sanitation in the bathrooms or how is that working? Because by encouraging people to go outside, at some point they're going to have to use some of those facilities, especially restroom facilities. We don't want them not using those facilities to meet their needs, for example. But how do you encourage people to stay safe while doing that?
Kelly Hepler: Well, we'll obviously clean, certainly those toilets, we'll clean those all the time, so they'll be maintained that way. But as always wash your hands 20 seconds, it's going to sound like a broken record, but hopefully you can find that hand sanitizer, clean your hands and make sure it's dried good. I do that all the time. And then take some wipes along. If you're concerned about a picnic table, just clean it off with some wipes ahead of time and that that goes a long ways. But just washing those hands, stand five or six feet away from [inaudible 00:04:28] close to the person unless it's obviously your family. Those precautions should take care of most people's concerns.
Lori Walsh: For people who are listening to the advice and the request for no unnecessary domestic travel, some of these people have planned trips and need to cancel them. Most of these places you have to get to somehow and if you're not supposed to be traveling ... unpack that for me a little bit because it feels like a little bit inconsistent.
Kelly Hepler: Yeah. Lori, glad you did bring that up. In fact, we had that conversations just two hour ago with our executive team because we're going through this. There's no real playbook you can go to figure out how to get through this. And so we're looking at it day-by-day and modifying where we think support for public health and for our staff health. This was those ones you balance that, you can stay holed up in your house, which I guess ideally at least that's probably be the best thing for this disease, but it certainly doesn't help your mental health in just getting out and reducing that anxiety.
So there's a balance, is that you still can get out, you can still recreate. We just need to be smart about it. And so like say for example, if you do have to go and use gas, I'll say for the same type of thing, then just cleanse your hands when you get to using gas. And just I think it's a balance and everybody's going to have to make that decision on their own. And it's one of those things honestly, I wake up at two in the morning and I do think about, because the last thing that we want to do as GF&P, it put some member of the public in a bad situation, or our staff, but I think we found that balance and I feel pretty comfortable where we're at right now, Lori Walsh.
Lori Walsh: And we've said on the show since this whole thing started that all these decisions have expiration dates. So people who are listening right now, because Secretary Hepler said this today, that doesn't mean a week from now that the situation hasn't changed, or three days from now. So always check before you go.
But give us an idea as Secretary Hepler about public safety and we talked about fishing and GF&P officers, what sort of ... they need to get a little closer than maybe we need to get when we're out taking a hike. We can keep a great distance, but if somebody needs help or if somebody is violating the law there, then those officers come into play. How are we prepared to protect them from what we don't know because many people have this virus can be completely asymptomatic and not really know that they even have it.
Kelly Hepler: Outstanding question. And we have spent quite a bit of time on that. We certainly give a lot of credit to our officers and our rangers and then give them the discretion to make those kinds of personal calls that they have to. We provided them with personal protection devices that they can use as far as face shields, some of that they feel is necessary. But for the average, just to go check a license, we're saying you don't need to do that and you can just observe. But if they actually have to go help someone with a boating accident, then hopefully we have the stuff, that they're prepared, they can wear, to reduce that.
But there's always an element of risk. And I just want to thank our law enforcement, I want to thank all of the health providers. I mean together they are really our front line and God bless them all because there's an element of risk, you just can't eliminate all of it. But they do that because they're dedicated and they think it's important, so I thank them.
Lori Walsh: All right, so the bottom line, things are still open. Please get your park pass later as a gesture of goodwill for the services that were provided because those stations are not manned. Officer's still on duty, but you really got to do those social distancing, those actions. It's just so important Secretary Hepler, just reiterate that for people before we let you go. If you're going to go out and do these things you can't forget. Because here's one of the things that I find, I go home and I do the things I'm supposed to do. I've washed my hands, I've cleaned the surfaces of my house and I can turn off the news for a while and I could just unwind and then I forget momentarily and then I'm like, "That's right. Like the world is not the same that it was yesterday." And then I have to switch back into that mode. When you're out there on a hike, you're going to get in that space, which we want you to be in mentally, but you also have to stay vigilant.
Kelly Hepler: You're absolutely correct. I mean it's just, there is a new normal for this situation, you know? I know the governor asked us to unplug and think positive and that's a mental health piece, but you need to be smart about it. So every media event we have, or blast we send out, we talk about being smart about it. People can go on our website and we have kind of the Q's and A's, what to do and what not to do, but every one of them is just be smart. We need to flatten this curve and we will get through this. There's no question about that. And we know that's going to happen. So yeah, I can't emphasize that enough is those outdoors right now, those fishing capabilities and those docks are in the water because we want people to get outside. But you know, please, please follow the CDC rules.
Lori Walsh: For people who still have their income right now, who are lucky enough not to be employed and are grateful for that. Some of them are supporting their local hair salons or their local restaurants as much as they can. What can people do to support their local game, fish and parks. Can they buy those things online? You know, if they want to continue to make a commitment financially to buy licenses, how does that sort of work?
Kelly Hepler: Well, they can, but the best thing they can do is just get outside. That's a first thing we want people to do. But after that, Lori Walsh, thank you, is that they can go out, they can buy our fishing license online, you can go out and get your hunting license online. And like you said, when we get the parks back open, you can come back and you can certainly buy those park entrance fees that way. You can also, you can make reservations right now, there's reservations online for camping still open on the park side. So there's a number of things they can do. You can also go on our site and even donate money for habitat. There's an order place there if you want to be able to do that. So all those things are great things to do that they support this outdoor legacy we call South Dakota. So anybody who wants to do that, but the main thing is get outside, be safe.
Lori Walsh: Kelly Hepler, thank you so much for being here. Be well.
Kelly Hepler: Lori, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.