Conservation History Association of Texas
Texas Legacy Project
Oral History Interview
Nature Conservancy in Texas

Interviewee: Pat Robertson
Date: June 14, 2022
Site: Austin, Texas
Reels: 3737-3742
Executive Producer: Lydia Saldana
Producer: Jeff Weigel
Field Producer / Chief Interviewer: Lee Smith
Videographer: Curtis Craven
Writer / Editor: Ron Kabele
Transcriber: David Todd / Trint
Item: Robertson_Pat_NCItem22_AustinTX_20220614_Reel3737-3742_Audio.mp3

[Bracketed numbers refer to the interview recording’s time code.]

Pat Robertson [00:00:16] Well, I got started with the Nature Conservancy through Carter Smith in the early 2000s. I ran into him probably at one of the smaller luncheons we used to have. And he said, “Pat, you’re an outdoor guy. You need to get involved with the Nature Conservancy.” And I said, “Well, okay.”

Pat Robertson [00:00:33] And so I got on the Advisory Board, which was a healthy nine-person sort of team. And from there I must have done too well because Carter made me chair of the Advisory Board. And then from there I moved on up through the system to the Texas State Board and became chair of the Texas State Board and chaired the Development and Nominating Committee.

Lee Smith [00:01:01] So this is back when Carter was with the Nature Conservancy, or when he was with Parks and Wildlife?

Pat Robertson [00:01:07] Right, he was the State Director when he recruited me. And then 2 or 3 years later, he moved to Texas Parks and Wildlife.

Lee Smith [00:01:15] Okay.

Lee Smith [00:01:16] So where did you grow up?

Pat Robertson [00:01:18] So I grew up the first eight years of my life, which probably had some influence on the Nature Conservancy in a little town called League City, which is now a big town south of Houston on a 50-acre ranch from 1942 to about 1950.

Pat Robertson [00:01:37] So when you came home from school back then, you didn’t get on the computer, you didn’t do the iPhone thing, you didn’t play games. You went and got on your horse or you fed the chickens or you went fishing for brim or you grabbed your .22 and went down and shot at squirrels.

Pat Robertson [00:01:57] So I grew up in the country and then moved to Florida in 1950, lived on the west coast of Florida. Back then, Florida was small. It didn’t have a lot of people. It was the greatest place for a young person to grow up on the water, a skiff, all those kind of things.

Pat Robertson [00:02:16] And my parents were all outdoor people. So that’s where I got the outdoorism and it’s never left me.

Lee Smith [00:02:24] So how did you, what happened after Florida?

Pat Robertson [00:02:28] Well, I left Florida and went to Washington and Lee, which we were just talking about, played lacrosse there and managed to graduate, came back and went to law school at UT through 1968, went to work for a law firm here in Austin and worked there for 15 years, started a trust company and wealth advisory company, sold it to Wells Fargo Bank, worked for Wells Fargo Bank for ten years doing their private banking and running their private banking group, and then moved to UBS in 2013. And that’s where I am today.

Lee Smith [00:03:07] Okay.

Lee Smith [00:03:09] So cast your mind back. Can you remember kind of the first time nature made an impression on you as a kid? It might be kind of hard because you were out in it all the time.

Pat Robertson [00:03:23] Well, I was, But I would say it was those years growing up when I was, you know, one year old to eight years old, on a small farm south of League City, before they built the Gulf Freeway and all of that stuff. I mean, it was a small place, small public school. And but I knew right then that I was always going to want to be outside.

Pat Robertson [00:03:47] As a matter of fact, I had a saying that the only reason I ever worked inside was so I could be outside. You know, you just had to make money in order to be able to go do things in the outdoors.

Lee Smith [00:04:01] So you kind of mentioned it – was there a family member or a mentor during this time for you?

Pat Robertson [00:04:08] Well, I would say both my father and mother. They were big fishermen. We used to we used to leave the farm and go to Port O’Connor, where we had a boat and we would take it across to Matagorda Island. And on Matagorda Island, there was nothing but the old Army barracks there, which we had turned into like a place to live. So we fished almost every weekend down there. Of course, if you go to Matagorda Island today, you’re going to find all kinds of homes and houses and totally different structure.

Pat Robertson [00:04:42] But I still fish down in that area.

Lee Smith [00:04:47] Throughout your education, was there anybody that was very conservation-minded that maybe had influenced you?

Pat Robertson [00:04:55] Well, I don’t know about conservation-minded, but I did play sports. I played football in school. And there was one particular coach who I’ll never forget that used to talk to me about football and about being outdoors and those kind of things. I can’t remember his name, but he was a he was a very cool guy and I’d say he did have some influence on my love for the outdoors.

Pat Robertson [00:05:25] So your first involvement with conservation, would you say, was with the Nature Conservancy when Carter roped you in?

Pat Robertson [00:05:32] It was. It was when it was when Carter roped me in. And Carter is good at that. And that’s exactly what happened.

Pat Robertson [00:05:39] But as soon as I got involved and began to understand what the Nature Conservancy was all about, I knew it was the place for me. And I think that’s why I rose up through the ranks and I think helped them build the organization along the way.

Lee Smith [00:05:55] So what what years was this Advisory Board period?

Pat Robertson [00:05:58] You know, I’m thinking, yeah, I’m thinking it was around 2004 or 5 that I got started with, with the very small group of people, which was the Advisory Board. And then it just went from there all the way through today, where I’m a lifetime trustee.

Lee Smith [00:06:19] What were some of the first projects that you were involved with?

Pat Robertson [00:06:24] Well, one of the things that the Advisory Board was responsible for way back when was putting on the luncheon. And there were like nine of us. And I remember that it was quite an ordeal to try to figure that out. Staff became involved later on, and the thing grew literally from being maybe 80 or 100 people to 800 people that would come to the luncheons.

Pat Robertson [00:06:51] Unfortunately, Covid and the budget sort of did away with the luncheons because it became so big, it took all of staff’s time to organize the lunch over a very small amount of money.

Lee Smith [00:07:05] Curse of success.

Pat Robertson [00:07:08] Yes.

Lee Smith [00:07:12] So what about when you got on the board? What were some of the major projects that you were involved in?

Pat Robertson [00:07:21] Well, the projects that I liked the best were not necessarily the projects at the preserves or things like that. But what I saw early on was a need for better development, fundraising and nominating and getting people onto the board as board members, because that’s also a development sort of approach.

Pat Robertson [00:07:46] And so I worked really hard on development, trying to help staff find the right people, get the right people in the seats, because the money really and where we were organized is Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio. So we had to have somebody in each of those cities that were good fundraisers and knew how to raise funds. And then we had to have board members in all of those particular areas.

Pat Robertson [00:08:15] So I focused almost totally on those sorts of things. I don’t want you to think I wasn’t out on the preserves, because we’ll talk about that later. I’ve been on most of the Nature Conservancy preserves, with the exception of maybe East Texas area.

Lee Smith [00:08:33] So how did you go by recruiting folks? Did you do it individually or did you target somebody and find a friend of theirs that you knew? I mean, how how does that work?

Pat Robertson [00:08:43] Well, for the Advisory Board, that’s exactly how we built the Advisory Board. We got people on the board that were nature-oriented, outdoor people, and then we just asked them to think about 1 or 2 people that fit that mode.

Pat Robertson [00:09:00] And that’s how we built the Advisory Board from, I’m going to say 10 or 12 strong, to maybe at one point and I don’t know where it is today, but maybe 60 strong. And these would be husbands and wives and families and things like that where we really got the whole group involved if we could.

Lee Smith [00:09:21] Well, and that creates longevity. You know, when you when you get the kids involved.

Pat Robertson [00:09:27] Well, that’s right. I mean, that’s how you build a legacy with the family and people who when one group drops out, you got another group to step in. And that worked. I think it still works extremely well. It’s also a pool from which to fish to add to the big board and and more donors and more interested people.

Lee Smith [00:09:52] The Schweppes are a perfect example.

Pat Robertson [00:09:55] Well, yeah, Anne was way ahead of me in that and has done a lot of good work, she and both Jane, but I would say Anne was more involved than Jane. But she did a great and fantastic job of raising some very big funds.

Lee Smith [00:10:11] Well, and their dad was.

Pat Robertson [00:10:13] Yes. And he was involved, too. He’s a lifetime trustee as well.

Lee Smith [00:10:19] So going out to West Texas, what drew you to West Texas properties?

Pat Robertson [00:10:25] Well, I would say it was my friend Bill Nowlin. It was Bill and Bettye Nowlin and their family were deeply involved with the Nature Conservancy, primarily through, through Anne Schweppe, and had donated a lot of good funds to the Davis Mountains. But then Bill heard about Independence Creek and he sort of adopted it as his his funding project, if you will, and Independence Creek needed that.

Pat Robertson [00:10:57] I went out there with him several different times and we had groups that came out with us like Jerry Santini and others, my son Jay from San Antonio, who who, by the way, built in his shop in San Antonio, the hunting vehicle, which is a two-tiered vehicle with a hunting area on top and a place to ride and throw the bodies below. And he built all that and it turned out beautifully.

Pat Robertson [00:11:27] But Bill, when he got out there, took one look at the deer blinds. And he was right, because when you went to get in a deer blind at Independence Creek years ago, they were built out of wood and they were old. They had a ladder that went straight up maybe 15 or 20 feet off the ground.

Pat Robertson [00:11:46] You climbed up the ladder with a rifle in your hand. You threw the rifle into the deer blind, and then you sort of flopped your body into the deer blind and wiggled in there, sat in the chair while the wind whistled through there and hoped that the whole thing wouldn’t blow down.

Pat Robertson [00:12:04] So Bill said, “We can’t have this.” Bill was a fairly big guy, by the way, and he needed a little more substantial sort of deer blind that had stairs that went up at an angle that you could get in. And so he funded a lot of the blinds. Carol and I funded some. Jerry Santini’s son, Jay, who helped procure the blinds because of his business in San Antonio. And we literally redid almost every blind at Independence Creek.

Lee Smith [00:12:39] That area is probably about as far on the spectrum away from Florida and League City. I term it a very tactile environment. What is it about that area that’s just so intriguing?

Pat Robertson [00:13:02] Well, I don’t know. All I can say is when you get in your car in Austin, Texas, excuse me, and you drive through Johnson City, drive through Fredericksburg and then through Sonora, Ozona, the country becomes less and less beautiful, if you will, more rough. And then you get to the little town of Sheffield, which I think is an old oil town, that is certainly no longer pumping a lot of oil back when I was going through it. And you go through Sheffield and the country becomes, to some people, I would say, ugly.

Pat Robertson [00:13:35] But whenever I head that direction and entered the the ranch, I think about like awesome vastness. It’s all I can say. It’s just awesome vastness. Because no matter where you are, no matter where you’re looking, you’re seeing just countryside, rough countryside, but beautiful countryside.

Pat Robertson [00:13:59] And then of course, you have Independence Creek, which runs right through the middle of it, and you’ve got a spring that produces 3000 to 5000 gallons that feeds into Independence Creek, creates a chain of lakes which you can swim in, and I might add some late nights after McCurdy tequila, maybe a little bit of skinny dipping despite the temperature.

Pat Robertson [00:14:25] And all of that feeds into Independence Creek, which adds about 24% in volume, I think, to Independence Creek. And then it all feeds in to the Pecos, raising the volume in the Pecos by like 40%.

Pat Robertson [00:14:42] And I’ve stood with Carter Smith and others right at the confluence of Independence Creek and the Pecos River. And it’s absolutely gorgeous. And it’s it’s just unbelievable that you’re standing there in the awesome vastness of some very dry Chihuahuan Desert. And here come these creeks and streams flowing to the ocean.

Lee Smith [00:15:09] Well, and it’s that contrast above of this rough dry inhospitable area, and then this river of life. How does that, that dichotomy kind of inform the importance of that site?

Pat Robertson [00:15:32] Well, of course, water out there is, it’s all about water out there. So that’s the importance of all of those creeks and streams that flow in there. But if you’re a water kind of guy like me, instead of going deer hunting, because by the time I got out there, I really didn’t care about killing deer anymore.

Pat Robertson [00:15:51] I would get a four-wheeler and I would just drive down to Independence Creek and get out and go arrowhead hunting and walk up and down the creek, spotting bass and watching the water flow by. And it’s just, like you say, a find in the middle of the awesome vastness and dryness of the Chihuahua Desert.

Lee Smith [00:16:15] It’s almost the definition of an oasis. In fact, isn’t one of the places…

Pat Robertson [00:16:21] One of the ranches is the Oasis Ranch. And so, yes, there’s a reason for that.

Pat Robertson [00:16:28] 20,000 acres. It didn’t start that way. But thanks to McCurdy, 20,000 acres available to you to roam around out there with with high spots. There’s a certain spot on that ranch where you go, what I would call to the second level.

Pat Robertson [00:16:44] It’s a very rough ride up a canyon. But once you get up there, you can then hike across to the end of it and you can look down on the Pecos River and you can actually see pecan groves and things like that growing down along the water. And then you can turn and look out across nothing but but rocks.

Lee Smith [00:17:05] Have you ever been up there when it’s rained hard?

Pat Robertson [00:17:09] I’ve been out there when it snowed and rained. Probably one of the coldest times that we were ever out there. As a matter of fact, it was honestly too cold to hunt. We had to drive around in the car and roll down the window in order to cull some deer.

Pat Robertson [00:17:26] But no, I can’t say I’ve ever been in a big rainstorm. But a snowstorm, which made, of course, the place even more beautiful.

Lee Smith [00:17:36] I’ve always wanted to see, because it just becomes a flashflood because it’s like hitting, water hitting the pavement. I’ve always wanted to be out there.

Pat Robertson [00:17:44] Yeah, I’m not sure that I would want to be there because you can see where that’s happened and you can see where the water’s been and where you would never guess that water would be, either in the fences or the trees. And it looks to me like if you were there, you maybe you wouldn’t get out for a good period of time.

Lee Smith [00:18:05] What about nighttime? What’s it like at night? Do you remember the first time you were out there and you just, like, stopped?

Pat Robertson [00:18:13] Yeah, well, of course there’s no, or very little light out there, to to ruin the views of the skies. So if you could just lie down in a lawn chair out there and look up, you can see stars that you’ll see nowhere else but that area out there, because of the darkness that has been preserved in part by the Nature Conservancy.

Lee Smith [00:18:39] What does that experience and how does that relate also to the vastness that you’re, we’re talking about earlier, being at the second level and whatnot? What is, how does that inform you as a human being?

Pat Robertson [00:18:56] Well, to me, it’s just … maybe the tequila helps a little bit, too, you know? McCurdy used to pass a bottle around the fire. He’d bring a full bottle and everybody would take an obligatory sip the first round. And the second round, you’d put your tongue in it and you wouldn’t, at least I wouldn’t, I think most everybody else too. But for some reason the bottle continued to go down and we can attribute that to Robert McCurdy, I think. And, but every the next morning at 5:30, he would be up picking up hunters and and heading for the blinds.

Pat Robertson [00:19:32] But to answer your question: yeah, looking up at the night sky out there, I’m not a big star guy, I know the major constellations and things like that. But that’s not really important when you’re looking up at the sky and you can see, literally watch them move across the horizon and see all of those things.

Pat Robertson [00:19:54] To lose that sort of thing over too much light, too much development, and everything else, would be a sad, sad thing. But that sort of thing would happen if it weren’t for organizations, conservation people like TNC.

Lee Smith [00:20:10] Independence Creek. Is there, you talked about that, that place that has the second level. Is there any other spot there that…?

Pat Robertson [00:20:20] Well, actually, that that second level where you have to go up through a very rough canyon up on top up there, I’d love to know the history of that because there’s an old pipe and old pens. There’s an old house up there. You know, you kind of got to wonder how people got there, what they were doing, what this big pipe that runs the length of the sort of peninsula out to the end and then pops out. And I’m assuming at one time it carried water.

Pat Robertson [00:20:47] But I loved to go out there and hike. As a matter of fact, I went up there one time on the four-wheeler, usually went up there by myself. Sometimes my son Jay would come because he likes that sort of thing too.

Pat Robertson [00:20:59] But I went up there to this old house and I was going to go inside to see what was in there. And I went around and all the doors were locked and I was like, “Well, that’s strange.”

Pat Robertson [00:21:09] And so I left and I told the ranch manager about it, and he said, “Well, they were probably locked because there were a lot of people passing through up there. They heard you coming, they ran in the house and locked all the doors.”

Pat Robertson [00:21:23] So I just wonder if I had opened one of the doors and gone in there how exciting that might have been if there were a bunch of of college students passing through that area.

Pat Robertson [00:21:37] But that’s really one of my favorite areas. The creek, of course, I’ve already mentioned, but you could go on and on about Independence Creek because it is so big and so vast.

Pat Robertson [00:21:50] And at one time there were a few quail out there. I used to actually hunt bobwhite quail out there. McCurdy called them his quail. He got, he kind of got upset with me because I came in with like four quail one time. And he was like, “You killed some of my quail.” And I was like, “I better not do this anymore.”

Pat Robertson [00:22:09] But yeah, the places is, it’s just unbelievable country.

Lee Smith [00:22:15] So why is the Nature Conservancy’s work important in that area?

Pat Robertson [00:22:20] Well, it’s important for some of the reasons we talked about. It’s important to preserve that area of the Chihuahuan Desert. It’s certainly important to preserve Independence Creek, its confluence with the Pecos, the 3000 to 5000 Caroline Springs that’s there.

Pat Robertson [00:22:40] You don’t want to see any development there like what’s happened up along the Devils River and up in that area where holes are being punched in the ground, water is being sucked out either commercially or for residential use, dropping the flow of water that eventually would normally run all the way into the dam up there and so forth. So that’s one reason that preserving that particular area is really, really important.

Lee Smith [00:23:14] So what is the Mad Island Preserve?

Pat Robertson [00:23:17] Okay, the Mad Island Preserve, it’s down near Palacios and Bay City. It was donated to TNC by the Clive Runnells family. I think back then the acreage donated was somewhere around 700 to 1000 acres. And then TNC or a landowner added another 6000 acres, I think. So the place is like 7000 acres of marsh prairie. And marsh prairie down in that area is disappearing fast because of rice farms, because of development, all those sort of things.

Pat Robertson [00:23:58] But I can tell you when you drive in the gate there at Mad Island and look out across those those marsh plains, it’s the way it was 100 years ago or 200 years ago or whatever it might be. Every time I drive in there, I mean, my heart gets going a little bit and I say, “This is what it used to look like, and it will always look this way because of the conservation that’s been done there.”

Pat Robertson [00:24:28] But so Mad Island, there’s an old lodge there that I suppose was owned by the Runnells family, and it’s somewhat of disrepair, but it’s a great place to go and stay if you want to kayak or fish, which is there’s lakes there. They call them lakes. They connect to the Intercoastal. They’re about a foot to two-foot deep in most places. So the only way to get around really is by kayak or to wade. And wading is not a good option because there’s a lot of mud bottom up there.

Pat Robertson [00:25:03] And so I go down there with a friend, Allen Berger. His wife Bridget and Allen are big conservationist people in that area, and they do work at Mad Island.

Pat Robertson [00:25:16] So I go down there and I wouldn’t be able to kayak anymore because this December will be my 80th birthday. But Allen brings the kayaks. I bring the food and the wine and he helps me get in the kayak. Once I’m in the kayak, I’m fine. I can go miles in the kayak and then I have to get out of the kayak. That’s a sight to see that we won’t talk about.

Pat Robertson [00:25:41] But at any rate, the kayaking down there is not all about fishing. It’s about the preserved lakes that are down there. So you get up early in the morning, right before the sun’s coming up, you get in the kayak and you paddle out of the entrance where we keep the kayaks, where the lodge is.

Pat Robertson [00:26:00] And then you’re on your own. You’re your own captain, and you can go as far as your body will permit. Sometimes we go 8 to 12 miles, depending on the wind. If it’s too windy, sometimes we don’t go any more than two miles. But you can you can in the early mist up there, you can paddle quietly across to the far side of the lake.

Pat Robertson [00:26:23] And if the wind’s right, you can just stop paddling and look down the coastline and you’ll see bird after bird after bird. White ibis and blue heron and green heron and rails and all of these birds. And they’re all cranking up. And ducks, of course. Lots of ducks.

Pat Robertson [00:26:45] And if the wind is right, you can just sit in the kayak and let it take you toward one of these birds. And I’ve gotten within ten feet of the most beautiful white ibis that you have ever seen. And of course, he he sort of knew I was coming. But you’re low in the water in those kayaks. And so the bird sees you and he starts kind of doing one of these things. He’s looking at you and you’re drifting in and drifting in. And then he starts doing little feathers and stuff.

Pat Robertson [00:27:16] But what I like to do, I like to start when I’m getting really close to him, start talking to him and say, “Hey, bird, what’s going on this morning?” You know, one of these things. And then finally you get too close and then the bird takes off.

Pat Robertson [00:27:30] And so that’s that’s a part of it that’s conserved forever down there.

Pat Robertson [00:27:35] And the redfishing’s not bad either. You can hear these redfish chasing bait up against the marsh prairie banks. And if you don’t hear that sound, you’re not going to have a very good day. Means the tide’s too high and the fish can’t can’t do it, can’t chase the bait. But if the tide’s low enough and everything else is right, you start hearing that and then you’ll see a fin.

Pat Robertson [00:28:00] And we’re not fly fishing. We’re actually casting, bait-casting a plastic lure. And you cast to where that splash is and a good part of the time that redfish is going to hit that thing. And then the fun starts because in a kayak, the fish is going to pull you wherever it wants to pull you. And it’s just so much fun.

Lee Smith [00:28:22] Seems to me that you’re kind of reconnecting with your childhood here. You grew up in League City and been over to another kind of a flats area. And is that what it is? Are you kind of, you know, back as a as a kid?

Pat Robertson [00:28:43] Yeah. You you really picked up on something there because when I first learned where Mad Island was and its proximity to Port O’Connor and Matagorda Club and all of that area down there, I hadn’t really been saltwater fishing on the flats in a long time. I mean, it had been years. I’ve been mostly ranching up around Llano and you just can’t, you can’t do both. You can’t be running a ranch and trying to fish unless you have help and a place to stay.

[00:29:13] And so Mad Island provided that to me, and I did sort of return to my childhood. And I sent pictures to my brother and my two sisters of the Matagorda Club where we used to hang out and asked them, “Where is this?” Only one of them got it right. And I’ve told them and sent them pictures countless times of me holding redfish in the kayak and doing that sort of thing.

Pat Robertson [00:29:40] So you’re right. You’re absolutely right. Reconnected with my childhood.

Lee Smith [00:29:46] Where did Mad, how did the name Mad Island? Whenever I’ve heard that, I’ve always thought what a strange name for a place. Do you know what the…?

Pat Robertson [00:29:55] Well, maybe and maybe not. But I always thought it was M-A-D-D. I don’t know why. Like Mothers Against Drunk Driving. But it wasn’t at all.

Pat Robertson [00:30:06] There is a lake, right in front of the lodge, which is Mad Island Lake, and it actually has a name and it’s on all the charts. And so my guess is that that’s where Mad Island got its name is from, somebody naming it Mad Island.

Pat Robertson [00:30:22] Now why they called it Mad Island, I don’t know, because it’s not a mad place, and not a bad place either. And it’s it’s a one-of-a-kind, iconic marsh prairie sort of place that few people will ever get the opportunity to see.

Lee Smith [00:30:42] Now, I you know, my background was Parks and Wildlife. And so we had Mad Island WMA and I never really even knew about the other side of it. But so what’s the connection with the Parks and Wildlife Management Area?

Pat Robertson [00:30:59] Well, I suppose it, like a lot of the things that the Nature Conservancy does with Parks and Wildlife and other partners, we partnered with them on that particular land, which has been an important element of the Nature Conservancy forever, because without the other organizations, some federal, some state, some private, NGOs, and the Nature Conservancy, we’ve been able to do things like Powderhorn Ranch and places like that.

Pat Robertson [00:31:29] But just like you had never seen the lodge, I had never until the other day ever driven down the road toward the WMA. I had no idea what was down there. We’re doing a project down there and redoing a bridge, which would be the normal route to the lodge and you now have to go around. So I actually went around and followed the signs to the WMA and then cut back to the main road.

Pat Robertson [00:31:57] But that’s an area where you can sign up, it’s my understanding, to hunt and do things like that, totally open to the public. You come through the same gate as you do to go to Mad Island. And so that’s that’s a great thing because the public can get involved there.

Lee Smith [00:32:13] Why is that important?

Pat Robertson [00:32:15] Well, it’s important, and I wish we had more of that at our preserves. But when you think about the liabilities and all the other things involved, we couldn’t do it. We couldn’t become a Texas Parks and Wildlife.

Pat Robertson [00:32:27] But having the public and have public days like they do at Mad Island, like they have an annual bird count there, they have birders that can sign up and come bird there. All those kinds of things, of course, are important because we want to get the public out onto those kind of lands. We want them to reconnect with nature.

Pat Robertson [00:32:50] And sadly, in my opinion, the public, as we know it, is not connecting with nature like it used to until maybe Covid came along. Covid, I think, did a lot to get people out of the city and out of their homes and out of their daily lives and out in the country.

Pat Robertson [00:33:11] I think that shows up through shops like that sell outdoor equipment, because they just boomed – boats, anything you can think of. People had more time. They started working from home.

Pat Robertson [00:33:24] And that’s an extremely important thing because it was on the downhill. I think 80% of the people live in cities or near cities, so they’re not going to connect with the land the way they used to.

Lee Smith [00:33:39] Well, I think it’s also I mean, it wasn’t just time. People kind of reassessed priorities. And I think they have given more value to personal time and family time and time outdoors. And then with that motivation comes, you know, going out and buying stuff and actually doing it. But I don’t know, that’s, that’s.

Pat Robertson [00:34:12] Yeah. So important, you know, and Covid wasn’t a good thing, but it did have some good outcomes in that regard.

Pat Robertson [00:34:19] And yeah, people did reconnect and once they got out there, they were kind of like, “Hey, this is pretty cool, I’m going to try this again.” And then they told their friends about it. And so maybe, you know, that could make them connect with some private conservation group or TNC or do more Texas Parks and Wildlife things.

Pat Robertson [00:34:42] Extremely important because our kids today, as you know, I mean, with everything that they can access online and all of the social stuff that they’re into, it’s it’s a bad thing. And it’s beginning to show up in our society in bad, bad ways.

Lee Smith [00:35:03] And having this kind of mosaic of partners. Why? I mean, because you can kind of touched on it. I mean, the overall goal is a large swath of protection, but kind of a secondary benefit of having all these different, is you can have one section that has public use and other limited. So, I mean, how does this mosaic further the mission of the Nature Conservancy?

Pat Robertson [00:35:45] Well, again, it allows the public to get on the lands because as you know and I know and everybody knows, most of Texas land is private. And so, without these areas that the public can access or people can access by going to the Nature Conservancy, signing up – Independence Creek and other preserves, Davis Mountain area hiking trail up there that you can get on – extremely important.

Pat Robertson [00:36:10] And a lot of that couldn’t have been done without a couple of things. When you think back about “Land, Water and Oceans”, which is what I think TNC is all about and protecting preserves, and one of my favorites is “Saving All the Great Places”. We’ve changed some of those things along the way. But I’m I’m sticking with Saving All the Great Places because I think that’s part of what we’re doing.

Pat Robertson [00:36:36] Yeah. I mean, you’ve got to have partnerships. The conservation easement went a long way to providing a means to conserve more land, because when you think about trying to just buy the land outright requires a lot of capital.

Pat Robertson [00:36:52] But the conservation easement came along and we were able to get landowners to either give land, give an easement or do whatever, and we were able to conserve a whole lot more land, taking us to this million acres that we’re celebrating here today.

Pat Robertson [00:37:11] The partnerships are the other side of it. TNC might not have enough money to buy Powderhorn Ranch at $36 million or whatever it was. But when you add in Texas Parks and Wildlife and other people and organizations, finally, after 20 something years or longer, we were able to to execute on Powderhorn Ranch.

Pat Robertson [00:37:36] And the same has been true of almost anything you you can name that we’ve been doing. Because when it comes before the board and Jeff Francell or Dan Snodgrass explains to us how we got there. They’re going to tell you, “Okay, first question is going to be where did the money come from?”

Pat Robertson [00:37:51] Sometimes actually is cash money. We might have borrowed it from National or we had it, but in most cases it’s going to be money from 2 or 3 different organizations, including the landowner and then some money set aside to monitor the land. So those partnerships, without them, I’d say we would be nowhere near a million acres.

Pat Robertson [00:38:17] One thing I wanted to ask you was, okay, you’re a financial advisor. That’s how how you made your living, right?

Pat Robertson [00:38:26] That’s exactly right.

Lee Smith [00:38:27] Yeah. Okay.

Pat Robertson [00:38:28] So, sometimes good, sometimes bad. But that’s how I went about it.

Lee Smith [00:38:32] Give me the pitch for a conservation easement. I mean, Pat, I’ve got this. This land, and you want me to give up, you know, the value of my property. How is that good, sound financial advice.

Pat Robertson [00:38:47] Okay. I think there’s a couple of reasons that it’s sound. In some cases, the landowner is a conservationist and wants to do it. That’s number one. And that’s that’s, of course, the very best thing. They’re going to give you the easement. They might even throw in some money to monitor the easement. And that’s a great thing.

Pat Robertson [00:39:05] Maybe a not so good thing would be the family. The land has been in the family for many, many years. And the family has become land poor for one reason or another. They don’t have the kind of cash and cash flow that they need in order to continue to do the thing they love – live on the ranch.

Pat Robertson [00:39:24] So they sell the conservation easement and money is raised and they they get money, but then they have to follow certain rules of the contract. They can’t do this. They can’t just build a house somewhere. They can’t dig a lake somewhere without it being either in the contract or all authorized by TNC or whatever conservation group has that particular easement.

Pat Robertson [00:39:51] So, so that’s sound business for them and allows them to continue to do the things they love. It allows the conservation easement to stay in place.

Pat Robertson [00:40:01] Now, you mentioned the value of the land. There is a tax credit or or advantage to a conservation easement, and some people do take advantage of that, as they should. It’s a part of the tax law, so they should take advantage of it. So that’s a third reason that somebody might do that.

Pat Robertson [00:40:22] But what what I’ve found is in looking at land that might have had a conservation easement put on it, the value of the land is maybe somewhat diminished unless you find a conservation buyer who’s willing to pay market price for the land.

Pat Robertson [00:40:40] So there are many ways to go about this, but I wish Jeff Francell well. This gentleman right here knows as much about it as Jeff. But Jeff Francell has become a master at partnerships, conservation easements, even wrote the book on it. So and it’s it’s it’s enabled the Nature Conservancy to do its job in even a better way.

Lee Smith [00:41:06] What is the value of the Nature Conservancy in this in Texas and the nation as a whole?

Pat Robertson [00:41:14] Or internationally, I guess you would say?

Pat Robertson [00:41:16] Yeah. Well.

Pat Robertson [00:41:21] The value of the Nature Conservancy is a lot of the things that we’ve been talking about because we’ve made a deep dive down into some of the preserves and things like that. And there’s other organizations, a lot of them, that are out there working in tandem with us, which is important too.

Pat Robertson [00:41:38] But the value of it is the federal government is never going to be responsible, in my opinion, or get the job done right, on conserving lands.

Pat Robertson [00:41:49] It’s always going to be private enterprise, in my opinion, that’s got to come along and do the job.

Pat Robertson [00:41:56] I’m not saying the federal government doesn’t help. Depends on the administration, depends on the politics. It depends on a lot of things. And some good things are going to come of that. Some bad things are also going to come of it.

Pat Robertson [00:42:08] But if you take private enterprise, no matter where it is that they’re working, things always seem to work better than something that’s government-run. So the Nature Conservancy job is to get out there and continue to do what they do.

Pat Robertson [00:42:25] Now I will say that I think at one point the Nature Conservancy tried to expand in a lot of areas that they probably had no business being in. That’s my personal opinion. I think “Land, Water, Oceans”, “Land, Water, Oceans.” Jeff would add climate change. But I’m just saying that Land, Water and Oceans, if you pay attention to them, you’re going to take care of climate change.

Pat Robertson [00:42:51] So our job is to get out there and continue to do what we do.

Pat Robertson [00:42:56] The thing that I’ve been most focused on as a board member, as chair, when I was with the Advisory Board and even now, as just a lifetime trustee is how do we raise the money to keep doing our job?

Pat Robertson [00:43:10] Because if we let that slip and it’s happened before, bad things happen. People get laid off, lands don’t get conserved, all of those things there.

Pat Robertson [00:43:21] We have got to pay attention to the money and then who’s on our board and who’s bought into the program and have them be apostles, if you will, out there spreading the word, finding like-minded people, bringing them in and allowing us to continue our job.

Lee Smith [00:43:43] What was that phrase?

Pat Robertson [00:43:44] Places, “Saving All the Great”, “Saving All the Last Great Places.”

Lee Smith [00:43:55] I think that, and this kind of gets into what you’re talking about – the government. The government doesn’t spend time identifying the great places and how to protect them. But who does?

Pat Robertson [00:44:10] Well, there you go.

Pat Robertson [00:44:11] The Nature Conservancy is set up to find, through science, the last great places, like Independence Creek. What was unique about Independence Creek, Independence Creek and a 3000 to 5000 Caroline Springs. That was unique. Otherwise, maybe it’s not worth saving. It’s just a bunch of raw land and rock.

Pat Robertson [00:44:35] But they found that, they identified it, and then found a way to buy it or conserve it.

Pat Robertson [00:44:42] Same thing with Mad Island and the marshes down there. They went down there, did the science on it, looked at what was down there from an eco structure standpoint, found the birds, found the fish, found all of those kind of things and said, “Yes, this is a good spot.”.

Pat Robertson [00:44:58] Now, the government’s never going to do that. They might appropriate some money to throw at things like that, but they’d be better off throwing the money to TNC or some of the other NGOs that can can really get the job done.

Lee Smith [00:45:15] And kind of dovetailing into something else you’re talking about, about maintaining the board that has the money, because timing on some of these properties is everything. And if you don’t have kind of, you know, your your ducks in a row financially and organizationally, then some of these great places may slip through. So how important is timing and having that kind of structure present?

Pat Robertson [00:45:48] Yeah. Having, having the right staff, having the right people on our board are extremely important, from a money standpoint, obviously.

Pat Robertson [00:45:59] But we have the advantage of having national, which is then the international organization which has a bank. And it has a bank that we can go to and prove a case for a particular conservation or purchase, and they will loan us the money.

Pat Robertson [00:46:17] And then we have to pay the money back, of course. And there’s a limit, just like with any bank as to what. And they may not think the project’s worthy. So somebody is overseeing this whole thing, but then we have an opportunity to do the deal at the right time, as you point out, do the deal at the right time before it gets away from us and some developer gets in and starts putting in 2000 homes. And then as we’re paying the money back, we have to raise the money, but we’ve got time to raise the money.

Pat Robertson [00:46:48] So very important to have the right fundraisers in the seats in Texas – for instance Houston, San Antonio. Dallas. Austin. Out there working every day not only to find new donors, but to manage the donors that we already have. Keep them informed. Keep them interested and keep them giving money.

Lee Smith [00:47:13] So what advice would you have for a young person going into conservation?

Speaker 1 [00:47:18] Well, you know, I do talk to people like that from time to time.

Pat Robertson [00:47:23] There are young people that come to me that are wondering if they want to be a lawyer or an accountant or do they want to be a financial advisor. And unlike me, who when I got out of college, I had no idea what I wanted to do. My father said, “Go to law school. You know, it’ll help you grow up.” Okay, fine. I’ll go to law school. Back then you actually did what your parents suggested that you do. That’s not true anymore in a lot of cases.

Pat Robertson [00:47:51] But, yeah, I went to law school. And honestly, law was not for me. I did it for 15 years, the whole time realizing that I needed and wanted something different. And it was financial that lured me.

Pat Robertson [00:48:05] So these people come to me and I get a chance while I’m talking to them. First of all, you got to read their personality. I mean, are they an accountant? Are they look at you or are they looking their feet. Or are they are they outgoing? And, you know, can they talk to you and those sort of things.

Pat Robertson [00:48:23] And then you ask them a little bit about law and why they want to do it. Well, you know, “I’ll make a lot of money.” Maybe not.

Pat Robertson [00:48:30] And so you try to kind of lead them in the direction that you think they might go in.

Pat Robertson [00:48:34] But while I’m doing that, I do get an opportunity to talk to them about enjoying what you do when you’re working so you can enjoy the outdoors.

Pat Robertson [00:48:46] And I tell them a little bit about myself, and it’s what I said in the early going that the only reason I ever worked was so that I didn’t have to work. I could be outdoors and, you know, I could I could buy a ranch or some land and have cattle on it and go throw range cubes at them and that sort of thing.

Pat Robertson [00:49:05] So not everybody is that way, obviously. They would much prefer to be urban-minded and so forth, but hopefully as we’re going along, that’s what I meant about apostles, that these apostles that we have out there can spread the word about the enjoyment of the land and how we’re doing it and hopefully get people involved and interested and then, you know, their children and grandchildren and everybody else just follows along. Without that, the whole thing’s going to die off, obviously.

Lee Smith [00:49:39] What do you think the future is? How are we looking?

Pat Robertson [00:49:43] I think I think our future is bright on conservation. I do.

Pat Robertson [00:49:47] I think we went through a little dip there. And certainly computers or social media and other things have had a bad effect on that. It’s what I said earlier on about when I came home and the school bus dropped me off on my 50-acre farm where I lived with my sisters and brother and everything, there was nothing to do but like go get on a horse or feed the chickens or go fishing or go hunting.

Pat Robertson [00:50:18] But today, I mean, kids come home, a lot of them, and they just get on their phone, get on the computer. That’s the downside. And we’ve got to work hard to get them out of that, that cycle of mentality.

Pat Robertson [00:50:31] I find myself looking at my phone 20 times a day and I’m and I’m like, “Why am I looking at it?” Well, part of it is I’ve got to because a client might be trying to reach me, particularly now. I don’t want them to have to wait. So I’ve got to look at it.

Pat Robertson [00:50:47] But I don’t need to look at it as often as I do. I need to put the frigging thing down or when, you know, if I’m at my ranch and don’t put it in my pocket or turn the ringer off or do something, because it just is a total distraction from what, the fun things of life, really.

Lee Smith [00:51:09] Anything else? Anything you want to say that we haven’t covered?

Pat Robertson [00:51:12] No. I want to say, “thank you”, because once, when you called me, first of all, getting connected with you again and then learning about Clive Reynolds’ deal, and meeting Curtis and meeting and seeing Jeff again and doing all those things has just been fun.

[00:51:27] But the main thing it did for me was it made me go back and start looking at the questions and start thinking about, “Okay, what are you going to say?”

[00:51:35] And it just took me back into the heart of this whole deal mentally, I mean, and it got me off this bad market stuff and and and really just got me thinking again about what we’re doing. And I’m obviously, I’m excited about it. I mean, I think there’s lots of good stuff that can be done.