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

Interviewee: Andy Sansom
Date: May 22, 2022
Site: Austin, Texas
Reels: 3435-3441
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: Sansom_Andrew_NCItem23_AustinTX_20220522_Reel3435-3441_Audio.mp3

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

Lee Smith [00:00:17] So where did you grow up, Andy?

Andy Sansom [00:00:19] I grew up on Oyster Creek in Brazoria County.

Lee Smith [00:00:23] And tell me about your, you know, the earliest experience you can remember about when you like really connected with the environment?

Andy Sansom [00:00:34] Well, my father was not an outdoorsman, but he recognized early that I had an interest in the outdoors and in nature. And he encouraged me in numerable ways over really all all of my life.

Andy Sansom [00:00:48] And the first thing that I can remember in that regard was that he and I built a boat that I could use on Oyster Creek. And every afternoon after school, I’d get in that boat and explore the creek.

Andy Sansom [00:01:01] At that time, there were basically native woodlands all the way to Angleton, which was 20 or 30 miles away. And so I could explore essentially a wilderness which today is no longer there.

Lee Smith [00:01:14] And how did growing up in the ’60s influence some of your thinking?

Andy Sansom [00:01:21] Of course, I grew up in the 1960s, which was also the birth of the environment, modern environmental movement, starting with the publication of the “Silent Spring”.

Andy Sansom [00:01:31] And as soon as I could, I believed that, you know, everything good that would happen would would happen in Washington, D.C. What a mistake that was.

Andy Sansom [00:01:42] But as quickly as I could, after college, I got to Washington. And every weekend, my wife and I would go down to the Mall with hundreds of thousands of other kids and demand change in the environment.

Andy Sansom [00:01:57] At that time, Nixon was president and he had appointed the governor of Alaska, whose name was Walter Hickel, as Secretary of Interior. And the Secretary’s office looks out on the Mall. And so Hickel would sit there and see these thousands of kids out on the Mall demanding change in the environment, and the Vietnam War. It wasn’t, the environment wasn’t the only issue.

Andy Sansom [00:02:22] And he he made a terrible blunder in that he wrote Nixon a letter in which he said, “We don’t have to do what these kids want us to do, but we owe it to them to listen to them.” And his mistake was that he released the letter.

Andy Sansom [00:02:38] And so Nixon fired him immediately and replaced him with a spectacular man who was a congressman from Maryland named Rogers Morton.

Andy Sansom [00:02:50] Well, my sort of part of the movement was that I wrote I wrote a lot of stuff. I wrote op-ed pieces and other things like that.

Andy Sansom [00:02:58] And somewhere along the line, Mr. Morton had seen some of my writing. And so I got a call a couple of weeks after he was in office and that the Secretary of Interior wanted to see me.

Andy Sansom [00:03:12] Well, I didn’t even own a suit and I had long hair, but I got cleaned up. I was frightened. And I went to see him.

Andy Sansom [00:03:21] And we had a very spirited discussion about conservation. And he stopped in the middle of the conversation and he said, “I have to make the commencement address at the University of Maryland tomorrow night. Would you write the speech?”

Andy Sansom [00:03:38] And I took a deep breath and I said, “Well, I will, I’ll try.” And so I called my wife and I said, “Nona, I can’t come home. I’m going to write a speech for the Secretary of Interior.” So I stayed up at the department. I wrote the speech. I went home and took a shower.

Andy Sansom [00:03:54] Next morning, I handed him a draft. He marked it up. I went upstairs and retyped it. He made the speech and I went to work as a speechwriter on Monday morning.

Andy Sansom [00:04:05] I didn’t last very long, mainly because I continued to try to put my own views into the speeches. But we became very close, and he assigned me to various projects, including one of the most significant ones, which was at that time there was a beginning of leasing oil and gas tracts off Matagorda Island.

Andy Sansom [00:04:27] And it sent the Defense Department into a whirlwind of concern because at that time, Matagorda Island was an airbase of the Strategic Air Command.

Andy Sansom [00:04:39] But it also upset the National Audubon Society because Matagorda is a good part of the wintering ground of the whooping crane.

Andy Sansom [00:04:47] So I flew down to Texas and went out to Matagorda Island. The Air Force reluctantly allowed me to come.

Andy Sansom [00:04:55] And a planeload of generals flew in from Vietnam to hunt quail and white-tailed deer. And I stayed there 3 or 4 days, during which time I saw high-ranking military officers from all over the country coming there to basically hunt and fish.

Andy Sansom [00:05:11] Well, I wrote it up. And I recommended that the base be closed and become a National Wildlife Refuge.

Andy Sansom [00:05:19] Well, they, the Secretary agreed with me and he wrote at that time the Secretary of Defense, whose name was James Schlesinger, and suggested that the base be closed.

Andy Sansom [00:05:33] Well, they didn’t reply to us.

Andy Sansom [00:05:36] And so just before Christmas in 1972, by prior agreement, we we we asked the Audubon Society to let us have a chance to work this out. And if it didn’t work, we would share our findings.

Andy Sansom [00:05:51] And so just before Christmas, I leaked the report to the Audubon Society.

Andy Sansom [00:05:55] And within 24 hours I got a call from 60 Minutes and I said, “Oh, my God, you know, I’m in too deep.” And so I refused to talk to them. But they did do the piece over the Christmas holidays.

Andy Sansom [00:06:10] I got on the bus to go to work on Monday after the Christmas holidays and I opened my Washington Post and the entire bottom fold was a picture of the whoopers.

Andy Sansom [00:06:20] And I and I’ll never forget the sensation of both being exhilarated, but also, “I’m doomed.” And sure enough, I lasted about two more months.

Andy Sansom [00:06:31] But during the time that I had worked for Mr. Morton, he also assigned me to be the Interior Department’s point person on the Big Thicket.

Andy Sansom [00:06:39] And at that time, the organization most involved in the preservation of areas in East Texas was the Nature Conservancy. There was no chapter in Texas, but the president of the Conservancy was a man named Pat Noonan. And who, in my view, changed the course of the Nature Conservancy forever. He was a transformational leader.

Andy Sansom [00:07:01] And he and I became very close. And so when I returned to Texas, I went to work first for the University of Houston and then the Port of Freeport, and then the Nature Conservancy posted the job for the executive director of what was then known as the Texas Chapter.

Andy Sansom [00:07:19] And Pat told them that there I was down there. And so he recommended that they interview me. And that’s how I ended up talking to the TNC and was extremely fortunate to to be appointed the executive director in 1982.

Andy Sansom [00:07:40] Well, when I got to TNC, which I learned more in that job than any other job that I’ve ever had, and I still still utilize skills and experiences today that I learned in working for the Nature Conservancy during the 1980s.

Andy Sansom [00:08:00] When I went to work for the organization, it was located above a pornography shop on Sixth Street. There were probably 35 people who gave it $100 or more, and it was three and a half million dollars in debt because of the purchase of Honey Creek, which was encouraged by the national organization.

Andy Sansom [00:08:22] But the local volunteer board of TNC had no real ability to raise those kind of dollars.

Andy Sansom [00:08:31] And so the relationship between the Nature Conservancy and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department was not particularly good at that time for any number of reasons. But obviously the first place I went was to Parks and Wildlife to see whether or not Honey Creek could be added to the Guadalupe River State Park.

Andy Sansom [00:08:51] Well, the answer was “no”. And the reason was because the state had just established a duck stamp that hunters who hunted waterfowl would be required to buy for the purpose of acquiring habitat for waterfowl.

Andy Sansom [00:09:07] And there was a tremendous amount of pressure on the department because they had not been able to make a purchase. And so at that time, you know, the hunting community was pretty upset at having to pay this additional fee, but yet not seeing any results on the ground.

Andy Sansom [00:09:24] Well, thanks to Carol Dinkins and others, I visited with a consortium of companies that had bought a spectacular wetland at the mouth of the Brazos River, south of the little village of Jones Creek, about 12,000 acres. And it had been purchased for the purpose of a huge tank farm. The idea was that they were going to anchor super tankers off the Texas coast and then pipe the crude oil into the tank farm.

Andy Sansom [00:09:57] Well, that project turned out not to be feasible. So these companies, including Dow and Exxon and and others, had a huge wetland on their hands that they didn’t have anything to do with.

Andy Sansom [00:10:12] Well, I’ve always been lucky, been luckier than skilled. And I’ve always had the ability to land in the right place at the right time.

Andy Sansom [00:10:23] Because during the years in which that wetland had been purchased and Honey Creek had been purchased, there was a spectacular run up in the real estate market. And so both of them were worth probably three times what what the owners had paid for them when they were purchased.

Andy Sansom [00:10:44] And so I went to the department, Parks and Wildlife Department, and I said, “Guys, here’s a wetland down on the coast that you might be able to use your duck stamp money on. And I will be able to, even though it’s worth 9 million bucks, I think I can get it for three. Because of that appreciation.”

Andy Sansom [00:11:04] And so they said, “Yeah, we’d like that.” And I said, “And you need to take Honey Creek”, which was also had appreciated probably three times.

Andy Sansom [00:11:14] So the department was able to buy about $12 million worth of land for 5 or 6. And that’s how Honey Creek debt was paid off. That’s how the relationship between the department and the Nature Conservancy became vital during those years. And and in both cases, I think those were among the most important projects that I that I ever worked on.

Andy Sansom [00:11:42] And so for the remainder of my time at the Nature Conservancy, I was able to cooperatively, what we used to call them was cooperative projects, do a number of acquisitions for the Department.

Andy Sansom [00:11:55] And in doing so, as as amazing as it sounds, today, the Department went through the Sunset process in 1985, and the Legislature was harshly critical of them because they were not buying enough land. In fact, the last time the state, even today, has passed a park bond issue was when John Connally was governor and it was 75 million bucks, which in the ’60s was a huge amount of money.

Andy Sansom [00:12:27] But by the mid-1980s, they still had 25 million of it left that they hadn’t spent.

Andy Sansom [00:12:34] So because I have been doing most of their acquisitions as the head of the Nature Conservancy in Texas, they hired me to be the basically the Century 21 of the Parks and Wildlife Department, and that’s how I came to work there.

Andy Sansom [00:12:49] Once again, landing in the right place at the right time, and being better to be lucky than good, I hit it in the middle of the savings and loan crisis. And so by that time, every ranch in Texas was depressed and for sale. So I went through the 25,000,000 in 2 and a half years and bought well over 500,000 acres. And they made me the executive director.

Lee Smith [00:13:16] So that tank farm is what is now the Justin Hurst Wildlife Management Area?

Andy Sansom [00:13:22] That is the Justin Hurst Wildlife Management Area. At that time it was called Peach Point because it was among the original holdings of Stephen F. Austin’s family.

Lee Smith [00:13:33] And the the 500,000, is that the Big Bend Ranch?

Andy Sansom [00:13:41] That’s the biggest part of it.

Andy Sansom [00:13:43] When I was working in the Interior Department, you couldn’t subscribe to Texas Monthly, you had to get it on the newsstand in the early months. And so one of the things that I would do, because I always thought that I would come home at some point in time and I missed Texas a lot.

Andy Sansom [00:14:01] And so I would go down to the Treasury Department where there was a newsstand, and I’d buy my Texas Monthly every month. And I opened the magazine one month and there was an article about a man named Bob Armstrong who had been elected land commissioner, and he was an environmentalist.

Andy Sansom [00:14:18] I could not believe it. And so I’m 26 years old and I’m a nothing aide in the Interior Department. And I called him and I said, “Commissioner.” He took my call and I said, “Commissioner, I’m absolutely thrilled that you’ve been elected. And I want you to know that I work at Interior. And if there’s anything I can do for you, all you have to do is let me know.”

Andy Sansom [00:14:41] Well, this was in ’72, and about three months later, he showed up in my office. At that time, he had begun work to protect the Big Bend Ranch. And he could not be more effusive in describing it. In spite of the fact that it has 37 miles of frontage on the Rio Grande, it has two of the highest waterfalls in Texas, it has an entire intact volcanic crater on it, all he could talk about was the stars. He continuously talked about the night sky.

Andy Sansom [00:15:20] And the problem was that the legislature flat opposed it. And Bob did not have appropriations for that kind of purpose. And so he had to go to the legislature to get the money. And they consistently refused. And so that’s why it didn’t get done.

Andy Sansom [00:15:38] But when I joined the Nature Conservancy, there was a national board member that lived in San Antonio whose name was B.K. Johnson. He was a part of the Kleberg family.

Andy Sansom [00:15:48] And Mr. Johnson was acquainted with Robert O. Anderson, the owner of the ranch. And so I told him about it. And he arranged with Mr. Anderson for the two of us to fly down and see it.

Andy Sansom [00:16:02] And so the first time I actually went to Big Bend Ranch was when, early days of the Nature Conservancy. And I visited it with Mr. Anderson and Belton Kleberg Johnson.

Andy Sansom [00:16:16] And I remember landing on the strip on the ranch in May, which was about like this May, except it was probably 115 out there. And we were in, we were in Mr. Johnson’s King Air.

Andy Sansom [00:16:29] And when we landed, I stepped down the gangplank and he was behind me. And he leaned over and he said, “I feel like the pope.” And I said, “Well, what’s wrong?” He said, “I want to kiss the ground.” And it was because landing in that heat was causing that plane to just heave up and up. And it was a very, very rough flight.

Andy Sansom [00:16:50] But for all of the time that I was at the Nature Conservancy, I continued to try to figure out a way to do the ranch. And in fact, one of Mr. Anderson’s sons, Robert B. Anderson, was on the board of the Nature Conservancy at that time.

Lee Smith [00:17:07] So how did the Big Bend Ranch get done?

Andy Sansom [00:17:10] Well, after I went to work for the Department and remember, we had a mandate to acquire as much land as possible from the legislature. And so, you know, I went at it. I mean, I bought 23,000 acres on the Devils River. I bought a number of different wildlife management areas along the coast.

Andy Sansom [00:17:30] And and at some point in time and I continued my conversations with the with the Anderson family. And incidentally, during that time, I continued to discuss the possibility of acquiring it with the Anderson family and wonder of wonders when I joined the Nature Conservancy, Bob Armstrong was on the board.

Andy Sansom [00:18:05] And when I was appointed executive director of Parks and Wildlife, he had been appointed to the Commission by Governor Mark White. So Armstrong and I, who became lifelong friends, stayed together on this project.

Andy Sansom [00:18:19] So by 19, the end of 1987, we had acquired a couple of hundred thousand acres – to the extent that the legislature was going, “Oh, well, we didn’t mean that.”

Andy Sansom [00:18:33] And so I finally was able to get the Andersons to pretty much agree to a price. And so I went in to see my boss, who was my predecessor, Dickie Travis, who was a shrewd, shrewd political operator.

Andy Sansom [00:18:50] And I told him, I said, “I think we can do it.” And he said, “Oh, God.” Because he knew that the legislature was breathing down our neck.

Andy Sansom [00:18:59] And so he said, “I’ll let you go out there and talk to them. But you cannot tell a soul.”

Andy Sansom [00:19:05] Well, I had appointments to meet with landowners in the Panhandle about playa lakes, which we were working on. And when I got to Amarillo, I called the the farmers, and I told them I have got to postpone.

Andy Sansom [00:19:18] I rented a car and I drove over to Roswell in secret and made the deal. And I called Dickie in the middle of the night and I told him, “We got it.” But he would not allow us to tell even Armstrong until we had a written contract from the Anderson family and there was no way we could get out of it.

Andy Sansom [00:19:39] And so that so we closed on it in the spring of 1988.

Lee Smith [00:19:47] Very cool.

Andy Sansom [00:19:51] I got to finish. Let me tell you. So, in 2008, Bob was still alive. And we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the acquisition. And by that time, I had a grandson. His name was Alex. Alex lived in the New York suburbs in New Jersey. He’s five years old.

Andy Sansom [00:20:15] But this transaction was such a significant thing in my life that I got all my family down there. And so Andrew and his wife and Alex flew in from New York, picked them up in Midland and went down to the ranch, celebrated for probably three days.

Andy Sansom [00:20:33] And Alex seemed to have a good time. He found a horseshoe and he was throwing it. And there were cowboys there. And the Buffalo Soldiers, I have some great pictures of him with Buffalo Soldiers. But we couldn’t tell really what an impact that it had on him.

Andy Sansom [00:20:50] Well, when he went back to New Jersey, he’s in kindergarten and the teacher assigned the children with a what a, you know, kind of a mimeographed form to select an animal that migrates, draw a picture of it and tell where it would migrate to and why.

Andy Sansom [00:21:09] So Alex picks an eagle and the E is, you know, this big and the G is upside down. And you could not, you had to be told what the picture was because it certainly didn’t resemble an eagle.

Andy Sansom [00:21:22] But he says that he would migrate to Texas so he could go out to Big Bend and see the stars.

Lee Smith [00:21:34] Somebody…

Andy Sansom [00:21:35] And I have that framed on my bedside table today.

Lee Smith [00:21:41] Somebody is going to ask him in 20 years what was his first remembrance of being out in the natural world, and that’s going to be it.

Andy Sansom [00:21:49] Well, he’s a great fly angler. He’s he’s every once in a while I get him down here to shoot a deer. So he is an outdoors person.

Lee Smith [00:21:58] Honey Creek – when did that first, how did how did that come on the radar? And how did you know that that was something that had to happen?

Andy Sansom [00:22:09] Well, because because basically the national office, which at that time we called NATO. Jeff Weigel, my oldest colleague of long standing, couldn’t remember that we referred to the guys in Arlington as NATO, which meant the national office, and they were going to default and basically sell the property. I mean, it was a threat.

Andy Sansom [00:22:33] And and I personally, number one, it’s one of the most fantastic natural areas in the United States. And number two, we would then, rather than be the protector, we would be enabling its development for some other purpose if we had to put it back on the market or default on it.

Andy Sansom [00:22:51] And so, for me, letting it go was simply not an alternative. We had to find a way to save it. In addition to the fact that it could have caused the chapter to essentially be bankrupted out of existence.

Lee Smith [00:23:08] So it had already been purchased?

Andy Sansom [00:23:10] Yes. Yeah. You know, the the Nature Conservancy’s most powerful tool in those days was was what we call the LPF, which was the Land Protection Fund. And it was essentially an endowment from which we could borrow. And that’s what happened. We borrowed the money to buy the ranch from the national office.

Andy Sansom [00:23:30] So when I, when I arrived at the Nature Conservancy, we owned Honey Creek by virtue of a loan of three and a half million dollars and a million dollar grant from from then Humble, now Exxon. And but we owed that debt to the national organization who were absolutely threatening to foreclose on it, basically bankrupting the local chapter and putting Honey Creek back on the market, which of course, threatened it to other adverse uses.

Lee Smith [00:24:07] So how did you swing Parks and Wildlife’s involvement?

Andy Sansom [00:24:15] Well, the Parks and Wildlife Department at the time did not have a great relationship with the Nature Conservancy. It wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t hardly there.

Andy Sansom [00:24:27] And their priority was protecting wetlands using the newly enacted duck stamp funding. And so I was able to find a tract on the Texas coast which they wanted badly, and then offered them a package which they could not refuse.

Lee Smith [00:24:44] I remember that now. I just forgot it.

Lee Smith [00:24:51] So, and also, I’ve heard that you kind of used Honey Creek as a way to impress people about the need, that it’s kind of like your deal-closer.

Andy Sansom [00:25:02] Well, you know, one of the most wonderful things about Honey Creek was that it was a poster child for what we were trying to tell people that we wanted to do.

Andy Sansom [00:25:14] We had a fabulous preserve manager whose name was Luke Thompson, who recently retired from the Parks and Wildlife Department. And Luke was a was an engaging, charismatic figure who could take people on these magnificent nature walks and birdwatching and whatnot.

Andy Sansom [00:25:33] And I’ll tell you, I learned almost everything about fund raising, beginning with Honey Creek. And I would bring donors out there. And I remember one weekend I brought a group of potential donors from San Antonio and they brought their minister.

Andy Sansom [00:25:52] And so he and I were walking along this gorgeous Hill Country stream. And he turned to me and he said, “You know, we’re in the same business.”

Andy Sansom [00:26:04] I said, “Well, I’m not sure what you mean.”.

Andy Sansom [00:26:07] And he said, “When I need to repair a stained glass window in the sanctuary and it’s going to cost $100,000, I can tell the congregation during my sermon and I’ll have the money before the last member of the congregation shakes my hand after worship. But if I tell them I need to hire a new secretary or fix the toilets, it’s going to take me a year to raise the money.”

Andy Sansom [00:26:34] And so Honey Creek was an unbelievable selling point for what we were trying to do because it is, in fact, a stained glass window.

Lee Smith [00:26:48] Cool. Anything else about that we need to do there?

Jeff Weigel [00:26:54] Yes. I think we covered it.

Andy Sansom [00:26:56] I had a lot of great experiences at Honey Creek. There’s a site along the creek which the department employees at Guadalupe River State Park still call “Dealing Rock” or “Negotiation Rock” because it’s a big boulder and it sits right next to one of those beautiful waterfalls.

Andy Sansom [00:27:18] And that’s where I would take donors to put the bite on them. And that’s where I finally worked out the deal with Parks and Wildlife.

Andy Sansom [00:27:26] And so I was absolutely thrilled in this latest crisis involving Honey Creek that when I went down there with the department officials and members of other foundations in Texas, they took us to that site and said, this is Negotiation Rock.

Andy Sansom [00:27:45] I was alarmed recently to find that a housing development, potentially having a couple of thousand homes, was proposed for the upper watershed of Honey Creek, which would totally obliterate its absolutely pristine nature.

Andy Sansom [00:28:04] And I could never have been more proud of the Nature Conservancy for stepping back in, making a deal with that landowner to buy that property and take it off the market so that it could be part of the complex of Guadalupe River State Park and the Honey Creek Natural Area, thoroughly ensuring its protection forever. And I’m very confident that that will be completed.

Lee Smith [00:28:28] How do you feel about, I mean, this has kind of been your baby for a while, how do you, even though you haven’t been directly in the mix on it, but it’s kind of like… How do you feel about others’ recognition of its significance and commitment to protect it?

Andy Sansom [00:28:47] Well, I have to tell you that that this latest episode at Honey Creek has been inspiring to me in in in one respect. And that is when I went down there with representatives of all of the largest conservation funding foundations in Texas to find out that there was unanimous agreement among them to put significant resources into the transaction so that it could be saved.

Lee Smith [00:29:17] All right. So, let’s head back out to West Texas. How did you first become involved in the Dolan Falls and Devils River?

Andy Sansom [00:29:30] I became involved in the Devils River because the descendants of the original settler out there, whose name was E.K. Fossett, who had walked from Alabama to work on the Southern Pacific Railroad, lived in a cave on the, today, the Nature Conservancy’s Dolan Falls Preserve, had essentially mortgaged that ranch for various purposes, send their kids to college and buy a second home somewhere that they went bankrupt. And so they had no choice but to sell it.

Andy Sansom [00:30:01] And I remember the closing, which was in Del Rio. And being there with the family who were, on the one hand pleased that they were going to be solvent again, that their ranch was going to be protected. But were all in tears because they were going to have to leave it.

Andy Sansom [00:30:23] And I guess the thing that that I find most inspiring about that beginning was that since then, the Nature Conservancy, both at Dolan Falls and all the way up the river, have been involved in protecting huge amounts of land through conservation easements up and down the river. So that it’s probably, in terms of its totality, the most protected river basin in the state. And it all began with that purchase.

Lee Smith [00:30:53] And it was kind of like dominoes.

Andy Sansom [00:30:55] Right.

Lee Smith [00:30:57] So how did, what other properties around there kind of fell into the to the mix?

Andy Sansom [00:31:05] Well, the second one was the Dolan Falls Preserve and which was a fee acquisition of the Conservancy.

Andy Sansom [00:31:12] But then what what began to happen, and it’s sort of a sort of an interesting phenomenon, is that that was right at the time that the so-called cigarette lawyers, the tobacco trial lawyers, all cashed in for hundreds of millions of dollars in the tobacco settlement. And so, all of a sudden they had a bunch of money and so much of that land was purchased, easements, were purchased up and down the river from those landowners who who had become extraordinarily wealthy because of the tobacco settlement and also were in a taxable position where they could not only buy the property but afford the tax credits to give conservation easements to the Nature Conservancy. So the trial lawyers saved it, along with the Nature Conservancy.

Lee Smith [00:32:07] Did not know that piece of the puzzle.

Andy Sansom [00:32:10] And Jeff didn’t correct me.

Lee Smith [00:32:13] He’s in the bathroom.

Jeff Weigel [00:32:15] I’m here.

Lee Smith [00:32:17] So what was your role specifically in that?

Andy Sansom [00:32:19] The purchase of the first tract, which was the Finnegan Ranch, that the descendants of E.K. Fossett, which is now called the Devils River State Natural Area, which is now also encumbered by a conservation easement held by the Nature Conservancy so that even the Department cannot alter it.

Lee Smith [00:32:42] And, you know, the sky out there is amazing. But also it’s a very tactile environment. I’ll bet if I tied you up and drove you in a car and dropped you out there, you would know that you were in that area instantly, as soon as your feet hit the ground.

Andy Sansom [00:33:02] You know, that’s interesting for you to say. I mean, because there’s no other place that I know of in Texas that’s like it, where you can float along as if you were in an aquarium because you could see everything. I mean, you can you can sight-cast bass and things that you simply can’t do elsewhere in Texas.

Andy Sansom [00:33:23] And because of the numerous rapids along that stretch, your “tactile” is a is an understatement because you’re in the rocks. In fact, I’ve run that river many times and I’ve never been out there that there wasn’t some kind of mishap, because it’s it’s also extremely challenging.

Andy Sansom [00:33:44] I remember the last time. I went out there on a sort of a farewell tour when I left the Department. That was one of the things that I decided to do during that last year was to make one more run down the Devils.

Andy Sansom [00:33:56] And there was a handmade boat building company in Austin at the time that were building these stand-up kayaks. So you could actually get in a kayak and stand up in it and cast a fly. And so they took two of those on this trip, and those boats were worth four or five thousand dollars. I mean, they’re handmade, beautiful boats.

Andy Sansom [00:34:20] And there’s a big drop just before you get to the natural area. I say big, it’s probably four or five feet, but going over it in a kayak is serious and it’s only about six or seven feet wide.

Andy Sansom [00:34:36] And so one of the one of the folks on the trip was in the kayak. And when he hit that drop, it turned sideways and got wedged between the rocks. Well, there were ten of us on this trip. And the strength of that river was so strong that we could not dislodge it. And it disintegrated. And before our eyes, probably a 4 or $5000 boat. So that’s be be careful if you want to run the Devils.

Lee Smith [00:35:04] Well. And what about the the guy standing on the kayak when he hit that?

Andy Sansom [00:35:09] Oh, he wasn’t standing at that time.

Lee Smith [00:35:12] Okay.

Andy Sansom [00:35:12] He was okay except that he was crushed that he lost his boat.

Lee Smith [00:35:16] The first time I was there, I fell with a camera. Busted the camera.

Jeff Weigel [00:35:20] I remember that.

Lee Smith [00:35:20] During the monarch butterfly.

Andy Sansom [00:35:22] Yeah.

Andy Sansom [00:35:26] Well, the first time I ran it was with Shannon Tompkins, who we all remember who who wrote a story about that trip. And we had all kinds of mishaps.

Lee Smith [00:35:39] Do you remember the first time you were out there at night and just had to stop and stare?

Andy Sansom [00:35:45] Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:35:47] Tell us about that time.

Andy Sansom [00:35:48] Well. You know, I would take my family. I was so involved in far West Texas during those years that I would often take my family out there.

Andy Sansom [00:35:59] And we would, you know, after dinner, typically what we would do is we’d wash the dishes and then we’d just go out and sit in the desert and watch the sky.

Andy Sansom [00:36:09] My children were pretty active. I mean, they were they they talked a lot and they were very animated. But we’re sitting there in a line watching the sky and my daughter’s way down here on this end.

Andy Sansom [00:36:24] And all of a sudden we heard her gasp and a huge yellow meteor came up and went all the way across the sky in front of us and fragmented.

Andy Sansom [00:36:36] And not a word was spoken. The four of us got up without speaking and went in and went to bed.

Andy Sansom [00:36:46] And I guess one of the most wonderful things that has happened out in that country is that it has become a night sky area.

Lee Smith [00:36:56] Well, and the protection of these large, I mean it’s it’s.

Andy Sansom [00:37:01] Right.

Lee Smith [00:37:03] It’s not only terrestrial, but it’s heavenly.

Andy Sansom [00:37:06] Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:37:12] So how does a place that big make an impression on your sense of self?

Andy Sansom [00:37:25] There are so many things about Big Bend Ranch that left a permanent impression on me. The landscape itself, wildlife, the history of mining and all of the other things that took place in that area.

Andy Sansom [00:37:45] But we, we had a, one of the projects that I worked on in those days that really got me into Big Bend was that the Harte family of Corpus Christi and San Antonio wished to dedicate a good part of the Rosillos Mountains to the national park. It’s right on the, if you go into the National Park through Panther Junction, the mountains on your right, are the Rosillos.

Andy Sansom [00:38:13] And the Hartes owned about 67,000 acres in the Rosillos and they wanted it to be part of the park as a gift.

Andy Sansom [00:38:22] Well, you can’t add land to a national park without a federal statute. And they had to make the donation now for tax purposes.

Andy Sansom [00:38:32] So the Nature Conservancy became the intermediary and we received the ranch as a gift and then worked with Congress to pass a bill to turn it over, which took three years.

Andy Sansom [00:38:44] Well, we had a manager out there whose name was Buster Babb, and Buster was born in the basin, in the Big Bend National Park. So he had lived right there all of his life. And his wife, he and his wife lived in the foreman’s house on the Rosillos.

Andy Sansom [00:39:01] And I took my family out there almost every Labor Day to spend 2 or 3 days on that ranch.

Andy Sansom [00:39:08] And Helen was Buster’s wife’s name. Buster would get up in the morning before daylight and he’d get on his horse and he would not come back until after dark. And Helen sat in the house with no TV, no communication with anybody for 12, 13 hours a day.

Andy Sansom [00:39:29] So when you walked in, she would grab you and she’d say, “Want to play Scrabble? Want some cookies?” I mean, she was so desperate for company that, you know, that she would literally grab you.

Andy Sansom [00:39:42] So I talked to Buster routinely about every two weeks. So I called him one time and I said, “Buster, how are things going out there?” And he said, “Not too good.” And I said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “Had to get the sheriff to come get Helen.” I said, “What?” “Went crazy.”

Andy Sansom [00:40:02] And I said, “Well, Buster, why didn’t you, why didn’t you tell me?” He said, “Well, there’s nothing you could do.” And I said, “Well, where is she?” “Well, she’s in that mental health clinic up in Alpine.”

Andy Sansom [00:40:13] And so she stayed there about a month and they released her, but they never came back. They found a ranch close to Sonora and moved up where they were closer to town.

Andy Sansom [00:40:23] So the, so one of the most lasting impressions I have about those big, big tracts in the Big Bend is how isolated they are. You got to be, you got to be pretty comfortable to spend time in that kind of country without much human contact.

Lee Smith [00:40:49] Where we at here? We’re at 2:10.

Andy Sansom [00:40:51] You know. I guess probably my favorite story about experiences at Big Bend Ranch, one of them, was that my biggest job at Parks and Wildlife was spelled M-O-N-E-Y. That’s what fell primarily on the executive director.

Andy Sansom [00:41:14] And so the key to that was the appropriations process in the Legislature. So the legislators involved in appropriations were absolutely critical to our mission.

Andy Sansom [00:41:29] Well, at that time, the House appropriations chair was named Clyde Alexander. And John Carter, whom we all know, who had Last Chance Forever, the raptor rehabilitation operation, called me one day. And he said, “I have a golden eagle that’s ready to go, be released. And I wondered if you’d be interested in releasing that bird at Big Bend Ranch.” And so I called Clyde and I said, “Clyde, would you like to release a golden eagle out at a Big Bend Ranch?”

Andy Sansom [00:41:59] So we put that bird in a King Air in a dog kennel and flew out there and spent the night. We drove probably two hours on the ranch.

Andy Sansom [00:42:11] And then we took turns holding the bird, which had a hood over it and climbing up to the highest bluff overlooking the Rio Grande, probably 2000 feet straight down. We all took pictures with the bird.

Andy Sansom [00:42:24] And then I handed it to Clyde, and he walked up to the edge of the cliff and I took the hood off. And the bird soared up in the sky and circled around us about three times and disappeared into Mexico.

Andy Sansom [00:42:38] And so Clyde turned around to me and his knees were visibly shaking. And he said, “I can’t thank you enough for this.” And I said, “Clyde, that’s okay. It will only cost you 350 million.”

Jeff Weigel [00:42:55] So, that wasn’t at the time with Governor Richards. That was another time. Remember when he did that deal with Governor Richards?

Andy Sansom [00:43:00] Yeah. Yeah, we did. And that was at at the at the big hill between Lajitas and Presidio. We also had Ann Richards release a bird out there.

Jeff Weigel [00:43:10] I remember.

Lee Smith [00:43:11] So what advice do you have for any young person that feels the drive to become involved in conservation work?

Andy Sansom [00:43:27] Well, in some respects, as a former chairman of the Commission told me one time, “The hardest thing we have to do is to spend dollars for people who are not born.”.

Andy Sansom [00:43:45] But that is also the greatest privilege of this work, to understand that the beneficiaries are generations away and that your work will provide them the kinds of opportunities that you have had.

Andy Sansom [00:43:59] It’s not easy. It’s not easy. It’s hard work. But it is, it’s it’s like building a cathedral. Because the beneficiaries are people that are generations away. And that itself is inspiring.

Lee Smith [00:44:24] So you’ve been through a lot. And so how do you feel about the future of conservation work?

Andy Sansom [00:44:35] Well. I feel, I often worry, particularly in the in the time when the Hill Country is disappearing before our eyes because of development. The landscape in Texas is fragmenting faster than in any other state. We lose more rural and agricultural land than any other place.

Andy Sansom [00:45:02] But then I think about the fact that the next generation, one of whom I’m immensely proud, my own daughter is now the CEO of the Bamberger Ranch in Blanco County. And so I take my optimism from the fact that I see young people very passionate about becoming involved in this movement.

Andy Sansom [00:45:25] When I started at Texas State in the early 2000s, I found the students to be a little nonchalant about the environment. Today, my students are fired up and they want to go out and make a difference. And that to me is the primary source of optimism about the future and gives me hope.

Andy Sansom [00:45:46] You know, probably one of the least recognized things about the Nature Conservancy’s work in Texas over the years has been efforts to preserve native prairies in the state.

Andy Sansom [00:46:01] We were largely ignorant of the fact that the Blackland Prairie of Texas is one of the most endangered ecosystems in North America.

Andy Sansom [00:46:14] Fortunately, we had a board member at the time who became chairman, whose name was Mickey Burleson, who herself had restored a native prairie along with her husband. And so she was a prairie enthusiast.

Andy Sansom [00:46:26] We had the Natural Heritage Program, which helped us scientifically identify native prairies as being critically important to conservation.

Andy Sansom [00:46:36] We had transformational donors in Tim and Karen Hixon.

Andy Sansom [00:46:43] You can’t say enough about taking the Nature Conservancy from an organization where people gave maybe 200 to 2500 dollars, to an organization where there were people of capable of giving significant sums of money.

Andy Sansom [00:47:00] And I’m very, very proud to say that the last thing I did before I left the Nature Conservancy and went to work for Parks and Wildlife was to complete the purchase of Clymer Meadow with funds provided by Tim and Karen Hixon, for whom it is named today.

Andy Sansom [00:47:17] And and I could not be more proud of that because it it ushered in a complete new understanding of what conservation, land conservation, meant.

Andy Sansom [00:47:30] Prior to that, it was where are the ducks, you know. Where can we find bighorn sheep? I mean, it wasn’t entirely about game, but it was largely about recognized megafauna and not botanic ecosystems.

Andy Sansom [00:47:48] And Clymer changed all of that, with the help of Tim and Karen.

Lee Smith [00:47:53] Well, in prairies, I mean, they’re not like Big Bend Ranch. They’re not you know, they don’t impress you with the same scale unless it’s a prairie that’s completely restored and is huge. And then you get that. But why are prairies why, why, why is it so difficult to get people to grasp the concept of prairies as important?

Andy Sansom [00:48:20] Well. I’m not sure it’s as difficult as you think. Although I’m not sure it is. Even though the initial understanding of native prairies was not widespread, I have not experienced a person who wasn’t impressed to see a Texas native prairie in full bloom in the spring.

Andy Sansom [00:48:43] I remember calling on a gentleman in Dallas whose name I will not mention, who later became a very active and generous trustee of the Nature Conservancy, who had been introduced to me by, once again, Conservancy people back East because he had moved home to Dallas from New York City.

Andy Sansom [00:49:02] And I went to call on him and I had a Jim Bones photograph of the Clymer Meadow with me to give him. And sometime during the luncheon before – we were at a club in Dallas – and sometime before the luncheon, before I actually presented him with the photos, he made some comment like, “Well, you get to do all this stuff out in West Texas and along the coast, and all we have up here in Dallas are these ugly old prairies.”

Andy Sansom [00:49:31] So you’re right. You know, there clearly has been a misunderstanding of them. But but it’s very hard to ignore their beauty.

Andy Sansom [00:49:41] I’ll have to say, since we’re running out of time, that one of the most wonderful things that happened to me when I worked at, had the privilege of working at the Nature Conservancy, was that Tim Hixon called me one day.

Andy Sansom [00:49:56] And he said, “One of my closest friends is Toddie Lee Wynne and he lives in Dallas. And he owns the only remaining private land on Matagorda Island. And so he wants to talk to us about it.”

Andy Sansom [00:50:12] So, Tim, I don’t think had ever even been on Southwest Airlines, only probably flown in private aircraft. But I bought us a couple of tickets on Southwest and we flew up to Dallas and had lunch with Mr. Wynne, who was concerned that he would pass along and leave the very complex and expensive issues related to managing 13,000 acres on the Texas coast to his children.

Andy Sansom [00:50:43] And so he let us know in that meeting that he would be interested in working with the Nature Conservancy to protect the ranch. And so subsequently, we were able to purchase it.

Andy Sansom [00:50:56] And and for me, it was an extreme form of closure that after my early traumatic experience with creating the National Wildlife Refuge on the former air base, I was able to complete the purchase of the last 13,000 acres so that the entire island is now a National Wildlife Refuge and a State Wildlife Management Area.