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

Interviewee: Carter Smith
Date: May 10, 2022
Site: Austin, Texas
Reels: 3444
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: Smith_Carter_NCItem28_AustinTX_20220510_Reel3444_Audio.mp3

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

Carter Smith [00:00:15] You know, central Texas is home. I had this childhood where I kind of grew up with one foot in the city and one foot in the country. We called Austin home. Dad was the dean at the UT Law School.

Carter Smith [00:00:26] But both mom and dad came from farming and ranching families. And so we had a farm in Williamson County there on Donahoe Creek near a little town of Schwertner, and then our family ranch there in southern Gonzalez County, right on the Karnes County and Gonzales County line.

Carter Smith [00:00:40] And one of the stories that one of my oldest friend’s parents loved to tell, there was some high-profile kidnapping when we were kids. And anyway, my little buddy came home and at the dinner table said, “Mom and dad, I want to tell you something. They’ll never kidnap Carter.” And they said, “Why?” “They’ll never find him.”

Carter Smith [00:01:02] So I was kind of, it was kind of an itinerant childhood.

Carter Smith [00:01:06] But went to school at St. Stephen’s in Austin. You know, it was a little bit of a different place back then.

Lee Smith [00:01:13] Huh. I thought, you went to TMI.

Carter Smith [00:01:14] No, no, no. I was a St. Stephen’s guy. You know, back when you still had a few sheep and goat ranches out out there around Lake Austin and in the hills there in Rollingwood and Bee Cave. And so it wasn’t quite the time of the cedar choppers. You know, I’m not quite that old or that vintage.

Carter Smith [00:01:32] But but but, you know, when I was a kid, I remember meeting kids from Leander and Liberty Hill and Cedar Park that really were part of some of those cedar chopper families. And it was kind of the the last couple of years of that of that of that era. And, of course, they’re long since gone. But again, that was kind of on the cusp when Austin was about to make a big change.

Lee Smith [00:02:02] So what is a cedar chopper?

Carter Smith [00:02:03] Well, a cedar chopper basically is is a family that cuts down cedar trees. And they’d cut them for to make charcoal and fenceposts. And the families, really, there’s a great book about cedar choppers that a professor from Southwestern wrote about the history of them. I mean, he ties them back to Appalachia and migration of families there from from West Virginia, the mountains of Tennessee to the hills of Texas.

Carter Smith [00:02:30] And you know, they’d kind of move from place to place. And whether they were cutting down juniper for fenceposts or charcoal or cypress trees along little spring-fed creeks in the Hill Country. That’s how they made their living.

Carter Smith [00:02:43] And very clannish. They tended to be a little itinerant and didn’t really send the kids to school past elementary school. But there was a fairly large contingent of them, you know, right there at West Lake, the Wild Basin Preserve, Leander, Liberty Hill, Cedar Park, Rollingwood, that area.

[00:03:08] And they were gone when I was when I was growing up and going to school out at St. Stephen’s. But there were still few families there around Liberty Hill, and I think they had a cedar chopper festival, you know, and just kind of celebrate that part of the heritage. Yeah.

Carter Smith [00:03:22] Well, I love to hunt and fish. You know, that was just something that I took to early in life. All my little buddies hunted and fished.

Carter Smith [00:03:32] But I have this very powerful memory. I was about eight years old and we had gone to see my grandparents there at the ranch in Smiley. And I’d pestered my dad about taking me deer hunting.

Carter Smith [00:03:43] And and it was it must have been 20 degrees. It was bitterly cold. And Dad and I climbed up in this old tree stand in a big bull mesquite tree. And we’re looking down this sendero, and Dad still laughs about it.

Carter Smith [00:03:58] I took my Snoopy sleeping bag up there in the in the tree stand to try to stay warm. And and we’re shivering in that blind. And, you know, I had this open-sighted 30-30 that I was cradling, you know, in the hopes that some deer would would would come out.

Carter Smith [00:04:15] And about 30, maybe 40 minutes into it, I see this little bit of movement in the brush out to my right. And out out walks the most beautiful bobcat in the world. And it was just magical. Big old tom. He came out and he looked up at us in the in the tree stand, figured out that, you know, we weren’t any danger to him. And he set down and he must have stayed there five minutes.

Carter Smith [00:04:41] And that memory to me is just just magical. And it undoubtedly helped to solidify my love of wildlife and animals and nature and the outdoors.

Carter Smith [00:04:54] You know, there are a couple of folks I’d say early on in my life that as I reflect back upon, you know, my progression in getting interested in conservation and ultimately pursuing this as a career.

Carter Smith [00:05:06] And my my grandmother on my mother’s side was undoubtedly one of those. She was a farm girl, but she was a birder. She loved to bird watch and she had bird feeders everywhere. She could name every chickadee and every sparrow and every junco and every, you know, little gray bird, little passerine that came through. And she spoiled them to death with her bird feeders.

Carter Smith [00:05:30] And, and my grandfather would trap all the squirrels that she’d get mad at for, you know, eating up the bird seed.

Carter Smith [00:05:36] And so I’d spend time with her. And and I really wasn’t that interested as a kid in watching birds, but grandmother was.

Carter Smith [00:05:45] And, and one time, she and my granddad took me on a trip to the Valley and I was probably nine, maybe ten years old. And we went to go see some farmer friends of theirs outside of Harlingen.

Carter Smith [00:05:58] And Grandmother and Granddaddy took me to the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. And you know, there were these green jays and great kiskadees and stories about ocelots, you know, prowling the thornscrub. And, you know, some biologist in a program told a story about, you know, the last jaguar that was killed over at Rio Hondo. And and, you know, it was just like this subtropical paradise, so radically different than anything I had had ever seen.

Carter Smith [00:06:30] And but my grandmother always made a point to make sure that in addition to my, you know, hunting and fishing pursuits that I’d kind of round it out with a few extra things.

Carter Smith [00:06:39] And one of the things that she did up until the day she died was she bought me a subscription every year to Parks and Wildlife magazine. And I loved that. And I’ll tell you, I don’t I don’t see that magazine. I don’t touch that magazine. I don’t read that magazine without thinking about my grandmother. And it just it just is a wonderful connection that exists to this day.

Carter Smith [00:07:01] My first two papers in school, if you want to call them that. I can’t imagine they were terribly scholarly, but they were they were predicated on stories I’d read in the Parks and Wildlife magazine. One was on ocelots and the other was on the on the Big Thicket.

Carter Smith [00:07:16] So I’d say Grandmother probably had a had had an influence.

Carter Smith [00:07:20] But you know, two others, interestingly enough, when I was when I was growing up, one was a Parks and Wildlife game warden and one was a Parks and Wildlife wildlife biologist. Glen Sachtleben was the game warden there in Gonzales County. He went on to become the sheriff of Gonzales County, and he was kind of the quintessential lawman. And, you know, like our game wardens all over the state, they’re so deeply rooted and anchored and respected in the community. And my grandfather and uncle and dad just thought the world of Glen. And whenever there was some problem at the ranch, you know, Glen was always there to, you know, help.

Carter Smith [00:07:55] And I’d just kind of hang on every every word, you know, when he’d stop by and I’d happen to see him there. Just just really great memories and just always thought of him as one of those kind of role models that, you know, a kid ought to try to grow up and be.

Carter Smith [00:08:08] And then there was a wildlife biologist that helped us at the at the Smiley ranch named Mark Mitchell. And Mark was as much of a cowboy as he was a biologist. And so he’d run around with one of my older cousins to help work cows.

Carter Smith [00:08:25] And Mark was a really, really knowledgeable biologist and he was a lot of fun, you know, when he’d come out to do deer surveys or look at turkey roosts or he’d need to collect something, you know, I’d tag along. He was always catching snakes and throwing them in the back of his toolbox in the truck, and just a lot of fun to fun to be with.

Carter Smith [00:08:45] And what’s also great about that is Mark still works for Parks and Wildlife today, and he manages our Mason Mountain Wildlife Management Area.

Carter Smith [00:08:55] And so anyway, just, you know, you never know who you meet as a kid, and at some point in life is going to have an influence on you. And then at some point you have a chance to work with them. And so that’s pretty, pretty special.

Carter Smith [00:09:09] Yeah. Parks and Wildlife magazine. I mean, I love the stories in that magazine. I mean, it just took me to places, you know, within our home ground that I’d maybe heard about or never heard about or again, were so very different.

Carter Smith [00:09:22] You know, just I remember reading a story about Caddo Lake and thinking, “That’s in Texas? What? Where, what? How do I get there?” You know, how do you see it?

Carter Smith [00:09:30] And so, you know, the beauty of that magazine is just, you know, bringing the outdoors in our home ground to life. And, you know, for a kid interested in the outdoors, it was no greater source of inspiration and excitement than that.

Carter Smith [00:09:45] I mean, I just cherished it when it came through. Grab it and run up to my room, you know, close the door, you know, put the “Do Not Disturb” sign on. You know, I’m going to read through my Parks and Wildlife magazine.

Carter Smith [00:09:55] But, you know, I had a penchant as a kid, and by a kid, you know, I really mean more junior high and high school of of reading. I love to love to read. I immerse myself in books. And, you know, that was a pretty happy place for me is to is to get a book.

Carter Smith [00:10:13] And I you know I don’t want this to come across as provincial but you know but I love Texas authors. And so, you know, John Graves’ “The Goodbye to a River” trip. I must have read that 100 times. “Hardscrabble” was another one of my favorites. I just love how he’d tell the story of the daily travails of managing that little piece of Somervell County and raising sheep and goats and cows and scratching out a little garden and going through the winters and the floods and the droughts.

Carter Smith [00:10:46] “The Time It Never Rained” by Elmer Kelton was just a classic for me.

Carter Smith [00:10:53] And I think what tied all of those together as I kind of reflect on on on them was about you know some of the sense of place that I think Texas is so known for. And as Texans, we so appreciate that.

Carter Smith [00:11:09] But, they also, to me, you know, told stories about stewardship through thick and thin of land and water and history and culture and ancestors and, you know, generational related responsibilities. And and whether the word conservation was mentioned or not, you know, that theme was embedded in all of those.

Carter Smith [00:11:34] And so those were some of my favorites.

Carter Smith [00:11:35] You know, when I got to got to college, and that was a very unconventional journey through college, to to say the least. But at some point, you know, I was introduced to “Sand County Almanac”, you know, the Bible for for all of us that ultimately studied wildlife biology. And and that helped to put a bow around it, you know, just really tied it all together for me in terms of for me, in terms of the philosophical underpinnings of of of why this was so important, and I think personally helped for me to understand why I was so drawn to it.

Carter Smith [00:12:12] You know, it put words to explain, you know, sentiments and feelings and emotions that I had that, you know, I probably couldn’t have otherwise articulated.

Carter Smith [00:12:23] Well, there’s no way to tell that story briefly. When you go to five schools, there’s just no way to truncate that. But I’ll do my best.

Carter Smith [00:12:33] I was slated to start school on the East Coast and I chickened out in July, and the only school that I had applied to that would let me in literally right before school started in August was Sewannee, University of of the South, there in Tennessee. And so I dutifully went off to Sewanee and went up on the on the mountain, you know, and learned all about grabbing your angel when you came onto campus, you know, there on the Cumberland Plateau, you know, ten, 12,000 acres there, I mean, just drop-dead gorgeous. The architecture was amazing.

Carter Smith [00:13:08] And I loved every bit of it except for the fact that I couldn’t get used to the fact that you had to wear a tie to class. And and and candidly, I just didn’t believe it was real.

Carter Smith [00:13:22] And so, you know, the first day of class on campus, you know, all my little buddies in the dorm room, you know, I guess there were four of us that shared a dorm room. You know, they’re putting their tie on. And I put my blazer on. They said, “Aren’t you going to put on a tie?” “No, I’m not going to put on a tie?”

Carter Smith [00:13:36] You know, and they said, “Better put a tie on.” I said, “No, I’m not going to put a tie on.” And so they said, “Okay”.

Carter Smith [00:13:41] So we went to class. And my, my first class was a was a class on US History. It was a professor named Joseph Cushman, Dr. Cushman. And when I walked in, I saw, yeah, everybody had a tie on.

Carter Smith [00:13:59] And so I I sat in the back of the room thinking, “I’m not going to get noticed. You know, I’ll have a low profile”, which probably really wasn’t a particularly good assumption on my part. Small liberal arts college. It’s not like there were 400 people sitting in an auditorium. You know, there were all of 30 of us in this little classroom.

Carter Smith [00:14:19] And and Professor Cushman walked into the room and he looked around and I saw him make eye contact with me. He walked to the front, put his stuff down, went up to the podium, immediately looked at me, called me out by name, and he had this wonderful accent. He said, “Mr. Smith, are you aware that there’s a jacket and tie rule in this college?”

Carter Smith [00:14:47] And I sort of sheepishly put my head down and said, “Yes, sir, I’m aware of that.” “Well, I suggest you go back to your dorm and find yourself a tie.”

Carter Smith [00:14:58] And that sort of summed up my relationship with Sewanee. And for a reason that I won’t go into really out of respect for my poor parents who don’t want to be reminded of that history, Sewanee and I parted ways, and I ended up at the University of Texas and kind of shuffled around UT, left school and went to work on a ranch in Colorado.

Carter Smith [00:15:28] And I and I came back and I went to see Billy Turner, Dr. Turner. Dr. Turner was a famous botanist at the at the University of Texas. And colorful does not begin to describe Dr. Turner.

Carter Smith [00:15:42] But Dr. Turner knew I was interested in wildlife and wildlife management. He knew what my background was. And the biology classes outside of kind of the cellular stuff and some little natural history stuff that they were doing at the field lab or botanist-related, botany-related things that Dr. Turner and others were doing. Those were really kind of the anomaly. They were the exception. There wasn’t a good track at UT at the time for that.

Carter Smith [00:16:05] And so he suggested that I transfer to Sul Ross and I said, “Well, where’s that?” And he said, “Well, Alpine.”.

Carter Smith [00:16:12] And so I went home and, and, and actually, no, I went to the library and got a book there on Sul Ross, wrote a letter to the Dean of Admissions, explained that I’d, you know, come back to UT and you know, the professor had recommended that I transfer to Sul Ross and study wildlife management.

Carter Smith [00:16:33] And lo and behold I got an admissions letter. It was about that easy. And they let me in. And so I moved out to Alpine.

Carter Smith [00:16:40] And my parents were probably a little wide-eyed about the about the whole thing. But, you know, they were supporting my youthful ventures.

Carter Smith [00:16:52] And I hadn’t been out there a couple of weeks when I met Jack Kilpatrick, who was the manager for the Elephant Mountain Wildlife Management Area. And Jack was an old West Texas character.

Carter Smith [00:17:04] And they needed, I guess, what they called kind of a seasonal technician at the time to come work on the Wildlife Management Area because there was going to be this research going on at the WMA. And the full-time technicians, Robert Culpepper and Rick McIntyre, didn’t have time to mess with that. So they needed someone. So they hired me.

Carter Smith [00:17:27] So I moved out to Elephant Mountain and lived up in the bunkhouse on the on the mountain and spent about a year and a half out there. I made $200 a month. And I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I mean it was just bighorn sheep and mule deer and antelope, and West Texas sunrises and sunsets and mountain lions and all this stuff. You know, it was just amazing.

Carter Smith [00:17:58] And there were these grad students from Texas Tech that were doing research on mule deer and antelope and bighorn sheep. And occasionally Dr. Fred Bryant from Texas Tech would come out to check on his grad students. And one day he said, “Hey, Carter, I want to take you to dinner. You know, would you come into Alpine and let’s have dinner?” And so I went into Alpine and we had dinner.

Carter Smith [00:18:24] And and and at some point in the conversation, he said, “Hey, I need to give you a little piece of advice. You really need to go back to college and finish your degree.”.

Carter Smith [00:18:34] And I said, “Did my parents send you?” And he said, “Nope, nope, nope, they didn’t. But you need to go back to college and get your degree.”

Carter Smith [00:18:41] And so anyway, so I applied to Texas Tech, went up and visited. Dr. Bryant showed me around and, and just thought, “Yep, this is where I need to be.” And so transferred to Texas Tech and finished up my undergraduate degree there.

Carter Smith [00:18:59] And and then came to work for Parks and Wildlife. I was so low on the totem pole that they didn’t really know what to call me. So they called me an intern. And it was kind of this manufactured term.

Carter Smith [00:19:11] And Bob Cook would kind of send me around the state to do this and that and help with projects. Maybe there was something at the Kerr. Maybe there was something at the Chaparral, maybe there was something at the Gus Engling.

Carter Smith [00:19:23] At one point I was Don Wilson’s driver. Don was a very colorful and somewhat chaotic upland game bird biologist that really needed a little more supervision. And I was, of course, too young to supervise anybody, but they felt like if I’d go with Don on his quail-trapping or turkey-trapping or squirrel-trapping ventures, I could largely keep him out of trouble. So, you know, that was my job for a couple of months.

Carter Smith [00:19:56] But it was it was it was fabulous. And and and then and I’m forever grateful for this – Bob Cook called me into his office one day and said, “You know, you need to go get a master’s degree and and you need to figure out where you want to go. And and so and we will help pay for it.”

Carter Smith [00:20:19] I said, “Wow. Okay.”

Carter Smith [00:20:23] So I looked around and it kind of came down to Texas A&M or Yale – two, you know, obviously very different places. But there was a professor at A&M that I was interested in studying under, and and there were a couple of professors at Yale in their biology department that I was very interested in.

Carter Smith [00:20:42] And so I went to see Bob and he sat me down and he said, “Well, first off, there’s no wrong answer. And whatever you do, I’m going to support 100%.” He said, “But I’m going to tell you this. If you were my son, I’d tell you to go to Yale.” And so that’s what I did.

Carter Smith [00:20:58] And I. And it was in it. And it was. So anyway, I embarked on that merry adventure and, you know, spent three years up in up in New Haven and and learned a great deal from it and made some wonderful friends from all over the world and and some professors that had a very profound impact on me.

Carter Smith [00:21:19] But candidly, I, I give Bob Cook a lot of credit for encouraging me to go do that because, you know, at one point I’d kind of chickened out on that whole venture. And and so kind of coming 180 on that, it just kind of gave me the necessary courage to go do that. And I’m glad I did to help round out the the five-school tour where it looked like, you know, my only job prospect was going to be to write a guide on U.S. colleges and universities.

Carter Smith [00:21:49] So there was nothing short about that, was it, Lee?

Carter Smith [00:21:53] Yeah.

Jeff Weigel [00:21:57] What year did you graduate from Tech?

Carter Smith [00:21:59] I graduated from Tech in ’94.

Speaker 2 [00:22:04] Yeah.

Jeff Weigel [00:22:04] I was long gone.

Carter Smith [00:22:05] Yeah. Yeah.

Carter Smith [00:22:07] Did you. Did you remember a. Well, when did you graduate from Tech?

Jeff Weigel [00:22:11] I got out in ’87.

Carter Smith [00:22:13] Well, he wouldn’t have been there. Rick Relyea was a master’s student under Steve Demarais and somewhere in the biology department. And and Fred Bryant, I guess, was his major professor. But he was out at Elpehant Mountain. Anyway. Great, great, great guy. You know, those those labs and active grad student coteries, at least from what I could see, there were a lot of pretty cool friendships and neat stuff that went on. So.

Carter Smith [00:22:41] I had been up in Canada working on a project for the National Science Foundation, and I was, this is when I got out, I got out of Yale and there was a multi-university research collaboration going on, long-term ecosystem research going on in the boreal forest.

Carter Smith [00:22:57] And and at some point, some old Parks and Wildlife friends encouraged me to come back to Texas and take on this job at this little fledgling land trust called the Katy Prairie Conservancy. They had no money, no office, no land, really, no nothing, save and except a lot of want-to to try to protect some of that vanishing Katy prairie.

Carter Smith [00:23:19] And I had no idea what I was walking into, but I thought, well, coming back to Texas, you know, as opposed to living on a Cree Indian reservation in northern Saskatchewan, you know, four hours north of Saskatoon, that, you know, maybe I ought to come home.

Carter Smith [00:23:32] And and so when I came back to the Katy Prairie Conservancy, I started interacting with some of the people in the land trust community. And obviously, you know, folks at the Nature Conservancy being the state’s largest land trust were very active at that time. And at some point a job opening came open down in Harlingen and Brownsville for a Laguna Madre project director.

Carter Smith [00:24:01] And I thought, “Well, that sounds interesting. I love South Texas and may get to do a little work in northern Mexico. I love the Laguna Madre, the Valley.”

Carter Smith [00:24:09] So I put my name in the hat and I didn’t think I’d have a prayer of getting the job. I thought, you know, here’s this big conservation organization. And so they’re not going to be interested in me, but I’m going to I’m going to apply. Well, and I did.

Carter Smith [00:24:25] And and and I was terrified. And, of course, what the interviewers, which I think included Jeff Weigel, James King, Robert Potts and Jim Bergin, I think were on the interview panel. Well, they didn’t tell me – I was the only one who applied. So, it was either me or nothing.

Carter Smith [00:24:49] And so so at some point I got the job after, you know, managing not to screw it up. So it was clearly mine to lose. But anyway, I ended up moving down to Harlingen initially and Brownsville and getting to work in that binational system in the Laguna Madre and just loved every second of it. Just just an amazing experience being immersed in the Valley.

Carter Smith [00:25:16] You know, my friend and colleague Jeff Weigel, had all of these cool projects going on down in the Laguna Madre de Tamaulipas. And so we were spending time in the Rio Soto la Marina, and we were trying to work on trying to preserve a big chunk of South Padre Island and expand the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.

Carter Smith [00:25:35] Parks and Wildlife asked me to, you know, help build out the World Birding Center and acquire land for that. And, you know, we were trying to make inroads and friendships with the ranchers up in the ranch country who were a little skeptical about the Nature Conservancy.

Carter Smith [00:25:51] And so it was a great, great, great time, but just a wonderful time to be in the field. And the people of South Texas and northern Mexico just really kind of welcomed us with with open arms. It was a it was a great time.

Carter Smith [00:26:07] When I think about the Rio Grande Valley, the Laguna Madre, you’ve got all of these amazing ecological systems that are coming together. Obviously you’vr got the coastal plains. You’ve got the kind of the desert influences to the west. You have these subtropical communities that are found at the northern extralimital part of the range. You’ve got that Tamaulipas thornscrub and you know, the hypersaline lagoon, you know, the largest and most biologically significant in all of the Western Hemisphere, if not the not the world. You know, the largest unprotected, or protected, now, really, you know, barrier island.

Carter Smith [00:26:48] And so I mean just this incredible mixture of of habitats that all came together right right there within a couple of hours’ drive. And so the the biological diversity is just off the charts.

Carter Smith [00:27:03] And and so, you know, whether it was, you know, all of the, you know, migrating red-headed ducks or the peregrine falcons or the Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles or, you know, all of these endemic little plants and small animals that were just, you know, hanging on in these patches of habitat and resacas and thornscrub and little islands of brush in the in the Rio Grande Valley.

Carter Smith [00:27:27] The diversity was just off the charts. And so a lot of species and communities found nowhere else in our in our state and a lot of people and interest in South Texas wanting to see those things continue to persist. And so, you know, it’s important to be a part of that and to help conserve those for future generations.

Carter Smith [00:27:49] There’s a lot of pressures on that system. And I, you know, the Rio Grande Valley in that area may be singularly unique in that regard. When you think about the diversity of pressures it’s gone through, you know, all that agricultural development and transition, the citrus, the urbanization, the border issues, which are huge now, you know, and the and the border wall related issues, Space X at Boca Chica. I mean, I wouldn’t have dreamed it in a million years if somebody was going to tell me that Boca Chica was the place that we’re going to get the Mars from. I mean, you know, you just couldn’t couldn’t have made it up in a science fiction book, you know, when I was I was down there. It seemed so far-fetched.

Carter Smith [00:28:29] But you’re right. There’s there’s all of these, you know, tourism-related engines that are going on at the island. And you’ve got, you know, Mexican fishermen that are coming over and illegally harvesting, you know, redfish and sharks and red snapper and trout and, you know, all of our native species in the in the waters there.

Carter Smith [00:28:50] And again, all of that development and people pressures there as well. And so the pressures are enormous and they’re intense and they’re not going away. You’re not going to change them. They’re not going to somehow magically disappear.

Carter Smith [00:29:03] And so you got to figure out how to live and work with them. And you got to build allies and you got to build partnerships and you got to build friendships and you got to earn respect and trust and you got to stay true to your mission.

Carter Smith [00:29:16] But you also have to recognize down there that sometimes a half loaf is better than no loaf.

Carter Smith [00:29:22] And in the Rio Grande Valley, with that long-standing effort to try to string together representative habitats and communities from, you know, Falcon to Boca Chica and then the Bahia Grande complex and connect that up to the Laguna Atascosa, you know, candidly, every little pocket and patch of habitat matters. And in that part of the world, you know, can have a disproportionately large impact because of a lot of the endemic and very rare, you know, plants or amphibians or reptiles or birds that are utilizing it periodically, small mammals, that can get by on relatively small patches as long as there’s some contiguity or connection with other patches.

Carter Smith [00:30:09] And trying to weave all of that together has proved to be, you know, a little bit of a Herculean, if not Sisyphean task. But, you know, there have been conservationists over decades that have worked long and hard on that. And, you know, candidly, the results of that are our kids and grandkids are going to be able to enjoy some semblance of what that place historically looked like.

Carter Smith [00:30:33] Now, that’s very different than the ranch country. You know, you get up north of Raymondville and thank goodness we still have those big, large family ranches who are very motivated by stewardship and wildlife and conservation and generational-related concerns.

Carter Smith [00:30:51] But in the in the Valley proper and on the on the on the island, you know, those pressures are intense and they’re enormous. And they’re only going to grow with time.

Carter Smith [00:31:02] I think those ranchers and ranching families have always been interested in wildlife and wildlife management and stewardship. You know, they weren’t interested in somebody coming in and telling them what to do or how to do it. And so, you know, that’s where a lot of that skepticism towards, you know, groups like the Nature Conservancy evolved.

Carter Smith [00:31:19] I think with with time, a lot of that has softened a great deal, and the Nature Conservancy, of all organizations, has worked incredibly hard to earn the trust and respect of landowners by respecting private property rights, choices that landowners get get to make. You know, making sure that it was abundantly clear that, you know, if they were working with a private landowner, it was always on a willing, voluntary, collaborative basis. And I think that’s been one of the great hallmarks of the Nature Conservancy.

Carter Smith [00:31:51] But but even putting aside the Nature Conservancy, I think one of the things that as I reflect upon, you know, my career in wildlife and conservation in Texas, you know, I’m very proud of the fact that, you know, we’re largely past the golden-cheeked warbler wars, you know, the endangered species fights of the ’90s and early 2000s that were so intense, you know, where all the gates got locked on Parks and Wildlife biologists, Nature Conservancy biologists, Fish and Wildlife Service, anybody, any biologist.

Carter Smith [00:32:25] And so there’s just been this huge proliferation of interest in conservation and stewardship in wildlife. You know, I think about Parks and Wildlife having 31 million acres under a voluntary wildlife management plan. That’s 20% of the state. And, you know, we can’t hire enough biologists to keep up with that.

Carter Smith [00:32:44] The demand for conservation easements that organizations like the Nature Conservancy and the Texas Agricultural Land Trust and the Texas Land Conservancy are helping to pursue with willing landowners has grown dramatically with with time.

Carter Smith [00:33:01] So, you know, I think a lot of those attitudes have just changed and evolved with familiarity and trust that, you know, that that organizations and people have taken time to get to know each other, come together on projects.

Carter Smith [00:33:19] One of the projects that I’m most proud of when I worked with the Nature Conservancy had nothing to do with land acquisition or land protection, but it had to do with a partnership that we formed with ranchers on the Refugio-Goliad Prairie – big old ranching families out of Victoria and Goliad and Refugio to help manage that coastal prairie.

Carter Smith [00:33:39] And those ranchers were interested in fighting the wall of brush and restoring the native grass. They were interested in bobwhite quail.

Carter Smith [00:33:48] And yeah, they thought it’d be pretty cool if the Attwater prairie chicken might might come back because, you know, some of them remembered it when they were kids, the older ones. Or some of them remembered their parents or grandparents talking about the about the leks.

Carter Smith [00:34:01] And the Nature Conservancy with NRCS and Parks and Wildlife and the Coastal Prairie Conservation Initiative formed this partnership with this core group of ranchers out of that triangle that is going on strong today. And these are great land stewards. You know, first and foremost, these are ranchers, but they care about the wildlife and the game and the habitat and the diversity of of plants and animals that they’re stewarding.

Carter Smith [00:34:30] And the Nature Conservancy played a huge role in getting that going.

Carter Smith [00:34:34] But it was at the invitation of 3 or 4 of those ranchers who said, “Maybe we ought to get to know you a little bit better and see maybe if there’s some more common ground.” And and sure enough, that partnership evolved out of it.

Carter Smith [00:34:51] And so I think we see that now in lots of parts of the state where the relationships between conservation organizations and landowners have improved dramatically compared to, you know, candidly, when I was much earlier on in my career, and I’m proud to see that.

Carter Smith [00:35:09] Fish and wildlife know no boundaries. They don’t care if they’re in Mexico or the US, or Texas or Tamaulipas. You know, they’re looking for spaces and places and habitats to meet their various life history related needs.

Carter Smith [00:35:24] And so and so it’s critical that we be thinking on a on a on a binational scale or a trinational scale or more, depending upon what the movements and migrations of the fish and wildlife that we’re charged with protecting.

Carter Smith [00:35:36] But, you know, scaling that back down to reality, you know, we have to respect the fact that, you know, the US and Mexico are different countries with different governments. And that can, that’s true at the federal level, the state level at the local level.

Carter Smith [00:35:51] And so there are lots of influences that can also change with time. And so, you know, relationships, you know, have to be very purposefully maintained with colleagues that are there for a career, not for short time frames, because administrations are going to change.

Carter Smith [00:36:11] And if we’re going to be successful in conservation, you know, this is a generational thing that we’re working on. It’s a multi-generational thing. So it doesn’t come in two-year cycles or four-year cycles or six-year cycles. These are things that have to be very purposeful and very continuous.

Carter Smith [00:36:29] But it’s also not easy. You know, there are very real challenges, you know, culturally and legally and financially and programmatically, that can’t simply be papered over or pretend like they don’t exist.

Carter Smith [00:36:48] And so, you know, you also have to embrace a whole lot of that “when in Rome”. And flexibility is the key. And, you know, their time frame may not be our time frame. Or our process for doing something may not be their process.

Carter Smith [00:37:06] And so all of all of that critically important binational work has to be predicated on starting with a healthy degree of respect for the other and the place from which they’re coming and the constraints that they have, that might be very, very different.

Carter Smith [00:37:24] But never doubt the passion, the conviction, the desire to do well and good by, you know, the fish and wildlife, the knowledge, the expertise, the experience. It’s rich.

Carter Smith [00:37:39] And so, you know, the kind of cross-pollination that Parks and Wildlife we try to encourage between biologists and colleagues in Mexico has been really important not only for our folks, but hopefully for theirs as we’re sharing ideas and programs and working on research and studies.

Carter Smith [00:38:01] And I think, you know, organizations like the Nature Conservancy recognized that very early on as well, thinking about, you know, landscapes like the Laguna Madre or work out in the Chihuahuan Desert, that again, if it’s going to be successful that the Rio Grande wasn’t the sideboard for which you know you could never cross and try to work. And I think that’s been again a great, great hallmark of the Nature Conservancy over over over the years.

Carter Smith [00:38:35] The Southmost Preserve is aptly named. I mean, it is the southernmost place in the continental United States, and obviously that includes Texas. You know, right there in this southern bend of Texas, a stone’s throw across the river from from Mexico.

Carter Smith [00:38:53] And it was recognized early on by biologists from Parks and Wildlife and Fish and Wildlife Service and biologists with the University of Texas and the LBJ program that were doing the Natural Areas study as one of the most biologically unique and significant places in the state and certainly the Rio Grande Valley.

Carter Smith [00:39:14] And a big reason for that were these historic relic sabal palm woodlands, like people are familiar with at the Audubon Sabal Palm Grove Sanctuary, which is adjacent to the Southmost ranch and preserve.

Carter Smith [00:39:29] The Southmost ranch was was owned by Julia Armstrong of the Armstrong and King Ranch family. And it was, you know, really her favorite farm. You know, she loved the rich, fertile soils down there, the big palms, the dense brush. She she had a nursery operation, a citrus operation there. But, you know, she and her brothers spent a lot of time there when they were young. And it was near and dear to her heart.

Carter Smith [00:40:01] And it was also near and dear to the heart of, you know, biologists that were, you know, keenly interested in all the critters that were found there. And so there had been some preliminary work done on plants and animals that were that were found there. And so it was always, again, believed to be one of these kind of jewels in the Rio Grande Valley that, you know, if the Armstrong family ever had an interest in selling it, that it ought to be protected for conservation.

Carter Smith [00:40:30] And one day, Ms. Armstrong called me in Harlingen and introduced herself and said, you know, “Look, I’ve decided that I want to sell the ranch and, you know, is the Nature Conservancy interested?”

Carter Smith [00:40:48] And, you know, I could just barely contain my excitement about that. And so we put together a little team from the Nature Conservancy and Fish and Wildlife Service and went out and surveyed the property and, and, and and looked for again, all these rare plants. It’s where I had my first encounter with killer bees, which is another story in and of itself looking for these rare herps in the middle of these impenetrable thornscrub woodlands.

Carter Smith [00:41:20] But but we ultimately put together this public/private partnership to acquire the ranch and have some of it go into the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, and then the Nature Conservancy to keep the largest portion of it as kind of an acre preserve in the Valley.

Carter Smith [00:41:39] It was a place in which TNC would do community-based conservation, education, would experiment with some compatible farming, would also work on revegetation and restoration of thornscrub, and convert the nursery there into a nursery growing native plants, which was really needed to help restore, you know, former brush lands that had been converted to croplands, but for which either the landowners or the Refuge or Parks and Wildlife now wanted to restore the the brush.

Carter Smith [00:42:10] But we needed places to grow those those those plants. And there was water, you know, trees, a nursery operation, you know, farm implements, folks that worked on that on that farm and knew what they were they were doing.

Carter Smith [00:42:23] And then again, there was just this artesian well of cool stuff there from a from a biological perspective that, you know, we wanted to try to protect and conserve.

Carter Smith [00:42:31] But we had to we had to raise money both on the public side and the private side. And so the Fish and Wildlife Service back in those days, that if they were going to do a land protection project, it also meant you had to go to D.C. and get the money for them. So essentially you had to go and, you know, lobby Congress for for for money.

Carter Smith [00:42:52] And, you know, and so Senator Hutchison was very interested in South Texas, and she was sympathetic to the work of the Nature Conservancy. And she played a huge role in helping to secure funds for that project, and then our big project on on South Padre Island.

Carter Smith [00:43:11] And then, thankfully, we had one of Julia’s cousins, Cina Alexander, who was on the Nature Conservancy board, and, you know, Bob Kleberg’s granddaughter and part of the King Ranch family. And she loved the Laguna Madre, had helped to fund the project that we were on. And so she was a big driving influence behind helping to raise the private funds.

Carter Smith [00:43:36] John Norris, who was one of the long-standing board members of the Nature Conservancy and he was a big birder. Owns the Lennox air conditioning. John just fell in love with it and made an incredibly generous contribution to help make that happen.

Carter Smith [00:43:58] Bob Braden of the old Turner Collie and Braden engineering firm in Houston. Bob was a big birder and on the Nature Conservancy board. And so Bob got behind it.

Carter Smith [00:44:08] Robert Potts, who was a muckety-muck of some sort with TNC. I think he was our state director at the time. You know, Robert loved it.

Carter Smith [00:44:14] And and so it was this great group of people that just came together to raise the funds both publicly and privately. We were able to leverage funds at the North American Wetland Conservation Act, get money from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and and then ultimately through the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Carter Smith [00:44:39] And then with a bargain sale from Ms. Armstrong ultimately were able to purchase it and, you know, see that special part of Texas protected and added to the refuge and part of the Nature Conservancy portfolio.

Carter Smith [00:44:52] And I think it in many ways helped to give more credibility and standing to the Nature Conservancy’s work in the Valley, because really prior to that, the majority of TNC’s work down there had been acquiring land for Parks and Wildlife or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Carter Smith [00:45:13] Now the Nature Conservancy owned a little preserve called Chihuahua Woods near Mission, but it really didn’t have a kind of anchor preserve. And that was something that was important to the Nature Conservancy at that time.

Carter Smith [00:45:26] The Devils River, Independence Creek, Dolan Falls, Mad Island, Clymer Meadow, Barton Creek, and so Southmost became the anchor site for the work in the Rio Grande Valley. And it was a place that the community got to be part of with school kids coming out to learn about what was in their backyard, researchers from all over that were studying bats and birds and beetles and salamanders and newts and fish and plants of all kind.

Carter Smith [00:46:01] And and then a place too where the Nature Conservancy got to develop relationships with farmers and landowners that were interested in plants and practices that were going on in the preserve.

Carter Smith [00:46:13] And so at least through that time, it really served its purpose, you know, very well of giving a very clear presence and emphasis and visibility to the Nature Conservancy that didn’t feel ephemeral to to to to people. It was it was more permanent.

Carter Smith [00:46:35] You know, TNC is part of this community. You know, the people that are working here, live here. Their kids go to school here. They go to church here. They’re raising families here. They’re neighbors. We’re we’re interfacing.

Carter Smith [00:46:47] And I it changed a lot of dynamics for us down there in the in the Valley. And and I think built up a lot of support for the for the Conservancy as a whole.

Carter Smith [00:47:02] One part of the project with with Fish and Wildlife Service was transferring property over to them for part of the refuge complex, but also subject to a conservation easement held by the Nature Conservancy to again just extend another layer of protection.

Carter Smith [00:47:20] And I think that’s something that, you know, when I reflect back on the work of TNC and candidly think about the work that we and our team at Parks and Wildlife have had a chance to do with the Nature Conservancy over the last, you know, 14 or 15 years that I’ve had this had this job. You know, we’ve done a lot of projects with the Nature Conservancy where they’ve helped to acquire new state parks and wildlife management areas.

Carter Smith [00:47:44] And in any number of them we felt like it was in the long-term best interest of conservation, where the Nature Conservancy retained an easement on those properties. And, you know, those are very carefully and thoughtfully negotiated by the teams because, you know, the department needs flexibility to manage these places. In many instances, you know, I mean, they’re very much open for public recreation and use and enjoyment. And so, you know, traditional easements that are that are used on on more conventional private land settings really don’t contemplate, you know, the kind of recreation that Parks and Wildlife works to foster and support and encourage. So, you know, there’s there’s there’s had to be some negotiation over that.

Carter Smith [00:48:27] But at the end of the day, you know, the department and the Nature Conservancy have worked very, I think, synergistically on a number of key projects to help protect some really unique and special places in ways that fostered and furthered both organizations’ missions and purpose. And I think we’re all very proud of that.

Carter Smith [00:48:48] One of the really important conservation goals in the Rio Grande Valley has been this effort at reforestation. You know, so much of those fertile soils and that historic brush land were obviously converted to cropland.

Carter Smith [00:49:01] And as you know, Parks and Wildlife and Fish and Wildlife Service, Valley Land Fund, the Nature Conservancy, and candidly, a lot of private landowners that are interested in wildlife have looked to try to revegetate some of those crop lands back to native brush communities, the limiting factor, of course, has been native plant seed stock.

Carter Smith [00:49:22] And so the Southmost Ranch was a perfect spot for that. And so strategically, when we were going through, you know, a very, very methodical, systematic planning exercise with all the partners down there about what could this place be, what’s the best value that we can get out of it. We talked about all these different issues – conservation and research and education and management and extension and, you know, wildlife protection and so forth.

Carter Smith [00:49:55] One that we kept coming back to was the need for a native plant nursery at some kind of a scale where we had the infrastructure – you know, people, water, a nursery that already existed without having to create one from scratch to grow out native plants that then could be used to revegetate priority tracts throughout the Valley.

Carter Smith [00:50:16] And you know, that was something that the Nature Conservancy and its partners had long been interested in in South Texas. And Southmost Ranch, you know, perfectly fit the bill for it.

Carter Smith [00:50:30] Most Texans are growing up in cities. Most Texans are growing up very far removed and detached from conservation, the outdoors, a piece of land in their family that may have existed for generations or candidly, never at all with all of the new people that have moved to Texas.

Carter Smith [00:50:51] So there’s no connection necessarily to any piece of private lands in our state or, you know, a nearby refuge or national park or state park.

Carter Smith [00:51:05] And so it’s critical from a conservation perspective that we think about how do we provide, manage compatible outdoor access for all of the people that live here. And whether that’s through greenbelt or trails or local parks or state parks or national parks or wildlife management areas or preserves that are open.

Carter Smith [00:51:27] It’s critical for fostering a connection with the outdoors. You’re able to get out. You’re able to see it, experience, touch it, smell it, feel it. You get exposure to the kind of wildlife and plants and nature that reside, you know, in some cases just a stone’s throw from your own backyard.

Carter Smith [00:51:48] And sometimes that’s all it takes, is a little urban park, a little patch of woods, a little pocket park in a city, a trail, a greenbelt, or, you know, a state park or a national park where you have a chance to really get out and recreate and spend the night and, you know, time immersed in a place in which you feel like you’ve kind of escaped it all, whether you have or hadn’t. And, you know, that gives you that feel and that connection to place and land.

Carter Smith [00:52:21] But I think that is essential as we think about the future of conservation in our home ground is making sure that we have places for people to access. Do it responsibly, lawfully, ethically, sustainably, all of that.

Carter Smith [00:52:37] And there’s a lot of evolution in the way that we manage public parks compared to, you know, their earliest inception. And and so that’s evolved in the sophistication and thoughtfulness and appreciation for the sensitivity of the natural and cultural resources that are that are there.

Carter Smith [00:52:57] But if people don’t have any access to these parks, you know, and of course, we saw this during the time of Covid. Where did everybody ultimately go to? You know, they went outdoors, as much for their mental and emotional and psychological sanity as anything else. They needed an escape valve. And, you know, the great remedy for Covid across our country and state was the outdoors.

Carter Smith [00:53:27] And so we’ve got to have places like our state parks and city parks where people can go and whether they’re hiking, walking, looking at the night sky, kicking a soccer ball, pitching a tent, catching a fish, getting on a kayak, doing a morning run, looking for birds, looking at plants, watching the butterflies pollinate the flowers.

Carter Smith [00:53:54] All of that stuff is critical to our quality of life, our sanity and the well-being of our citizenry.

Carter Smith [00:54:03] And so, if we’re not investing in making sure that there are places where people can go and access near where they reside, we’re going to lose the war on conservation because they’re not going to see the relevance or value necessarily to them.

Carter Smith [00:54:18] And I don’t want to see that happen.

Carter Smith [00:54:21] I think parks and conservation have always been the great uniter. Yeah, we can differ by degree and nuance, but it’s hard to get anybody to publicly say, “I don’t like fish and wildlife, or I don’t like parks, or I don’t like the out outdoors.”

Carter Smith [00:54:38] Now, motivating political leaders sometimes to act or to make that a priority among the many other things that they’re having to juggle within, you know, their basket of priorities, you know, takes effort and focus and, you know, the good strokes of timing and fortune and pluck and, you know, people being in the right places in the right time.

Carter Smith [00:55:02] But the overwhelming support of passage for Prop Five with, you know, 87, 88, 89% of Texans voting for it, incredibly unanimous. You know, people asked me before the election if it was going to pass. “Of course, it’s going to pass.” They said, “Well, what do you think it’ll it’ll get?” I said, “Somewhere between 65 and 70%, I’m hoping 70%. You know, I want it to be overwhelming. 70% just feels good.” But 88%? I just, I haven’t found a person who’s voted against it, but obviously somebody did.

Carter Smith [00:55:37] But as you look at the demographics of those who indicated that they were going to vote for it, it crosses all spectrums – ages, political parties, you know, race, ethnicity, you know, urban, rural geography. I think people just get the fact that investing in our state and local parks is the right thing to do for the future and betterment of Texas.

Carter Smith [00:56:09] The Edwards Aquifer obviously is of huge value to the people and places and communities and and and fish and wildlife of central Texas and, candidly, the coast, when you think about the springs of the Edwards Aquifer and the creeks and rivers and the inflows that ultimately go all the way down to the coast to sustain our our bays.

Carter Smith [00:56:28] You know, so many people and sectors and communities and industries, as well as fish and wildlife and outdoor recreation and environment, you know, depend upon the water that goes into the Edwards Aquifer and that ultimately, you know, comes out in the the springs that, you know, in wells that, you know, sustain us all, people and animals alike.

Carter Smith [00:56:49] And one of the projects that I think was just, you know, quintessential Nature Conservancy work was the the effort to ensure the dedication of a one-eighth cent sales tax in San Antonio, a project called the Aquifer Protection Initiative, to help generate funds to voluntarily acquire land or conservation easements over the Edwards Aquifer recharge and sometimes contributory zones to help protect water quality.

Carter Smith [00:57:19] You know, the single source of water when we were working on at that time for the country’s seventh largest city. So, you know, the entire city, the military bases, all of the agricultural sectors, everybody that lived there, you know, depended upon the quality of that water to help sustain them and their and their livelihoods.

Carter Smith [00:57:42] And so here’s an opportunity with a little bit of money to go out and purchase from willing landowners in the Hill Country conservation easements to protect recharge zones into the Edwards Aquifer to ensure that the quality of water going into that aquifer, the singular source of water for this giant city and all the surrounding areas, was going to be forever protected.

Carter Smith [00:58:13] And it was a terrific partnership of people that worked on it. Bonnie Conner, who was a San Antonio City Council woman and this great veteran of San Antonio political wars, Deirdre Heisler, was the superintendent at Government Canyon State Natural Area. And, you know, all the king’s horses and all the queen’s men were not going to keep her contained to, you know, Government Canyon. If there was a conservation project in the area, she was going to be right in the in the middle of it. It didn’t matter what anybody told her.

Carter Smith [00:58:46] The Nature Conservancy, you had these business leaders, Tim Hixon and Pat Kennedy, you know, downtown, you know, big real estate developers that were for it. Lots, lots of landowners. And the polling was showing that it was going to pass overwhelmingly.

Carter Smith [00:59:04] But we had to we had to get it on the ballot to go to the voters of San Antonio to dedicate this one eighth cent sales tax.

Carter Smith [00:59:14] And out of nowhere, the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce came out against it. And I have never seen Tim Hixon get more mad. Absolutely livid. And I won’t call out the San Antonio area businessmen who kind of engineered the Chamber to come out against it. But I promise you, if Tim Hixon was here, he would.

Carter Smith [00:59:44] But, boy, Tim just redoubled and redoubled and redoubled his efforts to get that passed. And, you know, we did all of this fascinating polling of residents to see about their interest in and support of that project.

Carter Smith [00:59:59] And something that was very telling for me in conservation, and I knew this from my work in the Valley and Mexico, but it really brought it home is of all the demographics of folks who may or may not have been all that familiar with this issue or why it was important or how these moneys could be expended in a very highly leveraged, very efficient way to get this incredible return on the investment for literally pennies on the dollar. What’s more important than protecting the quality of your water and, you know, doing it through acquiring these easements and we get all these open space benefits and fish and wildlife benefits, all these all these things that come with it.

Carter Smith [01:00:39] But I’ll never I’ll never forget the Hispanic community in San Antonio got it like that. Of course, that’s our water. We’ve got to have clean water. Yeah. I’m voting for that. I mean, just like that. You didn’t need a big runway. A big effort to try to persuade them. It was, “We got to protect our water.”

Carter Smith [01:01:02] And that measure also passed overwhelmingly. And then, you know, generated tens of millions of dollars for, you know, the City and the Trust for Public Land and the Nature Conservancy and others to go work with these landowners, to go protect these sensitive recharge areas. And the beneficiaries are all of us.

Carter Smith [01:01:24] Wonderful project.

Carter Smith [01:01:27] Honey Creek is is really one of the great crown jewels of the Texas Hill Country, if not the state. This amazing spring-fed system that feeds the Guadalupe. You get down into that spring-fed canyon with these giant cypress trees that were too remote and too hard to get out. So they were never cut, like, you know, a lot of Hill Country streams and rivers and candidly, that got that got cut over.

Carter Smith [01:01:54] And these pristine spring-fed waters that feed the river with this incredible unique amount of biology and ecology there. And the State Natural Area that exists now came about because of another Nature Conservancy / Parks and Wildlife partnership and the Nature Conservancy working to acquire the land. Andy Sansom tells some wonderful stories about raising friends and funds to help make that happen back when the Nature Conservancy didn’t have two nickels to rub together and, you know, had to bet on the state, ultimately to come around, take them out. But, you know, take them out, they did.

Carter Smith [01:02:35] And the result was, you know, this several thousand-acre State Natural Area that’s known as Honey Creek to protect again that that very, very unique biological system that also enjoys and joins the Guadalupe River State Park.

Carter Smith [01:02:50] But you know, that was done in the ’80s. And while at that time it was certainly logical to kind of declare victory, as time has gone on and development pressures have ensued and we’ve focused more on watershed scales of protection. You know, we’ve recognized that you can’t just protect the springs and the creek and the run of the river, so to speak, and the land adjacent to it. You’ve got to be thinking about everything in that watershed.

Carter Smith [01:03:23] And what really re-activated I think this this project was a proposed 2600-lot subdivision adjacent to the Honey Creek State Natural Area with, of course, the, you know, runoff from that going right into Honey Creek. And, you know, that mobilized a lot of people who were deeply, deeply concerned about what would happen to that incredibly sensitive, incredibly unique, incredibly special, you know, Hill Country jewel that while, you know, admittedly not many people get to see it, it’s just pretty rewarding to know it’s there and it still exists.

Carter Smith [01:04:09] And so as the development project ensued and, you know, the department worked to try to influence the development to the extent we we could, you know, with some little buffers and maybe a change in the way that wastewater was treated and dispensed with and, you know, commitments to work on a management plan with the future HOA, you know, it it candidly, it always felt like it was going to be a death of a thousand paper cuts. But we tried to make a really bad situation a little bit better.

[01:04:48] And thankfully we had a landowner that wanted to do that, wanted to develop the property, but was sympathetic to Parks and Wildlife interest, was I mean and listened to us and made adjustments along the way, which, you know, I can’t say about about every big developer that we have worked with over the over the over the years.

Carter Smith [01:05:10] But at some point in the in the process, a group of individuals came to us and just said, “Is there any way you could just buy it? Is there any way we could just we could just buy it?”.

Carter Smith [01:05:25] And, you know, money’s not growing on trees, right? And whereas places like the coast, you can sometimes piece together large amounts of money, like what we did for the Powderhorn Ranch, for instance, I wouldn’t say quickly, but where there’s a will, there’s a way and there’s more to pull for.

Carter Smith [01:05:44] You start to go inland, it becomes harder. But I sat down with Jeff Weigel at the Nature Conservancy and Andy Sansom at the Meadows Institute there at Texas State. And of course, Andy’s intimately familiar with with Honey Creek. And we decided let’s give it a try.

Carter Smith [01:06:05] And so, you know, remember, this is a development that’s marching down the road to get permits for 2600 subdivision, selling lots, getting all of the wastewater permits, have contracted to buy fresh water sources, have sold land to schools that are planning on building schools around the area that’s predicated on a subdivision, there are pipelines that are being built, wastewater treatment facilities. So all of this is going on.

Carter Smith [01:06:39] So Jeff and I drove out to the ranch on a Friday afternoon and met with the landowner, Ronnie Urbanczyk, and his partner, David Holmes. And we said, “Look, we want to make an offer and it may be a long shot, but if you’ll give us a little bit of time, we’ll be able to tell you pretty quickly if we can do it.” And that offer was let us just buy it.

Carter Smith [01:07:07] Let’s quit talking about a 50-foot buffer or a 100-foot buffer or whether you can kind of fix the lights and where they shine. Or can we work with you on a management plan for the herbicides and stuff that the residents in the HOA are going to need to put down to manage their lawns or all of these, you know, things that just, “How about we just buy it.”

Carter Smith [01:07:34] And, you know, they were kind of stunned at that. But Ronnie, to his credit, said, “We’ll think about it.” And I said, “Well, here’s a deal. If you’ll give us a little bit of time, we’ll tell you if we can raise the money. Here’s how we think we’ll do it. We don’t have dollar one in our hands. But here’s where we’re going to go to try to to try to get it. And so I promise you that that we will tell you quickly whether or not we can we can we can pull it off.”

Carter Smith [01:08:08] And they called us the next week. We went back out there and they said, “Yeah, we’ll entertain an offer.”

Carter Smith [01:08:18] And so we hand it over to the very capable hands of Jeff Francell, who went to work, you know, getting an appraisal and starting to negotiate an offer. And then Renee King at the Nature Conservancy and Susan Houston and Annie Brown at the Parks and Wildlife Foundation went to work to see about putting together a private fundraising plant to make it work.

[01:08:46] And and we thought that because of the amount of Land and Water Conservation Fund dollars that were going to be coming to Texas, that we could allocate some federal funds that were coming to Parks and Wildlife that had to be matched, but that we could make that share of it.

Carter Smith [01:09:03] And then, as it turned out, while these discussions were were going on, we were in the middle of a legislative session and Prop Five had passed. And we were having conversations with the legislature about, “Look, we’ve got these inholdings within our state parks. We’ve got these properties on our buffers that are threatened with development. You know, we need to look at being able to acquire some of these parcels to, you know, expand our parks, protect the investments that we’ve already made, give more recreational opportunities, abate threats.”

Carter Smith [01:09:42] And I’ll tell you, people really responded to that. And it had been decades since there had been state dollar one invested in land acquisition for the Department because the concern was, well, the Department’s going to go buy up all this stuff and they’re not going to be able to do anything with it. And they can’t fix the stuff that they already have with this billion-dollar backlog of deferred maintenance. And they’re going to go up and buy out West Texas again and not pay property tax.

Carter Smith [01:10:07] All those, all those things had kind of gotten in the way of, you know, the Department being able to convince the legislature that there were really needs that, you know, the legislature was probably going to be interested in addressing.

Carter Smith [01:10:18] And, you know, I really can’t say enough about, you know, the members of that Senate Finance Committee, in particular, Republicans and Democrats alike, who said, “Yeah, we got to invest some money to help protect all these parks that we’re investing in.”

Carter Smith [01:10:34] And we talked to them about Honey Creek. We said, “You know, here’s an example. You know, we’ve got this amazing State Park and State Natural Area. There’s a 2600-lot subdivision. You know, by law now we’re kind of relegated to writing letters, you know, to say, “Would you mind doing this or or that? We can’t legally protect, you know, the interest of the of the park because of some other issues that had transpired a number of years prior in the legislature.”

Carter Smith [01:11:02] You know, just thankful that we had a landowner that was willing to work with us and make some adjustments on a development that, candidly, were going to cost him real money.

Carter Smith [01:11:10] And that’s kind of gotten lost in all this story where people have demonized, you know, Ronnie Urbanczyk. But Ronnie along the way has been very sympathetic to our concerns, even if he couldn’t meet them all.

Carter Smith [01:11:22] But but so we went to work on up on a public/private fundraising package and and were able to put together the dollars, and the Nature Conservancy through Jeff’s work and others were able to, you know, put together a contract.

Carter Smith [01:11:38] But it was always predicated on the fact that some of these, not some and all of these entanglements that came with the property because it was going to be developed – water contracts and wastewater sites and so forth – those were going to have to go away. And so that’s proved to be very complicated and multi-layered in many ways and very time-consuming. And so been a lot of effort to try to untie that Gordian knot to get us to be able to protect this ranch. And the good news is, you know, we’re pulling the sled that direction.

Carter Smith [01:12:22] Here’s what I tell people that are interested in getting involved in conservation. Whatever you’re looking for is looking for you. Search for it.

Carter Smith [01:12:31] But if there are a couple of things that you can invest in besides, you know, your education in, you know, biology or, you know, fisheries management or law enforcement or whatever, being a park ranger, whatever it is you want to do, invest in yourself and invest in yourself with your communication skills. Learn to communicate well orally and in writing so that you put your best foot forward. Because ultimately, the end of the day, these conservation jobs are about people and they’re about interpersonal relationships and they’re about earning the respect of the people that you want to invest in you and believe in you that you’re going to do right for the place that they call home.