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

Interviewee: Cina Forgason
Date: January 5, 2023
Site: San Antonio, Texas
Reels: 5056-5057
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: Forgason_Cina_NCItem35_SanAntonioTX_20230105_Reel5056-5057_Audio.mp3

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

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

Cina Forgason [00:00:19] I grew up in both Pennsylvania and Texas.

Lee Smith [00:00:23] So where would you say you spent like most of your childhood? Both of those states?

Cina Forgason [00:00:28] Both. We were school years in Pennsylvania and summers and Christmas in South Texas itself.

Lee Smith [00:00:35] Yeah. Okay. Was there any aspect or experience – cast your mind back to like, your earliest recollections. Was there an experience or an aspect of one of those environments that really kind of maybe lit the flame of nature in you?

Cina Forgason [00:00:56] Well, I would say both environments did. I started my own Audubon Club when I was about five and I was the only member.

Cina Forgason [00:01:06] But yeah, both, both areas. We lived in the countryside, in both both areas. So, that was where I used to play and ride horses and do things.

Lee Smith [00:01:18] But yeah, pretty diverse habitats, right?

Cina Forgason [00:01:24] Yes. But growing up, you don’t know the difference. You know that they are different, but don’t necessarily know why or really pay much attention to that.

Lee Smith [00:01:35] Was there any member of your family that was a mentor in that regard?

Cina Forgason [00:01:45] Both my grandparents were. My grandmother used to love to fly fish and and was a birdwatcher and a bird hunter. And my grandfather was a hunter, especially quail. And so both of them influenced me greatly.

Lee Smith [00:02:04] Did you go out with them?

Cina Forgason [00:02:07] Oh, yes.

Lee Smith [00:02:08] So they taught you how to shoot?

Cina Forgason [00:02:10] Yes. Yes. Yes.

Lee Smith [00:02:12] So when you when you say you started the first Audubon.

Cina Forgason [00:02:15] My first Audubon club.

Lee Smith [00:02:17] Yeah. So birds had an interest for you. And did that come from your grandmother? You said she was a birder.

Cina Forgason [00:02:27] Yeah, well, both of them really were interested in the entire ecosystem, not just one part. So I’d say they were very influential in helping me to understand it was a very holistic world we were in, and pay attention to everything from snakes to birds.

Lee Smith [00:02:47] So what did you do in your bird club?

Cina Forgason [00:02:51] I kept records and I won the silhouette contests, which they had in those days, and we had a little chapter at my school. So I was president of my own chapter and and that was when they still had a program from Audubon to be used in schools. Unfortunately, I think they’ve discontinued it.

Lee Smith [00:03:18] Was there anything in your education, a teacher or a classmate, that sparked an interest in conservation for you?

Cina Forgason [00:03:27] No. I already had it by the time I got to class. It was more out of class than in class that that got me going.

Lee Smith [00:03:34] Was there anything in popular culture, any books or magazines or TV shows, that you had an affinity for?

Cina Forgason [00:03:43] The Wonderful World of Disney. And of course, Marlin Perkins’ Wild Kingdom. I met Marlon Perkins.

Lee Smith [00:03:52] Did you meet Jim?

Cina Forgason [00:03:53] No, Jim was not there. Marlon was there with his film crew who were older than he was.

Lee Smith [00:04:00] Really?

Cina Forgason [00:04:01] Yes.

Lee Smith [00:04:04] I didn’t think that was possible.

Cina Forgason [00:04:05] I didn’t either. Especially roaming around East Africa.

Lee Smith [00:04:10] But Jim, wasn’t it? I thought Jim was the guy that always grabbed the animal.

Cina Forgason [00:04:14] Nothing to grab in Africa, really? I mean, little. It’ll grab you back.

Lee Smith [00:04:20] And why was the Davis Mountains an important site to preserve?

Cina Forgason [00:04:27] To me or for other reasons?

Lee Smith [00:04:29] For you and TNC.

Cina Forgason [00:04:32] Okay. Well, I’ve been a lot of places and I’d never seen a place that was so unique like that. And I saw an opportunity there to get something big done, because of what TNC had been doing there for many years.

Cina Forgason [00:04:49] And we had a lot of people who were interested in the same idea and we managed to pull it off and I’m really glad we did because we never would have been able to do it nowadays.

Lee Smith [00:05:05] And when it first started to be bandied about in that area, there was a pretty, there were some concerns, some local concerns. How was TNC able to make this the success that it is today? Because you don’t see the signs. I was told that there were signs around saying “Stop TNC” and that kind of stuff.

Cina Forgason [00:05:30] Yeah. Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:05:31] How did that get turned around?

Cina Forgason [00:05:34] Frankly, I don’t know exactly how, except perhaps just building trust and faith, because we weren’t going to be an agent for the government as people feared, and it was mostly to preserve habitat and do it in a very low-key, quiet and conservative way. And I think we achieve that goal. And I think that the neighbors understand that a little better now.

Lee Smith [00:06:05] How important is that in building relationships with landowners – that trust, cultivating that trust.

Cina Forgason [00:06:17] Well, it’s very important. But we weren’t doing anything that any private individual couldn’t do. And we still don’t. As far as I understand it. I think people now are understanding out there that other people value that land for its beauty and its recreational uses and things.

Cina Forgason [00:06:37] But we were really interested in conservation values and saw an opportunity to make a big impact. And so, you know, a lot of properties have been bought and cut up and results have not been so nice for the community. You know, I think I think they see we didn’t mean any harm. We only meant to do good. So hopefully that’s that’s what the message is.

Lee Smith [00:07:09] The proof is in the pudding. You know. But that’s, that’s what I, you know, the Nature Conservancy kept its word. And that means a lot, especially in, you know, a lot of those rural communities that have established families.

Cina Forgason [00:07:32] Yeah, you have to be a person of your word and organization of your word. Otherwise there’s no point in doing it. We were not communists and we were not in there to make a national park. They already had a national park there. It’s called Big Bend, and it’s rather big, along with the Big Bend State Park. That’s a lot of public land.

Cina Forgason [00:07:56] And so the important thing, I think and Larry Gilbert talked about this way back in the beginning. Larry was on our board. He was chair of the Department of Zoology at University of Texas. And he said that these private preserves were extremely important in doing long-term research because there wouldn’t be a lot of variety in conditions.

Cina Forgason [00:08:20] Whereas if you have a, you know, a habitat that is heavily grazed or has a lot of intense management, it changes a lot of the quotients that are are necessary in the equation to do long-term research.

Cina Forgason [00:08:35] And that’s one of the big reasons Larry wanted to be involved with TNC. And we were very grateful to have his guidance and advice.

Lee Smith [00:08:45] And there’s research going on out at Davis.

Cina Forgason [00:08:47] Yes. Yes. And, you know, Larry’s an expert on butterflies and ants and moths and everything else and plants and, you know, so he he was extremely interested and energized by the fact that we would be preserving a small slice of that unique habitat for future generations.

Lee Smith [00:09:12] So the Southmost Preserve, why is that an important place?

Cina Forgason [00:09:19] Well, that’s also a unique habitat. I think there’s only 3% of it left, if that. And we we weren’t sure what we could accomplish there. It was really sort of a pioneering effort in working in that kind of a habitat.

Cina Forgason [00:09:38] And Lisa Williams really did an amazing job raising native plants at the time in her parents’ backyard in milk jugs. And then when we got the Southmost, we had scalable opportunities to raise a lot more native plants using some agricultural technology that we hadn’t had access to before.

Cina Forgason [00:10:11] And it’s now continuing to be an important research and propagation site for a lot of the species that are unique to the Rio Grande Valley, which has been really severely impacted in the last 40, 50 years.

Cina Forgason [00:10:28] When I was a kid, we used to go down there to Brownsville to visit friends every summer, and it was always like going to another country to us. You know, it really felt like the tropics.

Cina Forgason [00:10:39] And and now it’s not. It’s mostly plowed up.

Lee Smith [00:10:46] So how does that whole seed bank fit into the vision of TNC?

Cina Forgason [00:10:56] Well, when I first joined the board, the emphasis was on unique habitats and biodiversity within those unique habitats as part of the greater picture of biodiversity.

Cina Forgason [00:11:10] And what is, what was important is to understand how to restore landscapes, because in some cases, like in the Valley, we’d lost the opportunity to conserve large parts of it. And so once you miss that opportunity, you have to be good at restoration in order to try and get an image of what the habitat used to be like and to attract back the species that would have been endemic to that kind of habitat.

Cina Forgason [00:11:41] So I’m very pleased that that program has really succeeded very well. And now there’s a lot of interest in native plants and and forbs, which are also known as weeds, and shrubs, all kinds of things that that nature needs for the diverse species that thrive in there, like birds and ocelots and snakes and you name it, they’re all there, if you if you let them be there.

Lee Smith [00:12:13] And ocelots have kind of taken a recent, you know, they’re kind of the poster child right now with Ben Masters’ latest deal on ocelots and then the one before that, you know. So and TNC has done a lot of work with ocelots, right?

Cina Forgason [00:12:29] Well, mostly the work we did was with with the chain of refuges, the string of pearls they called it, in the Rio Grande Valley with the federal Wildlife Refuge system. And what Ben has been able to do is to go into the East Foundation properties that used to belong to my family 100 years ago and really spend time there and get to know the habitat and and he’s an excellent naturalist as well as a photographer.

Cina Forgason [00:13:04] And he, he got the goods. He really did a fantastic job in bringing awareness of that cat to South Texans and to all of Texas because we grew up knowing about ocelots, but we didn’t know that everybody in Texas didn’t know what they were. So it’s incredible what he’s done, and I hope it continues.

Cina Forgason [00:13:28] And, you know, the hope is that ocelots will be able to thrive on a public/private partnership of brush lands that aren’t cleared for agriculture because a lot of the area that ocelots like is very rich farmland. That’s why it grows such rich and dense brush species where it’s comfortable.

Cina Forgason [00:13:52] And so awareness of that.

Cina Forgason [00:13:55] There’s a man, Frank Yturria, who is a neighbor of ours, and he really devoted a lot of his time and energy to the ocelot. And I just hope it continues to spread through the area.

Lee Smith [00:14:09] What other things in South Texas has TNC been involved in?

Cina Forgason [00:14:13] Well, we helped add to the National Wildlife Refuge at Laguna Atascosa, which is on the mainland, and we added the north end of South Padre Island, which was under threat of development for many, many years.

Cina Forgason [00:14:31] Luckily, hurricanes both here and in Florida would discourage the development until we got the chance to to purchase it and then transfer it to the federal government.

Cina Forgason [00:14:43] Many people don’t like that it got transferred to the federal government. But as far as enforcement of game laws and trespass laws and everything like that, they really are the people who who can do that kind of work. And it wasn’t up to us to be policing a preserve like that.

Cina Forgason [00:15:03] So they can they can preserve it, reduce the number of vehicles driving, fires being set, all kinds of things that people get up to when they’re out recreating. And so I’m very proud of that.

Cina Forgason [00:15:17] We’ve we’ve been able to protect a large part of Padre Island, which is, I think, the longest barrier island in the US. And most people out of state don’t even know about it. And some people within the state aren’t aware of how unique it is and how well protected it is in many areas.

Lee Smith [00:15:36] So how does that speak to, because we talked about a couple of different preserves, to TNC trying to find the right partner for a particular place?

Cina Forgason [00:15:49] Well, it was very important because TNC had a national board meeting in San Antonio and we were able to show that project to those national board members who were interested in the project. We could go down there, show them the importance.

Cina Forgason [00:16:07] It was in the fall, so I think there was quite a bit of migration going on through that region, which happens every year. Little known migration. It’s not as famous as the Serengeti, but well, peregrine falcons, songbirds, sharks, butterflies all use Padre Island to migrate north to south and south to north every year, every season, spring and fall.

Cina Forgason [00:16:34] And that’s why it was such a critical thing to protect, among other reasons. But that was one of the driving ones that a lot of endangered species used it and still use it today.

Cina Forgason [00:16:46] Animals and nature doesn’t recognize borders. We were working on preserving not just avian populations, but also marine populations. And I don’t know what you call oysters and everything else, but it’s an all-encompassing environment and it’s on both sides of the border and it’s very similar.

Cina Forgason [00:17:10] And there was a dredging project that was being floated around by both the US and Mexican sides to put up an extension of the Intercoastal down to Tampico. And luckily our our Board of Governors chair at the time was Jim…

Cina Forgason [00:17:35] The tower in Houston?

Jeff Weigel [00:17:37] He was from where?

Lee Smith [00:17:39] Tulsa.

Jeff Weigel [00:17:42] Williams.

Cina Forgason [00:17:42] Jim Williams.

Jeff Weigel [00:17:44] Not Jim. Joe.

Cina Forgason [00:17:45] Joe Williams.

Cina Forgason [00:17:46] Joe Williams. Okay.

Cina Forgason [00:17:48] Our chair at the time was Joe Williams, and he’s from Tulsa, but had a lot of business in Texas and also knew the areas of South Carolina that have been preserved very well. And Jim had spent time in the Mexican side of the Laguna Madre fishing back in the ’60s, I think, and knew what a what an incredible place it was and environment.

Cina Forgason [00:18:19] So we started working with our counterparts in Mexico, and they were all aligned with the government generally, which was a good thing to be able to, to bring attention to the dredging project, because that was also our government cooperating with the Mexican government.

Cina Forgason [00:18:42] But then it drove on the idea of allying ourselves with a TNC-like structure in Mexico. And so they, there’s a group called Pronatura, which is “for nature”, and they have regional, they had …

Cina Forgason [00:19:00] Do they still have them, Jeff?

Jeff Weigel [00:19:03] Yes.

Cina Forgason [00:19:03] They have regional offices? Yeah.

Jeff Weigel [00:19:06] We worked with down in Monterrey.

Cina Forgason [00:19:07] Yeah.

Cina Forgason [00:19:08] Yeah. They have regional offices throughout Mexico. You know, there’s Baja California Sur. There’s Pronatura Noreste, which is Coahuila and Nuevo Leon and headquartered in Monterrey. And they provided a lot of the science for us.

Cina Forgason [00:19:30] So I’ll go to where that awareness of the duality of the Laguna Madre, for lack of a better word, was also important in driving us to really codify the science that had been done to date on the Laguna Madre, on both the Texas and the Mexican side.

Cina Forgason [00:19:52] And Wes Tunnel and Frank Judd, who was at UT in South Padre. And we’d visit him whenever we were down there. He always, he had a lab down at the very south end, and he’s the one who told us about the migrating hammerheads when we came across those one day.

Cina Forgason [00:20:13] And and then colleagues in Mexico on the Mexican side, people from Monterrey Tech. Lots of people got involved in creating sort of a compendium of research done to date on the Laguna Madre. And that has been a real Bible for all kinds of people working in conservation in that region ever since.

Cina Forgason [00:20:34] It’s being updated. And Wes Tunnel’s son is doing the update. Wes did a lot of it, but unfortunately, we lost him to cancer.

Cina Forgason [00:20:43] And so I just wanted to say that one of the great things about working with TNC was getting to meet these eminent scientists that that really have made a difference for our our conservation in this state.

Lee Smith [00:20:58] Why is it important to have that basis in science?

Cina Forgason [00:21:04] Well, I would say it’s been peer-reviewed, that people have spent the time and used their acute powers of observation and powers of writing, recording, filming for hours and hours and hours. And this kind of gathering of data in a scientific manner is extremely important to achieve long-term goals when you are working in nature.

Cina Forgason [00:21:35] And very few people want to do that kind of work. But luckily we’ve had some excellent research done in Texas for years and years and years, a long tradition of it.

Cina Forgason [00:21:48] One of the great outcomes of working on the Laguna Madre with our partners in Mexico was achieving conservation of the southern part of the Laguna Madre, the Mexican side. The government declared it as a protected natural area of about 500,000 acres.

Cina Forgason [00:22:10] It is not funded like our park system on the same side of the border. But it’s it’s a decree that that is on the record and that we hope will serve a purpose in the long run.

Lee Smith [00:22:27] Cuatro cienegas: what is that?

Cina Forgason [00:22:30] Cuatro Cienegas is a cienega. It’s a it’s a it’s a wetland which is right next to a mountain, which is I don’t know why it’s there. It’s a geological phenomenon. Subirrigated.

Jeff Weigel [00:22:46] Edwards aquifer, basically, except it comes more to the surface.

Cina Forgason [00:22:50] Okay. Okay. So Quattro Cienegas is a very unique oasis in the middle of a desert in Coahuila. And as you might expect, it has some very unique species in it because it has been unconnected from other bodies of water for I don’t even know how long, but longer than I can think of.

Cina Forgason [00:23:11] And one of our science staff members, Jeff Weigel, went to Mexico, became fluent in Spanish, got to know the biologist community down there, and helped to effect an important change in attitude towards Cuatro Cienegas, to view it as a wonderful natural resource to be preserved, not merely to be drained.

Cina Forgason [00:23:41] So, it really was an important change in mentality for Mexico to learn about ecotourism and to develop it. And as I understand it, Cuatro Cienegas is an is an important location in that region of Mexico for people to go and vacation and learn about water systems, aquifers and the unique things that can be happening in the middle of a desert.

Lee Smith [00:24:15] So why is it important for TNC to work with partners in Mexico? You’ve kind of covered it before, but I want to hear it again.

Cina Forgason [00:24:22] Okay. Well, one of the most important things, of course, is people. So you really need to get to know people and get working relationships and and respectful relationships.

Cina Forgason [00:24:37] And one of the great things I think we did was we invited members of the Pronatura board to serve on our board for Texas, and they invited some of our board members to be board members down there. And that was a wonderful program.

Cina Forgason [00:24:56] It’s been a bit interrupted by things that are going along on the border right now. But, you know, I think those kind of efforts will lead the way forward no matter what is going on politically, if people are still joined at the heart of nature.

Lee Smith [00:25:17] And it may make those other situations easier to deal with. But but there’s, there’s already a dialog on other things, so it’s…

Cina Forgason [00:25:30] Yeah, there’s, it’s like sports or art, you know, I mean nature is like you can’t take sides. It’s just either either you really understand it and want to understand more or you don’t. You know, and I’m sorry for those who don’t because it’s clearly because they haven’t had an opportunity to. That’s what I think. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know.

Lee Smith [00:25:55] No, I think you’re right. I think that’s why environmental education is such a part of many sites.

Cina Forgason [00:26:01] Yeah. Yeah.

Cina Forgason [00:26:03] And getting people out to the sites. It’s very different than reading about it in a classroom or in a book. I mean, as I said, if you asked me if I had teachers who inspired me in it, and not not especially because I was already inspired by being able to spend time outdoors and just messing around with my dog or my pony or whatever, and and just accepting it and being part of it. Not focusing on it in a book.

Lee Smith [00:26:34] So why was it important for TNC to develop partnerships with ranchers?

Cina Forgason [00:26:42] Well, ranchers are in charge of a lot of the land in this state, and I hope they always will be. And they needed to understand TNC and TNC needed to understand them better, too.

Cina Forgason [00:26:58] And as we’ve gone through and demonstrated our capacity for work, for honesty, integrity and respect, we’ve managed to forge some very good relationships with the ranching community.

Cina Forgason [00:27:15] I’m going to mention one example, which is Sonia Najera, who is originally from Kingsville, and she got to know Frank Yturria, who was very involved in ocelot conservation. And they each learned from each other about what the ocelots need, what the rancher needs, and were able to design an important program, the first of its kind in the US for conservation of ocelots on private land. And that’s that’s only through a unique relationship that that was established between TNC and a local rancher.

Cina Forgason [00:27:58] I’d say we also did it with a partner in Mexico, Jorge Martinez, who had a beautiful ranch going out into the Lower Laguna on the Mexican side. And for many years, Jorge was working with Ducks Unlimited and other. We got him federal money for doing all kinds of conservation on the Mexican side in the Laguna and on the on the he had a beautiful peninsula. I think since the the drug trafficking he doesn’t have much access to it anymore. But at that time, it was the early ’90s, he was he was very active with managing his ranch and his property there.

Cina Forgason [00:28:42] So, it’s it’s just a matter of getting to know people, sharing ideas. And if if you’ve got interest and and respect, you can move forward on doing some pretty unique things.

Lee Smith [00:28:55] I’m going to go a little off topic here, because the first job, first shoot I ever went on, when I got on at Parks and Wildlife was catching peregrines and taking blood samples on Padre Island.

Cina Forgason [00:29:10] Now I have done that.

Lee Smith [00:29:12] Yeah. Yeah. I got to ask you about the Peregrine Fund.

Cina Forgason [00:29:14] Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:29:15] Tell me about the Peregrine Fund and your involvement.

Cina Forgason [00:29:18] I’ve been on their board for. I don’t even know how long. A long time. Pete Jenny, who used to be on staff and then was the president for many years, and I grew up together in Pennsylvania. And, in fact, Pete and his family would come down to Texas in the summer because we’d go back and they’d want to know what we were doing down there all that time. We’d say, we’re working cattle, you know. So they came down. And so ever since then, Pete’s been coming down, we’ve been going up there.

Cina Forgason [00:29:51] And then Pete got involved with the Peregrine Fund because he was a falconer. And and invited me and several of my family members, invited Ed Harte, who owned the Corpus paper, all kinds of folks to come down and trap peregrines in the fall on the fall migration.

Cina Forgason [00:30:11] And it’s a great way to really bring home the fact that we are in a global conservation effort because these peregrine falcons are born in Greenland and we are one stop on their way south to Mexico and regions south of there.

Cina Forgason [00:30:30] And so, it’s really exciting to hold a bird that has never seen a man or if they have, it’s been very briefly from a very high altitude. And so that’s always an exciting time. And that whole time of October in Padre is just extraordinary.

Lee Smith [00:30:51] And, you know, I grew up in Houston. We’d go to the beach in the summertime, the springtime, but not much in the winter. And and it was it was so strange to be down there, you know, during during October and to see birds of prey on.

Cina Forgason [00:31:09] Standing on the beach and on the flats on the other side. Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:31:14] It it blew me away.

Cina Forgason [00:31:16] Yeah. It’s, it’s it’s something. I mean, and then if you were a duck hunter, you would have been out there in the winter. But in any case, birds use that Laguna like nobody’s business. And so do the fish. It’s such an important – it’s so well named by the Spanish who first named it “Laguna Madre, The Mother Lagoon”. It’s where all life begins in that part of the world.

Lee Smith [00:31:46] And what’s so fascinating about peregrines?

Cina Forgason [00:31:51] Wow. Everything. I mean, they’re beautiful. They’re fast. They’re global. They’re just, they inspire. I mean, they’ve been idolized since before time, almost. You know, I mean, they were so important to the Egyptians and Assyrians, and it’s all over the world that the falcon is revered as a very, extremely powerful force and important. And demands respect. You know, no one messes with a peregrine.

Lee Smith [00:32:28] Have you ever seen one hit a bird in mid-air?

Cina Forgason [00:32:32] Oh, yes. Oh, yeah.

Cina Forgason [00:32:32] What’s that like?

Cina Forgason [00:32:34] Very exciting. Thrilling. I was just dove hunting last weekend with friends and and they have bat houses around the area where we were. And at the end of the day, after sunset, out come the bats. And here comes a merlin. Boom. It gets a bat right out of that. He hit that bat, that bat had that just started flying and was a little slow on the wake-up, I guess. But yeah, it’s exciting.

Lee Smith [00:33:03] Now. I’ve seen it with a falconer.

Cina Forgason [00:33:07] Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:33:08] You know, just in the wild.

Cina Forgason [00:33:11] Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:33:11] It was just this poof of feathers.

Cina Forgason [00:33:15] Yes. It’s. It’s. It’s a lot.

Lee Smith [00:33:19] Well, you got to be a master falconer. You can’t just be a…

Cina Forgason [00:33:23] Oh no.

Lee Smith [00:33:25] It’s. There’s all sorts. And since they’re an endangered species.

Cina Forgason [00:33:28] Oh, there’s a lot of rules and regs. And not anybody can go out to the beach and catch catch birds with their falcons. And. And there’s good reason for that.

Cina Forgason [00:33:41] But, you know, falconry is a great way, it’s kind of like ranching birds almost. You know, they’re, it’s a great way to connect both the domestic and human element and the wild, savage elements that are nature. And it’s it’s extraordinary.

Cina Forgason [00:34:00] We had the opportunity to go to Abu Dhabi and see all their facilities there. Now, one of our former scientists from Peregrine Fund is running the Endangered Species and Raptor programs for the government of Abu Dhabi. And they do work also all over the world because of the tradition of falconry in the Middle East.

Lee Smith [00:34:26] And so how how are the falcons doing? I mean.

Cina Forgason [00:34:30] Not great. I mean, they’re doing a heck of a lot better than they were during the DDT years. But, you know, one of the disturbing things is that it is very popular in the Middle East, which is good. And then the other side of that is it’s bad because it’s encouraging money to get into the sport and people catching, capturing wild birds and trading in them.

Cina Forgason [00:34:56] And it’s it’s you know, here in this country, it’s very regulated, but not so much over there, or it may be regulated, but it’s not enforced.

Cina Forgason [00:35:08] You know, that’s one of the things that I’ve learned with both TNC and working with people at Fish and Wildlife and stuff, is that being able to enforce, and Parks and Wildlife, being able to enforce the rules and have those understood by enough of the population to where they support the rules is an equally important part of conservation.

Lee Smith [00:35:31] Well, the alligators. Yeah. You know.

Cina Forgason [00:35:34] Not sure I love them so much. They’re kind of like the grizzly. I don’t mind hiking without a grizzly coming after me. I really don’t. And I don’t mind kayaking without thinking about, you know, how I could be eaten in any second if I tip over or something.

Cina Forgason [00:35:51] Well, and they were an important part of preserving South Padre. Because the Peregrine Fund has respect as a scientific organization. They work a lot with private landowners. They have not messed up anything, and their researchers are serious, as are most researchers. You don’t go into science to goof off a lot. And so their their track record and working with Fish and Wildlife Service. Steve Thompson, who ran the Laguna Atascosa at the time, was really important in helping us move forward with the government, with other landowners.

Cina Forgason [00:36:37] We did a whole program called actually, this was through another group where we we got a thing called the Safe Harbor. And so that’s a really important reason why a lot of research was able to be done on private ranches in Texas, both here in South Texas and in west Texas, was the Safe Harbor agreements that that promised landowners that no adverse consequences would come from cooperating with with scientists who were working on raptor biology.

Cina Forgason [00:37:19] And that was a lot of it, Steve Thompson had a lot to do with that. He was a very important person in the Fish and Wildlife Service or became so. I mean, he always was in my view. But he was the refuge manager at Laguna Atascosa, and then he became almost the head of the whole department.

Lee Smith [00:37:38] So do you have any advice for young people coming up in the field of conservation?

Cina Forgason [00:37:46] Yeah, I sure do. Get out in the field. Go with people who are older than you that can teach you what they know. Go on your own. Get bitten. Whatever. Just experience it, you know, in a sensible way.

Cina Forgason [00:38:02] I think it also teaches you to be smart about how you manage yourself. Just like a horse or a cow. They’re not doing silly things that they’re going to get hurt doing.

Cina Forgason [00:38:12] I think a lot of our culture has problems understanding boundaries and limits because they don’t understand natural limits. You do not go running all day long in the South Texas heat, you know. You can’t do it. There’s reasons for that. And then it’s you know, eventually that gets into thick skulls as small boys.

Cina Forgason [00:38:38] But also, there’s so many opportunities to integrate interest in conservation and nature with all sorts of careers nowadays. Most companies need someone who’s working on environmental issues for them, both in the press, politics, government affairs. You know, now shareholder relations – that’s become very important. So in the business sector and in the traditional academic sectors, in the wildlife agency sectors, there’s tons of opportunities for having a unique, a unique career having to do with conservation and wildlife.

Lee Smith [00:39:24] What is your outlook for conservation?

Cina Forgason [00:39:30] I am optimistic on some levels and pessimistic on others. I’ve always been a strong believer that conservation is much better than restoration. Conservation is how it’s supposed to be. Restoration is how you try to get back to that. And I’m concerned about losing big areas that are important that cannot be restored. I mean, it’s just too, it’s too expensive, both economically and environmentally, to restore some of these areas.

Cina Forgason [00:40:10] And I’m also, you know, one has to look at the climate change issue because, as Larry said, Gilbert, some of the main threats are exotic species, invasive species. But we didn’t think about, you know, the ocean as being a threat to our wetlands and regions, which previously did not have those kind of issues. Same as it’s going on, you know, the changes in the Arctic and the Antarctic. It’s anybody who’s been on any of those tours in those parts of the world know that this is a real issue and it’s going to take everybody working together. It can’t be done piecemeal.

Cina Forgason [00:41:00] And I think that’s one of the great things about working with TNC, is I got introduced to the global view of conservation and the ability to do it. And it was very exciting. You can do big projects with big groups. And it’s a small group usually driving it, but they have the reach and the connections politically, scientifically, through the business communities, where you can connect with people in different continents and worlds and really work together on certain things. And I think that’s what it’s going to take to to save what’s left.

Lee Smith [00:41:45] So TNC is closing in on this million acre under protection. But a million acres in Texas is a slim part of the pie.

Cina Forgason [00:42:05] Yes.

Lee Smith [00:42:05] So how important is, even though it’s it’s this great milestone and everything. Are they done? Is their work over?

Cina Forgason [00:42:13] No. No, no. It’s a great milestone. It’s good to know how you got to where you are by examining where you came from. And what is important to me is not just the protection of the land, but recording how that got done and sharing those stories so that people in other situations that may have some similarities can draw from that and learn how to do conservation in their own regions using those tools.

Cina Forgason [00:42:46] And to me, that’s the most important thing about documenting this millionth acre campaign is that it demonstrates a lot of moving parts coming together for a common goal, and that’s how we’re going to have to do it as we get bigger, as the problems get bigger. Even if the problem’s small, you got to do that. So. I think that’s that’s the most important thing, is trying to take lessons learned and help others apply them and in ways that help them.

Jeff Weigel [00:43:23] That was fantastic.

Lee Smith [00:43:25] Is there anything we didn’t cover that you wanted to talk about?

Cina Forgason [00:43:29] There is. I wanted to mention a man who. But, he is not TNC.

Lee Smith [00:43:35] That’s okay.

Cina Forgason [00:43:35] Okay. Okay. I wanted to mention also a great mentor of mine who was neither a teacher nor a parent nor a… but he was a great, great friend and a great mentor and taught me a lot about conservation. He was an artist and a conservationist named Frolic Weymouth, who was from Pennsylvania, in the area where the Wyeth family paints and lives. And he had devoted his life to preserving the nature and art of that area. And he started at a young age, and he did it privately through setting up 501C3s. He built a museum. He built a conservancy.

Lee Smith [00:44:18] Let me give you that again. You grabbed the mic.

Cina Forgason [00:44:21] Sorry.

Lee Smith [00:44:21] Straighten your. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So. So how is he able to do that? Through what?

Cina Forgason [00:44:29] Frolic worked by through his art, through his charm and through his smarts. And he set up nonprofits. He built a museum. And he also built a conservation organization called Brandywine Conservancy.

Cina Forgason [00:44:46] And it was from him I learned how to work in the private sector protecting land. And that was when I was a teenager. And then they did a big project on a former King Ranch property in Pennsylvania. And that was going to be sold to whoever the highest bidder was. It was a unique area in Pennsylvania where two creeks came together and fed into the Brandywine.

Cina Forgason [00:45:18] And we, I helped form our model for West Texas from Frolic’s teachings, which was take us the central core area, the most important area that needs protection. And you set that aside as a preserve and you take people who are interested in that and give them the opportunity to buy property alongside that preserve and and it will work.

Cina Forgason [00:45:50] And he did it in Pennsylvania. It is, it it continues to attract people to the area who want to live in that kind of community aside nature. And and using conservation principles and things. And for people who enjoy seeing, going out on a walk and seeing birds of all kinds and deer and everything else. And they also do a lot of fox hunting through there, which doesn’t seem to mess up anything.

Cina Forgason [00:46:20] So he really was a great teacher. And they’ve preserved now, I think, 50,000 acres in southeastern Pennsylvania, which is like a million in Texas, just about.

Lee Smith [00:46:33] Yeah. You don’t think of that.

Cina Forgason [00:46:36] No. And they’re working with the Amish too. So that’s another example of working with, you know, the locals that most people don’t get to work with.

Cina Forgason [00:46:50] So they’re doing things to help the Amish understand the whole Chesapeake Bay system, which is what what all that is doing. The goal is water. Frolic’s deal was always water protection. And what’s happened in the Chesapeake is too many fertilizers and nutrients running into the Chesapeake.

Cina Forgason [00:47:15] I never understood how a nutrient could hurt something because, you know, growing up in a cattle family, you think, well, that’s good. More nutrients is better, but not necessarily for the Chesapeake. And we’re seeing it also in these algal blooms in Cape Cod and areas where – Lake Austin – people never saw them before.

Cina Forgason [00:47:35] Well, and one thing that drove me to be interested in the Laguna Madre was knowing about the Chesapeake and knowing the problems they were having from regions that were, you know, 100 miles away from the Chesapeake and how that area had been one of the great wildlife areas of the world, you know, when the market hunting was still going on.

Cina Forgason [00:47:57] You know, they they could you could live out there like an Indian and even better if you had a gun. And fishing and crabs and oysters and you name it, it was there. Not so much nowadays. And that’s another example of the conservation versus restoration. I mean, restoration is hugely expensive compared to conservation.