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

Interviewee: David Bezanson
Date: June 8, 2022
Site: San Antonio, Texas
Reels: 3730-3732
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: Bezanson_David_NCItem3_SanAntonioTX_20220608_Reel3730-3732_Audio.mp3

[Numbers refer to transcript time codes]

Lee Smith [00:00:15] So where did you grow up?

David Bezanson [00:00:17] East Texas.

Lee Smith [00:00:19] Where in East Texas? And what was it like out there?

David Bezanson [00:00:23] Yeah. So and that’s kind of my my origin story actually does intersect with TNC. My grandparents met because my grandfather was the vice president of Monsanto, a vice president of Monsanto. He came to Texas to oversee the ordnance plant at Caddo Lake, which was a gift from LBJ to Lady Bird’s parents. They bought that and made it an Army depot, and it’s now a national wildlife refuge. So, you know, he came down to run that. But, my grandmother, my grandmother’s from Marshall, so my dad grew up in Marshall, Texas.

Lee Smith [00:01:01] So where where did you go to college? Would you make friends with all that kind of stuff? I mean, I don’t know anything about you.

David Bezanson [00:01:08] Yeah. Well, I grew up in East Texas, like I said. And, you know, that’s kind of where this story starts for me because when we were when I was about 11 or 12, we got to meet Ned Fritz. Ned Fritz was the founder of the Texas chapter of the Nature Conservancy. And this was a little bit later. He was very involved in a number of advocacy battles, particularly the fight to establish wilderness areas in East Texas, in the national forest.

David Bezanson [00:01:43] And the he he came over, he was at that time he was a trial lawyer, did a lot of work in consumer protection law, you know, very important, influential in that regard and kind of in his spare time on the on his kitchen table established most of the conservation groups in northeast Texas, including, as I said, the Texas chapter.

David Bezanson [00:02:08] And he was very involved in trying to get the national forest wildernesses wilderness areas established. He came over to East Texas and recruited volunteers to kind of help locally with the advocacy there. And we were in living in Nacogdoches at the time, Nacagdoches, at the time. And my mom wasn’t working. She was housewife.

David Bezanson [00:02:36] And we thought this was, you know, it sounded interesting and we got involved. So the fact that we were in East Texas, you know, when you’re in East Texas, you’re even when you live in town, you’re surrounded by the trees, you’re surrounded by the surrounded by nature. And so and we did have a place in the country as well. And so you kind of that’s where I think, I think that everybody who loves nature and the outdoors and wildlife, they they’re called to do it or called to to have that.

David Bezanson [00:03:08] But, you know, clearly your surroundings play a part. And growing up there was was the gateway for me.

David Bezanson [00:03:15] But then meeting him and getting involved in that effort was kind of our our first exposure to conservation.

Lee Smith [00:03:23] Cast your mind back to that childhood. Is there a particular place or memory or experience from your childhood that you can really remember with some kind of clarity and that it had a that you connected with nature?

David Bezanson [00:03:42] Yeah. Well, you know, like I said, it’s all around you. And when we had land and we lived, we lived, we had some woods behind our house that belonged to a private landowner, but he didn’t care if kids ran around. So, you know, we spent half the day out there in the weekends.

David Bezanson [00:04:00] But then the and Ned Fritz had a an annual outdoor event, which they would their his organization would sponsor, later, my mom’s organization, would sponsor. And it was an opportunity to get people out to see the National Forest because you don’t you don’t love what you don’t know about. And there was not as much public use and recreation at that time probably as now, just because of the way things were. This was late ’70s, early ’80s.

David Bezanson [00:04:37] And so he would have that outdoor event every year in the spring in the National Forest campground. And he would, it was a big deal. A lot of people would show up, everybody from bass fishermen to to tree huggers. And it was a lot of fun. And they would do a lot of crazy stuff. You know, it was a great time.

David Bezanson [00:04:55] And had a lot of kind of culturally significant people were there, like John Henry Faulk was the first spokesmaster, whatever, master of ceremonies, at the first one that I went to. Sissy Farenthold was the guest speaker or something like that. So it was, you know, very much an old Texas liberal thing, but it was it was bipartisan too, and just people who cared about the outdoors.

David Bezanson [00:05:18] And I remember just going and thinking, “Wow, there’s a lot of people here that care about stuff we care about.”

David Bezanson [00:05:25] And and and when I was maybe at the second one of those when I was 12, I want to say 12, Ned grabbed me and said, “You know, I have to be with this congressman for a minute, so maybe you could lead all these people on a nature hike.” And I was 12 and I was just, you know, standing around like people, 12 year olds do.

David Bezanson [00:05:47] And could he have found somebody better to do that nature hike? Yes. But did he see the vision or did he see the purpose of pushing me into that role and trying to inspire me that way? Yes. And and 40 years down the road, I’m still at it. So he was he was right.

David Bezanson [00:06:07] Ned Fritz had an incredible gift for recruiting people, whether they were like-minded people or not, just people from all all walks of life. He, if they cared about the outdoors and wildlife, he found a way to recruit them and use them to further advocacy of conservation.

David Bezanson [00:06:32] And he always said it was bipartisan and completely apolitical. And at the time I was like, “I don’t know.” But I now see that he was right. You know, it resonates with everybody.

David Bezanson [00:06:45] And he like I said, he had just a great ability to recruit people and bring them in to all of the organizations that he that he founded.

David Bezanson [00:06:55] And I would assume the Texas chapter was founded the same way, by by Ned and individuals that he brought in that cared and were willing to devote their volunteer hours to it, because at that time, it was an all-volunteer organization.

Lee Smith [00:07:10] So you’ve mentioned Ned several times as a mentor. What about your mom?

David Bezanson [00:07:18] Well, Ned, of course, also brought my mom into conservation. And she, I think our first exposure, like I mentioned, was was going to the outdoor events and, and, and, and meeting some of the people that would be very important to to her in the decades to come.

David Bezanson [00:07:42] But yeah, she started initially as a volunteer, just, I think, part-time stuffing envelopes while I was at school. And that would have been maybe 1982. The the Wilderness Act was established in ’84. And as she will tell you, by that time, two years later, she had gone to being from being someone who probably never was on camera except for maybe a high school play to getting on the camera, on the radio all the time to talk about that issue and other issues.

David Bezanson [00:08:14] And obviously, she was a natural. Sometimes people, the best leaders, are the ones who are kind of pushed into it and find that it’s comfortable and that they’re able to do it. And she eventually became, she went to work for Ned’s organization. It’s now Texas Conservation Alliance, a couple of years after that, and was flying to Washington to testify, you know, in support of environmental bills. And it just went from there.

David Bezanson [00:08:45] And that didn’t really involve me except for just kind of the outdoor stuff, but it was always there. And obviously I was I supported where I could help where I could. And and, you know, I mean, how much good is a teenager?

David Bezanson [00:08:59] But but then after I had been, after I got out of college, my first job out of college was with the General Land Office. And I did that for a few years. And then there was an opportunity to be the director of one of the other organizations that Ned had created.

David Bezanson [00:09:18] And Ned, so Ned’s, Ned’s tenure with the Nature Conservancy, with the Texas chapter lasted, I think about ten years, maybe something like that. And I don’t, that was in the ’70s, and obviously I was I was a kid. I don’t I don’t know a lot about that time. We, like I said, we were all-volunteer at that time. The Texas chapter’s first employee was hired during that time, but Ned was board chair and so he was a volunteer and he worked mainly on just trying to acquire some of our first preserves and did that. And the national organization also was involved even earlier.

David Bezanson [00:10:01] I’m kind of telling us, I’m not telling this very linearly, but the the the first land acquisition projects for the Texas chapter were initiated out of the, by the national organization. Our first very first land project, and one of the best things we ever did was the creation of the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge which is a several thousand acre coastal prairie. It’s the only viable wild population of the Attwater’s prairie chicken. And it’s a it’s a really great conservation achievement. And so those kinds of projects were handled by the national organization.

David Bezanson [00:10:41] The relationship between the Texas chapter and the national organization kind of evolved, I think, during that time.

David Bezanson [00:10:46] And Ned was very active, as I mentioned, in terms of acquisitions of preserves and particularly donations. Ned was very tireless and persistent. Whenever anyone would visit with him and say, “You know, I’ve got some land, I don’t know what to do with it. You know, my kids don’t want it.” You know, Ned would start in on them, about maybe you could conserve it.

David Bezanson [00:11:11] And so there was about ten years of that and we actually acquired some very significant properties during that time and some of which we still have in fee simple.

David Bezanson [00:11:22] But Ned wanted to do more of that. And the Nature Conservancy at some point wanted to do less because our model was shifting toward larger-scale projects, public funding and [that didn’t sound good] and and the kind of the kind of projects that the Nature Conservancy does nationally and globally.

David Bezanson [00:11:48] And so Ned saw a niche for a land trust organization that would hold smaller properties that didn’t meet the tests of the Texas chapter going forward. And that was he formed the, not the first land trust, but one of the first NGOs that serves that purpose in Texas. And they don’t go back a lot farther because the conservation easement statute became law in Texas about that time. And and part of his focus was acquisition of conservation easements, too.

David Bezanson [00:12:21] So he he formed an organization called at that time NAPA, Natural Area Preservation Association. That was another kitchen table project of Ned’s and started shepherding acquisitions of properties, a lot of donations into that organization and became less active with TNC because that was what he was doing more of and along with a lot of other things, Dallas Audubon and still litigation.

David Bezanson [00:12:52] He filed the first lawsuit on behalf of the golden-cheeked warbler, under the Endangered Species Act in Texas a long time ago. And he was involved in several lawsuits regarding national forests, national forest policy. So he had a lot going on.

David Bezanson [00:13:10] So he pulled back from TNC at that point, and that was kind of dovetailed with TNC becoming a formal organization with more staff and a state director. Our first state director was hired in 1970, I want to say 8, 9.

Jeff Weigel [00:13:27] I’m not sure, David. It might have been ’80, ’81. But say his name.

Jeff Weigel [00:13:32] Scott. Yeah. Scott Spawn. Spann. Yeah.

David Bezanson [00:13:36] I’ve never known him. I’ve just corresponded with him.

David Bezanson [00:13:38] Anyway, so. So, you know, Ned had other projects and moved on from TNC at that point. But at that same time, TNC was becoming a more professional organization. And so it was a natural progression.

David Bezanson [00:13:50] And some of the most important projects that, in my opinion, TNC ever did in Texas were during those years, the McFaddin Marsh, 50,000-acre Wildlife Refuge on the coast, Gulf Coast, the Rosillos Mountains, a large addition to Big Bend National Park. These were visionary projects that that could only really have been done by the national organization with the muscle that it had. And and a lot of that was done with public funding. So that was kind of part of the evolution of the of the Nature Conservancy at that point.

Lee Smith [00:14:28] Was there anything in any books or magazines that you read when you were growing up that kind of maybe influenced you?

David Bezanson [00:14:37] Yeah. Well, I always remember my my mom’s parents – they lived in Brownwood, Texas, right in the dead center of the state. And going there was always kind of a great kind of get-away from East Texas because those are different parts of the world. And yeah, they just they had a little house on a little quiet street and my granddad had a coffee table and he would go out at five in the morning and meet his buddies at the Dairy Maid and come back with some candy that he picked up at the store and had a little candy jar on the coffee table and sitting under the coffee, under the candy jar on the coffee table, was the Nature Conservancy magazine.

David Bezanson [00:15:16] And I don’t know how they came to take it, but they always had a new issue, and I always liked looking at it. Back then, the Nature Conservancy magazine was very different than it is now. It was very focused just on the land purchases. And so to me, just looking at the pictures, the Nature Conservancy was this organization that just bought land. And they would talk about the great land that they bought every month and why they bought it.

David Bezanson [00:15:40] And I was like, “Well, that’s that sounds great, you know?” And that was that was when I was a kid. And there was a long interlude when I didn’t think about the Nature Conservancy. But yeah, it was that was my first exposure.

Lee Smith [00:15:57] So, what was your first involvement in conservation work? I mean, it was maybe you can pick one. I mean, there’s so many different ones. Well, I mean, being 12 and leading the tours. Leading.

David Bezanson [00:16:11] Yeah. Being 12 years old and, yeah. Being thrust into positions which, you know, 12 year, it was not appropriate for a 12 year old. Yeah. I mean, you know, leading people around the woods.

David Bezanson [00:16:20] And I remember there was once a little later on we were having one of the outdoor events and Ned was leading a hike one way and I was leading a hike the other way. And we met in the middle, out in the middle of nowhere, and we knew where we were, but it was just kind of a nice moment, you know?

David Bezanson [00:16:37] But then, like I said, after I’ve been out of college a few years, I got involved with the land trust that Ned had started and it was still all-volunteer at that point. But they had acquired so many easements, mainly, that clearly there was a need for paid staff, somebody that wasn’t a volunteer to pay the bills. And that’s how most of the environmental organizations do start.

David Bezanson [00:17:01] So I got to be employee number one. I’d been on the board. So it was sort of a I said at the time I was sort of a Dick Cheney deal where, you know, you hire from within.

David Bezanson [00:17:11] But but it was it was it was a good job for me at that point. I was still young. And I’m sure if I’d had that opportunity a little later, I would have probably approached it differently. But because Ned was still very much a driving force in that organization, I basically just did his vision, which was acquiring more land. And so we just took a lot of land and a lot of easements. I did a lot of transactions. I probably did 40 or 50 acquisitions, counting easements, while I was there.

[00:17:44] And the land trust community was just really, was was growing in Texas at that point. Terry Hershey and Mickey Burleson, some other great leaders had had promoted the idea of land trusts and conservation easements, which at the time were not well known. And organizations like the one that I found myself working for were really small, but kind of at the ground floor, you know, ground level for going out, visiting with landowners, promoting the idea of conservation easements, private conservation at a time when conservation easements were still a pretty new thing.

David Bezanson [00:18:25] And so we all kind of learned by doing. And clearly it worked. Something worked because there’s now well more than a million acres of Texas that’s under conservation easement on private lands. And TNC, the Texas chapter, is responsible for about 400,000 acres of that. So it’s no longer a small thing. Texas is a big state, but it’s still, you know, that’s a that’s significant scale of conservation.

David Bezanson [00:18:53] And I was I did a job for about seven years. And I had the opportunity to to come to TNC and initially, initially my job was was programmatic, was management over our staff in East Texas and North Texas.

David Bezanson [00:19:09] But after doing that for a little while, it sort of became clear that we needed more people doing straight land transactional work. And we had lost some capacity in that area just from turnover, and people going hither and yon. And so I had the opportunity to start working solely on land protection, which is what we call land acquisition, at that point. And I’ve been doing that ever since.

Jeff Weigel [00:19:37] So what is the Edwards Aquifer Protection Program?

David Bezanson [00:19:41] Well, glad you asked. But I think you’ve already probably heard a lot about the Edwards Aquifer protection program. So the Edwards Aquifer protection program is unique in that it is certainly one of the largest efforts by a municipal or county entity to do private land conservation.

David Bezanson [00:20:03] So public funds, public dollars going into private landowners pockets for the into private land conservation for the for a public goal, in this case protection of the primary water supply of the City of San Antonio, which is the seventh largest city, I think in the country, San Antonio, and certainly the largest to have a water supply which is largely dependent on groundwater resources.

David Bezanson [00:20:32] So that is the basis for the very innovative approach that the Edwards Aquifer Protection program has taken, which is to secure development rights, conservation easements on private land, private ranchlands over that aquifer.

Lee Smith [00:20:50] How has it been achieved?

David Bezanson [00:20:52] Well, it’s achieved by by purchasing conservation easements. And the the great thing that, I guess the thing I would highlight about the Edwards Aquifer Protection Program is because it’s been approved by the voters four times. So it’s been around a while. They have, I guess, road-tested every aspect of the program from what the conservation easement terms look like, to how they negotiate with private landowners, to how to get the due diligence and meet the criteria of the program. And so it’s very smooth, it’s very mature.

David Bezanson [00:21:37] And it it’s very, for me, it was a good way. You know, I already had obviously conservation experience, transactional experience. But but it’s a very good thing to do for a while just because it’s great to see a program that works really well.

David Bezanson [00:21:51] And the Nature Conservancy and other organizations were were active in the advocacy in the initial creation of the program, including playing some roles in that regard that wouldn’t be necessarily appropriate for the City itself as the implementer of the program to to do.

[00:22:10] But we also have, the Nature Conservancy and another land trust, we have a specific role under the program, which is to kind of be the, do the legwork for the City. City has limited staff capacity, so they contract with us and we do the kind of work that we do the rest of the time, only we kind of are just doing our day jobs, but we’re doing it for the City program.

David Bezanson [00:22:36] We go out, we in some cases, first contact with landowners. In other cases, the landowners come to us. We talk about conservation of their land, and if the program is a good fit for them, then we tell them how it’s done. We obtain the necessary appraisals and title policy and survey and all the things that have to be done before you close a conservation easement. We do that on behalf of the City with the understanding that the City at the end will bring the funding and we’ll close.

David Bezanson [00:23:04] So we’ve been doing that for 15 years and it’s it’s good for us because it helps us meet one of our goals statewide, which is conservation of land over the Edwards Aquifer. If you look at biodiversity in Texas, the Edwards Aquifer is one of the major hotspots, and that’s because of the kind of the, again, the uniqueness of a large limestone aquifer.

David Bezanson [00:23:31] So our interest, the Nature Conservancy’s interests, I guess in theory is a little different from the city of San Antonio’s. But it dovetails because both entities want to keep the aquifer, the water quantity and quality, particularly the water quality of the aquifer, has to be at a very high level. And that benefits the city and it also benefits all of the other resources that are related or associated with the aquifer.

David Bezanson [00:23:57] You know, the conservation easement transactions that I’ve been involved with, no two were alike. No two landowners were anything alike. You know, it’s amazing how diverse people are in their in their motivations and for doing this kind of thing. And again, I mean, it’s a it’s a very personal thing. What, anything you do with your land is a very personal thing. And to give up significant control or I should say, I guess, rights on your on your land is it’s a it’s a very personal thing.

David Bezanson [00:24:32] And so the challenge of of all of these transactions is kind of, you know, coming in, doing this kind of thing, it requires, it really requires you to get in their shoes. I mean, you have to you have to look at it from the vantage point of a private landowner and to to I won’t say persuade them, but just to if it’s something that they want to do to help them think through how they should do it.

David Bezanson [00:25:06] When I worked for the Natural Areas Preservation Association, which, by the way, is now Texas Land Conservancy, and has grown a lot. That organization has about 120,000 acres under fee and easement. And, you know, I did a lot of that. A lot of that was in East Texas, forest properties, North Texas prairies and coastal, west Texas, everything, you name it. And so and what I’m doing now is statewide, we’re doing something in every corner of the state.

David Bezanson [00:25:35] So and you get, I would say, the same issues throughout. It’s it’s really about the the, I mean, I guess all the pressures that we’re seeing in Texas, the the growing population, the development pressures that we’re seeing everywhere. And you don’t can’t really escape that anywhere. Land fragmentation, rising land prices. And so, you know, there’s a lot of commonality. It’s, it’s, I guess.

Lee Smith [00:26:05] The, the in the Edwards Aquifer protection program. Can you just name some of the spots that are like, what, Government Canyon perhaps and some of these other ranches – Allandale.

David Bezanson [00:26:18] Annandale.

Lee Smith [00:26:20] Kind of give me some of the you know the top five properties.

David Bezanson [00:26:24] Yeah I can do that.

David Bezanson [00:26:25] We and again, you know, it’s the art and the science of it is using a program which has a very particular focus and mission, and also fulfilling that mission, but also bringing in these other resource values, which, you know, we’ve had a great time doing it and we’ve done a lot of that.

David Bezanson [00:26:45] For example, again, the groundwater under our feet is really what the program is all about. But if we can protect surface water, so much the better we have. We protected parts of the Annandale Ranch. In fact, I’ll strike the “parts of” because we’ve actually, the Nature Conservancy, holds easements on a lot of the Annandale Ranch. It wasn’t all funded with the Edwards program. But you know that that ranch is where the Frio River disappears into the ground. And, you know, the Frio River is beautiful. It’s, you know, it’s a great recreational resource. And then it goes on the ranch and disappears in the ground. It’s it’s pretty cool.

David Bezanson [00:27:24] The Nature Conservancy also worked with landowners on the Nueces River, the Friday Ranch and the the Frio Ranch, the Briscoe family. And so, you know, those are, that river is still pretty wild. Not as wild as the Devils. But it’s, you get out there there’s a lot of big ranches and a lot of big ownerships, not a lot of development. It’s not that different from how it used to be.

David Bezanson [00:27:48] And one landowner, I will mention. This is in the Edwards program, but one of my, I guess one of the most special things that I’ve gotten to do is, is I worked with a private landowner recently to to establish a conservation easement on a ranch on a spring-fed creek close to the Nueces, called Montel Creek, which is a place that not many people have ever gotten to see. But if you’ve ever been there, you don’t forget it. And I knew about it because my college roommate was, it was his family. And we would go out there and party and and, you know, in college and and I had a lot of good memories.

David Bezanson [00:28:26] And then again the interlude.

[00:28:28] And then he actually, my roommate actually, passed away unexpectedly. And I thought, “Well, I’ll never, you know, never have any more connection with that.” And then and then a few years after that, his stepfather just up and called me one day and said, “We’ve decided we want to do this thing called a conservation easement. Can you help me?”

David Bezanson [00:28:51] And he was, I think, thinking about the Edwards Aquifer Protection program funding, and it didn’t really work for that, but I was able to find some other funding to purchase the conservation easement. And two or three years later, you know, I was swimming that swimming hole again and it was protected with a conservation easement. So, you know, several times in my career, I’ve been able to kind of come full circle on on things like that.

David Bezanson [00:29:15] Another one would be in the Big Thicket. Of course, Ned Fritz was very instrumental in establishing the Big Thicket National Preserve in Southeast Texas and then subsequently TNC, we were able to acquire by donation one of our most unique preserves, the Sandyland Preserve in the Big Thicket.

David Bezanson [00:29:34] So, you know, a lot of conservation has gone has gone on the Big Thicket over the years, and and we’ve been involved in some of that.

David Bezanson [00:29:42] And but just recently there was a place where, in the Big Thicket, a public trail, which was on timber company land, it was very significant conservation property. And it was a place where I went when I was a kid because my, grandma was kind of, she like she was a day-tripper and she would, you know, drag me all over the place in East Texas in her giant Cadillacs. And she brought me down there to that trail.

David Bezanson [00:30:09] And then decades went by and that trail was closed and the private land was divested repeatedly by the timber companies that have divested most of East Texas two or three times now in recent years. And I had an opportunity to get a grant through Texas Parks and Wildlife and buy that property, reopen the trail, and it’s going to be conveyed to the Texas Forest Service, and it’s going to be a public trail again for the first time in years.

David Bezanson [00:30:42] So it’s another example of something that kind of I went back to after a long period. And you know, was able to make a difference.

Lee Smith [00:30:55] So what is the Texas Parks and Wildlife Farm and Ranch Land Protection Program?

David Bezanson [00:31:01] So the Texas Farm and Rangelands Conservation Program is the state conservation easement funding program, which is kind of the state counterpart of some federal programs that fund conservation easements, mostly through NRCS, through the Farm Bill.

David Bezanson [00:31:18] And conservation easements are for many years were largely a matter of donation and are still, I guess the majority of them are still donated. You can get a tax charitable deduction for doing so. And there that works for some people and obviously doesn’t work for everyone.

David Bezanson [00:31:40] So at some point it was recognized that some, given that the public gets good out of having this open space be conserved, even if you’re just driving down the road and and you can still enjoy it. It’s it’s it help our quality of life. It helps, it protects, it conserves our wildlife. It keeps land in production. There’s many benefits for conservation easements.

David Bezanson [00:32:04] So it was recognized that this was something that the public should fund. And some federal programs do that. Tain’t enough. Those programs are all hopelessly oversubscribed. And NRCS will put out a call for projects and they’ll have 40 applications and they’ll be able to fund five of them. So conservation easements are popular with landowners. And and this is in Texas alone, by the way.

David Bezanson [00:32:31] So there was a there was a push for a state program that would that would be funded through the legislature. And Blair Fitzsimons was instrumental in that and some other conservation leaders at the time. This was quite a while ago. Initially it was actually housed at GLO, although I worked there at the time, I don’t remember hearing a whole lot about it. It was initially pretty low-key. And then at some point the, you know, the GLO’s focus was so coastal and this was intended to be a statewide program with an agricultural focus.

David Bezanson [00:33:02] And so it was recognized that it would be lot more logical to transfer it to another agency. And it went to Texas Parks and Wildlife. And that’s what the Texas Farm and Rangelands Conservation Program is.

[00:33:13] Unfortunately, it’s still not lavishly funded. We get about $2 million a year out of the legislature for it, or I’m sorry, every biennium, so every two years. However, I think that’s going to change because it’s building in popularity.

David Bezanson [00:33:28] TNC, I guess I’ve, I’ve been very successful at getting that funding as well as as well as NRCS, federal funding, in recent years. And it’s really just kind of a it’s a it’s because we, in our jobs, we spend a lot of time out in the field. We spend a lot of truck time driving around. We spend a lot of time meeting landowners and talking to them. And sometimes it takes years for us to find a way to help them.

David Bezanson [00:34:01] But because we have those relationships with the landowners, you know, we’re able to kind of, in some cases, match the programmatic funding with their needs.

David Bezanson [00:34:09] And when it gets to the point that they tell us, “Yes, we would like to do, I want to do a conservation easement on my land, I want I want it to be conserved in perpetuity,” so that the blood, the time and treasure, the blood, sweat and tears that I put into it will not be lost when a future owner has it. You know that investment will be preserved. For that reason, they do a conservation easement.

David Bezanson [00:34:34] But the money helps. Most people, as I said, they’re just not in a position to give away a significant chunk of the value of their land. And so even if it’s just a portion, having these funding programs is very important. And we’ve conserved some, worked with some great landowners and preserved some really great properties in the last few years with with those programs.

Lee Smith [00:35:02] So blackland prairies?

David Bezanson [00:35:04] Yes.

Lee Smith [00:35:06] Why is that protection of this region important?

David Bezanson [00:35:11] The blackland prairies in Texas, obviously, most of the middle part of the country was, is or was, prairie, which means a landscape kind of dominated by grasses and wildflowers. And technically most of that country still is dominated by grasses and wildflowers, but it’s now Bermuda grass or 1 or 2 kinds of grasses where if you look at what the natural condition of those landscape was, it was, you know, where you now have ten species of plants, you might have had 100 or 200.

David Bezanson [00:35:51] And I kind of became aware of this just learning by doing. One of the properties that that Ned Fritz acquired by donation because he pestered somebody into giving it to them was a small remnant prairie in the town of Ennis. And I think the energy behind that was the local garden club, which, you know, if you know rural communities in Texas, the garden clubs can swing a pretty big stick. They were able to convince the, I think it was public land, city property, and they were able to convince the city fathers to to set aside that property because they knew what it was. It was a it was a remnant of the native prairie, in the natural condition, the unplowed native prairie.

David Bezanson [00:36:38] And so when I inherited that job at the Texas Land Conservancy, it was my job to monitor that. So I went up there and looked around it and I took I took a buddy up there who knew, you know, about that landscape and kind of walked me through it. He worked for Texas Parks and Wildlife.

David Bezanson [00:36:53] And I was immediately aware that even though somebody might say, “Well, it’s just an overgrown pasture”, you look at it and you see, well, it’s completely unique. It’s covered with wildflowers. It looks like a planted flowerbed, and it’s got tall grasses, you know, over your head and and birds everywhere, what have you, wildlife.

David Bezanson [00:37:14] And you you sort of you have that experience. You have to see it. And native prairies are so rare now in some parts of the state that nobody’s ever seen one. So or they didn’t know it if they saw it, of course.

David Bezanson [00:37:24] So you have to have that initiation.

David Bezanson [00:37:26] But once you do, you recognize that prairies are one of the most important things that we have to conserve. And they’re certainly the rarest now landscape in Texas from a conservation standpoint. Less than 1%, much less than 1% is left and the rest has been turned into D.R. Horton, you know, Lennar Homes or farmed, you know, cultivated land or any of the other things that have happened.

Lee Smith [00:37:57] So what is the Clymer Meadow Preserve?

David Bezanson [00:38:00] Clymer Meadow is one of the largest protected remnants of native prairie, unplowed. The Clymer family just they they were original settlers, Anglo settlers in that area. They came from a place where you didn’t plow your ground for some reason, just cultural background. So instead of doing what everybody else did and dragging a plow through it, and once you do that, it really doesn’t ever come back in terms of the diversity, animal and plant diversity. So they never did that.

David Bezanson [00:38:30] And they they, it’s maybe hilly, maybe that played a part.

David Bezanson [00:38:35] But anyway, they, they never plowed it. They just cut it, cut the hay off their property.

David Bezanson [00:38:40] And then decades later, it had gotten fragmented, but the Nature Conservancy had an opportunity to start buying pieces of it. And we’ve assembled that preserve. It’s about an hour east of Dallas, and it’s, like I said, it’s one of the largest examples of this thing, which is a rare, a Blackland Prairie, unique to Texas. Nothing else like it and almost none of it left.

Lee Smith [00:39:07] So what were the challenges to protecting that, blackland Prairies in particular?

David Bezanson [00:39:13] Yeah. Well, for starters, when you’re talking about something that’s that small, it’s kind of hard to manage. And in most cases, native prairie remnants now, if they’re left at all, if they still exist, it’s usually because they were bigger ownership and the farmer had a section of the land that he chose not to plow. Again, usually for a hay meadow. So, you know, typically those are 50 acres or less at this point.

David Bezanson [00:39:41] Well, Nature Conservancy likes to have much larger tracts of land to manage than that because our management, you know, it’s just easier to manage land on a bigger scale. So just defending a 50-acre postage stamp from anything that’s any kind of encroachment, invasive species from the place next door.

David Bezanson [00:40:03] You know, it’s a challenge keeping it from getting brushy because these prairies, even though they are a natural habitat, they tend to brush up and become woods and then the diversity is lost. And that happens in the absence of fire, in the absence of bison and the bison are absent. The fire we do. But it’s, you know, it’s a challenge. There are lot of management challenges with with trying to keep these remnants intact.

Lee Smith [00:40:32] So what was Mickey Burleson’s role in that?

David Bezanson [00:40:37] Well, Mickey, so Bob and Mickey Burleson, were you know, were they are residents of Temple, Bell County, and and they were prominent citizens and that was their hometown. And they bought some land right outside of town. And they became, I think you could say, obsessed with the project of restoring native prairie on that on that land. Obviously, it was prairie before them, but had been plowed and cultivated.

David Bezanson [00:41:07] And so and you know, Mickey can tell you this story and will, I’m sure.

David Bezanson [00:41:11] But that was really a case of assembly required because they didn’t even really have the native species available commercially or on their property. So they actually had to go out and ride the roads. And they’d see a clump of something native by the side of the road, they’d have to get it, ask somebody if they could dig it up or grab some seeds and they put this thing back literally together from scratch. And in doing that, they kind of pioneered the how-to of of of restoring prairie in Texas.

David Bezanson [00:41:48] Both of them, of course, were prominent later in the sense they were both commissioners of the Texas Parks and Wildlife, commissioners at different times. And they were both involved with the Nature Conservancy. Mickey was on our board.

David Bezanson [00:42:01] And so, you know, everyone has, word has to travel by word of mouth. People aren’t going to do something again, very personal to their land without talking to somebody who’s done it. So, you know, having testimonials from people like Mickey and Bob that, you know, who did this and these were the benefits has been very, I think, pivotal in encouraging more people to conserve prairie. Unfortunately, we’re losing it faster than we’re able to conserve it or restore it.

Lee Smith [00:42:39] So were they involved in Clymer?

Jeff Weigel [00:42:44] She was the board chair of TNC who inspired the the push to buy the initial three properties in Clymer in 1986. Yeah. You can ask me about that, when we talk.

Lee Smith [00:43:00] Okay.

David Bezanson [00:43:01] Yeah.

David Bezanson [00:43:02] Yeah. I mean, you know, Texas is big and varied, the landscapes are diverse. And so throughout the history of the Texas chapter, we’ve always had lively debates about where dollars should be spent. And so having, again, having a testimonial from someone who understands the particular resource values of a corner of the state has has probably been pivotal. I mean, obviously.

David Bezanson [00:43:28] You know, we’ve done great projects in every part of the state, from Dolan Falls, Enchanted Rock, Southmost, Sandylands, Davis Mountains and Clymer Meadow. You know, these places are completely different. And there probably there was probably never any one advocate who would who could say, “Yes, we should we should do this project in West Texas, and then we should do this one in East Texas.” It’s just it’s just too big. And so, you know, having voices in the organization, on the board or on the staff, that could argue for the merits of a particular conservation project has has been, I’m sure, pivotal many times.

David Bezanson [00:44:05] You know, it goes back to the diversity of Texas, geographic diversity of Texas, and kind of almost you could say there’s a sort of a there’s a lot of political and cultural divides as well. I mean, you know, people in some parts of the state when they think about conservation, if they do, when they do, they think about big open spaces in West Texas or the West Texas mountains, which is great. Or the coast where, you know, where a lot of our wildlife is.

David Bezanson [00:44:34] And so East Texas is sometimes kind of behind, once you get behind the Piney Curtain, people assume that that’s a you know, that’s another state over there. That’s not in our jurisdiction. And so, again, being from East Texas and knowing a lot of people over there, even though I’ve been living in Austin, San Antonio, for most of my professional life, adult life, you know, I still, I guess it’s still the homeland. And I am very interested in doing more conservation work in East Texas, and I have been able to do a couple of of of projects that, you know, I think would would make Ned Fritz proud.

David Bezanson [00:45:15] We have been involved in conserving longleaf pine forest in the Big Thicket and also in an area called Longleaf Ridge, which is closer to the National Forest. And so those are those are projects which longleaf pine forest is is unique because it’s very open – open pines is what they call it over there. And basically, you have a lot of diversity in terms of grasses and wildflowers under the canopy, even though you do see it as a forest.

David Bezanson [00:45:47] It’s got a lot going on on the ground layer, you’ll have bobwhite quail in some cases and other things that kind of use that. There’s just a lot of diversity and there’s not very much of it left. It’s one of those things like blackland prairie that was harvested and and not replenished.

David Bezanson [00:46:06] In that case, the timber industry in the Southeast was built on longleaf pine. But once they cut it all, which took a while, I mean, we’re talking, you know, tens of millions of acres of very large trees. So a monumental effort.

David Bezanson [00:46:21] But when it was done, they didn’t replant. They replanted in younger, younger, faster-growing species. And so so we don’t have much of that longleaf pine forest anymore. And TNC has been able to acquire several preserves with that. And those are really great, great projects.

Lee Smith [00:46:43] Nicely done. Sorry. Tell me about the Native Prairie Association of Texas.

David Bezanson [00:46:53] So since we can’t do it all, like I said about Texas Land Conservancy. So so you know, we all, there’s quite a few successful conservation organizations now in Texas. They all play a role different. You know, I think I think we all have a niche.

David Bezanson [00:47:10] And TNC does projects that that fit our mission, our scale. And other land trusts have, I think, similar missions, but maybe somewhat narrower. Either they’re more locally focused or they’re focused on a particular kind of conservation. Some emphasized land in production, farms and ranches. Others emphasize particular kinds of heritage or natural resources.

David Bezanson [00:47:44] And one of my, I guess one of my favorite organizations in Texas, is the Native Prairies Association of Texas, because they have a very narrowly-defined mission, which is protecting these remnants of the landscape, the prairie landscape, which, you know, the first people that came to Texas were surrounded by millions of acres of tall grass. And it was the challenge they had to overcome to make a living here.

David Bezanson [00:48:11] But we’re now at the other end of that journey and the native prairie is gone. It’s, the last few pieces are left and they continue, they continue to be degraded or or converted.

David Bezanson [00:48:23] And so we’ve got to try to protect these legacies. You know, I worked on one, I worked on a conservation easement on a native prairie remnant, and it’s only 15 acres. But it’s got wagon ruts in it that are 150 years old. And you know, from the so those pieces of our history are just very important.

David Bezanson [00:48:41] And Native Prairies Association of Texas is a small organization, small NGO, land trust. But like quite a few of them, they have a narrow goal, a narrow mission, which they pursue. And and I love that.

David Bezanson [00:48:56] And I’ve been you know, I do a lot with them, I should say TNC does a lot in partnership with them. We hold conservation easements on properties they’ve acquired and vice versa. And we have the same kind of partnerships with other land trusts around the state. And again, it’s like our work with San Antonio. It allows us to do what we do, but do more of it.

Lee Smith [00:49:23] And you kind of covered how TNC partners with them. Why have prairies been overlooked, do you think?

David Bezanson [00:49:34] Well, when people think about, like I said, you know, in Texas, you know, when people think about the outdoors, a lot of times they look west. They look to the Hill Country. They look to the Gulf Coast. They don’t look at their own backyard. And for that reason, particularly, I think the prairie landscapes have been overlooked.

David Bezanson [00:49:56] And also, again, it’s a case where you have to know what your you really have to to to see it and experience it and know what it is to really get it. And then once you do, you do. And there’s a lot of advocates for prairie conservation now. But but they kind of have to have a gateway. You know, they have to, first of all, be exposed to native prairie. They have to see a native prairie. They have to, you know, be introduced to the conservation values of that landscape in a way that maybe they don’t if it’s the Laguna Madre and you’re catching redfish or if it’s the Davis Mountains and they’re hiking to the top of the mountain and or, you know, South Rim. It’s maybe a little more esoteric. I don’t know.

Lee Smith [00:50:39] But what advice do you have for a young person who is interested in conservation work?

David Bezanson [00:50:47] You know, I think you have to really love the outdoors or nature or wildlife to do what we do, you know, throughout to have the commitment to do a career in conservation, because it isn’t it isn’t always an easy path. It’s what we do is is challenging.

David Bezanson [00:51:11] Even in the cases where you have public funding and you think of that, you know, how hard can that be? You’ve got you’ve got money in your wallet. You just go out and offer, make an offer to a landowner. But it just starts there.

David Bezanson [00:51:26] You know, as I said, everybody’s got their own motivation. Everybody has their reasons for for everyone has their reasons for wanting to conserve land or not conserve it. And it, each one is, is is really everything we do is relationship-based. And it’s it’s very challenging. It’s rewarding, but it’s but it’s challenging.

David Bezanson [00:51:48] And also, you have to realize that you’re kind of on the losing end of of history in some ways.

David Bezanson [00:51:57] And you know a great story about that. Going back to to Ned Fritz, you know, he was a I think I mentioned he was very instrumental in establishing the Big Thicket National Preserve, which is more than a hundred thousand acres National Park in in East Texas. And it was entirely a it was a it was a century , well not a century, but it was a 50-year long effort. It was a multi-generational effort to establish the Big Thicket National Preserve. It began with advocates talking when the region was still pretty, pretty wild and before World War Two. And there were there were bills in Congress to establish it before World War Two. And then well, and then the war happened and they forgot about it. And then that generation passed on.

David Bezanson [00:52:44] And the next wave of of conservation advocates came along in the ’60s in East Texas. And they by and by that time it was all timber country and well, timber companies didn’t want to give it up. So it was a it was the kind of battle that people who haven’t done a battle like that can can’t really imagine.

David Bezanson [00:53:03] It can be very personal. It can be you know, it’s it doesn’t end at 5:00. It’s you know, neighbor against neighbor.

David Bezanson [00:53:13] And and at one point, Ned, of course, was still practicing law but he got involved kind of to lend his expertise and advocacy and willingness to get in front of a camera and say, “You know, we have to do, we have to go big and kind of shock people a little bit, because the timber companies by that time had kind of conceded, well, you know, yeah, we’re going to do this. But we can do it really small, maybe just, you know.”

David Bezanson [00:53:36] And, and and so the advocates then their challenge was to say, “You know, it’s got to be bigger. It’s not going to take in all the values that historic cultural and natural that we’re trying to protect.”

David Bezanson [00:53:46] And George Bush, George H.W. Bush, had a bill and Charlie Wilson had a bill, and then the liberals had a bill and everybody had a different bill for the Big Thicket.

David Bezanson [00:53:56] So anyway, but at one point, I guess near the darkest hour, one of the local advocates whose name was Geraldine Watson tells us, used to tell the story that she she had a meeting with Ned, lunch meeting. And Ned came down and she said, “You know, I can’t do this anymore. This is killing me. And I think we’re going to lose.”

David Bezanson [00:54:19] And Ned Fritz said, “Well yeah yeah we might lose. We may win. We may lose. But regardless which side do you want to have been on?”

[00:54:30] And she kind of looked at him for a minute and she was like, “Well, right. This side. Okay, I’m going back to work.”

David Bezanson [00:54:37] And I think that was the darkest hour. And the National Preserve became law the year after that. But, you know, that’s the kind of effort.

David Bezanson [00:54:46] And even even though the Nature Conservancy, we’re sort of perceived as being a moderate voice, rightfully so. And that’s a good way to get things done.

David Bezanson [00:54:56] But even so, we have to stick our neck out in in many ways, where there’s an element of gambling in what we do. There’s an element of risk and there’s a lot of personal commitment.

David Bezanson [00:55:10] So I think you have to really love the outdoors and and and wildlife and and the natural world in a strongly personal way to be effective in this space.

David Bezanson [00:55:29] But, you know, there’s always going to be people like that for whom this is this is what they want to do. This is their cause. And it’s always great to see new people come along and carry our work on for, you know, long after we hang it up.

Lee Smith [00:55:47] So what do you think the future is? You think there’s going to be the foot soldiers and dedicated folks that are going to take up that torch?

David Bezanson [00:55:58] You know, that’s a complicated question. You know, I hope so. I think as as Texas becomes more urban, we know that that’s a challenge. And Texas is very urban. Texas has gone from, I guess, you know, probably when my parents were young, the average Texas resident lived in a small town or in the country. And now more than 80%, getting close to 90%, of the residents of Texas live in large cities. That’s an unbelievably rapid change in a pretty short period of time. It’s going to have cultural fallout.

David Bezanson [00:56:36] You know, all my life, my dad’s been saying that the challenge of conservation is really going to come when people live in the city and they don’t know, they don’t have a personal connection to the land. And I was always kind of skeptical because I was thinking, “Well, you know, when you live in the city, they’re going to want to get out in the country.”

David Bezanson [00:56:52] But, you know, he’s he’s right. That’s going to be the challenge. You can’t you can’t love what you don’t know and you can’t really save, conserve what you don’t love. And so I think that’s the answer to your question. And I don’t think we know what that I don’t know, I think we don’t know how it’s going to go.

David Bezanson [00:57:10] But we’re going to have a lot more people in Texas in the future, in the near future. That’s, again, driving land fragmentation. It’s driving land prices up and that’s already making our work harder. So, you know, the challenges are real and the funding that we have does not keep up with the needs. And as I mentioned, these programs that we use are very oversubscribed.

David Bezanson [00:57:35] But I think on the flip side, people are going to care more and more. When something becomes more and more scarce, it obviously becomes more precious. So I think somewhere in there is the future of of what we do.