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

Interviewee: David Braun
Date: January 6, 2023
Site: San Antonio, Texas
Reels: 3743-3744
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: Braun_David_NCItem37_SanAntonioTX_20230106_Reel5067-5070_Audio.mp3

Lee Smith [00:00:16] When did you first become involved with the Nature Conservancy?

David Braun [00:00:21] That would have been 1988. I applied for the job of state director.

Lee Smith [00:00:27] And what was. Let’s just go to the Davis Mountains. Why was the Davis Mountains an important site for TNC?

David Braun [00:00:38] Well, I guess you’ve never been there because anybody who’s been there knows why it’s important. It’s the most beautiful part of Texas. It’s incredibly diverse. It’s just it’s just a piece of heaven. And my favorite part of Texas.

Lee Smith [00:00:55] What is a sky island?

David Braun [00:00:57] Well, I don’t like that term. I prefer mountain island because there are just these little outcroppings of mountains that are sticking up out of this vast sea of grassland.

Lee Smith [00:01:10] And how is the birding out there?

David Braun [00:01:13] Is it’s a little slow. You can go a long time without seeing much, but when you do, it’s exciting because it’s nothing you’re going to see anywhere else in Texas.

Lee Smith [00:01:26] Why are dark skies important, and how does it fit in to the dark skies?

David Braun [00:01:33] I think the dark skies are to move your soul. And you can’t be moved better than in West Texas. It’s, it’s infinity in those skies and, you know, you’ve never experienced really the the greater power to you have looked into those skies.

Lee Smith [00:01:54] So how does it relate to the McDonald Observatory?

David Braun [00:02:02] Well, I’ve got a story about that. I got to go to the Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby’s office in the Capitol, his special private office at the Capitol, to tell him about the Nature Conservancy’s work in the Davis Mountains.

David Braun [00:02:17] And he he’s he’s a kind of grumpy old guy, still. And he he kind of rolled up and said, “Davis Mountains. Hey, call that guy over at McDonald Observatory. Tell him to get over here. These boys want to protect the Davis Mountains and he needs to hear about this.”.

David Braun [00:02:41] So he called. The name’s not going to come to me. Frank.

Jeff Weigel [00:02:47] Frank Bash.

David Braun [00:02:48] He called Frank Bash at the University of Texas, and we sat there for 15 minutes waiting for the director of the McDonald Observatory to come over to hear what the Nature Conservancy was going to do to help him. I probably can tell that story shorter.

Lee Smith [00:03:04] So what were the challenges to getting that project done?

David Braun [00:03:09] Well, you have about a week because it would take at least a week to tell you the challenges.

David Braun [00:03:16] You know, the Davis Mountains project started maybe 10 or 12 years before I got to the Nature Conservancy. I worked on it every month for seven years, a hundred trips out there. And I don’t think the first land was bought till five years after I left. It’s a generational project, and it’ll never be finished. It’s still going on. So compelling. Well, I’m not answering the obstacles, but so compelling that at least one of our state directors has moved out there and got a house. And our greatest land protection guy ever, James King, is living out there, too. So it’s it takes you over if you let it.

Lee Smith [00:04:04] Were you there when James moved out there?

David Braun [00:04:07] No.

Lee Smith [00:04:13] So in those seven years, were you were you trying to court Mr. McIvor? Was that what’s going on there?

David Braun [00:04:19] We all did. We all sat in many, many afternoons, mornings in his parlor drinking coffee with him. We rode around in his jeep around the ranch. I actually courted his sister and and niece and nephew who were part owners.

David Braun [00:04:41] But yeah, the McIvors were at the core of it. Their decision triggered everything, but the whole community felt affected. So literally, the anti-environmental movement of Texas was was birthed right there. The Davis Mountain Heritage Society was born and became the Take Back Texas movement to stop the Nature Conservancy and the and the McIvors from protecting that ranch.

David Braun [00:05:12] Let’s do that. Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:05:16] Doing great, David.

David Braun [00:05:18] Thank you.

David Braun [00:05:19] That latter part about the the Davis Mountains Heritage Society. So what was the Davis Mountains Heritage Society?

Jeff Weigel [00:05:26] It’s actually the Davis Valley Trans-Pecos Heritage Association.

David Braun [00:05:29] Thank you. Appreciate it.

David Braun [00:05:32] Yeah. So, you know. The McIvor family, was central to the decision to conserve the Davis Mountains because they owned the top of the mountain. They owned 50,000 acres and they wanted to do it with the Nature Conservancy as their partner.

[00:05:56] But the whole community felt affected, so much so, that the anti-environmental movement of those years started right there. The Davis Mountains trans-Pecos Heritage Association was born right there to stop conservation of the Davis Mountains. And they didn’t.

Lee Smith [00:06:18] What were they scared of?

David Braun [00:06:20] Change. Just change. I mean, they those folks were good folks. And they had they had their families have fought for that land and ranch, that land against their own obstacles. And they just didn’t want it to change.

David Braun [00:06:35] But the the farsighted ones knew it was going to change, for the worse. And so there were already subdivisions crawling up the side of the mountain. They had gotten used to that. That was sort of the new norm. But they didn’t know how much that was going to keep happening unless they found a way to conserve it.

Lee Smith [00:06:58] Well, but you also had Big Bend National Park come in and then Guadalupe Mountain National Park or.

David Braun [00:07:08] Yep.

David Braun [00:07:11] Well, you are a historian at heart, I can tell. Because that conflict dated back to Big Bend. And as the story was told to me by the ranchers after World War II, leaders in Austin realized we did not have a national park in Texas. And that was kind of an embarrassment. And so the publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. What was his name? There’s a museum named after him in Fort Worth.

David Braun [00:07:46] Anyway, the publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram was appointed to a governor commission to find a national park for Texas. And they decided on Big Bend. And once they decided, they condemned it and evicted those families. And everybody out there remembers, knows somebody who lost their home. And that that fear of the federal government was what we were really dealing with. Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:08:22] Because they thought, y’all are going to flip it, right?

David Braun [00:08:24] Yeah. Well, and we were. Not we, the Nature Conservancy, but I mean, the, the original Davis Mountains plan was a national park study that was arranged by the congressmen out there who thought, well, of course we want a national park in the Davis Mountains. But he didn’t know his constituents.

Lee Smith [00:08:52] So the Nature Conservancy said they weren’t going to do that. That’s right. When you were out there, were you saying that to folks?

David Braun [00:09:02] By the time I came, it was obvious that that was not what the people wanted. So, yes, by the time I came, I, I felt like it had to be a private project and we had to raise the money. I believe that my predecessors at one time did view it as a national park project.

Lee Smith [00:09:24] And it’s not.

David Braun [00:09:25] It’s not and may never be. I, I became the state director of the Nature Conservancy in September of 1988 and became an international vice president in ’94, I believe, and and then left the Conservancy in September of ’95.

Lee Smith [00:09:50] So. This question kind of transcends. But, you know, you haven’t gone anywhere. You’ve been around, you’ve been watching things going on. How important for the Nature Conservancy and their work is the fact that they kept their word?

David Braun [00:10:11] Oh, it’s incredibly important. And and without without your word and the integrity of honest dealings with local people and local communities, you got nothing. Everything.

David Braun [00:10:26] You know, this is important to understand about me. I left the Conservancy after a career as a biologist, a career as a government lawyer, a career as a nonprofit executive to become a private lands advocate.

David Braun [00:10:40] All I have done since 1995 is work with the private landowners because they own what we’re trying to conserve. And I just came to believe that was the most direct, the most direct and and powerful thing I could do, is work with the private landowners.

Lee Smith [00:11:02] And building trust?

David Braun [00:11:03] Building trust. We, the company, the companies I started to work with private landowners. We have a motto. Basically, we we work with every landowner wherever we find them on their conservation journey. So they may not know they’re on a conservation journey, but when they hire us, we come aside them and start working to help them see the bigger picture and be better stewards of their land, according to their definition of better steward of the land and help them decide to make a decision about conservation that’s right for their family and their land.

David Braun [00:11:48] So, you know, I’ve worked with families through now, at my age, three generations. I am now working with grandchildren of people that I first met 25, 30 years ago.

David Braun [00:12:09] And, you know, you didn’t quite ask this question, but I heard it in the background. I want to answer it.

David Braun [00:12:16] Why? You know, why is it important that Davis Mountains didn’t become a federal park? Because the the toolbox of conservation has to include all these things – private land conservation, nonprofit conservation, conservation easement partnerships and public lands. So you cannot get the job done without lots of tools. So federal lands is just one tool.

Lee Smith [00:12:51] Well, and with that local opposition to a federal partner, if that had happened, it would have kind of screwed the private buffer area that has grown up around it.

David Braun [00:13:08] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

David Braun [00:13:12] No, I, I personally believe the best conservation happens when a lot of partnerships happen and a lot of people find ways to work together on common goals, even though they might not have much else in common, they can achieve common goals. So yeah. Excuse me.

Lee Smith [00:13:33] So Dolan Falls and Devils River. Why is that an important spot?

David Braun [00:13:39] It’s a great place to swim. It’s, it’s so quiet, you can hear your own thoughts. It’s into the earth, and that’s the way it should stay. Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:13:52] And what was your involvement with it?

David Braun [00:13:56] I think I think I borrowed four million dollars and bought it and put myself in jeopardy for many years because I had to raise it back the way the Nature Conservancy works. So you get to you get to buy first and fundraise later, and that puts a lot of pressure on on a fundraiser.

Lee Smith [00:14:18] So how did that whole thing come up?

David Braun [00:14:23] Well, I’m not sure I remember exactly. The Conservancy has a set of long-term projects in mind and we so we know years and years in advance both because of the science database that we had and also because of just good work of our of our protection and stewardship teams. We knew that was a target area.

David Braun [00:14:53] How how we’ve figured out that the family. I do remember now – Helen Ballew. I bet it was Helen Ballew. And we had a program back then called the Texas Land Stewards Society, and Helen Ballew was the director of that program. And her job was to go out and meet these landowners who owned these beautiful spots and just find out what they were thinking and give them an award for being a steward of Texas.

David Braun [00:15:29] And that program worked miracles. Helen worked miracles. I learned a lot about people in fund raising then and and why the Davis Mountains was important. I spent days cultivating some of the richest, weeks, cultivating some of the richest Texans to buy that place for us.

David Braun [00:15:55] And I got a wake-up call when one of them says, “I’m going to help you conserve this place. Here’s the deal. I’m not going to give you any money. You’re going to go tell that family, the McIvors, to sell it to me and then it’ll be conserved and we’ll all be happy.” And that was the solution of one of our donors, was to kick us aside and and buy it himself.

David Braun [00:16:26] And I I had to explain to him that even if I wanted to do that, I couldn’t make that happen because the McIvors had chosen the Nature Conservancy and they, their choice was a nonprofit partner. He’s never spoken to me since.

Lee Smith [00:16:44] Did you make the right decision?

David Braun [00:16:46] Oh, sure. Absolutely.

Lee Smith [00:16:53] Devils River to me is a very tactile environment. Everything is harder there, sharper there, crisper there. It’s almost like if you were dropped blindfolded there, you’d know pretty quickly.

Jeff Weigel [00:17:10] You meant to say Dolan, didn’t you?

Lee Smith [00:17:13] I meant Dolan’s, Devils.

David Braun [00:17:16] Yeah. Yeah. I knew where you were.

Lee Smith [00:17:18] Yeah. And it’s dangerous, you know, I mean, you get caught up there at the wrong time, the wrong situation.

David Braun [00:17:29] Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:17:29] It’s it’s rough country.

David Braun [00:17:34] Well, this is not what you’re going for, but you’re reminding me of another donor who drove in in his Ferrari and got it stuck in the Devil’s River trying to impress his girlfriend.

Lee Smith [00:17:47] Good.

Lee Smith [00:17:49] But what does that kind of country, what does that do for your soul?

David Braun [00:17:57] Well, I still go out there a lot. My wife and I have dear friends who own the headwaters of the Devils River. And we’re on that a lot. It’s just, I mean, it’s just this magical transition. You’re between the Chihuahua Desert and the Hill Country and South Texas. And for a former biologist, naturalist, it’s it’s endlessly surprising what shows up there in these little, little oasis niches of water and wildlife, rare plants and and unexpected birds and wildlife. So, yeah, I mean, that water makes all the difference in the world to to the diversity, to the experience. And it’s just a little trickle. But it’s it’s life going through there.

Lee Smith [00:18:57] And you really make that connection because you’re in this desert. Really?

David Braun [00:19:02] Yeah.

David Braun [00:19:04] There it is.

Lee Smith [00:19:05] Stick your face and drink all you want.

David Braun [00:19:07] Yeah. Yeah. I hope it stays that way forever. I mean, they, they say it’s the cleanest river in Texas. It’s, I can’t imagine anything cleaner. And the way it gushes out of some of those springs is. I just wish there was some way to just transport people there. But not in crowds, just one at a time, to experience it.

Lee Smith [00:19:33] Have you ever been there when the monarchs come through?

David Braun [00:19:35] Yeah. Yeah, I have.

Lee Smith [00:19:38] What’s that like?

David Braun [00:19:38] Yeah. Well, it’s so unexpected.

David Braun [00:19:41] You know, I, before I saw that, I had been on the wintering grounds in Mexico, so I had a and I had, I had worked in upstate New York. So I’d kind of seen the ends of the migratory path. And then to realize the Davis Mountains was just a stop. I mean, excuse me, the Devil’s River was a stop on that 3000-mile journey. And and that what we were conserving was supporting yet another amazing natural phenomena.

Lee Smith [00:20:15] And to see the trees covered like that. I mean, it’s like it’s not fall. Yeah.

David Braun [00:20:20] Well, you know.

Lee Smith [00:20:21] This fall, but it’s fall with the butterflies as leaves.

David Braun [00:20:24] I, to me, it’s like, well, you’re reminding me of something else. To me, when those butterflies come off those trees in the early morning, they’re beginning to warm up in the sunlight. It’s like orange snowflakes. Only there’s enough of them, you can hear the wing beats of a butterfly because there’s so many of them. Yeah, it’s. It’s magic. It really is.

David Braun [00:20:50] And we have a we have a friend, a client, who has is organizing butterfly tagging. So every year we go, and this is on the Llano River, near Mason, we go and put little tiny paper sticky tags on these butterflies as they pass through Texas. And some of them have been recovered in Mexico to match the migrant, to track the migration.

Lee Smith [00:21:22] Do you ever get any false reports of like one hitting the windshield of a semi and it ends up in San Jose?

David Braun [00:21:29] I don’t follow it that close, but I bet that happens. Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:21:35] Excuse me. So what were the, were you there when it all went down?

David Braun [00:21:41] Dolan Falls? Oh, sure.

Lee Smith [00:21:43] So what were the challenges in that? And the key players?

David Braun [00:21:48] Well, the first thing that comes to mind is and you’re going to keep hearing my perspective as a state director, ultimately as the person responsible for fundraising. I mean, yes, I got to make the decision that we were going to borrow the money. Yes, I got the decision on on how we were going to staff it. I’d but I had really super people working with me who were running the operations. My job was the outside face and raising the money.

David Braun [00:22:26] And there’s absolutely nowhere to accommodate guests at Devils River when we got there. So we we had, we had a super talented guy named Beyrl Armstrong, who has become my business partner, go out there and build tent platforms and and create a little high-end camping experience. What do they call it now? Glamping experience. And we actually brought in celebrity chefs to cook for people. And so they could we could attract the donors to that experience and accommodate them.

Lee Smith [00:23:21] And why is that important to have the donors there?

David Braun [00:23:29] Well, I mean, this is the hardest thing for for some idealistic young conservationists to realize. But conservation only happens when money is available to make it happen. So you have to you have to either become a lobbyist or a fund raiser or be born rich. Somehow you have to have money to do conservation.

David Braun [00:23:54] And the Conservancy taught me everything I know about that. I mean, I was I was born in a working class family on the wrong side of the tracks. I had no exposure to wealth. And and the Conservancy taught me that wealth and philanthropic people can be your friends.

David Braun [00:24:16] One of my mentors was was a former president of the Nature Conservancy, Pat Noonan. And I overlapped with Pat just a year or two in the early part of my job there. And he was famous for telling young conservationists who objected to taking money from oil companies or chemical companies, “Well, you may think it’s tainted money, but it taint enough.”

David Braun [00:24:47] And so that really, you know, brought it home to me. You got to work, you got to work with whoever. Well it’s just like me working with landowners. You got to work with whatever people are willing to contribute. And if there are some city folks that think it’s a good idea to give you some money to put their name on your brochure, that’s great. I want them to help.

Lee Smith [00:25:15] And how important is, are these certain places to that fundraising? Like Andy was telling us that there’s a rock at Honey Creek.

David Braun [00:25:27] Yeah.

[00:25:28] That he calls like the contract rock or the. Yes. If that’s not the right name. But it’s like the donor rock.

David Braun [00:25:34] Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:25:35] That, it’s, that’s where he makes his pitch.

David Braun [00:25:38] Yeah.

David Braun [00:25:38] Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:25:38] You kind of walk them around and let them just kind of go, “Wow.”

David Braun [00:25:42] Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:25:42] And then you have the donor rock.

David Braun [00:25:44] Yeah, they’re there. You can plan, you can plan for some places. The top of Mt. Livermore is a great one. Sitting in the chute at the Dolan Falls is another good one. There’s the porch at Matagorda. There’s lots of these places.

David Braun [00:26:02] But you also, it’s, it’s a moment in time too. And you have to be aware of when you have arrived at that place.

David Braun [00:26:13] Actually, the biggest single gift I ever got while I was the director of the Nature Conservancy was in a terrible country diner in Rockport. And and I was I was, I will not name names, but I was sitting with the CEO and the CFO of a major company. And they I could just tell they were excited about what we were doing. And I said, “Can you give this much?” And I wrote it on a napkin. And they said, “No, we can give twice that much.” And so that was, that was the moment, like you found to do it.

Lee Smith [00:26:58] It’s like you have this money resource and this physical resource. And you have to bring them together. You know, physically. It’s the proof of the pudding.

David Braun [00:27:10] Exactly. So maybe one of the proudest, one of the things I’m proudest of in my time at the Nature Conservancy. And I hope nobody corrects me about this. But I figured out that we had we had these corporate supporters who weren’t all willing to write big checks. They they were, they liked being associated with us. But they just they just weren’t writing the big checks.

David Braun [00:27:40] And I figured out what they could do for us. They could loan us their corporate jets. And so we’d had about three years where we just had a constant flight of corporate jets picking people up in Houston or Dallas and taking them to lunch at Mt. Livermore or the Devil’s River. And that’s the way we could get those city people out there. They wouldn’t give us a week to drive out there. They wouldn’t give us a weekend, but they would give us a lunch. And with that corporate jet, we could get them there and back. And it was amazing.

Lee Smith [00:28:18] Because you have to see the value of something. Yeah.

David Braun [00:28:22] You have to touch it. You have to touch it and feel it. I mean, you spend a lot of time taking great pictures. You take great video, you take it to their office. But the sale happens in nature.

Lee Smith [00:28:38] Because it’s, like I said, the the Devil’s River, that tactile. It’s you know, you know you’re there.. And the same thing at Honey Creek. You can you can blindfold me and I know. Smell all those trees. I can hear that water. Yeah. And it’s it’s it it’s physical. And then the physical becomes emotional.

David Braun [00:28:58] Yeah. Yeah, it’s. It’s true. And for me, it’s sweaty too. Have to hike it. You have to hike it. You’ve got to crawl through it. You got to get scratched up. Yeah. It’s it’s the real, you know, it’s the real personal.

David Braun [00:29:14] And everybody finds it in different places. I find it, I find it with birds. Some people find it, maybe it’s the rock art. You know, the rock art at Dolan Falls excited a lot of people. And they had to climb up a scree slope to see it. But they would do it.

Lee Smith [00:29:34] Where is it?

Speaker 2 [00:29:35] We can’t tell you that. It’s a secret.

Lee Smith [00:29:39] You didn’t show me that. How you got it. We got to get another trip.

Jeff Weigel [00:29:45] I have been to this mountain. They had to go out and take footage of all these preserves. So I’ve been touring them all over Texas, and.

David Braun [00:29:54] Good.

Lee Smith [00:29:55] Well, I went back solo just to get some dark sky, which I did.

David Braun [00:29:59] It is pretty amazing, isn’t it.

David Braun [00:30:03] My wife has been trying to get me just to do travel to places with dark skies so so we could get in touch with our souls that way.

David Braun [00:30:14] But, but the transformational moment of our lives was going to a total eclipse. And that that was 2.5 minutes of of just other, out of your body. It’s just like nothing you can imagine. And I’ve seen thousands of pictures of it. National Geographic, People. I mean, I’ve seen it on TV. Nothing is like actually being there. It is just “Wow.” You can’t believe what’s happening around you. Your brain goes click.

Lee Smith [00:30:55] So I’ve gone there. Gone there. Gone there.

Lee Smith [00:31:01] Another thing about that area is the expanse of it. You don’t see a telephone pole. Well, there’s one. If you look carefully, there’s that one power line that you can pick up.

David Braun [00:31:13] Damn. Hasn’t some blown that up yet?

Lee Smith [00:31:16] But it’s almost like being in an ocean. What does that do for your sense of being?

David Braun [00:31:23] Well, you know, I mean, that’s who I am. I, I my passion for conservation came from going to wilderness places and getting out beyond where other people go. And so, you know, for me personally, that’s why I do it.

David Braun [00:31:43] There’s a there’s a place in Mexico where you go to the end of the road and there’s a sign that says “Fin de Camino”, “End of the Road”. And then there’s this vast, beautiful valley. And that’s like, that’s the starting point of everything that’s important, is right there.

Lee Smith [00:32:06] The end is the beginning.

David Braun [00:32:07] Yeah, exactly.

Lee Smith [00:32:09] Yeah. So I’ve been to Diamond Y. We’ve photographed Diamond Y, we’ve driven through all of these oil, scraped things. And then there’s Diamond Y. Why is that place important? Why did you mess with that thing?

David Braun [00:32:33] Well, you know, we I give you the the professional answer is that the Nature Conservancy focuses its work with scientific precision and and that that spring represents some of the Earth’s diversity that is unique and there’s nothing like it. A little salty seep in the desert that’s grown populations of fish like no other place in the world. So that is the reason.

David Braun [00:33:12] But I actually think the reason is you have to be willing to preserve really ugly places that are the cesspool of our world and still go in there and find the beauty.

David Braun [00:33:29] So where you, I’m sure you saw, all these oil wells and tar pits and flares and you’re just driving into an industrial hell. But all in the middle of that is is a little bit of creation still hanging on. And we we worked with an oil company or several to preserve that.

Lee Smith [00:34:01] So what was TNC’s role in the Balcones Canyonlands Conservation Plan? And what was your involvement?

David Braun [00:34:10] Well, it’s there would not be a Balcones Canyonlands without the Nature Conservancy and and and I think if I’m honest, it couldn’t have happened without me either. I just was the right person at the right time with the right skill set.

David Braun [00:34:28] And it’s it’s an example of sort of the most complexity that that any conservationist could ever deal with.

David Braun [00:34:39] The Austin, the Balcones Canyonlands is a system of preserves inside of one of the fastest growing cities in America, Austin. And Austin was sprawling out west across these beautiful Hill Country landscapes and paving over a lot of endangered species, a lot of clear water.

David Braun [00:35:08] And there was nothing to stop it until the bank savings and loan collapse of the late ’80s. And suddenly the money to build dried up or paused.

David Braun [00:35:22] And at the same moment, a bunch of radical kids at the University of Texas started the Earth First! chapter and started demanding that the Fish and Wildlife Service protect the endangered species.

David Braun [00:35:38] And that confluence of things caused gridlock. The banks were taking back development land or losing it. The developers were stuck. The Fish and Wildlife Service was saying none of this land could be developed, so even more value was being lost.

David Braun [00:35:59] And the city leaders, the mayor, city council, they were seeing there, they were seeing their economic engine dry up.

David Braun [00:36:08] And it just seemed impossible to solve because the Endangered Species Act is so literally a barrier.

David Braun [00:36:19] So the Nature Conservancy out in California had some experience with compromises of these situations. And I heard about them. And and the compromise is you can get a permit to develop some land if you set aside others. The conservation plan is kind of a is a mitigation, a tradeoff.

David Braun [00:36:49] And so I went and proposed this to the mayor of Austin it at the time and said, and you know, here I am, a 35 year old kid from San Antonio working in San Antonio. He didn’t know me from Adam, but things were so dire at that moment. He said, “Well, that that sounds like that could work. You mean we could, If we bought some preserves and made some nature preserves, then we could develop the rest?”

David Braun [00:37:18] I said, “Yes, sir, that’s the plan.” And he said, “Well, that that, who who should we get to do that?” Or I said, “Who should we work with?” And he said, “Oh, no, you’re going to do it.” And that’s how I became the chairman of the Balcones Canyonlands.

Lee Smith [00:37:35] And so on. Did they have to get bond money or what was the mechanics of that?

David Braun [00:37:42] Well, first you had to work out a deal with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and and the environmental community. But then once you identified what you were going to preserve, then yes, there was all.

David Braun [00:37:58] Look. Did I say earlier you need a week to talk about the Davis Mountains? You would need a month to talk about the Balcones Canyonlands.

Lee Smith [00:38:10] There’s Barton Creek flows through it.

David Braun [00:38:13] Yeah. Barton Creek flows through it. Although it is only … you quickly realize when you study Travis County at that level that there are many creeks as important as Barton Creek, Bull Creek, for example, that that flow out of those hills, out of those canyons and make the Colorado River and and up every one of those canyons is important wildlife habitat and and clear water habitat.

David Braun [00:38:43] So anyway, bonds were part of it. But there was so much more.

David Braun [00:38:47] We we had to strike deals with developers. Most of the biggest amount of money for Balcones Canyonlands. Now for people who don’t know what we’re talking about, the plan that finally got approved was for the City of Austin and Travis County to acquire 30,000 acres of preserves and the US government to acquire a 70,000-acre National Wildlife Refuge. So in total, 100,000 acres of endangered species preserves in exchange for the rest of the city growing. So that was the deal.

David Braun [00:39:24] And the magic moment that happened is that the federal government bank regulators were taking over savings and loans and their assets and there were tens of thousands of acres in default.

David Braun [00:39:44] So we got our senator at the time, Lloyd Bentsen, and our congressman, Jake Pickle, to arrange for us to buy that land for ten cents on a dollar. So we got hundreds of millions of dollars of land for millions, because of that one moment in time.

David Braun [00:40:05] And that I I’m still I’m still working on that project because my clients, my landowners, are selling to the city and county and the federal government every year. We’re selling more land into that preserve system. It’s still going on.

Lee Smith [00:40:23] So how does that make you feel?

David Braun [00:40:24] Tired.

Lee Smith [00:40:29] But as you drive out 360.

David Braun [00:40:35] Well, you know, I told you earlier, I’m kind of a braggart, and I am not above, if I have visitors in town or if I’m trying to recruit a new lawyer to come work for me. And we drive out 360. At some point I will say, “You know, that big green view you just saw? I started that in 1991. That’s because of the work we did at the Nature Conservancy. Everywhere you look in Austin – “You like it? Thank the Nature Conservancy.”

Lee Smith [00:41:09] Now, was Shield Ranch kind of a component in that? We’ve talked to the Ayres.

David Braun [00:41:16] No. I mean, I suppose there is some credit given because of what their private conservation might count towards the total of the Balcones Canyonlands. A lot of things count. And we’re still years away from finishing that.

David Braun [00:41:32] But though I think of the Ayres family decision as a personal decision. And I started that journey with them in the last generation. I’m sure you interviewed Bob and maybe his sister Vera, but I started with their parents, Pat and and Bob, not senior, but the father of of this generation.

David Braun [00:42:07] They both they both came to a speech I gave and sat there in the audience and didn’t, I didn’t know who they were, but afterwards they sought me out and asked me if I’d have a cup of coffee with them because they were inspired by the conservation message. And they told me they were starting a foundation and they were putting five family ranches in it that they wanted to see conserved.

David Braun [00:42:35] And so that began a conversation that lasted through all my tenure. And then they started donating conservation easements and working, after I left, years after I left. But but that conversation started at that with the Conservancy, at that little speech I gave.

Lee Smith [00:42:55] I just shot the, their new camping facility for the El Ranchito camp deal.

David Braun [00:43:03] Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:43:03] And the, you know, getting the urban kids out there. And how important is that? And what role does the Balcones Canyonlands Plan play in that? Why is that important to get the urban people out there?

David Braun [00:43:21] Yeah, well. If if, if we don’t, if we don’t convince enough people that it’s worth saving, we have no hope of saving any of it.

David Braun [00:43:34] So human beings are the most amazing creature yet evolved or created on this earth, but they’re also the most destructive by far. And there’s never been anything like the the devastation. Maybe some asteroid from outer space can do more devastation than the human species.

David Braun [00:44:05] But, you know, even in my short life, I’m 68, almost 69 years old. I started going to wilderness places when I was ten. And it is just hard to describe how much of it has been cut down, paved over, occupied by humans who were not doing anything wrong. They’re just, they’re just living. They’re raising their families. They’re going about their business.

David Braun [00:44:36] But it just keeps rolling out there and and never seems to stop, unless we can teach the children, teach individuals to have that experience and value it, and then they join and do their part.

Lee Smith [00:44:53] And you kind of hit on this. But I just want to hit it a little harder. What aspects of bird conservation and other species has the BCCP impacted?

David Braun [00:45:05] Well, I believe that the the kids, the young college students who who started the whole effort were focused on the golden-cheeked warbler and the black-capped vireo. So, too, so a lot of lot of people think of it as the bird project.

David Braun [00:45:30] But I see two sides to that. In the case of the black-capped vireo, scientists really did not know that much about the range of the bird. And so they honestly thought that it was disappearing.

David Braun [00:45:47] But because of the focus and the efforts to conserve it, new research started happening and it quickly became, quickly, in ten years, 20 years, it became clear that bird was not endangered at all. It was all over the place. It was just not, it was just losing ground right there on the eastern edge of its range where people were building. But there were zillions of them.

David Braun [00:46:15] So that bird went from conservation focus to not a focus pretty quick. And and that’s that. I mean, there are people who will criticize and say that that is just proof environmentalists don’t know what they’re doing. But actually, it’s part of how you learn and and and make decisions. So we now know a lot more about that bird.

David Braun [00:46:44] The golden-cheeked warbler is a different story. That bird is truly disappearing. And what I love about the new focus on it is that the Conservancy went down with scientists into Mexico and Guatemala and found that its wintering grounds are just as endangered as its breeding grounds. And so we’ve got, I think Balcones Canyonlands help kick off the full range of conservation for that bird.

Lee Smith [00:47:18] Leads us into Mexico. Yeah. What is important about the Nature Conservancy’s work in Mexico?

David Braun [00:47:28] Well.

Lee Smith [00:47:29] What were you involved with?

David Braun [00:47:30] I went to Mexico first as a ten year old and fell in love with it. It’s. I like to, I like to say “Ahh, Mexico lindo”. It’s just the most beautiful place. And and and Texas is lucky to be a neighbor because it is the most beautiful, diverse place. And to me, why this doesn’t get me kicked out of the Texas citizenship. I kind of feel like it’s one big country, Texas, Mexico, Tex Mex. We got the same cuisine. We got the same land. So I don’t see the Rio Grande as a big border.

David Braun [00:48:15] In terms of conservation, we just very quickly started finding things we needed to do in northern Mexico because that diversity and those habitats just go right on over the Rio Grande to the other side.

Lee Smith [00:48:29] So why is it important?

David Braun [00:48:32] Well, I wrote a I wrote a piece when I was the director of the Nature Conservancy called “Were There Really Elephants, Mama?” And it was about ten reasons to care about nature. And you can’t you cannot make people care. I mean, some people, really smart people, don’t care. They love jazz or they love food or they love something else. And you just can’t make them care about snakes and slimy things.

David Braun [00:49:07] But if you think about it, I was able to come up with ten reasons why you just have to care. And I can tell you a few of them. But Mexico’s got all ten. And it’s it’s an amazing biologically diverse, beautiful place. And I was happy to get to work there.

Lee Smith [00:49:34] But in a practical sense, birds and fish don’t recognize borders.

David Braun [00:49:45] Yeah, our birds, that we think of as our birds, that are here either in the spring they may, and our bats spend the winter there. Our migrants that come through in the spring and fall that are going north, they also come back south and they spend the winter there.

David Braun [00:50:08] So I was laughing because when I, before I came to the Nature Conservancy, before I was a lawyer, I worked as a biologist in Mexico. And to do the work I was doing, I had to get I had to get seven different kinds of permits to to transport tissue and feathers from Mexico into the United States.

David Braun [00:50:35] And long story short, I was in an argument with a Department of Agriculture official who didn’t want me to bring these contaminated birds into the country. And I said, “Well, why not?” “Well, because there’s a disease that chickens can get from these birds.” And I said, “You do realize a billion birds a year fly over your head and contaminate that same chicken? And my tissue is not going to be the cause.” He didn’t have an answer for that.

Lee Smith [00:51:08] Yeah. But yours is going to stay in the lab.

David Braun [00:51:10] Exactly. Exactly.

Lee Smith [00:51:14] Excuse me.

Lee Smith [00:51:18] So is there any TNC project that we haven’t talked about that you’re involved in and feel strongly about that you want to talk about. Honey Creek? Was Honey Creek going on?

David Braun [00:51:31] It was, but it was not a focus for me for some reason. It was kind of in a pause. I guess we’ll have to get Jeff Weigel to tell me what it was doing.

David Braun [00:51:40] But no, there were there were many, many.

David Braun [00:51:45] But I would say two that I would like to talk about is Matagorda Island took up a lot of my tenure and it was an amazing, successful project.

David Braun [00:52:02] A year or two, several years before I started, the Conservancy bought a 55,000-acre island off the coast of Texas from the Toddie Lee Wynne family.

Jeff Weigel [00:52:17] We bought the southern 11,500 acres from Toddie Lee Wynne when the rest was already under Federal ownership. But for.

David Braun [00:52:29] Fair. Fair. Gosh, doesn’t let me exaggerate at all.

David Braun [00:52:35] We bought the last private part of a 55,000 acre.

Lee Smith [00:52:39] Too busy kibbitzing.

David Braun [00:52:39] And yeah, we bought the last private part of a 55,000-acre island that was home to the whooping cranes. It was an incredibly important piece of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge.

David Braun [00:52:55] And we had to we had to hold that island for at least six years while efforts, while we were lobbying Congress to buy it back from us. And and so during those years, I led dozens and dozens of tours of that island for our donors.

David Braun [00:53:21] And I still, to this day, have people walk up to me and say, “Hey, the most magical moment of my life was that time you took me out on Matagorda Island and we saw this thing.” And I’m like, “I am I’m so glad you liked that.” But it’s, you know, it’s you don’t know when you touch someone, but but you just keep on showing people what you love and and you’re planting seeds. So.

Lee Smith [00:53:55] Well. And the flats side of that island are almost like Devils River to me in reverse. There’s this same kind of expanse.

David Braun [00:54:08] Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:54:09] Where the reflection of the sky and the water meld. And it’s, it’s another type of infinity.

David Braun [00:54:19] Yeah. Yeah. You’re out there at the edge. You can’t. You can’t get there except by boat. You can’t walk. You can’t fly. Well you can fly, but you can’t drive your car there. And so you’re out at the edge.

David Braun [00:54:35] And I’ve I have taken city people out there who arrived after dark and were sitting on the porch and they didn’t really know where they were and they were hearing the sound of the ocean gently rushing by. But they were so citified, they asked me what what freeway is over there because they thought it was traffic noise and it was the sound of the ocean.

David Braun [00:55:04] And another another guy got up to go birdwatching at dawn. And he said, you know, I just realized I’m 45 years old and I’ve never seen the sun rise. And he saw it for the first time on Matagorda Island. Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:55:20] Well, and the way the sun rises.

David Braun [00:55:22] Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:55:23] Out there is different.

David Braun [00:55:24] It is different. Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:55:25] Because you get that horizon and then it comes boiling out of the ocean, and there’s.

David Braun [00:55:33] There’s nothing between you and the edge of the earth. Yeah. And actually, you know, Beyrl Armstrong pointed out to me, if you if you look out there, there is nothing between here and Africa to stop a dust storm or a hurricane. It is just ocean from here on out.

David Braun [00:55:55] And I said two things. I wanted to talk about prairies for a second too.

David Braun [00:56:01] When I when I started at the Conservancy, there was a there was a goal of protecting the last tallgrass prairies of Texas. And so I got to pick up and work on that goal. And I, I really didn’t know much about it, but I came to fall in love with those prairies and how rare they are.

David Braun [00:56:25] And Jeff Weigel was my mentor in that. He took me. He took me to Clymer’s Meadow and showed me what a real prairie was and just recently I was thinking of how that’s come around.

David Braun [00:56:44] This, one of my clients is working with the Native Prairies Association of Texas, and that group is stronger than ever. Still out there trying to preserve the prairies. And that’s at least 35 years later. So it’s it’s it’s it’s growing. You know, it’s growing.

David Braun [00:57:05] There’s people, jeff inspired me and I hope I inspired a few people. And now I’m running into clients who I never met who are inspired by the prairies. So it’s growing.

Lee Smith [00:57:18] So what is your philosophy of conservation?

David Braun [00:57:25] Well, I probably have had lots of philosophies. My first my first one while I was at the Nature Conservancy is get up every morning and run as fast as you can headlong into a brick wall and just keep doing it because that’s the only way you’re going to get anything accomplished is keep trying. Get knocked down, get up and do it again.

David Braun [00:57:50] And that’s that’s if you if you’re if you’re going to get frustrated with the first loss you have, you’re not cut out for conservation. You need to you need to be able to take a loss and keep going.

David Braun [00:58:07] Another philosophy I have is that it takes all kinds, you know. I, I don’t care whether you’re a pure tree hugger or a tax-driven conservation mogul. It takes everybody. It’s the whole world we’re trying to save. So I work with everybody in any place to get who will do some conservation.

David Braun [00:58:44] And what else?

Lee Smith [00:58:53] Why do you do it? Why do you run into a brick wall full speed?

David Braun [00:59:01] Well, I mean, there’s there’s a lot of ways to talk about that. There was one memorable moment when I decided to stop being a biologist and become a conservationist.

David Braun [00:59:15] I was I was working on the border between Panama and Colombia in a place called Darién. And I had been there for months in a rain forest and hadn’t been dry for at least a month. And I was exhausted and tired. And I’d just climbed to the top of this mountain from which I could see millions of acres of undisturbed rainforest.

David Braun [00:59:44] And I sat there catching my breath, having my lunch and thinking about my life. I was probably 28 or 9 then, and I thought I could keep on slogging through these rainforests, studying nature. Or I could be involved in trying to conserve it. And I just had to look in my own heart and say, “I want to be part of making sure this is always here and I’ll let somebody else study it.”

David Braun [01:00:19] So I came down off that mountain and went to law school.

David Braun [01:00:23] I discovered after I left the Nature Conservancy that my true calling is entrepreneur and that I’m I’m not a very good biologist and I’ve got a brother who’s a world-class biologist and I’m around world-class biologists all the time, so I know what good ones are.

David Braun [01:00:46] I’m not a very good lawyer.

David Braun [01:00:49] But I’m really good at figuring out how to to put together organizations and make them and give them a mission and a goal. And I and I realized I could combine that skill with my passion for conservation.

David Braun [01:01:08] And so I set out to create with partners, I want to I want to really credit my partners, particularly Beyrl Armstrong, for working with me and younger partners – Cassie Gresham, Shane Keefer – for working with me to make these companies happen.

David Braun [01:01:27] But the but the idea that I don’t think has happened many times before was to make a for-profit company that our business is to help landowners do conservation. And so we use all the tools of business, we use marketing and sales, we use accountants and and law, but we bring all those tools to bear as a service company.

David Braun [01:02:06] And Plateau Land and Wildlife was the first company. And it was it was born out of a realization that Texas had a unique law, a law that would reward landowners for managing wildlife with property tax reductions. And actually, the Nature Conservancy, while I was the director, was part of the coalition that changed the Constitution and made that possible. And then that happened in 1995.

David Braun [01:02:42] Three years later, Beyrl and I looked around and said, “Nobody’s using this law. What can we do?” So we started Plateau and started sort of marketing educational seminars to teach people to to use the law to convert their land to wildlife management.

David Braun [01:03:05] And this year, we passed over the mark of a million and a half acres of converted land. We’ve helped landowners who were probably grazing their land just to get a tax break give up that overgrazing of their land and start being wildlife managers – about 4000 landowners.

David Braun [01:03:34] And what what was your question? What do I think about it?

David Braun [01:03:37] I think it is a crucial, it’s a crucial another step in the conservation toolbox. I have more than once been accused of being a sellout because I’m not doing conservation for the pure reasons. “You’re just getting rich.” Well, actually, I think I’m making people richer by enjoying their land more and and having a purpose for being a landowner and and contributing to conservation.

David Braun [01:04:09] And then the next company was our law firm, Braun and Gresham. And what we realized is there was a huge underserved market of landowners who didn’t have lawyers who understood what they were interested in and what they needed.

David Braun [01:04:29] And so we started focusing on what a rural landowner really needed. And we’ve gotten huge acceptance and and built a, I now have 12 lawyers full-time, just working on working with landowners, many of whom want to do conservation.

David Braun [01:04:58] Well, and I’ll comment on this.

David Braun [01:05:00] So you asked me my philosophy of conservation. This is more like my philosophy of the world.

David Braun [01:05:08] The the human civilization is advancing through hunter-gatherers and agriculture and princes and kings and and empires. But where we have arrived is the most powerful force human civilization has ever seen, and that is capitalism. And capitalism is transformed the world in unimaginable ways in the last couple of centuries.

David Braun [01:05:36] And it’s important that conservation be connected to capitalism in order to succeed. And that’s my philosophy. Not having, not having the same goals necessarily of capitalism, but having the power of capitalism, putting capital to work.

David Braun [01:05:57] And so if I if I could live another 100 years, I would start companies that raise capital and do conservation. And I don’t have to, because there’s a whole generation of younger conservationists doing exactly that. And I mean, I get to work with a few of them. People are putting hundreds of millions of dollars behind conservation capitalism. And that’s the next wave.

David Braun [01:06:25] It’s another it’s another it’s another opening of of hearts and minds. And art is doing that.

David Braun [01:06:32] I guess what comes to my mind right now is how how fundamentally artists are observers and lovers of nature and are are in one way or another processing processing light and color and water and air.

David Braun [01:07:00] I mean my artist wife tells me that one of the hardest things to do is is catch the shimmering of water and light on water, to capture that in a, you know, painting.

David Braun [01:07:15] Well, here’s a story that that I will never forget.

David Braun [01:07:20] There’s a writer for Texas Monthly named Mimi Schwartz, and she’s a really successful San Antonio born and raised writer. And I got to travel with Mimi and her husband to Mexico City, where we visited an amazing aviary where the the the biggest chicken manufacturer in Mexico, the Tyson Foods of Mexico, this guy had brought pheasants and and birds of paradise and quetzals from all over the world into his aviary.

David Braun [01:08:04] And we got to tour this aviary of all these wild birds with plumes and colors and fancy wattles. And after walking around for an hour, Mimi said, Mimi who is an expert on design and fashion, said, “I now see that no fashion designer has ever come up with anything new. They just copied what these birds did in nature. All of these things are what we do with fashion.” So we’re all borrowing from nature, inspired by it. And that’s that’s what artists are doing. Yeah.