TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEWEE: Mickey Burleson (MB)
INTERVIEWER: David Todd (DT)
DATE OF INTERVIEW: June 19, 1999
LOCATION: Temple, Texas
TRANSCRIBER: Robin Johnson
SOURCE MEDIA: Mini-DV
REEL: 2012

Numbers mark the time codes for the VHS tape copy of the interview. “Misc.” typically refers to miscellaneous off-camera conversations or background noise.

DT: Where do you think you might have gotten your conservation interest?
02:05 – 2012
MB: You know, it’s a hard question to answer because I don’t really think I had a mentor within my family. I—except—unless it was my mother who kicked me out the back door and said go have fun in the backyard. And that’s exactly what I did. And we lived on the edge of town and also my father worked six days a week, had grown up in the area and he had eleven brothers and sisters, a number of whom had farms outside of town. And so Sundays, we went out to one of his brothers’ farms generally to spend the day. And so I had an opportunity to be outdoors. And they really didn’t care what I did so long as I entertained myself. My dad did recognize my interest in bugs and made me a butterfly net as a child. I spent a lot of time catching bugs, looking at rocks, picking up rocks, borrowing his hammer to break rocks open. I just had a—it was just something the lord gave me I guess you’d have to say. I had a natural interest in nature and loved it, enjoyed the wonders of nature and—and then about the seventh or eighth grade, my mother—my grandfather died. My mother inherited some money and she decided that what she wanted to do with that money was take her girls, she had three daughters, on trips. She liked to travel. My dad didn’t particularly like to so she began to take us every summer on some trip throughout the U.S. And we started in the West and I fell in love with the west. I love the scenes I saw from the windows. Every time we stopped and we stopped a lot, because mother was patient and enjoyed stopping and every time we stopped, I picked up rocks, I looked at insects, I looked at the scenery and it was all just wonderful to me because I’d really never spent much time outside of the state. And…
DT: Which state did you grow up in?
04:04 – 2012
MB: I grew up in Texas. I grew up right here in Central Texas in Belton, Texas. And Belton is sort of one of those—one of those—those locations that you kind of call edge country. It’s between two ecosystems. Part of it is in the Blackland Prairie and part of it is in the hill country and the Lampasas Cut Plains, I guess you might say. So we had a little bit of both and—and I enjoyed the opportunity to—to experience both ecosystems at close range as a child. But I just took to it. It’s one of those things I took to and I also had an upbringing in the Christian faith and I was in awe of the creator and the creation. Just thought it was unbelievable that we had all this wonder around us. I was full of wonder as a child and still haven’t completely lost it. And I—I wish every child and every human being could experience that kind of feeling that I have for the natural world. And I felt a great debt to the creator because I loved it so much, it brought me so much joy and pleasure. And always felt that, you know, he wanted me to take care of it and that it was really one of my duties as a Christian and as a human being who was so blessed with life
05:25 – 2012
MB: here on this wonderful planet and on this beautiful earth, that I needed to do my part to take care of it and to just enjoy it. It was a responsibility to get to know it. It was, to me, just as important as the written word because, to me, it was kind of like a word from God. It was a revealing of him. And so I—I really feel I was motivated partly because of that faith that I had as well as just opportunities to be outdoors which a lot of children just don’t have nowadays. Their—their—their opportunities are very limited partly because they don’t have the time to go anywhere. The parents are so busy. Both parents are working. Partly because it’s much more comfortable indoors in air conditioning, which we didn’t have, so I was just more comfortable outdoors. And partly because it—I’d lived in a small town and I was close to the country, a lot of relatives in the country.
DT: As you grew up and later got married, I understood that you took a lot of trips and shared a lot of interests with your husband, Bob.
06:34 – 2012
MB: Well Bob introduced me to a new kind of enjoyment in the outdoors. I’d never really done a lot or hiking. I’d never done any river running and so he introduced me to those things and I loved them. And we had to teach ourselves the skills required for river running because there were no teachers in Texas at the time. And really when we began, there were very few women doing that sort of thing. This was the early ‘60’s, the beginning of the modern women’s movement and women were—in the ‘50’s were staying at home and not doing anything like this. This was, I mean, in high school, you
07:16 – 2012
MB: didn’t even want to take P.E. That was things—that was something boys did, you know, not something girls did. And so, I was—I took to it naturally and I did feel kind of like a pioneer. Of course, the pioneer women were out doing those kinds of things but that had been a hundred years earlier and the women had drifted away from having that ability to get outdoors and, you know, face the elements and fight off the Indians and mountain lions and all those things.
DT: Do you there’s a different role for women and men in conservation?
07:55 – 2012
MB: Oh, I think that to a degree maybe, yes. I think that—that tho—that that’s going to change. At—what I see in the organizations I work with and in the agency I worked with, was that I was one of the first woman say on the Parks and Wildlife Commission. I was the—actually the third woman to be appointed. And all three of us had been members of—of a volunteer workforce. We had not been professional women or career women. And the fourth woman was the same, I would say. And we probably couldn’t carry our own with the men always just because they didn’t have quite the same respect for us that they would have had for a career person or a professional. The latest appointment to the Parks and Wildlife Commission, Carol Dinkins, is a lawyer who can carry her weight with any professional man and she has, I would say, tremendous respect among the men. And I think you’ll see more and more women like that coming onto the commission and more and more of an equal status there. I never felt out of the
09:08 – 2012
MB: loop. I always had a responsible position when I was on the commission and I think I was respected for my knowledge of—of the natural world which most of the men didn’t have in the same way that I did. Most of the men on the commission were hunters and fishers first and foremost and they all enjoyed the outdoors for other reasons and admired it. But their main love was hunting and fishing. And I hunted and fished a little bit, but my main love was hiking and canoeing and just an appreciation for the outdoors in general. And I think that might be a little bit of difference there that more men maybe are interested in the hunting and fishing aspects and less women. Or women are not as strongly interested. It’s not their main focus. But that may change too because less men are hunting nowadays and less—more men are getting outdoors to bird and do other activities. So all of that’s going to change.
DT: You were talking about difference between men and women in conservation. Can you talk about the mandate you see from your religion and your spirituality for conservation?
10:39 – 2012
MB: I think it’s my own personal interpretation and I think there have been many others who have interpreted the—the—say the written word in that way. And just, it makes sense. If—if the God you worship, you consider also the creator of this earth, it just makes sense to pay him or her that respect and to—to appreciate the creation and look upon it as an—as something that speaks of the creator. And I’ve always been puzzled that there wasn’t more teaching within Christian church and even other churches that believe in a creator
11:23 – 2012
MB: of the earth, more teachings to encourage believers to respect the creation, to—to manage it in a way that’s sustainable and to appreciate the wonders of creation. And I—I don’t understand fully why it’s not being taught but I know there’s been some fear that people might begin to worship the creation instead of the creator and they—I don’t know why they think that people would confuse the two in their minds but some people seem to think they do and I think primitive groups may have. I know that this worried me so much that, at some point in the ’90’s, early ‘90’s I believe or the late ‘80’s, I spearheaded a drive within our area church—churches to focus on environmental stewardship. And set up a conference, invited some churches from—a church from the Dallas area that had been very active in environmental stewardship and taught this in their church. It was a Baptist Church. I was a member of the Baptist Church in Troy, Texas at the time but we made this an interdenominational conference and we invited everybody in the area and got good publicity. That’s the advantage of having an advertising background. I can usually generate good publicity for my projects. But the attendance was so poor—we had a wonderful program, had wonderful contributors. It was an all-day program and we had such little interest, even though we got fantastic coverage. And we didn’t get a lot of support from our own pastor who I think was leery that something—something new age might be going on in his church and he was worried about sponsoring something like that. But it—it—we tried again. Somebody who came to that conference was local, from a church in Belton, Methodist Church, and he decided he wanted to have something similar at his church. Again, the attendance was very poor. We had a tremendous program. And it was very disheartening to me and I think we just kind of dropped the ball on that effort. Bob was helping me and he was one of the speakers and—and I had—I just feel that—that Christian leaders, pastors, seminary, professors, are letting God down. And it—and the believers down by not teaching that as an important duty of Christians. And I think it would really change the nature of environmentalism in the U.S. if Christians consider that a major responsibility of theirs and sort of being a major responsibility to get out and know the creation. And I don’t think many of them consider that very important nor do I think many of the leaders, the modern day Christian writers, modern day academics within seminaries. So, I’m discouraged but hopeful because I think that eventually that may come and hope that some time in the future I can have something else to do with encouraging that effort.
DT: Will you talk about some of the opportunities and challenges in trying to promote conservation?
15:07 – 2012
MB: Oh, I would say that the news media is pretty sympathetic. I’ve never had problems getting the news media interested in covering conservation issues. We’ve had a lot of help and I think that the reason that modern polls are showing that there’s such a big interest and support for conservation, among the general public, is because they’ve been exposed to so much in the way of environmental programming on public television and in the main—or the main networks as well. I think there’s been a lot of good coverage. I know in our trips, in the early ‘60’s, we very easily attracted journalists who wanted to cover what we were doing and their readers were enthusiastic, wanted to be involved,
15:55 – 2012
MB: wrote letters, asked if they could go on trips. More journalists wanted to come and that coverage of our early trips and of—and especially of Douglas, Justice William O. Douglas coming to Texas to do his book was very instrumental in increasing the interest within the state and support within the state for conservation. And I still that happening. There are not very many papers that have environmental writers. There are more papers that have outdoor writers and most outdoor writers are hunters and fishers and the stories that they write are generally about hunting and fishing and they do write conservation articles about game species and the—the need for more habitat protection of the species that they are focused upon. But their interest in other areas are generally minimal. There are exceptions among sports—among outdoor writers. And I think many of them are trying to broaden their interests because they know the readership is falling off and there’s not as much interest in hunting and fishing. And so some of them have tried to make river trips or—or get interested in hiking and write articles about that but their articles are few and far between. Their real interests are in hunting and fishing. I would love to persuade editors all over the state to hire environmental writers. Well, the Houston Chronicle has a good environmental writer and a good outdoor writer and I think that’s one of the few papers who—that does.
DT: Can you tell about your friend who works for the Dallas paper?
17:37 – 2012
MB: Frank Talbert? Frank Talbert went on many of our early trips in the ‘60’s and oh, he went on—he was probably invited on every trip that we went with Justice Douglas. I don’t know if he covered all of them but he did cover many of them and—and gave us quite a few full page stories in the Dallas Morning News. That generated interest statewide and made a lot of other reporters on other papers envious of him and they clamored to come along. And all of this was wonderful, as far as we were concerned, for promoting conservation and environmental work in Texas. It probably did as much good as Douglas’ book did but it—it generated so much interest that we had politicians wanting to come along. We had Representative Bob Hogue(?) who headed up the agricultural committee go on our Enchanted Rock trip as did, I think Representative Jake Pickle. And it was wonderful having them. We also had the President and Ladybird and Stewart Udall who was Secretary of the Interior and others of the President’s staff and cabinet members and others of the Supreme Court at the time Abe Fortas and his wife come along on the Hill Country tour. And, at that time, we persuaded–Jim Bohmer and I persuaded Ladybird that she should make a trip through one of the canyons and the Big Bend and she thought that was a wonderful idea and followed through on it and brought all kinds of reporters from Washington and from up east who then wrote up the wonders of Texas. And the Rio Grande River which was very beneficial to the kind of work we wanted to do in conservation along the river. So I’ve had wonderful experiences with the press generally. I’ve been a little perturbed sometimes when I was on the Parks and Wildlife Commission that some of the outdoor writers were so protective of the turf, their turf for hunting and fishing that they would sometimes attack
19:42 – 2012
MB: the park system or write unfavorable things about the park system because they were so afraid that the park system, which gets separate money from the Fish and Wildlife people and the Parks and Wildlife Department. These two divi—major divisions get their money from different sources but they’re always so afraid that Parks which is generally in trouble financially is going to steal money from Wildlife and Wildlife money mostly goes to protect game and–and sports fish. But anyway, they’re really wrong about that. The Parks division has never used the Wildlife money and yet many sportsman, many fisherman particularly, use the parks avidly and—and that’s been a little bit of a problem because it seems to me some of that money that fisherman put into the system ought to go to those parks that are primarily fisherman parks. But that doesn’t always work out that way. There’s a very—lot of jealousy there and when I first went on the Commission, that was a big issue among commissioners. There was a lot of animosity between these two groups, these ones who were primarily hunters and fishers and these ones who primarily cared about the parks. But that’s changed too. The last comm—two commissions I was on, that was a lot less of a problem and this last commission that I was on, the new commissioners had really broad interests. They cared about all the conservation issues. So I’m hopeful that it will continue to—to change and that that will be less and less of a problem.
DT: Would you speculate a little bit about the changes in political attitudes among the Democrats and Republicans, what makes them different?
21:49 – 2012
MB: In Texas, I don’t see a whole lot of difference personally.
DT: Between Democrats and Republicans?
21:55 – 2012
MB: No, in—yeah, on conservation issues. There are a few Democrats who have been pretty strong conservationists but they’re few and far between. Some of the biggest opponents to some of the things I wanted to do were Demo—conservative Democrats who probably were more conservative than some of the modern day Republicans. The one who fought me most getting on the commission was a Democrat, Bill–Senator Bill Simms, who was head of the Natural Resources Committee of the Senate. But he—he was one of the ones incidentally that we took through the lower canyons before he was a senator. But he was worried about me. He thought, I guess, based on his knowledge of my participation on that very trip, decided I was too much of a conservationist to be on the Parks and Wildlife Commission and I’d probably do something damaging to landowners and he represented rural district with a lot of landowners. And I think he found out that that was wrong and I think we were getting along okay before it was all over. But, the—I served when I first went on the commission with probably a majority of Democrats, I think it was a majority of Democrats. No, it really—yeah, it had been—I was with the second bunch that Ann Richards had appointed so there were six of us Democrats and three Republicans. But toward the end, I was one of only two Democrats left on the Commission. But the Commission was very bipartisan. We worked together well, especially toward the end
23:28 – 2012
MB: and it—it was more of a division on other issues than political issues like that. And we had friends for conservation and boat parties and I do think that we had a stronger support from Governor Richards during her tenure for conservation and probably a—in general—of course, at the national you’re going to get a stronger report—support from Democrats than at the—than Republicans. But certainly in the state, I have not seen a big difference.
DT: Can you tell about your experience with the Nature Conservancy where you were a Chair?
MB: I was asked to be on the Parks and—on the Nature Conservancy Board primarily because of publicity that we had gained from an effort I was doing that was just a countywide effort and protecting roadside remnants that were managed by the county, roadside remnants of the prairie vegetation. And it had gotten a lot of coverage and one of the board members happened to live in this county and she took the stories to the rest of the board and they decided they wanted me on the board. And so I went on in 1980 and at that time, there were just two staff members and they hadn’t been there very long. There was a director and a secretary and the Nature Conservancy had been in existence in Texas for I think about twenty years. All on a volunteer effort. No support to speak of from the national office. They were doing all their work up east. They had big staffs in every little state up east but no staff in Texas and no money were they pouring into Texas. So I think Ned Fritz was on that board for many years and I don’t know who all else was on it. But they were mostly conservationists, scientists, academic types. And the national
25:54 – 2012
MB: office had begun to take a little more interest in Texas and I think that must be how it came about that we got some staff but that happened right before I went on. The—it was just beginning to grow, the—the effort in Texas because the national office decided to, you know, pay us some attention. And before that—by the time I went off the board after about six years, we did have a staff of about eight people but still much too small. We have much bigger staff now. Much too small for such a big state with so much unprotected area and so much land. Compared to the states in the east where they might have twenty-five people in Delaware or something. And that was the big fight during the years I was on there. And to just get more attention and more support from the national office, we—soon after I went on the board we got a new director and I was instrumental in hiring Andrew Sansom to be director of the Texas Parks and—the Texas Nature Conservancy, excuse me. And Andy has a lot of talent as you know and is a wonderful leader and really changed things for the Nature Conservancy in Texas, enabled us to get a lot of statewide publicity and to get involved in more worthwhile efforts. We had a lot of trouble raising money. You would think there was plenty of money in Texas and that’s what the national office thought. My goodness, y’all have got lots of money down there. You don’t need us. You don’t need our money. Go get your own money. And oh, we worked hard at it. Andy worked hard at it. He was very inventive in trying—in finding ways to dispose of projects that we couldn’t afford for one thing. Like Honey Creek which we took on. We were going to have to raise a million dollars and it seemed like a hundred million because of the lack of success we were having. But we were able to transfer it eventually to Parks and Wildlife which was a very good thing and—and they
28:06 – 2012
MB: added it to their Guadalupe River State Park which was one that Bob was instrumental in getting on when he was on the commission. But the…
DT: How has the Conservancy managed to be so successful in getting financial backing and corporate acceptance that I think has escaped many other conservation groups?
28:58 – 2012
MB: There are probably two reasons. One reason is…
(misc.)
29:09
MB: There are probably two reasons that the Nature Conservancy has had more success in the corporate world and getting that kind of sponsorship. And one is that they refuse to do any lobbying or take public stands on controversial issues. That way they don’t make enemies in the corporate world. And that’s—they decided to focus on their main goal which was to conserve needed natural areas and natural resources and—and to work cooperatively with landowners and corporate—the corporate world. And so, they’ve left that up to other organizations such as the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society. And so they’ve been very religious about that. They’ve not changed their mind on that even though they’ve had a lot of pressure from time-to-time to take a stand on particular areas. They—there are many individuals in the corporate world who really care about the
30:13 – 2012
MB: environment and care about conservation yet they—they’re there to make money off of some kind of natural resource generally. And so a lot of them feel some kind of obligation to pay back the—the resources that they—and to make some kind of a—anyway, pay back to the people for what they might have abused or used up. And there are just a lot of friends in the corporate world and many of them are sensitive to the abuse they might feel that they get from groups like the Sierra Club. So our—this Nature Conservancy National Organization has made a really strong point that you’re not to go out and offend these groups and—but to try to work with them. And there are a lot of friends out there who welcome that and who have been happy to work with us. There are lots of corporate lands that aren’t being utilized and that can be set aside either as a gift or as just as a preserve of some kind and some kind of conservation easement and we’ve been successful in working with corporations in that way and it’s a real benefit to them. We also have expertise on board to help corporations to know just how they might benefit tax-wise or some other way from cooperating with us and—and private landowners too. And so we’ve been able to—to help them in that way.
DT: You started a program at Nature Conservancy to applaud land steward who were private landowners. How did that start?
32:04 – 2012
MB: I recognized right away, and I wasn’t alone in recognizing it, but I recognized right away that there wasn’t any way the Nature Conservancy or Parks and Wildlife was going to be
32:14 – 2012
MB: able to purchase enough land and set enough land aside to really protect all the natural resources we needed to protect in the state. And we needed the help of private landowners and we needed to recognize the fact that many private landowners were doing a good job. They needed to be encouraged. I could see places with prairie remnants that were disappearing because the people who inherited them or who bought them didn’t recognize the value of what they had and they needed to know, they needed to be informed about what they had before they destroyed it. And so we—I encouraged the board, they were very receptive to the idea, I talked with Andy at length. He was very receptive to the idea and we started the Texas Land Steward Society which was an effort to honor those landowners who had been good stewards and in the process, inform them and educate them and also hopefully encourage others to follow their lead because of the honor that they might have received. And it has worked very well. It’s a program I’m proud of and the—we just need to pull in more landowners into that group and we need to, in some way, probably publicize the program a little more so that other landowners can learn by the work done by these exceptional landowners. I also managed to help the Parks and Wildlife Department set up something similar because when Andy came on board, he had liked the idea and he wanted to see the department have a similar program. They were already working with landowners in wildlife conservation and wildlife habitat conservation and so he and I helped to convince the department that they needed to expand that program to include an awards program, to honor not only those people who were active in wildlife habitat conservation because they wanted more hunters say to hunt their land and they want to improve the situation for deer and have
34:22 – 2012
MB: bigger deer. We wanted to honor those people who had just appreciated the fact that they had a native prairie on their place or who went to the trouble and expense to replicate a natural area on their place. So it was expanded to include those kinds of groups. And it’s been a very successful program.
DT: Can you talk about your role at the Parks and Wildlife Commission?
34:52 – 2012
MB: I went on the commission in 1992.
35:17 – 2012
MB: I went on the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission in 1992. I was appointed by Governor Ann Richards. And came on at a time that was not too friendly toward conservation. The political climate was just not a good time. It wasn’t wonderful like it was in the ‘60’s when everybody wanted to jump on board and be a part of this great new appreciation for the environment. I think that in the interim, a lot of the corporate world had come to realize that they were going to suffer from this and a lot of private landowners became fearful that they might suffer by the problems that they imagined would come about from the—and may well have come about from some of the enforcement of the Endangered Species Act. But it was a—a difficult time. There was less money for acquisition and I was very interested in acquisition because I realized that we did not have within the park system really good representative examples of all our major eco regions and certainly not many of our minor ones. Most of our parks had come on board because they were gifts or because we just kind of inherited them from an earlier time when there was not that kind of appreciation for those natural resources.
(misc.)
36:50 – 2012
MB: I saw a—a big change in the political climate as far as conservation was concerned from the ‘60’s and from the early years of—when Bob served on the commission in the ‘70’s even. It was much less friendly when I got there to the Parks and Wildlife Commission. It was twenty years between Bob’s appointment and mine or twenty years between the time he left, I think, and the time I went on. But there was more money, I think too, maybe during his time. And we had acquired a lot of additional parks in the intervening years and when I went on, the parks were in such need of repair and there was so much in the way of maintenance burden and expense that we were not meeting that everyone was very reluctant to spend anything on acquisition. We didn’t want to buy anything else if we couldn’t manage what we had. And that was a reasonable argument. I understood it very much but I could still see all these prairie remnants going by the wayside and our main mission was to preserve the natural resources and we weren’t doing it because most of our parks really didn’t protect the remnants of the native ecosystems which I thought was a very valuable mission and a very important part of our natural resources. We had parks that protected scenic areas and parks that were just good recreational sites. So I was very eager for more acquisition and very disappointed that there was very little
38:19 – 2012
MB: money for that. But most people on the commission were very, very concerned and concentrated on finding money to take care of maintenance and repairs. And–and also to open these other parks that we had acquired with public money and that had not been opened. We were getting a lot of political pressure to do that. And we did go ahead and open those parks. We found the money to do that. But—and we finally after about five years, got the money we needed but not enough to take care—or begin taking of the repair and maintenance needs. And that had to be done before we could look at acquisition again even though we could see in the future there’s going to be a tremendous need for more parks. Already was heavy usage of our parks and the population was growing by leaps and bounds and we didn’t have enough and things were going up in value. We needed to be buying. So acquisition was a major focus for me and we had to be inventive to find ways to acquire things, even when we had offers, fantastic offers of gifts to the Parks and Wildlife Department. We had a very great reluctance on the part of commission to accept these gifts. The beautiful Chinati Mountains and the Trans Pecos. Well one of the arguments against them was that we already had too much government owned land in the Trans Pecos. We didn’t have the Big Bend State Park open and developed like we should have bef—and we shouldn’t be buying another big piece of—not buying, we weren’t buying it. We were just going to accept it as a gift, accepting another piece out there and yet we could see in the future that we’d need it and it was a wonderful resource that ought to be protected for the public and what would the public think if they found out we rejected such a beautiful place? So it was hard to convince the commissioners. Some were real big hold-outs. Some key commissioners
40:16 – 2012
MB: on the acceptance of this gift. And I think one of the contributions I made that enabled us to go ahead and accept that gift was to convince the commissioners that we could bank gifts of land because we did not really have an obligation to the public if we did not spend the public’s money for acquisition to open that land yet. And we could just set that land aside, leave it undeveloped, not put money into it until we had time—the money to do that. And the other problem, in the Trans Pecos particularly, was that the landowners out there were screaming that they—any more public land would raise their taxes, their property taxes. And so there was such an outcry about that that we decided we would try to raise the money to try to make a payment in lieu of taxes to the County so that they would not lose that income when that piece of private property became public property. And Andy Sansom and Dan McNamara worked very hard to raise an endowment. They got endowment from the people who had owned the land previously and that made a big difference in the political opposition. The governor was pleased to back the project and we just didn’t have any outcry from the landowners because of that. And so we were able to bring that piece of land on and go ahead and bank it. And since then we’ve brought in some other projects that we’ve been able to bank that were gifts or that were mitigation properties that we didn’t spend public money on. And we’re just going to bank them until there’s money there to develop them. But we have them. We’re holding them. We’re protecting them and future generations will be able to enjoy them.
DT: Could you touch on some of the controversies that occurred while you were at the Parks and Wildlife Commission?
43:04 – 2012
MB: There were some controversial issues while I was on the commission that I had a special interest in and one of them was the Bastrop(?) Golf Course issue. I had a lot of questions about it. I really didn’t like it. I really didn’t want to do it. I just hated it. I was heartbroken that I felt that—very pressured to cooperate with the—the whole project. It was a project that came out—grew out of the need to switch from being—getting our funding from the general fund to getting our funding from a dedicated fund. We had been jerked around a lot frankly by legislators who had a lot of power over us when we were begging for money from the general fund who would say, okay, we’ll give you this money if you’ll do this project for us. And it would usually eat up anything extra we got because we’d have to do a project we wouldn’t have chosen to do. And there were some major projects, big money projects that we were forced to do. And so there was a desire on our part to find something that was—we did have a dedicated fund prior to that. I’ll back up a minute—which was the cigarette tax money. And it had been a good source of funding for parks and for conservation work for—since Bob was on the commission. I think that that funding came through while he was on the commission and was something Don Kennard helped to—to achieve for the parks department, I mean, for the Parks and Wildlife Commission. But that money was dwindling, the amount was dwindling and it didn’t relate in any way to what we did and so Andrew Sansom felt like a portion of the sporting good tax would just make better sense. It related to what we were doing. It was something that was growing instead of dwindling. And he—the big effort, I think the year before I came on the commission, or the spring during the session of the legislature, the spring I was appointed, the big effort had been to get a switch from funding of the
45:32 – 2012
MB: cigarette tax to funding from the sporting goods tax, a portion of that. And we had hoped that that funding would—we would be able to get a bigger portion every year as the need was shown to the legislature. And it did make good sense and it was a good idea and it was achieved. But it was achieved with the help of a legislator who wanted a golf course at Bastrop State Park.
(misc.)
46:09 – 2012
MB: And the legislator that was most helpful to us that was head of our committee that oversaw Parks and Wildlife Department, the Parks and Wildlife’s efforts and work in the legislature was–wanted to expand the golf course at Bastrop State Park. And I don’t know if promises were made. All I know is that we felt a strong obligation to this man to follow through with his wish. This was his big wish and he was our most helpful person in the legislature and we needed his support in the next session. And so it was a trade-off for us. We got funding that we thought was going to be much more helpful and would increase in the future and would permit us to do much more conservation around the state. I was not a member of the commission when this transaction took place so I didn’t feel a personal obligation to this man the way that the commissioners who were there and fought to get that change made—that change effected. And so I didn’t feel as strong a need to vote in favor of it and yet, the rest of the commissioners and the staff were very persuasive in telling me that really we owed this man this favor. And the people of the
47:38 – 2012
MB: Bastrop area had long maintained that this was an oral promise made to them when this park first came on board and they were helpful in getting–establishing this park, the Bastrop State Park. So they had maintained since Bob was on the commission that they deserved to have that golf course expanded, that that was a promise made to them. And when Bob was on the commission, our staff looked at it and looked hard to find out if there was any written record of this promise being made. They could not find a written record. And they maintained then—there was no Houston toad to worry about at the time. That was not a big issue then because I’m not sure we were into endangered species so much. But we—it was a very rare relic of a very small ecosystem and this, of course, I’m big on production of ecosystem remnants and not—I don’t worry quite as much about the individual species as I do these communities that I see disappearing because I think when you let a community go, you’re going to lose a lot of species. It may not be on the rare and endangered list yet but there are a lot of threatened species there and they may—there may be twenty of them on the rare and endangered list ten years down the road. So I—I much prefer to focus on those ecosystem. And I—there never was—I had brought up this point a time or two that the staff never did come down big on this during my tenure. It was big issue when Bob was there and the Houston toad was the focus when I was on the commission. Com—that was a big compromise and I had gone ahead and told the commission, yes, I was going to vote for it. Reluctantly, unhappily but I was going to vote for it because I did like the idea of the sporting goods tax. But the day of the vote, when it came down, I looked out in that audience, there was some very persuasive arguments made against it by Sierra Club and the Audubon Society and I knew these groups had supported my appointment and I just couldn’t bring myself to vote against it. So I abstained but that wasn’t—I abstained publicly but that really wasn’t very helpful to anything because it was going to pass and I knew it was going to pass. I just couldn’t bring myself to vote for it though. But I didn’t do anything to compromise on that except, in a sense, you’d have to say it was a compromise to get the sporting goods tax which was more important to the department and to future conservation than protecting that additional land that we lost when we developed more—bigger golf course, nine more holes. So it’s a trade-off that I wasn’t very happy about making but maybe it was worth making and I was—it was worth my abstaining instead of voting against it. Another issue was the hunting in State Parks. This was something else that happened the session that I came on the commission and I didn’t have much to do or anything to do with the decision to get the legislature to permit hunting in State Parks. The former commissioners who were just going off were the ones who got together with some of the other commissioners who were staying on and who dashed to the legislature fearful that the new commissioners would not support this idea and—and won the support they needed to get this passed. Ann Richards was very opposed to it. Many of the legislators were not enthusiastic about it because it had been a long tradition not to hunt in State Parks and they felt like a lot of people who used State Parks would be unhappy about it. But hunters felt like those parks were not being used very much in the winter and they really needed a lot of extra public land because getting so expensive for people to hunt on private land. The leases were getting expensive and so a lot of people were quitting hunting and they were not having the support in the general population that they really wanted to keep hunting alive as a tradition. So it was a very emotional thing
51:50 – 2012
MB: for the people who were big hunting advocates. And I found, on the commission, I was told before I went on by a former legislator that you’re going to find out that those supporters of hunting are very—almost—it’s almost like a religion to them. It’s a cult. They worship it. And I thought, oh gosh, that’s a real exaggeration. My husband was a big hunter. My daughter’s a big hunter. They loved it but, you know, it wasn’t—it didn’t affect them in that way. But I would say that that’s almost the case. People are very emotional about hunting. Men are very emotional about hunting. They love it and I tried to understand it fully. And, as a woman, it’s harder to understand. That may be one of the differences between men and women. I hunt but I don’t have a real passion for it. I mainly hunt because my husband and children hunt and I go along. I like to be outdoors. It’s just another activity I can do outdoors but I’d probably rather be hiking but I don’t have any opposition to it. And I found that people probably love hunting because of their childhood experiences. That’s when they get emotionally attached to it. They learn to hunt with some adult man that they really admire who was a mentor to them and it gave them a sense of confidence and independence and power and they also learned to love the outdoors and enjoy the outdoors and there were many other reasons that they enjoyed hunting, the camaraderie, the overnight camping or the time around the campfire. There’s just a whole lot that they associate with hunting and it’s not the killing of the animal that they are so mad about. It’s just the whole hunting scene and their childhood experiences. And they want to pass on that tradition to their own children and they—they have a strong attachment to it. And I can understand it better when I look at it like that. And I found that many—nearly all my friends in the outdoors who had hiked and canoed with me for years were hunters. So I knew that many had broader interests. It was just a select few who just were so—they were powerful select few but they just considered that their main goal to keep hunting alive. But anyway, the hunting in State Parks, I’m rambling but the hunting in State Parks issue is something that they felt like would—if we permitted hunting in State Parks would keep the tradition alive. Permit those people who couldn’t afford to hunt to hunt and have a—give them a broader constituency for hunting. And I didn’t have a say in that decision. But what came out of the legislature was that—a promise from the agency that okay, if—if you don’t really support this fully, we’ll give you a trade-off. We will open our wildlife management areas which we had as much land there as we do in the State parks. And we’ll open our wildlife management areas to the public, the general public. We’ll let people go in there and bird and hike and camp and canoe and we’ll just open them up as a trade-off. If people are going to use the parks for hunting, we’ll let them use the wildlife management areas for other activities. It was a wonderful trade-off. It was a wonderful compromise and I wasn’t about to let the commission or the staff forget it. Year in and year out, I harped on, are we opening up those wildlife management areas? How many have we opened up? What’s our plan?
DT: Wildlife management areas have been traditionally used for hunting?
55:33 – 2012
MB: Yes, they’ve been traditionally used for hunting. They’ve been bought with hunter license—stamp money and fisher’s—hunters and fisherman’s stamp money and also the sporting good tax on the equipment they use at the federal level has—lots of money been
55:50 – 2012
MB: poured into Texas through that and—and—that program. And Texas—they match what we sell, say, in licenses. We get millions of dollars every year from the feds, from the sporting goods tax for wildlife programs. Most of it goes for game animals and fish—sport fish but more and more of it is going to help the non-game species which is wonderful. We need—those species have brought interest and people want to see them protected. So it was a trade-off that I think was certainly worth it. They’ve been—the Parks Department has been very careful, at least during the time of the—and the Wildlife Department during the time I was on the commission—been very careful in not abusing the right to hunt State Parks, making sure that they didn’t hunt all of them in one area the same weekend or the same week so that some in one region would always be open to hikers and—and other users. And I’ve also—I also spent a good bit of time reminding the commission that there was a little phrase in that law that said, so you may hunt—you MAY hunt in the parks so long as you do not interfere with this use by other traditional users. And so they’ve been pretty careful about that. Really our parks don’t get the use they ought to in the winter because we have wonderful winters in Texas for getting outdoors for hiking and—and birding and we don’t have very much use of those parks. And if hunters want to use it during that time, I don’t see anything wrong with that especially if the outdoor users can be using the wildlife management areas year round. I think…
DT: Would you talk about the fate of the Natural Heritage program?
57:54 – 2012
MB: As you know, that program…
(misc.)
58:06 – 2012
MB: You asked about the Natural Heritage Program. This was something that was initiated when I was on the board of the Texas Nature Conservancy. Previous to the time that we had the Heritage program in Texas, I had sort of been the local heritage program because I was identification chairman and that was my role to identify sites that needed protection, that sheltered endangered species and prioritize their need for protection. So it was kind of a relief to get the Heritage Program here because they were much more professional and scientific and could—had the ability to do a better job and a bigger job.
DT: At the commission?
58:49 – 2012
MB: Actually it was set up in partnership with the Nature Conservancy at the General Land Office because Parks and Wildlife Department, at that time, did not want it, was not friendly toward the idea. And it stayed at the General Land Office for a number of years, probably six years—five or six years and then was transferred over the Parks and Wildlife Department which was a more nor—natural place for it. It was the appropriate place for it. And it got pretty good funding. A lot of work was done during that time.
59:22 – 2012
MB: But this was also the time when landowners began to get very unhappy and worried about what might happen if the Endangered Species Act was really enforced. And they became very fearful because of the scare stories that they read in the press and heard about. And they became mobilized to fight the Endangered Species Act and they were really opposed to the heritage—Natural Heritage Program. Part of that animosity toward the Natural Heritage Program probably occurred because of the practice of some of the biologists at that time—and botanists—to just go onto private lands without getting permission. And there were lots of rumors that they were doing that and I know for a fact some had done that. And I warned them numerous times when I was with the Conservancy about what was going to happen if they continued that practice. They were going to create tremendous animosity among landowners and it did happen. And—but that wasn’t the only thing. Of course, the Endangered—the fears about the Endangered Species Act was part of what prompted this whole revolution by landowners and this big front that they presented to the legislature to fight this sort of thing. And the—the legislature just told us that we needed to, you know, abolish that program and we did. We abolished the program at the wish of the legislature and they did—they requested that because of the pressure from private landowners. And so that’s what happened and it was transferred back to the Nature Conservancy which was a good—is a good location for it.
DT: Would you give us a message to future generations for what you think is important to tell?
1:01:29 – 2012
MB: I would just say, don’t give up. Don’t give up ever. And I’m not the first person to say that but maybe the first person to say that about the environment. Don’t give up fighting for what’s right because we’re on the right side. And population. I know Bob’s mentioned that but that’s the biggie. We’ve just got to do something about population because nothing is going to really matter if we don’t and nothing else is going to be effective if we don’t. And just find some way to use the environment in a sustainable fashion. Make that a big priority. Use your vote because the great majority of people really do care, really do support conservation, really want things to happen but they don’t really show it with their vote. And legislators are not convinced because there’s so much money there to oppose conservation and most legislators are in somebody’s pocket so, you know, but they will listen to the voters if the voters really care and express themselves.
End of reel 2012
End of interview with Mickey Burleson