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

Interviewee: Molly Stevens
Date: January 5, 2023
Site: San Antonio, Texas
Reel: 5055
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: Stevens_Molly_NCItem34_SanAntonioTX_20230105_Reel5055_Audio.mp3

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

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

Molly Stevens [00:00:18] I grew up in Flint, Michigan. You may have heard of it.

Lee Smith [00:00:23] And what was that like? How was Flint when you were young?

Molly Stevens [00:00:26] So when I grew up in Flint, in Flint, it was considered one of the best cities in the country. The birth of community schools was there. The Mott Foundation had made a big investment in public education. It was one of the first cities to, school systems to integrate. And the middle class was doing really well. General Motors’ operation probably employed 70% of the population there, and people were doing very well. So it was kind of an idyllic town to grow up in, believe it or not.

Lee Smith [00:01:11] So cast your mind back to your early days. And was there anything that sparked an interest in the outdoors, any experience or aspect of Flint that sparked your interest in the environment?

Molly Stevens [00:01:27] Not so much Flint, although I did spend a lot of time outside as a child. Those were the days when you would hop on your bike and go until the streetlights came on. But my family had a cabin in northern Michigan, on a lake in northern Michigan. My grandfather bought this property and he and my father and uncle built our cabin in the ’20s. It’s about to be 100 years old.

Molly Stevens [00:01:56] And so it was a place where as soon as the school year was out, we packed up the car and the dogs and the cat and went up to the cabin and stayed there all summer until we were old enough to be going to camps and things like that.

Molly Stevens [00:02:11] So. So, yes, I spent lots of time in the woods. I spent a lot of time on the water, canoeing, sailing just outside all the time.

Molly Stevens [00:02:24] And my grandfather especially loved fishing and hunting. And so I learned to fish as a really young kid. I still love to fish.

Molly Stevens [00:02:35] So, yeah, that would have been my Mecca as a child growing up.

Lee Smith [00:02:40] So would you say your grandfather was kind of your mentor with regards to the natural world?

Molly Stevens [00:02:47] More my father. My grandfather wasn’t well when I was by the time I was five years old or so. He was suffering with heart disease. And so it was more my my father, who had a real passion for the out-of-doors.

Molly Stevens [00:03:03] And and an experience that I had multiple times as a young child and even as a as an adult with my own children was going back into the woods to a stand of virgin white pine that hadn’t been taken off at the turn of the century that was still there. And you had to kind of bushwhack through the woods in order to get to this particular place. But it was sort of a get up early in the morning and go to the white pines. And that was another, you know, kind of a holy experience as a child and as an adult.

Molly Stevens [00:03:41] So you kind of came through some new-growth pine trees and such, not white pines, a few white pines, but but but mostly jack pine and that sort of thing, until you came to this stand of open, an open landscape with these enormous 100-foot tall pine trees. So it was it was kind of a cathedral feeling coming, coming into that space.

Lee Smith [00:04:13] What did it sound like? Do you remember what it sounded like?

Molly Stevens [00:04:18] Well.

Lee Smith [00:04:20] Did it sound different from, you know, like.

Molly Stevens [00:04:24] I suppose it must have. I can’t tell you that I noticed that necessarily. But of course it would hold the breeze in a way that might be different from in the shorter, shorter trees in the brush landscape. It would have been a more open environment and probably hold the sounds of the of the breeze better than elsewhere.

Lee Smith [00:04:49] Was there anything in your education that maybe sparked some awareness or interest in the environment? A classmate, a teacher?

Molly Stevens [00:05:01] No, I can’t. You know, I think about that sometimes. I’m very invested in that now in my current work and volunteer work. But there was no sense of outdoor education, nature education going on in my world at all. In the science classes that I took, there was no sort of education about natural science. It was all other kinds of book science.

Molly Stevens [00:05:33] The other piece to my childhood, perhaps as significant as Beaver Lake, was that I was a camper at a camp every summer from the time I was seven years old until maybe 15. And then it wasn’t cool anymore until I went back as a camp counselor. And I did that for five summers.

Molly Stevens [00:05:53] And that was a camp where you started out in the Circle Unit, which was very nurturing and sort of intimate. And then the Hill Unit, which was more wooded, and then the Primitive Unit where you were well away from the rest of the camp and you were in tents as opposed to cabins. And then when you graduated from the Primitive Unit, you would do the Michigan canoe trip and then you would do the Canadian canoe trip.

Molly Stevens [00:06:22] So there was a whole process whereby you graduated until you did like a three-week trip up in Quetico in in Canada. And that experience was the other piece to my childhood that really landed the love of nature and, and the out-of-doors for me.

Lee Smith [00:06:49] Did you hear? Yeah. It’s okay.

Molly Stevens [00:06:51] Sorry, I said I said I didn’t do that, and went, “Whack. Whack.”

Lee Smith [00:06:55] That’s okay. That’s okay. People understand that. Was there anything in popular culture – a book, a movie, a magazin, that maybe piqued your interest?

Molly Stevens [00:07:13] Yes. A little bit later in my life, I read a book called ‘The Woman’s Place is On Top”. It’s about an all-women’s climbing team that got a permit to climb in Nepal. And they climbed Annapurna, which is one of the big, big mountains in Nepal. And it was an amazing, it was an amazing book. It was from the inception of the idea to the fundraising that this team had to do to pull together the resources to do this trip. And then the climb itself in which one of the Sherpas and two of the climbers were killed in the process. But I read this book and when I closed the cover, I thought, “That’s, I’m going to save my money to do that. I want to go see those mountains and go to Nepal.” And then after that, I read everything I could kind of out there, there’s a lot of literature out there about mountain climbing and and such, and so I got pretty deep into that. That was in my 20s that that became in focus for me.

Lee Smith [00:08:27] So what was your first involvement with conservation work, it was probably as that counselor?

Molly Stevens [00:08:35] Well, so we were doing more, you know, nature recreation than we were doing conservation. But yes, that was, you know, you can’t help but understand when you see a pristine place like Quetico that there’s something very different going on there than the rest of the world. And fires still would come through there on occasion. And so it was sort of a naturally-managed, naturally-managed landscape. So, you know, certainly my awareness of protecting natural areas and such would have been piqued by all of those experiences.

Lee Smith [00:09:23] So what was your first conservation, your involvement in conservation work, you know, in a more formal way.

Molly Stevens [00:09:29] So stand-up conservation? Well, I will say that when I was at camp in the Primitive Unit, we did do some conservation work in in the woods there. That would have been, you know, when I was in my 14 or 15 years old. That was part of what we did – now, sort of akin to Conservation Corps. We did some trail building and some things along those lines.

Molly Stevens [00:09:56] But really I didn’t fully understand or connect the dots in terms of conservation until I came to work for the Nature Conservancy. I didn’t come from a science background, a conservation background. I came from a fundraising background to work for the Nature Conservancy, and so I had a lot to learn when I when I got there.

Molly Stevens [00:10:17] And I had great, great teachers like Jeff to help me. Jeff is a fabulous teacher. He, I still remember going down to the coast the first time. He was driving and just pointing out how to recognize birds on wires and birds on fence posts and what to look for. And, you know, he has always, always been a teacher, first and foremost, with his colleagues.

Lee Smith [00:10:46] So how did you land at the Nature Conservancy?

Molly Stevens [00:10:50] It was just the job of my dreams. I my husband and I had come back from a long trip and had decided we wanted to leave New Orleans. And we looked at three different regions in the country. We looked at the Bay Area. We looked at the Tri-City area of North Carolina, and the Hill Country. We had friends in all of those areas and we liked the environment and landscape and all of those areas. And he and I both found work in central Texas within a week of each other, and for me it was to come work for the Nature Conservancy as their Director of Development.

Lee Smith [00:11:31] And what is the Director of Development do?

Molly Stevens [00:11:33] Fundraising. It was, well, sort of public affairs. And always I was working, I was responsible for our marketing and communications team, but also the whole fundraising piece, which is developing relationships with individuals, corporate fundraising, and foundation, grant fundraising, and so developing the plans and, and deploying the human resources and such to build those relationships throughout the state.

Lee Smith [00:12:12] So you came from a background of fundraising. What kind of changes did you make or what kind of tweaks did you make to the system that was already going?

Molly Stevens [00:12:23] Big difference between fundraising for United Way and coming to a then very small organization. I think the Nature Conservancy, when I came there, was maybe 8 or 10 people, or something like that. So, the United Way has a, it’s a big machine that you kick into gear every year with a workplace fund raising. We were raising $18, 19 million a year in New Orleans at the time. So it was a big operation, mostly supervision and management of both a significant staff team, as well and lots and lots and lots and lots of volunteers. So that was that was that job.

Molly Stevens [00:13:09] This was kind of a start-up effort. There hadn’t been a lot of comprehensive fundraising going on with the Nature Conservancy when I arrived there. I could maybe count on two hands the number of foundations that were invested in the organization. Pretty significant group of individuals. A number of wealthy people in San Antonio had been involved as donors for a long time. They, you know, the organization was there in San Antonio. There’s a lot of significant conservation interest in San Antonio, and a lot of those individuals have been brought into the tent before before I joined the team.

Molly Stevens [00:13:55] But nobody had ever written a fundraising plan for the organization before, for example. So, you know, looking at the year and looking at what kind of resources we need and developing a plan to to do all of that, that was, that was, I think, relatively new to the organization. So it was pretty different. It was it was much a start, a more of a start-up effort than what I had been used to.

Lee Smith [00:14:23] So what kind of changes did you make? Well, what kind of, in this plan that you wrote, what were some of the strategies for fundraising?

Molly Stevens [00:14:34] Well, Jeff, remind me the name of …

Jeff Weigel [00:14:39] Didn’t we invent the Chairman’s Circle?

Speaker 2 [00:14:40] We did.

Molly Stevens [00:14:41] Back in that time. Yeah, the Chairman Circle. And I’m trying to think of the Mary Kay Cosmetics … Richard.

Jeff Weigel [00:14:47] Richard. Richard Bartlett.

Molly Stevens [00:14:49] Dick Bartlett.

Molly Stevens [00:14:52] Yeah. So, yeah, we. We. We created a number of sort of new systems within the organization. One was for our wealthy individuals, the Chairman’s Circle. Those were people who were giving $1,000 or more and really made an investment in building relationships all around the state.

Molly Stevens [00:15:13] We had a wonderful board, a very connected, powerful board, and deploying them to host events in their homes and communities that would bring in folks that they knew who might be interested in the work. And building this individual donor base was a significant piece of what we did initially.

Molly Stevens [00:15:34] But Dick Bartlett at Mary Kay Cosmetics was on the board. And I don’t know if you ever knew Dick Bartlett, but he was kind of a bigger-than-life personality. And he was the head of Mary Kay Cosmetics, and he sort of leveraged the resources of Mary Kay Cosmetics, their marketing team and photography team and such, to bring to bear on fundraising for for the Nature Conservancy. Working with him was a lot of fun.

Molly Stevens [00:16:07] And we put together a committee, a fundraising committee, made up of board members and such to help, help sort of put all that together. So it was really building systems and practices that would engender support for the organization.

Molly Stevens [00:16:22] And the other thing that I was doing a lot of was grant writing, and I’m not sure, I don’t recall exactly what the experience was previously, but they were not using any visuals in, in the grant preparation. And it’s such a visual organization that one of the things that I did was simply to to design grant proposals that showed the beauty of that kind of work that we were doing. Or I think of the black bear proposal that we did for the Big Bend black bear conservation. It was just fun, you know, to be able to create the visual support that that would inspire support.

Molly Stevens [00:17:12] Fundraising is all about the heart. Especially if you’re fundraising with individuals. But I think even with foundations, you’ve got to grab the heartstrings of of a funder to kind of get them to go deeper and really understand, understand and participate in the planning and thinking around conservation.

Lee Smith [00:17:36] And what, give me some dates. When were you there? When did you come on?

Molly Stevens [00:17:42] I started in May of of 1990. And I left in May of ’93.

Lee Smith [00:17:57] And then where did you go?

Molly Stevens [00:17:58] To the Environmental Defense Fund.

Molly Stevens [00:18:01] And what did you do there?

Speaker 2 [00:18:02] I was the Regional Director of Development for EDF, which was Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Mexico. But 95% of my effort was Texas. There was plenty to do in Texas. But as opportunities arose in those other states, as projects were designed in those other states, then I would do the fundraising there as well.

Lee Smith [00:18:34] Did you liaison at all with TNC during that period? Did EDF? Was there any kind of crossover?

Molly Stevens [00:18:47] No, not that I can recall. The work that we were doing with EDF – there was some wildlife conservation work and I guess those folks might have interacted more with with TNC landowners, working with landowners to do conservation work.

Molly Stevens [00:19:09] But most of the work that was being done was in the area of energy and oceans conservation and also a lot of work on the border dealing with macquilas and in trying to make some investments in the Mexico side of the border to encourage conservation and also not using so many toxics and cleaning up toxics, etc.

Jeff Weigel [00:19:41] Bob Ayres

Speaker 2 [00:19:42] Bob Ayes is a good example. He was very involved in both organizations and he was, he was invested in EDF’s work, conservation work, wildlife conservation.

Jeff Weigel [00:19:57] David Wolff.

Molly Stevens [00:19:57] Yep. David was our…

Jeff Weigel [00:19:58] He worked both for us and EDF.

Molly Stevens [00:20:00] Oh. I didn’t know that.

Jeff Weigel [00:20:01] Yeah, he had, he left TNC at one point. He was a great employee and he went to work for EDF for a long time, with landowners on the golden-cheeked warbler.

Molly Stevens [00:20:12] Right.

Jeff Weigel [00:20:12] Safe Harbor agreements.

Molly Stevens [00:20:14] Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:20:15] And EDF does a lot of stuff at the policy level, and.

Jeff Weigel [00:20:18] Yeah, and so we didn’t have a lot of overlap. Yeah. Yeah. At that point, TNC was not working in the oceans, for example.

Molly Stevens [00:20:25] Right.

Jeff Weigel [00:20:25] Which we are now.

Molly Stevens [00:20:27] Big time. Yeah.

Jeff Weigel [00:20:29] Both geographic separation and thematic separation.

Molly Stevens [00:20:35] Right.

Jeff Weigel [00:20:36] So we did not connect, although we all knew each other and kind of rooted for one another.

Molly Stevens [00:20:41] Sure. Yeah. Yeah. You know, EDF’s niche has always been using market incentives to get businesses and and cities and states to do the right thing by conservation or environmental protection. It’s different. It’s it’s a different strategy and a different set of issues, really, than TNC, except for our our wildlife conservation work. But it was just a small program. I would say also our water work, EDF’s water work would sometimes, you know, overlap with Nature Conservancy.

Lee Smith [00:21:25] You were there when the Davis Mountains was going on. And so what was your involvement there?

Molly Stevens [00:21:30] Yeah. So, well, the Davis Mountains area was one of three bioreserves that were being proposed and designed when I first joined the team. And the land acquisition had already occurred – the You Up You Down ranch. And early on in my time at the Nature Conservancy, I went out to the to the Davis Mountains and hiked Mount Livermore, and and spent some time there.

Molly Stevens [00:22:01] And Jeff knows this, but I, I was introduced to our preserve managers, Kay Dawn and Randy Glover. And Kay Dawn Glover made a fabulous buttermilk pie that she served when we were visiting this particular time. And to this day, I have Kay Dawn Glover’s Buttermilk Pie recipe. It is one of my go-to go-to recipes. I think of the Davis Mountains all the time when I’m when I’m making that pie.

Molly Stevens [00:22:35] But it was a spectacular region in that sort of unique mountain region there. I forget the term for it.

Jeff Weigel [00:22:50] Sky Island.

Molly Stevens [00:22:51] Sky island, yes.

Molly Stevens [00:22:53] Anyway, so so I was involved early on in, in both sort of thinking about this landscape-scale conservation initiative. And it was at a time when private landowners were really freaked out about anybody coming in to that region to do conservation, environment work because of the Big Bend Ranch had recently been sold. And just a real concern about that, that the government or the Nature Conservancy was going to buy their whole their whole community and it would dramatically change their quality of life. So it was a pretty heated region to do work in. And, and so we were always very mindful of of where we were and who was around us in our thinking, in our talking. We had to be very thoughtful and careful about who we talked to and what we said.

Lee Smith [00:24:03] And how did that help the success? Because it’s still there and it’s been embraced, I think, by folks now. How did you turn that around?

Molly Stevens [00:24:17] So I can’t claim that I turned it around at all. But I do think that the proof is in the pudding. The only thing that will dispel myths about what’s going to happen, is it not happening. Right? I mean, they they came to trust, I think, the Nature Conservancy because they could see first-hand what was happening and also what was not happening, and that it didn’t destroy their quality of life or lifestyle. And the Nature Conservancy could flourish, as could they.

Lee Smith [00:24:53] So from a fundraising point of view, how does that help you, down the line? If you’re, what I’m going after here is that it seems to me that the TNC has established that they keep their word.

Molly Stevens [00:25:11] Well, I think that that’s very true. And I believe fundraising is establishing one genuine relationship at a time. It’s it’s making friends, genuinely making friends. And when you make friends, you treat them well. And when you treat people well, they treat you well. I mean, it’s just that simple.

Molly Stevens [00:25:37] And so particularly in in West Texas, where there was so much skepticism about what was about to happen, I, I give credit to the staff team that was out there that built one relationship at a time, one genuine relationship at a time with the people that were there. And that resulted in turning turning the tide in terms of perspective.

Molly Stevens [00:26:06] Now, I don’t know who among the folks that lived in West Texas ever became major donors. I don’t have a story of a person who was very skeptical and we built a genuine relationship and then they gave, you know, $100,000. There may be a story like that, but I’m not I’m not familiar with that. But I do think that donors who did support the work in West Texas needed to see that it was going to be a healthy project and a healthy area to do work. And so certainly that would have enhanced fundraising for the region.

Lee Smith [00:26:51] Well, and so how important is trust in building these relationships?

Molly Stevens [00:26:56] It’s everything. It’s everything. I mean, for for a donor to decide to give away some of their hard-earned money or for a foundation to make a significant grant, they have to be confident that they’re making an investment in a a healthy, a healthy relationship in that community. Nobody wants to be at the opposite end of a troubled relationship. So that has to be part of what’s done.

Lee Smith [00:27:34] So you’ve been out there. What’s what’s special about the Davis Mountains Preserve?

Molly Stevens [00:27:42] It doesn’t look like Texas in some ways. You know, it looks it it feels like you know, it feels like the southern Rockies, the the tree canopy, the you know, the whole the whole feel of the of the area. It’s not the desert of of Big Bend. You know, it has it has a very special ecology that’s different from elsewhere in the state. Smells really nice. You know, it’s it it’s a very unique part of the state.

Lee Smith [00:28:26] What about at night?

Molly Stevens [00:28:30] Oh, goodness. You know, I saw the movie recently, Deep in the Heart. You’ve seen it, I’m sure. That scene of the of the stars out in West Texas that’s in that film. I haven’t been out in West Texas for a while. So I said to Sam immediately, “We’ve got to go out and just lay out and see that night sky.” I mean, it’s just the best. It’s the best star viewing I know of. And it it’s transformative. It’s it’s just the best.

Lee Smith [00:29:14] So moving on to Dolan Falls and Devils River. What was your involvement in that?

Molly Stevens [00:29:19] So that acquisition was made while I was at TNC. It was probably probably a year or two into my time there. And I was terrified because it was really expensive. And TNC didn’t have an example of raising that kind of private funding for any of its work. At that point, it was the biggest campaign they’d ever undertaken.

Molly Stevens [00:29:52] And so I was I was a little bit breathless as to where that was going to come from. We had a board member, Daphne Vaughan, who had just come on the board and early on made a very big commitment to to the Dolan Falls campaign. And that really greased the skids for a number of folks to take it seriously and lean in and support and support the campaign.

Molly Stevens [00:30:25] I loved going out there under the guise of fundraising, you know, taking taking people out and and the jaw-dropping beauty of it. It was it was easy to raise money for the Dolan Falls Preserve because A, it sold itself. And I think people wanted access to it, you know, and so individual donors were, I think, quite inspired to make some generous gifts toward toward Dolan Falls Preserve. And and there were there was some foundation money to be raised for that for that as well. So it was a it was a very expensive purchase and it was not terribly challenging to raise the money for it just because it was so spectacular.

Lee Smith [00:31:29] But then you have the State Natural Area that is a component of it.

Molly Stevens [00:31:34] Right.

Lee Smith [00:31:35] And you’ve got the involvement of state agencies. So this is, tell me about how that whole relationship and partnership kind of evolved.

Molly Stevens [00:31:46] You know, that happened after I left. We we we bought the big chunk with the hope that that some of it would be purchased by Parks and Wildlife and and maybe some of it would be purchased by private landowners that would put a conservation easement on it. And I think both of those things materialized.

[00:32:06] I see Jeff leaning in. I think he wants to say something.

Jeff Weigel [00:32:09] Molly, that’s exactly right.

Molly Stevens [00:32:10] Okay.

Jeff Weigel [00:32:10] Parks and Wildlife bought the 19,000-acre Devil’s River State Natural Area, before we bought Dolan Falls.

Molly Stevens [00:32:14] Okay.

Jeff Weigel [00:32:17] And Dolan, they wanted us to buy it as an addition to that, and maybe I’ll tell this story on mine, but James went out there, James King, with Parks and Wildlife people to look at it. And the intent was they were going to have us negotiate the deal and then transfer it to them. I remember James calling me (this is pretty cell phone days), and saying, “Weigel, we’re not going to do this with Parks and Wildlife. We’re going to buy it and keep it.”

Molly Stevens [00:32:48] I see. Okay.

Jeff Weigel [00:32:49] And so I went out there as soon as I could to look at it and I said, “Hell yeah, we’re going to buy it and keep it.” And so that’s what happened. And we bought the 18,000 acres that we originally acquired, and now we still have our preserve out there.

Molly Stevens [00:33:07] And how many acres do do you still have?

Jeff Weigel [00:33:10] Well, we sold 13,000 to John Eddie Williams and put a conservation easement on it and kept the 5000 that’s still our Preserve.

Molly Stevens [00:33:19] Okay.

Jeff Weigel [00:33:20] Yeah. So. That was it.

Lee Smith [00:33:24] So you were saying Davis Mountains doesn’t look like Texas. It looks more like this other, you know, part of the country and everything. But, Dolan…

Molly Stevens [00:33:36] That looks like Texas. Yeah. No. Dolan Falls is, I think, it’s the most beautiful spot in Texas. I really do. There’s so much about it that that gorgeous, clear, clean water. The the Falls themselves are so spectacular. All of the indigenous rock art that is around it is in such good shape and and wonderful. The hiking, the the the cliffs and the ridges that you can get up on and see for for long, long distances. The fact that it flows into Lake Amistad, that sense of of it going, the water going on to Lake Amistad is is wonderful. I just I think it is just eye candy, eye candy everywhere you look.

Molly Stevens [00:34:33] And I can understand why James King said we’re not we’re not selling this. This is going to be ours. Yeah.

Molly Stevens [00:34:42] And I think it I think it I mean, the Houston Chronicle did a front page cover magazine about Dolan Falls when we were trying to purchase it. It also just had a lot of appeal well into Texas, you know, it was, it kind of in some ways made a name for for the Nature Conservancy. Some folks may never have heard of us. And now suddenly they see this and and associate it with our purchase. And I think I think it was a bit of a megaphone for who we were and what we did. Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:35:21] Which then dovetails and snowballs into fundraising.

Molly Stevens [00:35:26] Oh yeah, absolutely.

Lee Smith [00:35:28] You’re building this track record.

Molly Stevens [00:35:30] Right.

Lee Smith [00:35:31] Of significant sites and significant work.

Molly Stevens [00:35:34] Right. Yes. You know, first the Davis Mountains and then and then Dolan Falls. I can’t, there were no other land purchases of comparable nature prior to that. And if I you know, there were lots of wonderful things that had been done before then, but those were such high profile, little too high profile in the Davis Mountains, maybe, but just right profile at at Dolan Falls.

Lee Smith [00:36:08] And Dolan and Devils River, it’s to me it’s a very tactile environment. The plants are sharper, right?

Molly Stevens [00:36:16] Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:36:16] Ground is harder.

Molly Stevens [00:36:17] Right.

Lee Smith [00:36:18] You know, it’s almost like if you were dropped there blindfolded, you don’t know that you were there.

Molly Stevens [00:36:24] It’s sensuous, right? It’s sensuous what you hear and smell and see. It’s all. It’s all it. Your senses are alive when you’re there.

Lee Smith [00:36:37] What does that do for you as a human being?

Molly Stevens [00:36:40] It’s. It’s. Everything. It it grounds you. It reminds you that you are part of nature. That it’s essential that you require access to that part of that part of the world and that part of yourself. Right? It’s it is nurturing, completely nurturing.

Lee Smith [00:37:07] And the vastness of it, too, which is humbling.

Molly Stevens [00:37:13] Right? Yeah. That’s, when I think about my my time up in Quetico paddling and realizing what a itty bitty, teeny weeny little piece I am, you know, of, of the world. And you feel that also at Dolan Falls. I feel that in Big Bend. Those big landscapes help put you in perspective. Yeah.

Molly Stevens [00:37:46] You know, I don’t think anybody does what TNC does. They they they apply science to understand the most precious places on earth, those that are most at risk of of losing biodiversity, of losing landscapes, losing natural history. As populations grow and grow and grow, all of that is threatened all around the world.

Molly Stevens [00:38:22] And TNC has unashamedly come into those places and stood up for the plants and animals and landscape that’s there and said this is more valuable as natural resources than any other use of this place or space or resource.

Molly Stevens [00:38:50] And I think that people fund that because nobody else is doing that. You know, that’s. And so anybody who has a a love of wildlife, a love of water, a love of fishing, a love of hunting, a love of the out-of-doors, and who has the ability to invest as a philanthropist, TNC is a natural partner for those people.

Lee Smith [00:39:22] What about the skill set and staff that TNC has developed to make these things possible?

Molly Stevens [00:39:33] Yeah, yeah. No, they’re the best, you know? They have identified and recruited people who not only are good scientists or good land managers or land acquisition people, but who are also good partners to other people, good communicators, good at building relationships, trust building, because it can be a threatening work if you own property near a place that suddenly is in the crosshairs of the Nature Conservancy if you don’t fully understand or appreciate what the history and practices of the organization are. It can be a scary thing.

Molly Stevens [00:40:22] So the skills are not just being good scientists or having the ability to buy land, but also to be, have those interpersonal communication skills that are necessary to build relationships along the way. And of course, that translates to fundraising as well.

Lee Smith [00:40:48] Well, I think of them as, if you’re a landowner, as being a guide to put together whatever it is, whatever tools, whatever conservation tools, grants, partners, they’re there. They’re tenacious, it seems, in finding a way to make it work for the landowner.

Molly Stevens [00:41:10] Yeah. Tenacity is, tenacity is a great word for the team, I think, that it is attracted to work for TNC because it isn’t easy work and it isn’t quick work. It’s, it’s the drip on the stone. As a fundraiser, we often say that when a donor says, “No”, that’s the first step to “Yes”. And I think the same is true in building relationships with landowners who are skeptical. They’re saying, “No, I’m not interested”. It’s just the first step to, “Yes”. You’ve got to hang in there and build those relationships and build that trust. And eventually that will that will turn around. So, yeah.

Lee Smith [00:42:02] Do you have any advice for young people that may be considering a career in conservation?

Molly Stevens [00:42:11] Well, so I wanted to I wanted to just say that the last 15 years of my work at West Cave Outdoor Discovery Center, and then the volunteer work I’ve been doing since retiring from West Cave have been invested in growing a generation of young people who will continue the important work of of the last century, really.

Molly Stevens [00:42:43] I mean, if we don’t if we don’t raise a generation of people who are going to support policy and practices that conserve land and resources, all of what’s been done over the last century is going to be undone by a population of people who value the the resource extraction over resource conservation.

Molly Stevens [00:43:15] And so I’ve been involved in the first, the Children in Nature Collaborative of Austin and then have been involved in creating the statewide Children in Nature Collaborative of Texas to work with all of our partner organizations.

Molly Stevens [00:43:33] So many organizations like the Nature Conservancy and Travis Audubon and the Sierra Club who are who are doing great work in the fields of conservation, environmental education, environmental protection. But they’re all looking like me. They’re all, you know, gray-haired and and aging.

Molly Stevens [00:43:58] And so trying to engage youth both just to help them fall in love with the earth. I forget who is the quote. I think it’s Sobel who says, “Before we ask our children to save the earth, we have to ask them or help them fall in love with the earth first”. Right. That’s sort of it.

Molly Stevens [00:44:19] And it’s it’s hard work because these their parents didn’t grow up playing outside. And so they’re not born into an environment where there’s a real, a lot of opportunity for doing cool things outside and especially black and brown kids. There’s it’s it’s a real equity issue of of access to the out-of-doors, enjoying the benefits of the outdoors, like we were talking about how you feel in the Davis Mountains, or but even your own backyard. Right?

Molly Stevens [00:45:00] There are no backyards in many parts of Texas. There’s their schoolyard. And so we’ve been very focused on transforming schoolyards into nature-rich places so that there’s some place to go in the life of children that is something other than a blacktop.

Molly Stevens [00:45:19] Anyway, just to say that we have to give children the opportunity to fall in love with nature. And part of that is green play to green pay. Once they fall in love with nature, here are job opportunities.

Molly Stevens [00:45:41] El Ranchito campers. Now, half the staff at El Ranchito this year will be made of kids who started out as eight year olds there and are now the staff. And a number of those kids are at Texas State studying natural resource kinds of careers.

Molly Stevens [00:46:02] So clearly there is a thread that we can nurture to help kiddos fall in love with nature, have opportunities to work in nature and study and become professionals in nature. It’s I think it’s the most important work I’ve done.

Lee Smith [00:46:24] You mentioned over El Ranchito. How how did the Ayres come up with that. And how important is it?

Molly Stevens [00:46:41] Well, it’s it’s hugely important. So, you know, Rich Louv wrote the book “Last Child in the Woods”. It came out in 2005. And I came to work at West Cave in 2005, and we had a strategic planning day with lots of stakeholders in the region. And as a thank you, we gave all of the participants that book, “Last Child in the Woods”.

Molly Stevens [00:47:09] Bob was one of the people who was part of was part of that day. And our board … I wasn’t used to this … our board went away and read the book. And and and they came back to the next board meeting and said, “This is what, this is what we’re about. This is this is this is the flag we’re going to raise.”.

Molly Stevens [00:47:34] And a little book group was formed that included Terri Siegenthaler, who was there at the Shield Ranch and one of the staff at West Cave, and a couple of other people read “Last Child in the Woods”. And there had been a long-stand interest on the part of Shield Ranch family, the Ayres family, to share, the Ayres and Bowen families to share Shield Ranch with others, but not a lot of clarity about what the next step might be to do that.

Molly Stevens [00:48:10] And so after this book group came together, there was a desire to to work together to design a camp that might take place on Shield Ranch, and that’s sort of the the origin story for El Ranchito. And Bob and Vera and Pat and Bob Senior, all were all in from the from the get-go.

Molly Stevens [00:48:38] And we, you know, it took us we I was part of a planning team that worked on designing it over a course of about 18 months. We visited lots of other camps. We we sort of immersed ourselves in, in, in summer camp ideas. But we also had an idea of a very different kind of a camp than a typical camp. And so we also trusted ourselves to to follow our our unique perspective, which was nature immersion. Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:49:16] One thing I wanted to ask, because you mentioned it earlier at the lunch table, that the whole bioreserve concept was kind of just coming into focus when you came on.

Molly Stevens [00:49:31] Yes.

Lee Smith [00:49:31] Tell me about that.

Molly Stevens [00:49:32] Yeah. So again, the idea of of landscape-scale conservation was sweeping the country, not just Texas. The Nature Conservancy nationally was really pushing all of the state offices to be thinking about using a range of tools, whether it was working with private landowners for conservation easements, working with national wildlife refuges that had set aside large landscapes, state parks, nature preserves. Right?

Molly Stevens [00:50:10] There are certain parts of the of Texas where where the natural resources are so rich that there’s a number of things already going on. And it was kind of like knitting together what’s already there and finding opportunities to do some infill with Conservancy resources.

Molly Stevens [00:50:30] So the, the Hill Country, the Edwards Aquifer kidney shape was one of the bioreserves. Another was the Davis Mountains area. And Jeff, do I remember that the third one was the Gulf Coast?

Jeff Weigel [00:50:53] I don’t remember.

Molly Stevens [00:50:55] I think it was, I think the…

Jeff Weigel [00:50:56] The Hill Country was one, the Davis Mountains was another and.

Molly Stevens [00:51:02] Piney Woods?

Jeff Weigel [00:51:03] East Texas?

Molly Stevens [00:51:04] Might have been Piney Woods.

Jeff Weigel [00:51:06] I know we had a larger list of candidates, but I don’t recall that we narrowed it down to.

Molly Stevens [00:51:14] I think the Piney Woods was one because it was about the red-cockaded woodpecker.

Jeff Weigel [00:51:19] Yeah, may have.

Molly Stevens [00:51:20] All of them had sort of a key species that was connected to the regional conservation strategy. I think it was. I think it was East Texas. Because we were working with the Mitchell family. I know this isn’t very good for the video having this conversation, but I can I can say that the third one was East Texas, the Piney Woods, with the focus on the red-cockaded woodpecker. And we had a number of preserves over in that region as well as private landowners who owned significant property, the Mitchell family being one, that were very interested in conservation strategies. So there was sufficient existing strategies there that made sense to be able to knit that together as well.

Lee Smith [00:52:13] So what’s your outlook for the future of conservation?

Molly Stevens [00:52:20] I guess you ask everybody this question. That’s a tough one. You know, my outlook for the future of conservation is not terribly optimistic in that population continues to grow and natural resource conservation, maybe in this country, I would say I am fairly optimistic about the about the U.S., North America, Canada, because I think there is such a raised consciousness around the value of natural resources and species diversity and and protection of of of wildlife. And I and I and I have faith that we are really focusing on youth to help them grow up with the same same interest and protecting. You know, I think I think there’s the opportunity for the next generation to have a strong conservation ethic.

Molly Stevens [00:53:47] But when I look at the rest of the world, I am less optimistic. Europe, you know, Northern Europe, the Western Europe (haven’t been to Eastern Europe), but, you know, they kind of lost the conservation war a long time ago. It’s such a heavily developed part of the world. I don’t know.

Molly Stevens [00:54:17] I I’m less optimistic about the developing world because they’ve got such enormous challenges to deal with that I can’t see conservation coming under their radar screen in a significant way for some time to come.

Molly Stevens [00:54:35] Well, I would start by saying that in the donor pie, the, you know, the collective donor pie, less than 2% of that pie goes to conservation, the environment. So, you know, there’s this constant struggle to try to expand the slice of pie that is spent on the work of conservation in the environment. Maybe that’s part of my pessimism.

Molly Stevens [00:55:06] But but within that 2%, I think that, again, what works best with donors, what most appeals to donors in our field is a track record of success. People want to invest in something that they know is has been successful, will be successful, that the team that’s doing the work has a good track record. That’s that’s a big piece of it.

Molly Stevens [00:55:37] I think also there there there remains some interest in, “How is this going to benefit me?” Right? Is this in my, is this going to affect my backyard? Am I going to have greater opportunities to fish and hunt because of the conservation work that’s being done? I mean, I do think that people still have some self-interest in mind as it relates to conservation.

Molly Stevens [00:56:06] There’s plenty of people who who support conservation because it’s the right thing to do. And they they see, you know, they have that in their heart.

Molly Stevens [00:56:17] I also think that in the most recent years that I’ve been fundraising, I think people are beginning to understand that that our world is unequal in lots of ways and that equity, that that conservation and access to nature is an equity issue. And so to the degree that we’re doing work that exposes other children, other people to the opportunity to enjoy nature, people are willing to fund that, too. I think there is a definite awakening around the importance of everybody having access to nature, enjoying the benefits of time outside. So I think a lot of money has been raised in that way over the last decade.

Lee Smith [00:57:18] Anything you want to say that we haven’t covered, that you feel strongly about or…

Molly Stevens [00:57:31] I think I already said it. I think if there’s any. I think what I feel most strongly about is investing in children and their opportunity to fall in love with nature, both because it benefits them, but, as important, because they will grow up and be, vote and encourage and support policy that protects the natural world. And and and if we don’t make that investment, that won’t happen.