TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEWEE: Ned Fritz (NF)
INTERVIEWERS:
David Todd (DT)
David Weisman (DW)
Genie Fritz (GF)
DATE: October 17, 2000
LOCATION: Dallas, Texas
TRANSCRIBERS: Lacy Goldsmith and Robin Johnson
REEL: 2109

Please note that the recording includes roughly 60 seconds of color bars and sound tone for technical settings at the outset of the recordings. Numbers mark the time codes for the VHS tape copy of the interview. “Misc.” refers to various off-camera background noise, unrelated to the interview.

(misc.)
DT: My name is David Todd and it’s October 17, year 2000. We’re in Dallas, Texas, at the home of Ned and Genie Fritz. And we have the good opportunity to be visiting with Ned Fritz, who has been involved in numerous conservation efforts and groups over the years here in Texas—and nationally as well. And I wanted to thank you for joining us today.
00:01:55 – 2109
NF: Glad to be here with you
DT: Thank you. I thought we might start by talking about exactly where we are and maybe you could tell us a little bit about your beautiful yard and some of the cedar elms and burr oaks and other plants and animals you have out here.
00:02:14 – 2109
NF: Okay, in addition to those well there’s mesquite in the yard. It—it naturally came this far west in this particular regime. And then, many other species—honey locust and so forth—of trees here and the m—most rare—nowadays—plant is spring harbinger, which is a shrub and it has survived very well in our yard but most everybody doesn’t know what it is so they cut it and put in some kind of a planted thing, s—bushes elsewhere in this neighborhood and town. And then, of course, we have some native grasses in the little open space that we have available for them. And th—then many flowers manage to bloom in the few open spaces that we have so that it is—and then we actually still have some cactus blooming here—growing and blooming here so that it’s the native habitat that Genie and I wanted to save. And some other people enjoy very much having it saved like that. But everywhere else in town why—very few spots do they have any of th—the native species.
DT: I guess this habitat out here is home to many kinds of wildlife. Can you tell about some of the birds and animals that you see here?
00:04:14 – 2109
NF: Yes, we have birds of all sizes, especially even during migration well they come through here. And, of course, we have the Red Bellied Woodpecker and that’s—does r—reproduces very well here. Some years, well, we have the Red Tailed Hawk actually nesting in a tree in our backyard. This is three acres altogether here in town. And then we have Tufted Titmouse. We have Chickadees and we have, of course, Cardinals and many other species.
DT: And can you tell how this habitat and the wildlife that are here changes through the course of a year? What you see and enjoy most, say, in the fall, and in the winter, and the spring, and the summer?
00:05:25 – 2109
NF: Yeah, well I enjoy those seasons that you mentioned the most—all seasons…
DT: All seasons.
00:05:33 – 109
NF: …and that’s part of it. It’s the natural sequence and most of the species that I mentioned are here all year around—of—of birds. And so, I think that the—at this moment, I enjoy autumn the best.
DT: And can you tell us why you and Genie have decided to protect this patch of Dallas and treat it differently than many of your neighbors who, I imagine, have St. Augustine grass and liriope and red tipped photinia and have a sort of hedged, clipped…
00:06:26 – 2109
NF: Yeah, well…
DT: …landscape?
00:06:30 – 2109
NF: …well, the—we enjoy it mainly because we love nature. And we enjoy it also because it is saving for the enjoyment of other people as well—the natural habitat that originally existed in this area right here. And so it’s a great variety and it is more and more fulfilling the older we get. It just seems to be g—greener in the summer and—some plants are green all year, like red cedar. But then it is, even in the plants that are brown, like the osage orange in winter why it’s colorfully deepening into our heart and body.
DT: And I think you also mentioned that besides the emotional satisfaction you get out of it and the protection of the habitat for the wildlife, that it also is a good measure for water conservation. Can you explain all that?
00:08:03 – 2109
NF: Yes, water conservation is one of the growing necessities for Texas and the world, especially when it comes to watering lawns from—for grasses or planted shrubs or flowers. The best way to save water in the huge amounts that they take from pipes to use for whatever they plant in their yards, is not to plant things in the yard but to have the natural plants and let them survive even during a drought like this summer. Our natural plants survived and, strangely enough, some of the flowers, like the sunflowers, survived and are still blooming right now in spite of the drought. So that we f—would like to save—everybody we wish would do the same way and save water and that would be one of the steps that we need to reach the sustainability of drinking water—water that’s drinkable and otherwise usable in homes.
DT: You mentioned the word sustainability and gave your yard as a way that landscaping can be sustainable and maintain nature into future generations, that they can enjoy it. Can you talk about other examples and ideas of sustainability?
00:09:58– 2109
NF: Yes, besides water—especially [TAPE CUTS OUT]
DT: Maybe we could resume. You were telling us about sustainable use of natural resources.
00:10:24 – 2109
NF: Yes, another natural resource that is disappearing is natural soil because so much agriculture and, in some cases, grazing is taking place and that and, of course, development is taking place on a lot of natural soil too, so that it has been disappearing recently. One-fourth of our natural soil went down in the last fifty years. That—that’s the same way with the—some of our other natural resources and the net result is that we will lose most—too much—we will lose an adequate amount of our natur—some of our natural resources within a hundred years the experts say in—cautiously. But, it seems to me the way we’re now losing drinking water and—and usable water in cities and—and so forth, that the crisis may hit us in twenty-five years. The forests are another one that are disappearing. They, too, have lost fifty percent in the last hundred years. So that—and that’s over the world and it’s somewhat near the same in the United States in that score so that we need and we ha—actually have a lawsuit to help to save our forests.
DT: Maybe you could discuss the lawsuit as an example of how you press for more sustainable use of our forests.
00:12:43 – 2109
NF: The lawsuit has been going for some years now, trying to get the Forest Service to do the right things. And one of the things that they should be doing is inventorying and monitoring the effects of different practices that they are making in our forests in Texas here, for example, and over the United States. The inventorying and monitoring would tell them how much to do this and that. A current example is on clear cutting at—and that also includes the other even-age logging methods that they s—often do—most often do in the national forests in the United States and Texas. And so what we want to do is to have them see what vanishes, what natural res—other natural species vanish when they do excessive clear cutting, which is almost any clear cutting according to our lawsuit. And we did win the lawsuit in court and then had it affirmed in the Fifth Circuit Court. But then the—that was by majority but then they asked for a rehearing en banc, the Fire Service and the timber industry working together did. And then the Fifth Circuit has held the rehearing en banc and they are eight to five—they ruled against us and reversed it. So we have had to file a motion. Mary Van Kerrebrook is our attorney in Houston for this—this case and we had to file a motion for rehearing of their rehearing, which is before them now.
DT: I see. Maybe you could give us another example of your fight for sustainable use and protection of natural resources and one being some of the bottom lands along the Trinity that you’re trying to protect against clearing for the floodway south of Dallas.
00:15:18 – 2109
NF: Yeah, we call this campaign our Holy Trinity Campaign, not because of us but because the Spanish—early explorers who saw the Trinity named it in—in Hispanic—named it the Holy Trinity. That project is to save some areas, as many as we can, of—of what’s left along the Trinity that are still in their natural ecosystem. And we have now—by now succeeded in getting at least three or four of those areas and preserves for the Natural Area Preservation Association, which have the original species and we’re working on more.
DT: You mention NAPA, the Natural Area Preservation Association, can you talk about some of the work you’ve done through that group to protect various tracts that have examples of different kinds of Texas biota.
00:16:45 – 2109
NF: Yes, we founded NAPA, over twenty years ago now, and it is a private organization, non-profit, which now owns forty-four preserves, mostly a—a slight majority is under the conservation system and the—some of it is under total ownership in our hands.
DT: You mentioned the conservation easement, can you explain how that tool has helped you protect some sites?
00:17:43 – 2109
NF: Yes, the owner can meet—who grants—donates the—the—some of the natural area, of his or her natural area—can retain ownership just partly for their own joy and so forth and—and they can stay on the Stewardship Committee and—which we always have for every area, and somewh—someone who—in charge of the Stewardship Committees in our group is Katherine Goodbar. And the President of Natural Area Preservation Association is named Penz, P-E-N-Z—Sandy Penz, and they do a great job of saving the natural resources for other people to enjoy in Texas and in the world. And also, for human beings to appreciate because some of the species that live in there are essential to human life, some of which we don’t even know yet that they’re essential to human life survival.
DT: You mentioned that conservation easements through NAPA allow owners and NAPA volunteers to work on stewardship of the resources that are protected there. And I was wondering if you could examples of the kind of stewardship tasks that involves, whether it’s shredding, or burning, or removing exotics. What type of things would you do to protect the tract once it’s owned or protected under an easement?
00:19:45 – 2109
NF: It’s mainly to keep human beings from doing any damage to the areas. In that—in prairies, what we try to do is to maintain the natural ecosystem. In prairies, the natural ecosystem had fires occasionally, especially in prairies, of course, even forests had fires, maybe fifty or a hundred years apart but, in prairies, well the natural fires came more frequently. And so in—we have one prairie that’s in a city and, therefore, it does not get natural burns. And they put them out but the city has recently agreed to have burns periodically according to the natural frequency in our prairie right there in the city.
DT: I’m curious—the work that you’ve done through TCONR [Texas Committee on Natural Resources] to protect forests and through NAPA to acquire lands for protection and it’s always difficult work. Politically, you’re often in the minority. Financially, it’s not terribly rewarding because most of the work, of course, is volunteer—pro bono. So I’d like to ask you why it is that you’ve invested so much time and effort in work to make this world a little bit more sustainable?
00:21:41 – 2109
NF: Well, my philosophy has long been and is becoming even stronger toward wanting human beings to be able to be a part of the entire system of life in this planet. We don’t know about life on any other planet but I wouldn’t be surprised. But the—since life began on this planet about four and a half billion years ago why then we have developed a—a lot of different plants and animals, many of which have gone extinct but then the ones that we still have today are a part of our life. Human beings have just been here for 130,000 years and, as such, why we are now a booming species, more brain power than any—any other that we know of. And, as such, well then we want to save all the other species that are part of our lives and, perhaps, are part of our very survival. And some of them in a natural state because humans, in spite of their brilliance, have tended in times toward overproduction from our natural resources and that overproduction is increasing the more—especially the more that human population increases. So it’s very important to me to be a part of the really basis of life and of existence, not just for living species, but even for the natural resources that do not live, the soil and the water why—these are—become vital. And—and the older I get well the more they become a part of me and I understand and recognize them but it’s always been that I love nature and a lot of people love nature and so, I try to work f—to help everybody enjoy as much nature as they will.
DT: And what do you think the challenges are? The difficulties of achieving sustainable life here?
0:24:39 – 2109
NF: Well, the difficulties include over-exploitation of some key resources. We have mentioned two or three of them and there are others too. Industry, at present, tends to go for—toward over-exploitation even until they realize that we’re running out of something, which they haven’t seemed adequately to realize as yet with regard to the major ones left, which is water and soil and forest and—and then certain oils, for example, things like that. So what we’re trying to do is to get industry, and industry has some experts who are working toward it, to reduce or eliminate over-exploitation of any natural resources that are vital to society, which right now, could be almost any of them except diseases.
DT: You mentioned industry and trying to improve their behavior. You’ve often dealt with agencies in the government, how do you think that they can play a part in improving protection of life on the planet?
00:26:31 – 2109
NF: I think that agencies in—especially like, for example, the Forest Service—agencies that have to do with natural resources in any way could do a great deal of help but controlling the goals of industry is very difficult, especially right now. I—I think that we are confronting a possible crash, a—a worse situation than in any previous examples of declines in human ability because that we are over-exploiting certain natural resources and because industry has not yet solved or worked hard enough to solve the problem because they are mainly making profits. And they can make profits for several more years to come, which is the main goal of most industry as it is. And, therefore, we need to—we hope that they will get this message and will stop over-exploiting. Well, they’re—they have already developed according—there’s several books on the subject of sustainability now, and industry has already developed certain methods that could be helpful. For example, the—the automobile industry is working toward the types of fuels, like hydrogen itself, and variations of it, that will enable them to stop having to use oil anymore. And these industries, I hope the—the companies that are developing these fuels, I hope will get them all going well before we run out of oil and have some kind of a crisis there.
DT: This is sort of the campaign season and with presidential candidates in full swing around the United States, talking up their various programs—what sort of role do you think they can play? What sort of impact can they have? What are your views on the politics of environmental protection? I know you’ve been involved with the Texas League of Conservation Voters for a long time…
00:29:43 – 2109
NF: Yes.
DT: …maybe you can express some of those views.
00:29:46 – 2109
NF: Well, I—I—I’ll first want to express my personal view that we need to have more government independence of industry in order to help industry and the rest of society solve the problems of over-exploitation of natural resources. And that will mean, I think, that we must have campaign finance reform. So industry has more money than anybody else, in general, and spends it, unfortunately, on financing certain candidates to win office, which a—a majority in Congress right now has been heavily financed by industry. And w—therefore, is slow to bring us around to solving our problems of over-exploitation of resources. And so the way to do that is to have campaign finance reform where only the government contributes large amounts, at least to candidates who are running for office, and therefore, when those candidates get into office, they do not feel that they have to continue over-exploitation for the sake of industry or let industry do it without their stopping them from doing it.
DT: We’ve talked some about the seasons as they turn at your home here in Dallas and we’ve talked about the sort of quarterly financial outlook of companies, and every four-year cycle of politics. What would your advice be for future generations thirty and sixty years hence? Or, even to the seventh generation that Chief Seattle spoke of? What sort of advice would you give your children and grandchildren about sustainable life on the planet?
00:32:16 – 2109
NF: I—it’s important, not only so that we won’t run out of certain resources but also so that the world will stay in natural development condition—nat—natural evolution. I think that life is—after four and a half billion years, is deeply embedded into our—not only our souls but our very entities and—and our bodies in every way. And so I’m in favor of saving natural resources so that humans can remain a part of them, which we really are and can appreciate them fully. So it’s a important philosophy for life.
DT: Well, thank you for sharing your experiences and philosophy.
00:33:36 – 2109
NF: Yeah, I—I—I would like to add one thing there…
DT: Please do.
00:33:39 – 2109
NF: …and—and that is that human beings are overpopulating so heavily now, that that also uses up resour—too many resources. We have to—and we have great movements—humans who know that we have to g—hold our population down to where it will not wipe out certain resources and eventually wipe out humans prematurely. And so we need to have a better system of making sure that we don’t—that we do control the number of people that we produce and that may mean a limit on the amount of people a—a—am—am—amount of children that you have, or it may just be that we can educate everybody well enough so that that’s not necessary. But I do think that’s going to include—have to include government—democratic government—on the massive level because our population has now reached six billion just this s—new century. And it might—various estimates have it at the present rate in system why it might reach another six billion—double that within one hundred years after taking a hundred and thirty thousand years to reach six billion. So things are—and that, of course, could use up more of our natural resources, especially in the certain ways of foods and waters. And so the serious problem for humanity includes cessation of overpopulation. It takes a lot of thinking to say how much population should be but most of the thinking today is that the only safe way is to keep the population at about the present level and that includes very democratic action by government to so encourage that and education of all the people to where they go along with the methods that we have for stopping overproduction of human beings.
(misc.)
00:36:41 – 2109
NF: Acreage, so that the Long Leaf Pine Ridge, called Long Leaf Ridge, is to the east of the Upland Island Wilderness in Texas. I was proud to get our wilderness areas, I—I was the main lobbyist to get this bill passed through Congress, and John Bryant, our former Congressman, deserves great credit for having pressed it in spite of the fact that he’s up here in Dallas and the Congress—Congressman for the wildernesses were down there in East Texas. And so what we did was to point out and j—the main thesis now that we need some natural areas. Of course, one of the main reasons wasn’t—not just for survival when this passed over a decade ago but also it’s—it was for enjoyment of human beings. We can go free of charge into these wildernesses—walking—and g—get a tremendous happy feeling from having—but—from being in mother nature. So the Long Leaf area—let’s see if there’s—we have a—a good passage here that would tell about it. It’s over there, s—southeast of Lufkin, Texas. And it—here, let’s see if I can read this thing. No, that—that—that’s too long. I’ll just read the opening.
DT: That’d be great.
00:39:03 – 2109
NF: “As primordial seas rose and receded in deep East Texas, the Neches River deposited delta after delta of deep sand, tilted downward toward what is now the Gulf of Mexico. Each time the seas receded, torrents churned through the earth layers, occasionally about one hundred miles from the gulf coast the streams exposed deeper, harder deposits of whitish clay and stone, the Catahoula series. Laid in Oligocene swamps and broad river bottoms thirty-seven to twenty-five million years ago when palms and fern trees flourished here and ash in languish volumes blew in from active volcanoes in what is now New Mexico.”
Well that just is an opening they—the real thing about Long Leaf Ridge is that it’s the largest remaining example of Long Leaf Pine still growing in the world. And it—it is another—over—over ten thousand more acres here. Upland Island Wilderness, by the way, has some but not anywhere near so much as just to the east of it there. And this is an area that I think would be rich for human beings and also for many species—other species that live in it. So we’re trying now to get Cong—another Congressman—the local one has not joined with us yet in this—to save the Long Leaf Ridge area for all humans to enjoy and to maintain our—keep part of our natural envir—environment.
DT: Well, that seems very important given how long it’s taken to make these areas from the Oligocene on…
00:41:53 – 2109
NF: Yeah.
DT: …talking about hundred of thousands of years. And, yet, what you’ve done during your own life span has meant a lot, that it might survive another hundred thousand years—let’s hope so.
00:42:06 – 2109
NF: Thank you and, although I think the religion of believing in life after death is very helpful to many people who believe that, now that I’ve—ha—we have gotten to a stage where we have seen so many species vanish, and that’s all that—well, I mean, we look back at the past in the environmental facility mainly in—under the earth and under the water and known that they have not revived or survived in any fashion. And so we probably will not either. Well those of us who don’t believe in life after death anymore, still can get a growing satisfaction from life, especially as they get older like me because we know that we had better enjoy it to the utmost in the next few months or years, or that will be the end. And it will not be sad or any feeling of any kind after death but it will be wonderful to enjoy the last few years of life—life being for the human beings and for all the species—other species that still survive with us.
(misc.)
DT: David has asked whether there is a favorite place that you’d like to mention similar to Long Leaf Ridge that you enjoy visiting particularly. And maybe you could say what it makes you feel like when you go there now or when you went there when you were younger.
(misc.)
DT: And could you take off your glasses?
00:44:19 – 2109
NF: Oh, yes. Yes, one of them—we’ve been to many places in the—the western hemisphere here. They’re all magnificent. I—I would say perhaps the best message that I could give to people is that the—the inspiration of trees and shrubs and birds and wildlife, as well as fellow human beings, has come from whatever is growing around as you get older, close to your house. And so it helps me to look out the windows here and see nature as we have it here and to walk out in the yard and to watch the birds and to get to see the leaves, whether they’re turning green in the spring, or falling in the fall, like now. And that just seems to enrich my remaining years and to make me happy with—not only with other friends but with the—the world as a whole. I think that the world is a marvelous thing and that we’re—all should enjoy it to the utmost, as well as to serve it wi—and love it and that’s the way I feel about life.
DT: Thank you, I think many of us feel that way about you.
(misc.)
DW: Why don’t you take us on a little tour, take a little stroll around the place?
(Ned is still talking but sound is off)
00:47:14 – 2109
NF: Okay, this is spring harbinger, our native privet. And it stands at—even through the drought without being watered so that, this is—the native plants are the ones that I think that people ought to have to help to save water in the future. Here’s a young eastern red cedar and we had a couple big ones scattered around. And then this is green ash—I never mentioned that—we had some big green ash here in the yard too. And then I’ll have to confess that I planted one tree here, the—the western—West Texas green ash tree, which is similar but can be told apart. And then here we’re close to a young oak tree, which is Texas oak—Texas red oak I should say. (Inaudible) Here was our pecan. It died in the—may have died, I don’t know, but it—we lost it—this—during the drought anyway. And—oh yes, here’s one of the Chinese privet that we will cut—I’m willing to cut it for you if you want—want me to do it.
DT: Sure.
00:49:37 – 2109
NF: Okay, I’ll go get—get the (?). I left it inside of all things. There we go.
DW: Hang on a second, let me get ahead of you.
00:50:36– 2109
NF: Here, we’ll kill this thing. There. Now this, as you can tell, is a mesquite and one of the few that people have left growing this far west in Dallas and it has lots of seeds. We’ve picked up most of the seeds and put them out in a sunny place out there where they can hopefully grow. But there’s a—there’s another big mesquite right here.
00:51:36 – 2109
GF: You want to tell them about the buffalo grass?
00:51:38 – 2109
NF: Yeah, that’s buffalo grass, which—we have an agreement, my wife waters and keeps the lawn. And so she got to hold this stretch right here with buffalo grasses. And do you have any comment?
00:51:59 – 2109
GF: Yeah, I only watered it twice during the eighty-four days of drought and it’s still alive. Yeah.
DT: And it’s a native turf grass? Is that right?
00:52:11 – 2109
GF: Yeah, the problem is that it needs sun and—and so it doesn’t do too well where there’s shade.
00:52:26 – 2109
NF: And here is a young cedar elm. And here is a young green ash. And here is another big mesquite still holding on well, in spite of the drought. And there is another young eastern red cedar. Let’s see, I’ve forgotten what this is now, momentarily. But this is a really good, nice wild tree here. Here’s some more of our native privet, spring harbinger. It blooms in February and that’s just about the earliest one around here that blooms. Our—our cactus is back that way so I don’t think we need to go through it today.
00:54:05 – 2109
GF: Did you show them the honey locust?
00:54:08 – 2109
NF: That’s what it is, yeah, honey—honey locust, yeah, um hum. And that shows you most of the variety out this way. We can go back through the back if you want to.
DT: How do the cedar elms fare during the drought?
00:54:35 – 2109
NF: Well, you see, that’s the (airplane noise) –there are—some of these are cedar elm but my eyes aren’t too good so I’ll need to get (airplane noise). You can see that that one has almost lost its leaves but, by this time in the autumn, why usually they—they begin to lose their leaves anyway, yeah. This is—this is the honey locust right here. Notice the thorns on it. It really has good thorns on it.
DT: And does it bloom?
00:55:27 – 2109
NF: Yes, it does.
DT: What sort of blossom does it have?
00:55:31 – 2109
NF: Oh, just a set—set of small sort of pinkish blossoms. And, let’s see, this is another big cedar elm. Here, some more of our na—there’s ano—another one of our—that’s a young burr oak coming up. We have a big one I didn’t show you back over that way. And there’s a red bud coming up. Be careful, you don’t want—want to have to be knocked down there. That’s—this is another native Texas tree, which doesn’t grow as big as the rest of them. This is our watering for the birds and they come here when we’re available. We have some wild grape on some of these trees back here in the denser part of our yard. And that big one over there that we’ll go to is the osage orange. You want to be in front or in back? Okay. This is our food for the birds. This is a young cedar elm, already turning brown. And this is an osage orange, which you notice that even the trunk is orange. Of course, the—the flowers are orange. The best features of it are orange but the whole thing is beautiful. It’s an orangish-brown primarily down there. And (airplane noise). That may be our biggest cedar elm right there. So down here a short distance is the creek but I usually get to it through the next yard there, which they’re now building a new house in and so we won’t bother them. But the—the creek stayed flowing all through the drought. And one little branch of the creek comes down here through our yard. So is there anything else you’d particularly like to see?
DW: I think if you just admire the trees, we’ll be fine with that.
01:00:05 – 2109
NF: Uh huh. Okay. It—it really helps me to enjoy my declining years by being close to our wild forests right here and our three acres of land that we bought primarily to live in. And this whole area used to be wild like this but other people who have built houses here since ours have cut down a lot more trees to do it, which is their privilege but I hope we can talk them into growing back some of the wild trees someday. Here’s a red bud that’s doing a little better.
(misc.)
01:01:40 – 2109
NF: That—that red bud and here’s another Texas red oak that’s coming along. So it’s really inspirational to me to be able to live here in a native resource habitat like this that is part of the native world that we’re glad to be in.
End of reel 2109.
End of interview with Ned Fritz.