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

Interviewee: Sonia Najera
Date: January 6, 2023
Site: San Antonio, Texas
Reels: 5058-5063
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: Najera_Sonia_NCItem36_SanAntonioTX_20230106_Reel5058-5063_Audio.mp3

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

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

Sonia Najera [00:00:18] So, I grew up in Kingsville, Texas, South Texas, born and raised.

Lee Smith [00:00:28] And you went to high school there and everything?

Sonia Najera [00:00:31] I went to high school in Kingsville and also I did my bachelor’s there in Kingsville when it was Texas A&I University. A&I till I die! It is now Texas A &M University in Kingsville.

Lee Smith [00:00:47] So, cast your mind back to your childhood and was there any aspect or experience that you had back then that kind of sparked an interest in conservation or the natural world?

Sonia Najera [00:01:01] Yeah, you know, it’s funny because, you know, it’s home and we always have, I think, a tendency to just like, “Oh, it’s home, everything else is just so much more exciting, somewhere else.”

Sonia Najera [00:01:15] But, and I did leave South Texas for many years and then came back when I came to work for the Nature Conservancy in Texas. But in that span, I missed the South Texas brushlands so much.

Sonia Najera [00:01:34] When I was growing up at that time, the King Ranch was open. And so you used to be able to do a drive tour through a section of the ranch where now you take tours that the ranch puts on. But every Sunday, because I used to love horses, and I used to love being outside, my dad and I would drive over to the King Ranch. And just seeing the horses, seeing the pastures, seeing the brush.

Sonia Najera [00:02:04] Saw my first rattlesnake cross the road. And like it didn’t stop and coil like, you know, where everyone’s like, “Oh my gosh, rattlesnake.” No, it just it was huge. I remember and it just crossed the road and we stopped and looked at it.

Sonia Najera [00:02:18] And so those were lots of the things that I remember growing up, spending time outdoors with my dad.

Sonia Najera [00:02:26] Also, Baffin Bay is real close by. So we’d go fishing. And I was the youngest in my family. And so I was always the tag-along. And my brother loved to go fishing and I would like to go fishing. But I would like to run up and down the pier and, you know, do things like that.

Sonia Najera [00:02:45] And but I just always remember being outdoors, even when it was hot in summer. We’d be outdoors till your nose would bleed.

Sonia Najera [00:02:57] Also, my grandmother was from Mexico. And so we would, when I was real little, we would go to, she would want to go to Reynosa to go visit family and friends. And and so I would go with them on the on the drive down.

Sonia Najera [00:03:14] And we would always take the back roads because she wanted to collect plants or collect some of the fruit from some of the plants that were growing. And she would call them pepinos. And and they are. They’re like like little like small little cucumbers. And and she would she would cook with those. And and we would collect nopal for nopalitos and and the tuna.

Sonia Najera [00:03:37] And it was always an adventure. I mean, I was lucky in that. For me, I feel like I grew up with a connection with the land and as part of my culture.

Lee Smith [00:03:51] So you said you were the youngest. How many brothers and sisters were in your family?

Lee Smith [00:03:57] I have, so growing up, I had a brother and a sister, an older brother and older sister.

Lee Smith [00:04:04] And did they like to hunt and fish or…

Sonia Najera [00:04:07] Be outdoors?

Sonia Najera [00:04:09] You know, my brother did. I grew up. I was a tomboy. My sister was, she was she was beautiful and a majorette. And, you know, all all of that.

Sonia Najera [00:04:23] I grew up, you know, running and playing outside and and chasing snakes and lizards and never wearing makeup or combing my hair. Till this day, my mom still comes after me with a comb.

Lee Smith [00:04:42] So was there a family member or mentor that inspired you?

Sonia Najera [00:04:49] Yeah, growing up, you know, when I was young, my brother. I always looked up to my brother and he he well, we had aquariums and, you know, small aquariums grew into larger size aquariums and saltwater aquariums.

Sonia Najera [00:05:07] And and so I just following him around, learning from him. I really enjoyed like always wanting to impress my brother. And I guess maybe that’s something little sisters do. And I was the annoying little sister. But but growing up at home was just hanging out with my brother.

Sonia Najera [00:05:31] When I was in college, yeah, I had a major professor. My major professor was Dr. Alan Cheney. And I loved having classes with him because his his idea of teaching was “the field is the best teacher”. And we would have classes and lab on Fridays. And it was expected: every weekend was a field trip. I saw so much of Texas, you know, in all of my vertebrate, mammology, ornithology, all the zoology classes. It was trapping and seining and skinning.

Sonia Najera [00:06:12] And and it was interesting because when we would go on field trips, we would, you know, the the the rule was anything he saw on the road could be on our test. And we were all in separate vehicles. It could be a roadkill. It could be a bird on the side of the road.

Sonia Najera [00:06:32] You know, it was a way for him to teach us to be observant, to take notes. Don’t be driving around with the radio on. Have your windows down because you’ve got to be listening.

Sonia Najera [00:06:45] And so he was he was a big mentor of mine growing up.

Lee Smith [00:06:50] Was there anything in popular culture – any book, magazine or TV show, movie – that kind of sparked your interest as well?

Sonia Najera [00:07:01] Yeah, yeah, I was, you know, a child in the ’70s. I grew up watching Jacques Cousteau and Wild, you know, Wild Kingdom, Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom, on Sunday afternoons. Yeah, we used to just, you know, sit in front of the TV and sit on the floor and just watch that. It was great.

Sonia Najera [00:07:23] And and that’s what I think that also led to, you know, always thinking like that was elsewhere. And and it wasn’t. And I think that’s what being able to grow up in South Texas and seeing a lot of, you know, wildlife all around me, because we grew up also in a in a part of town that wasn’t as developed. And so we had a lot of empty lots around us. And to me, those those were the woods that I would see on these TV shows. And so I would just go explore an empty lot, but they were still full of native brush at the time.

Lee Smith [00:07:58] And what about springtime in South Texas?

Sonia Najera [00:08:02] Oh, wow.

Lee Smith [00:08:02] When there’s been some good rain. What’s that like?

Sonia Najera [00:08:05] Yeah, springtime in South Texas is is it’s really it’s interesting. The, well, the the migratory birds are are amazing. There are certain times where the water is super clear, primarily in the fall, though, in the winter on the shoreline.

Sonia Najera [00:08:26] But things are starting to to flower. Bees are coming out and it’s just yeah, everything just comes alive. But it’s, you know, spring in South Texas can be in middle January, can be in November. It can be in in April. That’s it’s it’s, spring isn’t always just in that spring period, as we see, you know, as we normally think of.

Lee Smith [00:08:54] It just seems to explode, on all levels, as you’re saying, the insects, the flowers, bird. I mean, it’s just it’s like it’s waiting for that moment. Then, “Pow”.

Sonia Najera [00:09:08] Yeah. Yeah. You start seeing all the lizards come out and explore and and caterpillars all of a sudden. You know, summer, summer in South Texas, when you hear all the chicharras and it’s not every year. But that’s one thing that I always remember. Reminds me of South Texas – hearing the chicharras all night.

Sonia Najera [00:09:30] The light bugs. Growing up, we used to have so many light bugs. And that was … I don’t, you don’t see them as often. And but when I do see them always takes me back home.

Lee Smith [00:09:42] Instantly. Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:09:45] So and then you you pursued a degree, a career in wildlife? Tell me how you did that.

Sonia Najera [00:09:53] Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:09:54] Between high school and getting and going to college.

Sonia Najera [00:09:57] So when I was in, going to college there in Kingsville, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And so I just took science classes because it was fun.

Sonia Najera [00:10:10] But but I have a family full of teachers and they’re they’re great. And so I was kind of directed to be, “Why don’t you be a teacher?” And but I always kept taking science classes. And I just decided one day that that I’m going to I’m going to just take science classes. I mean, I’ll just get a degree in science.

Sonia Najera [00:10:37] And then when I started taking Dr. Cheney’s classes, it was like, “I want to be a wildlife biologist”. And and so so it was it was I mean, to be honest, it was even a few years after after graduating.

Sonia Najera [00:10:52] And I was already working in the field that my family, my parents finally came to realize that I guess you’re going to have this as your career. And it’s it’s part of it may be part of a you know, again, my family is is traditional. And and they just didn’t see someone like me going into a wildlife degree, in a position like that. And so so but yeah, I went, that’s how I started. You know, I just kept kept at it. I was I’ve been really lucky.

Lee Smith [00:11:32] So what was your first job out of college?

Sonia Najera [00:11:37] I mean, my first paid job was I had a summer intern working. I was actually an SCA, Student Conservation Association, volunteer in Alaska. And I’ll never forget when when I applied, I met somebody at school and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, you should apply for these summer jobs.”

Sonia Najera [00:12:00] And so so I applied. I applied for several. And I was expecting to get a job here locally in South Texas. I’m in South Texas, maybe working with the sea turtles on the seashore. And out of the blue, the biologist from Alaska, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, called and asked if I if I was still interested in the job.

Sonia Najera [00:12:26] And I was like, “I can’t take the job. I’ve never left South Texas. And and no way will my parents let me.” And and then he just said, “Because have you ever been to Alaska?” I said, “No.” And he’s, because it’s a great way to see it. And I’m like, “I’m going, I’ll be there.”.

Sonia Najera [00:12:46] And and and it was funny because my dad, when he came home from work, and I told him, he was really upset. And I had to tell him, I’m like, “Dad, I gave him my word. You wouldn’t want me to back down.”

Sonia Najera [00:13:00] And and it was I’m sorry. Get emotional because my dad died last year. But but it was it was. I’m sorry.

Sonia Najera [00:13:16] Well, going back, the whole time I was in Alaska four months. I had a fantastic job. I was helping. I was trapping. I used to love, I used to love to trap. That was part of when I was in school and we were trapping snowshoe hares. And since I was over there, I was trapping on the side and doing museum specimens for for the museum at the university.

Sonia Najera [00:13:41] But the whole time I was there, my dad would, I would call my dad on the weekends and he’d be like, “If you ever want to come home, no matter the cost, you know, come home.”.

Sonia Najera [00:13:51] And I was like, little did he know that after that trip, I was like, before that, I wanted to be I wanted to work on the coast, be an ichthyologist. Actually, I wanted to work with marine fish. After that, I’m like, oh, no, I’m working terrestrial, working ecology. I was it was it was a great it was a great experience.

Sonia Najera [00:14:14] From that, you know, it just led on to to other seasonal jobs. I worked trapping ocelots. That was a great experience. Not only, you know, did we get to set the trap, see the habitat, catch ocelots, hold an ocelot, help prep them.

Sonia Najera [00:14:34] But the master’s student who became an excellent wildlife biologist, Linda Locke, at the time, she she taught me so much, you know, grit, really. It’s hot and and there’s nothing like like walking under the brush in deep south Texas, Laguna Madre structure, brush country, and seed ticks and ticks just crawling all over you. And you just have to keep at it because you’re you know, you’re at work.

Sonia Najera [00:15:10] And she was it was great. It was one of the best experiences of of my, you know, life was working down at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge in South Texas.

Sonia Najera [00:15:24] And yeah, I mean, I think of growing up going to Mathis Lake, you know, the state park, going to Garner State Park. Those were my experiences of going going camping and with the family and just exploring, seeing new sites. Yeah, it was it was it was lots of, that was my outdoor experience.

Lee Smith [00:15:47] So how did you land at the Nature Conservancy?

Sonia Najera [00:15:52] So, that was funny. I was at the time I was in New Mexico. I went to graduate school at New Mexico State and and I was working for the Fish and Wildlife Service for several years. And then I was actually on an interagency detail working for the National Park Service. And the National Park Service had a Mexico Affairs Office in Las Cruces, New Mexico. And I had already been working several years in northern Mexico with the National Park Service.

Sonia Najera [00:16:27] And I heard of this NGO, the Nature Conservancy, opening an office in Las Cruces and that they had intentions to work in northern Mexico. And I just I just popped in the office one day. And I wanted to I wanted to know what they were, what they were going to be working on because we had projects in the works. We had already years of experience, relationships built and I wanted to know basically what angle they were going to take.

Sonia Najera [00:16:58] So I was working in New Mexico. I was based out of Las Cruces, New Mexico. I was working for the National Park Service, US Mexico Affairs Office. And I had already been working in northern Mexico for several years.

Sonia Najera [00:17:13] I heard of an NGO, the Nature Conservancy, opening an office there in Las Cruces. And I stopped by to to kind of learn what they were planning on doing, what projects that were going to be moving forward.

Sonia Najera [00:17:27] And and I met Terry Sullivan, who was assistant state director for the Nature Conservancy there. And we discussed the projects they were mentioning, that they were just really they were, it was really more exploratory. They didn’t have a set idea.

Sonia Najera [00:17:48] He mentioned him and state director Bill Waldman were wanting to to expand into the northern Mexico, southern New Mexico area. A lot of the projects they were managing were further to the west and north. And and after our conversation, he he asked if I wanted to be involved with the project.

Sonia Najera [00:18:12] At the time, I was still working with the Park Service. And so so I declined. But but I later did call and ask if that offer was still available. And that’s how I got started with the Nature Conservancy.

Lee Smith [00:18:27] So what is your role now with the Nature Conservancy?

Sonia Najera [00:18:32] So today I am the Director of Landscape Initiatives. And in my program, our grasslands program, our coastal, Brazilian coast program, our climate program, as well as we still have our South Texas projects.

Lee Smith [00:18:52] So what is the Southmost Preserve? Why is that important?

Sonia Najera [00:18:57] So Southmost Preserve is a is approximately a little over a thousand acres right on the southernmost tip of Texas and right on the right on the Rio Grande. And several miles of the of the Rio Grande River is is our southern border, boundary of the preserve.

Sonia Najera [00:19:17] And it’s right in the deltaic region of the Rio Grande. And so that particular area historically was sabal palm forest. And Southmost is one of the one of two last remaining intact and large tracts of sabal forest still still found in the United States. Sabal forest as a as a as a community is one of the rarest plant communities in the US. There are still some large tracts in in Mexico, in Tamaulipas, but but on the US side as a forest structurally, that is is almost nonexistent.

Lee Smith [00:20:09] And what goes on there?

Sonia Najera [00:20:12] So at the Preserve, a lot of restoration. We’re a plant material center. That’s our main focus is we, our staff, Marcos Ruiz and and in the past, other staff members, are instrumental in providing native plant seedlings for restoration – brush restoration, in particular, thorn forest restoration and palm forest restoration – seedlings to advance those efforts and pretty much all the lower Rio Grande Valley.

Lee Smith [00:20:45] So what’s that process? You’re going and collecting seeds? Walk me through that.

Sonia Najera [00:20:54] So so yeah, it’s a year-round process. They, seeds are going to, you know, become ripe at various times of the year. So you always want to be vigilant as to what plants are going to seed and collecting. So there’s always seed collections going on, cataloging those those seeds and storing them in cold storage.

Sonia Najera [00:21:19] Usually we we also need to prepare the soil and the beds, once we do the planting. Most of the most of our seedlings are for efforts that other partners like the US Fish and Wildlife Service are doing. And so when you want to do your restoration, you want to have good soil moisture and you want to actually be planting when when it’s not the heat of the summer.

Sonia Najera [00:21:45] So winter, winter, late winter, late fall, in that period, November through January, are good times to try and plant. So so depending on the species, we might be putting seed in in a soil matrix starting in January so they can be ready at the end of that year for planting.

Sonia Najera [00:22:09] So there’s always there’s always all year-round, you’re going to be, and depending on the species you’re working with, some species you’re going to want to get them started in a tray versus an individual tube. And then you’ll have to transplant those later.

Sonia Najera [00:22:27] And it’s a lot of care – got to germinate the seed. Sometimes it’ll take hydrochloric acid or just different different techniques to get that scarification done so that you can get the seed to germinate.

Sonia Najera [00:22:41] And then putting them in the bed and then taking care of them until they’re ready to be delivered to whoever is going to be planting.

Lee Smith [00:22:54] So it’s almost like a seed factory or a species factory, it sounds like.

Sonia Najera [00:23:02] It’s a full-time job, that’s for sure. Marcos is doing amazing, amazing work out there working with the seedlings, and and before that Maxwell Pons and Juan and Ovidio, our staff in the past that used to work at Southmost.

Sonia Najera [00:23:26] I was going to say something.

Sonia Najera [00:23:31] So, so a limiting factor in a lot of this work is that seed material. The same thing as in our grasslands is to get native and regionally and ecologically adapted seed is is what we’re all looking for, for restoration.

Sonia Najera [00:23:47] And so our stewardship and and having like the preserve, Southmost Preserve, that has so many different habitat and niches on there. So we do have native plants that are that are generating that seed just because they’re they’re the parent material.

Sonia Najera [00:24:05] We also provide seed for other entities so that they can also have seed for their work.

Sonia Najera [00:24:11] But finding seed, getting access to seed, getting it at the right time, making sure bugs haven’t gotten to them. You know, we work with 30 different species. And so, so always want to be vigilant of you see a tree or you see a brush or shrub or something and its, their seed is ripe. Always be ready to be able to collect.

Lee Smith [00:24:37] What was Lisa Williams’ early role? She was even before the greenhouses were set up at Southmost. She was doing this, right?

Sonia Najera [00:24:51] She was. So Lisa was was working in South Texas, I believe, well before I arrived back in Texas. And and she helped, she really established the South Texas nursery based out of Chihuahua Woods, a preserve we used to have in Hidalgo County.

Sonia Najera [00:25:09] And it was in an era of when, you know, the wildlife corridor, which kind of began in the early ’80s, mid-’80s. And that was establishing, they would call it a string of pearls, of protected areas along the Rio Grande from Hidalgo County to Cameron County, really Starr county, all the way to Cameron.

Sonia Najera [00:25:37] And and it was trying to create that corridor, because as the Lower Rio Grande Valley was, you know, becoming more and more developed and more fragmentation. I mean, it’s already extremely fragmented. And at that time, there was there was a big, lots of NAFTA. There was more more development coming.

Sonia Najera [00:25:57] And it was really apparent that we need to get as much habitat as we could together. Fish and Wildlife Service was buying a lot of that land. And as they get their administration going and and put it under their management review, we were greatly involved in a lot of that protection effort.

Sonia Najera [00:26:20] But and there were the established refuges – Santa Ana, the headquarters, Laguna Atascosa, on the coast. And there was all these other tracts. But but they weren’t necessarily open to the public. They were small tracts. They weren’t like the big areas with facilities.

Sonia Najera [00:26:39] So when we when we were involved in Hidalgo County and we purchased Chihuahua Woods, Lisa had the foresight to to really look at and not just protect the land, but make sure it’s accessible to the people, to the local community. So she established a trail system, a volunteer network, the nursery, the original South Texas plant nursery to do restoration work there, working with landowners who wanted to restore brush. And not just brush … you know, people think of brush – mesquite or so – but the structure and the different species that that make that community.

Sonia Najera [00:27:24] So she was really instrumental in those early days of reaching out to the public and help bridge that what the Fish and Wildlife Service was doing as to why it’s important. And also it’s protecting not just, you know, this habitat, but also our heritage, because especially like in Chihuahua Woods, it was previously it had a management that exacerbated the proliferation of opuntia, a cactus, you know, what’s the nopal?

Lee Smith [00:28:05] Prickly pear.

Sonia Najera [00:28:06] Yeah, prickly pear. Sorry, I couldn’t think of the word. Yeah, but prickly pear. And so, you know, collecting prickly pear. And nopalito is a favorite dish in South Texas. And, you know, trying to make that connection also of, you know, these are protected areas for wildlife, for habitat, but also trying to make that connection of how it also supports the local community and the culture.

Lee Smith [00:28:37] Kind of got there. So what were some of the challenges in getting Southmost going to where it is today?

Sonia Najera [00:28:47] Yeah, there’s ecological challenges. We’re working with a very fragmented system, invasive species, invasive grasses. When you’re working with, where you’re having to already suppress and work and manage invasive species and then establish native on top of that, it takes a lot of management, a lot of, you have to have a long vision in that type of restoration. There’s that component.

Sonia Najera [00:29:26] There is, we’re right on the US-Mexico border. And so a lot of the border wall, the first border wall being built right, you know, right on our, not even on our boundary, but within our boundary and dissecting the Preserve. We have 80, more than 80 % of the Preserve is on the south of that border wall.

Sonia Najera [00:29:54] And we’ve been working in that, you know, the border wall was built in 2011 on us. And we’re used to it now. It’s not something that, we don’t like it, I don’t like it, none of us do.

Sonia Najera [00:30:14] But it doesn’t take away why that system is so important and why it is important for us to keep the potential of that, of the resacas, of that forest and being able to restore that forest.

Sonia Najera [00:30:33] And so, you know, sometimes a setback is, the border wall becomes a wall, a wall on people’s idea of conservation. And they don’t see the work that we’re doing because they’re seeing the wall. And so that’s a barrier sometimes.

Lee Smith [00:30:57] So what other projects in the Laguna Madre has TNC been involved with?

Sonia Najera [00:31:03] Yeah, wow, the big one is expanding the huge tracts on Padre Island, on South Padre Island. And it’s actually, so the town of South Padre Island is primarily on the Cameron County southern tip.

Sonia Najera [00:31:26] And so much of the barrier island going to the north up to Port Mansfield is still in its native, ecologically ebb and flow, lots of, you know, the processes that maintain that barrier island are still intact.

Sonia Najera [00:31:47] And the Nature Conservancy was instrumental in working with partners and securing the funding and getting those projects, that land protected. And expanded the boundary of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge to incorporate that into the boundary and into their management. It really helped protect that barrier island, helps protect South Texas.

Sonia Najera [00:32:20] Development hasn’t stopped. There’s still lots of areas in the deep southern end of the barrier island still being developed. But all that 30-plus miles or so of barrier island is still intact.

Lee Smith [00:32:42] So how has TNC been involved with ocelots?

Sonia Najera [00:32:48] So we’ve been, I mean, just through a lot of the land acquisition and projects and the restoration, as I described, providing that habitat has been, and providing that plant material to reestablish that habitat.

Sonia Najera [00:33:04] Ocelots, like, you know, their habitat is brush with a structure. And it’s really, you don’t get to that structure early on. It’s a late successional stage. And so, again, it’s that long vision. It’s a long game to try and restore that habitat.

Sonia Najera [00:33:29] And so we’re very much involved in providing plant material and working with partners like Fish and Wildlife Service and also area ranchers who are interested. We provide a lot of that plant material, a lot of the restoration techniques that we’ve employed that have been successful and not successful.

Sonia Najera [00:33:53] And we continue with our land protection, and protecting land where ocelots could occupy and is within the home range and the historic territory.

Sonia Najera [00:34:09] We continue to work with partners like Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute and Fish and Wildlife and other partners who are very much interested in advancing conservation efforts.

Sonia Najera [00:34:27] We work with private landowners like the Yturria Ranch where we have a conservation easement. We have an easement that we have, we know is known territory for ocelots. We continue to do restoration. Fish and Wildlife Service is now also an easement holder on the Ranch, and we work with the landowners on that.

Sonia Najera [00:34:53] So there are a lot of different efforts and a lot of different partners involved in ocelot work.

Lee Smith [00:35:00] Now you’ve said several times the structure of brush, and a lot of people, they say “brush country” or “brush” and it’s kind of this monolithic, just dense thing. But you’ve been using the word “structure”. Tell me about the structure of brush.

Sonia Najera [00:35:20] Yeah, so a thick brush community, when it’s in that later successional stage, is not necessarily highly diverse. It can be made up of just a few species, but you have your bigger branches and then you have other species underneath that will grow into that structure. And so that forms almost like a mat.

Sonia Najera [00:35:56] And it’ll get to the point where it’ll be bare ground underneath because you’re not getting any sunlight down and so you’re not getting much forbs or plants underneath it. But now you’re in pretty late successional stage.

Sonia Najera [00:36:14] But that brush structure is habitat to cottontails, to lots of bird species. And that also is, and it provides a lot of cover.

Sonia Najera [00:36:30] So when you have an ocelot or a predator that can really work that type of habitat, and they’re also keying in on a lot of these small mammals. That is their prey.

Sonia Najera [00:36:48] And so it provides cover, it provides for travel, it provides habitat for your prey. And that’s always, that’s what we’re getting to.

Sonia Najera [00:37:02] And it’s a multi-stemmed, it’s a plant, it can have a big trunk, but it’ll have multi-stemmed and helps create that interlocking mat as it grows up. And that’s what we’re always trying to get at.

Sonia Najera [00:37:19] Do we plant them in dense clusters? Can you shred it and will it then grow in multi-stemmed?

Sonia Najera [00:37:33] I mean, these are all different ideas, different techniques, different ways of looking at how do we advance and accelerate the brush community to grow as fast as, so that we don’t lose ocelots or so that we can create more habitat.

Lee Smith [00:37:58] So why does TNC work with partners in Mexico, and why is this international work important?

Sonia Najera [00:38:07] Yeah, so, well, for one thing, I mean, nothing stops at the border. We are all one system, whatever landscapes, wildlife, ecology, processes, it’s the same on both sides. And there are no sides, it’s one system.

Sonia Najera [00:38:32] And it’s so important that we work cross-boundary because whatever we do in South Texas, we need to be doing in lots of places in northern Mexico as we think of and also further west. And there’s no border, there’s no boundary.

Sonia Najera [00:39:04] There’s a lot of advances that are being made all over in conservation that we need to have more exchange on lots of techniques that we can be advancing here. I think we need to be just more open to working together.

Sonia Najera [00:39:29] Yeah, so the Janos Grasslands project started many years ago as basically high desert, Chihuahuan desert, grassland in northern Chihuahua. And it is an area that is surrounded by various ejidos, which are communal land holdings. And it was also an area that is very, colonies of Mennonite communities as well. And it was a very productive grassland ranching community. And it’s right in the corridor of grassland birds in particular. And it was the location of one of the largest prairie dog colonies in North America, the black-tailed prairie dog. And because of the prairie dog and them working that land, it was a really key location and migration for a lot of species.

Sonia Najera [00:40:46] So when we started working in Janos, we were looking at expanding into grassland conservation. But how do you do that in Mexico?

Sonia Najera [00:40:58] And we first started by, really by making partnerships. What is it that the community needed? We started the project really working with the equivalent of the county judge with Celso Jaquez. He used to be the community leader in Janos. And he had a vision of also connecting, building pride in the community, and linking that to who we are and this place.

Sonia Najera [00:41:48] And it intersected well with what we were wanting to do too, because you need to link that conservation to that community and that region. And really working with Celso, working with Pronatura, working with ProFauna, working with the university, Autónoma de Chihuahua, and working with TNC, we were able to establish a protected area.

Sonia Najera [00:42:28] We were working with a landowner who wanted to sell his ranch. And it was right at the base of the Sierra Madre Occidental. And it was a big swath of that high plateau grassland. And it was a working ranch. And he was right in the middle, surrounded by a bunch of ejidos. And he had a section of the prairie dog town.

Sonia Najera [00:42:57] And by being able to get established and to help protect that land, we were able to develop a project for many years and be part of that community. Also with the university, UNAM in Mexico City, and the researchers, able to advance conservation in that landscape. It’s a foothold.

Sonia Najera [00:43:29] But if you think of Northern Janos, our projects in West Texas, our projects in Southeastern New Mexico, these are all archipelagos. These are all connected landscapes. These are all high plateau grasslands. And as we look at grassland conservation, as we look at wildlife, bird conservation, we have to think at a large scale. I mean, that’s why there is no border.

Sonia Najera [00:44:07] There’s only systems. And we have to think at that system level because of climate, because of issues. And so the bigger the system, the better it can absorb and evolve and provide habitat for all sorts of areas.

Sonia Najera [00:44:31] And so at that time, there were lots of fronts, I’ll just say, lots of fronts of conservation in Northern Chihuahua. And Janos was a big one that we were involved in.

Lee Smith [00:44:45] Is Janos being used kind of like Southmost as a seed bank?

Sonia Najera [00:44:51] Today, I don’t believe so. Right now, it is owned and managed by Fondo Mexicano, which is a Mexico NGO. But it still provides a foothold of protected area in that landscape.

Sonia Najera [00:45:15] So yeah, so once Janos was established, then the local community and with UNAM, they helped establish Janos as a Reserva de la Biosfera at a local, basically a protected area decree within Mexico. And so the Rancho El Uno, the ranch itself that was purchased, became the nucleus site. And then expanded the reach of the protected area with various use.

Sonia Najera [00:45:55] So very similar to other protected areas in other countries. Or equivalent almost like to a Forest Service. So there’s still natural resources extraction like grazing, and there’s different things happening in that landscape. But the nucleus is Rancho El Uno.

Sonia Najera [00:46:15] And then also we were involved in the bison reintroducing into that area. So there is a native bison herd that is historically in that region of Mexico. And I know UNAM was very instrumental in working with the Nature Conservancy in reestablishing that bison herd in that ranch and in that whole system.

Sonia Najera [00:46:47] Well, so Janos is a small community. And it’s a really small community. It’s like an intersection. It’s the road that will take you to Hermosillo, into the state of Sonora. And if you go south, it will take you towards Casas Grandes, which is actually the county seat, I think, in that municipality.

Sonia Najera [00:47:16] So it’s important because it’s an intersection. And so there’s commerce going through there. But it is a small community. And it’s surrounded by these high plateau grasslands. And it’s very much a ranching community.

Lee Smith [00:47:36] And where is it located? Is it central, east?

Sonia Najera [00:47:41] If you picture the state of Chihuahua, and it borders the US, and then here is the state of Chihuahua, it’s on the north part of the state. It’s probably, as a crow flies, it’s probably 100 miles south of the border. It’s not very far. It takes longer to get there.

Sonia Najera [00:48:04] But if you were in southern New Mexico, in the Bootheel region of southern New Mexico, and you see those sea of grassland, and with islands of mountains around and the sea of grassland in between, it’s almost the same down in Janos. It’s the same type of landscape.

Lee Smith [00:48:29] That’s a good reference. Beautiful.

Lee Smith [00:48:33] So, what is TNC’s involvement with coastal wetlands?

Sonia Najera [00:48:39] Yeah, I mean, so we’ve been in all sorts of ways, from protection to ensure that coastal wetlands will exist into the future and have space to migrate with sea level rise, to restoration. We’re working on several projects right now on restoration of trying to protect, armor, build in resilience into these wetlands, while still allowing them to still maintain the processes that they need. Restoration from planting the native marsh plants to, again, to build up that resilience. And we’re looking at potential setting up feeder mounds on some sites that we have to help nourish, like a beach nourishment, but it’s going to be a marsh nourishment to keep marshes in sync as sea levelsl rise. There is lots of work.

Lee Smith [00:49:58] You’re feeding there?

Sonia Najera [00:50:00] Well, a project, we’re still in the works, but we’re trying to basically set up a feeder mound. It’s a mound of sediment that will dissipate over the course of years with wave action and will then help nourish the shoreline. But it won’t be like a smothering. It won’t be all at once. It’ll happen over time so that vegetation can colonize, and it will help build up that. So these are all just different techniques.

Sonia Najera [00:50:36] Very active in oyster reef restoration. Very active with partners, trying to get, you know, assisting partners. It’s not always the Nature Conservancy leading. We also partner and we assist others, you know, help them get funding, or maybe they have better connections locally or with the community.

Lee Smith [00:51:05] So kind of shifting up into the center part. What is the Clymer Meadow Preserve, and why is that place important?

Sonia Najera [00:51:17] So the Clymer Meadow Preserve is in northeast Texas. It’s northeast of Dallas, and it’s one of the last best locations of the Blackland Prairie. There is largest intact. Walking across that prairie is like walking back in time. And most of the areas that we have and manage has not been plowed.

Sonia Najera [00:51:52] And so you still have the gilgai, the shrinking and expansion of the soil that happens as it rains. And so it’s this undulation of the soil that you’ll see. In the winter it’s really obvious. You can really see it.

Sonia Najera [00:52:19] And that relief, there’s different plants at the top of that hill versus the valleys of this hill. And it’s extremely diverse.

Sonia Najera [00:52:40] And it’s an example of that Blackland community that is so rare today. And it’s a system that is primarily exclusively in Texas.

Lee Smith [00:52:57] And we’ve got Clymer. We’ve got Texas City Prairie. We’ve got Nash Prairie. We’ve got Janos. And you can say grasslands, but they’re all unique grasslands, aren’t they?

Sonia Najera [00:53:14] They are. They’re all unique grasslands. They’re all shaped by the climate they’re in. Janos is a very dry climate. It’s in the Chihuahuan Desert. And so, you know, good year, you have 12 inches of rain.

Sonia Najera [00:53:30] Clymer, up in the Blackland Prairie in northeast Texas, 40 inches of rain often sometimes. A very, very different forb community.

Sonia Najera [00:53:41] You know, Nash or Texas City or Mad Island, any of our coastal prairies, again, a very different plant community. Sometimes same species, but you will get different vegetation forms or the density, much more diverse as you go further east and to the coast.

Lee Smith [00:54:03] So why are all of these important grasslands?

Sonia Najera [00:54:06] Yeah, so all of these are, you know, they’re not just providing habitat for wildlife in all the different migratory paths that go through, but they’re also all capturing water. They’re also part of this greater landscape that contributes to that water budget, contributes in that intervening space.

Sonia Najera [00:54:34] You know, one thing we haven’t mentioned is, especially further in all these systems, but especially in further east, the disturbance regime that we need to maintain these grasslands, like prescribed fire, is so important to maintain the integrity of these grasslands, and that’s something that we, the Nature Conservancy, has really advanced, has really perfected.

Sonia Najera [00:55:06] And that’s how we’re maintaining it, that’s how we work on our, you know, our prairies themselves are, they’re in the state they’re in, they’re in that, I mean, almost at a high successional stage because of the management that our ecologists on the ground are applying.

Lee Smith [00:55:29] Are any of these prairies used as seed sources as well?

Sonia Najera [00:55:32] Oh yeah.

Lee Smith [00:55:33] Which ones and how does that work?

Sonia Najera [00:55:35] Gosh, all of them, Clymer, Nash, Mad Island, Texas City. It’s the stewardship, you know, the stewardship of our land is producing that seed. The seed’s there, the seed bank is there, and it’s the stewardship that we’re employing that, that those plant community, you know, those species express themselves and the seed they generate, all of them, and a lot of it is, like I said, it’s from the stewardship.

Lee Smith [00:56:07] How do you collect seeds from a prairie? Is there kind of like a harvester or is it by hand?

Sonia Najera [00:56:13] Yeah, that, I mean, I’ll talk about it in general, extremely general, but we do have, we have the seed harvester that we, it’s either pulled behind by, with an ATV, and it kind of like sweeps and it collects the seed. And then that is then put into, you know, sometimes, sometimes we’ll clean it. Our guys have been extremely resourceful and creative, and, you know, we’ll put it through a chipper just to clean some of the chaff off, but a lot of hand collecting also.

Sonia Najera [00:56:58] You know, it’s a great way to introduce people, the community, as you’re walking through the prairie, talking about the prairie, collecting seed, talking about where the seed’s going to go, you know, expanding and making sure that that genetic material, I mean, that’s what we’re after is to get that genetic material out.

Sonia Najera [00:57:25] So, like at Southmost, because, well, we’re talking about grass and forbs where we can collect seed, and that’s easy to, well, I don’t want to say easy, but that you’re not dealing with a big cover over that seed like you are with a brush. You know, in a brush species, we’re dealing with a lot of, it has a very hard cover that needs to go through some type of a process in order to get that germinated.

Sonia Najera [00:57:53] One of the ones, like sabal palm, and this was an observation from staff, you know, Maxwell Pons, where they noticed that the sabal palm that was growing out in the forest, because nobody was able to, they weren’t aware on how to germinate sabal palm, and they noticed that when they were seeing sabals actually growing, it was at coyote droppings.

Sonia Najera [00:58:31] And so Max started, and the staff at Southmost, started collecting those droppings and getting, and they found all the seed that was in the droppings, and using that seed to germinate almost all the time, we were successful in getting sabals to grow.

Sonia Najera [00:58:53] But if you just went to the tree and were collecting seed that was at the bottom of the tree, you were not getting sabals to grow. And so we realized that the seed going through the gut of a coyote was the scarification it needed, and it probably also protected that seed from insects that bore into the seed, so they were probably ingesting the seed soon after.

Sonia Najera [00:59:18] And this is, me thinking, soon after it drops, it’s fresher seed, they ingest it, it protects it from insects that would compromise that seed, and then, and it was going through that gut, that was the scarification it needed, and pop, up it went.

Sonia Najera [00:59:38] So we’ve been really successful in producing sabal palm seedlings, and we have no shortage of coyotes right now at the preserve, so that’s a good thing.

Lee Smith [00:59:53] So what advice do you have for young people coming into the field of conservation?

Sonia Najera [00:59:59] Yeah, that’s a good question.

Sonia Najera [01:00:03] You know, stay at it. Stay curious. Just stay at it, I think. Always stay connected to the land. You know, like Dr. Cheney said, the land’s the best teacher and we need to, we need to learn all along the way. So there’s always something new that we’re learning along the way.

Sonia Najera [01:00:31] I’m excited that there are many more, you know, people of all walks and likes coming into the field. And we need more ideas, more creativity. And things we learned in the past, principles are always good, but don’t be stuck to that. You know, be inventive. We have to be adaptive with climate change and not lose hope.

Sonia Najera [01:01:04] It is, you know, as I see so much change that is happening, it can be hard, you know, it can be hard to let things go. But it’s okay. Let things go because it’s not, because it’s just going to change. It’s going to be, it’ll be something different. But that, what is something different and how it fits in this landscape.

Sonia Najera [01:01:31] You know, I always feel like It’s hard, you know, I work right here in this patch and it’s so important. But where does that fit in all of this? And I think it’s important to keep that in mind because there’s so much change coming. And we’re seeing it all the time.

Sonia Najera [01:01:52] And when you work so hard to protect, or you manage and you want to keep it this way, we have to just remember ecology and how it goes through stages.

Lee Smith [01:02:05] What’s your outlook for conservation? What do you think the future of conservation is going to be?

Sonia Najera [01:02:10] You know, I am excited. Like I said, it’s going to be very different. It’s not going to be the same.

Sonia Najera [01:02:20] But that’s okay. Change is good.

Sonia Najera [01:02:23] And we need, you know, everyone needs to get excited. Conservation isn’t for the few, it’s for all of us. All of us need to understand that, you know, in order, I mean, it’s not an othering or it’s not them or it’s not far away. It’s my own backyard. It is there. It starts there.

Sonia Najera [01:02:43] And so I think that’s becoming more mainstream. And that’s the way it should be. I’m hoping, I’m hopeful that that is what’s happening.