Plenary Presentation

People, Property and the Public Trust: New Landscapes for Texas Land Trusts

By: Carter Smith, The Nature Conservancy

Texas Land Trust Council Annual Conference
Austin, Texas
27 January 2007

Introduction

Thank you Valarie for that very kind and generous introduction. It's a privilege to be here among land trust friends and colleagues from around the state. As some of you know, my "home ground" so to speak is Austin and central Texas. As such, I always have a little trepidation when speaking in this fair city, never quite knowing who I may run into. That anxiety was fueled a bit not long ago when I was asked to give a talk to a group of woman business leaders. The lady who had invited me to the luncheon was about half way through the throes of her introduction when all of a sudden this lady in the first row let out this very loud, audible gasp, and then turned to the lady sitting next to her, and said, in something less than a whisper, "Oh my God, I used to baby sit him." As you might imagine, it was a little hard to recover from that. And, so today as I look out among all of you, the one gaze that I keep returning to is that of my mother, a new member of the Hill Country Land Trust Board. So, Valarie, I promise you that at the very least after all this, you'll be able to describe me as "well behaved."

Nothing is Changed, but Everything is Different

Our beloved TLTC Executive Director, den mother, and favorite hill country peach grower, Carolyn Vogel asked me to share with you my reflections on the state of the land trust community in Texas-where it's been in the last 10 years, where it's headed, and what challenges lie in between. So, I've entitled my talk, "People, Property, and the Public Trust: New Landscapes for Texas Land Trusts." Or, perhaps less pretentiously, "Nothing is Changed, but Everything is Different."

The Nature of Our Business is Nature

So, what hasn't changed about our work. Well, as we all gather together over the next couple of days to reflect on the conference's theme of the "Business of Conservation," let's not forget that the nature of our business……..is nature. It always has been and always will be. For all that we do, day in and day out, is work to protect our state's natural places- for parks, open spaces, farms and ranches, community gardens, wildlife habitat, drinking water concerns, greenbelts etc… It's nature for humans, and nature for nature's sake. And, thanks to your efforts, we have much to celebrate including well over 1 million acres of our heritage protected.

Why does Everything Feel So Differently?

So, if the nature of our business is nature, and always has been and always will be, why does everything feel so differently? Well, for one, there's more of us. 10 years ago, we hosted the inaugural land trust conference at the LBJ Wildflower Center. There, at the conference we focused exclusively on trying to unravel the mysteries of conservation easements and on how to convince landowners that conservation easements weren't some kind of a souped up right of way agreement or a well concealed government plot.

At that time, there were about a dozen or so land trusts, and today there are about 40 organizations with such a focus. Ten years ago, the Katy Prairie Conservation (KPC) had 1 lonely employee who officed out of a windowless room in Katy with a leaky roof and who started work for a land trust who hadn't protected a single acre of land. Today, thanks largely to the leadership of 2 remarkable women, Mary Van Kerrebrook and Mary Anne Piacentini, the KPC has helped protect almost 20,000-acres of land, including the historic Warren Ranch. Ten years ago, groups like the Hill Country Conservancy and the Bexar Land Trust were just glimmers of hope in people's eyes. Today, those organizations are the bellwethers and backbone of the conservation movements within their respective communities. You as a community of land trust members have a lot to be proud of.

And, so over the last 10 years, as our merry band of conservationists has increased in number and competence, so, too, have both public awareness and expectations. As we look ahead to the next 10 years, to the next 20 years, to the next 50 years, make no mistake:

Time is not on our side, and
Nothing less than the fate of our state's lands and waters is in our hands. Let me be clear, the governmental sector will continue to play a strong role in land and water conservation, but the burden will rest largely on the private sector. Consider this, in 2000, the national Land and Water Conservation appropriation for federal land acquisitions for NWR, BLM, and NPS was approximately $450 million. Last year, it was about $65 million. Today, our state parks have about $400 million of unmet needs. Annual appropriations for the operations (not expansion, not acquisition, but simply operations) of our national parks are $800 million less than what our parks need.

So, as govt. entities have turned more to the private sector, such as the land trust community, so too has the sometimes unflinching and unforgiving glare of the public. Some of you may recall back in 2003 when the glare of the national media was shined rather uncomfortably on the Nature Conservancy, among others, following a series of critical articles in the Washington Post. That was followed by an inquiry into land trusts and conservation easements by the Senate Finance Committee. Now, the outcome of that inquiry took an about face when the Senate passed into law new provisions into the Pension Protection Act granting landowners unparalleled incentives for donating easements on their properties in 2006 and 2007. That may lead the uninitiated to erroneously conclude, that like contemporary art, "any publicity for the land trusts, no matter how bad, is good." Don't make that mistake! The decision by Senators Grassley and Baucus to sponsor these easement incentives were the result of an intense and difficult education campaign led by the Land Trust Alliance and land trusts around the country about the virtues, not the vices, of land trust. But it did reinforce the immutable truth that public trust is a fragile and delicate commodity that can be lost with a single mis-step.

So, as the awareness and expectations of the public have grown, we must hold ourselves rigorously accountable to the industry standards (S&P) articulated by LTA and a core value of "integrity beyond reproach."

So, NOTHING IS CHANGED BUT EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT.

Threats

Consider this:

Today, The Governor tells us that we need another 4,000 miles of highways to meet our state's future transportation needs;
Today, The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department tells us that they rank 49th in per capita spending on state parks and that if relief funding, to the tune of $85-$100 million annually, is not granted, then it's all over but the shouting;
Today, The Conservation Fund tells us that we have just witnessed the largest sell-off of large tracts of private lands in the state's history, with the divestiture of all the timberlands in east Texas. Most all the large, commercial forest products companies, with the notable exception of Temple-Inland, have decided that their assets tied up in land could be better allocated to other more remunerative investments;
Today, The American Farmland Trust and NRCS tells us that Texas leads the nation in the loss of farm and ranch land to development;
Today, ED, Sierra Club, and NWF tell us that are rivers are so over appropriated that 5 out of our 7 major bay systems are in serious long term peril because of the threats to freshwater inflows;
Today, The Nature Conservancy tells us that our natural lands are being invaded at unparalleled rates by a hardy bunch of interlopers led by feral hogs, fire ants, giant salvinia, Chinese tallow, K-R bluestem, and salt cedar;
And Today, T. Boone Pickens tells us that our groundwater is worth more than the land above it (and you know what, he may be right…);

"NOTHING IS CHANGED BUT EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT"

New Approaches

Well, with all that good news, what's a girl to do? Well, as my friend and colleague, Jeff Weigel is fond of saying, every good project needs a good threat. Well, we have them a plenty.

And, as land trusts, if we're going to adequately abate those threats, we're going to have to work at higher levels, at greater scales, and through different means. Bill Ginn calls this "crossing the divide." We must venture out and expand from traditional land preservation activities into new areas- unfamiliar and sometimes uncomfortable places like politics and policy, like sustainable development, like working landscapes, like groundwater and surface water and drinking water- with places and projects filled with new actors, untread waters, faustian bargains, and uncertainty aplenty. We can no longer think about acres and not acre-feet, about conservation easements but not climate change, about preservation but not policy. Bucks and acres can no longer be the simple calculus of our success.

This point has been driven well home to me by the following. Over TNC's 40 plus year history in our state, we have protected over 250,000-acres of land along the Texas coast- critical habitats- seagrass meadows, barrier islands, marshes, estuaries, river deltas etc… National wildlife refuges that provide habitat for species such as whooping cranes and brown pelicans. But candidly, all that work is for naught if we no longer have freshwater flows coming down our rivers and streams into our bays and estuaries. And, candidly, protecting more land is not the only answer to that challenge.

Please don't get me wrong, we must still labor tirelessly to protect lands and waters from the Big Bend to the Big Thicket, from the Red River to the Rio Grande. We must continue to work on helping landowners protect their properties through conservation easements to help save the best of Texas. We must continue to establish new preserves, new greenbelts, new parks, new wildlife refuges, and new wildlife management areas. This is the essence of our work and we must master the tools to do that, but master them quickly.

Conclusion

But always remember, our fight/our cause is not only for the last acre of the whooping crane or the last drop in the Rio Grande, it's for the hearts, minds, and trust of the people of Texas who are looking to us to save the natural beauty, character, and diversity for which Texas is so well known. Future generations will judge us not only by what we have developed, but also that which we did not. And, here we can not afford to falter. …or to fail.

Thank you.