TWA+TALT: Better Together

TWA + TALT: Better Together

STORY BY LORIE A. WOODWARD

In the face of explosive population growth and increasing land fragmentation, private landowners need access to every available conservation tool to keep their farms, ranches and forests open and working.

“Without working lands, Texas, which is 95% privately owned, would have almost no wildlife habitat,” said Justin Dreibelbis, CEO of the Texas Wildlife Association (TWA). “Without habitat, Texas would have no wildlife. Of course, we wouldn’t have food, fiber, clean air or water, carbon sequestration or a host of other life sustaining ecological processes either.”

These realizations prompted TWA, along with Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association and Texas Farm Bureau, to cofound the Texas Agricultural Land Trust (TALT) in 2007.

“Sometimes you just need a little help fromyour like-minded friends,” Dreibelbis said.

Representatives from these three groups and other stakeholders, along with long-time TWA member and land advocate Blair Fitzsimons, who became TALT’s founding CEO, created a unique land trust. Unlike many land trusts dedicated to conserving picturesque places or land in a specific area, TALT was formed “by farmers and ranchers for farmers and ranchers—and hunters too” to keep working lands open and productive.

“The founders were wise enough to know that TALT couldn’t be perceived as a land trust for farmers or ranchers or wildlife managers, but it had to be seen as a land trust for everyone who worked the land, understood its challenges and wanted to conserve working land as their legacy not only for their families, but for Texas,” Dreibelbis said.

Land trusts exist to conserve land and water resources in partnership with private landowners or other entities by holding conservation easements. Conservation easements are perpetual restrictions that prohibit development and commercial non-agricultural uses, while allowing agricultural producers and wildlife managers to continue doing what they do, whether it is grazing, row crop farming or hunting.

“Everyone understood that this new land trust couldn’t be an add-on to any organization’s existing mission,” Dreibelbis said. “TALT had to be a strong, standalone organization that could partner with landowners and hold conservation easements in perpetuity. Forever is a long time.”

Rewind «

At the time of TALT’s founding, many in the landowning community viewed conservation easements with suspicion. The memory of the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s ill-conceived attempt in the mid-1990s to name portions of 33 Texas counties in the Hill Country and Central Texas as critical habitat for the golden-cheeked warbler and black-capped vireo still loomed large in landowners' minds and rankled.

“During the ‘bird wars,’ it appeared as if a ‘coalition’ of environmental groups and land trusts were going to ‘save’ the endangered species by permanently wresting control away from private landowners either by taking it or purchasing it at fire sale prices from landowners who found themselves in a financial fix,” said retired TWA CEO David K. Langford, who was heavily involved in TALT’s founding. “Their tool of choice was a conservation easement. Their goal, as least as it was perceived, was to manage natural resources by removing virtually all human activity.”

In the beginning, Langford was firmly in the anti-conservation easement camp. Thanks to a series of events, he—and others like him—became converts.

First, after one of Texas’ periodic oil and gas industry busts, state leaders decided to diversify the state’s economic base. They made it clearthat Texas was open for business, especially technology, and touted the state’s lack of an income tax and business-friendly regulatory environment. Businesses responded.

As a result, Texas entered an unprecedented growth period. In 1990, population was almost 17 million. By 2005, it had surged to 22.8 million.

In rural counties where developments sprang up, the growth was initially heralded as a boon, but it came with a hidden cost. As studies conducted by the American Farmland Trust between 1990 and 2000 revealed, while new residents brought new tax dollars, they also required more services.

According to the American Farmland Trust studies, the cost of providing those public services far exceeded the amount of tax revenue provided by residential taxpayers. In comparison, agricultural and open space land, even with lower tax valuations, generated more tax money than they required in public service costs.

At that time, American Farmland Trust conducted a Cost of Community Services survey in Bexar County. In the early 2000s, Bexar County still had rural areas even though San Antonio was already America’s ninth largest city.

In Bexar County’s case, researchers found the county’s agricultural and open space land generated nearly six times as much revenue as the county spent on those lands in services. The American Farmland Trust reported that for every dollar agricultural and open space land generated in taxes, the county spent only 18 cents to provide those lands with services. Residential development on the other hand, required $1.15 in services for every dollar it contributed from property taxes, sales taxes and other revenues.

The results were similar for studies in Hays and Bandera counties as well as the 110 other countries surveyed across the nation. Although the results were surprising, they made sense.

“A single family on 100 acres requires fewer services than 100 families on 100 acres because cows don’t go to school, songbirds don’t call 9-1-1, and crops don’t require the ‘jaws of life’ in the wake of a Saturday night smash up on the freeway,” Langford said.

Second, Fitzsimons and Langford attended a Partnership of Rangeland Trusts meeting in Billings, Montana in 2005. For the first time, they encountered land trust proponents who understood agriculture from a first-hand perspective. These people, who operated in the American West amid federal lands and those attendant challenges, were forming land trusts to conserve their land, their legacy and way of life.

During that meeting a paradigm shift occurred. Fitzsimons and Langford realized that their problem with conservation easements wasn’twith the legal document itself, but with their perception of how it was being used.

“As we came to see, a conservation easement is a tool like any other, so the way it’s used determines whether it’s detrimental or beneficial,” Langford said.

As they flew back to Texas, which by this time was losing agriculture land faster than any other state in the nation, they decided an ag-oriented land trust might just work at home. Soon after, the duo reached out to representatives from Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers and Texas FarmBureau and began identifying common ground.

“We shared a passion for helping families perpetuate their legacies, codify their love of the land and protect it forever,” said Fitzsimons, who served as TALT’s CEO until June 2020 when she retired. “Everyone involved was willing to do what was hard because we all knew it was right. It took a lot of people with a lot of grit.”

Fast Forward »

In just 15 years, TALT has become Texas’ largest home-grown land trust and one of the largest in the nation. By partnering with 37 families across the state, TALT has protected more than 250,000 acres with the potential to double that amount in years to come.

Ultimately, TALT’s impact can be measured by more than the number of acres conserved. In 2020, the organization held easements on 236,000 acres. At that time, it was estimated that the protected acreage helped net Texas 180,000 acre feet of water, enough to supply the city of San Antonio with drinking water for 200 years.

“Our value as an organization, like the value of the state’s land stewards, extends far beyond the fencelines,” TALT CEO Chad Ellis said. “Our efforts serve as a bulwark against encroaching pavement and as a beacon for conservation progress.”

Concerted conservation efforts are crucial. Texas hasn’t stopped growing. Since 2005, the state’s population has increased by 7.1 million people and is now home to 29.9 million people. An estimated 1,800 people move to Texas each day, in turn increasing demand for natural resources.

At the same time, Texas is losing about 640 acres of working land each day, a rate still outpacing any other state. In fact, the American Farmland Trust has identified Texas’ agricultural land as the most threatened in the country.

“How each of us helps save Texas’ wide open spaces and precious natural resources depends on our own personal relationship with the land,” Fitzsimons said. “Each of us has to examine our relationship with the land and ask ourselves how can we get involved in vital efforts to conserve it.”

While the relationship to land is personal, the commitment to conservation binds organizations.

According to TALT’s bylaws, its Board of Directors is made up of five representatives from each of its co-founding organizations as well as five landowners who have conservation easements, and three board members at large. Several TALTstaff members serve on TWA’s Board of Directors not by policy, but by choice. The interwoven strands make both organizations stronger.

For instance, Steve C. Lewis, who served as TALT’s first Board Chair and is currently aco-chair of its campaign to endow the ForeverTexas Fund, is also a former TWA President and current President of the TWA Foundation. Lewis is a rancher, banker and philanthropist. He, and others like him, bring a front lines perspective to both organizations.

“I appreciate the value and need for open space land in Texas,” Lewis said. “Being able to drive down a country road and see cattle grazing on open land is important to me—and I want my grandchildren and great grandchildren to be able to see them, too.

“The government, state or federal, can’t—and shouldn’t—own much. A conservation easement allows landowners to voluntarily conserve their land while continuing to manage it in a way that they see fit. By keeping the land open and productive, these stewards are benefiting the public at their own expense.”

Of course, to keep producing public benefits on private lands, landowners need a wide variety of tools in their kits. While conservation easements are now tried-and-true, ecosystem services are now next generation conservation tools. TALT is on the leading edge of this emerging marketplace, which seeks to place a financial value on natural resources such as water and ecological processes which include carbon sequestration.

“We need to identify and develop other income streams that allow landowners to keep their working lands intact,” Ellis said. “Conservation carries a price tag. Developing markets for ecosystem services makes the public important partners in progress.”

TWA and TALT know the power of partnerships. The organizations recently combined forces to host “The Wild West of Ecosystem Services.” The daylong seminar was the most recent installment of TWA’s Private Lands Summit. Through the collaboration, the groups leveraged their assets and expertise to guide landowners through the new frontier.

“When it comes to conservation, Texas is better forever when we all work together,” Dreibelbis said.

For more information about TWA: Texas-Wildlife.org

For more information about TALT: TXAglandTrust.org