Wildlife conservation and rangeland management expert, Dr. Matt Wagner.

Private Ranch Owners and Hunters Are
the Key to Effective Wildlife Conservation:
Part One of an Exclusive Interview with Dr. Matt Wagner
 
Privately owned ranches play an important role in ensuring the well-being of wildlife and their habitats. Indeed, a growing number of Texas land buyers are electing to set wildlife and rangeland management as their primary objective.
 
For other owners, the care of wildlife and the maintenance of their environment is a secondary priority, or from some, merely a regulatory necessity.
 
Nonetheless, the more that ranchers know and understand about wildlife populations on their lands, the better prepared they will be to reach their goals and meet their obligations.
 
Dr. Matt Wagner knows more about wildlife conservation, rangeland management, and the laws and policies governing them than just about anyone who I know. He is an adjunct faculty member of the Biology Department at Texas State University, where he teaches Wildlife Law and Policy. He also works under contract as a project administer with the Wildlife Management Institute, which has supported game management, biological diversity, and ecology since its founding in 1911.

Private Ranch Owners and Hunters Are 
the Key to Effective Wildlife Conservation: 
Part One of an Exclusive Interview with Dr. Matt Wagner

By Lem Lewis
The Ranch Broker

Privately owned ranches play an important role in ensuring the well-being of wildlife and their habitats. Indeed, a growing number of Texas land buyers are electing to set wildlife and rangeland management as their primary objective.
 
For other owners, the care of wildlife and the maintenance of their environment is a secondary priority, or from some, merely a regulatory necessity.
 
Nonetheless, the more that ranchers know and understand about wildlife populations on their lands, the better prepared they will be to reach their goals and meet their obligations.
 
Dr. Matt Wagner knows more about wildlife conservation, rangeland management, and the laws and policies governing them than just about anyone who I know. He is an adjunct faculty member of the Biology Department at Texas State University, where he teaches Wildlife Law and Policy. He also works under contract as a project administer with the Wildlife Management Institute, which has supported game management, biological diversity, and ecology since its founding in 1911.
 
Dr. Wagner spent 28 years with the Wildlife Division of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, most recently as Deputy Director. He has extensive experience working with, and advising, private landowners in east-central Texas.
 
When you get to learn Texas, the culture, the environment, the wildlife, the land, and the people, you’ll never want to leave.
 
Growing up in Washington state, Dr. Wagner developed his love of wildlife while fishing with his father in the Puget Sound and hunting with his granddad. “Those memories really launched me into a career in natural resources,” he tells me. “You have to instill an appreciation for the outdoors when people are young.”
 
Dr. Wagner and his family moved to Texas in 1969, when he was 12, and he says you couldn’t pry him away from our state for anything. “When you get to learn Texas, the culture, the environment, the wildlife, the land, and the people, you’ll never want to leave,” he says.
 
I recent enjoyed an extended conversation with Dr. Wagner conducted as part of my new RANCHCAST with LEM LEWIS podcast. I designed RANCHCAST to showcase the vital contribution that America’s ranchers make to our nation’s economy, and to provide ranchers insights and practical advice available nowhere else.
 
What follows are edited excerpts from my interview with Dr. Wagner. In this article, Part One, we’ll cover: the two biggest issue concerning wildlife conservation in Texas right now; the role hunters can play in wildlife conservation; the coming convergence of the environment and the job market; and changing attitudes about open space and conservation.
 
Next week, in Part Two, Dr. Wagner and I will explore the impact of exotic wildlife and efforts to manage the population; statewide land stewardship programs; efforts to privatize white-tailed deer; and Chronic Wasting Disease.
 
The full audio of the interview will be available early in 2017, when RANCHCAST makes its official debut.
 
Lem Lewis: What do you feel are some of the biggest issues concerning wildlife conservation in Texas right now?
 
Dr. Wagner: I think there's really two dimensions. There's the human dimension and then there's the biological dimension.
 
On the human side what really worries me the most is the disconnect that we see from people that live in urban areas and the rural landscape. We're losing that connection with the rural lifestyle, the rural landscape, and people that come here to live in the city they're sometimes fearful of going outside. The young children they hear a lot of bad stories of things happening out there. It's created this barrier and this fear I think of the environment. Certainly a lack of education.
 
On the biological side I think one of the biggest pressures that we see is, number one, water and how we're going to distribute water, allocate water for people but also for the environment.
 
The breakup of these large ranches into smaller and smaller parcels, what we call fragmentation, does pose a threat to, for example, quail populations that really need intact grasslands. As you begin to subdivide those land areas into smaller and smaller tracts, each of those landowners may have a different goal in mind. They may want to manicure that land, or plant hay fields – like Bermuda grass – which is not what quail and other wildlife need.
 
Now if landowners work together on smaller parcels to create wildlife habitat then you can defeat that fragmentation. That's got to be the biggest factor to my mind. It's the human element, it's water, and the breakup of these large ranches.
 
Lem Lewis: What role do and can hunters play in wildlife conservation?
 
Matt Wagner: What I love about Texas is the fact the state is 95% or more privately owned. 168 million acres. In Texas, we have perfected the public/private partners. Wildlife are a public resource and yet they exist on private land where the habitat is. If you don't have the habitat you don't have the wildlife. Landowners are the stewards.
 
Obviously, the hunters in this country were some of the first conservationists in terms of funding wildlife conservation. Back at the turn of the century when a lot of our game species were depleted. White-tail deer for example were on the decline. Wild turkey. There were no hunting regulations and so people killed a lot of wildlife either for their own consumption but mostly for markets. It was a commercialized resource.
 
Lem Lewis: It's a shame that it's hard to educate the people in the state that are anti-hunting, pro-wildlife but don't really understand that the hunters are actually one of the big contributors to conservation.

Matt Wagner: It is. Although, in Texas there are a number of programs of the Texas Wildlife Association, Texas Parks and Wildlife, they are partnering to help educate people in the secondary schools, high schools, with different programs and try to address that issue: Hunter-Ed programs, Angler-Ed, all of those things are available. There's a lot of online programs as well.
 
A lot of ranchers now are deriving more income from their hunting operations than their farm and ranch operations.

Lem Lewis: I've heard you mention in the past that at some point you feel like conservation and economics are going to be tied together. Do you mind elaborating on that statement?

Matt Wagner: Yeah. I truly believe, and I tell my students this, that at some point, maybe not in my lifetime, I would say within the next 30, 40, 50 years we're going to see the environment and the job market come together.
 
The economy where people that are trained in natural resource management are going to be in demand. Of course, scarcity is going to drive that. As open space becomes scarcer and water availability is a concern, we see wildlife populations declining in some areas, increasing in others, that scarcity is going to require people that are trained to address those issues.
 
I think we're going to see the job market begin to expand in those areas. Especially in the private sector. There's a lot of folks that are doing private consulting with environmental firms or on their own.
 
Of course, the public sector with state and federal jobs. I truly believe Texas is a good model. The economics of hunting and wildlife management is big business. A lot of ranchers now are deriving more income from their hunting operations than their farm and ranch operations. That's a good thing to provide an alternative source of income when agriculture prices are obviously up and down and sometimes unpredictable, especially in a drought.

You have the wildlife to fall back on. The leasing model I think is an interesting model where that creates an incentive for landowners to maintain a habitat for wildlife. The hunters pay to access the property. They're not guaranteed anything. The lease is simply to access the property to hunt and the landowners can put restrictions on how many deer or game species are taken. I think that model can be replicated in other areas. I think in other states as well.
 
I think that the tools of looking at the environment as an economic asset for water, for open space is the trend of the future.

Lem Lewis: I know you've probably seen a lot of changes over your time as far as what landowners and conservationists are doing or their viewpoints on wildlife conservation.
 
Matt Wagner: I think the biggest change might be that today landowners and even cities, municipalities, folks that own and operate land are beginning to realize that there are other benefits to having open space.
 
There's some great examples in Austin and San Antonio where the people of those cities have essentially voted to tax themselves and passing bond measures that generate hundreds of millions of dollars to go in and protect the recharge zone into aquifers. Obviously the water supply is very important but without open space for water to infiltrate into the ground you put the aquifer at risk.
 
The people have realized that, and they've gotten tens of thousands of acres that have been protected from development because there's an economic interest in protecting the aquifer. How do you take that model and possibly someday expand it on a statewide level where it's not just aquifers but it's rivers, it's water sheds, it's important wildlife habitat areas that are protected through conservation easements?

That's another tool that's available to landowners today where somebody that lives on the land that's ranching, hunting, might have been in their family for generations, they can choose to essentially sell the right to develop that land and stay on that land and do what they always have. There has to be money, and often it's public dollars available, that would buy those easements. Some landowners actually choose to donate an easement and there are very good tax implications to that.

I think that the tools of looking at the environment as an economic asset for water, for open space is the trend of the future. In a private land state like Texas where else could you capitalize on those kinds of tools that are available?
 
Lem Lewis: I know. I think that the conservation easements that are available these days and the ease of availability for landowners is amazing. We could do a series of RANCHCASTs just on that one issue.
 
Matt Wagner: I agree.
 
It is a tremendous dedication where a landowner decides that this property will never be subdivided and built into a neighborhood or a shopping center.
 
Lem Lewis: A lot of what I like to look at for landowners who are trying to keep their properties intact is the aspect of building a legacy. Building a legacy for the family and what do you do with a piece of land rather than just play on it and use it? There's a lot of things out there nowadays that can help landowners really look towards the future and what this piece of property may become for their family and their lifestyle. 

Matt Wagner: It is a tremendous dedication where a landowner decides that this property will never be subdivided and built into a neighborhood or a shopping center. That's an economic contribution that lasts forever because conservation easement is perpetual. That is a landowner’s decision and often we see as subsequent generations of landowners, they may not have that interest in protecting the ranch. They'd rather sell the ranch. When you have these alternative tools, there are options.

That again goes back to the landowner’s choice because it is truly a property right. The ultimate property right to dedicate your land in that way.

If you have questions about buying or selling a ranch, please don’t hesitate to contact me. The more you know, the greater your chance of acquiring the right property and maximizing both your investment and enjoyment.

I’ve designed a series of short videos, “Ask Lem,” that address common questions I hear from both ranch buyers and sellers. You’ll find them here [http://www.theranchbroker.com/ask-lem-faq.html]

For more detailed answers, I’m always just a phone call away – 210-275-3551. It would be my pleasure to speak with you and share my experiences in buying and selling great Texas properties. Live water ranches and large acreage transactions are my specialties.
 
And be sure to stay tuned for upcoming editions of my new audio program, RANCHCAST, which will debut in January 2017.  Hear a full episode featuring Dr. Charles E. Gilliland now: http://tinyurl.com/RANCHCAST-01