Fred Wills Interview, Part 2 of 2

DT: Fred, can we resume where we were before, talking about Camp Bullis, and you were saying that some of the management decisions, both for how the landscape is manipulated and how it's monitored have changed over time and that you see it as kind of politically driven. Can you give us more of a complete picture of why this is going on, what's happening?

00:01:27 - 2325 FW: Well, the-there's been couple of things that happened. There's been an increased amount of training out there. In other words, much more-many more boots on the ground from when I started out there, which was in the early 90's. And-so there's pressure to create more land that's-s available for training. In other words, more open lands opposed to the wooded area which may be difficult for troop movement. Some of this could be perceived as-as restoration because, as I alluded to before, much of the hill country has increased in the density of its-its woodlands. But what-as I see

00:02:18 - 2325 it, one of the problems is that we tend to use highly impactive methods to-to do it. For example, bulldozers, chaining, things like that. I don't think they've done any-any chaining out there, it's-it's been primarily bulldozers. But-but what happens when you bulldoze a rocky landscape, you tend to-to tear up the-the soil, the-the microtopography-in other words, the-the rocky character of the landscape. I can't remember, it may have been J. Frank Dobie or-well, I've-I've lost the name now, but-but there was this quote about a-a landscape that can't be plowed keeps its secrets. And what's happening out there is essentially that the hill country's being plowed. And so I think a lot of the-the beauty, the diversity, is being lost because it's not being managed in ways that are perhaps a little softer. In other words, hand cutting, fire, things

00:03:38 - 2325 like that. In some cases, I think you've had areas which were developing into black capped vireo habitat that they decided to go back in and burn, you know, before they got big enough to be habitat. So I-I think-you know, at the same time, they've adopted th static approach toward the wildlife. There's a very dynamic approach toward human use of it and in-in some ways, I think this is-is backwards because the dynamic ec-ecological processes out there are being set aside. In other words, they're-they're

00:04:22 - 2325 treating, say, warbler habitat as something which is in Point X but not in Point Y. You know, that we won't let it develop in Point Y even if Point Y is a good place for-to have it. And the-of course, the other side of the coin is that-that areas which may be or potentially are habitat are being removed before they can develop to that-that stage. It's-it's always tough because the reason for existence of the place is obviously military training, but the same time, you have things like NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] and other environmental laws, the Endangered Species Act, that require that a public agency, including the U.S. Army,

00:05:17 - 2325 subject itself to those-those rules. I think to a certain extent-certainly on paper-they have attempted to-to meet those requirements, but my concern is that there's a certain amount of the-the good old boy syndrome, which is partly driven by, you know, the very concrete needs of the military for training area. Well, I sort of lost the train of my thought there.

DT: Well, maybe this would be a good place to talk about this dilemma that a lot of the folks who might be doing the monitoring face, because on the one hand, they are technically educated scientists that have this ethic of being objective and independent. On the other hand, they're business people that have to think about their next job that they're going to be getting for using these skills that they've got. I was wondering how you balance this sort of scientist versus consulting businessman role in your work.

(misc.)

DT: So maybe you could respond to this dilemma that-that consulting scientists find themselves in, yourself included, of course.

00:06:48 - 2325 FW: Sure. Yeah, it-it's always really tough to-to be objective, but yet, at the same time, to have an appreciation for the land as-as something which goes beyond the measurable or countable. When you go out in the field, what you're doing, even though you're recording observations, is that that area is affecting you as a scientist the same way it would-it would affect you as a user of a state park or a national park. So when you do that, when-when you're out there recording things objectively, that's one thing. But when it comes to how that information is used, it-it's difficult. The information may not be used in the way that you think it should be. It-the information you collect may be used to justify actions which you subjectively think are not-not appropriate. But as a contractor, as someone who's doing a job for the military, ultimately being paid by the Corps of Engineers, you have to go out there and-and collect the kinds of things

00:08:10 - 2325 that you're-you're tasked to do and you may have to bite your tongue when it comes to how those resources are subsequently managed.

But it's the old Aldo Leopold dictum about it's the better part of wisdom to never revisit a wilderness because it's quite likely that someone will have gilded the lily, will have, you know, changed the-the beautiful setting that you saw. And for me, I think the problem has been, being out there so long, going out every spring and doing those surveys for endangered birds, I've seen the-the

00:08:52 - 2325 changes over-over a fifteen year period and I can remember the way it was, you know, with very little military use, very little heavy equipment use, you know, roads that were perhaps in poor repair and so forth. You know, lots of hills covered by trees. If I go out there today, you know, I don't recognize much of it. If I go back even after a year's time, it-it looks quite different and I have to actually go out there and look at a road sign to make sure I'm in the same spot I remember because the kinds of changes that can be made by machinery are much quicker than I think the human mind can-can deal with,

00:09:51 - 2325 can incorporate. You know, if you-if you see a landscape that, you know, doesn't change for five, ten years and then in one year is totally changed, it's-it's kind of a shock. And because we're, you know, ultimately subjective creatures, it-it-it does impact our-our psyches. But again, we-we have to-because we're getting paid to do a job, simply do that and-and-and try to let the-the more subjective feelings about that landscape-either let them go or try to in-incorporate them in-into some kind of activity which does not, let's say, impact our future ability to get a job or make us appear that we're not being objective about-about our work, so.

DT: Maybe we can talk a little bit about some of the natural areas that have been preserved in a way where you don't maybe run into these conflicts between an inconsistent use, like the military developments out at Camp Bullis. And the two instances that come to mind are some of your work at inventorying the Government Canyon State Natural Area and I was hoping you could talk about the origins of that Government Canyon park and what you see as distinctive and special about the area that's been protected.

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FW: Well, cer-certainly the origins of it are fairly straightforward. Back in the nineteenth century, there was a family called the Hoffmans who acquired fairly large acreage out in that area. That was eventually sold to, I believe, the man who owned a theatre here in San Antonio. In the 1960's, 1970's, because of increased growth in the City of San Antonio, that area became inviting to speculators-land speculators. They entered into an agreement with the federal government to build a so-called new town

00:12:22 - 2325 development out there to be called San Antonio Ranch. And of course, the environmental community here, small though it was, immediately jumped on that as-as a threat to the Edwards Aquifer. Fay Sinkin I think was one of the people who was initially involved in that. In the 1980's, with the failure of many of the savings and loan institutions, the undeveloped part of San Antonio Ranch went up for sale as an RTC-

00:13:02 - 2325 Resolution Trust Corporation property. And through the efforts of a number of people here in San Antonio, Danielle Milam, Congressman Harry B. Gonzales, this land was eventually acquired for the public. Three agencies, which I believe were Edwards Underground Water District, SAWS and Texas Parks and Wildlife, participated in the acquisition of the property via the Trust for Public Land. I think started out with five thousand something acres and eventually that grew to-to, I believe, approximately nine thousand today with additional tracts added. Parks and Wildlife is the managing agency.

00:14:00 - 2325

They've had a hard time opening it to the public, simply because of re-financial resource issues. They just haven't had the money to hire the personnel to develop facilities on the area. It is now open to the public as of this-this year and-well, I...

DT: That's a good history of it. Maybe you could...

(misc.)

DT: When we were speaking earlier, I was asking what is it about Government Canyon that is special from a natural resources standpoint?

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FW: I think one thing that's unique about it is it sits right on the edge of the Edwards Plateau. In other words, it's a-it's at the junction between South Texas and the Edwards Plateau. And there's a major fault line that separates the Edwards Plateau from South Texas at that point. Essentially the Balcones Escarpment runs right to the park. To the south of that, you have brushland, you know, mesquite woodland, other-oh-other types of brush. To the north of that, you have a very distinctively different community, ash juniper, live oak, Texas oak. So in that sense, the park is geographically diverse

00:15:35 - 2325 within a relatively small area. I think it's fairly unique. I can't think of another park in this area that has that kind of overlap of two major biogeographic regions.

Once you cross that boundary, you're into the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone. There's a major drainage called Government Canyon Creek that runs through that area and, of course, unless the discharge is extremely large, much of that water will recharge the Edwards. So it's important that this area remain undeveloped to provide some protection for water quality and water quantity that's entering the Edwards. Well.

DT: I know you've done inventories out there. Can you tell us a little bit about the biota out there?

00:16:37 - 2325 FW: Well, the inventory I was primarily involved in was herpetofauna, amphibians and reptiles. We built some trapping arrays which consisted primarily of five-gallon buckets that were sunk into the ground-four of them, with one in the middle and three on the spokes-and those were connected by fences made of aluminum-aluminum valley

00:17:07 - 2325

material. We also had some minnow traps-mesh minnel tr-minnow traps arrayed along the sides of those fences and those were for catching snakes, which could easily get out of the buckets. So we were able to catch frogs, toads, lizards, snakes. I don't believe we caught any turtles or amphibians. So that was one method we used. We also went out and just turned rocks and did general searches to look for animals that were not amenable to catching by the traps. One of the ideas I had in mind for that was to monitor the area

00:18:03 - 2325 over time. In other words, to see what happened to the herpetofauna with a different management regime, for example. Or with increased visitor usage, did-did things change out there? That didn't turn out to be totally successful partly because there was some conflict between the vegetation management of the southern part of-of the area. In other words, the-the brushland part of the area. And partly because we didn't get to continue it as long as we had-we had hoped to. Now that's not totally true because

00:18:50 - 2325 there-there is an individual from Our Lady of the La-Lake University and he has taken over the project and is continuing that with-as time is available. But we intended to do it on a more continuous basis. In other words, we would operate the traps for days at a time or weeks at a time, in some cases.

DT: Did you find any endemic or rare species there?

00:19:19 - 2325 FW: Well, there-there is a neotenic salamander there. There's a spring in Government Canyon that does have a-an aquatic salamander, which is, I believe, restricted to this part of the Edwards Plateau. In other words, this general part of the San Antonio segment of the Edwards Plateau. Other than that, not too much unique but it is moist enough so that you have the slimy salamanders in some numbers in some of the moist-more moist canyons. There is another unit-unique faunal aspect in that we found black-tail rattlesnakes there, which are in-uncommon in most of the Edwards

00:20:16 - 2325 Plateau. They're much more common to the west, out in the Big Bend area. But here they-they're either peripheral or for some other reason are relatively uncommon. And those seem to be associated with cave features on the area. There-there was a cave survey done and-and they've, you know, found a number of caves and other karst features out there.

DT: One of the things I've heard of is, even though it's been really successful in protecting the Government Canyon site, that there have been some development pressures around it that have brought in power lines, transmission lines and there was some discussion about-I think Phil Gramm and some other politically influential people-had a tract that was nearby and they didn't want the power lines and were trying to divert it through the park. What can you tell about that instance, I don't know enough about it.

00:21:21 - 2325 FW: Well, that-the way you've explained it is essentially correct and a number of us fought that idea quite strongly and-and I think were able to persuasively make the argument to Parks and Wildlife. Certainly, Parks and Wildlife did not want the power line going through their Natural Area. But what happened was that the power line was rerouted to the west-or at least proposed to be rout-rerouted to the west along Highway 211. The park extends over to 211 in some areas now, but it-you know, at least, the major impacts would-would be averted with its current alignment. You know,

00:22:12 - 2325 even that has been questioned by some folks because it potentially could interfere with the bird migration or-you know, water quality, whatever, you know, just due to construction activity and so forth. But I think that's a positive development that at least it's not going straight through the-the park. I did do some consulting work for some of the landowners on the west side of Highway 211. For the most part, there was not quality golden-cheeked warbler habitat over there, only in one area up toward Medina Highway,

00:22:58 - 2325 which is State Highway 16. But that's just-just one of the things that-that, you know, thankfully, was-was at least averted in terms of the-the park impacts.

DT: Do you have any other sort of general thoughts about the development pressure on this northwest side of San Antonio that affects Government Canyon's region?

00:23:27 - 2325 FW: Mmm hmm. Tremendous amount of development pressure. In fact, the area to the north of the park has been developed, so the watershed of Government Canyon Creek is-is compromised to a certain extent. When you enter the park, if you look to your left, you'll see a whole row of tract housing in there. It's-it's not wall-to-wall dense housing, but it is quite prominent so it's pretty hard to block out that view of the barbed wire fence. But I-I think it's inevitable that that-that kind of thing happened because the Edwards Plateau is sim-simply more attractive as a building site to people who can

00:24:15 - 2325 afford to build there. The views, the oak trees unfortunately are more attractive than, let's say, the mesquite trees and the flats of the southern part of the county. I think at least some of that may change, at least for the employees who are working at the Toyota plant. In other words, they'll-many of them will probably prefer to live down there as opposed to building in North Bexar County. But I-I don't see the development pressure going away.

DT: You mentioned the southern part of Bexar County. One of the sort of natural features down there is Mitchell Lake and I understand that you've been tracking that for a number of years. Can you tell us about the origins of Mitchell Lake and what makes it special and how it's come to be protected?

00:25:14 - 2325 FW: Well, Mitchell Lake is an extremely interesting case of environmental history, or historic ecology maybe is the better term. Originally it was a shallow natural wetland. It had things like bulrushes out emerging from the water surface, which I think I was told could be waded almost entirely across without going higher than chest height. Around the lake, there were some large trees, like hackberries, perhaps oaks and other large trees. The area was extremely attractive to water fowl hunters. There's a man named Rudolph

00:26:00 - 2325 Menger, who was a naturalist-hunter-doctor here locally and he wrote some articles which became incorporated into a book about the area. Published some photographs showing the lake. Unfortunately at that time, changes were already happening when he took those photographs and he, to a certain extent, lamented the-the changes. And what happened was that the City of San Antonio had such a large sewage stream and there were concerns about dumping it straight into the river, so I believe in 1897, the City of San Antonio began using the sewage stream to irrigate cropland. This would've been

00:26:49 - 2325 inside 1604, out in the vicinity of the small airport there. And at some point apparently there was too large a stream for it to be disposed of through land irrigation and fairly short distance away, within, you know, a mile or two, there was this-this natural wetland. Its capacity for water was not extremely great so in approximately 1902, they decided to dam the south part of that little valley to increase the capacity of Mitchell Lake to hold water. And at that point, they began diverting the sewage stream directly into the lake. At some point much later, it may have been the 70's, a number of holding ponds and other structural features were added to the lake. In other words, they diked off part of the expanded lake in order to improve the sewage treatment. They could settle out the

00:28:04 - 2325 solids and move the liquid fraction of the waste into other basins and-and eventually release it into the Medina River watershed. They-I think they also did some upland irrigation with some of the liquid fraction. At some point, probably again because of water quality concerns, they built some new treatment plants.

So when this tract of land was no longer used for its original purpose, it was certainly known to the local birders who went out there primarily because there were a number of birds that showed up there

00:28:54 - 2325 that you couldn't find anywhere nearby-shore birds. And of course, these were attracted by this artificial shoreline, artificial marsh that, you know, developed not because of a plan but simply because it was a contingency of the-this history of use of the area. Most of these folks, you know, liked to go out there every once in a while so they weren't concerned too much about it being open to the public because they could always get permission from SAWS and get the gate key or gate combination and go out there and-and bird and then leave. But once the number of birders increased due to

00:29:51 - 2325 word of mouth and so forth, it was felt that there needed to be additional management of the lake. Some people wanted to restore the uplands to a more natural mesquite brushy woodland. Wanted to, perhaps, manage the water flow to the lake to be able to manipulate environments, habitats for different species so that you would keep the maximum diversity there. And eventually there was an agreement between National Audubon Society and SAWS for the National Audubon Society to take over the management of the area. And they moved a historic house out there which is now a

00:30:40 - 2325 visitor's center. And they've done some manipulation of water flow and so forth to, let's say, restore some freshwater ponds and to be able to move water from one basin to another, which ability had been lost when the infrastructure out there was essentially abandoned.

DT: And when you've gone out there, can you tell us about some of your birding trips?

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FW: Hmm. Initially, I had gone out there to do another one of these herpetofaunal monitoring programs. I-I was doing it on a very, very small scale. I had just a few pitfalls. I also had a few cover boards, which are pieces of plywood that you just drop on the ground and come along and turn over every once in a while to see what's underneath. I set this up actually in one of the basins, which at that point was completely dry.

And of course, while I was out there, I-I enjoyed the bird fauna as well. You have things like

00:32:00 - 2325 white pelicans. You have a number of south Texas species that show up there which aren't typical for this area, things like Kiskadee flycatcher, well, there's a number of-a number of species but it-I think that-that project-at least my-my little monitoring project got set aside when I went to Government Canyon to do a similar study there. But took a lot of years and a lot of folks working hard to convince SAWS that this was a good area to allow the public to use.

DT: Well then, I guess, like Government Canyon, there's been development around, I think on the-is it on the east and south side, there's a new development going in. What's been the impact and some of the discussion about that?

00:32:57 - 2325 FW: Well, I think I see it maybe more as-as visual impact than anything else. I mean it-it's pretty hard to have a water quality impact on an area which, you know, by virtue of what it was, has bad water quality, so, you know, there's a tremendous deposit of sewage solids in all the-that area, including the main lake. So it can never be-even if you wanted to, can never be restored to the-the shallow natural lake that it was. But I think what it is now is an a-a nice example of an artificial ecosystem that, at the same time, is extremely diverse and that can be changed, restored, manipulated to increase the diversity further.

DT: I want to talk a little bit about wildlife in general, if you don't mind.

00:34:07 - 2325 FW: Sure.

DT: You've been the Endangered Species representative for the Sierra Club's Alamo group and I think that one of the issues that you addressed was the fate and protection of the mountain lion. Can you talk a little bit about the mountain lion situation and how you sought to improve it?

00:34:30 - 2325 FW: Yeah, well, Texas is essentially the only Western state that does not provide any protection of any kind for mountain lions. Here you have a-a large game animal or what would be considered a large game animal in essentially every other state, if not protected because of its rarity in some states. What we tried to do as Sierra Club-as a Sierra Club entity-and there were other folks involved as well-was to try to get either some kind of protection for the mountain lion or, if that was not politically possible, to have the animal designated a game animal. And this wasn't a new idea, this-even back in the 70's, there

00:35:21 - 2325 was a lot of talk about trying to get it designated a game animal, which is certainly a perfectly reasonable idea. That idea, I think, was fought by many ranchers who, rightly or wrongly, sometimes correctly, sometimes not, consider it to be a very economically damaging predator of livestock. So th-the bottom line is that-that that effort was not successful. Certainly, I-I-I'm skeptical that there ever would've been the type of total protection you have in, say, California. But I think it-it was reasonable and appropriate that we have at least game animal status. You know, have some kind of closed season during the year as every other Western state does. Parks and Wildlife does some monitoring, but it's-it's mainly passive monitoring. In other words, they collect data on sightings or killings of the animal to get some notion of the-the trend in population.

DT: Is there still active predator control with mountain lions in Texas?

00:36:46 - 2325 FW: Yeah, there's-there's some. It-it's-it's not nearly as extensive as-as it was, say, in the 1950's and before where, you know, lions were considered beyond the pale and they were, you know, killed on sight or-or, you know, there was always some-some pressure on them. So there-there were no ef-no real areas except for perhaps Big Bend National Park where there's a substantial population that was not under pressure.

But what's happened during the 60's and-and 70's has been that the number of sheep raised has decreased fairly-fairly extensively and you've had both mountain

00:37:32 - 2325 lions and coyotes increasing in number, repopulating areas where they'd been absent for-for decades. So it's kind of ironic in a way that-that, you know, the mountain lion is doing better now, although it has little protection-no protection, but it's been a-a passive kind of a-a management that led to the-the increased population of the lions, not due to any efforts on-on the part of Parks and Wildlife or even those of us who tried to get it designated a game animal and failed. So.

(misc.)

DT: Fred, we've talked a lot about issues in the past, going back to the Civil War and how the ecology of the Edwards Plateau had changed and then some of the recent things that have happened at Government Canyon, Mitchell Lake or PGA Village. Maybe you can talk to us a little bit about how-what sort of advice you'd give to a younger person looking towards the future and what sort of attitude and understanding they ought to have and expectations they ought to have.

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FW: Mmm. Well, in my opinion, you-you have to look at the past, the present and the future as-as a, in a way, a unitary whole even though you're-you can only live in the present, to understand that present, you got to-to look backwards. And in order to create the kind of future that-that you want, you have to look forward. I think this-this is true of science, it-it's true of any other field. It's-I think it's true of conservation. If we only look at the present, we may be looking at-at a present that is-that appears to us either worse or-or better than-than the past or-or the future. So what we-we got

00:39:40 - 2325 to do is go and look at what was written, what was incorporated in maps, incorporated in the memories of-of our forebears. You know, understand what we had. I think that's what Del Weniger was-was about, that he tried to-to bring all these historical facts together, put them in one place so that people could consider where we've been in relation to where we are and, knowing that, what do we want to do with the future? In other words, do we want to bring back some aspects of the past? Do we really understand the nature of the present? And once we've done that, once we've brought the past to bear on the present, I think we need-we need to incorporate the-that past and this present into our future activities, into better management, better approaches to-to

00:40:50 - 2325 conservation. We can see what didn't work in the past and, you know, try and evolve a new strategy to make-make it work better in the future.

DT: I noticed that you have a nice collection of Edward Abbey's writings and I think he really struggled with this whole issue of change and human impacts over time. And I'm curious, what you take from his life?

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FW: That-that's an important consideration because I think what Ed br-brought was passion. In other words, if you don't have that-that core of passion, it-it-it's hard to get out there and-and do the things that it takes to preserve the things that you're-you're-you're in love with. I mean he was in love with the land and I think that was the-the basis of-of his passionate feeling, of his anger, of his finger pointing at the idiots that were changing things without really knowing what they were doing or caring what they were doing or altering things for a quick buck. But they were also altering

00:42:22 - 2325 things for all time and boy, I-I-I don't know, I think he's just such a-a seminal individual because most nature writing is-is too nice. It doesn't have the passion, it doesn't have the anger. He was-he was not a scientist. He-he said he was not a naturalist, but I think he had, you know, that grasp-overall grasp of the land, but that's really, I think, lacking in a lot of cases. Even if you're studying a particular piece of the landscape, if you're studying, you know, the scale counts on a lizard or the behavior of a

00:43:10 - 2325 bird, I mean, these can be important parts of seeing that overall whole. And I think that was where he was. He was looking at nature as a whole and looking at the human impact on that whole.

DT: Why was he so angry?

00:43:33 - 2325

FW: He was angry at seeing what he loved disappear in front of his eyes. And, you know, I mean, it made gener-it may generate some lament if you go back and look at an old book and-and it says that an area which is degraded now was-was really nice. But when you're actually seeing it degraded in front of your eyes within your own lifetime, I think that's where that-that anger comes from. And certainly he channeled that-that anger in-into writing. He probably channeled some of it, at least in his younger days,

00:44:10 - 2325 into direct action, monkey-wrenching, whatever you want to call it. Those things are, at least in terms of changing things at the societal level, may not be effective. But at the same time, I think it was an attempt on his part to have some kind of direct influence on that process. You know, direct influence on things which were degrading the world he loved.

DW: What would he do or think now? I mean, driving here, we saw all those giant earthmovers at work, adding lanes to the freeways and, you know, obviously he didn't spawn a generation of monkey-wrenchers, obviously they went away. Did the public just-have people just given up?

00:45:04 - 2325

FW: Mmm. I-I don't think people have given up. I think even those of us who may be viewed as somewhat pessimistic still have that-that grain of hope. I think you have to have that if you're going to continue to do conser-conservation work. I think you have to keep going in the face of-of a number of failures to-to do what you had hoped to do. But I think there are enough successes out there of your own and-and others that you can point to and say yeah, it was-it was worth it to try to put up that-that good fight.

DT: And what do you think would be one of the biggest failures and what would be one of the biggest successes in Texas conservation?

00:45:53 - 2325 FW: Mmm, boy. Well, certainly locally, I think Government Canyon was the biggest success story as far as, you know, actually acquiring land and-and managing land for public purposes. At the state level, I-I think forest management, certainly for East Texas, has been if not totally successful, at least we've made some impact on how the National Forests are managed. I think water-water issues, we've been somewhat successful in getting state legislation passed that implements planning, but the other part of that is that many of the things that are being put into these plans are at best

00:46:46 - 2325 questionable and-and some of them quite-quite damaging. I think one of the things is that-that many times we're so parochial about our-our views that it's hard for us to be objective about the landscape, the political environment, our own views of things that we-we can't see things in-in the-the broad context. And I think that's-that's essential if we're going to make conservation progress. We have to look at things comprehensively. We can't simply look at, you know, the coastal bend or the highland

00:47:30 - 2325 lakes or the Edwards Aquifer or downtown San Antonio and-and think that we're going to-to make a difference. We have to have that-that broad view.

DT: You're saying that in some situations, San Antonio population pressures and so on get exported to other areas.

00:47:55 - 2325

FW: Absolutely. DT: Water needs here may affect the level of the lakes in Lake Travis or the amount of freshwater that reaches Matagorda Bay.

00:48:06 - 2325 FW: Sure. Yeah. Those-those kinds of impacts, I think, are-are inevitable. I mean, we may be able to-let's say if-if we have more unlimited supplies of energy from natural sources-wind, solar-we may be able to desalinate and avoid some of these impacts on-on our streams and-and estuaries. My question is will we do that if it's more expensive? In other words, if it's cheaper to dam a river or cheaper to pump water th-out of an aquifer, will we give up an in-inexpensive-relatively inexpensive water in order to get water from a source that maybe less damaging.

DT: The sixty-four million dollar question. Well, let's finish with one question, if you don't mind. Is there a favorite spot that you like to visit and could you describe it?

00:49:11 - 2325

FW: Well, I haven't been there enough, at least in recent years, but Big Bend is one of my favorite places. So, you know, I think in the way that maybe Abbey was passionate about the Colorado Plateau and Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, I think I'm pretty passionate about the Chihuahuan Desert and Big Bend is just a-almost perfect example of the Chihuahuan Desert that's been set aside. It's-it's got a mountain range entirely inside of the-the-gets up almost to 8000 feet, so you got a mountain forest up there. You've

00:49:58 - 2325 got fairly extensive grasslands around the foothills of the mountains. You have very extensive lowland desert areas where you can see miles without finding a tree in your way. It has really deep canyons, 2000-foot deep canyons in three places. It has a-a river that's draining large parts of two different countries. And it's very hard to get to, so it's rarely crowded. It's just one of those-one of those things that makes Texas a-a good place to be.

DT: You mentioned Big Bend National Park. I'm curious if you have any views about the recent contretemps about Big Bend State Natural Area, the ranch; it's the State Park next door and the proposal to sell it to a private individual, Mister Poindexter.

00:51:09 - 2325 FW: That-that's an interesting problem. I-I think many of us saw it as a black-white issue. I later read two different editorials by Mister Poindexter and Ken Kramer and-and it seems it may not have been quite as black and white. That in some ways, it-it followed the Nature Conservancy model in that Parks and Wildlife was proposing to sell it to this individual and he would then be subject to a conservation easement on it. I think the major problem with the issue was that the public was not brought in; it was

00:51:53 - 2325 just an arbitrary decision on the part of Parks and Wildlife. So in many ways, it was-it was the process that was problematic as opposed to the potential results of the-the process.

DT: Is there anything you'd like to add? I think we're coming to the close of the tape.

00:52:15 - 2325

FW: Mmm. If I had-had a chance to sleep more, I might've come up with a-a big idea here. Well, I would simply encourage more people to get involved in-in some way in conservation and outdoor activities, in education-particularly conservation education. I think things like canoeing, hiking, even maybe more mechanized and urban things like bicycling or those sorts of-you know, skiing, let's say. All these-all these things put you in contact with the real world and they sort of get you out of your day to day

00:53:19 - 2325 problems, concerns, issues and so forth that are, in large part, generated through excessive human interaction. So, get out and get in the woods or the desert or the river or the marsh or whatever's nearby or, if you can afford it, whatever's far away.

DT: Good advice. Thanks a lot.

00:53:48 - 2325 FW: Well, you're welcome.