Mary Anne Piacentini Interview, Part 3 of 3

  • DT: Mary Anne, we talked a little bit about your work with two land trusts, the Friends of Hermann Park and then the Katy Prairie Conservancy and then for this federation of land trust service group, the Texas Land Trust Council.
  • You also have been on the advisory council for a group called the Texas Coalition for Conservation, which advocated for better funding for Texas Parks and Wildlife.
  • And I was wondering if you could talk about this tension that often exists between trying to be a neutral, market oriented land protector, by buying land on the market from willing sellers and then the other role that sometimes you have to play where you're an advocate in the political realm and how you reconcile those two?
  • MAP: Right. Well, in lots of cases, I think a lot of us view it as educating people. Certainly we are, you know, advocates for things that we think are important to us and in the case for the Coalition, Texas Coalition for Conservation, I think all of us recognized that our parks were in a dismal state.
  • There were parks that were being closed, parks that couldn't be maintained. There were, there was equipment that was so old that you had to actually steal parts from other things to try to put back together the tractor.
  • And I'm always amazed when I hear things like that because Texas, and you know, you'll recall I'm from New England, but Texas, when I came down here, I was told its the biggest and its the best. And you'd think you'd want its parks system to be the biggest and the best.
  • And while its true that a lot of the land in Texas is privately owned, a lot of peoples only ability to have access to land is on public lands, whether its the teeny tiny neighborhood park to the great regional parks we have or to Big Bend, to places like that or far afield to go to Yellowstone and National Parks.
  • And so I think all of us in the community recognized that if we didn't have a good state park system and wildlife management areas and places where our wildlife and our people could coexist that we were going to be in a state that a lot of people weren't going to want to stay in.
  • I mean, you, you talk about young people wanting to stay in your area and a lot of times, they are far more outdoorsy than perhaps their parents are. And they like to hike and they like to bike and they like to climb mountains and they, they like to be outdoors and canoe and kayak and if they go to a state park and things are maintained or taken care of or they can only go there an hour a day, that's, that's going to make them want to go someplace else.
  • And one of the things I'm finding out, whenever I look for an employee, I look and I see they, they've worked here two years, they worked here two years, they worked here two years, I used to think ooh, they cant keep a job. Well, now they understand, they're a young person and young people have lots of opportunities to go different places. Well, it also means they can go to different states.
  • And so one of the things I think all of us banded together to say is we know that if we tell our legislators that this is important and that surely they will understand why its important and that if their dollars can be used to effectively manage these parks and to bring them back up to the standard that we would all want our public to see, that they're going to do that.
  • And you have to do that and you have to recognize that, unfortunately, that's the way things get done now, is that its not always that your representative or your, your senator is going to know what's best for a community. They're listening to what their community wants and who talks the loudest or who says, you know, the most of what this needs to be done
  • and I think one of the brilliance of what George Bristol and the board of directors and all the people, and there were many, many people who worked over this, all over the state recognized is that we can probably only get one shot at this to do this well. And they, they did something that I think was really important.
  • The Sporting Goods Tax had been dedicated to Parks and Wildlife and little by little, it was, it was capped. And so all of a sudden, the tax, which grew and grew and grew was not all used for Parks and Wildlife. It was used for other things. And so we all recognized, lets go back and say you know, look at the sad state of affairs.
  • Our public wants it. We've got a growing population, they need access to this and the money's there and they are the users, the end users of it. The people that buy the running shoes to hike, the people that buy the licenses and the, and the sporting goods equipment; lets get some of that money back. And fortunately for all of us, enough of those legislators thought the argument was a good one.
  • But I think what it does say to us is all of us need to be really smart about preparing a good case and finding the right people to present that case and then having enough of the people who care about that. And I think that, you know, I was a very small part of it. Yes, my board took part in it and, and you know, it's okay for people to educate.
  • It's even okay to lobby. Under the Internal Revenue Service rules, you certainly have to limit how much you do of that, but it's okay to do that. You just, I think, have to use a judicious use of it and I'm so thrilled that the Texas Coalition for Conservation was successful because my hope is that they're going to go back and get more and that they're going to also try to see if they can get even more money for conservation in this state.
  • DT: Let me ask you, I guess, a more personal question. You've been talking about educating your political representatives. Let me put you in the position of trying to advocate for all this conservation work that you've done, but maybe towards a younger generation, towards your kids. How would you make the case to them about why this is important to you and why it ought to matter to them?
  • MAP: Right. Well, II guess Id personalize it and, for example, to my youngest, who loves to ride bikes. He used to go bike riding with a family friend and one of the scariest rides that they ever did was that they went thirty-five miles from Brays Bayou all the way to the Katy Prairie.
  • And eventually, I think that there will be a trail system that would allow him to not have to go on any roadways. He was ten years old at the time that he did this, and fortunately, II trusted this friend a lot and so I did it.
  • But one of the things I'd like to say to him is imagine a network that goes along our bayous that can get you from all the way from the Gulf Coast all the way out to the Brazos River and you'd never have to cross a highway. You might have to go over a bridge, you might have to go through an underpass, but wouldn't that be an amazing ride? And for him, I think it would be fabulous.
  • For my middle child, I think what I'd say to her is I know that you think that were all going crazy, using up everything that we have and you, you want to recycle this and you want to recycle this and I try to do that as much as you can. But imagine if you could've recycled a landscape.
  • Wouldn't it be wonderful to keep that, to be able to do what I told you earlier, the air quality, the water quality, the flood reduction? For her, even if she never went there, never saw the Katy Prairie, it would be important to have it because of what it would do to help, maybe, climate change, to help, you know, reducing pollutants and sediment offloads from roadways and farms. Also, you know, the, the carbon sequestration. For her, it would be wonderful and she, she would really like that.
  • For my oldest child, he's a runner and he, he sees big pictures really well and I think one of the things he thinks about a lot are legacies. And I think he thinks it's absolutely spectacular that a population today can kind of see into the future. He, he's very much the historian and I think what he wants to say is wouldn't it be great if fifty years from now, my kids, if I have any, could say you know, my grandmother worked on that or my great-grandmother worked on that.
  • And a group of, you know, committed citizens did this and Margaret Mead has this wonderful quote and it says never underestimate what a small group of committed individuals can do. And I think for him, he's going to say I want to know that, historically, this is going to matter.
  • And so for them, you know, I think the appeal is sometimes we suffer from, especially on the Katy Prairie, there's so many reasons why it should be saved, whether its flood reduction or its green-space or its the bayous or its the grasses or its, you know, the access to the lands, the hunting, the, the, the farming, the agriculture, locally grown produce.
  • But the truth is, is that, I guess for all of them, the most important and most compelling way to tell them is to get them out there and have them experience it because anybody who's gone out there and comes away from it, I think, has a different sense about what it is. And it's, it's personal and that is what's going to make them want to go back
  • and maybe, maybe they don't save the Katy Prairie. Maybe they don't, that it doesn't, it doesn't speak to them, but maybe they go to their neighborhood and they say, you know, I'd like to do an urban garden, a garden, an urban harvest garden.
  • Or I'm going to, I'm going to get rid of all the Saint Augustine and I'm going to put in ground cover that doesn't take much water.
  • And I think if we can touch a person in and in, in their own way, then it'll make a difference for them and maybe theyll save something. I hope it'll be the Katy Prairie, but maybe it'll be making Hermann Park better or Memorial Park, but whatever it is, it, it's going to be, I think, ultimately better for all of us.
  • And, and in that sense, I think that sometimes we get in bubbles. I used to, I don't know if you remember Maxwell Smart. They had the Cone of Silence and it was always so amusing because, you know, it wasn't silent. But yes, exactly, he took his shoe off and he listened.
  • But the truth is, is that if we, if we live in that little bubble and we don't realize that we have an impact on a larger community, it will be a pretty awful place and, and for me, that's the way I think I try to appeal to them and I try to reach them is you have a responsibility.
  • But even more than a responsibility, if you help do this, it benefits you, it benefits your family, it benefits the future and I, I hope that resonates with them.
  • DT: Well, you can't say it better than that. Is there anything you'd like to add?
  • MAP: No, except I, I, you know, as you know, I went to this Land Trust conference and I got to hear about this project and I just think its phenomenal.
  • I wish everybody, even if they aren't a conservationist, would kind of record their family and just talk about their histories, about why, I mean,
  • I'm a first generation American on my dad's side. He was born in Tivoli, Italy and it's just so amazing to see all the different landscapes that you have here
  • and, you know, I've, I've lived in Italy and the, the different things there and I just, I'm, I'm kind of sad that people, when they have the ability to capture these stories, don't.
  • And I think it's terrific that you're doing it and I'm sure you've got lots of really, far more wonderful people than me that you've done this to, but I do, I do think it's great that you're doing it.
  • DT: Well, thank you. Thanks for your time today.
  • MAP: You're welcome. It was fun. I'm sorry, I'm a motor mouth.
  • DT: Not at all.
  • [End of Reel 2416] [End of Interview with Mary Anne Piacentini]