Ted Siff Interview, Part 2 of 3

DT: Ted, let's resume the interview. We've talked about a number of things from your role in political operations to media outlets. And I thought we might talk about some of the things that you were really intimately involved in conservation. And one of those chapters in your life was from '89 to '91 you were the executive director of a firm called Victor Emanuel Nature Tours which has really become one of the preeminent, global ecotourism guide organizations. And I was hoping that you could tell us a little bit about the firm, and about Victor Emanuel, and the kind of clients that you had and places that people were sent, and just how this whole industry, ecotourism, has evolved since then, since that was really some of the early days.

00:01:55 - 2383 TS: I'd love to. It's interesting how these connections-what happens in your life that results in connections later. Victor and I had known each other at Harvard. We were both Texans at Harvard together. He was a graduate student when I was an undergraduate, and we met at the Adams House Dining Hall. And Victor, being-having gone to Rice and the University of Texas before coming to Harvard, ha-ha-brought some Texan elected officials to talk to us at the Adams House Dining Hall on a regular basis. W-we became friends. That was in the late '60s. In the late '80s, twenty years later, Victor, by that time having started his bird touring company and having been into it

00:02:57 - 2383 for fifteen years or more, needed a new executive director, and he-he called on me at the point-at that point a total non-birder, but an appreciator of nature, to help him run-run the company, which it was my privilege to do for a couple of years. As-as you alluded, it was really the beginning of ecotourism in terms of that word, the public being conscious, the economy, pe-people involved in the eco-state economy, the national economy, b-b-beginning to appreciate what the travel industry already knew,

00:03:44 - 2383 which was that tourism and travel by any number of measures is one of the larger industries, if you count airline-t-the transportation expense and the housing expense, and so forth.

Well, ecotourism, though still a-a probably decimal dust level s-factor in that whole travel and tourism sector, is-is absolutely growing very fast now, and-and was in its infancy at the time.

Victor's tours certainly helped promote that, particularly in Texas by helping create the whole public policy called the Great Texas Birding Trails, which are now multip-mult-multiplicity of trails, I think a dozen or more, with maps all promoted through mainly Texas Parks and Wildlife, and through major centers in

00:04:48 - 2383 South Texas, one in McAllen called the Great Texas Birding-eh-I'm not sure of it-Texas Birding Center. But because almost all the birds in North America come through Texas, and particularly South Texas, if they migrate south at all, Texas-one of Texas's significant environmental assets is-is the birds that live here and-and-and visit here.

DT: That's interesting. So he didn't feel it was necessary to go to some exotic place, a rain forest or the Antarctic to see spectacular wildlife. He sort of promoted the idea of looking in your backyard in a sense?

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TS: Victor became a world class birder by looking in his backyard. And growing up in Houston, looking at the birds in Houston, traveling as far away, which was maybe thirty miles to the Katy Prairie in west Houston. When I was an undergraduate in college and we were both home, Victor and I, to Houston for Christmas break, he would take me out to the Katy Prairie in the late '60s to look at the hundreds of thousands, or millions of birds that were landing on those rice fields before they went further south.

T-today, and even when I was at Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, now what that company

00:06:28 - 2383 is is a-a collection-it-its staffing is the collection of what I describe as the Indiana Jones' of their various countries. And there're probably thirty or forty of them now. The expert in s-in-in Brazilian wildlife, and particularly birds, is the-is the affiliate, or the person that people who go on Victor's tours will be led by. And my-my role in that was in part at least getting to help communicate and-and-and manage this worldwide network of Indiana Jones', which was we've-which was both fun and challenging.

DT: So you had these guides that you were trying to rope together, and then you were also trying to appeal to clientele. Can you tell anything about the kind of person that would go on these trips? It doesn't seem like a easily packaged kind of entertainment. It's not going to a museum or to a restaurant. It takes special skills and interest and patience, and you know, walking and seeing these things. What sort of people would that appeal to?

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TS: It's an amazingly ec-eclectic group of-the customers of Victor Emanuel Nature Tours mainly gotten at the time through direct mail, that is, customers wh-peop-people who subscribe to Audubon magazine, or other similar magazines, those subscription lists were rented and direct mail promotional pieces were sent to them, and that-some of them responded saying they wanted to go on this or that tour. It-in large part, a very educated group, but n-that-I guess if there's one or two commonalities

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that-the vast majority of them were already established bird watchers. And-and young or old, they had a-a sense of ad-that they want to do a different kind of travel, complete-a sense of adventure, if you will. And they got it.

DT: One of the things that I've often heard about ecotourism is that it's this sort of two-edged sword that, on one hand it promises environmental education and jobs in remote areas, an education I guess mostly for the visitors, and the jobs for the residents. But on the other hand, there's always the concern that you'll kill the golden goose, in the sense that you'll bring too many visitors that it will scare off the wildlife, or harm the habitat that you're going to enjoy. How do you see that balance playing out over time?

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TS: Well, I-I think it's an important question for the regulators or owners of those resources to-to be concerned about. And I-I don't-my observation, both while I was at VENT, but also now, is that the scale of the current ecotourism travel industry isn't-isn't going to impact the resource in-in-in general. There may be special cases, but there-the-it's going to have scale up a lot before there'll be a significant threat there.

DT: We sort of touched on these questions about habitat by talking about your exposure to ecotourism at VENT. I was wondering if you could take us to somewhat later in your life. In 1991, you helped lead the bond proposal and lead to its passage of I think it was twenty million dollars, is that right, for park land acquisition in the Austin area?

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TS: Right. Actually, August of '92.

DT: '92.

00:11:08 - 2383

TS: Yeah.

DT: And you were working then as a consultant to Trust for Public Land. Is that correct?

00:11:13 - 2383 TS: Yes. And your ninety-one reference, I guess we were working on that bond-bond campaign for about eighteen months. So, yeah, that started in '91.

DT: Well, tell me both the personal and the sort of politic side. I mean how did you get interested in that, and why was there this clear outpouring of public support and dollars for land conservation at that point?

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TS: Well, actually, while I was working at Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, a friend invited me to come to a meeting. And that meeting turned out to be a-a group of just a half dozen or so folks that had already decided to call themselves Citizens for Open Space. And the-the meeting included a City of Austin park planner named Butch Smith, and the head of the-the current head of the Voluntary Parks Advisory Board in Austin at the time, Beverly Griffith, a-a former PBS re-or NPR reporter who was currently working for the Save Our Springs Coalition, Bridgette Shea, and another

00:12:31 - 2383 environmental advocate named George Cofer, all youngsters bef-in the environmental advocacy arena, but as it turned out, it was a sort of threshold event for me, and I think each of the other folks there, because-while the city had-citizens had passed bond elections in prior decades for park land acquisition, it-the-there hadn't been bond elections since '84. This was '91. And the city had gone through a boom, as I'd mentioned earlier, a huge boom in the early '80s, then a huge economic bust in the late '80s, and was just crawling out of it e-in the early '90s. Parts of Texas actually suffered

00:13:33 - 2383 an eco-bust in the early '90s, Houston in particular because of oil related issues. But Austin started a very progressive increase in its e-e-economy in the early '90s, thus resulting in the economic stars being in place for a new bond election by the end of '92. Our-our group was f-was formed because all of us felt like there needed to be more park land in Austin.

And the result of that bond election, sort of fast-forwarding eighteen months since I've already spent so much time describing this, is that the most important environmentally sensitive land was identified to be at essentially the headwaters of Barton Springs, or, that is, the land right above where the springs are and a thousand of those acres were bought with the twenty million dollars that was authorized in bonds by the voters in August of '92.

DT: Well, so the main driver in a sense was water quality, or was it the recreation at the Springs that drove this?

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TS: The issues at the time were-were concern about the water quality at Barton Springs, recreation on the Barton Spr-Barton Creek Trail, and expanding that. And separately but related were concerns about endangered species habitat. There were two birds involved here, the Black-capped Vireo and the Golden-cheeked Warbler, both of which are listed on the federal Endangered Species Act. And in fact, in-in the early '90s, it became very much of concern in Austin that these birds were residents of Austin, at least part of the year, and-and that much of western Travis County was their habitat,

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which imposed federal restrictions on to the developability of that land. So part of the city's reaction to that was to try buy some land-or propose to buy some land that would be for the protection of endangered species habitat, and therefore, free up other land that could be developed without as significant restrictions. All that-all of that played into

00:16:24 - 2383 the identification of this land, which is now called the Barton Creek Wilderness Park, which as it turned out, not only had this potential to expand the Barton Creek Trail, but it was right over the most important part of the recharge zone that created the-the-the i-n-land through which Barton Springs flowed-or-a-and, in addition to that, the same-same thousand acres was also endangered species habitat for the Golden-cheeked Warbler. So part of that eighteen-month period was to identify land that was the most important to buy, and that that process resulted in identifying the land I've just described.

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The rest of that time was really building from not much in place a-a citywide constituency for parks, and-or for parks and public land. And-and Beverly Griffith, who ultimately became a city councilmember, Bridgette Shea, who later also became a city councilmember, George Cofer and I worked-worked on doing that.

DT: My understanding is that you were working as a consultant to the Trust for Public Land in helping pass this bond package. And then later on you became a staff member for TPL, and actually set up the Texas office. I was curious if you could tell us a little bit about how that organization came to have a footing here in Texas.

00:18:22 - 2383 TS: Yeah. Sh-that park planner that I mentioned earlier, Butch Smith, had been invited by the regional director of the Trust for Public Land to go to a conference, I guess a-a year or so before Citizens for Open Space started. Butch was so impressed by what was happening in other parts of the country at this Open Space conference that he went to, that he invited the people I earlier mentioned to talk about open space and open space plan for Austin. Well, my day job was at Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, and a-at these monthly meetings, this-which was their frequency at least at the beginning, one of them,

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a-that regional director who'd invited Butch to the conference, a man named Ted Harrison who was based in New Mexico, came and talked to our group. And that was the first I'd ever heard of the activities of the Trust for Public Land. I learned that there wasn't a state office-this Trust for Public Land didn't have offices in Texas, that it desired to have offices in Texas, and Ted Harrison was just commuting from Santa Fe on a i-irregular basis to try to identify parks-projects for the Trust to work on in communities in Texas. So I proposed to Ted that he hire me as a consultant to work on

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City of Austin efforts, and ultimately that evolved into me doing that consultancy work as my day job in '90-the end of '91 and into '92. And by the end of '92, I was offered the opportunity to open the Texas field office of the Trust for Public Land, which I did.

DT: Maybe you can tell us a little bit about some of the projects that you're most proud of that TPL was involved in. One that I think you started, and that has continued to gather steam, as years have gone by, is known as Government Canyon. And if that is something that you can mention, I'd like to hear about that.

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TS: Sure. Sure. Well, the Trust for Public Land helps public agencies, primarily cities and counties in Texas, identify and then buy land for open space. Your mention of the Government Canyon Proj-now State Natural Area of op-over ten thousand acres, that was a public-that was a Trust for Public Land project that a project manager named Dave Sutton, who also worked in the Santa Fe office, did the first two or three land transactions for. He worked for s-he worked with citizen advocates in San Antonio, not unlike our Citizens for Open Space group in Austin. I think their acronym was-was the AGUA [Aquifer Guardians in Urban Areas], and you may have interviewed Danielle Milam, or others involved in that group.

00:22:07 - 2383 But in the late '80s the-all of Texas went through this real estate bust. One of the results of that was a federal regulatory special agency called the Resolution Trust Corporation that took over the land a-assets of failed savings and loans and banks, many of whom were in Texas. So there were literally tens of thousands of real estate assets of failed banks and savings and loans owned by the Resolution Trust Corporation. One of those assets was a-I think it-can't remember the exact acreage now, but it's several thousand acre, maybe somewhere between two and four thousand acre ranch

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called The San Antonio Ranch outside of the City of San Antonio. That was the first project of the Trust for Public Land. It ultimately became the starter piece of Government Canyon. I did three or four land transactions that added to that, and they were all-the-part of the mix of things that has to happen for one of these land

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transactions to work is-is funding. We've mentioned activities in bond elections. The Government Canyon land, the different tracts of land that ultimately have created this c-almost completed puzzle called Government Canyon State Natural Area, was paid through a coalition of-of-of s-sources, the state Parks and Wildlife, some foundation grants f-large ones from the Kronkosky Foundation and the Meadows Foundation, have gone into the-the funding of these-these-these purchases. Over the maybe half dozen or so years that were the first six years of the Government Canyon acquisitions, there-there was built up enough citizen appreciation and advocacy in San

00:24:36 - 2383 Antonio for those folks to advocate for a portion of the San Antonio-City of San Antonio sales tax being dedicated to land acquisition. So in the late '90s, that election to authorize a portion of the City of S-S-City of San Antonio sales tax was successful. And then it's recently been reauthorized. So the City of San Antonio, which was very under-ser-under-parked, if you will, very little public open space in San Antonio fifteen years ago now is a city that ranks among some of the best cities with regard to the amount of public open space or park land, whether it be in natural areas or-or public parks. A lot of that is the result of the Public-Trust for Public Lands work.

DT: There was another transaction, and I think TPL was pretty deeply involved in it, this Guerrero Park out here in Austin. And it interested me because it's got many of the same attributes that I think that Government Canyon has, of having a water resource of maybe being an under-served part of the community. Can you tell about the acquisition of that place and why it was important to TPL?

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TS: Sure. It-Guerrero Park is along the Colorado River in the eastern part of Austin, and it actually was a-it's an area that was identified in the early '80s by a citizen commission called the Town Lake-Town Lake that-that created a-a plan for Town Lake, which is the part of the Colorado River in the center of the City of Austin. It's dammed on both sides and it's called Town Lake. So in '84-1984, this-this report was published envisioning a Colorado River Park, the r-the first name for Guerrero Park. Actually, the full name is Roy G. Guerrero Colorado River Park. In the-y-in 1980-well, I'm sorry. It was earlier than '84 that the report was published because in I think

00:27:18 - 2383 1984 there were bonds, three-point-two million dollars worth of bonds allocated to buy land for that purpose. Well, we were in the-still in the midst of that boom that I was talking about in the early '80s, and the city spent all of that money on about twenty-five acres of land. I-I say all that money, the-the bulk of that money. They had a little left. But now we get to the early '90s and no more of that land has bought, but the vision of this three hundred or more acre park is-still exists. And most of the land surrounding

00:28:01 - 2383 the original twenty-five acres is owned by either the Resolution Trust Corporation or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the other federal agency that got a lot of these failed bank or savings and loan assets. And the short version of the story is that a-a-through a-about a dozen different transactions on different parcels of land, several of

00:28:31 - 2383 which were owned by these federal agencies, the Trust for Public Land was able to use its money to buy ultimately what ended up being three hundred and sixty-three acres, and then the City of Austin bought the land from the-in-held in trust by TPL, a-and sold back to the city at TPL's-or at the appraised value of it-o-as the city could pay for it. So now we have this signature park, as you said, with water resources and-in a under-served area of town that's a sort of matched set of parks, it on the east, and one called

00:29:22 - 2383 Zilker Park on the west where Barton Springs is, and a-a-a big trail in between called The Town Lake Hike Bi-Hike and Bike Trail. So you've got ma-major-major open space resource in the center of the city.

DT: Maybe we can conclude this piece that you experienced about TPL by just talking about what's your perception of the difference between TPL and some of its cohorts in crime, you know, the other major land buying and protecting nonprofits, one of which I just mentioned, the Nature Conservancy, and you know, being the Conservation Fund. And then of course there are a whole slew of smaller land trusts that are more local, regional.

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TS: Right.

DT: Where do you think TPL fits in that sort of ecosystem?

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TS: Yeah. W-well, among the big-those big three, TPL is the Hertz to the Nature Conservancy being Avis or-or (?) maybe Avis-well, in any case, Nature Conservancy is clearly the-the most-the largest land conservation organization in the world. Over a billion dollars of annual revenue, etc. The T-TPL, though much less visible, is-is second largest and has annual revenue. And I mention these figures just for scale purposes, but of about three hundred to three hundred fifty million dollars. Trust for Public Land buys land for people, as its motto. That is, it buys park land while-while the Nature Conservancy's land acquisition criteria is science-based. It buys land for

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preservation purposes, preservation of the biological, scientific, endangered assets of that land. Some land can be both for people and have significant endangered species habitat aspects, or water quality or quantity assets, and so there's significant-there's some overlap between the Trust for Public Land's mission and-and the Nature Conservancy's mission. And h-I'm happy to say that now, much more so than in some earlier years, TPL and TNC work very much as partners in many projects throughout the country. The Conservation Fund I'm-I'm not as able to pigeon hole in one area or the other, but their

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main-they have two main programs. The-one is more oriented toward TNC te-nature cons-the Nature Conservancy kind of work, which is ch-very landscape scale, multi-thousands, multi-tens of thousands of acre assets. They work with private corporations and other funding sources to buy that land and either hold it themselves or-or-or gift it to federal-to public agencies. The other is the Conservation Fund has a-a major greenways initiative, which is trails like I've mentioned before, and they do a lot of good work in making t-trail-related or greenways-related grants to smaller nonprofits.

DT: You know, about this same time that you were helping get TPL off the ground, I believe that you were a co-founder of the Austin Parks Foundation.

00:33:30 - 2383 TS: Right. DT: ...in 1992. And as I understand, you started out as a board member, and then eventually segued into being their executive director. And I was hoping that you could talk a little bit about how you made parks a popular thing. I mean, I guess it's always had a constituency in Austin, but seems like Austin Parks Foundation under your leadership helped created the Adopt a Park Program and the Movies in the Park Program, and this Local Grants Program. There are a lot of different ways to sort of reach into the neighborhoods and find something that works. How did you do that and why?

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TS: Well, one of the national programs of the Trust for Public Land was called-is called its Green Cities Initiative. And th-through that initiative that was h-funded through some national foundations, seven cities were picked to focus on urban parks. And Austin-the Austin office of the Trust for Public Land in competition with others applied to be one of those seven cities. W-Austin got selected. One of the requirements

00:34:58 - 2383 of the foundation grant was to have a local-have a-a-a Trust for Public Land office involved in partnership with a-a city-city-based office, because most Trust for Public Land offices are either state offices or regional-multi-state offices. In-independent of that effort, my friend from Citizens for Open Space days, Beverly Griffith, who had served for ten years on the City of Austin Parks Board, s-decided-said to herself, no matter how good the parks department will be, no matter how good our advisory board

00:35:50 - 2383 will be, we need an outside group of advocates and funding supporters for our city parks system, over and above, to enhance whatever funding the-the citiz-the-that can provided on a city budget. So Beverly and two cohorts that she grabbed along the way, Cliff Price and one other, fou-incorporated this 501(c)(3) nonprofit Austin Parks Foundation. I was invited to be on its board. I helped the Austin Parks Foundation with no staff write its part of the grant application to get this national grant money. And through that national grant money, the Austin Parks Foundation got the funding for four years to pay for limited staff and-and to start doing programs, some of which you just mentioned.

DT: It seems like the park system in Austin would make any city proud. But I was curious if you could explain why we've got such a good park system and whether it was the Endangered Species Act that brought this about, or a quality-of-life concern. And then also why it seems to always be sort of a poor country cousin to other parts of the cities' obligations to fund it and to staff it.

00:37:33 - 2383 TS: Well, is-I've thought about that, why Austin has what it has, and-nnn-the-I've thought about your question a lot. So let me try it s-give a swing at an answer. The-the-the city itself was founded not as a real estate deal, which is how Dallas and Houston were founded, but as the seat of government. And th-through our-you know, through Sam Houston, Stephen F. Austin got a surveyor named Edwin Waller was hired to do a city plan, you know. And in that city plan, there were four block square parks in the center of the city along with two creeks that bounded the city respectively on the east

00:38:24 - 2383 and west, and a l-and a river that bounded it on the-on the south. So there was open space or connection to the environment i-integral to the-the land that-that was the city at its core. Unlike some other city-big cities, it was the exception that where Austin got land for parks gifted to us. The-only-the big exception is Zilker Park, and that's actually only a sort of half exception because Andrew Zilker gave his land to the Austin Independent School District, and only with ret-requirements that they use that land in some way to build a school that-so Austin-Austin actually paid for Zilker Park,

00:39:24 - 2383 but it was gifted to the school district. So Andrew got two good benefits out of it. This-we-we gi-got a great park, and we also got some school benefits. But m-most of the land protection that is exi-exi-has happened in Austin has happened because citizens voted to tax themselves to-to do that. And so from the very beginning, pieces of land have been bought.

In recent decades, the-there have been two additional forces

00:40:03 - 2383 in-o-over and above public recreation, which have been water quality and quantity protection, and endangered species habitat protection. There's been tens of thousands of acres bought for each of those two other purposes, some of which, but only frankly a very little of which, is open to the public for public recreation.

And I think for the future, that's-the current and future, one of our bigger challenges is to achieve those other public policy goals with that land first, but do it in such a way as to allow some-some public access to that land, too, because the citizens have paid for it. But bo-bottom line,

00:40:58 - 2383 citizens in Austin come to Austin in part attracted by its environment, and its environment is a natural seller of its value to the folks who ultimately voted to tax themselves to pay for buying some of it for-as a common asset-as a public asset.

DT: Yeah. And then given that there is such public interest and policy reason for this endangered species or water quality or supply, the support of having a good park system, why do you think that the parks department has often been under-funded or under-staffed?

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TS: On-as-as great as everybody-I-I think there is huge appreciation for parks in a-and even in-in the operations of the park system, but when you-you have seven city councilors deciding over a finite-d-deciding how to divide up a finite amount of funds, their priorities are going to be public health and safety first, direct social services second, and then-and-and transportation will be part of public health and safety

00:42:26 - 2383 probably, and if you are able to deal with those two big-big things, you might start thinking about parks, libraries, other stuff. That's an oversimplification. But the-the reality is that there is, you know, finite amount of public dollars, and there-for a city that's growing as Austin has from its very beginning to now at a rapid rate, because Austin has doubled its population almost precisely every twenty years from its birth, and it continues to do so. So Austin will be a million and a half more people in twenty or twenty-five years than it is now. That's the projection. S-so there-the-that requires

00:43:26 - 2383 more park land and park operating money, but it also before that requires more roads or transportation dollars, it requires more police, more firemen, etc. And at le-at least in our funding structure right now, just paying for police, fire and EMS, that takes up about seventy percent of our operating budget. So long answer, I'm not going to-did I-did I hit at least some of what you were asking?

DT: Let's skip over to some of your interests in a firm that you started called Creating Common Ground, where unlike with TPL, or with Austin Parks Foundation, whefe you were looking into, I guess, public land. You crafted this niche for yourself as a consultant to try to protect private land as intact habitat or as a working ranch or farm. Why do you think that might be an important role in Texas given its unique...

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TS: Sure. DT: ...private lands heritage?

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TS: Well, clearly one of the things I learned in spades for the decade or so that I was involved in the Trust for Public Land, or a little bit more than that counting the work with the Austin Parks Foundation, was sort of a-a given for us people who were involved in Texas land protection, which is that less than five percent really of all of the land in Texas is public land. And at least by some measures, that may include all of our public roads, you know. I mean w-exactly that percentage, it's debated a little bit. For a long

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time people said three percent. At its most it might be nine or ten percent, but that would definitely include every-every sidewalk, every roadway, etc. So in any case, parks, five percent or less. P-Parks or public open space. From an environmental standpoint, the much higher leverage point to-to do environmental protection work would be on the ninety-five percent of the-working with the ninety-five percent of the pie rather than five percent of the pie. Or even adding-you know, increasing the five percent to six

00:46:03 - 2383 percent, which would be whole bunch of acres, but still be a percent. So it-it did a-it became apparent to me that largel-that lowner-owners of large land could have a win-win kind of opportunity. Owners of ranches who don't intend to subdivide the ranch could either gift or even sell the conservation rights that-or assets of that land through gifting or d-that is donating, or selling that-those environmental assets to a-a

00:46:51 - 2383 nonprofit, a land trust. It's a relatively new concept in Texas, but not new nationally. It's been going-this kind of land transaction has been occurring in Massachusetts for a hundred years and many other states for decades. In the last five or six years through my consultancy, which is called Creating Common Ground, I've worked with private landowners to-to-to do just that. They remain the owner as in the law-it's called the fee simple owner of the-of the land, that they're still the owners of the land but they've-gifted or sold a-certain rights to that land to a land trust. They've either made

00:47:47 - 2383 money in cash by that transaction, or depending on their tax-their personal income tax liability or their estate tax liability, they've reduced their taxes by donating that asset. And they still have the same use of the land with minor restrictions-maybe not even minor restrictions-that they've been having for that land before the transaction.

DT: I have a specific question and a general question. The specific question might be if you can give us an example of one of these transactions that has been a real win-win, as you say. And secondly, I've heard that there have been efforts in Congress to address abuses in the whole easement business where some folks feel like the easements are over-valued or the land trust is not prepared to monitor the actual uses of the land once the easement is passed.

00:48:59 - 2383 TS: Right.

DT: Think you could touch on both those questions?

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TS: An example that comes to mind as far as conservation easement donation that-that I helped happen is a owner of a large ranch in Culberson County, far West Texas, John Byram, decided because he had a conservation interest, but also because he'd learned that there are some potential economic benefits, he-he decided, and I-I worked with him on the legal papers and identifying the land trust as well as the appraiser to do the appraisal, that he would donate a-the conservation easement over twenty-two thousand acre ranch. And at the time it was the largest conservation easement gift that

00:50:02 - 2383 had occurred in Texas. This was in '99-1999. John Byram,-the land in West Texas isn't a high value per acre, but if you have twenty-two thousand acres of it, and you gift the-at the conservation easement rights off of that land, you may be gifting as much as forty to fifty percent of the value of that land. And John Byram was able to take that charitable donation just as if he'd given the money to Goodwill or the American Heart As-Association as a Schedule A deduction on his individual d-income-federal income tax return. If-if hi-he didn't have enough income to take that whole gift in that year, under the law at the time, he would have been able to carry forward that gift and have it reduce his taxes in as much as six ad-additional years beyond that initial year. Today, just in the last session of the federal legislature, amendments to the federal law, federal income tax provisions were passed to extend that gift to a fifteen-year carry forward, and

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there were also other caps on how much you could take as a donation in any one year that had been increased. So it's-it-it's-it's a great potential economic opportunity for people in a circumstance where they have a large land asset and they have income tax liability.

The-the abuses that were-did hit the national news through reports in the Washington Post, and I think the New York Times, about two years ago now, have-have gone through a whole series of Congressional hearings. There have been some tweakings of-of the laws to ad-address how conservation easement appraisals are-are done. I'd say most importantly the impact of-of that news coming-coming into the

00:52:37 - 2383 public is that-and a t-a trade association for nonprofit land trusts called The Land Trust Alliance has-has d-increased something that it was already doing in a-in a large way, but increased it further, and that is a certification process for land trusts. So to be a member of a-the Land Trust Alliance, or to just be a viable land trust out there in the marketplace that might be eligible and attractive to a donor, you go through a training process and a-and you-you agree to follow a certain protocol for your land transactions. And through that I think su-a s-the risk of this kind of abuse occurring in the future is significantly diminished, if not eliminated.

(misc.)

DT: You were a director, and later vice chair, and then finally chair during the '90s of Earth Share of Texas, which is a work-place campaign for raising money for conservation groups in Texas. And I was curious if you could tell about those days with Earth Share.

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TS: Well, if you-you want to do environmental protection of any sort, or if you want to do almost anything, funding is always one of the questions you have to answer. And again, back to my Citizens for Open Space teammates, George Cofer-two of those teammates, Beverly Griffith and-and-and Bridgette Shea became city council members. George, what he was attracted to, in part, was funding for environmental organizations. And he got involved in getting corporations to have a donation campaign very similar to United Way where individual employees of a corporation would have the opportunity to decide whether or not they wanted some of their paycheck donated in-

00:55:01 - 2383 sort of in advance to one or another environmental charity. I got involved in that organization and-and helped it grow over about a six-year period when I was at the Trust for Public Land and the Austin Parks Foundation, that it was a pleasure to be associated with it.

DT: I'm wondering if you can talk about the pitch that you or the employees of Earth Share might make to people in an office who might not have a close connection with an environmental group, but are open to it. What would be the appeal?

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TS: To the employee you're talking about?

DT: Yeah.

00:55:47 - 2383

TS: Well, honestly, the-the-the typical employee that would donate to Earth Share may not be ge-be giving that-may not have that choice right now, because the vast majority of work places that have some kind of work place giving, campaign is what they're called, protocol really, don't include among the choices for their employees anything other than the United Way choices. So our main pitch was to the employer to increase the amount of choice your employees have by adding all the organizations that are members of Earth Share to-to that choice. To directly answer your question, the

00:46:50 - 2383

choices-the-the pitches-this is simply your opportunity and an easy way to make your charitable donation to an organization that you-that-that you value. Environmental protection is-is-is a value that keeps on giving, if you will. Give it once through your workplace and you affect the whole community on-on a, you know, every minute of every day basis by-by-by that gift. (misc.)

DT: It seems like it might have been another route to present to, not the employer, but to the United Way: "how about if you add some environmental choices to your suite of giving options?". What was United Way's response to Earth Share and that kind of giving option?

00:57:52 - 2383 TS: Well, when Earth Share was founded, and other environmental work place giving federations, state-based, which started I think also in the early '70s, it may have been a little later than that, but there may have been those conversations with United Way, either on a national level or-the-or-or at various states. As best I understand it, in Texas-I'm sorry...(misc.)

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TS: I-if those conversations between environmental advocates and United Way happened earlier, I know they didn't result in any kind of merger. In-in Texas, and certainly in Austin, the answer from United Way is simply that their mission doesn't include environmental protection, which is a shame. But the other side of that is it's sort of-it creates the necessity and the legitimacy of a separate organization to advocate for work place giving for environmental protection purposes. (misc.)