You can also listen to The Land Steward Podcast on Apple Podcasts.

 

Introduction

BW: The Land Steward Podcast is brought to you by the Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute. We have relatable conversations and share helpful resources for land stewards like you—no matter how you relate to the land. So grab your hat and join us outside.

[0:28—Texas Land Trends]

BW: Hey there, welcome back to the Land Steward podcast. This is BW your host and I am ecstatic to bring you part one of a two-part series for the Texas Land Trends project. So here's what we see. You're driving down the road in Texas, right? So hopefully you're driving now And for me specifically I always think of driving in the Hill Country, maybe that triangle between Johnson City, Marble Falls, and Fredericksburg, even in between College Station and the Hill Country. I feel like you see month over month how drastically that land is changing, but you also see like real diversification and land use, whether that is, you know small acreage ranches or farming operations, maybe it's row crop operations, you see lots of cattle, you see exotics, and then you're kind of weaving in and out of these city centers especially as we kind of we try to fringe around the Austin area but it seems like it is just growing closer and closer to College Station. So you just, you see how land use changes in Texas no matter where you drive, and you know sometimes I think we go, “oh yeah, it's year over year.” But I mean it truly is month over month. Sometimes you drive through a certain area and all of a sudden you're like, “where am I?” That's kind of the premise of the Texas Land Trends project.    

Here's what we know. Texas is comprised of about 142 million acres of private farms, ranches, and forests. So we absolutely lead the nation and land area devoted to simply privately owned working lands, right? And that's amazing. So these lands obviously provide like substantial economic, environmental and recreational resources that benefit every Texan, no matter where you are in the state. But absolutely crazy, rapid amounts of population growth is driving some of that suburbanization that we're seeing, more of the rural development, and, you know, lots of that ownership fragmentation that just is constantly, increasingly, I would say, threatening some of that working land. So these threats kind of results in what we would consider a fundamental change in the Texas landscape. So that impacts your rural economies, your food and water security, and then the conservation of natural resources.

The Texas Land Trends project, which is spearheaded by NRI's director Dr. Roel Lopez and also led by our geospatial analysis team right here, that works in-house both in College Station and in San Antonio. They monitor the status and changes of land use across the state but they also look at ownership size, land values of working lands, and a bunch of other factors that kind of come to play to help us describe how Texas changes and how that land is being used. So the research results are usually published as like topic-based reports. We do have this very cool website called txlandtrends.org, and I'll drop that link in the show notes for you guys. And that site, no matter what your GIS expertise is, you know, whether you use maps or not, you can explore and kind of query the Texas Land Trends data to find out more about certain areas and how that land is used. So you could look up where your properties are, where you live, where the rest of your family lives, and just kind of get an idea of what's around that area. I would say it's probably one of the most powerful tools that you can learn how to use as a land steward and as a land manager and it's something that I talk to my students a lot about, having even having very little GIS background that tool can help you see how decisions are made but in a more professional capacity can help you, you know help make better decisions for other people and think strategically about projects in the future of Texas.

A little bit of background, I do want to talk some, you know, all together about the Texas Land Trends Program. We definitely help provide decision makers and stakeholders with timely information to support the conservation and that strategic planning of working lands within a more spatial context. So this year is special because we're celebrating over two decades of that applied research and extension outreach, which causes us to be a little more reflective about the significant impact of the Texas Land Trends program, this beloved program here at the Institute. So since its inception, the program, I mean, it's really been a critical resource in understanding the complex landscapes of Texas working lands, which, of course, we endearingly refer to as farms, ranches, and forests that, again, are increasingly threatened by rapid economic and population growth.  

Now, with 25 years of trend data, this latest five-year report, which is its sixth iteration, provides a lot of those essential insights into the ongoing transformation of not only population growth, but also land value, ownership patterns, and land uses across Texas. So the report serves not only as this updated snapshot for you guys of the current conditions, but also it's kind of a roadmap for future policies that might affect some of the state's natural resources. So it's like a manifestation somewhat of our mission to conserve the integrity of Texas's wide-opens places for generations to come which you guys know is incredibly important to me.

So I did mention that this would be a two-part series. Today I'm going to cover the sort of like the brass tacks of Texas's changing escape, and four of those biggest findings from the latest 25 year Texas Land Trends report. Again, I do hope you're driving or maybe you're sitting somewhere in the blue bonnet through their headphones in.

Alright, let's dig in. I've mentioned that I have the privilege of receiving your emails sent in to the NRI inbox, which you can email anytime, day or night. One of the most common questions that comes in after a Land Trends report release is about the data sources. People wanna know how we're finding the information and what data we're using to be able to develop some of these projections and to see the trends over time. So briefly, the program is really just able to help provide some of those comprehensive data sets for the key issues that we're going to talk about in a minute. And then it helps examine some of the latest trends in urban development and working land loss so that we can better understand the changes to Texas' role landscapes by learning from two main sources.

The first is the Ag Census. So the Ag Census reports working lands really as the number and then of the and the acres of the operations by size class each since this year for every county in Texas. So that's you know, if we're going back to the very first Land Trends report that's from 1997 then we hit in '02, '07, 2012, 2017, and then in 2022. So the Ag Census kind of helps define operations for us because the way they see them are as properties that had at least a thousand dollars or more in ag products that were produced, sold, or normally would have been sold during that since this year. One of the disadvantages of that as a data source is that it's also voluntary. So in our minds, it's not absolutely comprehensive, but it's a huge data source for us to be able to see at least the majority of what's happening, looking at Ag Census data.

So the second source that we use is from the Texas Comptrollers Office. So you know they have an annual kind of compilation of land use and land value data from all private lands that are designated as 1D or 1D1 appraisal status for all Texas ISDs. You guys have heard me talk about the difference between 1D and 1D1 and we'll talk a little bit about that later on in the episode but it's essentially the difference between those who are fully ag productivity and those who are just designated as open space land.

All right, let's get into it. So we're going to go over the four key findings that came out of this 25-year Texas Land Trends report. Those are population changes, land value increases, ownership patterns, and then of course land use. One thing I do want you to have in the back of your mind and one of the things that is just puts things in perspective. For me, not only as a landowner, but also as a natural resource professional and as a teacher, someone who is in front of who could potentially be the next generation of natural resource professionals, is this stat that we have that's come out of this report. I'm going to read it to you because it is very striking. So, “With over 30 million Texans concentrated in urban areas, the stewardship of the state's remaining rural landscapes falls to just 231,000 ownerships, a striking contrast between urban density and rural dominion.” That's 231,000 people who own private land in Texas, who steward that private land, that open-space land, or maybe they're involved in ag productivity in some way, and are potentially operating from this conservation mindset. But 231,000 people who are responsible for kind of taking care of the rest of the 31 million people in Texas. That open space land is recreation land. It's ag productivity. It's what you see when you drive down the highway and it hasn't been converted yet. it hasn't been developed yet. It's not the subdivisions that we see, the countless new homes and foundations being poured every day. 231,000 people out of 30 million Texans are responsible for that open space land that we get to enjoy.

So the first of those four key findings is the population increase. So the growing population in Texas is driving that increased demand for rural land, especially in areas in and around urban centers. For another piece of perspective, the combined population of the 25 highest growth counties in Texas is greater than the individual populations of every U.S. state apart from California. If you have a chance to snag a hard copy of the Texas Land Trends report or even check it out on the website digitally, that's in one of the upfront pages of the report and it's a very cool visual just to see how heavily populated those counties are in Texas compared to the populations of other U.S. states. Another thing that came out of this is that Texas has eight of the top 15 fastest growing cities in the country, which makes sense. Again, you're driving down the road and you can see every day that that population increasing. We saw an increase from 19 million to 30 million people. That's about 1,100 new Texas residents every day. Again, another staggering statistic when you think about some of the limited resources that we have in our state and the things that we depend on for our livelihoods and to be able to survive like our water resources for example.

The second of those four key highlights deals more with the land value increase so as a direct results of that population increasing every day we see how that population then starts to affect land values. Now here's what's interesting. Historically, land market values used to serve as a really strong indicator for us of that rural land demand. Kind of like home real estate values, rural land market values varied by location, by their land use, and property size, and some other factors. From the Texas Land Trends data, though, the statewide average appraised market value for Texas working lands was a little over $3,000 per acre in 2022. On average, this represented almost a 55% increase in land value since 2017, and a 505% increase over the 25 year period. So from 1997 to 2022, 505% increase in that land value. So like what we've seen in our previous Land Trends reports and projections, the changes in the land market value are closely tied to the distance from major metropolitan growth areas. So the price per acre generally increases the closer that you get to those major cities. Those landowners specifically in the areas on the fringe of those urban centers are seeing and feeling more and more pressure to make a decision about whether they're gonna keep their land or allow it to be used for development or to be converted out of that open space land or ag productivity.  

Now the Land Trends program kind of swung open the door on the conversation about intergenerational land changes and highlighted almost decades ago what might be coming our way when we think about the massive shift as our older landowners are leaving us, and I really have to think about the reality of some of this intergenerational land transfer. You know, it's one thing to see this data in a report and to understand kind of the synthesis of the information that we're seeing, the trends that are happening. It's one thing to teach that and to share it even to say it out loud on this podcast to you guys, but the reality is even from my own personal experience, the shift in land ownership is very real and the generations who are coming into position now to own or maybe lead or be the main managers for some of this open space land that's still out there, they make decisions very differently. Even if we think about this from a theory-based perspective, their behaviors are different. The way that they make decisions, the resources that they consider, the things that they and take it to consider for credibility. Their communication styles are different.   

One of the things that I've shared with a coworker recently is, again, back to the NRI inbox. I get so much interaction from you guys. We get a lot of questions about, obviously, land conservation, maybe programs or opportunities that are available and I can tell very quickly with very little information usually in the beginning of the email if this person has a vast amount of experience and maybe has grown up on the land and has stewarded the land for many many years and I can tell if that person has just kind of maybe bought something recently or has maybe inherited a piece of land and they're new to it, and I will say the difference in requesting support or looking for information is very different.

When I have a conversation with somebody who has been a land steward for a long time, many decades, they have exhausted all of their resources. For the most part, they have turned to everyone in the community. They've looked at their own knowledge and skills. They've tried to learn and educate themselves on maybe something that they're struggling with. They've gone to their neighbors. They have gone to all of their trusted community before they decided to land in the NRI. The contrast to that is these newer landowners, for the most part, we might be one of the first places that they've come to. They maybe, you know, maybe the reality is that they built their life away from the land, and they don't have the same networks and communities that the older generations of landowners have. So it's just interesting that, you know, that very small interaction, just being able to see some of those messages and to be able to help you guys as you come to the Institute looking for resources or guidance and advice, it's been a really interesting experience just to be able to see the difference in how younger generations of land stewards approach land stewardship and conservation. What's even cooler is knowing that no matter how you relate to the land, no matter how you came about as a land steward, they're both asking for the same thing. They're looking for support and guidance. They're looking to be able to be equipped to make the best possible decisions for themselves. So this conversation that the Land Trends program has really opened up over the last couple of years is just highlighting that we are we're in this pendulum swing of intergenerational land transfers and we're not you know we're not we're no one's really sure I guess what that looks like. And I think that that is just acknowledging that and having a conversation about that is really exciting. And it gives me hope for the future of conservation, especially in the state of Texas.

So when we talk about the land value increases and going back to these properties that may be on the fringes of these major cities, it's hard to know sometimes what the situation is for those landowners. And if they're a landowner who, let's say, they have built their life away from the land and all of a sudden they're faced with their responsibility of stewarding and also maintaining this very critical economic bottom line to help sustain a piece of what could have been family property, for example, they may be faced with a decision and possibly a life changing amount of money to sell or maybe subdivide their property for development. And that land is then immediately converted out of those ag classifications. And that conversion piece is a data point for the Texas Land Trends program. And that's how we can kind of piece together the story of how lands are changing in Texas. And I think that as a natural resources Institute and as natural resource professionals, it is sort of our responsibility in a way to make sure that people have all the right information and so that if that's not a decision that they want to make, that they know that they have other options and there are other situations out there that could support them in their decision-making processes to hang on to that land if that's something that they're interested in and help them understand the value of that land over time.

So this third highlight here from the Texas Land Trends Report is the changing ownership patterns and more importantly the deviation from some of the trends that we've seen over the last 25 years. One of the things I have to remind myself of and that I also have to remind my students of as they're really learning the impacts of land conversion and fragmentation is that we talk about these data points as if Texas has lost land but the reality is the land mass of the state of Texas did not decrease or increase in size. It's just how the land has been divided up and how it's used differently across the state. So as urban centers grow in population, that demand for the surrounding rural land increases, raising the land market values, and then subsequently increasing landowners’ incentive to subdivide or maybe even sell their working lands for suburban and urban use. In past reports, the number of farms and ranches increased over time, while the number of acres classified as working lands decreased. So over the last five years, though, the total number of farms decreased by over 17,000 operations. And we also lost about 1 and 1/2 million acres of operations. So, the new pattern that we saw in this trend over the last five years is more than likely an indication that the shift in the relative, like the rate of fragmentation versus conversion, we kind of see where operations are being lost to conversion more often or maybe more quickly than they are being fragmented into smaller operations. So, you know, for a long time we saw the operations are increasing, but the acreage of those operations is decreasing. Meaning that those larger, larger farms and ranches were maybe being fragmented or subdivided are sold. But now this new pattern that we're seeing is really showing us that the conversion is actually happening quicker than the fragmentation.

So another new trend that we saw kind of creep up on us is that this statewide average farm size increased from 509 acres to 541 acres. Let me tell you the number of conversations that happened in the GIS lab after that stat came out. I think that they re-ran those numbers probably 400 times just to make sure that what they were seeing was right. What they finally resolved to understand is that the change is probably more likely due to the land consolidation or conversion into larger operations. So it's not so much that people are now opening up their smaller farms as much as it is that more land is being consolidated.

I do want to kind of add in here some of the significance of converting away from ag, which is going to technically lead into the next point about land use. So sometimes what we see in some of the questions, again that land in the inbox, is you know what does that mean when we say land loss? What we're talking about specifically is that the land has been converted out of 1D or 1D1 and it's being used for something else. For the most part we have to assume that if a property is coming out of an ag or open space valuation, it's being used either it's being developed or it's just being used for something else and we can't see specifically what the categories are that that land has then been converted into. What we did see though specifically is that 3.7 million acres of working lands were converted to non ag uses which more than anything just kind of accelerated the rate of loss that we were seeing over the last 25 year trends. We also saw a decline in grazing and croplands so these are categories that we can see through ag census data I believe just to kind of help us understand how that land is being used and that land was actually then moved into more of the wildlife management land. So a decline in grazing and croplands, an increase in wildlife management land. One of the things that we also have to consider when we think about that wildlife management land or the 1D1 open space land is that even though somebody has potentially moved into that wildlife management or open space management, it does not mean that they are not still continuing to have a cattle operation or somehow still have ag productivity on their property. That's a really important consideration for land managers but also the natural resource professionals who are helping them to make the best stewarding decisions, you have to have a really intimate understanding of how their land is being used. And on paper, sometimes that's hard to tell.

So let's say, I think one of the questions that we get is, why would somebody convert out of ag valuation into 1D1 or open space land? And the reality is sometimes, especially with the very dramatic weather situations that we've been in. Let's say you're in a situation where you need to do something with your cattle. It's not economically sustainable to continue to supplement their feed the way that you have been because we've been in a drought and maybe you don't have an opportunity to lease land elsewhere for your cattle. So maybe you decide that it might be better for you to convert to 1D1 and still have a cattle operation for income purposes on your property. So there's lots of small variables that come into play when you make those smart decisions or strategic planning decisions for your property, but something we just have to consider when we're looking at these land categorical conversions. When someone pops out of ag and then maybe we see an increase in the wildlife management area, it does not mean that they're not operating the way that they were agriculturally before.

Okay, so why does it all matter? Of course, I feel like I've dropped some data bombs on you But just to kind of round out this part one of this land trends two-part series I did want to reiterate this glimmer of hope 81% of the total land area in Texas is still private working lands. It's still the Texas that we know and love and as Texas just continues to grow in population and economy the demand for that rural land especially in those areas surrounding the major urban centers and those big transportation corridors, it will continue to increase, catalyzing the fragmentation and the conversion of those working lands as we have seen over the last 25 years. We know that's not going to change. But these lands are essential for supporting both the energy industry and military operations by providing open space infrastructure, resource access, and vital training while helping to prevent, you know, development and encroachment and maintaining those safety buffers. If you guys listen to the Camp Bullis Sentinel landscape episode, episode eight of the podcast, we talked about how important it is to preserve or to conserve the private land that buffers those military areas and how that's definitely becoming a major priority for Texas. And as we see the population increasing, we start to see, you know, this trickle-down effect of the many different industries, even outside of energy and military, that are starting to feel a little bit of pressure. And I think we're going to continue to see that list grow as we adopt more programs to make sure that that land is being conserved.

So the loss of the traditional benefits of working lands, including food and fiber, valuable ecosystem services, water storage, clean air, the role in urban communities rely on these things every day. And as we continue to see this, these trends happening, we know that so much of that is being lost every day. Ultimately, the future conservation of working lands is directly linked to private landowners who strategically steward these properties. Informed conservation and urban planning efforts should include and target these landowners and explore methods to incentivize the continued stewardship of working lands in Texas over the next 25 years and beyond. We simply cannot make strategic decisions around conservation without knowing what's happening and without knowing the data, being very familiar with those trends that have happened over the last quarter of a century.

So thanks for listening to the top four highlights from the Texas Land Trends report, which is our proud 25-year anniversary report that came out earlier this year. If you haven't had a chance to virtually flip through the pages on our website or grab a physical copy, please go, peruse that report, get familiar with how the Texas land trends have changed over time. You can go to txlandtrends.org for other reports, resources, access to the geospatial tools, or you can hop into the NRI website and look at the land trends project area. So I’m super excited to bring you guys part two with Dr. Roel Lopez. This is your host, BW. I am signing off now, but I do want to mention that there is a very special segment directly following my sign-off with a new book club entry in case that intrigues you. So keep your headphones in. I would love for you to hear our new book club. Until our part two, I will talk to you guys soon.

[31:07—LSP Book Club—A Sand County Almanac]

BW: At NRI, we say that we are where conservation and applied research meet, which really just means that it's incredibly important to us and all natural resource professionals to be in the literature just as much as we are in the field. So we decided to start a book club for our listeners on the Land Steward Podcast where we can share the written practice that we're applying in our day-to-day work. Joining us to share with you our very first book is Meghan Riley, a well-read and thoughtful project coordinator at NRI.

BW: Welcome to the podcast, Meghan.

MR: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.

BW: Yeah, thank you. Okay, so you want to tell me what you pulled off the shelf for us today?

MR: Yes. I'm very excited about this. I have pulled a classic for us for our first book club. Today we're going to be talking about A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold.

BW: An absolutely beautiful classic.

MR: Yes.

BW: Okay. So also for those of you who are listening in, I'm looking at this beautiful notebook that Meghan has put together and probably a thousand different highlighted tabs in this book of notes that she's taken from A Sand County Almanac, so I'm very, very excited to hear your take on this and your perspective. Tell me a little bit about the book.

MR: Okay so before I go into the book, I'm actually gonna talk a little bit about the author, Aldo Leopold.

MR: So, Aldo Leopold is a very important figure in wildlife ecology, wildlife management, conservation. He is known as actually the father of wildlife ecology, and we'll get into why in a minute. So, he was born in 1887 in Iowa. After he went to college he worked for the U.S. Forest Service and then eventually worked for the University of Wisconsin. He died in 1948 at the age of 61 actually while fighting a brush fire on his neighbor's property. So, a little bit more about this book. It was published in 1949 and another fun fact, it was actually accepted for publishing only a week before he died fighting that brush fire in 1948. So, he did pass away knowing that his book was going to be published, which I love. So, the book is set up as a series of essays, and in these essays he kind of just observes the natural world, how it works, and he does a lot of discussion on how we as human beings can interact with nature and the land in a much more ethical and caring manner. So these essays and the book itself and the ideas within them have become the foundation for modern conservation science and wildlife management ideas, most particularly the essay titled The Land Ethic, which is his philosophy on how we can better interact with the land and be better stewards of it in general. And we'll get more into that when we talk about the third section.

BW: I do feel like I've heard from so many different natural resource professional friends, people in the field, people who are, whether they're mentors or they're new into natural resources and their expertise and they're just starting out, they're getting familiar with those challenges. The ones who have read A Sand County Almanac have said it's foundational to the way that they perceive natural resources their perspective really and some of that ecological conviction that we learn about from Aldo Leopold.

MR: Absolutely that is one of the main things of the book and is shifting our frame of reference and our frame of mind and how we interact with all of this. So, I do recommend purchasing, if you're going to purchase the book, the copy that has an introduction written by Barbara Kingsolver, it's an excellent introduction. It was written in 2020. So, it's a little bit more modern. And she kind of goes back over his ideas and how they're still applicable today. And this copy also has beautiful little sketches in it. And I just it's a really nice copy. I love it.

BW: It is beautiful.

MR: So, the book is split into three sections with the first section being called A Sand County Almanac and what this is is a series of essays, one for every month of the year, starting in January. And he is in these essays describing just his adventures and observations as he walks around and engages with his property, which he fondly calls Sand Farm. It's 80 acres in Wisconsin, and the reason he calls it that is because this place has been left pretty barren by grazing and poor management. And the essays, in my opinion, are this great example of what he discusses later in the book as this deep love and respect for the land. And also the idea that the best way to develop this love and respect is to just be out in nature.

BW: I love that note too thinking about the different ways that not only that we teach our students but also the natural resource professionals the best way to get to know to become intimately aware of a landscape of a wildlife habitat of an urban or rural area is to become immersed to get in it to to be there, to experience just, you know, the same way that his essays are set up, to experience it month over month, season over season.

MR: Absolutely. The other thing I love about this section is that he is an excellent writer. He's a beautiful writer and the prose in this book, specifically in the first and second sections are just great, just gorgeous, just like a real pleasure to read. He also has this lovely kind of very dry, a little bit sarcastic sense of humor that I love because it's very similar to my own. And it's just kind of sprinkled throughout there like little treats. And I did, there are a couple of times where I was reading and I kind of like did a little giggle out loud.

BW: Which is funny that you mentioned that because I do feel like there's, there is this point for natural resource professionals and, and practitioners where you kind of find a way to hone in on what your sense of humor is, given what we know about the loss that we see and witness every day but also being able to remain hopeful in conservation and in stewardship. So I love that you picked up on his sense of humor because I do feel like that is so relatable for a lot of the people, especially at the Institute. You kind of have to have a little bit of a sense of humor.

MR: You do, you got to laugh.

BW: Do you have a favorite quote that you wanna share from, at least from this first set of essays that he has?

MR: I do, so my favorite quote comes from, it's the very first sentence of the February essay.

BW: Okay.

MR: "There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery and the other that heat comes from the furnace.” So the second section is titled Sketches Here and There. This is a series of essays detailing his explorations of various wild places and most of these take place before the Sand Farm, when he was younger. And they go all over the country, there's even he did some exploring even down in Mexico. This is also again an example of beautiful prose and this is where I would say his appreciation of the land and nature and really I would say honed his observational skills, going on all of these adventures. This is where we get the famous quote where he talks about seeing a wolf a female wolf dying and he's he talks about seeing the fierce green fire dying from her eyes which is just an awesome quote.

BW: Yeah.

MR: And then part of this is also him kind of meditating on what he's calling the rapidly disappearing wilderness, and this is even you know this is pre-1940s that he's going on these adventures and talking about this, and as he kind of meditates on the wilderness disappearing he also talks about the lack of value that society puts on the wilderness and wild places and kind of thinks on that as he's going on all of these adventures.

BW: And to think that we are 80 years beyond writing that and it is still just as relevant today as it was then.

MR: That's one of the things I love about this book is it was written like you said 80-ish years ago and it is still very relevant.

MR: So my favorite quote from this section, where he says, "But all conservation of wilderness is self-defeating. For to cherish we must see and touch and when enough have seen and touched there is no wilderness left to cherish.” So again, talking about that disappearing wilderness but this kind of catch-22 of the only way to really appreciate it is to be out in it.

BW: It’s striking that really difficult balance of, you know, you're being there, being able to observe and witness what you can of these wild places, but to also leave it as it was somehow. I feel like there's a part of me that I crave the opportunity to be able to share those open spaces with the public. But to Aldo Leopold's point, we have to also acknowledge the risk that comes with more exposure for sure.

MR: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So the third and final section is called The Upshot. And this is kind of where he is kind of laying out all of his philosophies and the point basically of what he's learned through these adventures and through living on his Sand Farm. So if you only are gonna read a portion of this book, it would be this section.

BW: Absolutely.

MR: However, I will say that I think it loses a little bit of its impact if you only read this section without the first two. But if you are short on time, this is the section to go for.

MR: So this is the section where we also get arguably one of his most famous essays, The Land Ethic, where he discusses how to more ethically interact with the land. So this section is where you're going to get your big kind of takeaways.

BW: So why do you think that it's important for Land Stewards to read this book?

MR: So first of all, I think everyone should read this book. Every, every person but specifically like you said, anyone who is a land steward, anyone who works in natural resources, agriculture, anything like that I think this is a very important book. And the reason that I think it is so important comes from the way he talks about changing our mindset of how we view the land, from only having economic value to having its own intrinsic value just for what it is. If I had to kind of sum up the entire section in one sentence, which is very difficult cause there's a lot going on in there, I would say viewing the land as a community rather than a commodity. So, changing our definition of community to include the land. And when he says the land, and when I say it, he means the flora and fauna and the ecosystem and all of that in general. I think this is still very appropriate for our society. I think we still struggle with this even however many years later and, um, I think, you know, it's when we talk about land stewardship, it's there in the name. We are stewards of the land and, you know, we should be shifting our mindset from “what can I get from the land?” to “how can I make the land better?”  

BW: Yeah, I love that perspective. So if you were to bookend this review of A Sand County Almanac, what would you say is the biggest takeaway for listeners, for you specifically too?

MR: So my biggest takeaway, kind of the most impactful point that I found is that this mindset shift, this reframing of how we think about things can't happen without what he calls "love, respect, and admiration for the land and a high regard for its value," and value in the philosophical sense, not in the economic sense. So loving the land for what it intrinsically is. And he also talks about how, you how this land ethic, he wrote it down, obviously we have the book, but you can't just write something down and it exists. He talks about how it has to be this whole societal and cultural shift of a mindset, it has to happen in the minds of people for it to exist in reality. And I think as any kind of wildlife or conservation professional, that's really important to keep in mind, you know as we go through our careers and through our lives and interact with people, we want to reflect that mindset and everything that we do and say.

MR: So I think our society today, even, you know, 80 years later, still struggles with this idea of seeing land more for its economic value than its intrinsic value but when you talk about land stewardship it's there in the name you know we are stewards of the land and he talks about this ethical obligation that we have to the land as land stewards to enlarge our idea of community to include the land and to be in a symbiotic relationship with the land rather than just thinking about what can we get from it. And rather than just thinking of it as property, like almost an inanimate object, you know, he talks a lot about viewing it as this living thing, which it is, but all together the ecosystem being this creature that's alive and not just something that we own and therefore can do whatever we want with it.

BW: Agreed. Yeah. And I love that that is one of the big takeaways that you took from it as not only a natural resource professional but also a brand new landowner yourself and somebody who I think comes from a line of land stewards in some way shape or form um and I think that as a society having pillars like A Sand County Almanac but also just the teachings from Aldo Leopold help us kind of better understand how changes in behavior shape culture and how having something as foundational as these essays and his philosophy that he shares can help us can give us kind of that foundation to be able to stand on when sometimes all of the arrows point to taking the easy way out and taking a different route away from conservation which can be challenging. And a lot of the challenges are out of our control. So I love that that was a takeaway for you specifically as a land steward yourself.

MR: Yeah.

BW: Thanks for sharing that.

MR: Thank you so much for having me.

BW: Yeah. All right, that is our very first book club review of the Sand County Almanac with Meghan Riley. I am so, so grateful, one to be surrounded by experts but also people like Meghan who are super thoughtful and who are looking for opportunities to share really great resources with Land Stewards all the time. So until next time, Meghan is going to be nose in book ready to share with you guys the next iteration on the Land Steward Podcast.

[49:12—Outro]

BW: Hey there, it’s BW. I just wanted to say thanks for listening. We are so grateful for those of you who have been with us since episode one, and for those of you who continue to join us every single month. We’re also really grateful for the experts and partners who come on and share an immense amount of wisdom for the land stewards in Texas and beyond. So, remember to subscribe to The Land Steward Podcast when you have a second and shoot us a note if you ever have any questions about the resources and research that we share right here on the podcast. Until next time, we’ll talk soon.