Podcast Ep. #6: Small Acreage & Wildlife Management with Chase Brooke

Podcast Ep. #6: Small Acreage & Wildlife Management with Chase Brooke

The NRI podcast crew, Brittany Wegner and Abigail Holmes, recently had an opportunity to sit down with Chase Brooke, an AgriLife Extension Small Acreage and Wildlife Management Specialist, to shed some light on the little bit of grit and luck it takes to steward your small slice of Texas and the wildlife that thrive because of healthy working lands.

This comical and very relatable episode dives right into Chase’s take on his state-wide travels, where he says, in Texas, “shade is for the weak and the rocks are for rattlesnakes.” Chase is passionate about his work, so from the moment he walked through the door into the recording studio, he was delighted to share his diverse and dynamic interactions with new-to-the-land and small-acreage landowners.

Chase earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Texas A&M and is pursuing his Ph.D. in rangeland, wildlife and fisheries management here at A&M, as well. His research is focused on the impacts of burning woody plant debris and how to reduce any long-term disturbances on our rangelands. In his role, he conducts programs for both new and small acreage landowners all over Texas to help them define the best strategies for stewarding their land and then he connects them with the resources and the expertise that they need based on their goals, including their economic bottom line.

 

 

BW: I want to talk a little bit about your background. You have a lot going on there, but you also have a lot that's happening right now. You're working, also in school, carving out your direction for your dissertation somewhere in the middle, which I think is lovely, too, because you get to take what you're learning out there on the road and apply it to what you're working towards and who you want to be as an expert in this field.

You're also making time to invest in students in a lot of different ways. You’re partnering with the next generation of land and wildlife managers to help them become subject matter experts on small acreage challenges and the resources out there.

CB: Yeah, well, talking about the students in class, what's also fun from my perspective, and the reason I'm in Extension, is that I like teaching. I like helping people connect the dots, especially in ways that directly impact their lives. I like being able to give people advice because, you know, in Extension, we're just…professional advice givers. Being able to help them connect to ideas and then be able to do something better, do something in the “right way, better way” and then see their success is so cool.

You know, if you’re a random small-acreage sheep and goat producer, you may not necessarily have the bandwidth or the motivation to go and read through the scientific literature, right? At the end of the day, especially when we look at who these small acreage and new landowners are and their time commitments, they tend to work in town. They have a full-time job. Oftentimes, they're non-resident landowners, and they only get to their property on the weekends or intermittently, you know, with all this competition on their time. Some people really like reading research papers, don't get me wrong. But they go to these extension publications the students are developing as the short form bulletin of what we know.

BW: It’s an incredible partnership to see how you’ve opened the students’ perspectives. We’ve talked about carving out your direction and a little bit about how you spend your time. Do you want to talk about your background? I know you're a die-hard Texas A&M degree guy, so when did you start?

CB: Well, I'm going to make a short story long. We're pretty good at that in Extension, too.

Fun fact—I'm an eighth-generation Texan. I come by my disposition honestly, I guess. We have a family ranch down in Coryell County near a little community called Pearl. Home of the Pearl Bluegrass Festival, the first Saturday of every month. We’ve managed that property for coming on 25 years. Really, through my high school years, that's where I cut my teeth on land management, and to a certain degree, I think we still see ourselves as new landowners of that property. There’s always more to learn and to know and to grow into, but you know that was, growing up and putting in fence, pounding holes in limestone with a rock breaker, and managing that land. Our goal with it is to try to restore that property into a native rangeland ecosystem. Trying to shift it back to a grass-dominated system, we've been burning it since 2014 regularly and trying to integrate a lot of these conservation practices back onto the land. To get there, we use the Aldo Leopold “axe, cow, plow, fire, gun.”

You know, when we've got thatch build up in pastures, we patch burn it; if we have brush piles, how do we safely dispose of those? And so, that wildlife management mentality, that conservation experience, was really built in through my formative years. It's been a very fun dynamic moving into my role with Extension and then suddenly having some of the family recognize the expertise and experience that can come with that.

BW: How many generations are managing the ranch right now?

CB: Right now, two. My dad and his siblings were the original ones who bought into it. And so, we are… me, my brother and my 28 first cousins.

BW: [laughs] Oh, my goodness.

CB: To give you an idea of my family…take the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”, make the family Mexican, and that is my family in true documentary form. I have a very diverse family, and we're blessed to have a tight-knit group like that.

BW: Having that piece of land, being involved, and being brought into that process even 25 years ago, do you think that shaped the way you made decisions about your future?

CB: I think it did. And I think where it really came in is just providing the context to build relationships. When I go to talk to a landowner and I say, "Hey, you should put in some cross-fencing," it's not just from an academic perspective. So much of the advice-sharing relationship is understanding that, yeah, building that fence is going to be hard and sweaty and you may not have the right equipment to do it, but at the end of the day, it's worthwhile, right? It can help you meet goals, and then I can share programs and some ways that you may be able to offset some of the costs. So, that's where I try to stay relatively grounded and just understand that it's always easy on the PowerPoint.

When you're the landowner, the producer, and you went to this Extension workshop or you read this publication, you go out in your field and you're hard-charging, “I am going to remove all this unwanted woody plant encroachment that's come in,” and then you're standing out in your field and you've got a pair of loppers and a chainsaw and 30 acres of mixed juniper in front of you… it hits a little differently. I see a very significant part of my job is being able to relate to that. It's not always easy and anyone who tells you it's easy it's probably lying, or you know…

BW: …hasn’t done it, yet.

CB: I think that experience has helped ground me in what management looks like. I will also be the first to tell you that I didn't grow up with livestock production and it’s not my expertise in the same way that wildlife management was a part of my upbringing. Part of recognizing where I am well-read and understand the information I have and where the science is, etc., it's also just as important to acknowledge that I am not the right person for some things. Other people are.

BW: Right. Being able to connect the people who are standing in front of you with the right expertise and resources is a huge part of your role, for Extension especially.

CB: Yes, and broadly speaking, how we talk to people to effectively share our message about conservation is critical. It's not just how we present science in an understandable way, but it's how we present it so that it’s relatable and applicable. Makes me think of this lovely couple I used to work with when I was a county agent who had a lavender farm on five acres. Smelled wonderful.

BW: I was about to say, that kind of sounds amazing.

CB: It was so cool. One of the challenges they had was that their production mentor was based out of Washington. Great advice, great information, but translating how to practice in Washington State versus North Texas is tricky.

You talk with students about how different generations interact with the land, and it brought me back to a quote from one of my old board members on one of the county farm bureaus I served on. He told me one day, I think we were on a trip somewhere, he said, “You know when I was a kid we were embarrassed to be from the land in the country because it meant you were poor. Nowadays, it's a point of pride because it means you have the means to own and manage land.” I mean, that is a monumental shift in cultural perspective. He was probably 82 years old at the time. I think that's one of the reasons I like working with small acreage and new landowners.

New landowners are generally less than 10 years on their property, 100 acres or less by the practical realities of land management—it depends on where you are, right? If you're right outside of Georgetown, Texas, and you have 20 acres, you've got a “ranch”. If you're outside of Alpine and you've got less than a section, you've got small acreage, right?

BW: Yes, geographical context is always a good idea in Texas. 

CB: And oftentimes they're very conflated. I think the overlap on that Venn diagram is much closer than you’d think between new landowners and those who have been around for a while. And I think that when we look at how we engage with these landowners, one of the biggest things to keep in mind is that on the land management side and on the professional side, sometimes, you get caught up in just the nitty-gritty of the questions –

BW: The technicalities.

CB: – the technicalities, the things that take up time. But I always like to remind folks that the people who are buying this land, the people who are buying land today, at the price that land is, this is the realization of their life dream. This is the point they have worked 30–40 years toward. To be connected to nature, to be able to have either agricultural activity or a conservation connection, whatever that may be. So, when we engage with these people, we realize, you know… you signed on the dotted line at the mortgage office, or you leave the farm credit bank, you get on the property, the gate closes behind you, and you stand there like, "Wow, what do I do now?"

They are very motivated, and while they might have some weird ideas, they’re willing to try. My teaching philosophy is that I can take people who are passionate and make them knowledgeable. I cannot make a knowledgeable person passionate.

Thankfully, I don't work for the part of the government that gets to tell anyone what to do. It's why people call me back, I think. But it's really being able to ask what people want for options. It's 2024, right? It's your property. You do with it what you will. I'm here to help you figure out how to do it in a way that supports the resilience of your property. That helps you as a landowner, as an operator, be able to do it sustainably, that you're passionate about, and that meets your goals. Because at the end of the day, if you like what you do, if your property meets those goals that you set for it, when things are good, you're rocking and rolling. And when things are bad, you're going to stick with it. The challenges arise when we have a mismatch and people aren't very well connected or enjoying what they're doing. Then, suddenly, you have a year like 2022 come in and you have no water, and people lose the dream.

How do they act, how do they react, and then what are the outcomes of that from a conservation standpoint? How much good are we doing if people give up when times get tough? That's from a social context, an emotional context, an economic one…but it all comes down to: What do you want to do? What do you like doing? What is the means to that end? How do you get there in the next one, five, 10, or 20 years?

BW: I think that's brilliant. How many landowners do you think that you see and work to support over the course of a month?

CB: It depends on where I'm going and where I'm presenting, who I'm interacting with, and what I'm doing. For example, I've been working with a team of other folks in the Rangeland, Wildlife and Fisheries Management department and with AgriLife Extension doing a lot of new landowner education and conservation practitioner trainings. We’re working to get to know these new, especially the ex-urban, landowners. On a workshop like that, we might pull on about 30 people. I have a conference I host every summer, the Small Acreage New Landowner conference in Farmersville, that will bring about 100 folks in. It just depends on the community.

I do get asked a lot about how we get small acreage people to show up to workshops and engage. I have not found that secret sauce yet. I think it really comes down to how we market. Extension is—I told you, there'd be no hot takes but this is a hot take—really good at marketing to people who already know about us.

BW: If you're not in the circle, you don't know about the opportunities. Do you feel like that circle is getting smaller?

CB: I think it varies. Things like social media give us such a step up in some ways and how we can reach people. I also go back to my early Extension days, you know, when we were learning about why volunteers are important as force multipliers. When I was a county agent, being able to tap one or two of those new, small acreage producers who are plugged into their communities, was key. They are the ones who can wave that flag and sing the high heavens for you. I can only ever be in one place at a time, and so, it's all about how we can build people who can cheerlead for us.

BW: Yeah, you build ambassadors.

CB: And I think we have to ask how we’re being creative. Not everything is going to work but community involvement is such a huge part of this job.

BW: One hundred percent. So, on that note, the demand on your role is, thematically, that you're available; you have to be interruptible, you have to be adaptable, and you're kind of “on call” for whoever picks up the phone with a broad potential of topic areas that they could ask you about. So, you become this critical puzzle piece for a lot of different parts of Extension, land ownership and wildlife management.

CB: Really, if it’s my wheelhouse, I can support it. If it’s not, I’ll connect them with the right contact. But the thing I always do is loop in the county agent because you never know if the landowner reaching out might find an immense benefit from that local office. It also helps the local agent know that there are landowners in the county who are active, have questions and can show up to programs. That county agent is going to know way more about that county than I ever could.

When we look at the 254 counties in Texas, every single one is ecologically different and has a different degree of standards for agricultural use valuation. I cannot memorize all that, but I know who can. And that's just a part of that conversation and, more than anything, just opening people up to the idea that you don't know what you don't know, right?

BW: I think one of the values that you pose is helping people be more specific about what they want, what they need, and, in that way, you help them start to think strategically. To your earlier point, people are fulfilling a dream and usually it's a life-long dream to be out there. The gate closes behind them and they want to know what to do next. It's overwhelming when you have lots of options and voices around you who tell you what you could take advantage of, how to use it, what you should do, what you shouldn't; and then you have people who are subject matter experts or people who can help them organize their thoughts and what their ideal relationship to the land could look like. That’s a tremendous value for, especially, new landowners.

So, we've been talking about your role a little bit, about where you came from and why you think the way that you do, which is fascinating. It's exciting and hopefully a comfort for landowners who have an opportunity to connect with you. You come from the land, and you understand that the nuances are limitless in this field. That vision, I think, is where it starts and getting people to get specific about what they want out of land stewardship. I do have some stats here from the –

CB: Hit me with ‘em.

BW: – Texas Land Trends program. We had our last status update in 2017 and just now got in the new data to be able to update the next five-year report. So, one of the stats that we learned is that, since 1997, about a thousand new farms and ranches have been added every year in Texas.

I can't even wrap my mind around what that might look like, and obviously, it's not that new land has been added to Texas, but it's that Texas is changing. You mentioned the word “fragmentation” earlier, and we know that sometimes when people come to you as new landowners, as small acreage landowners in particular, historically, their parcel of land looked different.

Contextually, Texas is 95% privately owned. In Land Trends, we also talk about 84% of that privately owned land being working lands or family farms, forests, and ranches. And even further, we talk a whole lot about who owns that land. The latest stat that we had is that it's around 250,000 private landowners who own that open space or working land. To think about the overall population of Texas, which is around 29 million, right? Translating for conservation means that about 250,000 people out of 29 million ensure that our state is managed well and sustainably.

The flip side of that is that if 250,000 people own more than 80% of the open space and working lands you see, we know that the other almost 29 million people live on just 16% of the state’s land. As our population increases, though, in those big urban centers like the Texas Triangle, the demand for the surrounding rural land grows every day. This demand drives land market values up, incentivizing private landowners to sell or subdivide their properties to developers. One square mile of working land is lost every day in Texas. Due to factors in population growth and urban sprawl, high land market values, tax burdens, and some of these generational shifts we're observing, we know that the land is being converted at an astronomical rate. Over the last 25 years, we've lost more than 2.2 million acres of rural land. So, all of this has led to this increase in small acreage agriculture. From 1997 to 2017, small ownerships increased by almost 39,000 new farms and ranches. While this might have a negative impact on wildlife and their habitats, it presents a unique opportunity for more new landowners than ever before who are seeking expertise to figure out how to steward their land.

What resources are those new and small acreage landowners asking for the most? What do you feel like is one of the biggest challenges that they have in getting started?

CB: That's a good question. And I really think when we look at these new landowners and the resources they're needing and the questions they're asking, it comes down to three broad categories: 1) Where do I go for information? 2) What do I do with my land? 3) How do I do what I want to do on my land?

If you're a new landowner, I'm working on a resource list right now that has some of the basic contacts to get started. I mean, it's about as exciting as I can make a laundry list of contact info. You know, but that's one of the first question marks: who do I talk to for what?

I’m also a believer in expectation-setting. You can’t rush biology. There's no amount of money in the world that is going to make little bluestem grow faster. There's no amount of labor you can put in that will make soil settle better or make your pond fill more quickly. Strategic patience is something that is also more traditional. For example, in the wintertime, you take your time, do the books and the activities for downtime. You take the time to identify what’s coming next, look at options, and read ideas and literature. And that's where Extension really comes in strong. We probably have what you’re looking for.

BW: I'm glad you described a little bit about how, even if you own “small acreage,” it doesn't manage itself. So, any amount of acreage that you can learn to steward, taking stock of the resources that are out there and the people who can help connect those dots… Any amount of effort towards conservation benefits the broader community and, beyond that, the broader state of Texas. So, like you're describing, it may be white-tailed deer management but it's conservation on a landscape scale.

When you talk about conservation ethics, there are these theoretical models that show ethics at the heart of this sense of identity as a landowner. It's a part of who you are, and it has defined how you make decisions. I know other specialists understand that all of this is to benefit people for generations to come. And when you can just take that moment to have the conversation with someone to get strategic and figure out what's important and what you can continue to be passionate about, it changes everything.

CB: There's an almost primal level of satisfaction and contentment that comes from stewardship, you know? When you can find that and you can understand that you are working with the ecological context of your region, there's just nothing like it.

I say take the wins where we get them. We will always have the opportunity to do better. We may have the quantitative value of ecosystem services, but let's not lose sight of the qualitative ones. Let's not lose sight of the things that motivate people. Some are motivated by the dollar signs and the digits, some by the spiritual connection, whatever you want to call it, but most people are probably somewhere right in the middle.

BW: I hope that land stewards and wildlife managers find joy and hope in this conversation like I have. To acknowledge that there are people like you who are here specifically to connect others to resources so that we can take care of the land and wildlife to the best of our ability.

If you could provide one piece of advice for the land stewards, what would you say?

CB: Ooh, all right, one piece of advice. I would say to find your joy, find your meaning, do what you love. I'm not going to say that if you find it, you’ll never work a day in your life. That's bull. You're going to work like the dickens, and, in Texas, you’ll sweat your butt off for nine months out of the year doing it. But find that joy because it’s easy to get lost in the pessimism. We have to be optimistic because in the jobs we work, in the roles we’re in, if we were not optimistic that we could do better, we would not be working in conservation.

BW: That is a good note to end on—find what brings you joy in land and wildlife stewardship. Thank you for your insight, and for reinforcing some of the ideas we have at the Institute. There’s a network of people out there who are waiting to support Texans. They are the sticky glue that keeps us landowners and managers sane, I would say.

 

Thank you for listening to our latest episode of The Land Steward Podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

 

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