lmost 40 years ago, long before the term ecology registered in the public consciousness, I spent an undergraduate summer in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona with my freshman biology professor, Michael Rosenzweig. I did not become an ecologist but I never forgot that summer or that ecosystem: rattlesnakes and hummingbirds, banner-tailed kangaroo rats and badgers, chollas and ocotillos.
I live now on a rocky farm in the Texas hill country. I abandoned the suburbs six years ago; sold my home with its swimming pool and irrigated lawn. I'm not a radical environmentalist. I'm hooked up to the grid. I even drive an SUV that is perfect for negotiating the rough road into my place and carrying the essentials I need.
Not long ago creeks flowed everywhere in the hill country. Buffalo grazed in shoulder-high grasses and were hunted by nomadic peoples. The first German settlers began arriving in the 1850s. These hardworking folks did whatever it took to make a living: They raised cattle, sheep, and finally goats. But in the end the prairies were overgrazed; prickly pear and twist-leaf yuccas consumed the pastures; thirsty mountain junipers spread out of the draws into higher elevations. Lush grassland once brimming with springs began to look like desert. When I spot a painted bunting migrating back from Central America in the spring, I wonder if my great-grandchildren will ever see this lovely creature.
On a place like mine, the projects are never ending. I've banished mice from the walls, ring-tailed cats from the attic; shredded the fields around the barn; cleared a series of walking paths. I've tilled the ground in the old horse pens and planted a vegetable garden. I've cut and stacked wood for winters to come. But I wanted to do more. I wanted to see how the land had once looked.
I could have raised longhorns or angoras or run Arabian horses or grown a feed crop, but this land had been abused enough. I didn't want to breed exotic game -- blackbuck antelope from India or fallow deer from Europe -- so that "hunters" could sit in a blind and blast a wall trophy out of an unsuspecting creature coming to a feeder. The reality, however, is this: To afford a small parcel of land in the country, millions like me have to maintain it in a lower-taxed "agricultural" category. Which means the land must produce something, even if it is a losing or subsidized proposition. So what most people do, at least in Texas, is the simplest thing: They throw a few animals out to graze their already overgrazed plots, further degrading the land. I couldn't do it.
To my surprise, in 2001 the state of Texas established a "wildlife management" tax category that provides the same benefit as an agricultural exemption. The law provides that the "land must be used to generate a sustaining breeding, migrating, or wintering population of indigenous wild animals . . . for human use [including] bird watching, hiking, photography . . . [as well as] the owner's passive enjoyment." To be considered for this exemption I had to develop a wildlife management plan, and was told to hire a biologist or conservation ecologist to prepare the complicated paperwork. I wondered where I was going to find such a person -- until I remembered that long ago I was an ecologist, at least for one memorable summer.
I waded through piles of technical literature, sharpened my natural history skills, got out my Peterson Field Guides. I've identified dozens of butterflies, dragonflies, snakes, lizards, frogs, turtles, mammals, shrubs, and trees. Fifty grasses, a hundred kinds of wildflowers. So far I've seen 130 species of bird here, and I'm working to supply them with their favored habitats: native seed and berry sources, nest boxes, brush piles, supplemental water. My plan was approved in 2002.
And then I met Mike Rosenzweig again. We went birding on my place together. I showed him a few south Texas specialties he hadn't seen yet: the black-crested titmouse and golden-fronted woodpecker just outside the kitchen window, black-bellied whistling ducks on the pond. I explained my plan to do a series of controlled burns to encourage the regrowth of native prairie grasses so that bobwhite quail might return; told him how I planned to preserve mature mountain junipers to maintain their papery bark, which the golden-cheek warbler requires for its nests.
"You're practicing reconciliation ecology," Mike said as we walked back to the house. He quoted the ancient Chinese sage who wrote, "The careful foot can walk anywhere."
If Rosenzweig's philosophy were to take hold, think of how the earth might appear from above: each of us on our plot of land, tending native plant species, putting up nest boxes, digging small ponds, untended edges merging together; suburbs and city parks sheltering islands in the midst of our commerce; farms and ranches acting as mini-preserves along our interstates and farm-to-market roads, extending and expanding our parks and reserves -- right back into our own yards. From above, to the painted bunting migrating over my piece of prairie in my great-grandchildren's time, it will look like home.
Back to Father Nature
