Stewards of Nature
La Grange ranchers restored their native prairie — and they want to help others do the same.
Last year on their annual biodiversity survey, La Grange ranchers Mark and Cheryl Brown came across a plant they had never seen before. Head-high with bright yellow blooms, the plant's leaves tracked the sun as it moved across the sky. It was a compass plant, or cutleaf Silphium, an indicator of a successful prairie restoration.
They once dotted the prairies in abundance, but humans changed that. In his book A Sand County Almanac, conservationist Aldo Leopold lamented their disappearance. “What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked,” he wrote.
This particular plant did not currently tickle the bellies of any bison, but it did tickle the fancy of the landowners. For the past two decades, the couple has thrown their extra time and money into restoring their 200 acres of Blackland Prairie outside La Grange, deep in the verdant country between Austin and Houston. The appearance of the Silphium was the latest sign that the land was healing from years of taxing agricultural use.
The Browns practice regenerative land use, mimicking the natural forces of the Blackland Prairie — fire and grazing — to create a system in which human enterprise and native ecosystems can exist in harmony. Their work on prairie restoration doesn’t stop at the borders of their property; they also devote themselves to educating others on the value of conserving Texas’ native grasslands. In a state where 95 percent of land is privately owned, thoughtful stewardship of private lands is key for the survival of wildlife, as well as the character of the land that makes Texas special.
This year, the Browns’ hard work and outreach earned them Texas’ top conservation honor: the Leopold Conservation Award, named for Aldo Leopold himself. The Sand County Foundation, a national nonprofit land conservation organization, presents the $10,000 award to one rancher or organization each year in partnership with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Lone Star Land Steward Awards.
Tim Siegmund, leader of TPWD’s Private Lands Program, nominated the Browns for the award. Often in conservation, he says, “You have storytellers, who are really good at telling a story but maybe don’t have a lot of experience with hands-on work; you have practitioners, who may be really good at doing the work in the field but are not able to get the story out there. And then you have Mark Brown, who's both. It makes the story much more powerful when you have somebody who can not only talk about why it's important to them and how to do it, but also does the work themselves.”
THE PERFECT VIEW
MARK AND CHERYL Brown met in college at Sam Houston State University. They went on to have successful careers, Mark as a construction contractor and Cheryl as an advertising professional. When they were both in their 40s, they decided to buy land.
They first saw their ranch, once a dairy farm, 23 years ago. “We bought it because the views were really good,” Mark says. “When we drove onto the property it was not that all that impressive, but when we got up the hill and turned around to look back, we thought, ‘Oh, this is nice.’”
After they closed on the property, the next order of business was making a place to stay. The Browns bought an old beer joint from the nearby town of Ammansville and moved it to the hill with the view they liked so much.
The longer the Browns lived there, the more they learned about the land. They discovered that it had once — before the dairy days — been habitat for quail, but because of years of intensive grazing, the birds no longer had the tufted grass that they needed to hide from predators. They also learned that the land seemed to have a pull on Cheryl’s family. She was not the first of her family to be drawn to this particular patch of Texas. When her great-grandfather immigrated from the Czech Republic, he settled just 10 miles away.
Over the years, Mark and Cheryl worked with TPWD biologists to understand how best to foster a healthy prairie on their 200 acres. They began to get involved with local organizations such as the South Central Texas Prescribed Burn Association and the Native Prairies Association of Texas. Mark became a Texas Master Naturalist. With help from TPWD, they began burning swaths of their pasture and watching the grass regrow like a phoenix from the ashes. Soon, the Browns were hosting prescribed burn classes on their property.
The Browns also put thought into their livestock management practices. The family occasionally has cattle, but not always. When the steers are there, the Browns adopt a livestock management practice called rotational grazing. By moving cattle from pasture to pasture often, the animals mimic the natural movement of bison. This allows the cattle to graze on fresh grass and allows each portion of pasture to recover after grazing.
The Browns help out their native grasses in another way, too: by decreasing their competition. Mark spends most days out in the pastures, individually spraying invasive bluestems and bermuda with the general herbicide glyphosate.
Cheryl, for her part, prefers the controlled burns; she gets a gleam in her eye while talking about them. She also enjoys hosting events on their property.
The Brown’s personal care for their land reminds Siegmund of Leopold’s work on the property surrounding his shack in Sand County, Wisconsin. “That property was only 160 acres, and Leopold did most of the work himself,” Siegmund says. “Mark and Cheryl are doing the same thing on their 200 acres. It shows how [good land management] is something that really anybody can do.”
A New Culture
THE BROWNS are unusual winners of the Leopold Award because of the relatively small size of their ranch. “They told us we won the award because of our outreach,” Cheryl says. “We've really been trying to spread the word and get other people involved. And it's amazing — once you get some people, then they know some people, and it just kind of keeps growing.”
They reach out to others through a number of avenues; for example, Mark started a Fayette County chapter of the Native Prairies Association of Texas, and worked with donors to obtain a grant geared toward people with smaller amounts of land. While TPWD provides land management advice at no cost to landowners with over 25 acres, people who own smaller plots have to pay for these services. The grant helps improve the smaller pieces of the region’s “patchwork quilt” of properties.
“We hope we can encourage the next generation that's inheriting the properties to come in and learn, so maybe they can change the ways that their ancestors have done things,” Cheryl says. “We just imagine this land as it used to be. We have Indian grass here and it's almost as tall as I am. Whenever it blooms, I stand there and think of the bison coming through here, when the land was nothing but native grasses. It’s just amazing.”
Biodiversity in the Hill Country
Ranch and region reap biological, economic and aesthetic benefits from varied natural features.
The Zesch Family Ranch was named the Edwards Plateau ecoregion winner in the 2023 Lone Star Land Steward Awards and was featured in a chapter on biodiversity in the 2023 book “Armadillos to Ziziphus: A Naturalist in the Texas Hill Country” (University of Texas Press). An excerpt is printed here with permission.
By David Hillis
I LEARN A great deal from discussions with my ranch neighbors, especially my friend Hal Zesch. The Zesches were among the first German families to settle in the central Hill Country in the mid-1800s. Today they are known throughout the area for their stewardship of their family ranches, which have been protected, managed, enjoyed and passed down through several generations. Thanks to generations of families like the Zesches, much of the natural beauty of their region of the Hill Country has been preserved and protected. For many people, the inherent value of biodiversity seems obvious. Why, then, have we lost so much of our biodiversity? Clearly, everyone does not evaluate biodiversity in the same light.
Here, I’ll approach biodiversity from biological, economic and aesthetic viewpoints, and, of course, all of these viewpoints overlap and interact.
From a biological viewpoint, an ecosystem is like a complex machine, with many working parts. All the bacteria, fungi, plants, animals and other living organisms interact with one another and with their physical environment to produce a functioning ecosystem. A healthy system requires a delicate balance of many different species from all these groups. If we start to lose species, it is like losing parts off an automobile engine. The car may still run for a while, but it probably won’t run as well, and eventually, if we lose enough parts, the car will stop working altogether. The same is true of ecosystems. Ecosystem productivity and stability are directly related to biodiversity.
We can also make an argument on strictly economic grounds for the importance of biodiversity. The economy of the Texas Hill Country is based in large part on income from ranching, hunting and tourism. Each of these enterprises depends on the biodiversity of the Hill Country. Ranchers benefit from healthy rangelands, which produce the livestock they raise. Healthy rangelands come from efficient and stable ecosystems, which are a product of biodiversity. The long-term maintenance of grasslands requires a complex web of many species of bacteria, fungi, plants and animals. Snakes are important to keep rodents in check, just as bats, lizards and frogs are important to control insect populations. An efficient, profitable ranch depends directly on its overall biodiversity.
The land stewardship of the Zesch Ranch has resulted in a solid economic payback. The family has managed grazing to allow the restoration of native tallgrasses and broad-leafed forbs. Better habitat and management led to larger deer, which meant that hunting income has increased. What makes it all possible is the balance and variety of native plants and animals (that is, biodiversity).
Hunters come to the Hill Country not just to harvest deer and other game animals but also for the experience of a diverse and vibrant landscape. The hunting leases with the highest value are those that give hunters a chance to see a diverse and beautiful natural habitat, with plenty of wildlife.
Another major part of the Hill Country economy is tourism, and a big part of the draw is the area’s natural beauty. Wildflower season brings people from far and wide to the Hill Country. Diverse native plant communities support birds, butterflies and other wildlife that are additional major draws. Visitors come to see the area’s natural beauty, and then they spend money on food, hotels, shopping and services. All of this economic activity depends on the natural beauty of the Hill Country, which stems in large part from our local biodiversity.
Finally, there is the aesthetic argument for the importance of biodiversity, which is the argument that resonates the most with me. The beauty of a field of wildflowers comes in large part from the many colors, shapes, sizes and textures that are present. We marvel at the antics of an armadillo, or the array of spines on a horny toad or the beautiful call of sandhill cranes as they fly overhead. The sights, sounds and smells of nature excite and stimulate us as they give us a sense of peace and happiness.
Most people need the natural beauty of biodiversity to feel whole and alive. That is why walking in the woods, strolling through a field of wildflowers, watching birds feed in your back yard or canoeing down the Llano River feels so refreshing and rejuvenating. For most of us, the more varied our natural surroundings are, the happier we feel. Biodiversity is what makes the world such a beautiful place to live.
In short, biodiversity is what makes the Hill Country interesting, attractive and economically viable, for all its residents and visitors. It is what gives us a sense of place, what makes the Edwards Plateau different and distinctive. Longtime residents like the Zesches know this intuitively, and pass a love and passion for the land and its inhabitants down through the generations.
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