Hello, and welcome to the bookmark.

I'm Christine Brown, your host.

Today.

My guest is Iliana Pena, contributor to lessons from Leopold.

Learning from the land.

Ileana, thank you so much for being here today.

Hi.

I will be here.

I would like to start by asking you to just introduce this book to us.

You know, lessons from Leopold is a book that I think inspires a deeper understanding and appreciation for the land around us.

The book does an excellent job of talking about the importance of landowners, and that's foresters, that's, you know, ranchers, that's that's, you know, ranchers and and farmers.

But it's also, you know, urban and suburban people.

This book really helps us all understand that we all play a role in taking care of Texas, its waters, its wildlife.

And I think the book does a wonderful job, you know, really tailoring itself to the audience and their needs.

The book is, 55 lessons that are, you know, in essence, kind of snippets of Aldo Leopold teachings with, commentary from Steve Nelli.

And, it is divided into seven chapters.

And so, honestly, this book is one of those that you can pick it up and decide to read a lesson because you need a little inspiration, or you can read it from cover to cover.

It really does an excellent job of kind of, I think providing the, the, the reader what it needs.

So yeah.

How did how did the book come to be.

How did this idea strike Steve.

Yeah.

So Steve Nelli he was gosh, in 2013 he was approached by friends at the Texas Wildlife Association Association, which is a nonprofit, organization here in Texas.

And they asked him to write a bimonthly column, for their magazine called Texas Wildlife.

And so he began writing that by monthly column.

And very quickly, friends members, people that they'd shared it with were really there were a lot of accolades for how great this little, you know, column was.

And so former CEO David Lankford and friend to Steve and David and Andy Sampson and others all began talking about we need to have a book.

And so they talked about that for a long time and then eventually got it, together.

And here we are.

Those are some friends of the press.

So, yeah, some names that may have been on the show before.

People might recognize that they're good friends of the press.

Yes, do wonderful work on their own, but I've heard that story more than once that they've given some gentle nudges to people.

They're great to write their own books.

Right.

So that's lovely.

Can you tell us about about who you are and why you're involved with the book?

Sure.

So I am a graduate from Texas A&M University.

I got a degree in wildlife fishery sciences.

And then I went on to get my master's degree in range and wildlife science.

After that, I began working for the National Audubon Society in Texas.

I started as a center director of a little 1200 acre property south of San Antonio that needed a lot of land management.

And so it was a wonderful first kind of jump into professional life.

So in addition to taking care of the land, I was helping to open that center to the public and really introduce those wonderful wetlands and grasslands to people.

Then I went on to serve as their director of education.

And then finally, I served the last 8 or 9 years as our director of conservation, where me and my team helped to restore and manage, colonial waterbird rookeries up and down the Texas coast.

We also introduced a wonderful program called Audubon's Conservation Ranching, which takes, landowners who are doing good work on the land with their cattle, to improve habitat for grassland birds, actually creates an attribute for their beef saying that their beef is bird friendly.

So anyway, after working for Audubon, I moved on to, Texas Wildlife Association in 2018, and that's where I met Steve.

A big part of my job there was to develop opportunities for landowners to get out and to learn about land management.

And so to do that, you put on workshops, conferences, you know, you set up field days.

And very quickly I found out the person needed on an agenda was Steve.

Nelly.

He is he's wonderfully articulate.

He is so very knowledgeable and much like Aldo Leopold.

Steve has a wonderful way of creating an emotional connection.

I think for the people at those workshops and conferences, they really begin to say, well, that's how I feel about my land.

So, I, you know, so so that's really where I got to meet Steve.

And then in 2022, I went off and, started doing consulting.

And so today, I am a private consultant, and I primarily work with family foundations that, help to support land conservation and land protection.

And so, yeah, so as far as how we got together to do this, so around that same table with, David Langford and Andy Samson and Steve Nalley, I think they recognized very, very early on that this book really could reach a much larger audience than just landowners.

And so, you know, I knew them, they knew me, and they knew that my background, especially my early career with with Audubon, I spent a lot of time working with urban and suburban residents.

I mean, it's been a long time working with landowners, but I also had that connection.

And so we felt like putting those two perspectives would be great and broaden the audience to which this book, really appeals to.

And so they invited me to write the introduction, and I worked with Steve on editing the lessons and putting the chapters together.

And here we are.

Well, I have to say, y'all, y'all did a wonderful job because you maybe I would call myself an inspiring landowner.

He's we all think we're going to move out to the country one day.

And I'm like, yes, but I should make you revisit this when you buy it.

Yeah, absolutely.

I was like, oh, that's all I did.

I didn't know what I was dreaming about, really.

But so as a non landowner, it still was valuable lessons, still was, interesting reading.

And maybe a little sobering about what when it all entails if you do want to do that.

So I think y'all y'all hit the mark on on making it approachable to everyone.

Can you tell us a little bit more about Steve's background and how he came to be?

Yeah.

So, Steve, graduated from Texas Tech.

Okay.

Yeah.

Texas Tech.

And in 1979 with a, with a degree in, range in wildlife management.

And very soon after that, he went on to work for the Soil Conservation Service, which today is now the Natural Resource Conservation Service.

He worked with them as a wildlife biologist from about 1985 through 2011.

And then in 2012, he decided to become a private, not a natural resource consultant.

And he's still doing that today.

Steve has worked with hundreds of landowners and he has seen and is familiar with so such a big part of Texas that, Steve's commentary, and pairing with Aldo Leopold, you know, work is just such a, such a gift.

He, you know, Steve has just such, such familiarity with the land and with the landowners that his insights, in this book, are just really spot on.

I feel like you can really see that he's got a lesson or an example or a, you know, he can he can point to a modern version of something that, that Aldo's talking about and just makes it very approachable.

As you say, he's the one who can teach it to, to people.

He he makes it easy to understand, pairs it down for us.

I want to talk about Steve says, in the preface or somewhere very early on in the book that he hopes this book is used and not merely read.

Can you expand on that idea?

And so again, imagine Andy Sampson, David Lankford, Steve and myself and others sitting around a table and going, you know, if this is going to be what we consider to be a success is if this book, someone comes up to us, shows us a book that is sun bleached, coffee stained, dog eared because they keep it with them.

Again, this is the kind of book that we hope a land manager driving around on a pasture in a ranch somewhere who might be frustrated by some challenge that he just can't.

He or she just can't, you know, that they might find inspiration in the book.

But also like a birder who's just spent a wonderful day at a wetland somewhere and is just like, oh my God, I just saw all the most amazing shorebirds and waterfowl that they too can can find a lesson in here that just says, you know what?

That's exactly how I feel.

So for us, the book is beautiful, Wyman's pictures are wonderful and it's lovely, but we want to see it really well, you know, because it's the kind of book that I think, yeah, speaks to you.

And if you're out enjoying nature or just in your garden, it is a great place to reflect on some of the lessons.

So you think that filtered into the design a little bit?

It's a slim volume, so it's easy to carry around, but it's got that durable.

Yeah.

Hardcover cover.

So you really have to work hard to throw it in the back of the truck.

And it's great.

You know, keep on kicking.

Yeah.

Exactly.

That's right.

Well, let's let's talk a little bit about the man himself.

For people who may not know, can you tell us who Aldo Leopold is and was.

Yeah.

So that's a very big question.

Aldo Leopold is a very complex individual, but what a gift.

He has been described as everything from a naturalist.

He was a hunter, a fisherman.

He spent a vast majority of his life hunting and fishing.

He is a professor, a conservationist.

He was a father.

He was a husband.

He was all these things, teacher, a writer.

And it was that kind of assemblage and or hybridization, as Steve likes to say, of, all those attributes and experiences that created a man who could write in such a way that not only helps to explain the scientific, you know, but it also helped to create this wonderful emotional connection to the land or what you were reading about.

Aldo Leopold graduated from Yale with a forestry degree, and very quickly he was sent to New Mexico, in Arizona, to work for the U.S. Forest Service.

There is where he really began to develop these ideas, that there was interconnectedness between what we humans were doing on the land through either working lands again, forestry, ranching, you know, farming and, and, and the land itself and wildlife.

It's actually where he really began to develop the concept.

So, so Aldo wrote two books.

One is game management, which is scientific, and it's in its function.

And in that book, it was the first time anyone had ever said that the same tools that can damage our land, the ax, the plow, the cow fire or the gun are the exact same tools that can help restore the land.

And so it was in those early years that he really began to see the relationship between how we humans use the land and how that can actually be very beneficial.

You know, we have a really good, we have a really good opportunity to improve soil health and those kinds of things.

And so it was those early years that really began to kind of the foundation for his thinking on a lot of the stuff.

But then he was invited to, become the very first professor of, wildlife management at the University of Wisconsin.

Then he became the first department chair of wildlife, you know, wildlife management.

In that time, of course, he, he, he published a lot.

But he also he married this wonderful one woman named Estella who she herself very cultivated, but also quite the outdoors woman.

You had to be, right.

But she she was someone who gets a lot of, credit for creating the kind of family environment in which Aldo could just thrive.

Could, could, could do he and his family could spend time outdoors, all of them fishing and hunting and observing, studying and measuring all of those things.

And so she gets a lot of credit for, I think, him having the ability to kind of become Aldo Leopold.

But the other thing that that Aldo was great about, he was a great teacher.

He really, I think, enjoyed, his time as a professor.

He was able to take students, much like his family, outdoors and to ask them to do exactly that, to observe, to study, to understand, and then to write it all down.

I think one of the gifts is that, Aldo Leopold spent his life writing as a young, as a young child, he documented the birds he caught or shot, you know, and was very detailed in what he saw.

So he practiced that, his entire life.

And like I said, it's it's very evident in his in his writings.

And like I said, I think what's absolutely beautiful is that he was able to express not just the science behind what he was trying to teach, but also create an emotional connection.

So Aldo Leopold, a very interesting man.

Again, I think the book that most people are familiar with is, The Sand County Almanac.

And unlike game management, Sound County Almanac is very much about the relationship of people in the land.

So you've got there has science piece and his, philosophical piece.

Yeah.

And I want to mention that was written in, I think 99 published in 1940, which was posthumously.

Yeah.

So he began writing it in, in, in the late 40s.

And then he passed away.

And so his son Luna, actually, yeah.

Published it, after his passing, which I wanted to make sure we, we place him in time because that's a pretty big stretch of, of of time between then and now.

And yet, when you read what he's written, it's it's it's timeless.

It's still applicable.

It's I think in somewhere in our, in our, like, advertising copy, we call it prophetic because he sees things or he sees problems that maybe weren't talked about.

Our common that we're still discussing and that we're still working through today.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think, you know, there are several lessons in which that is so apparent.

They're they're timeless.

Like you said, they are, just as applicable as they, you know, I mean, again, his time period, is 1887 or 18 89 to 1948.

So think about that.

Yeah.

And so like he has a lesson I was going to kind of highlight, there's a lesson titled Soil and Water.

You know, he describes it, soil and water are not two separate organic systems that they're actually one, you know, and we understand that more so today than, I think we've ever had.

When we manage our soil, we manage its ability to hold water, we manage its ability to clean water, we manage its ability to create good forage.

And also we understand now that healthy soils help to capture carbon.

So.

Wow.

Right.

I mean, and he was talking about this back in the 1930s.

So you're right.

A lot of the lessons are very timeless and relevant.

I also want to highlight to a lot of these writings that that he's he's doing.

You mentioned New Mexico, but he also had a farm that was nowhere near the state of Texas.

But but he wrote in such a way about the land that it wasn't specific to a specific place.

It was it was generalized so that any landowner, anywhere from Texas to Hawaii to Alaska, anywhere in between, can, can relate to to how he's speaking about the land.

You're right.

He, I think it's really, really interesting when you look at, he did visit Texas two times.

Once while he was at Yale.

He got to visit East Texas when he was training to to start working for the U.S. Forest Service.

But then he also got to go down to the King Ranch.

He was invited to the King Ranch, to learn about and see how they managed wildlife.

But you're right.

A lot of of of his work is is absolutely relevant and timeless.

It he, he and his family did purchase a farm, in 1935, and it became central to their to their lives.

He called it the sick little farm.

Right.

It was it was one of these places that needed some TLC.

And it was a it was a living laboratory for him.

And it was a place where he could, some of the many things that land, you know, management strategies that he'd encouraged throughout his, his career.

He could try there and, and document and see why it works, why it doesn't, or what are the things that, you know, influence how things come to be.

So that farm was very, very important to him and his family.

He actually did pass away fighting a fire on a neighbor's farm in 1948.

He was only 61.

So it's interesting to imagine what kind of other wonderful gems we might have had from him.

But what's really beautiful is that his five children are all very accomplished in this field, and all on their own did their their own contributions to wildlife management.

So he's still I just find it it's it's inspiring.

And it's it's crazy to think that, you know, this was the 30s and 40s that he's doing something that people are still doing or trying to do today.

We have examples here in Texas, like the Bamberger Ranch of of people who buy this property that is sad or is barren or has just been overgrazed and over everything.

And they try to bring it back to life, which is exactly what he was doing 40, 50 years before anybody had that, that that inclination.

Yeah.

No, a lot of people for the longest time felt like land was a natural resource that we use to to our disposal.

And I think it's it's his, his passages, his, his writings that help us understand that it land can be constantly contributing back to us if well cared for.

And it's beautiful that we do have examples.

Many landowners in the state of Texas that have taken on, stewardship.

And, you know, it's funny, in the book, one of the chapters is called Land Ethics.

And I know somewhere there's a beautiful definition of what ethics or land ethics is.

But really, you know, a land ethic or an ethic is something that is a value or a personal motivation.

And I believe that an ethic can kind of it's part of how you grow up.

It's your that's shared with you by family, but it's also something you develop over time.

And it's something that, I think that that many landowners and Steve will tell you this, he's met so many landowners that have an innate, interest in focusing on protecting the land, and they understand that it benefits them, of course.

Right.

Because if they do good, a good work, they have healthy soil that will then produce either good crop or healthy cattle that produce wonderful beef.

But they recognize too, that what they do on their land is helping all of us Texans.

Right.

And all of that because, again, healthy soil, supports healthy water, helps healthy air and all those things.

So it is land ethic is something that, you can definitely encourage.

And I think that that this book does that if you have an inkling or an interest in nature and you want to see that grow, or you want to see how you feel about that, I think reading this book helps in, create new thought and, you know, interesting, interesting thoughts about that.

I had never put those two terms together, land ethic in my head.

So that was a really fascinating idea for me to chew on a little bit.

And, and I believe somewhere in there they talk about your land is your signature.

It is your it is your your self portrait.

It is your reflection of you.

So wouldn't you want your land to reflect what you know, the best version of yourself?

That is a really poignant kind of thing.

I mean, imagine that that that Aldo Leopold says that the land is a self-portrait.

And I think I, as you said, if landowners were to kind of look at land like that, it really can be hopefully very beautiful or inspire you to kind of do better for yourself.

Maybe.

I also want to highlight to a value or a trait of his that I find admirable because it's a hard one to have, which is he was able to as he grew and as he learned, if he made a mistake, if he had a wrong impression on something, he he would admit that.

So my example is that the best example in the book is as a younger man, he he wanted all predators to be taken out.

And that was a common way of thinking at the time.

Get rid of all the wolves, get rid of the, you know, get rid of the things that are killing us.

We did a good job of that now.

And he he was starting to see that, that the deer were unable to feed.

They were overrun.

And so the the writings reflect that I was wrong.

Let's let's fix this.

And I think that's a true a true virtue to have is to be able to to correct yourself.

And if it falls well, and it's funny.

So at the beginning of the book, Inland Ethic, there are two, lessons called, balance of nature and interconnectedness.

And I think one thing you'll find within each chapter is that you're going to see a lot of repetition within those lessons, but it's intentional.

You know, how often have we heard?

Well, if we just got to get to a balance in nature and there is no such thing as Aldo Leopold says, you know, true balance in nature is actually constant movement because there's so much interconnectedness going on.

And you just you hit the nail on the head.

You know, predators were a very good example of that.

People thought, if we just get rid of predators, we'll have more game.

It'll be great.

Well, what happens when you have more deer?

Some of our urban residents know this.

Too many deer really start to negatively impact their food source, our garden, our bushes, or in out in the wild.

Right.

And so nature is always trying.

It's oscillating and oscillation is okay, but it when it's really out of order, that's when it starts to really, you know.

And so you're right.

It's funny, when he went to visit the King Ranch, Steve Nelli, found in his writings that one of the only gentle criticisms that he had of the King Ranch in their land management at the time was their predator control, and they actually ended up kind of modifying that after talking with him.

So it is it's one of those things.

And again, that gets back to that, the ethics piece, I think that as you grow and you experience, you know, the effort that you've put on the land or in your life, you'll begin to kind of you become introspective and you take all those observation eyes that study that measure, and you let it kind of influence how you think and going forward so fluidly.

Do you have a favorite lesson?

I do, and I was hoping I could read because it's short, but it's one of those that I think all of us, can relate to, whether you're a landowner or not.

It's called the Boring Bush.

I'm going to read his his little excerpt, and then I'm going to talk a little bit about what Steve says about it.

But, I'll, I'll start here again.

A boring bush, by Aldo Leopold in 1939.

I want to plant some thoughts about a bush.

It's called Bob Birch.

I select it because it's such a mousy, unobtrusive, inconspicuous, uninteresting little bush.

It bears no flower that you would recognize as such, no fruit which bird or bees could eat.

It doesn't grow into a tree you would use.

It doesn't harm it.

It does no good.

It doesn't even turn color in the fall altogether.

It's a complete biological bore anyway.

But is it?

He asks.

Once I was following the snow tracks of the starving deer.

The tracks lead from one birch to another.

The browse tips show that the deer were living on it, to the exclusion of scores of other kinds of bushes.

Once in a blizzard, he saw a flock of sharp to sharp tailed grouse, unable to find their usual grain or weeds, eating bog birch buds.

They were fat.

So it appears then, that our little nonentity, the bog birch, is important.

After all.

I think there are so many examples of that.

But Steve does a wonderful example of describing back Chris.

Some of us know it is poverty weed.

Some of us know it is as Roosevelt Willow.

He does describe it.

Many people do, as an unattractive, scruffy little bush, frequently grows in gravelly creeks down near the water, now in our rivers and creeks.

And most people ask, how do you kill it?

But as Steve likes to say, it is a gravel pioneer.

After our big floods on the Blanco and other floods in the.

It is the kind of bush that grows quickly and in all its branches.

It captures a sediment and it captures seed, and it makes the perfect environment for growing those beautiful bald cypress.

Our sycamores are our other switch grasses that are important for our river riparian zones.

But you know what else it does in the fall?

If you get out on one of these old gravelly Bark Creek bars, it is a it's like a wonderful food nectar source for migrating butterflies.

Who knew?

So again, I think he asks.

I think in that lesson we ask the ecologically minded individual would be wise to appreciate the things that we do not yet understand.

And I think this is one of those things that landowners and gardeners are constantly you know, I still have yet to figure out what mosquitoes are for, but Aldo asks us to think about it.

So no, no creature or plant is hopeless.

Yeah, potentially.

Yeah.

I don't know what.

I don't know what I'm not I'm not convinced on on that I it, what would you say, Leopold's lesson, his legacy is for, for for us.

I, you know, I think his legacy is that, again, it's that creating a deeper appreciation and understanding for the land that we all benefit from, that whether you are a landowner or not.

I think, like you said, you and I talking beforehand, you you don't spend an enormous amount of time outside.

But this gives you perspective.

And I think today, you know, with the fact that more and more people are spending less time outdoors, we know less and less about our environment.

And that affects all of us because as we, help our communities, develop land, landscape planning and other things, if we understand these, these lessons and these truths, we can help our communities contribute to better water quality, more water.

It also helps, of course, our landowners help.

Again, not Texas is 98% privately owned.

So that's a huge responsibility for our landowners.

But we all benefit from all of them doing good work on the land.

So I think that Aldo Leopold and his, you know, that's something he'd want to make sure everybody shared, is that we all can play a part, in caring for the land.

Sure.

Yeah.

So unfortunately, we're running a little low on time here in our final minute.

What would you hope people take away from from this book?

Oh, goodness.

I think we've talked about a lot of those things.

But really, I would encourage, folks to just if you have any, any interest in nature, take a look at the book.

It really does open the mind, and asks you to ask questions which, you know, curiosity is one of those things.

I think sometimes we lose kids.

And this is one of those ways to kind of help inspire that again.

But yeah, I think the hope is that all of us, take away that we are all caretakers of a land, whether you're a landowner or, you know, I want to have a little plot of a backyard or even a pot on a balcony.

You can make choices every day, to plant native plants.

We are so lucky that today there are so many native plants available in nurseries and things.

So you can help contribute to pollinators and others.

And so, yeah, I think it's, it's that we all can play a role.

Wonderful.

Well, thank you so much for being here and for talking about the book today.

Great.

Really appreciate it.

The book again is lessons from Leopold.

Thank you so much for joining us and I will see you again soon.