• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Conserving Nature and Ownership

Posted on: Monday, 17 April 2006, 21:00 CDT

By Pat Hathcock, Victoria Advocate, Texas

Apr. 17--Victoria Advocate Fair Oaks Ranch has been in the Lucas family for six generations. Giving conservation easements to the Nature Conservancy will help keep the ranch in the family even longer.

Nothing seems more alien to the Texas rancher ethos than giving up any control over their land, but some are finding that conservation easements can actually help them hold onto family properties. A conservation easement surrenders certain rights to the land in exchange for tax and estate advantages that can help keep family places in the family.

In September of last year, the Lucas family's limited partnership, comprising brother and sister Richard Lucas and Leslye Weaver, spouses Kimberly Lucas and David Weaver, and children Alexander Weaver and Suzanne Weaver, ceded certain rights on Fair Oaks.

In agreeing to a conservation easement on two separate parts of the ranch -- 10,259 acres in Goliad County near Berclair and in 584 acres in Bee County -- the family gave up rights to large-scale development on the land and gained tax advantages and expertise from the Nature Conservancy. The people of Texas gain the advantage of having a large contiguous plot of land that will be devoted to careful management of wildlife and protected from the piecemeal development that has become the largest threat to wild places in the state.

Richard Lucas explains the advantages to the family. "We did this for two reasons. No. 1 was the desire to keep the ranch in the family and this makes it a little easier to do that, and secondly were the estate-planning aspects of it.

"Our overall objective was to maintain the family tradition of the ranch and do everything possible to keep the ranch in the family and estate-tax planning is a benefit, but more importantly, a vehicle that facilitates our overall objective of holding onto the ranch.

"Also the Nature Conservancy provides a lot of services and benefits, such as access to experts on ecological questions. The Nature Conservancy is a wonderful resource," he said. "One thing, we're trying to tap into Nature Conservancy's expertise to return the ranch as it used to be before brush took over. They have extensive knowledge and resources as to prescribed burning and plans for brush control combined with prescribed burning."

David Weaver said, "I've been particularly interested in getting access to the experts -- botanists and biologists -- associated with the Nature Conservancy. They've been down to the ranch, and it's been interesting going around with them, having them explain more about the fauna, things as a non-technical person I'd have never noticed."

A home on Fair Oaks ranchland near Berclair was build about 1880. Old oaks on the property no doubt gave the land its name.

Lucas said, "We have rare species we didn't even know we had until we started dealing with Nature Conservancy."

According to the Nature Conservancy's Niki McDaniel, the ranch lies on the transitional zone between two biotic provinces, the Gulf Coast prairies and marshes and Tamaulipan thornscrub. There are four types of habitat on the ranch, including freshwater marshes called "prairie potholes" that fill with rainwater and runoff and dry up seasonally.

The intermittent marshes help support one of the rare plants, Wright's trichocoronis. Other rare plants are Texas pinkroot, along Mucorrera and Blanco Creeks, Billie's bitterweed, found in gravel and caliche outcrops, and crown tickseed, found in deep sand.

The ever-rarer Texas horned lizard and the Texas tortoise find the habitat hospitable, as do a number of bird species in decline in the state -- Cassin's sparrow, dickcissel, grasshopper sparrow, savannah sparrow, LeConte's sparrow, Sprague's pipit, the burrowing owl, northern harrier, white-tailed hawk, loggerhead shrike, scissor-tailed flycatcher and Northern bobwhite quail.

The easement included an agreement to not introduce any non-native elements to the ranch, although Lucas said, "We have quite a bit of coastal bermuda that we planted back in the '60s and '70s we can continue to fertilize, but we can't add any more."

Carter Smith, state director of Nature Conservancy, is probably one of the few people in the world whose college transcripts include credits from both Sul Ross and from Yale, where he graduated. He said, "I grew up with one foot in the country and one in the city, in Austin."

He said his family had ranch properties in Smiley and Gonzales, among other places, so he understands ranchers' wariness about the easements but sees improvements. He said, "In the last five years there's been much greater awareness by the private landowner community of what conservation easements are and are not. Many landowners are realizing that this is just another voluntary tool to consider in designing and executing their long-term plans for the family's property. Conservation easements are not appropriate for all landowners and for all situations, but they are another tool for landowners to consider."

Suzanne Weaver, a sixth generation Lucas on her mother's side, spent Easter weekend at the old homestead, now a part of the Nature Conservancy.

"I think the advantages are multifold. First is a real sense of security in their mind that their family heritage will continue to be preserved for future generations. You can't put a price on that type of security.

"Secondly, they are appreciative of the opportunity to work with groups like the Nature Conservancy on compatible land-management practices -- brush management, grazing management, wildlife management. I think they appreciate being able to work with an organization that shares similar goals with respect to their land and wildlife management."

Smith said that the tax advantages of giving easements depend on the rights surrendered and reserved as well as immediate development pressure on the area. The IRS allows further generous deductions from the taxable value of the estate, and the easement on an estate can even be granted by the executor of an estate for a time after the estate owner dies.

This is what happened with Fair Oaks. Lucas said, "We had heard about easements for a long time, but we didn't consider one until we had a lawyer friend who talked to us about it after my dad died. We did some post-mortem estate planning after my dad died. David (Weaver) did a lot of research and contacted a lot of trusts. We decided that Nature Conservancy was the best and would be around the longest."

Weaver said, "I'd like to emphasize that this is a totally negotiated document. What I mean by that is, while we had no desire to give up any control of the ranch, what we have here in the final document really doesn't give up any control other than a right to extensive subdivision. We have the right to add more housing for the family. We can still ranch, hunt, lease to other hunters. We addressed oil and gas exploration and water, which is becoming important. We have the ability to use all the water we want on the ranch, and we have mechanisms set up to where, if we want to sell water off the ranch, we can do that as long as it meets the requirements in the easement.

"It took many months to work out, and we found out that what we were required to do by the easement as to ranching and hunting is pretty much the same practices as we have always done," he said. "The main effect of the easement is to maintain the ranch as it's always been."

Smith said, "Just the scope of the ranch is worth mentioning. Anytime we get to work voluntarily with a ranching family that owns a ranch of this size, it's a valuable opportunity. The single biggest threat to wildlife habitat in Texas is the breaking up of the family farms and ranches and working with ranches like Fair Oaks is one of the biggest opportunities. We hope through this partnership we can add a little value to their operation through our scientific and technical expertise."

It's the kind of solution that business types characterize as win-win.

-----

To see more of Victoria Advocate, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.thevictoriaadvocate.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, Victoria Advocate, Texas

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Source: Victoria Advocate, Victoria, Texas

More News in this Category