Redefining the Ranch

Brush control and other strategies reap numerous benefits for wildlife, springs and the city folk who live downstream.

By Tom Harvey

Excerpt taken from Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine, July 2005

The Wetland Ranchers

Centuries ago, down along the Guadalupe River just a few miles from where it flows into San Antonio Bay , early settlers couldn’t make money off the trees in the river bottom. So they cleared the trees, built levees to hold back the river and planted crops.

Jess Womack and his son Jesse have worked a magical transformation on their ranch of close to 9,000 acres. When Jess took over this part of the historic McFaddin Ranch in 1988, a decision was made to stop farming.

“That decision was partly made by me and partly by Mother Nature,” Jess said, explaining that floods in 1987 broke levees along the Guadalupe in 17 places.

The Womacks sold a conservation easement on their property to the federal Wetland Reserve Program, keeping ownership and control of the land but giving up the rights to develop it in ways that might harm wetlands.

They became “wetland ranchers,” emphasizing light, rotational grazing, controlled burning and restoration of native grasses and forbs. They gave up planting cotton and corn and the fertilizers and pesticides used to grow them.

“We took a very ecologically sensitive ranch that had been somewhat degraded over the years, and have made it into a showplace, and been very successful at both ranching and wildlife,” the elder Womack said with pride. But the Womacks were always in the ranching business to make a profit.

Today, about 60 percent of ranch income comes from cattle, the rest from hunting.

Jess Womack passed away shortly after he was interviewed for this article, but he left his love and passion for Texas woods and waters to his son, Jesse.

Jesse attended Texas Christian University ’s ranch management school in Fort Worth , which was “by far the best year of school I’ve ever spent,” he says.

“You abide the law of take half, leave half,” says Jesse. “That way, the good, native grasses can have a competitive advantage over the bad grasses and will eventually multiply, benefiting water, wildlife, soil, everything.”

The Womacks also conduct controlled burns “as much as we possibly can.” And they manage their wildlife populations just as they manage cattle, so they don’t overpopulate and overtax the vegetation.

“The more I’m down here, and the more I’m around wetlands, I’ve become more and more of a conservationist,” Jesse says.

“My biggest pride is to see these wetlands, which were mostly ag fields until 20 years ago, to watch them grow and to see the bird populations.”

Despite his optimism, he’s realistic about the obstacles ahead. At the moment, one of his big concerns is abandoned oil wells. Jesse believes that the neglected wells, on his property and across the state, pose a serious threat to water quality. “I do battle with small-time oil and gas companies around here, because there are way too many loopholes in oil and gas law.”

“What scares me is I feel like it’s a prevalent opinion in the U.S. that if something needs to be protected, like these wetlands out there, they see government ownership as the answer. But I maintain that private stewards continue to be the best stewards. It’s micro management vs. macro management. On the whole, private stewards take pride in managing their land well, and that really gets down to water quality.”

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