Latest / Conservation Stories / Leasing the Land: Renewable Energy, Conservation Easements, and the Next Generation of Stewardship

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Leasing the Land: Renewable Energy, Conservation Easements, and the Next Generation of Stewardship · Conservation Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Hello, I'm Dusty Timmons with Conservation Stories, and I recently was afforded the opportunity to go to the Hunt Fish Podcast Summit held outside of Houston and interview a number of venturing people for the conservation stories that you'll be hearing over the next couple of weeks. Included in these are people from all walks of life that are involved in conservation and charitable organizations that I feel will be really interesting. I hope you enjoy the podcast as much as I enjoyed recording the interviews for you. Good afternoon, everyone. We're here with Cole Payne. Cole Payne was raised in Lorain, Texas, and attended the Texas A and M University, which, as a proud red raider, I won't hold against you too much, where he earned his undergrad degree in wildlife and fishery science and then went off the rails and became a lawyer. Going to tech law school. He's an associate with.
• 0:53
  Speaker B: It's UL Fitzsimmons or Fitzsimmons.
• 0:55
  Speaker A: Okay. In San Antonio, where he specializes in doing oil and mineral leases and that measure. Go see if I can get this here. I apologize, I have like lost trains of thought.
• 1:11
  Speaker B: That's all right. We've been doing a lot here at this Hunting Fish Podcast Summit.
• 1:15
  Speaker A: This has been a. It's been a blast. Really had a good. We're down here, down there, the great city of. Great white city of Houston down here. And we're. Both of us are. I think we're both kind of anxious to get to the ponds and the five stands shooting this afternoon.
• 1:30
  Speaker B: I can't wait.
• 1:31
  Speaker A: I'm pretty excited to miss a lot of. A lot of clay pigeons.
• 1:34
  Speaker B: Yep, absolutely. But the way the wind's blowing, it's bound to happen.
• 1:38
  Speaker A: It's bound to. Yeah. I always thought it was windy up where we are, but Lord, down here is crazy. It's nuts down here. But so talking about the land leasing that you've done, oil and gas that you have done in the past, talk a little bit about what you're seeing as far as the shift in what's being leased now.
• 2:00
  Speaker B: Right? Yeah, absolutely. So our firm, Uhl Fitzsimmons in San Antonio, we're a landowner based firm. We represent all landowners, primarily an oil and gas firm. That's what Arthur Uhl and Joseph Fitzsimmons started the firm as. And, you know, we've grown. We've got estate planners and litigation and whatnot. And I'm fortunate in what I do. My boss, Parks Brown and I, we represent landowners and primarily do renewable energy lease negotiations. So if a landowner gets a company that comes and says, hey, we want to build A solar project or put wind turbines or right now, what's big are battery facilities, data centers, cryptocurrency mines, and anything related to that. So we even do transmission easements and roads and all of the ancillary documents that plug in there. But that is what my boss, Parks and I and a couple of our other associates do is renewable energy lease negotiation. And really, you know, oil and gas has been around for 100 plus years. Wind leasing didn't really kick off until, you know, after the year 2000, going up towards 2010 or so, we had
• 3:10
  Speaker A: to make it sure. We made, you know, made Y2K.
• 3:12
  Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. To make sure the calendar is turned over. And then when I graduated law School in 2020 during COVID I went and clerked in Eastland for the court of appeals for a year and then moved to San Antonio. And in 2021, I feel like I entered the legal profession at this firm at exactly the same time that solar leasing really exploded in Texas. There were some solar lease deals that had gone on in years prior to, you know, 2018, 2019, but really 2021 through 2024, it was as fast as we could do. Solar leases, they were coming left and right and all parts of the state, from the panhandle to Brownsville, east to west. And so we got, I like to think, really good at what we did in representing these landowners, making sure that the landowners being compensated and taken care of. And then what I enjoy is, with my background in wildlife and fisheries, is making sure that the land's taken care of. You know, a lot of our clients worry, rightfully so, of what happens if a solar farm or a wind farm gets built and what's going to happen with the infrastructure when the project's over. In 50 years, we're all going to be dead and gone, who's going to have to take care of it. And having that background in wildlife and fisheries, I enjoy that part of protecting the land, making sure that we're going to reseed with native species, that we're going to turn it back to the way it was before we signed the lease, that if anything goes wrong, there are damages that will be paid. So I enjoy that part of it. And currently we're in a shifting landscape again of federal tax incentives have changed. Renewable energy as far as solar and wind has somewhat slowed. But data centers are huge right now. Battery facilities are huge right now. And we're, we're negotiating leases left and right with big companies that are putting in data centers that are putting in battery Storage facilities. And you treat them all roughly the same. They're a lease of the surface of the property. And so each lease is somewhat similar, but there's a lot of nuance when it comes to whether it's a container full of computers or a bunch of solar panels on the property and how those interplay with the land. So. So it's a very diverse practice. It keeps us busy and we're in the part of the country where it's not going to slow down.
• 5:38
  Speaker A: Yeah. Which is kind of bizarro that it's here. And I guess it has to fit into rural areas because nobody's figured out the fact that there's a lot of rooftops in town that they could put solar on.
• 5:53
  Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
• 5:54
  Speaker A: But there's a lot of infrastructure that goes in there. The transmission lines that have to be built for these things and the right of way projects on that. When you're looking at if, when you're, when a landowner comes to you and talks to you, they typically just say, hey, I got a phone call from this guy. Right. And here's what they're. They give you an offer sheet kind of deal and say you look at it and.
• 6:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And you know, a lot of the clientele that we have are used to oil and gas leases and the way that that goes. And we have to kind of tell them, hey, this is a different beast.
• 6:26
  Speaker A: This is.
• 6:27
  Speaker B: It's not going to be fast. We have lease negotiations that take one month. We have some leases that we've been negotiating for 18 months and it just takes a long time. And There is no Producers 88 form that we can look at and say, here's what the oil lease says. These wind and solar leases and battery and data center leases are 50 pages long. And one sentence in a 50 page lease could be the make or break if it's written to the detriment of the landowner. And so often we get phone calls, whether it's existing clients or people that are referred to us from other parties that'll call us and say solar company, wind company, have put something in my mailbox or reached out to me and said, we want to lease your acreage. Here are the terms. Really the first step for us is getting whatever documents they've sent you, the term sheet, the actual lease maps, whatever it is, and doing an overall assessment of number one, who's the other party? Are they reputable? Are they a known entity? Or are they somebody in the backyard in a garage that we don't know, that doesn't have the financing to do this. They're just trying to get land. And so we'll do that analysis and then we'll say, okay, well, what are they actually offering? Is the money right? Do you, do we need to negotiate? What are they looking to do? Does the lease only allow solar project solar facilities or does it contemplate cryptocurrency mines and data centers? Because the pricing structure is so different. A good example of price structure difference that we've got to explain is with a wind lease, if constructed, which of these leases that we negotiate, 20, 20 to 25% actually get constructed. There's a lot that fall through because of financing that goes wrong or environmental studies, endangered species, whatever may be the limiting factor. But of those 25% that get built with a wind lease, they're going to put a foundation with a tower and the rest of your land. You have the right to continue grazing, continue farming, continue hunting, whatever it is. With a solar lease, it is a complete possessory interest of the surface of the property. You can't, Once a solar project gets built, they're going to put a fence around it and say for the next 50 years, landowner, you're not allowed to come on this place. And so we've got to monetize that and say, well, with a wind lease, I'm able to continue using my land except for these limited areas. With a solar lease, they lock the gate and I don't see it for 50 years. And so there's a lot to take in of what are the rights that are granted in these leases? How does it affect me as the landowner? What am I being paid? When am I being paid? And then what's the likelihood that this is going to get built? Because the upfront payments may look nice, but really, once we get into operations, that's when a landowner is going to make money, if they make money at all. There's a lot of money to be paid. But the fact that 75% don't make it to construction, you've got to take that into, into account.
• 9:34
  Speaker A: Yeah. When they, when they're doing. When like a, with a solar. Let's. I mean, we're. I'm relatively familiar with wind farms. We are, we were always. This is where we are. I'm from where I, where I am, it's where tourists and when wind energy comes from. Right. It's kind of the way it is. We're from. We move that way. But there's just now beginning to have solar projects come in. There's, I think I Believe there's a very large one going in north of Amarillo right now. That's huge.
• 10:05
  Speaker B: Right?
• 10:06
  Speaker A: And then there's a couple more rants scattered around and stuff that are coming in now when you, when they do that. And you know, we're kind of in a hell corridor and I know I read a story, I believe it was last year, the year before. There was one that had been under construction. They just finished it in Kansas and fired it up. And like three weeks later it just got obliterated by storm.
• 10:28
  Speaker B: By a storm.
• 10:30
  Speaker A: What is the, what is the clauses in there for like remediation?
• 10:35
  Speaker B: Right.
• 10:36
  Speaker A: Of that. Because you're not going to want, obviously you're not going to want whatever the heck is in that stuff scattered to hell.
• 10:41
  Speaker B: And so, you know, one of the big things in that scenario, I'll take that one for example, is every lease will have a clause governing hazardous materials remediation. So, so if something were to leak onto the property or if they bring hazardous materials and it goes on the property and contaminates things, there will be remediation procedures, monitoring obligations. But you've got to make sure that those are written correctly so that the company doesn't have the ability to say, oh, we'll deal with it in the future, we'll deal with it in 40 years when the lease is up. It's got to be taken, Action has to be taken when the damage occurs. There's clauses that cover that. And the big question that a lot of our landowners rightfully worry about is let's say the project gets built and there's a solar farm everywhere. All over my property. There's a fence around it, there's transmission lines. And five years into this 50 year lease, the solar company goes bankrupt, walks away and I can't get a hold of them. What happens then? Well, the state of Texas back in around 2019-2021, enacted legislation. So we have laws in Texas governing mandatory remediation obligations of solar and wind and now battery facility operators. You can find it in the Texas utilities code, chapter 301, 302, 303. You can go in and see that at the end of the lease, the remediation procedures are roughly the same for all the projects. You've got to take everything above ground off. You've got to take everything below ground to 3ft. That's what the legislature said is 36 inches is where we need them to go to. So they'll take everything off the top, everything down to 36ft, they'll regrade it to what it was prior to the effective date and then reseed. Typically it's, it's not going to say native species. We try and negotiate for that, but they will reseed it and try and get it back to an operable standpoint. But that is just the minimum. It's really important that landowners, when you get one of these leases, whether it's me or my firm or any other attorney, you got to have somebody that knows what these documents say and know how to take it above and beyond. We can negotiate for greater restoration obligations that protect the land more on top of what the state statute requires. There's a period where a lot of people, a lot of our clients are worried, you know, what do I do if they walk away and there's no money, there's no bond, how am I going to get the project off of my property? And the way we like to explain it is that the state does mandate that a bond be posted, but not until year 2020 of the lease, which just like you did, raises eyebrows. You say, well, what happens in the first 20 years of the lease and the way that you have to see that is, is that the value of the assets, let's take a solar farm, for example. When that solar farm gets built, there are millions of dollars of assets on the property that a lender has backed, they've got a lien on. And if the solar company entity goes bankrupt and walks away while the assets still have value, the lender will want to come in and either operate the project, sell it to someone else, or take the assets off and go move them somewhere else and operate it. So you have that protection. And the state statute kicks in at the point where the value of the assets crosses the cost of restoration. So as those assets depreciate, the cost of restoration is going up. And when those cross, that is the point where the bond has to be posted. So. So at a certain point, there's going to be money in the bank that if the solar company walks away, the landowner has the right to draw on and hire their own contractor to go in and remediate the property, subject to what it says in the lease. So there are a lot of protections, particularly in Texas. I know a lot of other states don't have mandatory remediation obligations. I would say that we are fortunate to have that. But you can always negotiate more.
• 14:49
  Speaker A: Yeah. When you talk about, you know, that access of crossing value, the, you know, technology changes so rapidly. We were talking at lunch, we were discussing the, the size of the wind turbines and how, how it's changed, you know, in the spin, the project at Sweetwater has changed from what, 2 gigawatts to now it's stock 6, you know, the huge equipment deal. Does the, the rapidly changing technology like say, let's say a solar panel they put out day and it's a, I'm just going to throw numbers out there that don't mean anything. I mean it's a $10 solar panel and it produces X amount of energy.
• 15:29
  Speaker B: Right.
• 15:29
  Speaker A: And then two weeks, you know, two years later they come out and there's now one for $10 that produces, produces X times three.
• 15:38
  Speaker B: Right.
• 15:38
  Speaker A: You know, and so then the value of the ones you have is going to, you know, it's not going to be as valuable. Is that going to impact the timing of that bond issuance in there?
• 15:47
  Speaker B: Well.
• 15:48
  Speaker A: Or is it pretty much just is it, is it. I guess what I'm getting to is is it a formula that's figured up and you have to put in turn in paperwork and then, or is it just a calendar? Here's what we estimated that it's going to be 20 years and this is when the bond kicks in.
• 15:59
  Speaker B: You know, I would say, not ever having been on the developer side of it, I would say that they, they very likely have models of what the actual expense expectancy is of the life expectancy. You can typically rule of thumb say that the life expectancy of these wind or solar facilities is going to be somewhere between that 10 to 20 year time frame when they have depreciated below the cost of restoration. The solar company, the wind company, in the rights granted to them in the lease, they have the right to go in and replace the existing infrastructure with the newer, better technology. So from a business standpoint, the developer, if newer technology that will help them monetize their assets better is available, will very likely come in and replace that project so that they can make more money over the life of the rest of the lease. And at that point we don't restart the timeline of when the bond must be posted. It's still at the very latest gonna be year 20. But that could give you more of a buffer of we've got more expensive assets back out there, we're covered by the lender type deal. But yeah, it's, it's rapidly changing and there's new technology every day. It just blows my mind.
• 17:18
  Speaker A: It's amazing. You know, it's watching how fast technology's changed in the last 20 years and it's changed just getting faster. Right? I mean it's. It. You can't even keep up with stuff anyway. You know, I'm old enough that I've given up trying to keep up with it. And I now understand why my, why my parents had the VCR clock flashing at us 12 o'. Clock.
• 17:38
  Speaker B: Right?
• 17:38
  Speaker A: You, you may be too young to remember those days.
• 17:40
  Speaker B: No, I'm just on the cusp. Just.
• 17:43
  Speaker A: I am at that point, If I had VCR still, it would be black flashing 12, because I just would not care to find out.
• 17:48
  Speaker B: Y.
• 17:49
  Speaker A: And so, you know, just anytime I talk to someone that's gotten information about it, it's amazing to me how rapidly that shift changes and how rapidly it, you know, I remember, you know, when they first started coming out with the windman wind projects. They can, you know, and hearing the numbers that, you know, it does this and this produces this. And I'm not going. That's not, I mean, that's, that's nothing. Right. You know, and that was back 20 years ago when our electric demand was, you know, was, you know, was not what it is now. I mean, you know, we're not quite as bad as California when you can't charge your. Like they don't want you to charge your electric cars, you know, on the grid. But it's still, you know, we're getting there. You know, we're getting deal with the population growth. And I think I saw something that the Dallas Fort Worth area has. The population of the Dallas Fort Worth area is greater than something like 27 states.
• 18:39
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 18:40
  Speaker A: And so you see that, you know, that up there, population, particularly east of I35, you know, 80% of the population of Texas is east of I35, you know,' and I'm fortunate to live in the 20%. Absolutely. It's not as pretty, but, you know, it's, it's, it's okay. It keeps the Yankees away.
• 18:59
  Speaker B: It does. Yes.
• 19:00
  Speaker A: But you know, when we go, when, you know, we transfer that energy down there, running the math on that thing, I was like, that didn't make any sense. I'm like, there's, I mean, there's no way that this makes any sense. Right. And then they got, they got bigger, they got better. You know, I mean, we're talking about some of the new points. Have you had any on the, the wind generation side? Have you seen any of the European version of those wind turbines that are vertical instead of.
• 19:26
  Speaker B: No. You know, what we're still seeing everywhere is just the traditional. What you see driving through Sweetwater, West Texas now, they're everywhere, but it's the three blade wind turbines. And, you know, talking about the amount of energy that's produced by one of these things, it has changed. You know, it went from two megawatt turbines to now there's six or seven and a half, eight and a half megawatt turbines. And something that, you know, all the listeners can do if they're around a laptop. Go online to the ERCOT website, ercot, and you can find on ERCOT the current real time energy generation mix of what is being used or produced in Texas right now. And you can monitor it every minute of every day, throughout the day. And what's neat to see in a world where we have natural gas, we have renewable energy, you can watch it day by day of, during the day when the sun's shining in Texas, solar and renewable energy as a whole is producing well over a quarter of the energy that's being used in Texas. And it waxes and wanes throughout the day. And natural gas steps up, wind steps up at certain points in time. You know, it blows, the wind blows at night in certain places in Texas and it blows during the day in others. And it can be steady, it can be intermittent. Solar is going to be obviously steadier during the day than it is at night, but you can watch those graphs move in real time and say, oh, it's a pretty sunny day today. Solar energy is actually contributing 30, 35% of the energy grid right now. And to be able to see that and see the footprint that it has, it really shows that it is an important asset and tool that we've got. And every, every asset, every facet of the energy industry has its flaws, has its pros and cons, but to be able to use it all collectively and have those tools in the bank hopefully stabilizes us to avoid a 20, 21 failure like we had during the winter storm Yuri. But yeah, we're just hopefully finding, finding ways to make things more sustainable for us.
• 21:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, I was where I was, I was fortunate to be off ERCOT in that thing and we never had a blip. That's kind of one thing that makes me nervous is I'm on a electric cooperative program right on the, up there in West Texas in the High plains. And I have lived, been on the same one for 21 years, no, 25 years now. And I can count on one hand the times my electricity's blinked, right, much less, and it's never been off for more than 10 minutes.
• 22:07
  Speaker B: Right.
• 22:08
  Speaker A: And you know, that sustainability that, that dependability is something that's really nice. And, you know, we start hearing, you know, we're up there, we just, you know, part of Blument just finally got onto ercot and, you know, we're hearing horror stories from it there. But, you know, it's, it's, you know, with any technology you have, you're going to have ups and downs and you're going to have growing pains. And until you hit critical mass, it's like, you know, if we had the, if we could start with the technology we'll have in 50 years, it'd make life a whole lot easier and you'd have a whole lot less people complaining and whining about it. And when you look at, have you seen a change over the years in, in how contracts, on how contracts negotiated from what you can, what you can negotiate to, you know, the end point, has it changed to where, hey, you know, okay, we're going to guarantee this gets put back in, back to this or.
• 23:00
  Speaker B: Right. You know, a lot of it, a lot of it to some degree is standardized. It's, it's the same, it's the same provisions in every lease, just written with different words. Sometimes a lot of the negotiation really just depends on what leverage the landowner has for that project. These developers try and gather as much acreage as they can to meet the needs of their specific project. And particularly when you deal with wind projects, the landowner that has 2,000 acres available has a whole lot more leverage than the person with 75 acres. The person with 75 acres may only end up with a transmission line running through them to connect their 2000 acre neighbor with their other 2000 acre neighbor. And so a lot of how far you can push, even on provisions such as restoration, you know, what we would call little provisions elsewhere in the lease really depends on how much leverage. And it also depends on what developer you're dealing with. Certain developers are very open to creating a good form, what we would call a good form that is mutually beneficial for both parties. And some developers show up and say, if you make any changes to my form, we'll walk away. And at that point, it becomes a judgment call on the landowner's behalf of we as the attorneys can give you all the advice in the world. It comes down to whether or not you trust the developer and want to enter into that relationship. Because with renewable leases, you're entering into a, at minimum, 25, sometimes up to 60 year contract that your kids or grandkids will probably have to deal with. I know I'll be dead and gone by the time some of These are, you know, finished. And it's just you're entering into a 60 year relationship and you've got to be able to trust the people you're working with.
• 24:55
  Speaker A: Yeah. If you're going to get into a 60 year contract and if you've got grandkids, they're going to be the ones dealing with it because you're probably going to be gone, your kids are going to be gone, it's going to be them.
• 25:04
  Speaker B: And the biggest, the biggest thing, you know, like I said earlier, is whether it's us or someone else, find an attorney to help you. Renewable companies more increasingly are open to the idea of reimbursing the landowner for at least a portion of their attorney's fees bill to offset some of those costs. Sometimes you can get the full bill done, sometimes they cap it. Find an attorney to help. Because these leases are long, they're complex, they're hard to read. If you ever want to go to sleep, read one of these things because 45 pages in it can get mind numbing. But the two other big things are you got to find a CPA or a tax advisor because we can't give that advice. And sometimes these leases are going to be pretty lucrative for a landowner and it may change the tax implications. And the bigger one than that is, is you've got to have the conversations with your kids, your grandkids, your family and an estate planner, someone that's going to help you put the pieces in place for when the day comes. If you're not around, someone else is going to take over the lease and be able to perpetuate it the way that you intend.
• 26:10
  Speaker A: Yeah, because that's, I mean if you're looking at basically giving away access, you know, you know, your grandkids aren't coming, you know, may come into that place, in that place for 50 years on, on the solar. You know, that's one of the things that's, that's always been interesting to me of being a guy that's, you know, always I thought, I'm a big fan of land. I love to own it, haven't bought it, haven't had any until just here recently. And you know, I card that jealously. Right. And you know, but everybody looks at it at the dollars and cents and where they are, I mean, right. And goes from there, the going, looking forward and looking at the switch over to data centers for just a little bit. When you're looking at, when you look at. And these are, these are two things I know next to nothing about. I Know next nothing about crypto mining then. I've heard stories of people that bring in a shipping container of computers and it's really noisy, right. And you take a place that, you know, it was real quiet, and then all of a sudden your neighbors got the shipping container and we brought right there and you're dealing with the noise. Right. And then on the data centers, you know, I didn't know until just like, you know, just getting ready for this and doing a little bit of the brief little bit of research that I did was how many there already existed. Right. You know, I was sitting there thinking, well, it's a relatively new thing. They're just getting started. There's a lot of them things out here.
• 27:35
  Speaker B: You drive by them and never know they're there. And, and you know, to the, to your point about noisy facilities, again, who knows? But I like to think that a properly negotiated lease would have noise abatement procedures that at the edge of the property, it won't be loud. Find an attorney. That's all I can, all I can say. But with, with the cryptocurrency mining, with the data centers. So in July of 2025, with tax implications changing our work with solar farms and wind farms, negotiating those leases kind of slowed down. The tax incentives went away to some degree there. But data centers tax tax breaks are still there for these companies. And we've really seen an explosion over the last almost year of data center leases coming in. And again, you treat them roughly the same as you would a solar lease. It is improvements being placed on the surface of the property where the landowner is going to be compensated to stay out of a certain area for whatever use is behind the fence. And you treat it the same way as far as hazardous materials remediation, bonding, anything like that. It's very similar in nature. The part is, in a world where artificial intelligence AI is a relatively new thing, and it is a very hot topic right now. When you hear data centers, a lot of people either turn away or shiver at the thought of it. All I can say is it's here and it isn't going to go away. The only thing I can think of is if it is here and it's not going anywhere, we've got to figure out how to use it to our advantage and use it ethically. There are already legal opinions coming out from judges, from the policymakers in the world. You know, as attorneys, we have an ethical obligation to bill our clients just for the work we do. We can't fluff our bills. We can't charge you for things unethically. And there are already precedents being laid that say that one day we don't know when, but one day it will be unethical for a lawyer to submit a bill for something that he could have used AI to do faster. And we don't know when that is. I don't think it's now, but when that day comes, especially in our profession, we, we've gotta be able to use it as a tool.
• 30:21
  Speaker A: That's wild. When you hear the stories about the AI briefs, the briefs that were done by AI and they cite legal cases
• 30:27
  Speaker B: that don't exist, that don't exist. I have seen that happen in real life.
• 30:30
  Speaker A: Have you really?
• 30:31
  Speaker B: Yes. We had a demonstration not long ago where that was shown. What I can say about it, our firm is trying to figure out what tools are out there and how we can use them to our advantage. And we've got a good team leading that charge. I would say that right now it is really good or helpful for things like drafting emails, reading through very comprehensive documents and summarizing what's in those documents and just kind of speeding up the processes. I would not feel comfortable yet, and others may disagree, but I would not feel comfortable yet having it do a complete project for me and submitting it. That is the part that I still remain confident, at least for the next however many years I'll practice. I don't think that AI will take my job away because I've still got to read the product that it produces and make sure that it is true, factual, that what it is citing is actually out there. It may help us speed things up, document review, drafting of certain things, but particularly when you've got a 45 page solar lease, you can't just submit it to an AI model and say fix this lease for a landowner because who knows what it's going to do to it. And the other thing that attorneys have to think about and take into account is with, with general AI. So we're talking chat, GPT, OpenAI. We can't submit client documents to those models because they're confidential information. And so there are legal companies out there that have their own versions of AI that keep everything closed to where we can operate just in firm and keep that information confidential. But yeah, if any attorneys are listening and currently using ChatGPT to read their documents, I would say please review the ethical rules because your client's information is now out there in the abyss.
• 32:36
  Speaker A: Yes, I've, I've heard stories about, about that people got their Tails in the crack. And of course, we've all heard the stories about. Was it Deloitte? Okay, that was. They got caught there in Australia using chat GBT or something like that. And one, it got them because it wasn't, you know, letting confidential information out, but also it was making stuff up.
• 32:57
  Speaker B: Yeah. Crazy.
• 32:59
  Speaker A: And I think it happened in Australia and Canada. I think it's happened twice and relatively recently. And I'm like, well, man, you seem like somebody would.
• 33:08
  Speaker B: Right.
• 33:08
  Speaker A: You know, at one of those, you know, they're not. There's not a big five, there's supposed to be big three if they keep that up. I know, let's get that out.
• 33:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, somebody didn't check something, so.
• 33:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, but that's wild. When you're looking at, at the legal ramifications of, of remediation. How do you, how do you look at like a data center that's, you know, they're building a big building out there and what is. I mean, and you probably can't speak to this directly because you're not from the manufacturer side, but it seems to me like it would make more sense to just go and buy the land.
• 33:43
  Speaker B: Right.
• 33:43
  Speaker A: And then put it on it. Then you don't have to deal with anything. And then at 50 years, you can just, you know, take your computers out and say, here's a building for sale.
• 33:51
  Speaker B: We, we have seen that. And you know, it is so new that I can't say with confidence that it is an increasing trend that developers are purchasing land for this purpose. But we do see that. We see some of these companies that have the financial backing to come in and purchase the land. Our clients can walk away if they so choose and take the money and go buy a different ranch or do whatever they want. And then the developer has the rights to do what they want to on that land. So that is a possibility that we see on a weekly basis. It's just, it's project by project dependent.
• 34:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, I did have a guy told me, I think I told you this story that he was asked, you know, he was doing a wind. Wind farm lease on it and he's an attorney and he's got a lot of experience. And two things he told me, he said. I talked to one guy that told me, he said, I hate dealing with Texans. And he's like, why do you hate dealing with stuff? Because y' all know how this crap all works is if we can go to, you know, somebody in Iowa and Indiana and they don't have a clue. Right. And he said, then it's easy to get stuff done. And I'm like going, he said, was telling me that I'm going. That guy just admitted he's willing to absolutely steamroll somebody because they didn't know anything. Yeah.
• 35:01
  Speaker B: And that's the hard part is, you know, we're in a state where oil and gas is so prevalent and it has been for a long time that a lot of landowners know how negotiations should be done. And in other parts of the state that might not be true. And it's also such a different ball game of you can talk to developers that come to us that we're not familiar with that work in other parts of the state that say, you know, yeah, we just finished a really large solar farm project and it was 150 acres. And we're saying, well, a large project here in Texas is, you know, 15,000 acres. And it's a different game when you're in a place this big and making sure that the land and the, the landowners are taken care of are for most concern.
• 35:47
  Speaker A: So yeah, that's, that's, you know, that the landowner, you need to have somebody got your back right on that stuff. And finding someone that's good, that's, that's experienced with it. And that's one of the things that, that I have a couple of friends that are attorney. That's what they've all told me. It's like, listen, when it comes down to it, you got to find somebody that's, if you're, if you're facing a criminal trial, you don't want a guy that does tax work.
• 36:08
  Speaker B: Exactly. You know, and a lot of people do need to hear that and they need to hear that from someone that's not the attorney that wants their business. But you know, if you've got your small town attorney that does your estate planning and does your taxes and does everything for you, they are certainly an asset. But with some of these really nuanced contracts, it might not be their forte to read one of these things and properly negotiate it. And the thing about the legal world in this area that we practice, particularly renewable energy is it's a very small community. There's only a handful of us that do this on a day to day basis. There are other people that, it's part of their practice, but attorneys doing renewable lease negotiation every day, there's not a whole lot of us out there. And so finding one of us is key. And whoever it is, they'll do a good job for you. But make sure that you've got somebody that Knows, knows the ins and outs of how these documents work.
• 37:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's. I mean when you start delving into the world of legalese, I mean, I like to pretend like I'm intelligent, but you start getting into legalese. I mean the, you know, just imagine that the apple's was it terms and conditions and multiply it times like 50. Right. And with something with some real steak in the game, I mean, you know, you know, something with some real meat on it that, you know, something you gotta, you know, it's kind of like the pig and the chicken that the, the pig is involved in the, the chicken is involved in breakfast, but the pig is breakfast.
• 37:46
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 37:47
  Speaker A: You know, and you know, when you're dealing with something like this, you're the pig in breakfast. Definitely. You're definitely the sausage and bacon definitely on this thing. You're not the egg in that thing. When you. Have you seen. Is there anything that you, you're. You may have heard coming in Texas about any changes in how some of these solar and data centers, the, the I'm gonna call them new wave land, land use contracts.
• 38:13
  Speaker B: Right.
• 38:13
  Speaker A: You know, oil and gas is pretty well set in stone. There's going to be some stuff that's going to be changed and there's just probably stuff that needs to be changed.
• 38:21
  Speaker B: Right.
• 38:21
  Speaker A: You know, if you look at some of the stuff out in the Permian, there's some, some very sketchy stuff that's been done in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, particularly when, when, when, when oil prices go down, everything kind of gets a little bit sketchier. And so, you know, just taking that experience and the knowledge that we have from, you know, 100 years of oil and gas leasing and, and moving it into this brand new world of renewable and data, this brand new world of leasing in there. Is there any. It's gotta be something that the landscape changes rapidly on.
• 39:01
  Speaker B: It really can and you know, it has to some degree. You know, really what we've got are we've got the mineral interests that are pretty set in stone and we've got our surface interests that are set in stone as well. And there's a lot of things being negotiated or talked about right now that are kind of that in between as far as solar rights, wind rights, surface rights, that all is pretty straightforward. But when you get into things, other leases that we do, think about geothermal rights, think about carbon sequestration in underground caverns. Who owns the pore space beneath the lands of. Is it the mineral owner or the surface owner? A lot of that Is being put through the courts right now, is being talked about in the legislature, and it is a rapidly changing landscape. You know, we're. We're in the wild, wild west to some degree, of renewable leasing. And that's the. That's the other part of it. Even for wind leases that have been around for 20 or 25 years, we've still got 20 or 25 more years before the first one expires. We have not yet seen very many of them come to full fruition from start to finish and be decommissioned. And so we've still got a long way to go before we know the actual ways that these things are going to play out.
• 40:23
  Speaker A: Well, I know that some of the older wind turbines have been taken down and stacked, and there's been a recent court deal where they had to, you know, had to figure out something to do with that stuff. Right. But is. Is there any. I'm assuming that there's not. But you know what it happens when you make. When you assume. So there's the landowner that has the lease on it. If the, if the company lease it, takes it down and stacks it on another lot. Right. That landowner is not going to be liable for that mess. Is. Is he correct?
• 41:00
  Speaker B: No. The landowner shouldn't have any liability for that if the lease is proper. Properly.
• 41:04
  Speaker A: I don't think you should.
• 41:06
  Speaker B: The lawyer answer is, it depends.
• 41:09
  Speaker A: It's like you're an economist, too.
• 41:10
  Speaker B: Exactly. And, you know, you often think, you know, we recently both had a drive that was similar south of Sweetwater on 70. You see the big tall stacks of wind turbine blades. What has happened there? What I would guess is that the landowner of that particular parcel allowed that to happen, that the wind company's not going to take the wind turbines down and then just stack them up on your property like I said they shouldn't. That should be prohibited in the lease, but the landowner should not have liability for that. And that needs to be properly negotiated in that lease.
• 41:49
  Speaker A: The thing you run into is that my imagination may not be good enough for what somebody else wants to get away with.
• 41:55
  Speaker B: Well, in my imagination, being somebody that does it every day, I can't imagine what is gonna happen in 50 years. You know, what technology is gonna be out there. Are we gonna be flying around in hover cars like.
• 42:08
  Speaker A: I don't know. They called. They called for that in the 70s, and I'm still waiting for it.
• 42:12
  Speaker B: Still. Absolutely. And, you know, it's. It's a. It's a really neat practice to have. I'm very fortunate to have gotten in when I got in with it with a good crew in San Antonio. And we get to do a lot of really neat things. Like I said, we do oil and gas, we do this stuff. We do conservation easements, we run the gamut of landowner issues, and it definitely keeps us busy year round.
• 42:35
  Speaker A: Well, let's talk about conservation easements a little bit. That's been a topic I've been interested in, in hearing from, and I am familiar with some of the stuff that the Nature Conservancy has done. Let me rephrase it. I am aware that it has been done by the Nature Conservancy out in the Big Bend region, out around Alpine and stuff like that. There's some stuff out there that they have got that on. When you're looking at a conservation easement, explain first what is a conservation easement?
• 43:02
  Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So a conservation easement is a document governing a piece of property that says, in a nutshell, for the rest of forever, it has to be perpetual. For the rest of forever, this landscape will continue in its current form, being wildlife, being working lands, being a ranch land. There will be essentially deed restrictions or prohibitions on use that you're not going to be able to build condos, you're not going to be able to put a parking lot on it. The conservation easement is intended to protect working in ranch landscapes for the rest of time. And so that's the flip side of we negotiate solar leases that for 50 years are going to take over a whole landscape. And on the next day, or even the same day at our practice, we could be protecting a portion of the Devil's river or the Hill country or a small park in inner city Houston that is going to be kept as a green space. Who knows what it is, but they're valuable tools for landowners that can be used as a tax tool for the landowner in taking tax breaks for the valuation of that land. And then essentially, the way that they operate is you've got the landowner that gives the rights to the holder of the conservation easement. They operate similarly to a trustee of a trust and do annual monitoring to make sure that the landscape is being treated the way that the lease says it's, or that the easement says it's going to be treated. There are, you know, management plans and baseline reports that have to be taken to make sure that here's the way the land is used now, we're going to keep it that way and that whoever has access to the property isn't violating that contract. There will be you know, restrictions or prohibitions on and gas development on where and how large you can build buildings on the project. There will be individual building carve outs where you can only place facilities up to X square foot if you want to build a barn or a residence, whatever it may be. You know, prohibition on public access or allowing public access, if that's what it's meant to be for. But that annual monitoring is really key to make sure that the land's being taken care of.
• 45:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's kind of like. That reminds me of. It's like an HOA that I can actually get behind.
• 45:37
  Speaker B: Right? Absolutely.
• 45:39
  Speaker A: So you're basically just selling out. Just guaranteeing that it's going to be now when you have a conservation. Most of the ones that I'm sure the people that are familiar with conservation even are aware of is like foundations or trusts that come in and they buy this like Nature Conservancy I believe is a trust, didn't it?
• 45:55
  Speaker B: Yeah. So the Nature Conservancy, they have a big presence with conservation easements. And really there's two general types of conservation easements. One are purchased easements where an entity has funds or a donor where they are going and purchasing the right to place a conservation easement on that property. And the other that we deal with quite a bit are donated conservation easements where the landowner is saying, I am giving you the value of this property or however it's determined, put an easement on my place and you can keep it.
• 46:28
  Speaker A: That was actually where I wanted to ask you about it. Sound like a landowner can have this land and say, listen, I'm gonna give you can. They can go to. I don't know who they would go to.
• 46:39
  Speaker B: Right.
• 46:39
  Speaker A: But an organization similar to or like the. I'm just using nature conservatives because that's the only one I know.
• 46:46
  Speaker B: And others are, you know, you've got your large, what I would call large entities like the Nature Conservancy. But even in Texas we have so many conservation easement minded organizations. One we work with a lot is the Texas Agricultural Land Trust that holds, you know, hundreds of thousands of acres across the state. The Hill Country Conservancy in San Antonio, we've got Green Spaces alliance that does what I would call more inner city type work. You've got, you know, entities that specialize in coastline conservation easements or whether it be Hill country or high plains desert. There are individual entities that serve as the holders of these conservation easements across the state.
• 47:31
  Speaker A: But a landowner though could like, let's say, because I Like to imagine this and dream this, that I win a lottery and I go in the. And I go to the. Say I go to somewhere between. Between Mason and Brady.
• 47:50
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 47:51
  Speaker A: And I buy 15,000 acres. Right. I could go then to Atlanta if I was that, you know, lander. I could. If I was so inclined, I could go to one of these organizations, say I want to donate.
• 48:00
  Speaker B: Right.
• 48:01
  Speaker A: A conservation easement to you.
• 48:03
  Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. You can make that contact. And even entities like Texas Parks and Wildlife hold conservation easements.
• 48:09
  Speaker A: Really?
• 48:11
  Speaker B: And, yeah, you, as the landowner can find, you know, do research and find an entity that their mission aligns with what you want to see on the property. And, yeah, reach out to them, and then it becomes. The entity will send someone out to say, okay, we're going to come do an appraisal or evaluation of this property, see what's going on, see if it meets our mission, see if it's something we want to hold the conservation easement on for the rest of time, because it does have to meet that entity's mission and how they operate. But they're always looking for places to put conservation easements on. Donated, you know, are, I would like to think, are easier to make happen than purchased ones. But on the same, you know, on the other side of the coin, sometimes the donated ones have a lot of issues.
• 48:58
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 48:59
  Speaker B: And there's a lot of things that must be taken into account, particularly areas where there's a lot of mineral development. You've got to either make sure that there won't be any mineral development on the property or that it's so limited in scope that it's not going to violate the terms of the easement. And you get into some really sticky situations. When Papaw held the land in the 1800s, and now there's 97 grandkids that all own an interesting. And you've got to track all of them down and get mineral waivers or whatever it may be. So there's a lot to take into account. But there are so many entities out there that do conservation easements. And essentially we are working as the attorneys, we are working for the landowner, working with the conservation easement holder to make sure that the document is set in stone. There is a huge oversight on conservation easements from the irs. A lot of boxes that must be checked to meet the federal tax code and make sure that we're crossing all of our T's and dotting our I's. But they can be a really unique tool to preserve really valuable landscapes.
• 50:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's one of the things that I was, was going to. I know that you're like, you know, I'm not an intelligent person. I don't play one on tv. So you're not a tax professional. I don't expect tax advice. But is there a potential like when you, when you do a concert. Let's say I've got, let's just say for, for, for giggles. I wish this was true. I bought about 15, 000 acres in the hill country for one and a half million dollars. Right. You know, that's never going to happen in my lifetime or you're, you know, the apocalypse will have to come before that ever occurs again. It's more going to be like likely to be 150 million. But anyway, so if I go in and say, okay, I'm going to give my easement, I'm going to donate this conservation easement and it's valued at say, you know, 500 bucks an acre. Is that, is that generally speaking deductible? So is it an expense?
• 51:05
  Speaker B: There will be a portion. And that all does go above and beyond of where we're at. But my best answer would be that there is a cpa. Exactly. Yeah. Talk to a cpa. But there is a portion that would be dependent deductible potentially. Exactly. And it's, that's the, that's the part is we've got to make sure that the easement agreement checks all of the boxes for the IRS to allow that deduction to happen.
• 51:30
  Speaker A: How does that, with Texas being a big property tax state, how does an easement, an easement valuation affect your property tax levels on that thing? Does it lower it. Is this at the state level? Is it still lowered at the state and local level?
• 51:43
  Speaker B: Well, you know, particularly.
• 51:45
  Speaker A: And I apologize if I'm getting off.
• 51:47
  Speaker B: No, all good. I, I won't go too far just because I, I'm going to be honest.
• 51:50
  Speaker A: Right.
• 51:50
  Speaker B: The answers are above my, above my pay grade. But you know, and looking, that's saying something.
• 51:56
  Speaker A: Being an attorney, you know, your property
• 51:59
  Speaker B: taxes are going to be what they are. A lot of these landscapes in Texas, like you said, being a property rights heavy state, these landscapes are already going to be subject to open space valuations or agricultural and have that reduced value, that base value. And so what that looks like on a property by property basis. Again, back to the lawyer answer. It depends.
• 52:23
  Speaker A: But I can see a couple of situations where it would matter, where it wouldn't matter. Like if you're right on the edge of town and you have in your buying branch Land that hasn't had a cow on it in 20 years, you know, and you're not trying to keep an AG exemption on it, you might be able to keep your AG exemption. And with the conservation, let's say it
• 52:40
  Speaker B: may be a lot here and with the conservation easements, that's the thing is you're keeping the landscape operating how it, how it is or for, for those uses. And so maintaining your ag, your AG valuation, your open space valuation, that is what you're going to be able to do because the land's going to remain that way.
• 52:57
  Speaker A: Right? Yeah. Okay, that, that makes sense. And it, we got halfway into it and I was like, oh, I'm an idiot.
• 53:03
  Speaker B: We could spend two more hours and not even scratch the surface.
• 53:06
  Speaker A: Oh yeah. I mean it's, that's one of the amazing things, you know, that's like, it's. My wife is a CPA and I have a son who's a CPA and a daughter in law who's a cpa. And so I've got a lot of tax people in my family. And you know, it's one of the limitations that my wife was like, you know, we were, did we want to move when we retired? I asked her, I said if we wanted to move when we retired. She's like, well, we can only move to this state, this state, this state, this state or this state. And I was like, why? They don't have income statements, said we're not moving anywhere. That's a state income tax. I'm like, well I can't move to this state anyway because you know, I happen to have guns that are a felony in that one, but they're perfectly fine here in Texas and I'm not willing to trade those. But have you seen an increase in the number of conservation easements that are coming through your office now? Is it getting to be, is it getting to be an effort an acre at the, the point of concern is like I'm a Gen Xer and I'm low end of gen. I'm the late, late end of Gen X and but the early end of Gen X is getting ready. They're getting up into retirement, right? You know, they're getting to that 65 and you know, looking towards not being here anymore. You know, all, all of the gen Gen Xers, I always joke, I said we were born old and we were planning to die. We, we were either planning to live forever or just not even thinking about death. You know, but now it's getting to be reality where, you know, I turn 50 and makes my wife so mad. I always tell her, I said, I'm two thirds dead. Yeah. You know, and like, statistically speaking, 74, 75, that's what I got in there. But you're seeing, are you seeing more people that are in that age that are like, hey, I'm gonna, I'm putting this up for my kids a lot.
• 54:46
  Speaker B: Yes and no. You know, there are a lot of what I would say, the older generation of ranch owners in Texas that want to preserve those landscapes, keep those landscapes the way they are for years to come. And I think where we're at in the world we live in is a lot of the grandkids or great grandkids may not be interested in doing that. It's a different world. And you have those competing interests of, okay, grandpa wants to put it in a conservation easement. What do the future generations want? And you've got to have those conversations to make sure that the people are in place. We, as a firm, see a lot of conservation easements. I was at a conference last weekend in Austin, the Texas Land Conservation Conference put on by the Texas Land Trust Council, talking a lot about conservation easements. And a lot of the presenters were talking about how, particularly in the hill country and in these pristine landscapes, there is a ramp up of conservation easement activity, that there are going to be a lot coming down the pipeline that we've got to put in place. And so I remain hopeful that that's true and that we're going to see more of these places like the one we're on here at the Pacific Hunting Club, be preserved so that my grandkids and great grandkids can come hunt on a place like this or, you know, go out and see nature and touch dirt and get their hands dirty.
• 56:21
  Speaker A: Well, it's, you know. Well, I'm going to ask you, I'm going to ask you some questions here. I'm not changing the subject. What I'm doing is I'm, I'm looking at a particular situation that I have in mind for somebody. Okay, so. So you've got a relatively small block of land. Okay. And it used to be farmland and was put in the CRP back in 86 when the program first came out. And so it's been out of the CRP program for 20 years, actually 30 years now. It went in in 86, was renewed in 96, and in 06 it came out, but it's stayed in grass. It's in, it says, reverted to as close to native as it can be. And not be because, I mean, a plow hadn't touched it in 40 some years. And so the owner of it is a big fan of conservation. He wants it kept the same way. But it's, you know, that kids have moved off and, you know, he's getting to retirement age, a little bit older than me getting retirement age. And he and I were kind of tired, like, well, you know, you, I don't know you could sell, but I did not know that you could donate a conservation agent. But short of donating conservation, can you just like go in and say, and let's just say that the guy's going to just be a horse's patoot and just put in. Can you put deed restrictions on it that'll stay after you're gone? Or does it need to take that step to go to a donated conservation easement to stand? Because, I mean, and the guy's like, listen, it's a quarter section. I don't give a flying rats were in what my great grandkids want to do with it. It's going to stay just like this until the end of time.
• 58:00
  Speaker B: And the thing with conservation easements is I wish it was as easy as just donating it and saying, here it is, take it. And there are a lot of boxes that have to be checked for it to qualify. But in a situation like this where, you know, who knows what's going to happen with the land. The big thing is, is figuring out if your future generations are going to be the ones to take it over, and if not, finding out how to either pass it on to someone that's going to treat it the way you want it to be treated or finding a way to convey it with restrictions. And as far as putting deed restrictions, the problem that comes to mind is if I restrict too many things, I reduce the pool of people that want to purchase it, right? And so it's to what degree we can put a deed restriction, you know, all these deed restrictions that say you've got to leave it how it is when you get the keys to it. There's. There's only a limited number of people that would buy it like that, if anyone. And so that's the hard part. And what we see so much with land fragmentation and changing and disappearing landscapes is you've got to get the future generations to buy in and really invest in our natural resources and to do a, you know, a little shameless plug. I'm part of an organization called the Texas Brigades. I was just elected president of the board of directors in January and our whole mission and what we do, we host summer camps across Texas for high school age kids and teach them about conservation and natural resources. And so we've got two camps that are on bobwhite quail research or you know, habitat, two that are on whitetail deer, inland fisheries, coastal fisheries, waterfowl and then two on ranch management. And really it's a matter of getting these 13 to 17 year old kids to come in, learn all they can, take the tools we give them regarding stewardship of resources. We teach public speaking and teamwork and leadership and take those skills back to their community, spread the word for us and then go on to replace us in the wildlife field. You know, go get a degree in natural resources or do what I did and pursue natural resources and then make a left turn and go to law school or my sister who grew up in the program is now a doctor of audiology and does hearing aids. But when she gets off work she goes fly fishing and lives in the mountains of Idaho and spreads the word to kids.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker A: Great place to live.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker B: It's a phenomenal place. She's got a rough life.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker B: But just really, really doing our best to get kids in nature is the way to do to, to solve those problems.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker A: Growing the next. And I've heard affirmative. I'm relatively familiar with the Bob White brigade having been, you know, been to several events at the Rolling Plains Whale Research Ranch up in Roby, which is just a phenomenal.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker B: I was there last weekend, we took 12 kids hunting the last weekend the quail season and they pushed about 15 coveys of wild birds that afternoon. And for those 12 kids that had never been quail hunting, it was pretty special to work, see dogs work and flush wild birds.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker A: It is amazing. That's, you know, that's my baby is a, is a quarter section that I babysit for quail.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker A: I mean it's kind of. I told somebody, I said I treat it like it's a deer lease, like imagine a deer ranch. Like what do you mean? It's like I can tell you how many birds we've shot off that place every year for the last three years. And you know, I know how many I get, you know, and I mean I have to because I hunt it multiple times a day, a week or other. So. But you know, that's that what the, what the Brigades foundation has done has been pretty. Is that what it's called?
• 1:01:43
  Speaker B: Yeah, Texas Brigades?
• 1:01:44
  Speaker A: Yeah, Texas Brigades. What they've done and what the organization has done has been a sea change and I've heard multiple people that have, that I've talked to in different things that grew up through that. Not just you, but I've heard other people that have done that have grown up through that and gone to that. And that was not a program that was available for me when I was a kid, which is. Might be a good thing because I might be a broke biologist, a broke farmer, but I'd still be broke either way.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker B: Exactly.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker A: I mean, but it's. What it's done is in bringing on it. As we get more urbanized and less time, fewer kids are spending time in the woods or even outdoors for that matter. What they've got. That brigade, the Texas Brigades have done, has been very impressive.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker B: It's a phenomenal program that we're now in our 33rd year of existence. And I went to the North Texas buckskin brigade in 2010 as a 15 year old kid. And the reason that I go back, other than all of the doors that it's opened for me in my professional life and even personal life, but the, the reason I go back and continue to serve, I'm on the board as the president now. I'm on the steering committee for the Rolling Plains Bobwhite Brigade and serve as a volunteer there. But the reason I go back is because when I was 15 at North Texas Buckskin Brigade, on the third morning, they took all of us out before sunrise and we, we sat in a field with a journal and we watched the sun come up and wrote about what we felt and saw and smelled and heard and growing up the way I did. My dad owns a feed store. We grew up hunting and fishing. For me, that was another morning watching the sun come up. And, you know, after breakfast, one of our instructors asked, he said, will everyone raise your hand if that was the first time in your life you've ever watched the sun come up, up, and probably half their hands in the room went up. And for me, that really set in as a 15 year old that didn't know any better of, I'm lucky to be able to have done the things I do. And there's a whole lot of people out there that don't get to do it. And finding those people and getting them plugged in with people like the Texas Brigades or the Texas Youth Hunting Program or whoever it may be, to really involve them in the outdoors and show them the power of nature and how it can just keep you grounded and at peace is really important. In a day where technology and cell phones and video games are taking over, we've got to get kids in nature.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's very true. How can someone get, how can you like, how can someone, a parent, for example. Find out more information about the Texas Brigade.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker B: No, absolutely. So we can be found online at www.texasbrigades.org. we're on Facebook and Instagram Exasbrigades as well. The email that you can email anytime would be campscapasasbrigades.org. our application season for those high school age youth 13 to 17 runs from November 1st to March 15th. Our camps happen in June and July. But even more so, we also take adult volunteers that want to come take part in the five day summer camps and be hands on to kind of shepherd those kids through the process. And the biggest thing that I can say to parents that listen is this, is that we don't advertise or spend money to promote Texas Brigades itself. Our model is that we bring in 20 to 25 kids per camp every year. And we teach them how to speak, speak in public. We teach them how to be confident. We teach them teamwork, leadership. We teach them how to make their bed and wash dishes too. And then we send them home with a crash course in wildlife biology under their belt. And the challenge is we say now go back to your community and spread the word for us. And if they do so, and they keep track of it, we call it a book of accomplishments. But think of a record book for, for FFA4H. They turn in that record book at the end of the year and each camp invites between four and six of those returning what we call cadets from the last year to come back to camp. They've been through the process. They can help guide the kids that are there. They're kind of a camp counselor type role. And when they come back their second time, we write them a college scholarship. We collectively every year give out roughly $50,000 dollars of college money to these kids that can be used for institutions, that can be used for trade schools. Whatever higher learning that kid wants to do after high school, we're going to try and support it whether it's agricultural based or not. And so that's my pitch to the parents is get them in the door and push those kids to do these programs. And it can pay off in the form of co college scholarship. It can pay off in the form of doors that are opened, newfound confidence and leadership and a whole lot of really good people.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker A: Yeah. And it's, I mean it is a, it is a very good program. I have been intentionally familiar with it. For a while. But obviously it's. It. I predate. Sadly, I predated.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker B: Right. The whole program.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker A: But. But it's, you know, it's something that would. That when I was a kid, I would have loved to have been able to do.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker A: You know, and it's. It's something that I, you know, one of the things I regret is not sending my kids to that. And it's. And it was a matter of timing, of when I learned about it and when I didn't learn about it, my kids were gone. When I really learned about when I. When it clicked in my head that, hey, that's a thing that you can do.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker B: Absolutely.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker A: But what they do, you know, is. Is phenomenal. Anything, anytime you can get a kid outdoors. And appreciating the outdoors, you know, there was a. I can't remember who it was that said that freedom is only one generation away. Well, it's the same thing with everything. You know, conservation can come and go in a generation. I mean, we can either be standing on the cusp of the greatest conservation renaissance ever right now with this generation, or we can be witnessing the demise of conservation. And it's just once in one generation. If you can change the hearts and minds of just a few people every year, and that's a great way to do it. It's a lot of fun. Everything. Everybody I've heard that was a former attendee that talked about it, has talked about how much fun it was and how much they learned and how much they enjoyed it, and predominantly the younger ones. It's like, this was a lot of fun. It is.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker B: It's a really great program. And yeah, all I can say is help us spread the word to get people there. And. And to go to your point of the generational aspect, we call them at camp Silver bullets or gold hooks, but inspirational type quotes that we assign to each of the kids that they've got to learn, memorize, and then get up and recite in front of their parents, in front of their peers. But two of them. That came to mind when you were talking about that, the one that we use so often throughout all of our camps is that anyone can count the number of seeds that are in an apple, but no one can count the number of apples that are in a seed. And so getting those kids in front of the people they need to be in front of and figuring out what their full potential is, is what we're all about. And then the last one about the generational aspect is that, you know, one generation plants the seed while the other enjoys the shade. And so we've got to be the people that put that foundation in place so that our kids and grandkids can really reap the virgin benefit.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker A: Well, I remember planting a tree with my. With my grandmother, and I was probably 10, and we planted a tree and I. And we were talking about it, she said, one thing I want you to remember, Dusty, is you don't ever plant a tree for yourself.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker A: So I'm not planting this tree for me. I'll never see the shade of this tree. Right. Said, but you will and your kids will. And so that's, you know, and that's great to see. Well, I'm gonna. We're getting a little bit long, and I'm gonna. I appreciate your time.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker B: Absolutely.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker A: And so much on this thing. And there's so much great information that, you know, give me whatever address you want to give is fine. But I want to make sure we get the Texas. We want to double check and get the Texas Brigades.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker B: Perfect.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker A: Because I really want to get that information out.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So Texas Brigades, our youth leadership program, can be found at www.texasbrigades.org. and if anyone wants to reach out to me, my name is Cole Payne and my law firm is UHL Fitzsimmons in San Antonio.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker A: You're gonna have to spell that because it is.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker B: There's a lot of letters, but UHL is U, H, L, that's the one.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker A: That's the Fitzsimmons I can spell.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker B: Fitzsimmons is pretty. Pretty good. But F, I, T, Z, S, I, M, O, N, S. We are a landowner only firm. But Texas Brigades, UL Fitzsimmons, I can be found at either place. And I've really enjoyed our conversation today.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker A: I appreciate it very much. Thank you very much. And I hope you have a good day. And I hope I outshoot you this afternoon. Let's go do it. All right. Talk to you later.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker B: Thanks.