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Thursday, August 9, 2018

+ COMICS & PUZZLES

ON FRIDAYGET YOUR SWIMON BEFORESUMMER ENDS

By Pam LeBlanc

pleblanc@statesman.com

Chris Harte acts like a proudpapa as he points out a grove oftiny green, white and red flagssprouting alongside a gravel roadcutting through his Hill Coun-try ranch.The flagsmark the locations of

postoak,MexicanplumandEve’snecklace seedlings. ToHarte andDavid Mahler, an ecologist withEnvironmental Survey Consult-ing who has directed restora-tion work at Spicewood Ranchfor the past 29 years, they alsorepresent another victory in aquest to restore the property toits state before cattle and goatsmoved in.“Wehadatheorythatweshould

have post oaks here, and if wegot the deer population downthey’d come back,” Mahler saysas the men stride past the tinynewtrees. “Upuntil a fewmonthsago, it was only a theory.”As other ranches in the Hill

Country have shrunk withencroachingdevelopment, Spice-woodRanchhasexpanded,evolv-ing froma traditional cattle oper-ation into a sort of real-world lab-oratory for researchandmanage-ment of native plant species andhabitat. ThisMay, theTexasParks

and Wildlife Department hon-ored Harte with the Lone StarLand Steward Award,which rec-ognizes private landowners forexcellence in habitat manage-

ment and wildlife conservation.“Chris Harte’s achievement is

a slam dunk on somany levels,”says Tom Harvey of Texas Parksand Wildlife. “In an era when

human development is causingmore buildings and roads andfragmentinghabitat,Chris is going

Hill Country land comes backto life at Spicewood Ranch

CONSERVATION

Texas Parks andWildlife honors Chris Harte for his work to restore an overgrazed ranch.

FILM

By Sonia Rao

The Washington Post

NEWYORK— Spike Lee has beenopining for a few minutes now:Isn’t it ludicr3ous that people callfootball players unworthy of liv-ing in this country for kneelingduring the national anthem, hesays, when the first Americanwho died during the Revolution-ary War was a black man?“So nobody can tell black peo-

ple … about going somewhereelse,” he concludes. “Alongwiththe genocide of Native Ameri-cans, this country got built cost-free from slavery.”Seatedonabrightpurplecouch

in the Brooklyn office of his com-pany, 40 Acres & a Mule Film-

works, Lee eventually pauses. Itall comes down to love vs. hate,he says — it always has. That iswhy the two words appearedon the knuckle rings of RadioRaheem, a fictional characterkilled by police officers at the cli-max of Lee’s 1989 film “Do theRight Thing.” Some claim Lee ison a soapbox, but he really justwants to be on the loving sideof history.The provocative filmmaker,

61, has recently faced hurdlesin his everlasting pursuit of thisgoal: “Da Sweet Blood of Jesus”opened to less-than-lukewarmapplause in 2014, and the satiri-cal depictionof violence in 2015’s“Chi-Raq” insulted someChicagonatives. But the latest Spike Lee

joint, “BlacKkKlansman,”whichopens Aug. 10, attempts to cap-ture racial tensionwith the sameclarity of “Do the Right Thing,”which Roger Ebert wrote came“closer to reflecting the currentstate of race relations in Americathananyothermovieofour time.”Only this time, he attempts to doso using a story from the past.“BlacKkKlansman,”which took

home the Cannes Film Festival’sprestigious Grand Prix in May,tells the real-life story of a blackColoradoSprings copnamedRonStallworth ( JohnDavidWashing-ton) who infiltrated the Ku KluxKlan in the late 1970s bypretend-ing to be a white man over the

Spike Lee just wants America to achieve greatness, period

SpikeLee, from left,withactorsTopherGraceandAdamDriver on the

setof Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman.” CONTRIBUTED BY DAVID LEE, FOCUS FEATURES

SpicewoodRanch owner Chris Harte, left, and ecologist DavidMahler stand for a portrait in an exclosure,

a fenced-offarea that keeps deer andwildlife away fromnative seedlings. SpicewoodRanchwona 2018

LoneStar LandStewardAward from theTexas Parks andWildlife Department for its restoration and

management of native plant species and their habitats.

Lee continued on D6

Spicewood continued on D8

Controlled burns have cleared out dense cedar breaks onSpicewoodRanch to restore the land to an oak savanna,which allows native grasses to grow. The folks behind the

restoration of the ranch are sharing the techniques they’ve learned. LYNDA M. GONZALEZ / AMERICAN-STATESMAN PHOTOS

D8 AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN | THURSDAY, AUGUST 9, 2018

D8

in the opposite direction.”About 95 percent of Texas

is privately owned. For con-servation to work, it needsto start on private land, saysErin Wehland, a wildlife biol-ogist for the Texas Parks andWildlife Department.

The men hop back in theirtruck and drive to Alliga-tor Creek, on another partof the ranch. There, lime-stone cliffs rise 50 feet highalongside a stream of green-ish water. Sumacs and rockrose, now uncommon in theTexas Hill Country, cling tocanyon crevices. A Texasrat snake slithers out frombeneath a ledge.

They’re all signs that theranch has rebounded sinceHarte’s father and uncle, Edand Houston Harte, pur-chased the first 280-acretract in 1972.

Harte doesn’t blame theprevious owners for theranch’s worn-out condition.Theyweresubsistenceranch-ers who ran as many cattleas they could and broughtin “improved” non-nativegrasses in order to makea living. With overgrazingand overbrowsing, though,ash juniper, also known ascedar, took over, and othernative plants disappeared.Thedeerpopulationswelled,and they gobbled down anytender shoots that managedto sprout.

In 1984, Harte bought outother family members andbegan to buy adjacent prop-erty, especially environmen-tally sensitive areas alongcreeks, as it became avail-able. At the encouragementof his late wife, Kay Wagen-knecht-Harte, a landscapearchitect and native plantexpert who died of cancerin 1997, the restoration effortbegan in earnest.

Harte has made 35 landtransactions over the yearsand still hopes to add a fewmore.Today theranchspans1,300 acres, a rare chunkof au naturel terrain in theexpanse of high develop-ment west of Austin.

“We knew the place washammered,” says Harte,70, who grew up in SanAngelo and Corpus Christiand worked in the familynewspaper business mostof his life. He retired fromHarte Hankes in June andnow focuses on managingthe ranch and other busi-ness investments.

They cut out cedars andopened up the land. Grassesstarted to come back, andthey seeded it with more

native grasses, which pro-duced their own seed. Theyreduced the deer populationand put up high fences tokeep other deer out.

“When we started, thedeer would eat everything,”Harte said.

Slowly, they began addingplant species, starting withplants like plateau golden-eye that were less desirableto deer. Harte jokingly refersto what he calls the spinach-to-ice cream scale. Plantsmost desirable to deer are“ice cream” plants; the leastdesirable ones are deemed“spinach.”

As the deer populationdecreased, pressure onthe plants eased, and somestarted to survive. Whenfour or five species wereestablished, the deer hadmore options on their saladbar. Then Mahler and Hartestarted adding plants thattasted even better. Becausethey had more food options,the deer ate some of the newplants, but not enough tokill them.

“Through habitat resto-ration, we’re trying to getcloser to what it was likebefore it was overgrazed andoverbrowsed,” Mahler says.“We’re trying to get woodyplants and edible flowers aswell as native grasses back.”

Mahler uses exclosures— fences to keep deer out,rather than livestock in — toprotect certain areas wherethey test plants. If a speciescan grow inside the enclo-sures, where deer can’t eatit, they try growing it outsidethe fenced-off area.

“We know we could plantanythingwewanted ifweputa cage around it and wateredit just like Westlake Hills, butthat’s not a good model forrestoration of a large acre-age,” Mahler says. “It’s notlike you go to Wikipedia andlearn how to do this.”

“We’re trying to figure outways todothiseasilyon largeacreage, not in the back-

yard,” Harte says.Just a few months ago,

Harte and Mahler startedseeing post oak seedlingsoutside exclosures on theranch.

“Finally we’re startingto reach the goal of gettingdeer pressure down to alevel where these speciescan finally survive. I wasstunned when I came outand saw it,” Mahler said.

Harte and Mahler aresharing what they learnby offering workshops tothe public.

“It’sexciting toknowwe’rehelping expand native plantsand bring back plants thatwerehere,”Hartesays.“Icantell we’re making progress.”

ContactPamLeBlancat512-445-3994.

Spicewoodcontinued from D1

Apost oak seedling growsbeneath the shade of a full-

grownpost oak tree at SpicewoodRanch, located in

Burnet County.

SpicewoodRanch owner Chris Harte explores his nearly 1,300-acre propertywith guests from theTexas Parks and

Wildlife Department in June.When the first part of the ranchwas purchased, the landwas overgrazed andworn out.

LYNDAM. GONZALEZ / AMERICAN-STATESMANPHOTOS

SpicewoodRanch owner Chris Harte inspects an area of land thatwas cleared of cedar

trees to restore native grasses and other plants.

TO LEARN MORESpicewoodRanchsharesmanagementtechniquesandstrategies throughguidedplant tours,prescribedburndemonstrationsandotherbestpractices.For informationaboutworkshops,go toEnvironmentalSurveyConsulting’swebsiteatenvirosurvey.com,clickon thee-newsletterbuttonandscroll to thebottomofthepage.

Ecologist DavidMahler, whooversees native plant

restoration at SpicewoodRanch in Burnet County,

examines soil quality in June.

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