Fall 2017

PROFILE
Dr. Wallace Klussmann
EDUCATION•CONSERVATION•DEDICATION
TWA MEMBER PROFILE
WRITTEN BY LORIE A. WOODWARD
PHOTOS BY DAVID SMITH PHOTOGRAPHY
In 1993, Dr. Wallace Klussmann, professor emeritus at Texas A&M
University (TAMU), ended his 30-year career in higher education
and immediately embarked on his second “career” as a volunteer.
“Retirement is like another career,” Klussmann, who served as
head of TAMU’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences
from 1982 to 1990, said. “People have to retire to something not
from something.”
Klussmann’s retirement destination was natural resource and rural
economic development advocacy.
“As state employees, we were discouraged from getting involved
politically and encouraged to sit on the fence,” Klussmann said. “I
had wonderful jobs at Texas A&M, but retirement is even better—I
don’t have to check anything with the dean.”
Klussmann climbed off the apolitical fence permanently in 1993 at
the request of Congressman Lamar Smith, who found himself locked
in a battle with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over a critical habitat
designation for black-capped vireo and golden-cheeked warbler.
“Next thing I knew I was his wildlife expert at a series of town hall
meetings through the Hill Country,” Klussmann said. “My message
about endangered species in Texas was simple: Big sticks don’t
work in a private lands state. Incentives do. Landowners should be
encouraged to value endangered species just as they do white-tailed
deer or bobwhite quail.”
Klussmann’s philosophy was formed by the years he’d spent
working with landowners applying research findings in rural Texas
and his own personal experience as a landowner. He and his wife
Dolores had retired to the Hill Country where they had purchased a
ranch near Fredericksburg. The fight over critical habitat was taking
place in their backyard.
“If regulations have a chilling effect on the rural economy, it
encourages people to ‘shoot, shovel and shut up’ instead of
conserving rare species,” Klussmann said. “Engagement—not
estrangement—of landowners is the key.”
The message resonated. Although it took time and the election of
a president with Texas roots to change the philosophy at U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service, today there is a spirit of cooperation and active
management. One example is cowbird trapping initiated by the Texas
Parks & Wildlife Department (TPWD) that has put the black-capped
vireo and golden-cheeked warbler in a much better stead.
The strategy of active management and cooperation became a
template for other potential conflicts between the rural economy and
endangered species such as the dunes sand lizard that threatened to
shut down oil production in West Texas. A coalition of landowners, oil
companies and government agencies worked to create a “win-win”
conservation plan.
“Success breeds
success and a
willingness
to consider
conservation
challenges from
different angles,”
Klussmann said.
Klussmann got involved
with TWA at the same time he
got involved in the politics of natural
resource management. The late Charly
McTee, who served as TWA’s general
manager then, called him and asked him to
join. Klussmann agreed only after determining
that TWA and TPWD had addressed the
differences that prompted the TWA’s creation.
“I checked with Charly and I checked with TPWD,”
Klussmann said. “I wanted to be sure that we would be
working together not against each other. Wildlife wouldn’t
have benefited if we were all at cross purposes.”
The answers he received greenlighted his involvement. He got
busy. He has served on TWA’s Executive Committee for more than 15
years and as the PAC Committee Chairman for decades.
“Although our PAC is relatively small, it is effective because TWA is
respected in Austin,” Klussmann said. “Through the years, we have
built a reputation for working for the good of wildlife and habitat—
and doing what we say. Legislators appreciate straight shooters.”
He has also been instrumental in TWA’s education efforts including
the Texas Youth Hunting Program (TYHP) and Learning Across New
Dimensions in Science (L.A.N.D.S.). In fact, the proposal that led to
the creation of TYHP was written at a meeting hosted on his ranch.
“I kept harassing Bob Cook [former TPWD Wildlife Division
Director] telling him that we weren’t doing enough to get young
people involved in hunting,” Klussmann said. “One day he turned to
me and said, ‘Quit bitching, Wallace, and get me a proposal.’”
Klussmann convened a meeting at his ranch. The attendees
generated a proposal that led to TPWD committing $90,000 to hire
the first executive director of what grew into TYHP. After two years, it
became a position jointly funded by TPWD and TWA.
“Of all the things I’ve done in my retirement, the creation of
TYHP has been the most satisfying,” Klussmann said. “We’re not
only giving young people an opportunity to harvest an animal,
we’re giving them a full-blown educational experience that
impacts their families.”
96