Fall 2014

to hosts of professionals at natural resources agencies such as Texas
Parks and Wildlife, Texas A&M University AgriLife Extension and the
U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service.
He came away with a lot of information, but no clear goal.
“It took a long time to assimilate it all and then I had to digest it,” Paul
said. “I learned that you have to take the information and make it
your own.”
Their new interpretation led them to conclude that if they came to
understand the smallest things on the ranch, they would understand
the larger ecological processes more clearly. They also determined
that if they would find the big truths in small things, those truths
could be applied in the broader world and have great impact.
“For instance, if we teach our grandchildren to take care of the most
vulnerable animals, then they will inherently understand that they
must also take care of the most vulnerable people,” Paul said.
From this epiphany, Paul and Toni began their restoration in earnest.
The process actually began years earlier, in 1972, when they started
rebuilding the ranch to its original size by purchasing neighboring
tracts as they became available. The Depression forced Paul’s
grandfather and great uncles, like so many other ranchers, to sell off
land to keep their family afloat.
“In the early years, our process was disjointed and lacked a clear plan
or goal,” Paul said. The family tried all of the traditional means such
as rotational grazing and brush removal, but they weren’t seeing
noticeable results.
After about 15 years of running in place, Paul decided to stop all of
the work on the ranch for a year. During that year, he read as much
of the original natural history of Texas as he could find, consuming
more than 20 journals of early explorers and pioneers. Plus, he talked
Finally, he took a week off from work and family to contemplate his
goal for the ranch. When he returned, he knew what he wanted to
do.
“I wanted to take the ranch back in time,” he said. “I wanted to restore
the land back to pre-settlement condition. We chose to use the
year 1773 as our benchmark because it was 100 years before the
settlement of the ranch and prior to most of the settlement of Texas.”
Toni suggested renaming the ranch the Colonel Burns Ranch. This
not only paid homage to its founder Colonel Simon Pierce Burns,
who served the Confederacy, and eventually made his way Brown
County, settling about 13 miles north of present day Brownwood,
but created an umbrella that would encompass the entire family.
The family, including Paul’s siblings and their spouses, went all in.
They vowed to restore not only the land, but all of the ranch’s original
structures. Their efforts were a collective tribute to the previous
generations of their family, who had committed themselves to hard
work and the land, making the best lives possible under difficult
circumstances. With a single, shared goal in mind, the current
generation set out to achieve it, acutely aware that projects couldn’t
succeed in isolation.
“I wrote the goal down and I keep it with me,” Paul said. “I measure
every proposed practice against it and ask, ‘Will this help move us
toward our goal?’ Having a clear goal has kept us from going off on
tangents and wasting money on things that are irrelevant to our
desired end result.”
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