Wynne_ToddieLee_Weigel_Jeff_StarBrandRanch.mp3

Jeff Weigel [] There was an 11,500-acre ranch owned by a guy from Dallas named Toddie Lee Wynne, your classic wealthy Texas guy. And he had bought this place when, years earlier, he was duck hunting down on the coast and got caught in a storm and they ended up on this property sheltering and they liked it so they bought it.

Jeff Weigel [] So he built this big lodge out there, mahogany paneling, guest rooms, airstrip, and it was his Texan retreat. He would fly his DC-3. The story we heard is he would fly his own DC-3. He owned it. He wasn't flying it. They would send that down to the island with all his cooks and people. They would go to the island, start getting ready for the big guy to show up, and then the plane would go back to Dallas and get him and his guests and they'd come to the island and it was a big retreat.

Jeff Weigel [] But Mr. Wynne, for reasons I don't know, this is right when I got to TNC, he had decided to sell it and TNC was playing the role of being the negotiator for this deal which we would eventually transfer over to the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Jeff Weigel [] But Mr. Wynne didn't want to work with them because they were the government. So we came in and we negotiated that purchase and we bought that 11,500-acre ranch. But "Fish", as we call Fish and Wildlife, Fish didn't have enough money yet appropriated from Congress to buy it all back from us.

Jeff Weigel [] So we kept that lodge for about six years and we ran it as a guest lodge and we would take donors out there to try to court them and schmooze them and feed them good food and if they were bird watchers we could show them 150 birds species in three days because there was so much diversity out there. So we were able to corral a number of donors by using this lodge and it was kind of a unique thing for the Nature Conservancy because we're not in the hotel business but here we are running this lodge.

Jeff Weigel [] It was really expensive because it's out on an island. The Fish and Wildlife Service wouldn't let us fly planes because it would disturb the whooping cranes so you had to boat everybody out there. And everything on an island is more expensive and it goes to hell faster in that coastal environment. So you were constantly painting the place and fixing it up.

Jeff Weigel [] But we ran it with great success I think to our mission for those years and then we eventually let the lease expire and sold the rest of the land to the U .S. Fish and Wildlife Service so now it's all part of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, harboring the wintering whooping cranes which have grown in number now. So that's succeeding.

Jeff Weigel [] And that lodge was abandoned and it's now just a ruin. It's barn owl habitat. So all that mahogany paneling and all that stuff just is rotting out there on the island but that's what it should be. It needs to be a wildlife refuge and it is.

Jeff Weigel [] So that's the Matagorda story.