Improving Wildlife Habitat & Ranch Resilience
- Aug 12
- 4 min read
While there are not a lot of things we can depend on, ranchers in many arid parts of the world can depend on drought. Those ranch managers preparing for drought by utilizing Holistic Grazing Planning and Financial Planning have often fared better than other ranchers nearby. One such ranch is the 23,000-acre San Pedro Ranch in Texas. The San Pedro is owned by the Joseph Fitzsimons and Pamela Howard families and managed by Chase Currie.
In 2021 the San Pedro won the Texas Leopold Conservation Award for their land stewardship and conservation ethic that is clearly seen in the wildlife and plant diversity on the ranch even in these challenging times. If you want to learn more about this incredible story, come to the 2025 REGENERATE Conference from November 5-7, 2025 in Santa Fe, New Mexico to hear Chase Currie tell how they are continuing to improve wildlife habitat and land resilience even in times of drought.
The San Pedro Ranch is located in Dimmitt and Maverick counties at the edge of the Chihuahuan desert and between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers. Water sources on the ranch include the San Pedro Creek, San Ambrosia Creek and San Pedro Spring. All this water in an arid landscape is a draw to wildlife on this rugged landscape and the Beefmaster cattle that the San Pedro run are not only an economic necessity but a tool for improving wildlife habitat. In fact, the cattle operation is part of the wildlife management operation, because Joseph and Pamela’s father, Hugh Fitzsimons was an early adopter of Holistic Management, and quickly realized that the cattle and wildlife share the same land and must be managed together.
When the San Pedro won the Leopold Award they were in the worst drought that part of Texas had seen for 90 years. Despite the drought, the springs were still running clear. Chase noted that the San Pedro has been diligent in the grazing management to keep the cattle moving in order to give grasses adequate recovery with such infrequent rains and improve the water cycle function on the land. They aim for one year recovery periods when they can to improve ecosystem health.
This grazing management is the foundation of their watershed management for the ranch. As Joseph noted in the 2021 Leopold Award video, “Watershed management is really key to how you manage an arid rangeland.” They have protected sensitive creek bottoms by restricting cattle access to them with fencing, and they have addressed erosion issues in these riparian areas using Bill Zeedyk structures to slow and capture more water. Likewise, their efforts in holistic planned grazing have improved the health of their uplands which helps with ground water recharge and improved water infiltration across their landscape.
Their passion for creating more diverse landscapes included working with Ducks Unlimited to utilize an old 14-acre caliche pit and hydroseed 42 different wildflowers and native herbaceous plants to create a very productive wetland that serves the wildlife on a piece of land that was at one point one of the least productive areas on the ranch.
The San Pedro’s wildlife includes the Northern bobwhite and scaled quail (i.e. blue quail), Rio Grande wild turkeys, collared peccaries (javelina), mule deer, and many other species. As a partner with Texas Parks and Wildlife, the San Pedro does wildlife counts to determine deer and harvest numbers to make sure that the hunting operation on the ranch is sustainable.
The Fitzsimons and Howard families also donated a conservation easement to the Texas Agricultural Land Trust to protect this ranch and have it managed as a whole regardless of who owns it in the future. As Joseph Fitzsimons noted in an article on the Texas Agricultural Land Trust’s site: “We care about this land and how it will look in 50 years or 100 years. Our children share our commitment to the ranch’s biological and cultural integrity, so a perpetual conservation easement made sense. The land is perpetual and our responsibility to care for it is perpetual, so why not enroll it in a conservation easement that will protect it for perpetuity?”
While the San Pedro Ranch’s conservation ethic has been recognized by many organizations including their winning of the Outstanding Rangeland Stewardship Award from the Society for Range Management in 2005, 2007 National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Environmental Stewardship Award, Region IV, the 2016 Lone Star Land Steward Award, and HMI's Outstanding Holistic Management Demonstration Site Award, the awards themselves are not the motivation for this ranch team. As they note on their website, they have a very dedicated ranch team as well as a family with a long history of conversation. They feel responsible to this land and to each other that the land will continue to improve, that the water will continue to flow clear even in times of drought, and that the wildlife that depends on this landscape will continue to find hospitable wildlife habitat for many generations to come.
To learn more about how to improve your grazing, visit HMI's Training Programs webpage. To learn more about the San Pedro Ranch, read the full article on the Texas Parks and Wildlife site.
