- It is one of the pioneering environmental organizations of Memphis, the Mid-South and Tennessee, celebrating its 40th anniversary.

Founded in 1985, the Wolf River Conservancy has worked to protect the Wolf River and its watershed as a sustainable natural resource.

In addition to operating a land trust, currently protecting more than 20,000 acres along the river and its tributaries, the Conservancy organizes and promotes educational and recreational activities that raise public awareness of the ecological importance of the Wolf River Watershed.

Join me, Eric Barnes for a conversation with leaders of the Wolf River Conservancy, past and present.

This is The Wolf River Conservancy at 40: Four Decades of Environmental Leadership in Tennessee & the Mid-South.

I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian and Behind the Headlines, and I'm joined tonight by Eric Houston.

He's the current executive director of the Wolf River Conservancy.

Thanks for being here.

- Yeah, thank you very much, Eric.

- I'm also joined by Jeanne Arthur, former board president of the Wolf River Conservancy.

Thank you for being here.

- Thank you.

- And Keith Cole is another former executive director of the Wolf River Conservancy.

So we're here to talk about the 40-year history of the Wolf River.

And I think even before we talk about the Wolf River Conservancy, I should say, the river's been around quite a bit longer than that.

But I wanted to start by asking each of you, and I'll start with you, Eric, what was your first touchpoint or awareness of the Wolf River before you were a part of the Conservancy?

- Yeah, like many Memphians, it started with the Wolf River Greenway Project.

And so my family loved getting out on the Greenway Trail and experience these beautiful green spaces around us.

We would go out to the Shady Grove Trailhead in East Memphis and get a really nice walk on the weekends, and we would meet people out there on the Greenway, cycling, running, just enjoying the space.

And so that's how I really became aware of the river and aware of the Wolf River Conservancy.

- Gene, I'll go to you, same question.

- I've always been kind of a river watcher and spent a lot of time in Arkansas, so across the bridge.

And I loved to look at the trees and the river but when I was growing up, the Wolf River didn't have the greatest reputation, and it was more conceived as kind of an industrial drainage ditch.

And my mother and father were both conservationists and they used to kind of chuckle about the Wolf River, you know?

So it was easy to learn that people were wanting the Wolf River to change.

- Yeah.

- And Ms. Cly obviously was the mother of some of my friends.

I knew her.

And my dad loved the river.

He would go out in a small boat and he always kind of talked about the Wolf, you know, watch out for the Wolf and so that's just how I became involved.

But when it started making progress, it was like a magnet.

- Yeah.

- To me.

I wanted to know more about it.

I thought I could learn more about it, and I thought I could help and that was my motivation.

I have always wanted Memphis to be a better place to live.

And I think the proof is in the pudding that the Wolf River's become such a great part of people's lives now.

- Right.

- Running, canoeing and- - Well, as Eric said, that was not the experience that everyone had, even when I moved here, you know, some 30 years ago.

But let me go to you, Keith Cole, before you were at the Conservancy, your first touchpoint with the river.

- Mine was actually very little, if any.

It was in 2011 when I interviewed for the executive director position.

I knew of the Wolf River Conservancy.

I knew of the great little logo they had of the wolf head.

You'd see it on people's bumpers.

All my impression of the Wolf River Conservancy was positive, didn't know why, but the more I learned about the Conservancy when I interviewed for the position, the more I learned about the current board and other folks that were supporting it, it was all very positive, very positive.

Yes, the Wolf River had a need to improve its health, and that was the core mission of the Conservancy.

So that was exciting.

But I was new to conservation, but I saw it as a great opportunity to improve our community and work with a lot of good people and that turned out to be that way.

- Jeanne referenced Mrs. Clys, and maybe that gets back to the origin story.

Who wants to- Do you want to take that, Eric?

To talk about the origin story of the Conservancy.

And again, that backdrop of it being kind of what was sadly considered like many rivers and many bodies of water in the United States, kind of a drainage area for industrial waste.

- That's right.

And so in the middle part of the 20th century, the urban section of the Wolf River was channelized by the core of engineers.

And so what that means is they took the natural meander of the river and straightened it, and it did, as Jeanne referenced, become kind of a dumping area for industry in Memphis.

And it was declared the urban section at least, a dead river.

So it was not sustaining life in the urban section of the Wolf River.

And there was really an environmental movement in the early 1970s where we had the Clean Water Act, the formation of the EPA, and there was more public consciousness about the health of our waterways and our water systems throughout the United States.

And the Wolf River was certainly a beneficiary of that public consciousness around the importance of environmentalism and the health of our waterways.

And so fast forward a few years in 1985 with a generous grant of $10,000 from the Memphis Board of Realtors, the Wolf River Conservancy was founded as a grassroots advocacy organization concerned with the preservation of the Wolf River and its watershed as a sustainable natural resource.

So you might wonder why would the Memphis Board of Realtors be- - Well, yeah, that was news to me as many stories was, and I've interviewed Keith before and we've done so many stories.

That is news to me.

- Yeah and so, you know, the interest of a Board of Realtors, an organization like that, in a healthy river, really becomes obvious when you look at, they're interested in people having a beautiful place to live.

They want the Wolf River thriving, and it's hard to get folks to be interested in living in Memphis or buying homes in Memphis if there's a dead river in their backyard.

- Yeah.

- And so the organization took off from there, from its founding in 1985.

And there's really a rich history of success in preserving different sections of the Wolf River and many of the lands that surround it since then.

- And you go ahead, Keith.

- I was gonna say, I think it's important to note the Memphis Board of Realtors in raising that $10,000, what they did I understand was sponsor canoe trips down different sections of the river.

And of course, paddling is very much part of our DNA today at the Conservancy.

That's something we do every month, take people out on the river.

And the sole purpose is really to get people outside to enjoy the great outdoors and to see what we're protecting.

- Yeah Jeanne, thoughts on that history?

- I think of Charles Askew specifically, just because I knew him and he was very vocal and very involved in the Memphis Board of Realtors, of which I later became one, remained dedicated to the improvement of the Wolf River.

And I think there's so many realtors in Memphis that that wasn't a bad thing.

- Yeah.

- And they cover lots of areas that touch the Wolf River, especially as you get into the county.

So there was a lot of recognition and couldn't have been a better spokesperson than Charles Askey.

- I will add one thing before, then we'll go back to you, Keith.

It's interesting when you talk about the realtor thing, and again, I hadn't heard that, or I didn't know that, but I can remember, you know, you think about all the changes in the 30 years I've been here in Memphis in terms of the greening of Memphis and the Green Line at first there was fear that the Green Line would, which seems silly now, would somehow hurt property values.

In fact, it dramatically improved property values.

And Shelby Farms now is this incredibly desirable area Overton Park Conservancy, I'm leaving things out.

But these green spaces, these bike lanes, these kind of green access has this incredible improvement on neighborhoods.

And it's not just property values, although that's important, but it has improvements on all these sort of assets and livability and so on, but- - I was gonna add to what Jeanne said about the folks that help create the organization back in the '80s.

Along with that was the creation of this Greenway, the Wolf River, what we call the Wolf River Greenway today.

The notion was really built around conservation and how do you improve the health of the urban Wolf, as Eric mentioned, the city of Memphis section was to protect the green spaces along that.

So the building of the Greenway coincides with our conservation mission.

- Who wants to take, maybe I'll go to Eric on this.

There are many parts and pieces and elements to the conservancy, right?

There's still educational programs that were part of the foundation.

There's the stewardship of the land and the water.

It's a land trust as well.

Talk about, and again, there's a lot of people watching this are really close to this, a lot who maybe aren't, who maybe their whole experience of this as well, I've heard about these bike lanes, and I've seen the river from the highway, maybe a neighborhood, but I don't really know about it.

But let's talk about that land trust part and that element of what's going on.

- Yeah, absolutely.

So core to our mission of preserving and protecting land in the Wolf River watershed, the Conservancy aims to identify ecologically valuable land within our region and protect it in perpetuity through the use of fee ownership or the placement of conservation easements onto that property to ensure that development that would harm the ecological value of that land does not occur.

And so, in order to do that, the Wolf River Conservancy became an accredited land trust in 2015 under past executive director Keith Cole's leadership.

And so, and we were continuing as an accredited land trust through the Land Trust Alliance, which is the foremost national accreditation agency.

And so what that allows us to do is it gives confidence to our stakeholders and to our partners and landowners that we operate ethically, we have sound finances, and that we do things the right way.

And that this organization will be here in perpetuity to enforce those conservation easements and protect the land.

- And talk a little more in the weeds of that 20,000 acres that we talked about in the intro.

The Conservancy owns, manages and/or has bought or been given those pieces.

Talk, there's a bunch of different dynamics and ways in which that land comes to the Conservancy, correct?

- Absolutely.

- And we work with landowners across the region to place conservation easements where they retain ownership, but we are the holders of an easement.

So we inspect the property on an annual basis and ensure that it remains the healthy, thriving ecosystem that it's intended to be.

We also own property.

We own many thousands of acres throughout Shelby and Fayette County and Marshall County, Mississippi and Benton County as well.

And we also work with government agencies.

So we will take property ownership and then transfer it to TWRA or- - Tennessee Wildlife... - Recreation Agency.

- Yeah, I was gonna say that.

- TWRA.

Or we will work with the US Forest Service or other agencies to transfer ownership of a property that it could then become a state forest, it could become a wildlife management area.

And so we've had a hand in the creation of many of the WMAs and state forests in this area through our partnerships with these agencies.

- Yeah.

Jeanna, again, we talked about, you know, your father, you know, talking about that's not a place you wanna be necessarily the Wolf to-- - In the beginning.

- In the beginning.

And to now have all this land protected, not just protected, but under the stewardship of the Conservancy is a huge shift.

- What I love is a map that we have that shows the green areas that Wolf River Conservancy has helped put under conservation easements, whether we manage it or not.

And in my mind, it becomes a green stepping stone along the banks of the river, so that when the water flows off the land, it's filtered as it goes through the green protected areas of the edges and filters the water so that when the water gets into the Wolf River, it's really cleaner than it was when it was on your farm or in your backyard or whatever.

And so I love seeing that map because it encourages me personally and makes me believe and know that we're doing the right thing.

- Yeah, Eric?

- Yeah Eric, and so the watershed of the Wolf River is 522,000 acres.

It covers a massive area in our region.

And much of what we would consider the critical recharge zone of the Memphis Sand Aquifer lies within that 522,000-acre area.

And so our work is not just constrained to Shelby County and the urban section of the Wolf River.

A lot of our work is in Fayette County and east of here to protect those wetlands that recharge the aquifer that provides our drinking water.

- And it's interesting too, cuz it's, and I'm glad you brought up the aquifer, and you think of Protect Our Aquifer and the real awakening that people who are not necessarily out canoeing or kayaking or, you know, even, you know, riding or walking along any of the green spaces we've talked about, they suddenly became aware of this aquifer in a really big way and that connection to the Wolf River.

- I like to say that we've been protecting the aquifer since 1985 cuz that's our core mission.

- Yeah.

- Is protecting land, protect the water.

I once had somebody ask me, "Well, how can we protect the water?"

I said, "We protect the water by protecting the land."

And so it is a bit of an abstract idea, but if you understand that we in Memphis and Shelby County live on what's estimated 4 to 500 years worth of water down below us, ours is not so much a question of quantity, it's a question of quality, protecting the quality of the water.

So the lands that we protect, most of them are floodplains or wetlands, shouldn't have a house built on 'em, shouldn't have a building, shouldn't have a driveway.

So the lands that we protect are designed to protect our water.

And so I think that's an important, that's the core of our mission, is protecting the land to protect our water.

- Jeanne, you were gonna add something I think.

- Well, I was just thinking about the best thing in our favor is the land closest to the water is usually kinda squishy.

[all laugh] So it kind of- - Simple truth.

- It sort of works against building there, which is, you know, we don't have to educate so many people about that.

- Well, yeah.

- But I think of that green land as being like, it's the filter.

So when the water travels over it, the sediment and things are filtered out usually.

So when the water gets back into the river, it's cleaner.

- Yeah.

Well you look around the country, and I think we, in the, you know, people in hurricane zones are more aware of what building in wetlands really meant.

- Sure.

- Meant to some areas around New Orleans and Louisiana and Alabama.

- Oh yeah.

- Places that a lot of people from Memphis vacation.

That, you know, we made a good move there.

I wanna talk about the land trust and the change, mutual, well, now friend of yours, then friend of mine, Hugh Frazier, who was board chair back in when you started in 2011, I remember him saying to me, "Hey, I think I've got this great guy "that we're gonna hire probably to be the executive director "of the Wolf Conservancy.

He comes from Blockbuster."

And for those who listening are like, what was Blockbuster?

Blockbuster used to be a place that on every street corner, it felt like and in every strip mall where you could go get a movie and rent it and bring it home and then bring it back.

This was a long time ago people.

You came out of that.

- I did.

- And I remember you making the cognitive leap.

For me, I think we met or Hugh introduced us, of why, how that background served you as you all went and it made perfect sense in hindsight, went into this mode of working with becoming a land trust.

- Yeah.

- Building out the Greenway all, but make that connection for others.

- Okay.

Well, fortunately, I was spoiled.

The Blockbuster Video business was a great business.

I got to enjoy that for 20-plus years.

A great business, a lot of good people involved with that.

So when I was in my late 50s, I said I was semi-retired, my wife said I was semi-employed.

And so I was much too young to quit working.

So I was looking for opportunities and I wanted something fun.

That's what I was used to.

Something fun, different.

And so the Wolf River Conservancy, a nonprofit, it's protecting land.

You have education, you've got recreation, you've got all these different things, all sorts of people that you meet.

It was kind of a fun different challenge to have, so I welcomed it.

When I started with Conservancy, one of the number one challenges or objectives of the board was to become an accredited land trust.

And frankly, it looked like a pretty daunting task.

- Yeah.

- And it was.

I think it took us almost three years to complete all the process to be accredited first in 2015.

We've been re-accredited, I guess about 2020.

- Yeah.

- And why that's important to your viewers, as Eric mentioned, if you're an accredited land trust under the Land Trust Alliance, in the United States today I think there's about 1700 land trusts.

Only about one in four are accredited.

Why that's important?

If you're a landowner and you wanted to donate an easement or deal with a land trust for protecting land, you know if you're doing a transaction with us, it'll be done the way it should be done.

It also affects our ethics as it relates to fundraising, our board transparency, just through the entire organization.

So that was one of the stepping stones to help the organization to go from grassroots to where it is today, where it can manage a multimillion dollar project such as the Wolf River Greenway.

- Let me come back to you, Eric.

I mean, we talk about the funding and paying for all this and the Wolf River Greenway and all these things.

Where does the money all come from?

- Yeah, that's a great question.

And so the simple answer is that it comes from community support and so we rely on the community being knowledgeable about the issues that we seek to address and providing their support.

So we work very hard every day to earn that.

But Keith mentioned the Wolf River Greenway, that's a public private partnership.

And so we work with Shelby County, the City of Memphis on the construction, design and engineering of that project.

And then we are kind of a lead partner in the construction, design and engineering of that.

We work to fundraise both federal, state and local funds to dedicate to that project.

And the Wolf River Greenway is a $94 million undertaking.

One of the great lines Keith told me when I came on board was, you know, when they were first conceiving of the Wolf River Greenway back in the '80s, they said the best part about it is that it'll be nearly free to construct.

[all laugh] - Oh yeah.

- And that's because they just envisioned it as kind of a trail through the woods that followed the Wolf River.

And it's really exploded through many community leaders' vision into what it is today.

This beautiful 26-mile linear park that serves not only as a recreational trail for Memphians, but as a multimodal transportation network that connects neighborhoods that have been historically disconnected from one another.

And so we're very proud to be a lead partner on that, along with the city and the county.

And we are bringing in funds both from the state, from the federal government.

The Wolf River Conservancy was a recipient of a $10.3 million legislative disbursement last year.

The City of Memphis with the Wolf River Conservancy's help as the recipient of a $21.8 million RAISE grant through the US Department of Transportation that's dedicated to this project.

And so there's many different sources that fund the Wolf River Greenway.

But we also fundraise for our Land Conservation Fund, which helps us to navigate many of these land transactions and really helps to fund that other side of our business, which is protecting ecologically valuable land in the watershed.

- It's interesting too, we talked, you know, about the Greenline, we talk about Shelby Farms and so on, but all these other park and public space, I'm thinking of Kennedy Park, I'm thinking of developments in Frayser.

I'm thinking, you know, all this has created a citywide, community-wide change that this is a part of.

And it's all about, I remember Greenprint, some people remember Greenprint.

And you know, this notion of mapping out all the connections and almost a grid of bike lanes, trails, and the Greenway, the Green Line, all these things being a big part of that.

But Jeanne, I come back to you, we were joking.

You're a note taker and you took a bunch of notes as Eric was talking, so I want to- When you hear all this, you think of what?

- Well, I was just making a mental note of the amount of money that has been raised and invested in the Greenway and how that helps everybody that lives along it.

I had a wonderful African-American man that helped me for years in real estate named Everett Gardner.

And I told him about the Greenway and it was gonna come near his house and he was so excited.

He said, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna be able to take my grandchildren.

And so I gave him a couple of bikes.

I used to be a biker, believe it or not and I rode all over the place.

And unfortunately, Everett passed away before he got to live his dream of riding the Greenway with his grandchildren.

But it has affected people who live along the Greenway no matter what color they are.

And it has a magical effect and it's brought our city together, in my opinion, in many areas that had not been very desirable.

- Yep.

- So that's a plus.

And then I know from runners in my family that have changed their destinations, you know, they used to run around their neighborhood, now they go to Shelby Farms.

- Yeah, yeah.

With just two and a half minutes left, we've talked a lot about the history and understandably 40 years, when you think about the future, again, you're not the executive director anymore, but obviously you have a emotional and, you know, attachment to it.

What do you see and we'll end with Eric.

- Quickly, I would think that for me, the future would hold, as Eric mentioned, it's a public-private partnership.

I think the Conservancy may be taking more active role of managing the land within the city, the Greenway, with the idea that it can help us extend our outreach both on education and recreation.

That would be my short answer.

- Yeah.

- Is continued involvement.

- Go to Jeanne.

I mean what do you see in the future?

What would you like to see in the future?

- I would love for there be to be a weekly column or something about what's going on about the Wolf, even if it's small, about land that's been added, where the land is, how you can use it.

People need to be educated more about how this wonderful asset can be enjoyed no matter where you live.

- Yeah.

- You can put a bike rack on the back of your car and tootle on out to... - Yeah.

- Someplace if you don't have one near you.

- Yeah, yeah and Eric, you may have more details of a strategic plan.

- Sure.

- And so on.

This, you know, where does the Conservancy go next?

- Yeah, absolutely.

And we do have a strategic plan for the next five years.

And we're beginning to plan for even beyond that.

But you know, currently today we're educating more than 6,000 students on the Greenway on our properties and in schools with partnerships with Memphis-Shelby County Schools and our charter schools in the community.

We're continuing to protect land.

As we've talked about, we surpassed 20,000 acres protected over time just last year and we'll continue doing that.

The Greenway Project, we'll be completed as far as the construction goes in 2029.

We've currently got 1.9 miles under construction right now that we're managing and we'll have more coming online later this year.

So we're very excited about that.

As Keith mentioned, we're gonna be very involved in figuring out how the Greenway is to be treated as the amazing public asset that it is in perpetuity so that Memphians of all generations going forward can really enjoy this beautiful park that we're building for them.

- That next generation, you were talking about the education, which I probably didn't spend enough time on, that includes what for kids and young adults?

- Yeah, so we are literally, we are literally bringing kids out to the Greenway, out to properties that we own.

We're teaching them about ecologically valuable lands.

We're teaching them about conservation issues.

We're teaching them about environmentalism, and we're creating awareness in the next generation that's going to ensure that the Wolf remains a thriving river.

- Were you gonna add something there, Keith?

I saw you reaching out.

- I would only say amen.

- Yeah.

Amen.

Anything, last word from Jeanne.

- When I was growing up it wasn't great to say you were near the Wolf River, but now it is.

- All right, congratulations to you all and to all the people, many, many people I'm sure you all say, who supported the Wolf River and have been a part of it and been part of the Conservancy.

People can learn much more about the Wolf River Conservancy at- - www.Wolfriver.org.

- Okay.

Happy anniversary.

Thanks very much for joining us and goodnight.

[gentle acoustic music] [acoustic guitar chords]