Liberty Hill, Texas - Young cedar trees in the Texas Hill Country are obstructionist, brambly knots of vegetation. Older ones guzzle scarce moisture. When they are really mature, the golden-cheeked warbler, a songbird in danger of extinction, sometimes moves in.

So imagine the reaction in these precincts when, in the early 1990s, the Interior Department set out to protect the warbler by buying -- or condemning -- cedar-covered land.

There were protests on the Capitol steps in Austin.

One rancher took a bulldozer to his cedar trees.

Others indicated they would tie the project up in court battles.

The effort stalled.

Over a decade later, in a cultural and political turnabout, people like Kerry Russell, a lawyer, rancher and lifelong resident of the area, have largely bought into a conservation program that combines federal and state incentives with flexibility for landowners, who can participate by committing land to conservation purposes forever, or for as little as 10 years.

Part of the payoff is that they are shielded in those years from unilateral conservation actions by government, a provision that gave the program the name "Safe Harbor."

"If you sign up to restore or enhance the habitat for a certain number of years, after that time you won't be held to" the obligations any further, Mr. Russell said. He has committed to preserve and tend 150 acres of cedar groves on his property for the migratory warblers forever.

Mr. Russell, like his fellow Republican Bob Long, a rancher a few counties away, is a familiar public face of the program in Texas.

The state has been a focal point of safe harbor initiatives, and the Austin office of Environmental Defense has been in the forefront of putting together safe harbor agreements.

Like personal shoppers, their representatives go out into departments of state and local governments and come back with a wardrobe of easements, grants and other arrangements to encourage land uses that help endangered birds, toads or insects. The ranchers choose the ones that fit best; the environmental advocates handle the red tape.

Brandishing a walking stick and accompanied by his wife, Lee, Mr. Russell took two visitors through the cedar groves, pointing out the ideal spots for songbird nests with all the enthusiasm of a park ranger.

But this third-generation Hill Country resident also understands the political ecosystem.

"The old folks around here don't want the feds to have their land," he said. There was "a basic distrust of the federal government, a Texas kind of distrust: They are taking our land from us."

When his land was threatened with condemnation for a refuge for the warbler and the endangered black-capped vireo, Mr. Russell said he pointed out that local residents were not favorably disposed to federal biologists.

And, he recalled with a grin, he said that if he went to court over the government's proposed price for the land, "the judge and jury are going to be my kinfolk."

But when a representative of Environmental Defense offered to broker benefits for him, including almost $1,800 an acre -- or about $250,000 -- for the perpetual set-aside for the warbler, his attitude changed.

"The reason we're strong property rights advocates is we want to preserve the land," Mr. Russell said.

As for the money, he said, "It's a benefit to me, and I'm mercenary in that respect, but at the same time this is a benefit to everyone else."

David Wolfe, the senior scientist in the Austin office of Environmental Defense, said of Mr. Russell: "He's an excellent representative of the whole shift around here. He does have a strong property right ethic and certainly doesn't want anyone telling him what to do with his land."

But, Mr. Wolfe added, the shift in attitude paralleled a shift in economics.

"The historical ranching and grazing economy has been going away," he said. Landowners are looking for other ways to make money. One possibility, he said, is leasing the land to hunters. Another is making it ready for nature tourism by conserving the ecosystem.

The safe harbor programs are widely acknowledged as one of the most successful blends of public and private initiatives to further conservation. They mimic the pollution credit trading programs that cut the amount of acid rain falling on New England.

Because the Endangered Species Act primarily regulates activities on federal land, the cooperative programs involving private land have filled in a gap in species protection. In states like Texas, where almost all the land is private, the voluntary trade-offs have been crucial.

Despite the agreement that these efforts, often called "cooperative conservation," have had significant success, there is far less agreement on the reason for it.

Some conservatives say that the inducements -- tax credits, payments for easements and other government benefits -- are the essential element, turning the government from a sheriff into a partner.

On the liberal side, some environmental groups believe that the incentives are important, but so is regulation. And they fear that, in the name of cooperative conservation, crucial regulatory safeguards will be abandoned.

Legislation introduced this month by Senator Michael D. Crapo, Republican of Idaho, and Senator Blanche Lincoln, Democrat of Arkansas, crystallizes these disagreements.

The measure includes a sliding scale of tax credits to landowners. The longer land is removed from commercial use, the greater the benefits offered. It also sets up a "conservation bank," allowing landowners to put aside credits for setting aside land for endangered species, which could offset habitat destruction elsewhere.

"Collaboration and incentives offered to property owners will be a faster route to recovery" than court battles, Mr. Crapo said in a news release.

But John Kostyack, senior counsel for the National Wildlife Federation, said in a statement that the legislation was disappointing. "The bill would offer tax credits for mere compliance with the law," Mr. Kostyack said.

The National Audubon Society also weighed in against the measure, saying in a statement, "It would make it harder to protect the very habitat endangered and threatened species need to live by creating new incentives for development."

And some property rights groups, like the National Center for Public Policy Research, based in Washington, oppose the measure because too much regulation remains. "Cooperative doesn't mean voluntary," said Peyton Knight, the group's director of environment and regulatory affairs. "It does not help if I'm saying, 'Cooperate or else.' "

If passed by the Senate, the bill could be married to legislation passed in the House and sponsored by Representative Richard W. Pombo, Republican of California, who has made pruning the regulatory impact of the Endangered Species Act a top priority.

In Liberty Hill, Mr. Russell watches the developments in Washington through a lawyer's eye. He has taken the view that an endangered species law with reduced regulatory authority will work against conservation. "There's a huge chance for abuse" in incentive programs, he said.

If the only tool for conservation is regulation -- which he calls the "command and control" approach -- "you impose a structure that doesn't work," Mr. Russell said. But, he added, "You have to have some command and control because a huge multinational corporation isn't going to do something because it's right. They'll do what's good for the bottom line."

The approach that he and conservation groups like Environmental Defense have taken was a radical innovation 10 years ago. "We were the first," he said. "We were the exception. Now we're the rule. And it happened much faster than we ever thought."

Copyright 2005, Sarasota [Florida] Herald-Tribune.

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