Taylor retires after 32 years as superintendent of AgriLife Research station at Sonora
Writer: Steve Byrns, 325-653-4576, [email protected]
Contact: Dr. Charles “Butch” Taylor, 325-387-3217, [email protected]
SONORA – The Texas A&M AgriLife Research Station at Sonora just celebrated its 100 year anniversary and for almost half that time, its current superintendent has been a mainstay at the 3,462-acre facility south of Sonora.
But after a 45-year history with the station, 32 years in his current role, Dr. Charles “Butch” Taylor, will retire effective May 31.
Taylor earned a bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate all in range science and all from Texas A&M University at College Station. He first came to the station in 1971 as a graduate student after just having served a year in Vietnam as a first lieutenant in the 9th Infantry Division.
He and his wife Cleone arrived at the station with the first of three sons, all of whom were raised on the station. They lived in the big two-story concrete house built in 1918 and Dr. Leo Merrill, superintendent at the time, swapped Cleone’s considerable cooking skills aimed at feeding special guests for their rent, Taylor said.
Taylor has been at the facility ever since, rising through the ranks from graduate student, 1970-71; technician I, 1972-74; research associate, 1974-82; research scientist, 1982-83; assistant professor, 1983-90; and associate professor, 1990-96, before becoming superintendent in 1983 and reaching the rank of full professor in 1996.
Taylor, the son of a Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service county agent in Dickens County, said he was pretty naive about the Edwards Plateau country when he arrived but was determined to learn as much as he could.
At the time, he said, the wool and mohair incentive program was in place and there was a lot of interest by ranchers about the Rambouillet ram and Angora goat performance tests, which measure fiber value traits and rates of gain.
“Those years of high wool prices and high rancher interest were very enjoyable and the ranching lessons I learned from those producers have been invaluable to me throughout my career, even though major changes were at hand,” Taylor said.
“Things in the West Texas ranch industry soon changed in a big way,” he said. “We normally think about change as being kind of insidious and occurring slowly over time, but when the government did away with the wool and mohair incentive, things started changing real quick, on a daily basis. Today, fine-wool sheep and Angora goat numbers are way down and people have replaced them with meat goats and hair sheep.
“We are also seeing much land fragmentation and land bought strictly for recreation. And the landscape itself has changed with juniper encroachment rampant and woody plants in general continuing to increase.”
Taylor said the station has changed and continues to change. Catastrophic wildfires over juniper-infested ranches with little or no livestock to keep noxious plant growth down are now a very real danger. Those ever-increasing conditions and the need for a cost-effective brush management solution have combined to guide the bulk of his research in recent years.
Taylor’s primary research interests have centered around the components of grazing management, such as stocking rates, season of use, grazing systems, and the kind and class of livestock that best suites the range. Also among his research interests are the relationship among weather, soil, vegetation – both native and introduced, domestic livestock and wildlife interactions and economics.
But the use of prescribed fire is his forte.
“One of the things I’m really proud of and I really enjoy doing is working with ranchers with prescribed burning,” he said. “I think the initiation and development of the Edwards Plateau Prescribed Burn Association, where we train ranchers to use prescribed fire and they work together to conduct prescribed burns on their own ranches, has been one of the more enjoyable things that I’ve done.”
The Edwards Plateau Prescribed Burn Association was started by Taylor and a handful of like-minded ranchers in 1997 in Edwards and Sutton counties. The 30 original members and two counties quickly grew to encompass 20 counties with a membership of 500.
Those numbers have since decreased as chapters spun off to form their own associations. Today, there are prescribed burn associations from South Texas to northern Nebraska, all patterned after the Edwards Plateau Prescribed Burn Association.
Through his work as the organizer of the association, Taylor earned the title of “lead instructor” for prescribed fire training from the State of Texas. He also served as vice-chairman of the Prescribed Burning Board of Texas, the body responsible for administering the Certified Prescribed Burning Program for Texas.
“We’ve changed the fire prescription. Years ago, prescribed burning was pretty much done in the winter or dormant season. We’ve done a lot of fire research during the growing season; summertime burns under dry conditions. Our research has shown those fires are much more effective in controlling prickly pear and juniper and can be safely done with enough preparation. So, we now have a lot of ranchers burning in the hot, dry summertime and those burns are meeting their goals and objectives.”
With more than 300 burns to his credit, another point of pride for Taylor is his ability to tell ranchers when to burn, how to burn and how to do it safely — knowledge gained through years of experience backed by research.
Taylor said his vision for the station’s future is that of an outdoor laboratory where success is proven by the more than 80 graduate students from a number of Texas universities who have completed work there since 1980.
“As an outdoor laboratory, the station is one that needs to be used,” he said. “It’s in a unique location. There’s a lot of places in the world that share characteristics similar to those here. And as the world population continues to grow, we are going to become more concerned with having enough food, more so than we are today. I can see the station playing an even more important role in helping find solutions in the future.”
Along with his duties as superintendent, Taylor has served as an adjunct professor at Angelo State University, San Angelo; Sul Ross State University, Alpine; Texas Tech University, Lubbock, and Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma. He has also served on the Texas A&M University graduate student faculty as director of the Academy for Ranch Management.
As an active member of the Society for Range Management since 1977, Taylor has served the Texas Section component as a director, second vice president, first vice president and president.
His honors and awards from the national Society for Range Management include the W.R. Chapline Land Stewardship Award, the Sustained Lifetime Achievement Award and the Outstanding Achievement Award. His Texas Section Society for Range Management honors include their Publication Award, Outstanding Contribution to Range Management Award and the Outstanding Achievement Award.
Other accolades include Special Congressional Recognition for Outstanding Achievement, the Texas A&M University Regents Fellow Service Award, Texas Sheep and Goat Raisers’ Association Special Achievement Award, Environmental Excellence Award-Governor’s Office and the Sutton County 4-H Silver Spur Award.
Taylor has authored or co-authored a number of published journal articles and book chapters across his career and actively participated in many national-level scientific meetings and symposiums.
“Personally, after 45 years, it’s going to be rather difficult to just walk away from this place, but I know it’s time to go,” Taylor said. “I’ve known it for awhile now, and I look forward to changing direction even though I have some apprehension about it.”
However, Taylor said he plans to stay active in teaching prescribed burning schools and helping ranchers conduct prescribed burns.
“I’m going to be involved in the ranching industry. The last thing I need to be doing is just sitting around the house. I’ll be looking for work to do, and I think it’s there.
“A lot of people have bought property and they’re not sure what to do with it and need some advice. So I’ll look at those opportunities. And I think those things will keep me about as busy as I want to be.”
