Michael Gaglio and Cynthia Hoffmann

[00:00] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Hi, I'm Cindy Hoffmann I'm 59 years old. Today is February 6, 2023, and I am in El Paso, Texas, with my interview partner, Michael Gaglio We are both on the board of the Frontera Land alliance.

[00:18] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Hi, my name is Mike Gaglio I am 48 years old. Today's date is February 6, 2023. We are in the great city of El Paso, Texas, and today I'm being interviewed by my friend and fellow colleague, Cindy Hoffmann And together we are on the board of directors of the Frontera Land alliance.

[00:44] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Thanks, Mike. Mike, how did you come to love the mountains and the deserts in and around El Paso?

[00:52] MICHAEL GAGLIO: I hope you have time.

[00:54] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Sure.

[00:57] MICHAEL GAGLIO: So I grew up in El Paso. Turns out we've figured this out, I think I'm a 6th generation El Paso, and my grandmother grew up in the sandhills, and she was raised by her grandparents, and the sandhills out by Anapra, or what's now Sunland park. And I was really fortunate, I think, in the sense that I grew up in an area on the northeast side of town, and I grew up on the hill up there. And I had. The mountain was my backyard. It was really cool. So when I would come home from school as a little kid, when I would come home from school, I was able to just hop over the wall in my backyard, and I was literally in open space in the mountains on trails that pretty much directly connected to the Franklin Mountain State park. At that time, I didn't realize that it was a state park and all of that. I just knew that there was this cool, big mountain behind my house. And so that's how I grew up. And so I've always been connected to the desert in that way.

[02:07] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Wonderful. And so is that one reason, that connection to the mountains and deserts, that as a grown up, then you decided to stay in El Paso. And I know you're a business owner. Tell me a little bit about your business and how you ended up deciding to stay in El Paso.

[02:25] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Yeah, that's cool. Gosh. So when I was nine, I think I decided I wanted to become a marine biologist. And that kind of goes back to. That goes back to, like, my grandfather. He was my step grandfather, and he's the guy that was raising me. And, you know, he and I watched a lot of nature documentaries and stuff together. And so we always watched documentaries about Jacques Cousteau. Big in the eighties and nineties, Jacques Cousteau's documentaries were all over the place. And I just loved the idea of being a marine biologist and being out on the water and seeing all this wonderful life under the ocean, I, and then, you know, I grew up in El Paso. I stayed here. And then. So throughout high school and all that time, I just had this idea that I was going to go off to college and be a marine biologist. And like so many high school students, we say, oh, we're going to get our basics done at UTEP and then move on to whichever bigger school we're going to go to or whatever other school we're going to go to. And so I had dreams of going to, like, San Diego State University or something and doing that. Well, while I was doing my basics, so to speak, at UTEP, I took a desert ecology class with Doctor Bill McKay and he sort of reinvigorated my love for the desert. That class in particular got me on the ground, out in the desert, looking at the desert critically through the eyes of a biologist and a scientist. And so, like, I re fell in love with the desert, and not just the desert, but particularly the Chewabean desert that's right here in our backyards. And I learned why. I learned why. Like in the chihuahuan desert, everything is a little bit different because we're like our, just like all deserts, the Chewalwind desert is a harsh environment, but we're much colder than the other north american deserts and we have greater variety of topography and landscapes within the Chewalban desert. And so that leads to all of this spectacular diversity. But it's all just a little bit smaller because it's cold and stuff and because it's the desert and it's all a little bit smaller. And Doctor McKay really taught us how you gotta get in there and appreciate all these small things. And then, oh, let's see. Well, then I guess I got a while I was doing my graduate work. I got a job working as a biologist with an environmental consulting company here in town. And I thought, oh, this is great. We're going to do environmental work. What I learned is that environmental consulting has nothing to do with preservation of the environment in the context that you think of as a conservationist or as a tree hugger and all of that stuff. And so my clients were developers and people that were developing the city and building in the city. And it was kind of a shocker to me. But, you know, I was young and had a young child and needed to make, have a living. And so I did it and it was great and it was a very rewarding career. I stayed there for nine years and had a lot of fun with that. But all along something was sort of nagging, like, this isn't what you want to do. Because I had this idea of being an environmentalist and a conservationist and that kind of stuff, and I just felt like, man, like all of my clients, all these people that we're doing this work for, it's all exactly the opposite of what I really want to be doing. I did want to be doing pure science from the academic standpoint and all of that. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to do more conservation work. And so there was this really neat period of time. After I had been with the company for several years, the Frontera Land alliance and Keystone Heritage park and a couple of other groups were forming. Oh, the Texas master naturalists had formed and were gaining some steam in town and.

[07:06] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: And around what year was this?

[07:09] MICHAEL GAGLIO: So this was in the early two thousands, early to mid two thousands. And so these organizations were starting to grow, and I wanted to become a part of them in some capacity. And being a consultant, I was being an environmental consultant, we were able to, like, work for certain aspects of it. Like, I did work for the fellow that owned the land of Keystone. I did work for him prior to it becoming an open space, a protected open space. And so, but so all of that kind of just put me at odds with what I wanted to do. And then so Frontera was being formed, and what I really liked about Frontera Washington, the fact that it worked with private landowners. So Frontera came on the scene as this environmental organization that wants to work with everybody, as opposed to telling everybody what to do. Frontera wanted to find ways to work with everybody in a way that benefited everybody. So it is like this, the radical middle. My friend uses that phrase. Here's this organization that's in the radical middle, trying to find a way to do public benefit with private land. And that really spoke to me, because working for the folks that I was working for, I recognized, especially in West Texas, like, I recognized, like, this is a private land ownership state. If we're going to try to save open space, we better work with people that own the land, and we shouldn't do so by picketing their properties and by spiking their trees or vandalizing their equipment. That's like, that's not productive either. So Frontera really did this thing where they bring everybody together to work together to conserve land that has a public benefit. And I really liked that. And so I started getting involved there. Yeah.

[09:22] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: And so what all have you done with the organization? I think you might have been president at one time.

[09:28] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Yeah. So here's the thing, right? You get involved with a growing organization, and you open your mouth at one of the board meetings and you exhibit that you care about something or that you have some sort of little. Yeah. And then you get Voluntold on what to do. They're like, oh, there's a guy that knows what's going. Going on. Pick him. And since then, yeah, I've learned that the way you get things done is you find the busiest person in the room and you assign a task to that person and it gets done. Yeah. So I got involved in Frontera, like, in 2006 ish is when I sort of started hearing about them. I started my own company in 2007 and then started going to the board meetings, I think in 2008. And then in 2009, they elected me president, which really clearly indicated that this organization has. What are they doing? But, of course, I was super honored. I thought it was great. Frontera, you know, quite honestly, Frontera helped me as a new, young business owner. I was able to have an excuse to get in the room with some really important people and ask them questions. And so, yeah, make no mistake, let's not be. Let's not mix words here. I leveraged my relationship with Frontera to help my business along, but I feel like I did so transparently and all that stuff, you know? But my business is in the business of conservation, too, and so it all goes hand in hand. And so, anyway, what I really like to. I'm getting off course here. So, yeah, I became president in 2009, and I was president for six years, which means I served three terms as president. And while early on, while I was president, I realized that we had the opportunity, Frontera had the opportunity to become the premier, cutting edge, leading environmental organization in town if we did. So by taking our organization seriously and by really putting our money where our mouth was and by maintaining transparency and being professional.

[12:17] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Yes.

[12:18] MICHAEL GAGLIO: At all. All steps of the way, all of these things were required. And so thus began to the journey of elevating Frontera to be a real professional organization in town. And I think we did. So I think, you know, under my leadership, we. Well, we went to one of your seminars, and we.

[12:48] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: I taught a fundraising seminar for the board somewhere in that time frame.

[12:52] MICHAEL GAGLIO: That's right, you taught a fundraising seminar. And I, and I, and I insisted that the whole board go. And what we learned is we learned something that I think is what is key to setting Frontera apart. And that is everybody on the board must give.

[13:09] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Yes.

[13:09] MICHAEL GAGLIO: And everybody on the board has a financial responsibility to the organization. And that was kind of news to us. That was new. Cause we were all used to, like, volunteering and giving our time and giving our expertise to the board. But you made it clear, and it really resonated with me, that if your organization is going to have the impact that we wanted it to have, we had to do strategic planning, and everybody had to give money, period. And you equipped us with the tools to start going out and having the confidence to ask people for money. And another step along the way was that I had a vice president, Richard Teschner, who really helped make it easy to challenge people to raise money for the organization, because if anybody has put their money where their mouth is with regards to conservation in this town, it's him. I know that he's been on this program before, and we have him to thank for so many leaps towards conservation. But, you know, so he and I, you know, Pinky and the brain, you know, really collaborated to create a strategy to make Frontera really climb a curve and become a really professional organization. And along those lines, we, you know, it was really important for us to maintain this attitude of professionalism and an attitude of not engaging with politics or activism, you know, the Franklin Mountains Wilderness Coalition. Judy Ackerman, bless her soul, a total, absolute hero of mine is Judy Ackerman. And she couldn't. She never wanted to join the board of directors of Frontera because she wanted to be out there chaining herself to equipment, and she wanted to be at city hall pointing fingers and really shouting and telling people what they were doing wrong and telling people the way to do it better. She was a huge supporter of the Frontera Land alliance, and Frontera couldn't have done what they did without her background, support, and her activism. But Richard and I and the board of Frontera made sure that. That we were there as a non political, non sided. Like, we didn't take a side in terms of who's doing right and wrong. We were there to facilitate and see to it that conservation could be done.

[16:06] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: And so what were the advantages, in your opinion, of taking that approach?

[16:10] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Well, I'll tell you what the. Yeah, the disadvantage at the time was. It took a lot of hard work, a lot of hard work and dedication to stick to that, to that mission and that vision. The advantages of that were that, you know, we could. We could sit at the table and we could gain the trust of private landowners, big and small, that had, you know, resources that were important to us, and it helped us get a seat at the table. With decision makers and people, with funding and that kind of stuff. And so, yeah, that was a big. It was a big deal. Today it still helps us because, you know, Kasner Range, the Kasner range has always been. The Kasner range is the reason why Frontera Land alliance was formed in the first place years ago, the preservation of Kasner Range. It was an offshoot from the Franklin Mountains Wilderness Coalition. Franklin Mountains Wilderness Coalition wanted to do that work to preserve Kasner. But we were advised by an advisor long ago during some strategic planning that we needed a land trust, a 501 C three land trust, to help facilitate the conservation of Kasner. Well, in order to do that, we had to be apolitical. Like, we had to be on both sides of the aisle. It didn't matter, because whoever was in leadership at the time, we needed to be talking to them because we need their support to do all this conservation. So, yeah, that's the big advantage of staying apolitical.

[17:58] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Wonderful. Sounds like it's worked well.

[18:01] MICHAEL GAGLIO: I think so.

[18:02] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: So I know somewhere part of you talked about the professionalism, and that's part of what's been part of a big part of Runeterra's success. So it sounds like you at some point, went from being a grassroots organization to hiring a paid staff person. Tell us a little bit about that.

[18:21] MICHAEL GAGLIO: So with our. Yeah, it's true. And it's interesting, Cindy, um, we. I got, like, eight thoughts that want to traffic jam out of my brain. We have time.

[18:36] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: We have time.

[18:37] MICHAEL GAGLIO: I know. I feel like there's so much to talk about that I want to like that I'm not sure. So, yeah, we. We hired. We hired our executive director. Let's see, I was president from, what did I say? 2009 to 2014 or 15, something like that, six years. And during that time, we decided that we needed to hire an executive director. That was one of the things that came up out of strategic planning was in order to maintain this professional status that we had worked really hard. The next step was hiring an executive director, somebody who could represent us, because, again, everybody on the board of Frontera, you know, we were all the usual suspects in some sort of way. We all wore multiple hats. And, you know, people knew me as the cactus guy. Oh, he wants to come collect your cactus. And people knew Richard as the professor and others is the. As the activist and stuff. And so we needed somebody who represented strictly and solely Frontera land alliance. And that person, we decided, needed to be paid, and that was an executive director. So we did some major fundraising and against the advice of our CPA at the time, who said, you guys are going to create a monster that you can't feed. We said, yeah, that's exactly what we want to do. And so we went out and hired Janae Reynaud Field. And we were really, really fortunate. The same advisor, his name was Steve Bonner, the guy that advised us to start Frontera in the first place. He knew about us all along, and he says, folks, have I got a person you gotta meet? And at the time, Janae worked for an outfit in central Texas, and her husband was returning to El Paso, I believe was the situation. He grew up here, he grew up here, he's from here, and he'd gone to law school and done all this stuff, and now he was coming back to El Paso and bringing his new wife with him. And it just so happened that the timing was just fantastic. It just worked out. You know, we managed to scrape together a little bit of money so that we could make her an offer. She accepted the offer, and now, you know. You know, here we are, ten years later, she's worked for Frontera Land alliance, and she has elevated frontera land alliance to this. To this. You know, I'm totally excited. In my mind, I knew that this is where we were going, but ten years ago, it's like, it seems so far. It seems so far away, and here we are and she's there. And it's just been such a great thing for us, you know, and you helped us get there in training us and guiding us, and with the strategic planning and the. And keeping a sense on the board of, like that the fiduciary needs and the governing responsibilities of our organization. And to me, that's been really important. So it's like, let the board govern and let the staff run the organization.

[21:56] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: And that is the ideal situation, isn't it?

[21:59] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Yeah. And we've achieved that, I think.

[22:01] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: And now there's even more employees than just Janae. Correct.

[22:05] MICHAEL GAGLIO: It is true. Tell me. I don't even know.

[22:06] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: We have, like, what, four in addition to her?

[22:09] MICHAEL GAGLIO: We have four staff.

[22:10] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: They're all part time, but, I mean, how amazing.

[22:13] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Yeah, but they all work full time.

[22:17] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Doing education and doing outreach, working specifically with Kastner range. We have a development director doing fundraising to keep us sustainable and all of this ongoing.

[22:33] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Yeah. She keeps the fire lit underneath all of the board, all the board members to. At each board meeting, she's now telling us, okay, these are the goals and these are the objectives for the fundraising stuff. I think it's really. It's something else. So I'm still on the board, of course, yes. And one of our former board members, he always makes the joke. He goes, he goes, man, I'm really disappointed about being on that board. Not Frontera. This is just a general joke. He says, I'm really disappointed in that board. I've missed three meetings and they still haven't kicked me off.

[23:13] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: That's the same as the old joke. I would never join a board that would have me as a member.

[23:18] MICHAEL GAGLIO: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And now, I think, you know, people aren't clamoring to be on our board yet, but people are close. Yeah, people. People know that the board of directors of Frontier Land alliance is expected to work, and there's no. There's board members that haven't put in their efforts either. Find themselves not, you know, they. They find their way out, you know, and it's a really stunning thing to me to see how far along we've come.

[24:03] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Yeah, it's exciting, isn't it?

[24:04] MICHAEL GAGLIO: It is.

[24:05] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: What do you think Frontera is going to be like ten years from now?

[24:09] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Oh, gosh, yeah. I hope. We just did a five year strategic plan, right?

[24:19] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Yes.

[24:20] MICHAEL GAGLIO: And I should have this right off the top of my head ten years from now. I hope that we have a much bigger presence throughout West Texas.

[24:31] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: You mean geographically?

[24:32] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Yeah, geographically, and also through southern New Mexico. I envision that our staff will have grown, you know, we'll have more people on staff. We'll probably have a different executive director. Unless Janae wants to retire with us. I hope that our organization grows to the level that we can offer that kind of job security and stuff. I mean, the Nature Conservancy has done it. There's land trusts that have been around for over 100 years that are very respected and are really, really good places to work. In another ten years, we'll have something like 25 years under our belt. Will be a very mature organization by then, I hope. How about you? What do you feel?

[25:27] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: I've been thinking about the geographic stuff a lot, just as you have expanding out to different parts of El Paso county and then even into Hudspeth county and other areas of west Texas. And then I would really love to see us do more in New Mexico. As you know, Mike, I've done real estate in the Las Cruces area, the Mesilla Valley, and there's the beautiful areas along the Rio Grande river and Mesilla and stuff. I think there's a real need there.

[26:05] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Yeah, I agree.

[26:06] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: And they, you know, they have the Oregon Mountains National Monument. But there's still so many other mountainous areas also that, you know, that could be preserved. And it's just a special place.

[26:20] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Yeah. Like. So I'm gonna flip this back to you. Tell me. So I'm a naturalist and a conservationist and a biologist. You're a real estate agent. So what makes it so spectacular? What makes this place so special?

[26:39] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: I can tell you one of the things I love hearing as a real estate agent is we got to get a lot of people coming in from out of town, California, Colorado, the Midwest, mostly a little bit back east, but they've never seen anything like our topography that we have here and the weather and the possibilities for outdoor recreation. Most places don't have mountains in their backyard like you did. We may not have the green like they have other places, but we have arroyos and mountains and foothills and cacti and coyotes and, you know, all these other things and beautiful weather in which to enjoy it most of the year round.

[27:32] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Yeah, like eleven months out. Like eleven and a half months out of the year.

[27:35] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Exactly. Hiking, biking, skiing, you know, whatever. I mean, you just, and you go, you know, just a few hours into the Sacramento mountains and you've got the tall pines and the ski resorts. And, I mean, think of all the different kinds of biodiversity just within a couple of hours of El Paso. That's amazing. And we have the national parks, we have big bend just a few miles away, white sands, Carlsbad caverns, which are each so spectacular and so unique. And we're so lucky that we live here right in the middle of it. And so these people come from out of town and they're just blown away. They're like, I can live here. I can go to these places every weekend. I can go out and walk in this every night. And I think they'd be willing to pay more to be able to live here, but they don't have to because we're actually one of the most affordable places in the United States. So it's great. They get a lower cost of living, lower housing prices and this fabulous quality.

[28:43] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Of life, but that same. So all of those things, though, they also combine to really trigger the growth of this area.

[28:52] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Yeah. So we have to be careful about.

[28:53] MICHAEL GAGLIO: That, which is why frontera exists in some ways, because the area has such a potential for growth that it could lose some of these things that make it special.

[29:04] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Exactly. And that would be, that would be a huge shame. So, you know, my maver, my mom is an El Paso native, and I had relatives on both my mom's side and my dad's side of the family that came to the El Paso area, like, in the early 19 hundreds, one in, like, 1902 and one in 1905. And so I love this city. It's so unique, it's so wonderful. And I love all the nature. My parents took us out hiking into the mountains and everything when we were little kids, and it's just kind of like you. It was part of growing up, and I love sharing it with other people, and I don't want it to go away. I mean, there's plenty we have. One thing we have is space. I'll never forget, my dad had been. Is an army veteran, and he had been stationed in Germany during the cold War in the late 1950s. And he got to be really good friends with this german family that lived nearby, the Edelmans, and misses Edelman. He invited her, when I was a kid to come back to the states and visit us in El Paso. She was blown away. She's like, I can see for hundreds of miles. I can only see for, like 100ft in Germany. There's land and land and land with no people. I've never seen land without people in my life. And we don't realize it, but when you see it through someone's eyes like that, you realize, oh, my gosh, this is special. We have to save this. You know, even if we are as realtors or business people, wanting our businesses to do well and wanting people to move to El Paso and Las Cruces, we got to still protect those special places so that they don't go away and we still have that wonderful quality of life for our kids and grandkids and great grandkids.

[31:05] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned folks coming from back east. That also reminds me, too, like my grandfather, who raised me, he was my step grandfather and he was from Massachusetts and he was in the army. And a very typical story where a lot of people from somewhere else end.

[31:28] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Up at Fort Bliss.

[31:29] MICHAEL GAGLIO: End up at Fort Bliss, and then they retire and they stay here because of all the things we've just been talking about. And so as a kid growing up, his family members would come and visit. And one thing that kind of always struck me was that they either loved it or they hated it because they were from back east, where there was a lot of green and trees and water and you didn't have to drive quite so darn far to get to the next town or the next thing or whatever. But most of the people, when they would come out, they loved it. And there was a couple of his family members who were like, no, I just can't take it. The dust and the blowing. I need my trees, which I fully understand and I get. And so I guess I share a similar experience in growing up, seeing these people just be in awe by that. And my, you know, my experience like that continues where? At Keystone park, where we're, you know, host these tours often at Keystone, and the people are. Of people that are visiting. You know, they're coming in from Minnesota and these places, and, like, our desert areas attract folks from these.

[32:55] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Yes.

[32:56] MICHAEL GAGLIO: These other areas that we would consider so beautiful and all of that. And so that's. I agree. It's just. It's just got to be saved, you know, it's just got to be protected a little bit better.

[33:10] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: I don't know if you heard this story, Mike, but when George Bush, the sun was president, he had a Tom Lee painting in his office, in the Oval Office. And Tom Lee is, as you know, a famous El Paso artist, another one who was in World War Two and ended up in El Paso and then fell in love. And somebody was asking George Bush about that painting, and he always told the story. Cause one time, somebody, I guess from one of the national media, like New York Times or something from becky's, came to visit Tom Lee and was in his backyard and said, oh, my gosh, you have no trees in your backyard. And do you know what Tom Lee's answer was?

[33:56] MICHAEL GAGLIO: What?

[33:57] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Well, you don't have a mountain in yours.

[34:01] MICHAEL GAGLIO: That's a great answer.

[34:02] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Isn't that great? And I always think of that story. We may not have trees in our backyard, but we have a mountain in our mountainous. Absolutely.

[34:11] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Wow. That's cool. You know, actually, so that reminds me of, again, one of the missions of Frontera, or one of the benefits of Frontera is like, you know, like Wendy and Rocio, the gals that are on staff now.

[34:27] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Yes.

[34:28] MICHAEL GAGLIO: You know, they're. They're so happy to be working at Frontera, and their experience, I think, is very different than ours. Yes. And I just learned this the other day at the meeting, getting to talk to them, and they were saying that, like, yeah, they grew up in El Paso, and they always knew that the mountains were over there, but they didn't know that those mountains were accessible.

[34:50] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Yeah. Then they never had experienced them, really, except to just see them.

[34:54] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Yeah. And to me, that's like, oh, that kind of opened my eyes to a situation that's happening right here. Like, we see it and we experience it as kids or as people growing up is like, oh, I can't wait to get out of this town and that kind of stuff. And I think that that happens because we were not necessarily taught or shown how beautiful this region is and all of its hidden little treasures. And so what has happened with Frontera that I actually didn't really expect myself is the educational side of Frontera. Getting out there in the community and growing the community's exposure to the open spaces that are publicly accessible and that the people that live in this community have access to these beautiful things that define this community. Community. And that's, to me, that's really powerful. And I guess that's something about that's.

[35:59] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: A wonderful thing that's happened. Like you said, that we weren't really expecting that. We're, like, teaching the future generations things that I think it'll stick with them forever.

[36:10] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Forever.

[36:10] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Besides just preserving the land forever, we're opening their eyes forever.

[36:16] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Yeah, I sure hope so. And then, you know, we. I know that we. We programmed this or we put this in our strategic, you know, growing objectives. It's like, oh, the education stuff does need to. Is important, because if we. If we train the future generations, then they will vote. It will be easier to get them whatever. Whatever path they choose, when they vote or if they hold office or something like that. They'll make decisions that promote the value of these types of areas that we're trying to conserve. And I think that's really important.

[36:59] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: It is. It's another thing that'll carry the legacy forever. So it's wonderful.

[37:04] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Well, golly, what else is exciting on the frontera? Front? We have. We're gonna do some work on the. We're gonna do some restoration work. Now, that's actually. I wanted to say that, too.

[37:23] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: Yeah, that's a cool thing.

[37:24] MICHAEL GAGLIO: We get to do a little bit of restoration work on some of the lands, and that's. That's a tricky thing because that requires funding and stuff. And so we have a situation that came up where we're going to, where some land was accidentally scraped and graded and stuff. And so Frontera is going to have the opportunity to get some volunteer workshops to talk about land restoration and how to promote water infiltration into the ground and do rainwater harvesting and planting out of natives and stuff. And so that's a really exciting thing that I think is going to be.

[38:02] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: So that'll be another great thing for the future, not just saving the land, but restoring lands that maybe were either bye accident or on purpose are not in their natural state.

[38:14] MICHAEL GAGLIO: Yeah, yeah. I'm looking forward to that. That's gonna be.

[38:16] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: That sounds great. Thanks, Mike. This has been great.

[38:20] MICHAEL GAGLIO: This has been a lot of fun. Cindy, thank you.

[38:22] CYNTHIA HOFFMANN: You're welcome.