The Journey Continues: Kaare Remme
My journey this week took me across the street to my neighbor, Kaare Remme, who I consider to be an enlightened conservationist.
As a Texas A&M graduate in agriculture and the product of a cow/calf ranch in west Texas, I have always been interested in range management. His genius is combining practical agricultural and spiritual awareness.
Remme is the captain of his family’s vast land holdings in the Fort Davis area of west Texas – named the McCoy-Remme Ranches – Maddox(MRR-M) where he manages with Reid and Brian McCoy. Over the past 30 years, he has been entrusted to maintain and enhance the land and its natural processes. He has proven himself as a problem solver and thinker for this challenging task by developing and implementing geospatial and range management tools at Remme Corporation
“If you endeavor for the right reasons, you really can’t fail because it will never lack meaning or purpose," Remme said. "God wants us to be part of the environment and to care for it. You can’t do stewardship without a relationship with faith.”
Paraphrasing his friend and confidant of 26 years, Dr. Jim Kimmel, Remme quoted, "Using love as a paradigm shift in land management, the following principles based on St. Paul’s message in I Corinthians:13: 4-7 were developed:
“Patient: Accept natural process.
“Kind: Relate to our Earth, community and neighbors with love.
“Humble: Realize that we are stewards, not owners.
“Tolerant: Learn to live within Earth’s pulses, flows and occasional extravagances.
“Accommodating: Make room for Earth’s processes rather than trying to control them.
“Positive: Rejoice and celebrate life on Earth in its fullness.
“Hopeful: Keep faith in the things we do not understand.
“Resilient: Maintain our commitment to live in wisdom.”
"We follow two great commandments – to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves; including the soil, water and minerals as well as the walking, crawling, swimming and flying neighbors with whom we share this place. The challenge is to act as a manager of all that is under your care, not as the owner. It all belongs to God,” Remme said.
Another purpose that guides the management of the MRR-M lands is sustainability.
“The development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
For decades MRR-M has been managed for longterm sustainability, with the commitment that cattle take the place of native formerly migratory-grazers as integral parts of the grassland ecosystem. However, they are no longer native or migratory, and do not have hundreds of thousands of years of co-evolution with the grasslands as the native grazers had. We take the responsibility to place their grazing inputs where we can replicate the way this natural system evolved. Remme says, "The cattle are here to manage the range.”
“Grazing on our land is managed by a process called the Ranch and Management Modeling System(RMMS), based on Geographic Information Science technology that allows geospatial analysis of where grazing can take place, by what number of grazers, and for how long to prevent overgrazing and improve range health.”
To assist him in the Remme Corp daily enterprise, Remme noted three important lieutenants: Administrator Lauren Tuttle; Geographic Information Systems Analyst Dr. David Nicosia and Ranch Coordinator and Manager for 27 years Dan Mitchell.
Remme is married to Brenda McCoy and father of three children – Keith (deceased), Kara and Heather. They are members of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church.
I am awed by his life’s work for the ecology, economic and human well-being of the land. This man’s exuberance uplifted my spirit. As he said, “stewardship is taking care of something you cannot own,” and “there is more to life than how long it is.”
