Austin takes reins of Wolf River Conservancy

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

Feb. 7, 2013

Commercial real estate lawyer Stewart Austin of Glankler Brown, PLLC, has been named the new board president for the Wolf River Conservancy as of Jan. 1.

“Like most people, I was drawn to the group after taking a canoe trip, the river really sells itself once you’ve been out there and seen it,” he said. “But after I did that and got a little more involved it was a big plus that I could use some of my work skills to help a nonprofit.”

The Wolf River Conservancy is a land trust whose mission is to protect the Wolf River and its watershed, a mission that is accomplished by buying land when available and holding conservation easements.

“We’ve taken it a step further in that we not only want to protect the river and the land, but we want to promote conservation, education and recreation,” Austin said. “Those are our three main missions.”

The conservancy has protected more than 18,000 acres so far. That’s a lot of land, and handling any buying of it is what Austin has trained to do since an undergraduate studying business and real estate finance at Texas Christian University.

After school in Fort Worth, he entered the University of Alabama School of Law in 1993. “It was really more of an offshoot of business,” he said about his decision to obtain a Juris Doctorate. “I liked business, but I was intrigued by the law and luckily it came together for me doing real estate law, which is my entire practice now.”

The Memphis native, and Memphis University School alum, grew up with an affinity for the outdoors, but it escalated during his time as a clerk for Federal District Judge Daniel H. Thomas in Mobile, Ala … (Read more)