CCCA Land Preservation

LAND PRESERVATION

"Increasingly the evidence suggests that people benefit so much from contact with nature that land conservation can now be viewed as a public health strategy." — Richard Louv

Landowner Outreach Initiative

Great Springs Project is more than a 100+ mile spring-to-spring trail network. We are creating vital partnerships between public agencies, community organizations, philanthropists, conservationists, and landowners. By working together, we can preserve the beauty of Central Texas and its life giving springs for generations to come.

Great Springs Project has launched our Landowner Engagement Initiative: a two-year program that will directly engage the owners of 1,400 parcels of land in our corridor towards conservation easements or conservation-based land use practices outcomes in alignment with the environmental, ecological, economic, and health benefits of Great Springs Project’s land conservation and connectivity mission. Guided by a core value of respect for private land and landowners as willing partners, GSP and its partners will work with landowners on the benefits of partnering with Great Springs Project and our conservation project partners to create a healthier, connected, and sustainable environment.

WHY LANDOWNER OUTREACH?
To accomplish our mission before 2036 - the Texas Bicentennial - Great Springs Project is working with our project partners to build 6-10 miles of trail and conserve approximately 5,000 acres every year. By engaging in concentrated landowner outreach and engagement, we are building the GSP conservation and trail connectivity pipeline for the next decade.

Landowner engagement efforts have already played a significant role in conserving remarkable properties in the GSP corridor, such as Presa Grande in northwest San Marcos. 30 years ago, the land was identified as critically important for water quality and quantity inflow to San Marcos Springs. In recent years, it was offered for sale as a developable property with hundreds of homesites. Through a multi-year effort, Great Springs Project has assured Presa Grande’s permanent protection, including over two miles of new trail, thanks to relationships based on trust, commitment, and a shared conservation and trail connectivity goal among the landowners, governmental partners, and the local community.

None of this is possible without community support and collaboration. Please read on to learn more about opportunities to volunteer, ways to give, and other joys, like where to safely bike in San Antonio. Thank you for your continued support of this good and important work. See you on the trail!

Robert Kent, associate vice president and Texas state director for Trust for Public Land, conducts a tour in a field of wild flowers on the land where the Judge Charles R. Rose Community Park will be made, on June 7, 2022 in Dallas. State Rep. Justin Holland wants to establish a permanent fund to protect more of Texas' natural spaces.(Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

Conserve Texas lands for generations to come

State Representative Justin Hollan has introduced landmark legislation in the Texas House calling for the creation of the Texas Land and Water Conservation Fund.

"The fund is a once-in-a-generation opportunity afforded to us because of the excess in our state’s Rainy Day Fund. As my colleagues and I carefully consider important priorities like infrastructure investment, we must also make a meaningful and lasting investment in Texas lands and waters.

"Our state continues to attract new people and new industry. We are blessed to have weathered tough times and continue to be one of the nation’s strongest economies and attractive places to do business. Our economic success comes in part because of the unique lands that make up Texas. I truly believe that our land is our greatest asset, and it cannot be replicated once it is lost.

"We must take bold steps to preserve the landscape and culture that makes Texas a great place to live. Texas is home to 7 of the top 15 most rapidly growing cities in the country. Research also shows that 78% of Texas counties will not have sufficient parks in the coming decades.

"Texas needs additional parks, open spaces and natural habitats to preserve our quality of life, provide food and fiber and clean water, and to support the multibillion-dollar agricultural and outdoor recreation economy.

"The Texas Land and Water Conservation Fund would provide a significant, long-term state funding source for enhanced conservation efforts across the Lone Star State. The $2 billion investment can be dedicated as either a trust fund or an endowment.

"It would provide grants for projects that support, enhance and protect state and local parks and recreation areas, working agricultural lands, water resources, wildlife habitat areas, and more. The fund could support the acquisition of land to expand state parks.

"The bill provides base eligibility guidelines for funded projects and ensures that 50% of the funds go toward the conservation of agricultural lands, water resources and wildlife habitat, while the other 50% of the funds go toward state and local parks, wildlife management areas and other public access conservation projects."

Empire, Wide and Glorious

As we celebrate one hundred years of our state parks, they are more popular than ever. But our booming population is overwhelming the state’s scarce public lands. What will the next century hold for Texas’s “best idea”?

By Rose Cahalan
April 2023

Forty-six enamel pins adorn a canvas banner hanging on my bedroom wall. Collected over a decade of camping and hiking trips, each one evokes a small but powerful memory. When I look at the red leaf that represents Lost Maples State Natural Area, I can smell cinnamon buns baking in a Dutch oven nestled in campfire coals on a chilly Hill Country morning. A grinning skeleton in an inner tube takes me back to a lazy summer day floating the Frio River at Garner State Park, not far from Lost Maples. There’s a pin depicting Enchanted Rock State Natural Area, in Fredericksburg, where my flashlight beam caught a glimpse of a ringtail cat. The image of a shorebird reminds me of shrimping in the bay at Galveston Island State Park and netting only a couple piddly catches, which we fried up in butter, nonetheless. I can still taste them.

Reflecting on these moments reminds me how lucky I am to live in Texas, where a $70 annual park pass gives me access to such an abundance of natural wonders. In our 88 state parks and natural areas, you can play nine holes of golf (Lockhart, in Central Texas), admire rock art painted four thousand years ago (Seminole Canyon, in the state’s southwest corner), or pitch your tent on a floating campsite in a marsh off the Gulf of Mexico (Sea Rim, in far southeast Texas). You can canoe through eerie canopies of Spanish moss at Caddo Lake State Park, near the Louisiana border, or tackle some of the best bouldering on the planet at El Paso’s Hueco Tanks.

The breadth and beauty of our parks, which cover more than 640,000 acres across the state, are undeniable, and we’re enjoying them more than ever. The number of visitors surged by 37 percent from 2020 to 2021, when it hit a record high of almost 10 million. Some of that spike was a temporary result of the pandemic shutdowns, which led stir-crazy Texans to seek refuge outdoors, but most of it has been sustained. Last year, 9.6 million day-trippers and campers flocked to the parks.

But as the state system celebrates its centennial this year, the problems are clear. With more than 30 million residents (and growing by about 1,000 newcomers a day), Texas is the second-most populous state, but it has less public land than almost any other. (Only Kansas and Nebraska have a lower percentage of public land as total acreage.) More than 96 percent of Texas is privately owned, compared with 49 percent in California. Snagging a weekend camping spot or even a day pass at the most popular parks is now a feat akin to scoring Beyoncé tickets. Texas Parks and Wildlife has been chronically underfunded, a problem that was thrown into stark relief as the state’s population boomed over the past two decades. In 2019 TPWD estimated the cost of addressing its maintenance backlog—crumbling buildings, potholed roads—at $781 million.

Somehow, TPWD must accommodate all its new visitors while still preserving and protecting vulnerable animals, plants, and ecosystems. In a 2001 report commissioned by the agency, Texas Tech University researchers found that the state would need to add 1.2 million more acres of parkland by 2030 merely to keep up with population growth. Texas is nowhere close to that goal, having added only about 14,000 acres across five new parks over the past twenty years. That number will rise by about 70,000 acres thanks to five new parks and natural areas (and one expansion) that are set to welcome visitors within the next eleven years. Soaring real estate prices have made acquiring new parkland, which has always been a logistical nightmare, more challenging than ever before. David Yoskowitz, who became TPWD’s executive director in November, says addressing this problem is his main priority. “In 2050, by the most aggressive numbers, we’ll have twenty-five million more people in the state,” he says. “Demand for our natural areas is already high, and we’re having a tough time meeting that.”

Writer Wallace Stegner famously called the national parks America’s “best idea,” arguing that nothing is more democratic than protecting the wild places that belong to all of us. It’s a similar sentiment that can be felt when belting out our state song, “Texas, Our Texas” (“O Empire wide and glorious, You stand supremely blest”). Recently, I went on a leisurely hike at McKinney Falls State Park, near my home in Austin, with my six-month-old son babbling happily in a carrier on my chest. At one point, both of us paused to look up as a red-tailed hawk swooped over our heads. How, I wondered, do we protect what we have while ensuring that all of us, including new Texans like my son, can access and enjoy it?

The stone water towerand observation deckbuilt by the Civilian Conservation Corps in Mother Neff State Park, between Waco and Temple. Earl Nottingham/Courtesy of TPWD

Isabella Neff and son Pat, a future governor of Texas. Courtesy of TPWD

The birthplace of the Texas parks system, Mother Neff State Park, is unremarkable at first glance—no hidden waterfalls, majestic vistas, or exotic creatures. Its four hundred acres are tucked away in a part of Texas not known for its natural beauty, about halfway between Waco and Temple off Interstate 35. The Leon River—a muddy, homely tributary of the Brazos River—meanders through this region when it’s not clogged up with logjams. Fifteen minutes from the park is a town called Flat, which more or less sums things up.

But on the cold and drizzly December morning when I visited, it didn’t take me long to uncover the park’s delights. The plants in the pollinator garden were wearing their Christmas best: crimson blooms of Turk’s-cap and cherry sage added a dash of color to the winter landscape, and coralberry bushes were strung with the plump, bright berries that are a favorite snack of thrushes and cedar waxwings. Silver bluestem, one of the dozens of native prairie grasses that thrive here, rippled in the wind. A white-tailed deer munched on some, blinking at me as I walked by.

With a “Welcome to Mother Neff,” Melissa Chadwick, the soft-spoken park superintendent, invited me to climb into her white pickup for a tour. An avid birder, she was wearing wooden cardinal earrings that jostled with each bump in the road. We passed a playground, complete with a giant armadillo for kids to climb on (a favorite of Chadwick’s eight-year-old daughter), and entered the forest that occupies about half of the park. Flocks of jewel-toned painted buntings alight here in the summer. Despite its modest size, the park encompasses three geographic zones: the prairie, limestone escarpment and canyons, and bottomland in the Leon River floodplain, where a large, graceful pavilion called the Rock Tabernacle stands.

In this spot, under shady pecan trees, the Neff family hosted picnics from the late 1800s through the early 1900s. Isabella “Mother” Neff and her husband, Noah, had married in Virginia before seeking their fortune in Texas, where they had nine children and farmed cotton and subsistence crops. After Noah and two of the children died of typhoid fever, Isabella opened some of the family land to visitors. This six-mile stretch of riverbank became known as Neff Park, where, starting in 1925, hundreds of Texans would come for culture-based social gatherings called chautauquas—a trend sweeping the nation at the time that brought enriching programming to small towns. (At one such event here in 1929, the entertainment included a lecture on “The Passing of the Texas Cowboy” and a performance by the Ukulele Yodelers.)

Isabella was a successful farmer, and over time, the family’s fortunes grew. When she died, in 1921, she left Neff Park to the community for “religious, educational, fraternal, and political purposes.” That same year, her youngest son, Pat, a prominent lawyer, began his first term as governor. Inspired by his mother’s generosity, he made the establishment of a state parks system a top goal. Neff was one of the first Texas politicians to campaign by car, putting six thousand miles on his Model T while crisscrossing the state. Once elected, he continued his travels—on one 1924 trip, he toured 24 proposed park sites in eighteen counties, giving as many as six speeches per day. “The people should have these breathing spots, where they can enjoy nature in stream and tree, in rock and rill,” he said in 1922. “These are valuable things in this world that do not bear the dollar mark.”

On that last point, the legislature agreed, though maybe not quite the way Neff intended. In 1923, at his urging, lawmakers created the State Parks Board, which later became TPWD. But they refused to fund the new agency, forcing it to rely heavily on philanthropy and to generate its own revenue—a model that, to a lesser extent, holds today. All parkland had to be donated; not one dollar was appropriated for park operations or staff. The attitude echoed a sentiment first expressed by Tyler representative E. W. Smith in 1893, when the Daughters of the Republic of Texas begged lawmakers to fund the first state park, at San Jacinto. “Texas is not now in the mood, nor in the proper financial condition, to undertake such work,” Smith scoffed.

In Texas the land rolls on forever, but almost all of it is gated off.

If Texas wasn’t in the mood to pay for parks in 1893, it really wasn’t in the mood in 1929, when the Great Depression hit. But in the throes of the economic crisis, the nascent state and national parks systems got an unexpected boost: the Civilian Conservation Corps, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ingenious idea to get Americans back to work building roads, cabins, and other structures in the parks as well as planting trees and improving conservation efforts. From 1933 to 1942, the program sent three million young men to public land nationwide; 50,000 of them served in Texas. As we drove through Mother Neff’s campground, Chadwick pointed out a marker on the spot where their barracks stood. “There were close to three hundred CCC men here,” she says. The work they did by hand—carving wooden furniture, constructing cabins, installing iron railings—has stood the test of time. The CCC’s imprint is found across the state parks, including at one of the system’s jewels, the gleaming Indian Lodge, in Davis Mountains State Park, in Fort Davis. Each of its adobe bricks was smoothed into shape and dried in the desert sun.

Steering her pickup back toward the visitors center, Chadwick listed the many challenges facing Mother Neff. Drought, floods, and logjams necessitate constant repairs; a portion of the park remains closed as a result. Invasive weeds threaten to choke out native grasses.

As superintendent, Chadwick is essentially the mayor of a small town, managing a staff of seven and planning events and budgets, even making sure her park hosts (the volunteers who staff the campgrounds) have cleaning supplies for the bathrooms. When the pandemic brought a surge in visitors, it became even harder to keep up. The work remains fulfilling, though. “There’s so much healing in nature,” she says. “Mother Neff invited the community out, and we still try to—oh, look!” She pointed to a hummingbird in a nearby branch, a broad-tailed species rarely spotted here in winter. We sat in blissful silence, watching the small blur of iridescent green.

The Rio Grande in Big Bend Ranch State Park. Photograph by Nick Simonite.

It is increasingly hard to find quietude in marquee destinations such as Enchanted Rock and Garner. If you truly want to get lost in the wild, your best bet is to head west, to Big Bend Ranch State Park, miles from anywhere in the northern Chihuahuan Desert. At 313,000 acres, it’s by far our biggest state park, and also one of the least visited. On a trip there a few summers ago, my husband, Chris, and I had the sprawling campground to ourselves. (The ranger who checked us in said he hadn’t met another visitor all day and seemed generally starved for human contact.) We hiked the otherworldly Closed Canyon, its awe-inspiring cathedral walls soaring as high as 150 feet. This slot canyon has no trail, per se, just a narrow space to wend your way between the rocks. A tarantula was hanging out, unmoving, in one crevice; in another, a desert marigold bloomed. Having just learned from our new ranger friend that this canyon was 28 million years old, I felt very small, like one of the grasshoppers buzzing around my boots. The sensation returned in the wee hours of the next morning, when Chris, an astronomy buff, woke me at 2 a.m. to watch the Perseid meteor shower. Whatever worries I’d brought from home shrank to nothing as we cozied up in our hammock, watching star after star zip across the sky.

The following day, during the nine-hour drive home, a never-ending procession of gates and fences passed by my car window, demarcating the massive private ranches that much of rural Texas is parceled into. When I first moved here after growing up in Pennsylvania, I was taken aback by all those forbidding gates and “KEEP OUT” signs (and by the bizarrely common sight of zebras, ostriches, and antelope wandering on the other side of the fence). In Texas the land rolls on forever, but almost all of it is gated off.

Understanding why means going back to 1844, when Texas submitted a treaty of annexation to join the Union. The soon-to-be-state had $10 million of debt. Texans hoped the federal government would cancel that in exchange for 175 million acres of land, but Congress rejected the proposal. When Texas officially became the twenty-eighth state the following year, a joint resolution spelled out the terms: the Lone Star State would keep both its debt and its public land. This was highly unusual. Up to that point, every other state, other than the thirteen colonies, had given land to the federal government upon joining the Union. Congress eventually agreed to cancel Texas’s debt in exchange for territory outside of the state’s borders, but the other half of the deal didn’t change. Texas then sold most of its land to settlers. As a result of this historical oddity, creating new state parks has always been a challenge—one that can be met only by persuading landowners to donate their acreage or buying it from them at a competitive price.

Jeff Francell knows this problem well. As the director of land protection at the Texas chapter of the Nature Conservancy, he’s spent decades cutting deals with landowners. The nonprofit has long helped TPWD identify and buy acreage to turn into parks. This is how Enchanted Rock, one of the most popular natural areas in the system, with more than 300,000 visitors a year, came to be in 1984. Over his career, he has seen attitudes about the environment change. Landowners are more conservation-minded these days, he says.

“Twenty years ago, Texans thought the land was limitless,” Francell says. “With the growth [in population] we’ve seen, even rural landowners understand that our wide-open spaces are a finite resource.” This is in part because the cost of land has skyrocketed, making it harder for conservationists to make a winning bid. “Prices shot up during the pandemic, and when we had something to offer, it often wasn’t enough,” he adds. The latest victim of this dilemma (and of sprawling development in North Texas) is Fairfield Lake State Park, southeast of Dallas, which closed this February after landowner Vistra Corp. rejected TPWD’s efforts to retain or buy out the longtime lease and instead sold the land to a developer of luxury homes. Just last year, a record 82,000 visitors enjoyed the 47-year-old park, known for its fishing and trails.
Thankfully, Fairfield Lake is an outlier. Francell and his fellow environmentalists have a rousing success story in the Palo Pinto Mountains, a bucolic 4,871-acre tract eighty miles west of Fort Worth that is set to open late this year. The $7 million price tag for the Palo Pinto property was just the first hurdle. “Buying the land is often the cheapest part of the process,” Francell points out. Building roads, trails, wastewater systems, and other infrastructure adds to the bill. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation, TPWD’s philanthropic nonprofit, called on private donors to help raise an impressive $9 million for Palo Pinto.

Another new park, Powderhorn, is set to open in 2029. One of the biggest conservation projects in state history, the huge sanctuary of Powderhorn Ranch includes 17,000 acres on the coast of Matagorda Bay. A coalition of nonprofits and donors joined TPWD in raising money for Powderhorn, which cost an unprecedented $50 million—the largest amount ever raised for a conservation land acquisition in Texas. A significant portion of those funds came from fines that BP and Transocean paid after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, in 2010. The majority of the parkland, some 15,000 acres, is a wildlife-management area that’s off-limits to the public except for occasional tours. In the remaining 2,000 acres, fishing, camping, and kayaking opportunities will abound. This stretch of coastal prairie is also a hot spot for migrating waterfowl, so it’s likely to be a major draw for birders.

Axis deer at Powderhorn Ranch. Photograph by Jerod Foster.

A salt marsh at Powderhorn Ranch, on the coast of Matagorda Bay, which will open as a state park in 2029. Photograph by Jerod Foster.

In the more immediate pipeline are other projects drawing on a mix of public and private funding. First up is an expansion of Devils River State Natural Area, a legendary paddling destination in Southwest Texas with turquoise waters, which is set to open next year. In 2026 the new Albert and Bessie Kronkosky State Natural Area, northwest of San Antonio, will give the booming Hill Country region a much-needed outlet. The Kronkoskys, a San Antonio couple who avoided the limelight, left more than 3,700 hilly acres just west of Boerne to the state in their wills. Visitors might catch glimpses of the endangered golden-cheeked warbler or the Texas spring salamander. In West Texas, Chinati Mountains State Natural Area will add almost 39,000 pristine acres northwest of Big Bend Ranch in 2032. Finally, the 1,700-acre Davis Hill State Natural Area, expected to open in 2034, will include a white-sand beach along the Trinity River, less than an hour east of Houston.
“All these places will be special,” says Rodney Franklin, TPWD’s director of state parks. “The diversity of the opportunities that will be offered to our folks—that’s what’s exciting to me.” Franklin has been rising through the ranks since joining the agency at the age of sixteen, when he took a summer job mowing, painting, and giving tours at the Sam Bell Maxey House historic site, in his East Texas hometown of Paris. He ran me through the numbers: his annual budget is $100 million for 88 parks, encompassing 640,000 acres and 1,400 employees. With nearly 10 million people now visiting the parks each year, his team struggles mightily to make room for them all. He frequently hears complaints about the difficulty of reserving a campsite or a day pass and points to the agency’s new Camping This Weekend online tool, designed to help travelers find last-minute spots.

Franklin also urges Texans to think beyond well-known destinations and Instagrammable vistas. “We have a lot of people coming to a few of our highly visited parks,” he says, noting that the most popular, Garner, draws crowds of more than half a million annually. “I ask folks, ‘Have you explored the possibility of going to Lake Bob Sandlin [near Pittsburg], Palmetto [near Gonzales], or Daingerfield [near Texarkana]?’ You might discover a new favorite place, if you do a little exploring.”
Texas has a state park for every age, interest, and ability level. These days, with a baby in tow, I’ve enjoyed my easy hikes at McKinney Falls, twenty minutes from my house. At the TPWD headquarters there, I met up with Yoskowitz, who’d recently finished his first month on the job as executive director. An economist by training, he spent most of his career in Corpus Christi, at Texas A&M’s Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, and is an avid fisherman who’s passionate about aquatic issues. Drought and flooding, as well as the impact of climate change on flora and fauna such as mangroves and whooping cranes, are frequently on his mind. “It’s important for Texas to start thinking of itself as a coastal state, rather than a state with a coast,” Yoskowitz says.

Despite the challenges he faces in his new role, he has reason to be optimistic about the future. In 2019, by an unprecedented 88 percent margin, Texas voters passed a constitutional amendment to close a loophole in the sporting goods sales tax. Parks were always supposed to get 94 percent of tax revenue from the sale of fishing rods, basketballs, and the like (although from 1996 to 2007, this was capped at $32 million a year). But lawmakers often spent the money on other things, resulting in that $781 million maintenance backlog. Four years after Proposition 5 passed, TPWD is still chipping away at those long-delayed projects, but the overall picture is “tremendously better,” Yoskowitz says. For decades, park rangers scrambled to keep the lights on; now they can dream bigger.

Political support for those dreams appears to be growing. In a February speech, Governor Greg Abbott called for Texas to invest in new parkland. “Yes, we want Texas to grow. Yes, we want Texas to prosper,” Abbott said. “But we can do that while at the very same time conserving the beautiful parks that we have and adding to them to make Texas even more appealing to future generations.” A bipartisan group is pushing for lawmakers to spend $1 billion of the $33 billion budget surplus on parkland acquisition; senator Tan Parker, a Republican from Flower Mound, was expected to file a bill that would dedicate those funds. “It’s pretty rare for us to agree with Governor Abbott, but we’ll take it,” says Luke Metzger, the executive director of Environment Texas, adding that the campaign has a broad range of supporters including actor Ethan Hawke and Trump donor Doug Deason. “The stars are aligning for Texas to make a big investment.”

The Lighthouse rock formation in Palo Duro Canyon State Park. Photograph by Kenny Braun.

It was pitch dark when Chris and I arrived at Palo Duro Canyon State Park, thirty miles south of Amarillo, for our first post-baby getaway. An owl hooted in the distance as we crunched our way down a gravel path to our lodging in the canyon, which is the nation’s second largest after the Grand Canyon. A paved road built by the CCC takes vehicles right to the bottom, where you can choose from a slate of options ranging from $12-a-night campsites to $300-a-night glamping cabins. We splurged on the latter. The hot breakfast, ice cream, and s’mores kit provided by the nearby trading post all felt luxurious, but the stunning view of the canyon walls from our private porch was definitely the best feature. Only Garner sees more visitors than Palo Duro, though most of the canyon’s 442,000 annual visitors are from outside the state, and the majority come in the summer. One of the draws for those vacationers is TEXAS, a beloved and corny 58-year-old tradition in which local actors stage a live musical history at an outdoor amphitheater.

During our January visit, the campground was empty. Despite the comfortable bed and cozy firelight, it took me a while to fall asleep. Near midnight, I crept out to the porch and saw that the clouds had drifted away. There were so many stars that a flashlight was unnecessary. Through binoculars, I spotted a faint green smudge in the northern sky: the comet ZTF, which was making its first trip over Earth in 50,000 years. I stared at the smudge and sipped a cup of peppermint tea, feeling the same comforting sense of cosmic insignificance that had come over me in Big Bend Ranch years earlier.

“Last night I loved the starlight—the dark—the wind and the miles and miles of the thin strip of dark that is land—it was wonderfully big,” the artist Georgia O’Keeffe wrote in a 1916 letter. She spent a few years near Palo Duro, teaching in the nearby town of Canyon and painting the landscape in her spare time. Feeling wonderfully small, I finished my tea, went inside, and slept dreamlessly until 10 a.m.

The Little Red Camping Area at Caprock Canyons State Park. Photograph by Hayden Spears.

The next day, after a windy, invigorating six-mile hike on the famous Lighthouse Trail, we drove to Caprock Canyons State Park, passing through tiny Happy (motto: “The Town Without a Frown”). Caprock is home to the official state bison herd, which comprises a couple hundred of the last living southern plains bison. From the car, I watched one scratch its belly on a post by the campground, closing its eyes in bliss like a house cat. Caprock is one of the state’s most remote and rugged parks, with temperatures that can hit triple digits by May. Office manager Rebecca Birkenfeld says that her team performs more than three hundred wilderness rescues per year, most of them heat-related. “During the pandemic, our rescues were up one hundred percent,” she says. “It was almost like people went out with reckless abandon.” (Big Bend Ranch also reported a similar increase in the number of rescues from 2019 to 2020, as novices headed into the backcountry; Enchanted Rock experienced a 49 percent rise in the same period.) Birkenfeld worries that too many inexperienced hikers now rely on their phones to navigate. “I’ve had college kids ask me what a map is,” she says.

Chris and I set out to hike Birkenfeld’s favorite trail, the Upper South Prong. We passed under sandstone cliffs and hoodoos, which were a more intense red than at Palo Duro, and stopped to marvel at shimmery veins of satin spar gypsum, a white stone soft enough to crumble in our palms. Three miles in, we rested in an arroyo, laughing as we ate a weird lunch of beef jerky and Snapple we’d picked up from the gas station outside the park.

A century after Pat Neff called for the creation of a state parks system to give Texans “breathing spots,” the wilderness has undoubtedly become a little less wild and a lot more crowded. But it’s still possible to find quiet spaces. Sitting with snacks in hand, Chris and I daydreamed about future trips before falling into a companionable silence. On the way out, I stopped at the visitors center to add a bison pin to my collection.

The Time to Conserve Land is Now

By Annalisa Peace for the New Braunfels Herald Zeitung
Dec 24, 2022

The Edwards Aquifer, source of Comal Springs, is recognized as one of the most prolific karst aquifer systems in the world. Storm water enters and travels through the system with amazing speed, allowing for rapid recharge of this elegant water source.

However, this porosity and rapid channel flow also makes the Edwards extremely vulnerable to contamination. According to the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality, “Pollutants on and near the surface can directly enter the aquifer with little natural attenuation and travel long distances in a relatively short period of time.”

Although there are state and local regulations in place to protect the Edwards Aquifer, reporting shows that regulations are not sufficient to prevent declines in water quality. Preserving land on the recharge zone in its natural state is the most surefire method of protecting this valuable water supply. Towards this end, the cities of Austin and San Antonio, along with counties Travis, Hays, and most recently, Kendall have all allocated public funds to purchase land and conservation easements within the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone.

The Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance and the above mentioned local governments believe that landowners should be compensated by the public for providing the ecosystem services we all rely on to preserve and sustainably manage our natural resources. The various programs, such as San Antonio’s Edwards Aquifer Protection program, have proven highly successful in pairing willing land owners with public funding to preserve approximately 6% of the Recharge Zone.

With unprecedented growth in the Edwards region, especially in Comal County, opportunities to preserve land are rapidly disappearing. We are caught in a vicious cycle where demand inflates the price of land, which leads to higher density developments and a more urbanized landscape.

We have found, however, that there are landowners who welcome the opportunity to preserve the land they love in perpetuity while

continuing to live and work on their property through the sale of development rights.

It is to our advantage to act quickly to secure park land and conservation easements, not only as it relates to preserving water quality, but to mitigate the very real threats of flash floods. Land on the recharge zone is especially efficient at soaking up stormwater. Conserving this land can go a far way in negating the need for costly drainage infrastructure and loss of property due to flood damage.

The non-point source pollution of stormwater runoff contaminated by urban development, increased volumes of waste water discharges from new treatment plants, and the proliferation of on-site sewage facilities now threaten to diminish the quality of Comal County’s rivers, springs and streams. Waterways bordered by high density suburban development are far more likely to become impaired to the point that they are no longer suitable for contact recreation.

Comal County and the City of New Braunfels benefit greatly from sales tax income and profits generated by recreational tourism, especially from the thousands who visit to tube down the Comal and Guadalupe rivers. Imagine the impact to recreational businesses if Comal Springs were to be temporarily closed due to high bacterial counts, as has happened twice at Austin’s Barton Springs.

Such a future is not inevitable. We at the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance believe that investing in green infrastructure in the form of land preservation not only provides the most cost effective means of protecting our water resources and diminishing flooding, but is an essential component of preserving the quality of life, safety, and economic security of the citizens of Comal County. We must move forward now to allocate public funds and plan for honest and effective application of these funds to preserving land where it will do the most good.

Kristen Rothstein often walks the trails of the property near her house to get exercise and connect with the outdoors. Credit: Scott Ball / San Antonio Report

Proposed rezoning of wooded, private land for townhomes near park roils neighbors

By Shari Biediger
October 13, 2022

The undeveloped, narrow strip of land in northwest San Antonio has all the makings of a park — hiking trails, sweeping vistas, shade trees and native plants, critters, and other wildlife.

There are fossils to be discovered, heritage oaks to behold, even a not-so-secret treehouse. Online, a detailed trail map shows how the well-worn trails connect to the 202-acre O.P. Schnabel Park and the Leon Creek Greenway.

But the 11-acre hilly and wooded parcel in the 7500 block of Prue Road north of Leon Valley is not a public park. It’s private land zoned for single-family residential homes.

In September, the owner, a corporation formed in January by Sankar Samineni and Vamsidhar Mukkamala as Parkview at Prue LLC, asked the City of San Antonio to rezone the property to allow for a townhome development.

The nearby residents of the Prue Bend and Oak Bluff neighborhoods who over the years grew accustomed to using the trails for recreation and to access the adjacent city parkland are fighting to stop it.

The Prue Bend neighborhood sits alongside an 11-acre undeveloped property. Credit: Scott Ball / San Antonio Report

In addition to starting an online petition and rallying their neighbors on social media, several homeowners in the area have spoken against the rezoning at recent meetings of the city’s Historic and Design Review Commission, the Parks and Recreation Board, the Linear Creek Parks Advisory Board and the Zoning Commission.

They have called city departments, written a letter to the mayor and met with a representative from the District 8 City Council office. They posted their own signs alongside the official zoning notifications on the property letting passersby know what’s happening.

“The community has always wanted it to just remain a park and that’s how the community has been using it,” said Kristen Rothstein, who lives in the Prue Bend neighborhood. “It’s such an unusual terrain that I can’t even see how they can develop it with their plans.”

A site plan included with the rezoning request shows rows of townhomes, 60 units in all, or five per acre. A recently published website promoting the new neighborhood states there will be 56 units with the south section of the property close to the park left undeveloped.

The Parkview at Prue LLC zoning site plan includes 60 townhome units. Credit: Courtesy / RCE

The property currently is zoned R-6 (residential single-family district) which allows for the development of detached, single-family dwellings with a minimum lot size of 6,000 square feet and a minimum lot width of 50 feet.

The owner initally submitted a request to the Zoning Commission asking for a change to PUD R-4. PUD stands for Planned Unit Development and the requested zoning designation would allow for greater density than single-family zoning and reduced setbacks.

At the Sept. 20 commission meeting, the owners’ representative asked for a continuance to Oct. 18.

But on Monday, attorneys with Killen, Griffin and Farrimond, who represent the owners, told Rothstein in an email that the case was being postponed due to “a variety of factors,” including giving the owners more time to meet with the community and discuss the proposed development.

Those meetings will happen this week and next, said attorney Ashley Farrimond, in an email to the San Antonio Report on Wednesday.

The owners are also planning to amend the zoning request to PUD R-5, she said, “which has a lower maximum density per acre and is the same base zoning district as some of the neighborhoods nearby.” That change requires re-notifying the neighbors, per city ordinance.

Prue Bend homeowners say they hope the owners are flexible and open to their feedback in the meetings, but that they still want to see the area added to the city’s roster of green spaces.

“I wouldn’t be fighting it so hard if it wasn’t such a special piece of land,” Rothstein said. “Because when you go out there and you start imagining what they’re going to do, they’re just going to destroy something that is so unique.”

Kristen Rothstein holds a fossilized rock found on the Prue Road property. Credit: Scott Ball / San Antonio Report

Rothstein moved into the area in February 2020 and, with access to the wooded tract of land through a gate at the end of her street, began hiking there daily during the pandemic, often seeing her neighbors there.

She’s now familiar with every bit of the terrain and its mossy timbers, where to find the bed of fossils, a babbling brook and the best views from atop massive boulders and steep cliffs. She recalls the day she spotted a monarch butterfly while on a walk.

It all makes her wonder why the city has not acquired the land for a park before now. “This is not a ‘not in my backyard’ [NIMBY] case, this is actually something special that the community stands to lose,” she said.

The city acquired 100 acres of land to expand O.P. Schnabel Park through the 2017 bond, but there are no plans to acquire more parcels, said Connie Swain, marketing manager for the Parks and Recreation Department. Funds from the 2022 bond will be used to build recreational amenities for the park expansion.

Prue Bend resident Andrew Craig told zoning commissioners in September that he worries the proposed development also could affect drainage.

“We’re concerned that development of additional asphalt and structure development is going to cause flooding concerns for our neighbors who live along that area,” he said.

Neighbors also have raised concerns about road safety, homeowner privacy and the environment — everything from the flora and fauna to the aquifer.

The property is rated as zone 2 by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service as potential critical habitat for endangered karst invertebrates. Zone 2 means no actual karst invertebrates have been spotted but the land is favorable for the beetles and arachnids that are found in karst landscapes.

It could also be a habitat for the endangered golden-cheeked warbler, said Clay Thompson, director of conservation and stewardship at the urban land trust Greenspaces Alliance.

“There are a couple of overlapping concerns with the property,” Thompson said. “There’s this NIMBY component — folks thought that this was a park but it’s not — and the private landowner has a need to see return on his investment.”

He said there is a question about whether the southern end of the property benefits the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone because the Edwards Aquifer Recharge is on O.P. Schnabel Park. He hopes to meet with the attorneys to discuss a conservation easement on part of the property.

Kristen Rothstein points to a property map of the 11-acre parcel. Credit: Scott Ball / San Antonio Report

If the owner agrees, the property might be eligible for the city’s Edwards Aquifer Protection Program, said Phillip Covington, special projects manager for the program, which acquires land over the sensitive aquifer recharge zone to protect the quality and quantity of the water recharging into the aquifer.

Under the program, owners maintain ownership of their land, but their development rights are bought at 50% to 60% of the fair market value. The 11.7-acre Prue Road property was last assessed at $624,060, according to tax records, up from $252,520 three years ago.

Covington visited the property in mid-September. “It definitely has potential certainly for recreation in the future and preservation of habitat and protection of the aquifer, too, I suspect,” he said, adding also that a geological study would need to be conducted.

“The landowner would have to be willing to consider selling the property or conserving it through an easement,” Covington said. “We don’t have eminent domain or anything like that.”

Farrimond said the owners’ plan is to develop the property as a residential community, “but we are happy to communicate with and listen to groups that reach out.”

On Sept. 28, Laura Garza, the district and zoning director in District 8 Councilman Manny Pelaez’s office, also toured the property with neighbors.

Following that visit, a city spokeswoman told the San Antonio Report Pelaez can’t comment on the issue until the zoning commission makes a recommendation. (The area has been redistricted to City Council District 7, but the matter is being overseen by District 8 until May 2023.)

There are no defined boundaries between the trails in O.P. Schnabel and the Prue Road property and no signs warning against trespassing. Park visitors are likely unaware they have entered private property when using the trails to hike or bike.

About 60 miles of authorized mountain biking trails in San Antonio have been mapped by the mountain biking group STORM, which has an agreement with the Parks and Recreation Department to build and maintain bike trails in some parks and greenways.

The group’s president, Jeff Jordan, said he contacted the department director, Homer Garcia, to make him aware of the issues with the Prue Road property.

But this is not the first time trails that were created on private property have been lost to development, Jordan said.

Unauthorized trails once existed near Southside Lions Park and close to an elementary school and the Salado Creek Greenway on North Loop 1604. In both cases, the land became housing developments.

Jordan said it would be a shame to lose the trails on the Prue Road property because they are fun to ride and it’s a nicely secluded space in the middle of a developed area. But nobody got permission to build them.

“It is private property … and somebody purchased it to develop those townhomes,” he said. “So it’s kind of mixed feelings.”
Rothstein said it was only through the rezoning request and the posted signs that she learned the land was not part of the park or a neighborhood amenity. But anyone who sees it in person would think the same thing, in her view.

“If you look at Google Maps, it just seems like a field,” she said. “You don’t know that it’s actually like this incredible terrain and microclimate.”

On Tuesday, District 7 Councilwoman Ana Sandoval announced that work will start this winter to redesign the entrance to O.P. Schnabel Park to improve safety and mobility.

Spring in Texas: Why Land Preservation is so Important

Texas Hill Country: Rolling Hills or Empty Moonscape?

By Milann Guckian
January 22, 2022

I am Milann Guckian, president of Preserve our Hill Country Environment. This is not the job I asked for or wanted in retirement but one I felt I must undertake.

I’ve always known I wanted to come back to Central Texas to live out my days. Born in Lockhart, my family’s roots are embedded here. We had a vacation home on Canyon Lake where I spent many a day relishing the beauty of the hills, the rivers and lakes, the wildlife, and the peacefulness that came with these natural wonders.

In 1996, we found our little slice of paradise here in Comal County. We purchased five acres of land surrounded by all that I had come to associate with the Hill Country. We would be nestled amongst oak, cedar, and elm trees with an abundance of wildlife, birds, bats, and insects. Our neighbors to the southeast were our best friends, to the north-northeast sat a 600-acre family homestead and to the west-northwest sat the beautiful White Ranch.

We planned, we scrimped, we saved and in 2016 we completed construction of our forever home. Retirement came in 2017 and we left the coast for our dream home. but with the move came word that White Ranch had been sold to Blue Pine Holdings, Inc. Turns out that Blue Pine is a shell company owned by Vulcan Construction Materials, LLC., and they have plans to turn White Ranch into a quarry.

White Ranch, 1500 acres (2.3 square miles) of pristine Texas Hill Country rangeland, sits in the middle of Comal County amidst caves, rivers and streams, wildlife, and fauna. The ranch sits under the migratory paths of bats, monarch butterflies and whooping cranes. Numerous legacy ranches and homesteads are nearby along with Indian remains and artifacts on neighboring properties and in adjacent caves.

The property extends southwest nearly three miles from the corner of State Highway 46 and Farm-to-Market 3009. This land is one of the largest pieces of undeveloped property in the county and is in unincorporated territory midway between New Braunfels and Bulverde. Of the utmost concern, White Ranch rests entirely over the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone (EARZ), and is unfortunately, in the crosshairs of the aggregate production operation (APO) industry in Texas.

To understand the concerns of a quarry in the middle of the EARZ and how this will affect the Hill Country, Comal County, and New Braunfels, there needs to be a basic understanding of how the aquifer system works. Simply, we live on karst. Comal County is one of many counties that makes up the Balcones Escarpment in Texas. The escarpment is a karst formation. Karst is a terrain formed by dissolution of bedrock — in our area, this bedrock is limestone. The common features of limestone bedrock are sinkholes, caves, underground streams, and large streams or aquifers. Precipitation provides the groundwater that feeds the karst aquifer system.

Karst is fractured and the millions of cracks and crevices throughout the limestone captures water, and over time, creates conduits. As the conduits enlarge, capturing more water, they can grow at ever-increasing rates until large enough for human entry. This is how Natural Bridge Caverns and Bracken Bat Cave were formed.

The water continues through these conduits to the underground streams or aquifers. Through the faults in the karst, water can then be carried to artesian springs. Prime example, the largest artesian spring in Texas is here in New Braunfels; Comal Springs.

Not only does White Ranch sit atop the EARZ but the West Fork Dry Comal Creek runs through it, converging downstream with the Dry Comal Creek before merging with the Comal River in New Braunfels. The Comal River is fed by springs from the Edwards Aquifer and is home to several endangered species. The clear, temperate waters of the Comal are widely used for recreational swimming and tubing activities before discharging into the Guadalupe River. Dry Comal Creek and Comal River are essential natural resources in Comal County, supporting economic development and recreation in the city, as well as agricultural operations and wildlife throughout the area.

The portion of the West Fork Dry Comal Creek that runs through White Ranch is the only section of the Dry Comal Creek and Comal River watersheds that is not polluted.

In 2010, TCEQ listed the Dry Comal Creek for impairment to its designated contact recreational use due to elevated Escherichia coli (E. coli) concentrations.

Each of these water systems has a bearing on the other. The Dry Comal Creek and Comal River watersheds are also experiencing rapid urbanization, which adds another basis of pollution. Karst is vulnerable to pollution and the relationship between its many features —creeks, streams, aquifers, and caves—are complicated.

Comal County has numerous waterways — Dry Comal, Cibolo, Rebecca, and Honey creeks; Comal and Guadalupe rivers; Comal and Hueco springs, the Trinity and Edwards aquifers; and Canyon Lake.

If any of these water sources becomes polluted or is irreparably harmed, the others are in danger as well.

White Ranch, by its very location, is a notable component of the EARZ, and the Dry Comal Creek and Comal River drainage basins. A quarry sitting in the middle of all these water resources would present numerous challenges to these many interlinked systems, leaving our community exposed to water quality and quantity sustainability issues.

In 2017, Vulcan applied for an air quality permit with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). Area residents banded together to create an all-volunteer grassroots organization to contest the scientific and factual validity of the permit. Preserve Our Hill Country Environment (PHCE)and PHCE Foundation DBA Stop 3009 Vulcan Quarry and Friends of Dry Comal Creek were born.

February 27, 2018, TCEQ held a Public Meeting at the New Braunfels Civic/Convention Center. Over 500 residents, local and state leadership, and media showed up to support our efforts, voice their concerns and submit public comment for the permanent record.

December 2018, TCEQ granted our requests for a Contested Case Hearing (CCH) with the State Office of Administrative Hearings (SOAH).

March 6, 2019, SOAH Preliminary Hearing. There was standing room only in the Comal County Courthouse when the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) extended the affected party boundary from one to five miles and granted AP status to all who had requested it.

June 2019, the Contested Case Hearing, lasting 3 days, was held in Austin. In August, the ALJ released a recommendation to TCEQ granting the air permit.

November 2019, TCEQ Commissioner’s granted the air permit. We filed a motion for rehearing on the permit citing the judge’s lack of consideration on the impact that the quarry would have on air pollution, increased truck traffic, decreased property values, endangered water quantity and quality, and other environmental issues. Also cited was the claim to “trade secret” allowed by the ALJ on Vulcan’s composite core sample used to determine silica content of the mining materials. The rehearing was not granted.

February 2020, we sued TCEQ in Travis County District Court. We asked the state to reevaluate the permit, noting that the agency ignored important environmental data and made legal errors when it approved the quarry in November 2019.

December 8, 2020, Hearing presided over by Judge Maya Guerra Gamble. Friends of Dry Comal Creek, Stop 3009 Vulcan Quarry v. Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and Vulcan Construction Materials, LLC.

March 6, 2021, Judge Gamble struck down Vulcan’s air permit remanding the permit back to TCEQ. In April, TCEQ and Vulcan appealed that decision to the Third Court of Appeals.

Long story short, we followed the arcane “set to fail” process set forth by TCEQ and now the property’s future is in the hands of Texas courts. TCEQ stood with industry over citizens and issued the permit without adequately considering the impacts on the environment, our natural resources, and the health of the community, as required by state law.

Aggregate product is essential to the growth of Texas, but it is best produced in an industrial setting using common-sense, environmentally protective practices. The White Ranch is not an appropriate location. The sensitive features that comprise the White Ranch and ultimately affect the citizens of Comal County and New Braunfels need to be protected and preserved.

Understand what our Texas Hill Country stands to lose. For more information go to www.stop3009vulcanquarry.com.

Thank You to all Who Voted for Fischer Park Renovation.

October 2021

Because the community came together, the park will receive a grant for $90,000 for needed renovations.

“We’re thrilled to support this nature-based play project in New Braunfels,” Niagra Cares Director Kristen Venick said in the release. “It was exciting to see the community come together to vote for this project and we look forward to the enhancement of Fischer Park,” which includes:

Creating direct public access to the park’s 30 acres of restored Blackland Prairie
Connecting into the park’s Enchanted Forest, a wooded area that has not been formally converted into a public space
Continuing the park’s restoration work to balance the urban forest, increase the tree canopy, and improve local wildlife habitats

“We are so excited to receive this funding from Niagara to improve Fischer Park,” said Stacey Dicke, New Braunfels parks and recreation director, in the release. “We are thankful for the community support throughout the contest. We know our residents love Fischer Park, and now there will be even more to love thanks to this grant.”

Rural Comal County. Photo courtesy of Comal County Conservation Alliance

Opinion: GEAA Says Proposition 2 Could Endanger Important Ecosystems

By Annalisa Peace
October 17, 2021

Texas voters can soon weigh in on potential changes to the state’s Constitution regarding a variety of issues,
including county infrastructure. Election day is Nov. 2, and early voting begins Oct. 18 and lasts until Oct. 29.

For those of you living in fast-growing counties in the Hill Country area, consider and vote carefully on Proposition 2: tax financing for county infrastructure.

This amendment would authorize counties to issue bonds or notes to raise funds for transportation infrastructure in undeveloped areas. Counties would repay these bonds by pledging increased property tax revenues.

At issue is the prospect that funding transportation infrastructure in undeveloped areas would hasten development in what is already one of the fastest-growing regions in the nation, and how this would impact dwindling water supplies, flooding, water quality, and spring flows.

Land that some may consider “undeveloped, unproductive, or blighted” may be recognized by others as land providing important ecosystem services.

While we realize that some counties in our region might be facing challenges to providing needed transportation infrastructure, perhaps raising the state-mandated cap on impact fees would be a more equitable solution by allowing new development to absorb the costs of services required.

To learn more about Prop 2, click here. To read more about all of the propositions, click here.

ABOUT THE GREATER EDWARDS AQUIFER ALLIANCE
The Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance (GEAA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that promotes effective broad-based advocacy for protection and preservation of the Edwards Aquifer, its springs, watersheds, and the Texas Hill Country that sustains it.

The Edwards Aquifer is the source of the largest springs in Texas and the sole source of drinking water for more than 1.5 million Central Texas residents.

A view from Headwaters at the Comal, Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021 in New Braunfels. Headwaters at the Comal is a conservation project by New Braunfels Utilities’ with goals of environmental projection, engaging visitors in natural areas and preserving the Comal Springs Ecosystem. Alma E. Hernandez / Herald-Zeitung

County Seeks Grants for Conservation Purposes

By Will Wright
September 1, 2021

Preserving Comal County’s wide-open spaces hasn’t been at the top of the county’s to-do list, but commissioners took steps in that direction last week.

Last Thursday, they selected Moriarty & Associates LLC to pursue funding for county land acquisitions for wildlife conservation and water source protection. It approved $4,500 for the firm to prepare county applications for grants through the Texas Water Development Board’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF).

“Behind the scenes, I’ve been working for years to find a way for Comal County to participate in (this effort),” Precinct 3 Commissioner Kevin Webb said. “We struggled with lining up a time where funding was available and a project was available. Right now we don’t have a project, but this is an open program.

“We are applying for $30 million through the Water Development Board’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund to fund the possible purchase of lands or conservation easements in Comal County for conservation of source water and stormwater and flooding mitigation.”

The Comal County Conservation Alliance (CCCA) said Comal is behind adjacent Hill County counties in percentages of land dedicated to protected lands. The U.S. protected lands database indicates just 5% of Comal’s 579-square miles is dedicated to protected lands, which matches Medina County but trails Travis (17%), Bexar (10%), and Uvalde and Hays counties (9%).

For years the CCCA, Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance (GEAA), Hill Country Alliance (HCA), League of Women Voters of the Comal Area (LWV–CA) and a host of other organizations have rallied community interest in preserving natural and unique areas in the county, which is now being developed at a rapid pace.

While private entities have contributed, Comal County hasn’t attempted a sustained effort similar to entities in surrounding counties. For example, it took the San Marcos River Foundation five years and longer to purchase prime watershed areas surrounding the city, but it led to protections for San Marcos Springs, Sink and Purgatory creeks and the San Marcos River.

“We’ve been close a couple of times,” said Webb of the county’s acquisition efforts, which he noted were behind-the-scenes and had gone unpublicized.

In 2018, the CCCA proposed the county purchase 610 acres in two of the seven tracts that comprised El Rancho Cima, home to the old Boy Scout Camp off Farm-to-Market Road 32.

“Despite the efforts of a dedicated group of former scouts and other individuals, the 2,400-acre Boy Scout ranch, El Rancho Cima, along the picturesque Devil’s Backbone, was sold to a private developer,” the CCCA website said.

The purchase would have satisfied federal statutes in providing the 500 contiguous acres as domain for the endangered golden-cheeked warbler under the county’s Regional Habitat Conservation Plan.

In the meantime, Hays County purchased nearby tracts to establish the El Cima Preserve, which joined the county’s Wildenthal Preserve as warbler habitat. It also has Gay Ruby Dahlstrom Nature Preserve and Jacob’s Well Natural Area designated for water quality protection.

Last November, 70% of participating Hays County voters passed Proposition A, which designated issuance of up to $75 million in bonds combined with other funding mechanisms to establish parks, open spaces, conservation lands and other recreational areas.

Travis County voters passed a $185 million bond for additional green spaces and watershed protection measures in 2016.
All of the area entities are seeking the $30 million in CWSRF monies for properties — especially for source pollution mitigation and low-impact recreational parks and open spaces.

“The county could preserve land through conservation easements or simple purchases of land to keep in perpetuity for stormwater mitigation, drinking water, source point pollution mitigation and more,” Webb said. “Just basically keep it from becoming developed in the future unless it’s for those purposes.”

Webb said the CWSRF grants resemble those made available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, or ARRA, which was the stimulus package approved by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in February 2009.

“Approximately four years ago the TWDB revised their long-standing policy and opened the CWSRF to these sorts of land purchases,” William Moriarty wrote commissioners. “The city of San Marcos was the first entity to take advantage of this new funding opportunity.

“Recent legislative activity in Washington, D.C. has created additional opportunities. The possibility exists that the new federal infrastructure bill may result in significant grant dollars flowing through the CWSRF program.”
Moriarty suggested the county quickly file a PIF to get on the short list for CWSRF funding within the next few months. If that fails, he said the county would file another PIF next March, as well as seek up to $1 million in Green Project Reserve grants and similar subsidized loans.

Webb said millions from ARRA and subsequent federal stimulus went to the TWDB, which passed 30-year loans on to entities with qualifying matching funds that saw up to 60% of the debt forgiven.

“To get such a grant like that we would have to find the other 40%, which is substantial on some of these larger projects,” Webb said.

In July, Precinct 4 Commissioner Jen Crownover said she believed county voters would pass a bond similar to Hays County’s.

“Comal County is very late to the party,” Crownover said. “I think if we were to do a straw poll at the moment, we would probably pass something by 70% or 80%, based (on Hays’ result).

“I would certainly love to put that before the people and the voters.”
Crownover, County Judge Sherman Krause, Precinct 2 Commissioner Scott Haag and Precinct 1 Commissioner Donna Eccleston voiced concerns about the optics — long-term spending on the unknown at a time the county has spent the past five years and more than $100 million on infrastructure improvements.

One answer, proponents said, would encourage developers to pitch in or give them incentive to designate preserved areas in non-developed areas of the county. Another is enhancing partnerships with companies like CEMEX, which has donated hundreds of acres for habitat preservation, and New Braunfels Utilities’ Headwaters at the Comal.

NBU’s conservation project’s goal is environmental protection, engaging residents and visitors in natural area landscapes, preservation of the Comal Springs Ecosystem, and establishing long-lasting local connections to past and present natural history.

Commissioners unanimously approved both measures, but cautioned they’re not about to support a money pit.

“I would like to see this move forward strictly because we can’t say that we wanted to maintain the character of Comal County and not do anything about it,” Krause said.

Eccleston said it presents opportunities and options on potential purchases and form partnerships in an ever-shrinking window.

Haag hoped the $4,500 wouldn’t lead to spending 10 times that on the next step.

“I don’t have a problem with this as long as we’re using it to seek grants,” he said. “Property values are continuing to go up.

“If we start spending (county) money on pieces of property — and its tens of millions if not more – and even if you reduce it down it’s a lot for us to pay over a long period.”

Haag suggested the county stick with supporting adding more conservation easements, which are voluntary agreements between landowners and selected conservators that dedicate future use toward protecting and/or enhancing its natural resources.

Elizabeth Bowerman, CCCA board president, stressed Thursday’s approvals were important first steps.

“They will lead to a more livable future for our county,” she said. “(The amount) isn’t really that much to spend, (if it leads to) protecting land and water.”

Commissioners will not meet this Thursday in order to attend the Texas Association of Counties annual conference. They will meet again on Thursday, Sept. 9. For last Thursday’s meeting video and agenda, visit www.co.comal.tx.us/agenda.htm.

Comal County Subdivision Development

Comal County is growing at a rapid pace. These latest maps show the growth and the limited amount of open land to protect our aquifers. That's why it's so important that we protect what is still available. As people move in, our options get quite limited.

Proposed Honey Creek Ranch Subdivision

Honey Creek Ranch Development Meeting Minutes

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The proposed Honey Creek Ranch Subdivision will be built at the upper portion of the Honey Creek watershed. Honey Creek runs through the 2,293.7 acre Honey Creek State Natural Area and into the Guadalupe River. Honey Creek normally gets it flow from the Honey Creek Cave and a few small springs. Honey Creek is truly one of the most pristine, clear and pure steams remaining in Texas. That is why it is preserved as the Honey Creek State Natural Area.

Impacts of Growth in Comal County

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Comal County Protected Map

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As a part of the conservation effort, the county purchased seven easements. (Courtesy Travis County)

Travis County Celebrates Purchase of more than 3,000 Acres for Conservation in the Hamilton Pool Road Area

By Benton Graham
December 6, 2021

Travis County held a ceremony at Reimers Ranch Dec. 2 to celebrate the purchase of more than 3,000 acres of land in the Hamilton Pool Road corridor, as a part of conservation efforts.

The county purchased seven easements that will help to restrict development and protect environment features, according to a press release.

“Travis County is growing at a rapid pace, and there’s an urgent need to protect natural areas like the Hamilton Pool Road corridor,” Travis County Commissioner Brigid Shea said in the press release. “These conservation easements allow us to maintain the county’s irreplaceable environmental features. Reimers Ranch Park, and Hamilton Pool visitors and residents nearby will be able to enjoy the land and scenery for many years to come."

Funding for the project came from a 2017 Travis County bond approved by voters aimed at protecting watersheds, native wildlife and scene vistas.

Travis County Commissioner Ann Howard thanked voters for approving the funding in a statement. She added that she hopes to bring similar conservation projects to eastern Travis County in the future.

A map showing the Hamilton Pool Road Corridor (Courtesy Travis County)

Conservation Subdivisions with Randall Arendt

Bexar County may purchase a 600-acre historic ranch on the far Northwest side to convert into a rustic county park. The property's location as between Toutant Beauregard Road and Boerne Stage Road.

Bexar County Eyes Historic Ranch for Possible 600-acre Rustic Park

By Brian Kirkpatric
July 21, 2021

The park would be twice the size of Phil Hardberger Park, one of the largest city parks in San Antonio.

Bexar County Commissioners in early August are expected to hear an update on the possible purchase of a 600-acre historic ranch on the far Northwest side to convert into a rustic county park.

County Judge Nelson Wolff questioned County Parks Director Betty Bueche at the July 13 commissioners meeting about efforts by the county to purchase the ranch from a foundation headed by a member of the famous Maverick family.

The family name coined the term "maverick," meaning independent-minded person. The Texas State Historical Association reports the term is connected to a herd of cattle owned by politician and land baron Samuel Maverick that were allowed to roam unbranded, which was unconventional. When other ranchers came across an unbranded cow, they said it must be a "Maverick."

Bueche told Wolff her staff was working on a grant application for $5 million that could be applied to the purchase. She expects to report on progress at the Aug. 4 commissioners meeting.

She described the property's location as between Toutant Beauregard Road and Boerne Stage Road.

Bueche said some planning has been done, including a spot on the ranch for a visitor education center if the purchase can be completed.

"We have already been doing that planning and we've done the diagrammatic sketches of what's allowable and what's not. There is actually a 5-acre parcel that's included in that, but does not have a conservation easement and on that 5 acres is where we would propose the visitor education center where school groups from the entire region would benefit," Bueche told commissioners.

Wolff said he would like to see the property undergo little development and feature some trails if the purchase happens.

The Texas Nature Conservancy and Audubon Society would join the county in park operations. It would be twice the size of Phil Hardberger Park, one of the largest city parks in San Antonio, which has 311 acres.

Opossums, rabbits, deer, and coyotes have all been spotted crossing the months old Robert L.B. Tobin Land Bridge at Phil Hardberger Park. Bueche's comments to Wolff came after a presentation on a 10-year master plan for the county park system, which will guide future improvements based largely on public surveys.

The plan was needed to keep the park system eligible for matching grants from the state and other contributors.

Commissioners approved the plan that calls for three new flagship parks to replace large pavilions at Rodriguez, Russell and Comanche Parks.

It also details the completion of the remaining 55 miles of the Howard Peak Greenways Trail System, additional conservation at Hot Wells, and a Native American cultural center, possibly at Padre Park.

The total value of the projects contained in the plan and spread over a decade is pegged at nearly $317 million dollars, with $240 million for the county-wide river and creek program, the Greenway trails system, and watershed protection. Grants and partnerships would contribute largely to the projects.

A report on the master plan found the county's 16 parks and three civic centers host 3,900 events each year and attract two million annual visitors. Those visitors generate $102 million in economic revenue and an additional $33 million from amateur sports.

Public surveys related to the master plan found county parks in need of more shade, more playgrounds, and more picnic space.

There are a total of 32,540 acres of park in Bexar County, operated by the state, county, cities, schools and nonprofits.

From Skeptic to Advocate: My Changed Perspective on Conservation Easements

By David K. Langford

Publisher’s Note: The following was originally published in the February 2021 issue of Texas Wildlife and is excerpted from the preface of the forthcoming book Replenishing Our Hills by Brent Evans. The book will be published soon by the Texas A&M University Press.

The Texas Hill Country has left its mark on me and me on it for almost eight decades. My Giles family staked its claim here in 1887. Our ranch, where my grandchildren are part of the sixth generation born to this land, still bears the name of my ancestral home, which is Hillingdon Middlesex England.

I was reared in San Antonio, but spent many of my weekends, most of my holidays and every summer into adulthood on much of the 13,000 or so acres that make up Hillingdon Ranch. While I eagerly anticipated these days in the country, they were not vacations. As a member of a ranching family, we were all expected to do our parts.

One of my earliest jobs centered on the water bucket and dipper my grandparents kept on their kitchen table. In those days, providing water for the family required a trip to a nearby spring with bucket in hand.

Carrying that heavy, water-filled bucket over uneven ground taught me lessons of conservation that I’ve never forgotten. Water is vital to life. Abundant water appears through someone’s work, not magic. Water is too valuable to waste.

An uncle demonstrated to us all that wildlife like native white-tailed deer have a place on a ranch as surely as cattle, sheep, and goats. Each successive generation has managed Hillingdon’s native grass, forbs, browse, and trees so both wild animals and domestic livestock thrive.

The convergence of time, experience, and opportunities allowed me to carve out a career as a professional photographer who specialized in livestock, wildlife, ranch landscapes, and the western lifestyle. In 1985, the relationships with my clients that I forged and treasured earned me an invitation to an early organizational meeting of the Texas Wildlife Association, a group that was being put together as a voice for landowners with an interest in wildlife. I left the meeting as a member of the executive committee.

Four years later, I left an executive committee meeting with a temporary job serving as Executive Vice President; it lasted 11 years in its first act. I flunked retirement in 2001 and came back for a second act overseeing water policy development and other special projects. My second act lasted eight years. In 2011, I turned in my business cards, retired for the final time, and came back to where I started as a volunteer again serving on the executive committee. My volunteer service continues today.

As TWA’s Executive Vice President, I spent a lot of time in the public policy arena, especially in Austin. In those days, I spent a lot of time standing behind microphones in countless conference rooms in front of a mixed bag of legislators, agency personnel, traditional environmental groups, lobbyists, and the general public.

As the '80s bled into the 1990s, Texas, especially its private lands, became a contentious arena. Two little-known bird species, golden-cheeked warblers and black-capped vireos that nest solely in the cedar-spotted hills of Central Texas and the Edwards Plateau, found themselves in the headlines. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the auspices of the Endangered Species Act devised a plan to designate portions of 33 Texas counties as critical habitat for the songbirds.

At that time, it appeared as if a “coalition” of environmental groups and land trusts were going to “save” the birds by permanently wresting control away from private landowners either by taking it or purchasing it at fire sale prices from landowners who found themselves in a financial fix. The tool of choice? A conservation easement. The goal? To manage natural resources by removing virtually all human activity.

The reaction—and rhetoric—was swift and heated. Across the state at microphones in hearing rooms and in reporters’ hands, I and others with like minds decried conservation easements as plots promulgated by land-grabbing Communists.

Against this backdrop, Blair Calvert Fitzsimons, a volunteer landowner advocate who ranched in South Texas with her husband Joseph, and I were invited to a meeting hosted by Texas Parks and Wildlife. As private property proponents, we were in the minority. Most of the invitees represented land trusts, traditional environmental groups and parks at the national, state, and local levels.

As the day progressed, speaker after speaker identified the problems that estate taxes created for landowners. Because of their experience and focus, these speakers wore blinders. While they were able to see and showcase the solutions offered by conservation easements and land trusts, the speakers only saw the application for landowners managing beautifully pristine properties. Most were committed to preserving properties with magazine cover views.

These well-meaning crusaders didn’t understand that farmers, ranchers, and family foresters, the people who fed, clothed, and sheltered us, faced the same pressures from estate taxes and market forces. In their zeal for pretty places, they didn’t give working lands much thought. Apparently, those of us in production agriculture had managed to hide our challenges as effectively as we’d hidden our conservation.

As these discussions were taking place, the economy of Texas was changing. Through much of the 20th Century, Texas got its wealth from the ground through oil and agriculture. In the late '80s, after one of the periodic busts that marked the energy industry, state leaders decided to add another leg to the economic stool. They made it clear that Texas was open for business, especially technology. The Lone Star State entered a period of unprecedented growth.

Growth, as we came to learn from studies conducted by the American Farmland Trust between 1990 and 2000, comes with a hidden cost. Initially, leaders in rural counties were ecstatic as developments sprang up, but the jubilation was short-lived. Why? While new residents bring new tax dollars they also require increased services, which cost money…big money.

According to the American Farmland Trust’s Cost of Community Services surveys, the cost of providing those public services far exceeds the amount of tax revenue provided by residential taxpayers. On the other hand,

agricultural and open space land, even with lower tax valuations generate more tax money than they require in public service costs.

This was an important realization for those who valued open spaces. We spent a lot of windshield time contemplating this and tucked it into our hip pockets for future use.

Fast forward to 2005 and Blair asked me to attend a Partnership of Rangeland Trusts meeting in Billings, Montana. I went because I respect Blair and I like Billings. I still wasn’t particularly fond of land trusts or conservation easements.

As I sat there, though, I quickly figured out these land trust cats understood agriculture from a first-hand perspective. Tellingly, at least for me, production agriculture groups in these western states, where private land butts up against public land, were forming land trusts to conserve their land, their legacy, and their way of life.

By the time the folks from the Colorado Cattlemen projected their guiding principles on the big screen, the tectonic plates of my paradigm had shifted. I looked at Blair. She looked at me. We both realized that we’d been angry about the wrong thing. The problem wasn’t the conservation easements, but our perception of how they were being used.

As we came to see, a conservation easement is a tool like any other, so the way it’s used determines whether it’s detrimental or beneficial. Thanks to those westerners, we both flew back to Texas, which by this time was losing open space agricultural land faster than any other state in the nation, thinking, “This just might work here after all.”

Soon after we got home, we got together with representatives from the Texas Farm Bureau and the Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers to talk about the possibility of forming an agricultural land trust in Texas. We agreed that forming an agricultural land trust would help give farmers, ranchers, and family foresters access to the tools necessary to combat estate taxes and keep their working lands intact in perpetuity.

While many farms, ranches, and forests may not have jaw-dropping views, they have productivity, both tangible as food, fiber, and shelter, and environmental as clean water and clean air. Productivity merits its own conservation value as does the lifestyle and livelihoods built on it.

In 2007, the Texas Agricultural Land Trust was born from our collective efforts. During its first decade, TALT became the second largest land trust in Texas and currently oversees easements on 236,000 acres of working lands across Texas with more in the works.

This land will continue to produce food, fiber, and shelter along with a myriad of other benefits such as cleaner air, better quality water, more vibrant river flows, aquifer recharge, the aesthetics of scenic open spaces, and wildlife and pollinator habitat that benefit every Texan in perpetuity. These landowning families will continue to voluntarily steward their own land, footing the bill for its care while paying their taxes and contributing to the health and growth of their local communities.

At the moment, a conservation easement is the only tool available for landowners who want to keep their working lands open forever. This legal document, which requires much thought, commitment and planning, provides a reinforced, retaining wall around a family’s land legacy.

Succeeding generations can’t convene at the courthouse to squabble over the land’s destiny and dismantle their heritage a lawsuit at a time. A conservation easement is legally unassailable.

In addition to keeping the land legacy intact, a conservation easement ensures that the best interest of the land is always an essential factor regardless of what is being discussed or what is being considered. When a conservation easement is present, the land has a seat at the table—forever. I would argue that of all the long-term benefits of this conservation tool, this is the most powerful and most lasting.

As I write this, Myrna, our children, and I have finalized a conservation easement that will keep the Laurels Ranch, our piece of Hillingdon Ranch, open and development-free forever. We have poured ourselves into this process for almost four years; it is exceptionally challenging—and taxing—to predict what will be right forever.

The Texas Agricultural Land Trust is our partner in perpetual conservation. The organization’s guiding principles align with our family’s guiding principles. Ours is a partnership, like all good partnerships, where both sides win. A conservation easement held by TALT is a voluntary solution that works for us.

I’ve unashamedly come full circle. Today, I find myself extolling the benefits of conservation easements to my extended family. As preceding generations died land ownership was spread into more hands. Hillingdon is collectively owned by more than 20 family units with some controlling a few acres and others several hundred.

Until now, the family has relied on shared memories and common experiences to keep the ranch intact. The last generation to spend summers here is silver-haired now. Succeeding generations are scattered by geography and interests. Without a series of conservation easements, there is no guarantee that the legacy that is Hillingdon Ranch will pass to the seventh generation. I hope the Laurels Ranch conservation easement will serve as template for my extended family and make the monumental task of keeping Hillingdon Ranch intact a little easier.

While our story and struggle are personal, we’re not alone. Conservation easements preserve our past, but they also assure our future. We cannot live without the land and its natural bounty—and we shouldn’t be foolish enough to try. Conservation easements, which preserve open space land and voluntary stewardship by committed landowners forever, are the key to replenishing our beloved hills, our beloved plains, and our beloved rivers, lakes and streams, day after day, year after year, generation after generation.

2020 Evaluation Report: Texas Farm and Ranch Land Conservation Program

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Authors: Lund, A.A., G.W. Powers, R.R. Lopez, L.A. Smith, L.M. Olson, and L.F. Gregory. 2020. Texas farm and ranch lands conservation program: 2020 Evaluation report. Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute, research report 2020:1. College Station, Texas, USA.

Texas is comprised of 142 million acres of private farms, ranches and forestlands, leading the nation in privately owned working land acres. These working lands are under increasing land conversion and fragmentation pressure. In response, the Texas Legislature created the Texas Farm and Ranch Lands Conservation Program (TFRLCP) in 2005 to protect agricultural lands in the state.

In April 2015, NRI evaluated the TFRLCP, a purchase of development rights (PDR) program, to determine the needed funding levels and target areas of opportunity for the state. This report provided science-based information to help the land trust community make the case for sustained TFRLCP funding and resulted in the program receiving funding for the first time since its establishment. In December 2016, a second report evaluated the effectiveness of the TFRLCP, following the implementation of the recently funded program. The report focused on the program’s return on investment, value of protected water resources and potential future demand for a PDR program. For more information on the TFRLCP program, see the TPWD program’s website.

Finalized in November 2020, NRI examined the conservation easements executed under the TFRLCP, specifically evaluating ecological and economic values secured through the protection of these properties as well as the fiscal efficiency of state funds to protect working lands with high agricultural value at a relatively low cost for state residents.

Hays County acquired 28.7 acres of property near the San Marcos river located just east of Interstate 35 and south of River Road, which it plans to use for a project aimed at regional connectivity and recreation options for county residents. Photo courtesy of Hays County

Hays County Aims at Enhancing Connectivity, Recreation Options with Cape's Pond Project

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Hays County is aiming at enhancing and expanding regional connectivity and recreation options for county residents with the acquisition of 28.7 acres of property near the San Marcos River.

The county acquired the land located just east of Interstate 35 and south of River Road for the Cape’s Pond Project through a 2018 transportation bond.

Hays County General Counsel Mark Kennedy said in a press release that the project was discussed as a “key land acquisition to provide multi-modal transportation connectivity between currently disconnected areas of San Marcos and local hike and bike trail systems, including those that are in the planning stages.”

Texas' Farms Under Threat

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Texas’ farms are under threat, with its best land succumbing to development.

The report found that Texas was the most threatened state in the nation due to the loss of agricultural land to poorly planned real estate development. Between 2001 and 2016, 1,373,000 acres of agricultural land were developed or compromised, 555,000 of which were “Nationally Significant,” or land best suited for growing food and crops.

The hot spots for development are around Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Odessa and San Antonio.

However, the threat is more than just urban sprawl. Texas’ agricultural land is disproportionately threatened by a new, more insidious kind of development discovered by AFT through this research, termed low-density residential, or LDR, land use.

Roughly 50% of the land developed or compromised in Texas fell into this category. LDR is insidious because it is not always immediately visible to communities and policy makers and therefore has yet to provoke a policy response. In Texas, LDR is 30 times more likely to be converted to urban and highly developed land use than other agricultural land.

Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute Publishes Texas Land Trends

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From the Press Release:

“The report shows as Texas continues to grow in population and economy, the demand for rural land, especially in areas surrounding major urban centers and transportation corridors, will continue to increase and have long-term impacts on working lands.”

“Open spaces in Texas also provide valuable ecosystem services that we rely on for everyday necessities, such as air and water quality, carbon sequestration and wildlife habitat,” he said. “Fragmentation and conversion of working lands disrupts the natural processes of healthy ecosystems, creates an increased financial burden to mitigate impacts and elevates pressures on remaining open spaces to provide these services for growing urban areas.”

Protected Land Maps of the Edwards Aquifer

Six-county Protected Land Maps

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Scotland Video Sends Powerful Message

This four-minute video about Scotland sends a powerful message about land preservation. And, while it isn't in Comal County, the images will remind you of many places where we live. Landowners have an opportunity to create a legacy for their children, grandchildren, and Comal County, which will benefit all of us all, forever.

Video from KarmaTube

LAND PRESERVATION

Landowner Outreach Initiative

Conserve Texas lands for generations to come

Empire, Wide and Glorious

The Time to Conserve Land is Now

Proposed rezoning of wooded, private land for townhomes near park roils neighbors

Spring in Texas: Why Land Preservation is so Important

Texas Hill Country: Rolling Hills or Empty Moonscape?

Thank You to all Who Voted for Fischer Park Renovation.

Opinion: GEAA Says Proposition 2 Could Endanger Important Ecosystems

County Seeks Grants for Conservation Purposes

Comal County Subdivision Development

Honey Creek Ranch Development Meeting Minutes

Impacts of Growth in Comal County

Comal County Protected Map

Travis County Celebrates Purchase of more than 3,000 Acres for Conservation in the Hamilton Pool Road Area

Conservation Subdivisions with Randall Arendt​

Bexar County Eyes Historic Ranch for Possible 600-acre Rustic Park

From Skeptic to Advocate: ​My Changed Perspective on Conservation Easements

2020 Evaluation Report: Texas Farm and Ranch Land Conservation Program

Hays County Aims at Enhancing Connectivity, Recreation Options with Cape's Pond Project

Texas' Farms Under Threat

Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute Publishes Texas Land Trends

Protected Land Maps of the Edwards Aquifer

Scotland Video Sends Powerful Message

Conservation Subdivisions with Randall Arendt

From Skeptic to Advocate: My Changed Perspective on Conservation Easements