Is saving natural prairie from development possible in Fort Worth? These people say yes
For more than a year, Jo Ann Collins led monthly tours of native prairie in southwest Fort Worth, near Crowley and the new Tarleton State campus. She and other nature advocates hoped to convince the Texas General Land Office to protect several acres from being paved over to build homes and businesses.
“There was an area that was prime habitat and it had every piece of Fort Worth in it, and it was on the Chisholm Trail where cowboys took their cattle and left them out there waiting to go to the processing plants,” Collins, a retired teacher, said. “We were trying to save that history, but it didn’t happen.”
After much of that land was sold to a developer in 2014, Collins became a self-styled “prairie preacher,” volunteering to lead the Fort Worth chapter of the Native Prairies Association of Texas and serving on the organization’s statewide board. She’s held workshops teaching residents to be “prairie seekers” and encouraged officials to not mow their prairie grass more than once a year.
Soon, Collins won’t be alone in preaching the gospel of the prairie. She will be joined by a new full-time outreach director and land steward for the Dallas-Fort Worth region, hired through a partnership between the Native Prairies Association of Texas and the Dixon Water Foundation, which promotes sustainable land management strategies for ranchers.
Each year, developers in Fort Worth turn 2,800 acres of prairie into new subdivisions, retail businesses and more, the Star-Telegram reported in 2019. And of the original 20 million acres of tallgrass prairie in Texas, less than 1% remains, according to the association.
“North Texas has a lot of prairie, much of it still very high quality and worth saving,” said Kirsti Harms, the executive director of the association. “In the meantime, the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area is expanding. We’re trying to get ahead of the expansion and conserve green space.”
With two other full-time employees based in Houston and Austin, the position will be the first of its kind to focus on forming partnerships with North Texas government agencies and landowners, identifying properties to acquire, and educating rural and urban communities about prairie conservation. The association already owns and conserves several acres in North Texas, Harms said, with properties that go almost all the way to Texarkana.
Why is it crucial to save this ecosystem? Many remnants not touched by development, such as the Tandy Hills Natural Area in Fort Worth, are ecologically rich and useful for wildlife, Harms said. Tallgrass prairies are increasingly endangered, but many Texans are unaware of how they absorb flood water and contain hundreds of plant species, she added.
“People look out, they see a field of grass, and think: Why is this field of grass special, and this one not?” Harms said. “There aren’t as many groups working on the North Texas ecosystems, so we feel like that’s kind of an area where we can step up and get the Dallas-Fort Worth area to become more excited about prairie conservation.”
The association works on both conservation and restoration projects, but largely focuses on convincing landowners to either donate their property to a land trust or sign an agreement known as a conservation easement.
In signing an easement deal with an organization like the Native Prairies Association, landowners retain their title but agree to limit certain kinds of development on their property. Even if landowners sell their title later on, the easement agreement is permanent and will carry over forever, Harms said.
“Putting a conservation easement on your property is a big investment in the future, because you have to talk to your children and you have to decide that they will never be able to cut this up and sell it to a developer,” she said.
Conservation efforts should align with the priorities of ranchers across Texas, said Robert Potts, the president and CEO of the Dixon Water Foundation, which has offices in Decatur and Marfa. His foundation promotes the ecological and financial benefits of cattle grazing practices that improve soil health, restore grasslands, conserve water and limit the impact of drought.
“We work on our ranches to do research and demonstrate how you use livestock in the most effective way to improve the watershed health, sequester carbon and make money,” Potts said. “We need this position to raise awareness and engage landowners to preserve and enhance their prairies.”
There has already been some progress on the conservation front in North Texas, Collins said. She cheered Fort Worth’s Open Spaces Conservation program, which launched last year in a city effort to acquire and preserve natural areas. In June, officials completed their $610,000 purchase of Broadcast Hill in east Fort Worth using money from the oil and gas trust fund and donations from residents.
“Trying to save this land has become a bigger snowball, so to speak, that we never see very often here,” Collins said. “With climate change, and noticing how much water a prairie holds compared to land that’s mowed or paved with concrete, it just makes so much sense to preserve these areas.”
Harms hopes to fill the North Texas position next month, and said the association may hire two people since the job requires very different skill sets. In the meantime, Collins is dreaming of the possibilities, which include working with developers to recognize the importance of preserving even a small piece of prairie when they are building subdivisions on ranch land.
Collins points to Walsh, a massive development of more than 7,000 acres that the developer said could eventually be home to 50,000 people in west Fort Worth.
Bexie Nobles, Walsh’s spokesperson, told the Star-Telegram in 2017 that roughly one-third of the 1,700-acre initial development was reserved for green space, and the developer took care to not “denigrate” the land. But Collins thinks builders can do more.
“When a big ranch is taken, like Walsh Ranch, it should be almost mandated that a piece of that be left for the enjoyment of the community and for all of the services that the particular piece of land provides with water retention and habitat for animals,” Collins said. “People need to realize that it’s not just grass that you’re supposed to mow. It has value, and it’s just as important as having the trees to walk through.”
