Fall 2002 - Lone Star Chapter, Sierra Club

12 Lone Star Sierran Fall 2002
Your Environment
Continued from previous page
Legislature in 2001 with passage
of SB 305, the bill continuing
TPWD in existence after the
sunset review process for the
agency. The plan includes an
inventory of all public and nonprofit
lands that provide public
access and an analysis of existing
and future land and water conservation
needs. The plan also includes
recommendations on how
TPWD will address the states land
and water and recreation needs
over the next ten years.
[Editor’s Note: See related article
in this issue of the Sierran for
an analysis of the plan.]
Insights from a State
Representative
Rounding out the morning State
Representative Edmund Kuempel
gave an enthusiastic speech about
the importance of citizens communicating
their interest in
parks and land conservation to
their state legislators. Rep.
Kuempel said that citizens must
become involved in the process by
which state government makes
decisions if they want more
parkland and protected wildlife
habitat. Such involvement is
especially important in light of an
anticipated shortfall in the state
budget next year.
Purchase of
Development Rights
Julie Shackelford, Field Director
for the American Farmland
Trust, opened the afternoon with a
presentation on how to reduce the
loss of open space by preserving
working landscapes. Shackelford
noted that Texas leads the nation
in land conversion from rural to
urban.
Purchase of Development Rights
(PDR) is a tool that can be used to
protect open space. A small farmer
can sell his development rights
(the appraised difference between
farming value of the land and the
developed value of the land) to the
state, a local government, or a
land trust. Funding options for a
state PDR program include bonds,
appropriations, lottery, cigarette
tax and matching donations.
Twenty-one states have these PDR
programs in place, most often
where local communities have
taken the initiative, with Pennsylvania
and Maryland leading as the
oldest programs.
Managing Urban Growth
Comal County Commissioner
Jay Millikin talked to conference
attendees about the need to
manage urban growth as a strategy
for protecting open space.
Commissioner Millikin discussed
the differences between authorities
that cities and counties have
for managing such growth. According
to Commissioner Millikin,
counties in Texas need more
ordinance making authority so
that they may appropriately manage
urban development.
Special Places
The conference concluded with
presentations on two of the “special
places” in Texas that the
Sierra Club and other groups are
trying to preserve for the future:
the Trinity River National Wildlife
Refuge (NWR) and the Katy Prairie.
Stuart Marcus, Refuge Manager
for the Trinity River NWR, discussed
conserving bottomland
hardwood forest along the lower
Trinity River. The Trinity River
NWR was approved for 77,300
acres. Thus far 4,4000 acres have
been purchased. Once completed
the refuge will protect high quality
bottomland hardwood forest. The
area contains broad and narrow
leaf deciduous bottomland hardwood
forest, which is wetland type
that has experienced dramatic
and damaging declines in the past
decade. By 1980, 63% of all bottomland
riparian forests in the entire
Two of the leading
conservation
experts in Texas,
Dr. David
Schmidly of Texas
Tech University
and Dr. Pete
Gunther of the
University of
North Texas,
discuss land
preservation
issues during a
break at the
conference.
state of Texas had been destroyed.
Mary Anne Piacentini, Executive
Director of the Katy Prairie
Conservancy, gave an overview of
the Katy Prairie. According to
Piacentini, the Katy Prairie
provides winter habitat for one of
the densest concentrations of
migratory waterfowl in North
America and habitat for a large
variety of other birds as well as for
60 species of mammals (such as
deer and coyotes), and 55 species
of reptiles and amphibians. The
Katy Prairie is continually threatened
by urban development expanding
westward from Houston,
which destroys and degrades the
ecological viability of the prairie’s
wildlife habitat. Urban expansion
and the resulting loss of open
space significantly decreases
floodwater protection and water
quality. Increased incidence of
flooding on the west side of Houston
is the result of conversion of
open space to commercial and
residential development.
Continued on page 14