Dec. 18, 2006 — TPWD’s Top 10 News Stories of 2006
EDITORS NOTE: In this issue of TPWD News, we forsake our usual format for the most part and provide a summary of the top news stories of 2006. Details about these topics can be found in the department’s online news archive. Please note that TPWD will not be distributing weekly news during the coming holidays. News distribution will resume on Jan. 16, 2007. Happy Holidays! Read the news release.
April 6, 2006 — Mitigation Agreement To Benefit Wildlife, Highways
AUSTIN — Texas transportation and wildlife officials today announced an agreement to increase large-scale wildlife habitat protection while also facilitating new highway projects. Read the news release.
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Texas Department of Transportation
April 2006
The Texas Bottomland Hardwood Preservation Program Report in May 1984 was a key planning document that identified the last large contiguous pieces of bottomland hardwood forest in Texas that should be prime candidates for conservation.
Based on this report, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) has worked with the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and other state and federal agencies on four mitigation bank projects. All four are or will be wildlife management areas (WMAs) operated by the department. Three of these have been completed:
In the early 1990s, TPWD worked with TxDOT’s Environmental Affairs Division (ENV) and its Tyler district to develop the Old Sabine Bottom Wildlife Management Area as a mitigation bank along the Sabine River north of Tyler.
In the mid-1990s, the department worked with ENV and the Beaumont district to conserve the Blue Elbow Swamp as a wetland mitigation bank called the Tony Houseman WMA along the Sabine River where I-10 crosses it. Today this site not only protects wetlands and has a wildlife viewing boardwalk and exhibits, but it also has a TXDOT travel information center for motorists.
In 1999, TPWD and others created the Columbia Bottomlands Mitigation Bank in Brazoria County, working with ENV and TxDOT’s Houston and Matagorda districts. This site has since become the Nannie M. Stringfellow WMA, part of the Austin’s Woods initiative to protect neotropical migratory songbirds.
The fourth major mitigation bank project in Texas is the planned Pineywoods Mitigation and Conservation Area located between highways US 59 and US 69 on the Neches River south of Lufkin and Diboll, expected to be approved by the Army Corps of Engineers by late 2006.
This will include a wetland mitigation bank to offset wetland impacts in the Pineywoods Ecological Area in East Texas.
Built into the mitigation bank cost structure is funding for long-term operation and maintenance of the site as a TPWD WMA. This will include appropriate recreation, probably eventually offering public use such as hunting, hiking, birding, camping and Neches River access for boating and fishing.
Ecologically, the property provides an important connection and wildlife travel corridor between the Angelina and Davy Crockett National Forests. Besides river hardwood bottomlands, it also includes adjacent uplands, which offers a chance for more complete watershed management to improve water quality.
The site is currently owned by the Neches River Corridor, LLP, a Boston-based investment corporation that invests endowments from major universities. A sub-unit of this partnership, Renewable Resources, LLP, bought the property in June 2003 for about $28 million. The nonprofit group The Conservation Fund is a minority investor in the partnership.
Texas is one U.S. state that is actively pursuing the benefits of landscape scale mitigation instead of piece-meal mitigation. This reflects an emerging national trend that is being recognized in Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service policies. Several other states are also being proactive in mitigating for large public works in a more ecological and holistic way, such as Florida and North Carolina. One difference in Texas is the public access, use and recreation benefit, which Texas planners have not seen in other states.
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, 4200 Smith School Road, Austin, TX 78744