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An overarching priority of Gulf Coast Prairie LCC is conserving prairie grasslands. This helps migratory birds and wildlife that need large expanses of land to meet their life-cycle needs. Photo courtesy Texas Parks and Wildlife Department © 2006
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Gulf Coast Prairie LCC partners are protecting and restoring prairie grasslands of the Southern Great Plains.
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The endangered golden-cheeked warbler, a Gulf Coast Prairie LCC focal species, breeds in central Texas. LCC partners are working to protect juniper and oak woodlands to help the warbler and other songbirds. Photo courtesy Fish and Wildlife Service
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The Gulf Coast of Texas is an important wintering area for the endangered whooping crane. It has rebounded from only 21 birds in the wild in the 1940s to around 600 today. Photo courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
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An overarching priority of Gulf Coast Prairie LCC is protecting and restoring Gulf of Mexico coastal habitats and wildlife. Photo courtesy Texas Parks and Wildlife Department © 2006
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The American oyster, a Gulf Coast Prairie LCC focal species, lives in tidal areas such as Louisiana’s coastal estuaries. Many other species use oyster reefs for foraging and shelter. Photo courtesy Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries
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The northern bobwhite is a Gulf Coast Prairie LCC focal species. It ranges throughout the eastern and Midwestern U.S. and eastern Mexico, but has declined by as much as 90 percent in some areas. Photo courtesy Texas Parks and Wildlife Department © 2006
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A captive breeding and reintroduction effort in the grasslands of south Texas is helping to recover the endangered Aplomado falcon. Photo courtesy Texas Parks and Wildlife Department © 2013
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The Enchanted Rock area of Texas, referring to an enormous pink granite dome, is situated in the hill country of Texas, northwest of Austin, amid grasslands and shrublands.
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An overarching priority of Gulf Coast Prairie LCC is improving hydrologic conditions, including water quality, quantity, and flow patterns. Changes to hydrology have damaged many prime habitats. Photo courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
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The Gulf Coast Prairie Landscape Conservation Cooperative was established in 2011 and is based out of Lafayette, Louisiana. It is part of a network of 22 similar partnerships throughout the United States and our neighboring countries. LCCs develop the science partners need to conserve and manage natural and cultural resources, particularly GIS technology and climate science.
LCC boundaries are determined by landscape geography and ecology, not government jurisdictions or organizational parameters. Gulf Coast Prairie LCC covers about 120 million acres, including areas within five states in the south-central United States (Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas) and portions of three states in northeastern Mexico (Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas).
The majority of the LCC area is in eastern Texas, central Oklahoma, and northeastern Mexico, but it also includes the western coast of the Gulf of Mexico in Mexico north-eastward through Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as a small part of south-central Kansas.
Prime habitats within the area covered by the Gulf Coast Prairie Landscape Conservation Cooperative range from tallgrass prairie and semi-desert shrublands, to oak hardwood and pine forests, to tidal wetlands and barrier islands. Several major waterways lace through the LCC area, including the lower Rio Grande, Guadalupe, Brazos, Trinity, Nueces, Arkansas, Red, San Antonio, and Mississippi Rivers, as well as some of our continent’s most wildlife-rich coastal wetlands.
These waterways not only serve as a lifeline for wildlife, they also contribute significantly to our economic prosperity because of their importance to tourism and outdoor recreation, commercial fishing, and shipping and transportation. The area’s water resources also provide groundwater supplies for some of our fastest-growing population centers.
More than 500 kinds of birds and 300 butterfly species can be found within the Gulf Coast Prairie landscape, including the northern bobwhite, eastern meadowlark, black-capped vireo, and monarch butterfly. Other well-known species include the blue crab, Guadalupe bass, diamondback terrapin, horned lizard, ocelot, ornate turtle, redfish, and spotted skunk.
