Hill Country Conservancy looks to preserve 7,500 acres across region
AUSTIN — Organized by the Hill Country Conservancy (HCC), a coalition of 27 regional partners has secured $23.2 million in federal funding and set a goal of preserving 7,500 acres in primarily rural areas. This is the largest single federal award for conservation easement funding in the Texas Hill Country.
Known as the Hill Country Headwaters Conservation Initiative, the coalition will leverage the expertise and local relationships of all 27 regional partners to target landowners in significant portions of the Colorado, Guadalupe, San Gabriel, Llano and Lampasas River watersheds. This also includes the Blanco, Comal, San Saba and Pedernales rivers.
The partners will screen and rank potential properties, with priority given to land with sensitive water recharge features, such as caves and sinkholes that enable unfiltered drainage into the region’s aquifers. These properties also include those home to unique and threatened wildlife habitats; historically underserved producers will also receive priority.
In its 25th year, the HCC is “a land trust, which means that we work to preserve vital natural resources throughout the entire Hill Country, predominantly on private lands through conservation easements,” explained HCC CEO Kathy Miller. “We also have two nature preserves and are building, maintaining and operating the Violet Crown Trail in Austin and into Hays County in the near future. We also have a kind of public spaces and community engagement with nature component to our work.”
Hays County is one of the fastest growing counties in the nation, as it has seen unprecedented growth, which has led to pressure being placed on water resources, open spaces, dark skies, wildlife habitat and outdoor recreation opportunities, according to Miller.
“Hill Country Conservancy exists to protect the water, wildlife and wonder of the Texas Hill Country. The Hill Country is our backyard, whether you live in Wimberley or Austin or San Marcos. It is our backyard, our beautiful playground. It provides our drinking water,” Miller explained. “It provides all of our water … An organization like Hill Country Conservancy is there to help protect that water, wildlife, those open spaces and wonder forever because the conservation easement does just that. It is in place forever.”
Miller also said that in the beginning of HCC, the nonprofit was only working in Travis, Hays and neighboring counties; however, it has since expanded its footprint into the whole Texas Hill Country because of the rapid growth that the region has been experiencing along the IH-35 corridor.
The $23.2 million in funding, which was awarded through the U.S.
Department of Agriculture’s Regional Conservation Partnership Program, will allow HCC to be strategic and focused on water resources, flood mitigation and mitigation of changes due to climate change, according to Miller.
“This funding will allow our coalition to be more strategic and proactive in protecting high-impact properties that deliver the most bang for the buck in protecting the region's endangered species, iconic spring-fed streams and pools and critical aquifer systems that provide water to communities and farmers from Central Texas to the Gulf of Mexico,” she explained.
Ninety-six percent of the land in Texas is privately-owned, so in order for HCC to protect the resources across the state, building relationships with landowners and engaging in conservation easements are critical.
“We work with those landowners and we purchase, or they donate [voluntarily], what's called a conservation easement on their land.
So, when we say land conservation, what we really mean is habitat, water and natural resource conservation. It just so happens that we talk about land in Texas, it's a piece of property,” Miller said. “When someone owns property and they then either donate or we purchase a conservation easement on that property, they give up their rights to develop the property so it can never be sold and turned into an apartment complex, a big box store, a parking lot or a Valero gas station. It's very prescribed in what can and cannot be built on that land; for the most part, it prevents additional impervious cover, so that as much water filtration as possible can happen.”
“There's usually like a home site that's allowed, maybe a second one, if two brothers are living on the same property, or two sisters, and usually an envelope, maybe an agricultural building, like a farm. But for the most part, the owner of the land says, ‘We're not going to put anything else on here that would prevent water infiltration,'” Miller continued. “We're not going to develop it any further.’ They can still hunt on their land. They can still farm their land. They can still have outdoor recreation, but they can't develop it … Once a landowner engages in this process with us, and we hold conservation easement on the property, it can never be developed.”
Looking to the future, HCC currently holds conservation easements in nine of the 18 counties in the Texas Hill Country and it hopes to expand on that within the next decade to sustain the water resources in the region, Miller said. In addition, they hope to do more partnering with local and community-based organizations to grow a constituency of conservationists so that more people become aware of the importance of and become engaged in conservation.
HCC is also looking to work with people who are doing development throughout the Texas Hill Country and establish guidelines, as well as adopt more conservation practices, even when they are doing development, so that “we can balance the growth that's happening and exciting in our region with the protection of our natural resources and our natural beauty,” Miller explained.
To learn more about HCC, visit www. hillcountryconservancy.org.
