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The City of Austin Bond Election Advisory Committee recently recommended $5 million in open space bond funds to protect area prairies!

Prairie is a diverse community of native plants and wildlife dominated by native grasses and flowers in successions throughout the year, with sparse to few trees. Prairie once made up over half of Travis County and most of Williamson County, but now it is almost completely gone.

The Native Prairies Association of Texas, working with local chapters of the Native Plant Society of Texas, recently organized an effort to protect the few remaining prairie remnants in the Austin area. I gave a proposal and multiple presentations to the City’s Bond Election Advisory Committee, and our members and friends gave (and sent via email) many comments supporting prairie conservation.

As a result, the Bond Election Advisory Committee recently recommended $5 million in open space bond funding to protect area prairies! That will probably be enough to only protect about 20% of what little remains in the area, but 20% is much better than 0%.

The Austin Chronicle also ran an article written by Rachel Proctor May, Dreaming of Buffalo, about Austin area prairies!

Now the recomendation goes to the City Council, and if accepted on to Austin voters for approval.

More prairie information follows after the link.

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Lisa, Scott, Coby, and I went on a tallgrass prairie tour (aka vacation) through Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri last week/weekend. It was a whirlwind trip, but it was very fun! It also helped me feel a little better to know some good quality prairies are protected.

We visited Tallgrass Prairie Preserve (OK), Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve (KA), Konza Prairie (KA), Prairie State Park (MO), Black Oaks Prairie (MO) (Scott’s 80 acres, part remnant prairie and part restoration-in-progress), Osage Prairie (MO), Stilwell Prairie (MO), and Diamond Grove Prairie (MO).

Prairies are an ecosystem dominated vegetatively by grasses and forbs (such as flowers). In spring, summer, and fall prairies are full of wildflowers blooming, creating a beautiful landscape of flowers and grasses that once stretched to the horizon.

Tallgrass prairies, which once covered the central US from southern Canada down into Texas, are 99% gone mostly because of conversion to farmland (due to the rich soils created by the prairie ecosystem) and development. Since so little tallgrass prairie is left, it is important that we protect what little remains before it is destroyed by development or plowing.

Many creatures depend on the prairie as habitat, such as bison, prairie chickens, prairie dogs, and the black footed ferret.

See the Native Prairies Association of Texas website for more information about prairies in Texas and how to help preserve these wonderful places for current and future generations.

Recently, I’ve uploaded some updates to the NPSOT chapter web sites I take care of:

Lisa and I updated the Austin chapter site to make the site more attractive.

Same for the Williamson County site.

Lisa created a Zilker Demonstration Garden page for the Austin chapter.

We added the spreadsheet version we created of Bill Carr’s annotated checklist of Travis County flora to the Travis County Flora project.

Do you support protecting nature and the environment? Most of us will answer yes. Many of us even give money to environmental causes, and many perform volunteer work at local parks and preserves.

But do the things in our everyday life reflect our environmentalism? For example, landscaping with non-native plants and non-native lawns wastes large amounts of ever more precious water, and increases dangerous pesticide and herbicide use which kills beneficial insects and pollutes our water sources. Lawns usually involve mowers, trimmers, and leaf blowers, which emit air and noise pollution. Non-native plants do not reflect our home area, and are not the plants butterflies and hummingbirds are searching for.

Native plant landscaping is much more environmental than traditional exotic landscaping. Native plants and native lawn grasses in general require little to no supplemental watering, and are resistant to diseases and insects and thus reduce use of and pollution from pesticides and herbicides. Native plants also increase our sense of place, making our home area unique and different from those in different parts of the country.

Butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds are looking for the native plants. By creating a backyard wildlife habitat, we can have a beautiful garden and attract the critters that we enjoy watching. We can even reduce or eliminate your lawn, reducing yard work while reducing pollution and increasing the number of attractive plants and critters around our homes.

Not only is native plant and wildlife landscaping attractive and enjoyable, but it is also a moral imperative in today’s world of increased environmental damage and habitat destruction.

For more information, see the following:

• Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
• Backyard Wildlife Habitats at the National Wildlife Federation
• Your local Native Plant Society, like the Austin Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas
• Texas Wildscapes at Texas Parks and Wildlife

Scott, Coby, Lisa, and I took a trip through back roads and along railroad tracks in eastern Travis and western Bastrop Counties. Notable plants we saw include Baptisia (blooming), large wild hyacinth colonies, sandyland bluebonnet, coral-berry, split-beard bluestem (maybe in Travis Co. which isn’t in TEX-LL, waiting for bloom), puccoon (blooming), calyophus berlandieri (large colonies), viburnum (blooming), Drummond’s phlox (blooming), and toothache tree.

Lisa went with the plant gang to McKinney Falls State Park today. I wanted to go but I could not sleep last night and was ill this morning. 🙁

They saw over a hundred turtles, a downy woodpecker, some terns, ruby-crowned kinglet, some warblers, a blue wing teal, a greater yellowlegs, mallards, chickadees, titmice, kingfishers, Bewick’s wren, cardinals, mockingbirds, and a red-tailed hawk.

Plants blooming included Mexican buckeye, Mexican plum, creek plum, red buckeye, redbud, agarita, golden groundsel, anenome, and greenthread. Other plants include spiderwart, rain lily, a huge bald cyprus (second largest in Travis County).

Afterward we all met for dinner, and I wrote this entry from the restaurant on the Treo 600 using Vagablog.