Texas Wildlife October 2010
by
Henry Chappell
"To Houston the road lay across a flat surface, having a wet, sandy or ‘craw-fish’ soil, bearing a coarse, rushy grass, diversified by occasional belts of pine and black-jack. We had reached the level prairie region of the coast, and in fact saw henceforth not one appreciable elevation until we crossed the Mississippi.”
Fredrick Law Olmsted, A Journey Through Texas
From the road, Nash Prairie looks flat, like the archetypal prairie of popular imagination, but a walk through its luxuriant grasses reveals terrain in which plant life varies with a few inches of rise or fall in elevation.
On an early August morning, Reverend Peter Conaty, and his wife, Susan, Nash Prairie’s chief advocates, gave me a tour. I recognized little and big bluestem, Indian grass, coneflower, and gay feather. Susan called out scientific names faster than I could scribble them in my notebook. Here and there “pimple mounds,” sandy, waist-high bumps shaped over the eons by wind and water, formed distinct grassy islands.
This coastal prairie remnant along the lower reaches of the Brazos River, in Brazoria County, is a layered landscape, not unlike the understory, midstory, and canopy of an old growth forest. Susan often knelt and parted taller vegetation to point out ground-hugging flowers. Surveys have identified 289 plant species, including 59 species of grass, and over 120 bird species.
In a sense, Nash Prairie is old growth, or virgin. Like an ancient forest spared the ax and chainsaw, it has never been plowed or heavily grazed by livestock. Though its grasses and sedges are head-high at their most impressive, its biomass likely exceeds that of any similar-sized patch of North American forest. The tiny fraction of native prairie that you can see is anchored and fed by long, dense, tough rootage evolved to survive fire and the severest drought.
Nash Prairie has been mown however; locals have long called it “The Hay Meadow.” Occasional mowing, like fire and grazing by bison in pre-frontier times, rejuvenates the grass and keeps encroaching brush at bay. Regular haying is impossible, however. At times, swales hold enough water to provide resting and feeding habitat for puddle ducks while other spots would burn at the drop of a match. The little meadow has long been hayed according to natural dictates of elevation and rainfall, just as it was grazed and burned according to the vagaries of nature in pre-Columbian times.
This 350-acre parcel is the largest and most intact coastal prairie left in Texas. It survives because of the haying practices of early German and Czech immigrants, and the eccentricity and whim of Kittie Nash Groce, a resourceful rancher and philanthropist who sped up and down CR 25 in a Cadillac and unsettled Brazoria County matrons by throwing lively parties at which she purportedly danced awfully close with local husbands.
Kittie was raised in Houston, the only daughter of William and Ina Nash. In 1909, she married Browning Groce, a Galveston banker, who committed suicide two years later. After her father’s death in 1930, she and her mother moved to the 12,000 acre family ranch near West Columbia. With the Great Depression raging, and no ranching experience, she found the ranch deeply in debt. Through resourcefulness and legendary frugality, she returned the ranch to profitability by 1940.
Kittie died in 1957 after funding much of the construction of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church and Parish Hall. She left her ranch – now called KNG Ranch – to St. Mary’s, several heirs, and a group she named the West Columbia Hospital District Trustees in anticipation of the health facility they were to build with proceeds from the sale of the ranch.
The last heir died in 2006 leaving the KNG in joint ownership by St. Mary’s and the hospital trustees. Per Kittie’s will, the ranch, which contains Nash Prairie, and the smaller but ecologically significant Mowotony Prairie, must be sold.
Naturally, there’s considerable disagreement among the present owners as to the best way to carry out the terms of Kittie’s will. Potential agreements with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and other organizations have fallen through.
Although Nash Prairie has long been known to professional ecologists, it has been virtually unknown to the public until recently.
The Conatys moved to West Columbian in 2005, when Peter became St. Mary’s priest. Shortly thereafter, Susan heard a talk on the prairie at a local Master Naturalist meeting.
“I had been driving by it every day and had no idea what was there,” she said. “As the talk went on, I started trembling. I went straight home and told Peter, and we agreed that this prairie should be protected forever.”
The Conatys worst fear is that a developer will make an offer the trustees or Episcopal diocese can’t refuse. Currently, the best hope seems to be in the Nature Conservancy, which is interested in Nash and Mowotony Prairies and surrounding bottomland.
The coastal prairie runs along the western gulf coast from about Lafayette Louisiana to South Texas, just inland from the coastal marsh. Prior to settlement, the coastal prairie encompassed some nine million acres – about 2.5 million in Louisiana and 6.5 million in Texas. Today, less than one percent of the region remains in pristine condition. As of 1999 in Louisiana, only about 100 acres - mostly tiny patches along railroad tracks - remain of the original “Cajun Prairie.”
In Texas, where cattle ranching left more prairie unplowed, remnant patches total about 65,000 acres. The rest has been lost to urban and suburban development, conversion of native pasture to “improved” domestic pasture, overgrazing, and cultivation, especially rice farming.
Why should we care? Coastal prairie provides critical ecosystem services such as water filtration and flood control – no small matter in one of the more flood-prone regions of the country. Never mind, the disastrous loss of wildlife habitat and the small matter of our natural heritage.
In Texas, ecologists divide the coastal prairie into the Upper Coastal Prairie, which runs from the Louisiana border, southwest through Houston to the vicinity of Victoria and Matagorda Bay, and the drier Lower Coastal Prairie which extends into the Kingsville area.
Not surprisingly, given the abundant rainfall along the upper coast, tallgrasses such as big bluestem, Indian grass, and eastern gama dominate. Unlike prairies of the Great Plains, where aridity is central, a combination of poorly drained soils and susceptibility to wildfire restricted trees and other woody vegetation to watercourses.
In pre-settlement times, Karankawa Indians and roving Comanche bands hunted the upper coastal prairie. Bison were numerous, as were red wolves, and prairie chickens. The wolves and bison are long gone. The Attwater’s Prairie Chicken is the most endangered bird in North America.
Covering some 1000 square miles, Katy Prairie is the largest and best known prairie on the upper coast. Bounded by the Brazos River on the southwest, pinelands on the north, and Houston in the East, it exists today as a patchwork of small remnants, some protected, most not, amid an ocean of sprawl and agriculture. With its thousands of potholes and marshes, Katy Prairie has long been holy ground for waterfowl hunters. During the rice farming boom of the past 60 years the area’s snow goose population boomed as the birds moved inland to take advantage of waste rice and the vast increase in surface water.
Southwestward, as rainfall decreases, the tall grasses of the upper coast give way to midgrasses and thornscrub of the Lower Coastal Prairie.
What can be done?
As we drove south on I-45, from Houston toward Texas City, Jaime Gonzales, Katy Prairie Conservancy’s community education director, pointed out dozens of potential prairies – small, imperfect patches that nevertheless contain indicator species such as gay feather and Indian grass.
“There are hundreds of thousands of acres of these spots in the Houston area alone,” he said. “Sure, a lot of these have been over-grazed in the past, and contain exotic species, but they have the basic prairie components. They could be saved and restored over time. The big challenge is to educate the public and get them to buy into prairie conservation.”
In Galveston County, just west of La Marque, we met Dr. Glenn Aumann, director of the University of Houston Coastal Center. The site encompasses 925 acres of coastal prairie in various stages of rehabilitation and serves as a research facility for the development of sound conservation practices in urban coastal areas.
Prior to its acquisition by the University in 1960, the site had been part of Camp Wallace, a U.S. Army base. Ever vigilant against disorder, the Army mowed and planted Chinese tallow, a fast growing ornamental shade tree around its barracks and office buildings. By the 1990s, despite a mowing and burning program, much of the prairie had been shaded out by Chinese tallow. “Once it forms a canopy, that’s all she wrote,” Aumann said.
Young tallow trees were fast encroaching on remaining prairie, however prescribed burning proved futile. Even small trees recovered. Ultimately, years of chainsaw work, careful herbicide application, and seeding and transplanting of native species have returned many of the prairies to health. To the untrained eye, like mine, the best patches look perfect.
Yet, once altered, ecosystems that developed over tens of thousands of years can’t be completely restored in mere decades. “This is a good start,” Aumann said. “But a prairie is more than plants. It’s also bacteria and insects. We can’t begin to even name all of them. We’re a good 200 years away from the real thing.”
As valuable as they are, protected prairies can’t be the complete answer. Nearly all coastal prairie is private property, and few landowners can afford to set aside large acreages.
In 2000, TWA member Jim Willis, a former rice farmer, bought 224 –acre WW Ranch, in Colorado County. “It was basically old, bald knob.” Willis said. A biologist called it a wildlife desert.
Willis and his business partner restored over 100 acres to native grasses, constructed a five-acre wetland, and planted some 3,000 native sand plum trees to provide loafing cover for bobwhites. By 2004, the ranch bobwhite population had rebounded to nearly a bird per acre. Biologists from Texas A&M identified 31 species of birds.
Reality, in the form of drought and predators, reduced the quail population considerably, though it remains at a healthy level, especially for the upper coast.
In case you’re wondering, the WW remains a working cattle ranch. Willis runs a moderate stocking and rotational grazing program to maintain healthy native pasture. Although he runs fewer cattle than many landowners, he makes up much of the difference in cost savings.
“We haven’t had to feed cattle in the past three years,” Willis said. “Nor do we have to fertilize native pasture.”
In 2004, Willis founded the Wildlife Habitat Foundation, a cooperative aimed at decreasing fragmentation and educating landowners and the public. In 2008, with a federal Conservation Innovation Grant, he and four of his neighbors began work on a seven-mile wildlife corridor to connect their properties with the Attwater’s Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge. The project should be functional this year.
In 2005, Texas Parks & Wildlife honored Willis with a Lonestar Land Steward Award.
Over 99 percent of our coastal prairie has been lost, much of it buried under concrete and asphalt. Protecting the remaining pristine patches and restoring damaged remnants will be a multi-generation effort.
Jim Willis puts the long recovery in perspective. “The key thing is that you don’t have to do it all at one time. You can replace exotic pasture a little at a time, as you can afford it. As the price of fertilizer and other inputs go up, ranchers will see the benefit.”
As will coastal wildlife and the millions of Texans who love it.
Additional Information
Katy Prairie Conservancy - www.katyprairie.org
Coastal Prairie Partnership - www.coastalprairiepartnership.org
Armand Bayou Nature Center - www.abnc.org
Wildlife Habitat Foundation - http://whf-texas.org/
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service - www.fws.gov/southwest/clearlakees/coastalprairie.htm
Have a Field Day
The second annual State of the Prairie Conference will bring together prairie experts from Texas, Louisiana, and the mid-west to share their experience, expertise, and passion for prairie restoration, conservation, and education with private landowners, nonprofit and governmental employees, and educators.
When: November 4-5, 2010
Where: Houston Zoo and field trips to local prairie sites including Armand Bayou Nature Center and Attwater’s Prairie Chicken National Preserve.
Register online at www.CoastalPrairiePartnership.org
