January 1, 2004: Headlines: COS - Guatemala: Reforestation: American Forests: At the hub of the restoration process for the Rio Grande is Chris Best who came to the refuge in 1990 after serving in Guatemala for four years as a Peace Corps volunteer
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January 1, 2004: Headlines: COS - Guatemala: Reforestation: American Forests: At the hub of the restoration process for the Rio Grande is Chris Best who came to the refuge in 1990 after serving in Guatemala for four years as a Peace Corps volunteer
At the hub of the restoration process for the Rio Grande is Chris Best who came to the refuge in 1990 after serving in Guatemala for four years as a Peace Corps volunteer
At the hub of the restoration process for the Rio Grande is Chris Best who came to the refuge in 1990 after serving in Guatemala for four years as a Peace Corps volunteer
I went to south Texas to tour AMERICAN FORESTS' Global ReLeaf reforestation projects with Chris Best, plant ecologist for the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge (LRGV NWR). I left with a greater understanding of the challenges the Refuge has faced and the accomplishments it has achieved.
"Since 1997, our revegetation program has received funding for 326,000 seedlings through AMERICAN FORESTS' Global ReLeaf Forests, enough to restore native vegetation on 1,185 acres-nearly two square miles-of refuge cropland," says Ken Merritt, project leader for South Texas Refuges Complex, which includes the LRGV NWR and Santa Anna NWR. "Places that were bare dirt five years ago are now inhabitated by large numbers of white-tailed deer, javelina, bobcat, chachalaca, and white-winged doves."
Reforesting this fallow agricultural land means the refuge has to have many hands in the dirt. Participants range from farmers and nurseries to state agencies and nonprofits, and the refuge itself. At the hub of the restoration process is Chris Best. Best came to the refuge in 1990 after serving in Guatemala for four years as a Peace Corps volunteer.
His innovative idea for reforesting the refuge is benefiting local farmers and the ecological health of the land at minimal costs. In a two-prong deal, the refuge first buys cropland from local farmers willing to sell, then enters into a Cooperative Farming Agreement (CFA) with another farmer. In a traditional CFA, the farmer would cultivate a standing grain crop, which would benefit migratory birds such as geese. Since reforestation is a high priority for the refuge, farmers provide in-kind tree-planting services in lieu of cash rental. Each year, with assistance from the refuge, the farmer reforests approximately 10 percent of the land while continuing to cultivate agricultural products on the rest.
There are about 15 coop farmers this year. Twenty five percent of the farmer's services consist of funds to buy seedlings from the nurseries, administered through a USFWS cooperative agreement with a local nonprofit, the Valley Nature Center.
South Texas Eco-Wonderland
Home | Products & Publications | American Forests Magazine | Archives | Winter 2004 | South Texas Eco-Wonderland
By Karen Fedor
It's about a five-hour drive due south from San Antonio to McAllen, in Texas' Lower Rio Grande Valley, and the scenery is flat, dry, and monotonous, with mile after mile of brush. Step out of your air-conditioned car, and the first thing you notice is the air. It smells of gulf saltwater, a smell you'd expect near the beach in southwestern Florida, surrounded by mangroves and baldcypress. Instead, I was surrounded by trees with thorns and small leaves-trees adapted to desert conditions.
When your senses try to acclimate to conditions you've experienced nowhere else in the United States, that's when you'll know you're in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. South Texas is a crossroads for various climatic conditions-warm, humid air flowing east from the Gulf of Mexico converges with dry air from the Chihuahuan Desert to the west. Subtropical climate from the south meets the Texas Plains from the north.
The melding of all these different surroundings makes the Lower Rio Grande Valley an ecological wonderland. The subtropical vegetation of the Rio Grande delta region includes riparian forest, dense forests, and shrubland; savanna, freshwater, and tidal wetlands; and a variety of types of coastal habitat. It's a bird superhighway as well, with thousands of winged wildlife from the Central and Mississippi flyways passing through on their way to and from Central and South America. The area is also home to 15 national Big Tree champions, the biggest being a 375-point Montezuma baldcypress.
I went to south Texas to tour American Forests' Global ReLeaf reforestation projects with Chris Best, plant ecologist for the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge (LRGV NWR). I left with a greater understanding of the challenges the Refuge has faced and the accomplishments it has achieved.
"Since 1997, our revegetation program has received funding for 326,000 seedlings through American Forests' Global ReLeaf Forests, enough to restore native vegetation on 1,185 acres-nearly two square miles-of refuge cropland," says Ken Merritt, project leader for South Texas Refuges Complex, which includes the LRGV NWR and Santa Anna NWR. "Places that were bare dirt five years ago are now inhabitated by large numbers of white-tailed deer, javelina, bobcat, chachalaca, and white-winged doves."
The name "Rio Grande" evokes images of a wild, flowing river, but in this area it's hardly enough creek to support a kayaker. During the drought of 2002, the Rio Grande south of Falcon Dam was reduced to a dry sand bar. The Lower Rio Grande Valley, known to locals as just the "Valley," is not really one at all; it's a delta of the Rio Grande, a tract of usually triangular land formed by river sediment and enclosed between two or more mouths of a river.
The Rio Grande used to flow freely from the headwaters in Colorado through arid regions of New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico out to the Gulf of Mexico. Jaguars and ocelots roamed freely under the branches of subtropical riparian forests. Now, the animals are on the threatened and endangered list and sightings are a rare occurrence. Over the past 100 years riparian forest along the lower Rio Grande has been cleared to build dams and reservoirs for flood control, agriculture, and municipal uses, destroying the wild cats' habitat.
In fact, since the 1920s, about 95 percent of riparian vegetation has been removed from the U.S. side of the Lower Rio Grande Valley. With a median temperature of 72 degrees, farmers realize they can get two growing seasons out of the rich delta soils if they irrigate their land. Today, the Valley produces more than 40 crops, primarily sugar cane, cotton, citrus, sorghum, and vegetables. Agriculture is big business here, providing more than $500 million annually to the local economy. But this bounty has been at the expense of the river.
Adding to the pressures on the already stressed ecosystem is NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Rio Grande Valley is the center of a NAFTA-driven border economy; home to many of the fastest-growing cities in Mexico and the U.S. The Mexican side houses that country's largest concentrations of export-oriented assembly plants. On the American side, the water-thirsty Rio Grande Valley and city of Laredo are among Texas' fastest-growing regions. Laredo is the largest inland port in the United States, and thousands of trucks cross over the Rio Grande daily.
With development comes problems, and runoff from agricultural fields and urban areas has degraded the Rio Grande's water. The Valley's population has doubled from 1.1 million to more than 2.2 million since 1970 and is expected to double again by 2030. Despite phenomenal growth in the area, poverty remains high and Starr County's population is the poorest in the state.
Protecting the Land
The federal government created the 2,080-acre Santa Ana National Wildlife on the banks of the Rio Grande seven miles south of Alamo in 1943 to protect a remnant of subtropical riparian forest. At the refuge, in Hidalgo County, you can see what the area must have looked like before industrialization and agriculture dominated the local economy.
The species list reads like a Who's Who of the environment: nearly 400 birds; a myriad of mammals, including indigo snake and the endangered ocelot; and about half the butterfly species found in North America.
During a quick 20-minute walk on the refuge's "A" trail I saw green jays, some sort of rail, great kiskadee, tricolored heron, American snouts, and an indigo snake. As a "backyard birder" and novice butterfly ID'er, I was excited to see so many birds and butterflies in one place. I'm told birders from Germany, England, and Spain have come here to add to their "life lists." In fact, birding is becoming so popular in south Texas that the World Birding Center has chosen Mission, Texas, as the site of its new $20 million headquarters.
But back to the trees. The Lower Rio Grande Valley NWR is a patchwork of fallow agricultural lands, located in Starr, Hidalgo, Cameron, and Willacy counties and extending for 275 miles along the Rio Grande from Falcon Dam near the most western edge of Starr County to the Gulf of Mexico. The goal is in 100 years or so to have LRGV be equivalent to Santa Ana NWR. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) can buy land for wildlife corridors using federal Land and Water Conservation Fund money (money from the sale of Outer Continental Shelf oil and gas leases). Thus far, the agency has acquired approximately 85,000 acres and reforested 10,000 of those. Its goal is to acquire 132,500 acres.
Reyes and Best in her nursery; reforestation of tepeguage and ebony at LRGV NWR
Innovative Restoration
Reforesting this fallow agricultural land means the refuge has to have many hands in the dirt. Participants range from farmers and nurseries to state agencies and nonprofits, and the refuge itself. At the hub of the restoration process is Chris Best. Best came to the refuge in 1990 after serving in Guatemala for four years as a Peace Corps volunteer.
His innovative idea for reforesting the refuge is benefiting local farmers and the ecological health of the land at minimal costs. In a two-prong deal, the refuge first buys cropland from local farmers willing to sell, then enters into a Cooperative Farming Agreement (CFA) with another farmer. In a traditional CFA, the farmer would cultivate a standing grain crop, which would benefit migratory birds such as geese. Since reforestation is a high priority for the refuge, farmers provide in-kind tree-planting services in lieu of cash rental. Each year, with assistance from the refuge, the farmer reforests approximately 10 percent of the land while continuing to cultivate agricultural products on the rest. There are about 15 coop farmers this year. Twenty five percent of the farmer's services consist of funds to buy seedlings from the nurseries, administered through a USFWS cooperative agreement with a local nonprofit, the Valley Nature Center.
From the Ground Up
Growing trees in this region, though, has never been an easy task, especially when there were no commercial reforestation nurseries from which to obtain young trees. Best, therefore, had to start from the bottom up, contracting with local farmers and others in the area to grow seedlings.
The refuge's need for native trees has stimulated a local industry that continues to grow. A half-dozen privately owned commercial nurseries have evolved over the past few years, and a couple of those have added retail sales of native plant seedlings and native plant landscaping services. It's becoming a rapidly developing private-sector market, as more and more people become interested in drought-tolerant trees, butterfly gardening, and the like.
All the seeds needed to meet this demand for natives are collected from the wild, on private lands with permission, or on refuge tracts or other publicly owned land. Seed collection is confined to Cameron, Willacy, Hidalgo, and Starr counties, so source seeds never originate more than 50 miles north/south or about 100 miles east/west from the restoration sites. The refuge alone has close to 70 different species grown for its reforestation projects.
"Based on the soils, hydrology, and microclimate of each site, I develop an idealized species and abundance list for plants to be used in the restoration," Best says. That idealized list is intended to recreate the vegetation on lightly disturbed sites that have similar soils and hydrology, using species he knows will thrive there. "But in the end," he says, "we have to work with the species that we are able to obtain, which is greatly influenced by availability and viability of native plant seeds collected from the wild-factors beyond any human control."
Refuge Employee with 2-year-old jaboncillo
During our tour, Chris and Patty Alexander, the refuge's public outreach officer, showed me two of the numerous refuge tracts-La Joya and El Morrillo Banco-that American Forests has planted through its Global ReLeaf Forests program. At La Joya, the trees top 10 feet tall. Tree species include tepeguaje (Leucaena pulverulenta); palo blanco, (Celtis laevigata); anacua (Ehretia anacua); tenaza (Pithecellobium pallens) or huajillo; jaboncillo (Sapindus saponaria) or Mexican soapberry, an old-growth species; and Vasey's adelia (Adelia vaseyi), which is rare.
As the refuge plants its trees it's also educating the locals about the importance of restoring the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Each year the complex holds "Rio Reforestation," in which 1,000 volunteers come together to plant more than 13,000 seedlings in one day.
Originally created as a way to improve water quality in the Rio Grande, Rio Reforestation has evolved into an annual community event that draws everyone from grandparents to grade schoolers. "It's such a thrill for me to go out onto the planting site and see a kid with a trowel, getting dirty, and planting a tree," says co-founder Jim Matz, president of the local nonprofit Valley Proud Council, which provides volunteers for the event.
It's just another aspect of south Texas' eco-wonderland in action. AF
Karen Fedor is vice president of Global ReLeaf for American Forests. [TOP]
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Story Source: American Forests
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Guatemala; Reforestation
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