Essays

Moseying: Exploring the Natural World

The Sibley Nature Center helps conservation groups in Whiteface, Rankin, Colorado City
October 8, 2008

Within a five day span I met with three very different conservation minded groups. The Biology I students from Rankin High School, taught by Michael Dupre, came to learn about how to plan a nature trail. Their proposed two-mile nature trail will go up along a hillside behind the school, and visit two water catchment areas. They brought 25 photographs of the proposed trail area, and toured the Sibley Nature Center’s trail, utilizing our three different styles of brochure, and listened to a fifteen minute version of a guided walk along the trail. We also discussed creating Virtual Nature Trails on a website. The trail will serve all grade levels of Rankin schools, as well as visitors to the town. I will be going to Rankin on October 14th to further work with the students and Mr. Dupre.

I also met with the Board of Directors and the Executive Director of the Native Prairies Association of Texas at the Maddin Prairie Preserve southeast of Colorado City. Eleven years ago the preserve was donated to the group. Over half of the property was still in farmland, and most of the remainder of the property was covered with dense mesquite and prickly pear thickets. In the intervening years, the farmland has been planted with many species of native grass. Some of the native grass seed was locally collected, with the remainder being CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) grasses selected by the National Resource Conservation Service grass farm at Knox City south of Wichita Falls. A large percentage of the shrubbery has been grubbed and removed, so the preserve is now about 90 percent prairie.

A segment of Champion Creek cuts across the property, filled with a riparian forest of native pecan, willow, soapberry and hackberry. While I was touring the property with the group we wondered why cottonwood is not found and debated about reintroducing the species. The riparian forest has a diverse understory, including a shrubby species of aster I had never seen in bloom before our tour. I had visited the property the first year it was purchased, and then after the farmland had been seeded with native grasses a few years later, and was very impressed at the success of the group’s efforts.

The Native Prairies Association of Texas (NPAT) recently received significant funding, including funds from the Meadows Foundation, through the efforts of Treasurer Jason Spangler (who writes computer games for a living). The Sibley Nature Center also recently received notification of funding for our capital campaign for improvements from the Meadows Foundation, and the new Audubon Center in the Metroplex also has received significant funding from the Meadows Foundation. The Meadows Foundation deserves statewide recognition for its funding of conservation efforts all over the state of Texas. This was the first board meeting of NPAT with its first ever Executive Director, Dalmara Bayne. It was of great interest (and a sense of déjà vu) as I listened to their discussions of taking the non-profit group to a new level of administration and professionalism.

The group protects a number of prairie remnants all over the state, ranging in size from ten acres to several sections. I served as “naturalist” as we toured the property, for they were unfamiliar with a number of the species of plants on the preserve, as it is their westernmost property and far from their offices and as is most of their membership. Their discussions with me centered on ways that the Sibley Nature Center and other West Texas “nature study” groups and institutions could serve as recorders of the preserve’s increasing diversity. The Sibley Nature Center has created an e-newsletter El Despoblado that is emailed to such groups from Abilene to Sonora to El Paso to Amarillo so we hope to enlist a number of groups to visit the preserve. The group also gave the Sibley Nature Center permission to hold teacher trainings at the site.

I also traveled to Whiteface (fifty miles west of Lubbock) to serve as a naturalist for one of Ogallala Commons “Playa Festivals.” Fifth grade students from Whiteface, Morton, Leveland, and Dora, New Mexico came to Whiteface for two days of programs focused on the natural history and value of playa wetlands. Ogallala Commons founder and executive director Dr. Darryl Birkenfield has worked with schools all over the panhandle of Texas and even in Oklahoma and Kansas in developing instruction about the unique habitat. Funding comes from a variety of sources, including the Playa Lakes Joint Venture, a consortium of governmental agencies and nonprofit conservation groups. This year he has put together five playa festivals throughout the Texas panhandle region. Among the other presenters were Dr. David Haukos of Texas Tech and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Dr. Nancy McIntyre of Texas Tech, Gail Barnes of the South Texas Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, and employees of the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Dr. McIntyre’s presentation focused on the invertebrates of playas, featuring live dragonflies that the students were permitted to handle and jars of playa water full of the microinvertebrates that make playas such wonderful waterfowl feeding grounds. The group toured several playas. One playa was dry, but showed the zones of vegetation quite clearly. Another playa was full of water, with a handful of just arrived wintering ducks, some migrating sandpipers, aquatic vegetation, and a bathing Harrier Hawk. As Dr. Haukos had to leave after giving a PowerPoint presentation on playa plants in the morning, I served as the plant resource person in the afternoon. The Sibley Nature Center had worked with Whiteface teacher Laura Wilbanks in 2007 with her 5th grade E-CYBERMISSION team that competed at the national level in Washington D.C. with their playa lake education project.

We are excited to see so much burgeoning interest by schools and groups all over West Texas to learn more about their own home’s ecology, and are very happy to serve in every effort to “Leave No Child Inside!”