Zooming in
The funds were awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Regional Conservation Partnership Program to the Hill Country Headwaters Conservation Initiative—a coalition of 27 regional partners, working to identify the most strategic properties for conservation, according to the news release.
This is the largest single federal award ever for conservation easement funding in the Texas Hill Country, the news release states.
Originally, the coalition had set a goal of preserving 7,500 acres of high-conservation value land with the new funding. HCC CEO Kathy Miller said preapplications for the grant closed Oct. 11, and they received over 40,000 acres of project proposals, worth over $70 million.
“We obviously will not be able to do all of them, but we think it’s [going to] be possible that we may have more than 7,500 acres protected at the end of this,” Miller told Community Impact.
A conservation easement is a legal document that prescribes where building can happen and restricts any kind of building or impervious cover on that land. The money purchases the development rights on that land, Miller said
“For the landowner—what they have said is—'I will not sell this to a developer. It will not become condos. It will not become a shopping mall. It will not become a parking lot, and we will not pave over it,’” Miller said.
Why it matters
The $23.2 million will allow the coalition to be more strategic and proactive in protecting high-impact properties, thus protecting the region’s endangered species, spring-fed streams and critical aquifer systems that provide water to Central Texas farmers and communities, Miller said.
“The pace of development has been so rapid that the Hill Country is losing open space at an incredible rate. That is why I think this grant and this project is so important now, and that is why it requires 27 partners to make it happen, because we don’t have the luxury of a slow rollout of conservation,” Miller said. “We’re living with our swimming holes drying up and water restrictions.”
What’s next?
Each proposed project will be screened using GIS software and then ranked according to a specific criteria, such as which projects have the highest conservation values. Once completed, the coalition will meet and agree on the the projects that will be funded. Awards are anticipated to be announced in November, Miller told Community Impact.
