The forested coastal wetlands of Texas’ Columbia Bottomlands
The addition of 4,628 acres to San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge will benefit migratory birds, wildlife, and the community
One year ago, the Biden administration laid out an ambitious plan for tackling the climate and biodiversity crises at home and abroad. Within that executive order, the President stipulated the need for a plan to reach the goal of conserving 30% of America’s lands and waters by 2030, as scientists have urged is necessary to support the natural systems upon which all life depends.
There are many ways to reach this ambitious goal, and it will require finding diverse and innovative ways to protect landscapes that support local communities and preserve the land’s specific values. The creation and expansion of national wildlife refuges is an excellent way to contribute toward reaching the 30x30 goal.
An example of a recent successful refuge expansion effort is the acquisition of almost 5,000 acres along the Texas coast. The McNeill-Peach Creek Unit, as the acquired property is known, will be added to the San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge contains some of the only forested wetlands adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico, known as the “Columbia Bottomlands.” This habitat once covered over a thousand square miles of floodplain forest along the Brazos, San Bernard, and Colorado Rivers. Today, there is just 150 square miles of Columbia Bottomlands forest that is not impacted by agriculture and development.
The 70,000-acre San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge was designated an Internationally Significant Shorebird Site by the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network. The area is critically important for millions of migratory birds that use it as a staging area between wintering habitats in the Caribbean and South America, and breeding habitats in North America. In addition, Columbia Bottomlands habitat supports numerous species of reptiles, amphibians, and mammals, like swamp rabbits, white-tailed deer, red-eared slider turtles, and wood ducks, to name a few. The importance of the area is not only confined to fauna; the property is home to many Bottomland hardwood trees including green ash, pecan, water hickory, bald cypress, sugar hackberry, American elm, water oak, Shumard oak, Durand oak, bur oak, black willow and many others.
In December 2021, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), acquired the additional acreage, the largest contiguous “old-growth” forest tract remaining in the Columbia Bottomlands that was not already conserved. Heather Snow, the FWS realty chief in the Southwest region said, “What makes this very unique is the Fish and Wildlife Service was able to fund this acquisition with about $11.5 million of the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund.” The remaining $2 million of private funds were provided by the Knobloch Family Foundation, The Brown Foundation, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Bezos Earth Fund. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) assisted with securing the grants to help fund the acquisition.
“The newly acquired tract safeguards critical plant and wildlife habitat in a region that is rapidly developing. The Nature Conservancy is pleased to continue its role in collaborative partnerships within the Columbia Bottomlands and protect additional old-growth forests and wetlands.” —Suzanne Scott, state director for The Nature Conservancy in Texas
While managed for the benefit of wildlife, the refuge also provides opportunities for people to enjoy nature through wildlife watching, photography, hunting, fishing, and environmental education programs. Recent polling has found that as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to impact our lives, more than ever, people are seeking solace and relief in the outdoors. A report commissioned by the Outdoor Foundation found that 7 million more Americans participated in outdoor recreation in 2020 compared to 2019. The additional 4,628 acres of coastal bottomlands forest along the Texas Gulf Coast will provide more opportunities for the community to enjoy the outdoors in an area that is experiencing significant pressure from development.
For some additional background on how the land acquisition came together and what makes this area special, the Center for Western Priorities spoke with Mike Lange from Texas Conservation Partners. Lange is a former FWS employee who spent decades developing partnerships with local landowners and raising funds that eventually led to the acquisition of the land for this project. A biologist by training, it is clear that Lange loves and values Columbia Bottomlands habitat; he specifically mentioned the importance of the region for neotropical migratory birds, that “make a jump across 500 miles of the Gulf of Mexico” and rely on these forested areas right on the Gulf for their survival in order to rest and feed before they move on the rest of the United States and Canada. Sidney Gauthreaux, a Clemson University scientist, calculates an astonishing 239 million birds pass through the Columbia Bottomlands each spring in a mass exodus event that commences a “half-hour to forty-five minutes after sunset on a southerly wind.”
According to Lange, the McNeill-Peach Creek Unit is a “wonderful wetland forest that contains old growth trees, swamp” where there hasn’t been any logging in the area since the early 1960’s, and it is situated “between a creek and a river” (the San Bernard River and Peach Creek). The Fish and Wildlife Service uses radar data to track the movements of birds and they discovered this particular area of Columbia Bottomlands is a “hotspot” for birds to rest before continuing their migrations.
Lange also spoke of the previous landowners for this area, saying they wanted it to be used for conservation: “They really loved the land. They took wonderful care of it. They left it intact with minimal impact.” The option to sell the land to the FWS was a good solution because the landowners could get full payment for the value of the land, and they could sell the whole parcel intact rather than in pieces. “So much of the Columbia Bottomlands has been cleared, so it was a unique thing to have so much of the forest left in one piece,” Lange said, mentioning the Columbia Bottomlands’ value for storing a lot of carbon in the forest itself, and in the soil. “By preserving large tracts of the Columbia Bottomlands, you’re preventing a lot of additional carbon from going into the atmosphere.”
Lange is optimistic about the possibility for additional land acquisitions in this region:
“When people understand that the land has value for wildlife and it might be possible to sell it for conservation someday, they take better care of it. You kind of change the way people look at the land.”
Part of what makes this acquisition special is that it supports many of the pillars of the Biden administration’s America the Beautiful initiative, the administration’s roadmap for conserving 30 percent of America’s lands and waters by 2030. According to the FWS, the acquisition of the 5,000-acre McNeill-Peach Creek Unit “aims to support locally led and voluntary conservation and restoration efforts across public, private, and Tribal lands and waters in order to create jobs and strengthen the economy’s foundation; tackle the climate and nature crises; and address inequitable access to the outdoors.”
The acquisition of the McNeill-Peach Creek Unit is also an example of the many existing tools that are available to the Biden administration that can be used to reach the 30x30 goal. This example shows that funds made available through the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund are a helpful option to expand the acreage of existing national wildlife refuges. While we still have a ways to go, strong federal leadership and good community-based partnerships and relationships on the ground are bringing us closer to reaching the 30x30 goal.
For more information, visit westernpriorities.org. Sign up for Look West to get daily public lands and energy news sent to your inbox, or subscribe to our podcast, The Landscape.
