Environment
BY AMIRA VAN LEEUWEN
HCC secures $23.2M for conservation
Explained
A conservation easement is a legal document that dictates where building can happen. 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 ... and we will not pave over it,’” 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
This is the largest single federal award ever for conservation easement funding in the Texas Hill Country, the news release states. 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 .
Hill Country Conservancy, or HCC, a local nonpro t organization working to preserve natural resources, secured $23.2 million in federal funding for conservation easements Oct. 8. 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.
Hill Country Headwaters Conservation Initiative target areas The HCC will utilize the funding to identify strategic properties to conserve in the region outlined below.
slow rollout of conservation.” KATHY MILLER, CEO OF HILL COUNTRY CONSERVANCY
Project boundary Major streams Watersheds: a land area that channels rainfall into a body of water
BRADY CREEK
SAN SABA RIVER
COLORADO RIVER
N. LLANO RIVER
SAN GABRIEL RIVER
What’s next?
LLANO RIVER
PEDERNALES RIVER
Austin
UPPER SAN MARCOS RIVER
S. LLANO RIVER
Each proposed project will be screened using Geographic Information System software and then ranked according to which projects have the highest conservation values. Once completed, the coalition will meet and agree on the projects that will be funded. Awards are anticipated to be announced in November, after press time, Miller said.
GUADALUPE RIVER
San Marcos New Braunfels
UPPER SAN ANTONIO RIVER
Federal funding: $23.2M
San Antonio
Proposed acres protected: 7,500
N
SOURCE: HILL COUNTRY CONSERVANCY COMMUNITY IMPACT
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