News
Six Texas freshwater mussels proposed for Endangered Species Act Protection
AUSTIN, Texas— Following litigation by the Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today proposed to protect six species of Texas freshwater mussels under the Endangered Species Act. The Service also proposed designating 1,944 river miles...
Look out Napa Valley, Texas Hill Country named among best wine regions in U.S.
Where is the best place to swirl, sniff and sip wine in the United States? If you guessed Napa Valley, you haven’t been paying attention. The popular Northern California destination did not make the top 10 in the 2021 USA Today 10 Best Readers’ Choice awards for best...
TWA announces Justin Dreibelbis as new Chief Executive Officer
Texas Wildlife Association (TWA) is pleased to announce the hiring of Justin Dreibelbis as Chief Executive Officer. Tom Vandivier, immediate Past President of TWA, organized the Search Committee that selected Dreibelbis. According to Vandivier, “During the search...
Black Gap Wildlife Management Area designated as an International Dark Sky Sanctuary
BREWSTER COUNTY – The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) is proud to announce that Black Gap Wildlife Management Area (WMA) has been designated as an International Dark Sky Sanctuary by the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA). Black Gap WMA is the second...
AgriLife, Hill Country Alliance, and Gillespie County partners host Kolaches and Conservation event
(August 20, 2021) — On Tuesday, September 14th, the Gillespie County AgriLife Extension and partners will host the annual “Kolaches and Conservation” event at the Extension Office from 8:30 am – 10:30 am. This informal event encourages landowners who have questions...
Texas Parks and Wildlife votes preservation over development for Honey Creek Ranch
The future of a Comal County freshwater creek is looking fresher today. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission voted Thursday to acquire and prevent development at Honey Creek, one of the most iconic streams in the Texas Hill Country. The commission, which has worked...
If you live within the Guadalupe Blanco watershed and have had problems with flooding, we need to hear from you.
Do you live in the Guadalupe River’s flood planning region? If so, we want to hear from you! Help the Guadalupe Regional Flood Planning Group identify areas with potential flood risk by filling out this interactive survey map by September 3. Your feedback is crucial...
Travis County goes Lights Out for migratory birds
Lights Out Texas is a campaign of education, awareness, and action that focuses on turning out lights at night during the spring and fall migrations to help protect the billions of migratory birds that fly over Texas annually. The goal of Lights Out Texas is to reduce...
Urban Riparian demonstration site in Seguin approved for three more years
For the past three years, the Urban Riparian and Stream Restoration Program has been conducting research at a demonstration site along Geronimo Creek located within the Irma Lewis Seguin Outdoor Learning Center in Seguin, Texas. The project, which is funded by a...
Leopold Live! Chapter 2: Bluebird Boxes Recap
Lights, camera, Leopold Live! Last month we premiered our second episode of Leopold Live!: Chapter 2 with our incredible partners at Selah, Bamberger Ranch Preserve, and we truly enjoyed connecting with you again as we continue with the series. Our usual hosts, Dr....
First-ever water shortage declared for Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir
Federal officials have declared a shortage in Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the country that serves tens of millions of residents in the West and northern Mexico, amid a historic decades long "megadrought" in the region. The Bureau of Reclamation announced the...
Young Life camp to withdraw permit for wastewater discharge into Hill Country river
People in the Hill Country say they have fought for months to keep the pristine Sabinal River waters clean. Last May, the Young Life camp at LoneHollow Ranch applied for a permit that would have allowed them to discharge up to 60,000 gallons of wastewater a day into...
County to turn off lights in summer and fall to protect songbirds
The Travis County Commissioners Court passed a resolution Tuesday that will mandate county buildings to turn off all nonessential lights from 11 p.m.-6 a.m. during key migration periods for migrating songbirds. The Lights Off initiative will be in effect annually from...
The well fixer’s warning
The well fixer and I were standing at the edge of an almond orchard in the exhausted middle of California. It was late July, and so many wells on the farms of Madera County were coming up dry that he was running out of parts to fix them. In this latest round of...
4 charming Hill Country spots named among Texas’ best small towns by Travel + Leisure
Travel + Leisure magazine has given its seal of approval to four Hill Country communities as being among eight of the best small towns in Texas. In a list published July 28, the magazine lauds Bandera, Dripping Springs, Johnson City, and Wimberley, offering vignettes...
How discharged wastewater is feeding massive Hill Country algae blooms
Green mats coat what once were clear, scenic creeks and rivers, the result of algae blooms that are frustrating those who live in the Texas Hill Country. Effluent is wastewater with its pollutants removed, also known as treated wastewater. When effluent is discharged...
Why a Chinese billionaire bought 140,000 acres of land in Texas
On June 7, Texas governor Greg Abbott sat down at a desk in the state capitol and, flanked by a half-dozen lawmakers, put pen to paper for a ceremonial signing of the Lone Star Infrastructure Protection Act. “As far as I know this is the first law of its kind by any...
Texas Hill Country harvests No. 3 ranking among American wine regions
Sorry, Napa Valley. Apologies, Sonoma Valley. The Hill Country crushes both of those heavily hyped California destinations (like a grape) in a new ranking of the best wine regions. The Hill Country lands at No. 3 in the 2021 USA Today 10Best Readers’ Choice awards for...
How this Texas town became one of America’s fastest-growing cities
In the not-too-distant past, motorists driving along a stretch of Interstate 35 just northeast of San Antonio were met with vast fields of wildflowers and grazing cows in grassy pastures. Today, the cattle are gone, replaced with clusters of sleek apartments, gated...
“We can’t have land back without water back”
Growing up in Sandia Pueblo, on the banks of the Río Grande in New Mexico, Julia Bernal heard tales about the world of her ancestors. Elders told her that the area was home to diverse flora and fauna, the likes of which she had never seen. The river used to overflow...
The key to slowing traffic is street design, not speed limits
On September 8, Wiley & Sons will release the second book in the Strong Towns series: Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: A Strong Towns Approach to Transportation. Chapter five is about building great streets and how it is essential, if we want places that are...
USDA invests $167 million in high-speed broadband in 12 states
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is investing $167 million in 12 states to deploy broadband infrastructure (PDF, 360 KB) in rural areas without sufficient access to high-speed internet....
‘Nonfunctional’ grass to be banned in Las Vegas Valley
The days for much of the water-thirsty grass in the drought-stricken Las Vegas Valley are numbered. Nearly one-third of all of the grass in Southern Nevada will need to be removed by the end of 2026 under a new bill signed into law by Gov. Steve Sisolak Friday, a...
Climate change is intensifying the water cycle, new IPCC report finds
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of the world’s leading climate scientists, released its sixth climate assessment on Monday. The 1,300-page paper is the most comprehensive, up-to-date report yet on the physical science of climate change,...
Where dark skies draw star-gazers, wildfire smoke spoils the view
GREAT SAND DUNES NATIONAL PARK — The high, lonesome dunes that run up against the Rocky Mountains at 7,500 feet above sea level in southern Colorado are a long, long drive from the closest streetlight, and after dusk, the almost untainted darkness and thin, dry air...
Be a sponsor, be a star at this October’s Hill Country Night Sky Month!
Deep within each of us is a memory of breathtaking awe and wonder. Within each of us is a recollection of that first time we found ourselves speechless, under a canopy of deep night and starlight. It might have been at a star party, under a planetarium dome, or while...
Young Life camp withdraws wastewater permit, will employ zero-discharge approach
LoneHollow Ranch, a camp in the Vanderpool area owned by Young Life, a Colorado-based Christian organization, recently announced they will be withdrawing their wastewater discharge permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and moving forward...
Sponsor the 2021 Leadership Summit: A Hill Country Conservation Reunion
The Hill Country Alliance and The Hall at Jester King Brewery are proud to present: A Hill Country Conservation Reunion at the 2021 Hill Country Leadership Summit. The Summit is happening live and in-person on September 30 from 8 AM – 6 PM at The Hall at Jester King...
Big news on Young Life permit
HCA is happy to share some GREAT news from the Bandera Canyonlands Alliance, LoneHollow Ranch, and The Cibolo Conservancy! After months of opposition, including a petition garnering nearly 25,000 signatures and three county resolutions opposing the wastewater permit...
What animals see in the stars, and what they stand to lose
One moonless night a little more than a decade ago, Marie Dacke and Eric Warrant, animal vision experts from Lund University in Sweden, made a surprise discovery in South Africa. The researchers had been watching nocturnal dung beetles, miniature Sisyphuses of the...