Donate to the Bolivar Restoration Effort
Upcoming Work Days and Workshops
Resources
Trees for Bolivar
 Houston Audubon is able to offer peninsula property owners free native trees and shrubs as part of the Trees for Bolivar Project. Property owners sign up trees and Houston Audubon staff conduct a site visit to determine what species of trees are appropriate and if their soil is ready. Peninsula residents are excited about replanting, and many have signed up to participate in the program. This Project is supported by Together Green, an Audubon program with funding from Toyota. It is also made possible with funding from ERM Foundation, BP America, and the Apache Foundation of Apache Corporation.
Photos
Bolivar Restoration Projects: Spring 2010 Summary
Ducks Unlimited and Houston Endowment funds have enabled us to continue Hurricane Ike debris clean-up as well as restoring hurricane damaged areas to their pre-Ike conditions.
We have made improvements to our High Island sanctuaries that human and avian visitors will appreciate. Projects included restocking Smith Pond in High Island with native fish and rebuilding the wood fences surrounding the Smith Oaks parking lot. With funding from the McCullough Foundation and the Smith Foundation we were able to improve the system of boardwalks and trails and add roofs over the rookery observation decks. We are now working to diversify Smith Oaks' woods with native plant species. Last but not least, the Farm Service Agency (FSA) has helped us rebuild over 10 miles of barbwire fencing at Horseshoe Marsh and Bolivar Flats.
Volunteers contributed three outstanding work days on the peninsula in February. Our regular High Island work day was attended by over 50 people! We focused on removing privet in Boy Scout Woods in order to promote bird-friendly native plants. Joining us were the young energetic workers of Barber's Hill High School Key Club, who had come all the way from Mont Belvieu, and a group from the Student Conservation Association (SCA). Our second work day was at Horseshoe Marsh on February 16 with the Galveston Bay Master Naturalists. They have chosen to help with our prairie restoration project at Horseshoe Marsh this year. We kicked off the project by planting over 70 native grasses and distributing little bluestem seeds throughout the mowed area. After planting grasses, we moved over to our lots at Ft. Travis Seashore Park and planted an important line of yaupons delineating our property from the neighbors. More events are scheduled with GBMN this year to restore the Horseshoe Marsh prairie.
Environmental Resource Management (ERM) offered 48 of their North American managers, including the North American CEO, to help with more habitat work at High Island. More privet was pulled and over 50 trees and shrubs were put in place in the newly cleared areas.
This has been an exceptional year of projects, and it has proven how important our relationships with partnering organizations are to accomplish conservation goals.
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Grow Out Native Plants for Houston Audubon
by Flo Hannah, Sr. Sanctuary Steward
American Basketflower, one of the native plants available for propagation
Houston Audubon and the Coastal Prairie Partnership (CPP) are involved in native plant restoration projects at several locations, Houston Audubon's land outside of the Ft. Travis Seashore Park in Port Bolivar, and a CPP project at Hermann Park (Project Blazing Star).
Partners include the NRCS, several Master
Naturalists chapters, and the Apache Tree Foundation. This Project is supported by Together Green, an Audubon program with funding from Toyota.
The biggest roadblock to coastal prairie
restoration is the lack of available native plant
material specific to the Upper Texas Coast. We
have collected native seed all summer and fall
and are asking individuals to propagate the
seed at home for restoration projects. I hope you will join in this fun,
important wildlife enhancement project. I will
mail you the native plant seed along with a
photo of the native plant you are growing. Full
instructions on native plant germination are
available at the Coastal Prairie Partnership website. Jaime Gonzalez has prepared a Coastal Prairie Plant Growers' Handbook,
available on that site, which explains everything
about seed collecting and propagating.
Once your plants germinate, and are hardy
enough to bump-up to 4" or 1-gallon
containers, you can join us at a potting-up work
day, or drop off the seedlings and we will do the
rest. The plants will be used in one of our many
restoration projects. We encourage you to
retain some of the native plant material for your
own backyard, helping to create a wildlife
corridor throughout the Houston-Galveston
region.
If you're not able to propagate plants but
would still like to participate, other
ways to help are by joining us on one of our
work days or assisting with a donation. If you would like to help us grow seedlings, please contact me at fhannah@houstonaudubon.org. We have prepared a Secure Online Form for you to donate to this program.
Fort Travis Restoration
We are working with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to create a demonstration site at Ft. Travis Seashore Park in Port Bolivar. On October 31 and again on November 17 we planted native grasses and wildflowers at Houston Audubon's bird sanctuary which is on either side of the Fort Travis Seashore Park entrance road (900 SH 87, Port Bolivar). Once 4 acres of yaupon thickets where Painted Buntings nested and many migrants stopped the lots were scraped bare by hurricane cleanup operations. Habitat restoration specialists from the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) came to the peninsula to evaluate the site and then brought 5000 native salt tolerant grass plants, 150 trees and shrubs and grass and wild flower seeds for the site.
The grasses were planted on October 31, by 40 volunteers who included HAS sanctuary volunteers, master naturalists, and peninsula residents. Thirty volunteers showed up on November 17 to plant the trees and shrubs they were treated to a yummy gumbo lunch provided by Port Bolivar resident Edith Watson. What would we do without volunteers?
Some of the volunteers at the Nov 17 planting event.
Report and Photos of October 31 planting event.
Bolivar Blueprint
Houston Audubon staff is involved in the process to develop the "Bolivar Blueprint" long term recovery process. The community is looking to ecotourism as one of the keys to economic recovery and that is good news for birds and bird watchers. The peninsula's rural nature has retained wildlife habitat and made it a popular birding destination. The restoration of that habitat will help with economic recovery. To find out more about the Bolivar Blueprint process, visit the Bolivar Blueprint website.
