Thornscrub Sanctuary Action Plan
“Tamaulipan Thornscrub” is the name given to the habitat type that occurs in South Texas, a region that contains dozens of plant and animal species found nowhere else in the United States. To many that live in the region, these scrubby and spiny plants are referred to simply as “brush” and sadly viewed as disposable and worthless. Plants here are seen as standing in the way of “economic progress”, which today in America usually means endless sprawl in order to build retail centers, parking lots and tract housing with lawns. But the plants that grow here are some of the most resilient in the world when it comes to dealing with heat, and together with the soil biome of fungi and symbiotic bacteria they compose a living network of vastly remarkable and understudied organisms that is being destroyed before it is even fully understood. Recognizing how valuable and precious this ecosystem is, we decided to come together and form a base of operations where we could both conserve and work to restore what little is left, while also providing education and outreach to the people of South Texas about the biological riches that they are living on top of so that future generations may come to appreciate and respect what too many people today seem unwilling to.
Aside from serving as a research station, base of operations and waypoint for botanists and field researchers in the area, we hope to serve as an education center for the endangered plant community that occupies this habitat as well.
In addition to conservation, another of our goals is to be able to help facilitate and advise native plant propagation and planting in places where applicable, whether it be at schools, municipal buildings or even the front yards of private residences.
The majority of our focus for land conservation will be on our 37 acre land project. The focus will be on :
- building and establishing trails,
-removing invasive species such as buffelgrass and guinea grass and continuing to maintain their eradication,
-planting thousands of native cactus species such as Astrophytum asterias, Ancistrocactus scheeri, Mammillaria heyderi,
-planting hundreds of native perennial Thornscrub species such as Asclepias prostrata, Galphimia angustifolia, Nyctaginia capitata, Agave univittata & asperrima, etc
Our immediate expenses will come mainly in the form of construction costs for an on-site, 2000 sq. ft building near the entrance and unpaved (for now) parking area and establishment of a tall fence to keep feral hogs away and mitigate unauthorized entry. We hope to eventually establish a grey-water system and composting toilets.
The building is to serve as a meeting space, library, presentation gallery, small lab for microscopy and potentially PCR and molecular sequencing of plant & fungal species, and will have a small kitchen, 2 bathrooms, shower and small lounge area.
Ideally, we hope to one day be able to host interns and have somebody live on site. Being that this is one of the most extreme climates in North America in terms of summertime heat, it would seem best if the building is constructed of rammed Earth walls that have a high heat capacity and insulation ratio. The property is somewhat sloped so there will be grading that needs to occur and part of the building will likely have to be built into the slope. Aside from one or two buildings and a storage container near the entrance to the property, there will be no other construction anywhere else on the 37 acres.
The vast majority of the property occurs on fossilized oyster beds of Eocene-Oligocene age. Half of the property has been root plowed in the past for cattle , but there have been two decades since of decent recruitment of black brush (Vachellia rigidula), Ancistrocactus scheeri, Erythrostemon caudatus, Galphimia angustifolia, and Asclepias prostrata, among other species.
There is a low-lying arroyo area on the property as well, and eradication of buffelgrass here will require monthly maintenance and walkthroughs to monitor seedling germination of buffel grass once it is cleared. It is in this area that we also hope to establish a few populations of the endangered cactus species Astrophytum asterias, as a common companion plant of that species - Varilla texana - is already found here.
On the Eastern side of this arroyo the property has never been root plowed, leaving the soil seed bank intact. Infiltration with invasive bufflel grass is somewhat extensive and likely still occurring. It is thus important to halt this process as soon as possible. The idea of removing this invasive species without the use of glyphosate is laughably impossible, so we will be using spot applications of this herbicide. Though application of herbicide is certainly not ideal, we recognize that it is certainly the lesser of two evils and that most restoration efforts anywhere in North America are impossible without responsible herbicide use. Once the large seed-bearing clumps of buffelgrass are removed, its eradication can likely then be maintained manually without the continued use of herbicide by doing monthly walk-throughs and walk throughs in the days or weeks following rain.
It is important to mention that a large part of what Thornscrub Sanctuary hopes to accomplish is also, in effect, the farming and mass-production of seeds of native and especially endangered plant species to serve as a resource for others in the region that need a reliable seed and plant source for their own restoration goals. We aim to do this by maintaining robust and genetically diverse populations of native plants, both grouped together in small monocultures for ease of seed-harvesting and mixed in with each other. Being that pollination is required for the production of seed, we hope to be monitoring and observing pollination studies on all of the species within our care and producing good data as to insect species observed and the plant species that they frequent. Being that this is one of the most understudied ecosystems in North America, we feel that this work is incredibly important to understanding how such a heat adapted ecosystem functions.
Species present on the property include (note: this is only a preliminary, partial list and will be continually updated. The actual complete species list will be quite long and is nowhere near being completed) :
Hechtia glomerata, Galphimia angustifolia, Asclepias prostrata, Physaria thamnophila, Varilla texana, Sideroxylon celastrinum, Ancistrocactus scheeri, Hamatocactus setispine, Erythrostemon caudatum, Lophophora williamsii, Vachellia rigidula