Vegetation and Wildlife Biodiversity

preserving our variety of living things

A pillar of a well managed, healthy ecosystem is the presence of a wide range of plants and animals, working together to build a larger, more resilient web. They balance each other in an interconnected trade of energy and roles they play which contribute to the ecosystem as we see it today. Although it would be easy to focus on cattle only as a source of income, we would be remiss to ignore what made this land able to support cattle in the first place, and to shirk our responsibility to stewardship for future generations.

Our first step was to create a way to monitor the biodiversity we have now. We started setting up camera traps; automatic trail cameras to snap pictures of what comes to our playas. We also started a biodiversity project using a tool called iNaturalist to document those things you may not be able to see at a playa or on a trail camera.

To view some of our best trail camera photos click the link

To view our iNaturalist project, see below for details

View Gallery

Biodiversity Project

iNaturalist is a website, app, and tool that researchers and managers can use not only to engage with the public but also to log information about plants, animals, insects, and even microscopic organisms in a given area. Photos are uploaded and geotagged, and then the species is identified by the community of users which includes general public and expert specialists. Feel free to visit our project below, and if you visit the ranch, snap a photo and post it!

Take Me To The Project

We quickly realized we have a problem not uncommon to Texas: feral hogs. Escaped or released hogs from livestock raisers over the last hundred years or so have proliferated on their own, eating anything in their path. Often posing trouble for crop farmers, these invasive animals can still threaten our biodiversity, upsetting the balance of roles. It's a problem we are working towards addressing. Below is drone footage of a herd of hogs in the Sanctified pasture.

Edited by superintendent Steve Killingsworth, filmed by Martha DeLuzio.