Restoring Native Habitats in Rio Grande Valley

In Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, less than 10% of native forest remains. It’s been wiped out by farming, cattle ranching and development. Furthermore, climate change is pushing native plants out of their current habitats and threatening the lives of animals that depend on them.

This region is habitat for 1,200 plant species, 519 bird species and 300 butterfly species. It is also home to 45 threatened or endangered species, including the endangered ocelot.

The area is a flyway for bird and butterfly migrations to Central and South America.

Restoring the vegetation along wildlife corridors is essential to native species’ survival in the Rio Grande Valley.

The damage is evident. This photo was taken right after a devastating cold snap in late February 2021. This winter landscape is normally green and blooming with wildflowers, but extreme weather is taking its toll.

With her generational family land threatened by flooding and heat waves sparked by climate change, Betty Perez wants to do something to help. 

She opens up her family cattle ranch in La Joya for seed collecting, which is necessary to propagate more native species to restore the threatened habitats in this area.

She also maintains a nursery for native plants like yucca, catclaw acacia and wolfberry. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service buys them to use in restoring native habitat on unused farmland. 

“It doesn’t bring a lot of money, but it brings a lot of gratification,” Perez says.

Some of the seedlings grow in shelter tubes, which are reusable plastic cylinders that conserve moisture, protect the tender plants from animals and help them outcompete invasive grasses. 

It takes a while for the seedlings to grow as tall as the shelter tubes. These plants, put in the ground in March 2020 in La Sal del Rey, Texas, as part of an American Forests planting, still haven’t reached the top, as pictured here a year later.

Perez is part of the Thornforest Conservation Partnership, a coalition that reforests the public lands in the Rio Grande Valley. Founded by American Forests, the coalition includes state and federal agencies, universities, nonprofits and community organizations.