Land Trusts & Surveys
Outline of what this section will cover, equivalent to 2 to 3 chapters in a book. Content will be posted as funding becomes available. If you have photos, film/videos, or insight or tips for this section, please contact us.
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Ned felt governments were much too amendable to profiteers. Only land in private hands with a mission to conserve was safe. Soon Ned was at the ground floor of the state’s land trust movement by helping form The Nature Conservancy of Texas in 1964. He served as first board of trustees president and its first acquisitions director. Right off the bat, 16 areas preserved, either through purchase or conservation easement. One of them eventually became the Atwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge
Around the same time in the ‘60s, Ned saw a need to identify natural areas around the state. He poured over hundreds of maps to identify places crucial to wildlife, of special beauty, particularly large trees, exceptional diversity, just significant in some way. He brought in map professionals, geologists, experts in plants, animals, and ecosystems. For those he could, he traveled to see them first hand, often with Genie in tow.
It became of a project of environmental students at SMU. One of them was John Bryant who would become a US representative and powerful ally. Ned got the EPA to print and bind it. Known as the Texas Natural Areas Survey or Green Book for its cover. Cities, counties and state governments used it to identify land for parks and preserves. So did land trusts and conservation buyers.
The Texas Wilderness Act that Ned spearheaded required that the land for wilderness be contiguous. So Ned and Genie created the Natural Area Preservation Association, or NAPA, now known as Texas Land Conservancy, NAPA set about purchasing or getting conservation easements on key parcels so areas in a wilderness were linked. The first Texas-only land trust, it now preserves over 120,000 acres via purchase and mostly conservation easements.
