South Texas is one of the Last Great Places where there is a widespread wild northern bobwhite--hereafter bobwhite--population. This is because South Texas has the habitat that supports this wild population. Of the 20 million acres that make up the South Texas landscape, about half of this land mass, or around 10 to 12 million acres, supports a self-sustaining population of wild bobwhites. This is a key reason why South Texas received designation as a Legacy Landscape for Northern Bobwhite Conservation by the Northern Bobwhite Conservation Initiative in 2014. This designation is not legally binding in ways that designation of critical habitat is legally binding for an endangered species. Nevertheless, being recognized as a legacy landscape for conservation by the largest bobwhite conservation initiative in the world is a way to make people aware of the value of this landscape for a diverse array of wildlife, as well as for humans. This legacy designation highlights how important the South Texas landscape is to an ecologically iconic and highly valued socioeconomic species--the bobwhite--that has suffered population declines of up to 90% across large parts of its geographic range.
In South Texas during the past two decades, every few years gas and oil pipeline, or utility line rights-of-way projects are proposed in designs that are engineered to cut across large---hundreds of thousands or even millions of acres of South Texas---areas of private rangelands where there are few if any paved roads and little or no human settlement. The conservation value of the relatively unfragmented South Texas landscape is seldom of concern to the civil engineers who design pipeline and utility corridors. At the same time, keeping large areas of the South Texas landscape from becoming fragmented is a critical concern for ranchers, hunters, and conservationists who are among the key natural resource stakeholders in this region.
The purpose of this Technical Publication is to make people aware of how important it is to keep the South Texas landscape as unfragmented as possible as we move through the 21st century. The lessons here do not just pertain to bobwhite conservation, but also to thousands of other plants and animals that benefit from the current configuration of the South Texas Landscape. The lessons related to South Texas as a National Legacy Landscape for Northern Bobwhite Conservation also pertain to the people who want to live with--and sustain--not just bobwhites but all these plants and animals. Over time. Forever.
