What began as a personal love of the outdoors evolved into a wildlife habitat restoration project for landowners James and Georgiana Matz of Cameron County, Texas. Matz and his wife have always considered themselves stewards of the environment and their land located near Rio Hondo, Texas, along the Arroyo Colorado....
Gaines County is located in the South Plains of Texas. This county has nearly 700,000 acres of cropland planted primarily to cotton, grain sorghum, wheat, and peanuts. For many years, Gaines County has ranked among the top two counties in Texas in cotton production....
Situated in Nacogdoches County in the heart of the "Piney Woods" of East Texas, Fritz Lewis' 11-acre CRP contract was planted to Longleaf Pines in 1999 to reduce sediment loss due to soil erosion....
Hale County is a model of CRP success, and everyone in the county benefits. Located on the High Plains of Texas, the county once lost a whopping 14 tons of topsoil from each acre every year. Growing wheat, cotton, and grain sorghum in some areas created more of a conservation headache than the benefit in production value....
Texas thornscrub may be inhospitable to people, but wildlife sure like it. Its thorny shrubs provides dense cover for even the most secretive wildcats, the endangered ocelot and jaguarondi. Birds like green jays and altamira orioles also thrive in its thicket. Thornscrub is reappearing in south Texas thanks to wildlife-conscious farmers and CRP....
Joe Kohler's soil loss rate dropped from 3,111 to 0 tons annually. A field on his Texas wheat and cattle farm once suffered from severe soil erosion along a drainage way that empties into a Red River creek. With continuous CRP funds, in 2003 Joe installed a grass waterway and drainage structure that have alleviated the problem altogether....
