Prairie power
Unlikely survival of the Deer Park tract gives us hope for other wild places.
We were thrilled by Tuesday’s announcement that conservationists managed to save the Deer Park prairie — a 50-acre tract of Gulf Coast tall-grass prairie, one of the world’s most endangered ecosystems.
With a short deadline looming, and the very real prospect that the land would be developed as a suburban subdivision, the Bayou Land Conservancy led a frenzied fundraising scramble. And in less than a month, the loose alliance of conservation groups raised $4 million needed to save what will now be forever known as the Lawther Deer Park Prairie.
We are relieved that the prairie’s ancient topography, its slight rises and depressions, will survive unpaved, and that atop them will continue to grow more than 300 species of plants precisely adapted to that land. The place’s diversity makes biologists giddy. “It’s home to more species of butterflies than exist in the entire state of Connecticut,” marveled Jaime Gonzalez, director of conservation education for the Katy Prairie Conservancy.
Just as astounding, we think, are the diversity of donors who made the prairie’s survival possible.
“It’s a people-powered prairie,” said Jennifer Lorenz, head of the Bayou Land Conservancy. To her surprise, by and large, the money that saved the prairie wasn’t a few large donations from big corporations. Instead, it came mainly from individuals — more than 1,000 of them.
A few people gave big (thank you, Terry Hershey; and thank you, Dean Lawther). But most were small donors, people who sent $50 or $100 via the Bayou Land Conservancy’s website. “We had a lot of — what’s the right way to say this? — mature women, and a lot of people on fixed incomes,” Lorenz marveled. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
At the news conference announcing the prairie’s survival, Gonzalez described how the Lawther Deer Park Prairie will provide valuable seeds for prairie-restoration projects all over the Houston area. Just as crucially, we think, it provides the seed of an idea: That a large number of Houstonians care about preserving the precious little that’s left of our wilderness, and that we can in fact preserve it — doing so, if necessary, one $50 donation at a time.