This easement at Honey Creek Spring Ranch, which will remain privately owned and managed, now adds an additional 621 acres to these protected lands.
Texas Parks and Wildlife DepartmentOfficials are celebrating a big win in its latest conservation achievement in Central Texas. The Texas Wildlife Department added new protections to the Honey Creek Spring Ranch, which serves as a site of ecological importance for wildlife and water resources, including the region’s Edwards Aquifer.
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and The Nature Conservancy were able to add protection to 621 acres of Honey Creek Spring Ranch through a conservation easement. In 1981, the Texas Nature Conservancy acquired 1,825 acres in Comal County, which were transferred in 1985 to TPWD to create the 2,294-acre Honey Creek State Natural Area.
New conservation protections are being added in Comal County thanks to the combined efforts of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, The Nature Conservancy, and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to safeguard Honey Creek Spring Ranch from future development.
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
In 1981, TNC acquired 1,825 acres in Comal County, which were transferred in 1985 to TPWD to create the 2,294-acre Honey Creek State Natural Area.
Texas Parks and Wildlife DepartmentWhile the conservation easement does not allow for public access, the Honey Creek Spring Ranch sits near two state parks and provides essential habitat for many species living in the Texas Hill County. The property is home to endangered golden-cheeked warblers and black-capped vireos and several other species in decline, according to a news release sent from TPWD on Monday, February 7.
Honey Creek Cave, the largest cave system in Texas, also runs underneath the property, with several miles of underground river emerging from the ranch’s namesake spring as the primary source of Honey Creek, an important tributary of the Guadalupe River. The cave is in a drainage area for the Edwards Aquifer, which supplies drinking water to nearly two million Texans and the City of San Antonio. It contains numerous native and threatened species, including the Comal blind salamander and at least six invertebrates found in only a few caves in Central Texas.
While the conservation easement does not allow for public access, the property’s significant natural resources will be permanently protected from future development.
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
Owned and operated by Moore’s family since its inception in 1871, Honey Creek Spring Ranch has long served as a site of ecological importance.
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department“The preservation of the Honey Creek Spring Ranch is a critically important piece of the broader efforts to conserve Honey Creek and the surrounding watershed,” Carter Smith, executive director of TPWD, stated in the release. “The efforts put forward by the landowners and our partner agencies to conserve this and many other properties in Texas are truly a testament toward the importance of conserving our wild places for the people of Texas.”
The conservation easement has become one of the most recent properties benefiting from the protections of TPWD’s Farm and Ranch Lands Conservation Program, launched in 2005. Since the legislature created the program, more than 27,000 acres of working lands have been protected. These properties produce $2.9 million in agricultural commodities, provide $170,000 in wildlife value, and $7.3 million in water replacement costs annually.
