KAUFMAN/HUNTSVILLE – Two land stewardship workshops focusing on wildlife and habitat management in the Trinity River Basin will be held in November, said Blake Alldredge, Texas AgriLife Extension Service associate in College Station.
The workshops are free and open to the public, said Alldredge, who has been appointed education and outreach coordinator for a new middle Trinity River project. They are being sponsored by Trinity Waters and the Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board.
He said the first workshop will be Nov. 21 in Kaufman at the Kaufman County Library, 3790 S. Houston St. The second workshop will be Nov. 22 in Huntsville at the Walker County Storm Shelter adjoining the H.E.A.R.T.’s Veterans Complex Museum, 455 State Highway 75 North.
The morning program for both workshops will begin with registration at 8, followed by a welcome and program presentations from 8:40 a.m.-noon. The afternoon program will be from 1-3 p.m.
“The workshop will focus on developing working relationships among neighbors in the basin seeking to conserve natural resources,” Alldredge said. “Program topics will include wetland and wildlife management, ongoing conservation projects in the basin, financial assistance opportunities for implementing conservation practices, an overview of the new Trinity River Information Management System online management tool, and practices and applications relating to the use of the TRIMS platform.”
Alldredge said the information management system was developed by the Texas A&M Institute of Renewable Natural Resources to provide landowners and land managers access to online maps unique to the Trinity River Basin.
“For those seeking to make conservation and habitat restoration decisions within the basin, TRIMS provides access to the latest aerial photographs and information such as elevation, soils data, hydrology, land use and more,” he said. “It provides data access and baseline support for projects designed to address wildlife habitat management and water quality, particularly native grassland and wetland restoration, and bottomland hardwood establishment.”
He added that the system also can be used by a landowner to simply measure the area of a pasture to determine an appropriate stocking rate or rotational grazing system for livestock. Information that can be accessed through this system includes area measurements, such as pastures and land or fence lines, recent high-resolution aerial photographs, map printing and natural resource planning data, such as stream gauge, elevation and soil data.
Alldredge said the workshop presentations are open to everyone, but the afternoon training session for the online mapping tool is limited to 20 people, so he recommended registering as soon as possible.
For more information on the workshops and to register, go to the “Events” page on the Trinity Waters website at trinitywaters.org, or register by contacting Alldredge by email at balldredge@tamu.edu. A confirmation email will be sent if registration is completed in time for a spot for the afternoon’s system training session.
The Trinity River watershed encompasses more than 18,000 square miles and travels through 38 Texas counties. Approximately eight million people live in the Trinity River Basin, making it the most populated river basin in Texas. Major activities within the watershed affecting water quality and quantity include urbanization, commercial and industrial development, row-crop farming, livestock production, outdoor recreation and timber production.
Trinity Waters is a nonprofit, non-governmental organization committed to land and water conservation by partnering with landowners to implement land-management practices specifically within the Trinity River Basin. It is dedicated to improving the quality of life, economic sustainability and ecological integrity of areas associated with the Trinity River Basin through a coalition of local communities, non-governmental organizations and stewards of private and public lands.
The Building Partnerships for Cooperative Conservation initiative in the Trinity River Basin project is funded by the Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board through a Clean Water Act §319(h) grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
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