The Texas Hill Country Endangered Songbird Safe Harbor Agreement
Posted: 01-Sep-2003; Updated: 22-Mar-2004
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In December 2000, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved a safe harbor agreement to benefit two endangered songbirds of the Hill Country of Central Texas. The administrator of this agreement is Environmental Defense, a private nonprofit environmental organization. As of November 2003, landowners had enrolled 521 acres.
The black-capped vireo (Vireo atricapillus) and the golden-cheeked warbler (Dendroica chrysoparia) both depend greatly upon the actions of private landowners in Texas, where 97 percent of the land is privately owned. Periodic disturbance from fire or other causes is necessary to maintain the early successional stage -- a shrubland or open wooded area with shrubs up to six feet tall -- that is the vireo's preferred habitat. Uninterrupted progression to a mature woodland and overgrazing have caused a decline in suitable black-capped vireo habitat. While wildfires once created this habitat, now only about one-tenth of Hill Country landowners regularly use prescribed burning, and many acres of vireo habitat have been lost.
PHOTO: Black-capped vireo at nest feeding young.
The golden-cheeked warbler, which nests in stands of mature Ashe juniper (often called "cedar") mixed with oaks and other deciduous trees, is also losing its habitat. Such lands are rapidly disappearing to urban and suburban development. Safe harbor landowners can aid this species by facilitating regeneration of hardwoods in areas where it is likely to benefit the warbler.
The Texas Hill Country songbird agreement covers all or part of the following counties: Bandera, Bell, Blanco, Bosque, Brown, Burnet, Comal, Comanche, Coryell, Edwards, Gillespie, Hays, Kendall, Kerr, Kimball, Lampasas, Llano, Mason, Medina, Real, San Saba, Somervell, Sutton, Uvalde, and Williamson. Under its permit, Environmental Defense provides a certificate of inclusion to landowners who agree to undertake actions beneficial to the black-capped vireo or the golden-cheeked warbler. Some of the Safe Harbor landowners are also enrolled in Environmental Defense's Landowner Conservation Assistance Program, which provides landowners technical and financial assistance to create and maintain habitat for the black-capped vireo or the golden-cheeked warbler. The Safe Harbor agreement ensures landowners that such management actions will not result in any additional Endangered Species Act obligations.
Full text of Texas songbirds Safe Harbor agreement (96.2 kb pdf file)
