Balcones Canyonlands Complex

 Balcones Canyonlands Preserve

 

Local importance and success 

The Balcones Canyonlands Preserve highlights many important features of urban conservation of biodiversity. The need for a mutualistic relationship between rapid urbanization and for ecosystem integrity to be ensured. The relationship between the these topics must have good examples to draw on for widespread success. Examples of encouraged and properly managed biodiversity with encroaching human development will be necessary. This area is an example of public and private landowners working together protect habitat for sensitive threatened and endangered species.  

This area is an example of public and private landowners working together protect habitat for sensitive, threatened, and endangered species on a county level. This is a good example of a public policy success and highlights the importance of inter-agency cooperation with that of private landowners. One recent success is the delisting of a songbird from the federal List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife in May of 2018. This area serves an important environmental function on a local level as the protected forests on the preserve grow on the ridges surrounding a freshwater reservoir for the growing City of Austin. The surrounding forests slow runoff and increase infiltration into the diverse network of aquifers and caves found in the region. This has an influence on the overall water quality in the region as well as flash flooding which is a notorious threat in Central Texas during the rainy season.

Biodiversity 

Biodiversity is the complete inclusion of all living organisms and their biotic communities, the range of genetic and phenotypic traits and adaptations found in these communities, and abiotic factors such as the biochemical processes that an ecosystem requires to function. This wide range includes microscopic single celled bacteria up to the largest animals on the planet, all expressed and potential genetic traits both dominant and recessive, and the abiotic processes such as the hydrological cycle, soil formation and erosion, gas exchange, and weather and climate influences on the physical environment.