Our Work — Texas Land Conservancy (2024)

The Llano River watershed lies within 10 counties: Edwards, Kimble, Llano, Mason, Menard, Real, San Saba, Sutton, Gillespie, and Kerr. It also contains 253 miles of river corridor and three cities of significant growth: Junction, Mason, and Llano.

Widely known for its scenic beauty and recreational use, the Llano River flows for over 100 miles through the Texas Hill Country. As it winds through the rolling limestone hills of the Edwards Plateau, the clear, spring-fed river is lined by bottomland hardwood trees.

The 815,363 acres of the Pedernales Watershed contains 125 miles of river corridor, 7 counties, and two cities of growth: Johnson City and Fredericksburg.

For more than 100 miles, the Pedernales River winds its ancient Hill Country course, cutting through deep, mossy canyons and towering limestone cliffs before joining the Colorado River at Lake Travis, west of Austin. The Pedernales is one of Texas' most pristine and beautiful rivers—vast stretches of the river are lined by ranches and remain largely free of development.

The 25,452 acres of the Medina Watershed contains 116 miles of river corridor and 5 counties: Bandera, Bexar, Medina, and parts of Kerr and Kendall.

The Medina River is a short, narrow, and beautiful river that is reminiscent of the Upper Guadalupe because of the physical nature of its topography. Starting in northwest Bandera County to its confluence with the San Antonio River southeast of the city of San Antonio.

The 10,878,211 acres of the Brazos Watershed contains 668 miles of river corridor and 28 counties, including the cities of Waco, Temple, and College Station.

The Lower Brazos River flows through the heart of Texas. Its watershed captures the center of the rolling hills and savannas of the Cross Timbers, the dark clay of the Blackland Prairie, and the sandy Post Oak savanna ecoregions before briefly passing through the gulf coast prairie ecoregion on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. Along its meandering course through Texas, the lower Brazos, and its connected network of natural tributaries, oxbow lakes, and floodplain wetlands, possess varied and important aquatic habitat types and harbor numerous rare species of fish, mollusks, and crayfish.

The 6,116,580 acres of the Lower Trinity Watershedcontains 408 miles of river corridor, 16 counties, and one of the biggest urban areas in the United States—Dallas.

The counties around Dallas, the headwaters of the Trinity, are some of the fastest growing in the nation, and this growth has forever changed the Trinity River, a vital water source for the urban areas at its headwaters. However, there is still hope for this river that sweeps through the northeastern heart of Texas. With pockets of conservation already in place, some remaining bottomland hardwood forests and prairies, and numerous endangered and threatened plant and animal inhabitants, the Trinity watershed can still be positively impacted by conservation if we act swiftly and strategically.

The 5,935,160 acres of the Neches Watershed contains 377 miles of river corridor and 18 counties, including the cities of Tyler, Lufkin, Nacogdoches, and Beaumont.

The Neches River is truly one of Texas' wildest natural assets. Its sometimes steep, heavily wooded banks and bluffs grow a combination of pines and hardwoods – oak, hickory, dogwood, pecan, and blackgum. From the headwaters starting in the Post Oak Savanna, winding through some of the most biologically diverse forests and wetlands in the U.S., to where it flows into Sabine Lake in the Gulf Coast Prairies and Marshes ecoregion on the Texas/Louisiana border, conservation along the full length of the river is priority.