On March 14: TreeFolks, “Travis County Floodplain Reforestation Program: a natural solution to contemporary problems”

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Live oak at Garey Park
Live oak at Garey Park

Join us at NPSOT-Wilco’s chapter meeting on March 14, 2019, for our program topic by TreeFolks on “Travis County Floodplain Reforestation Program: a natural solution to contemporary problems” with Collin McMichael.  (Please note, we meet in Cedar Park this month, not at the Georgetown Library. See the bottom of this post.)

Collin McMichael is Education Coordinator at TreeFolks in Austin, a nonprofit where the mission is “… to empower Central Texans to build stronger communities through planting and caring for trees.”

From Collin:  “As Austin pushes eastward, the degraded creeks and streams of the Blackland Prairie ecoregion find themselves in developers’ cross-hairs. The goal of TreeFolk’s newest program, the Travis County Floodplain Reforestation Program, is to reforest the riparian corridors east of Austin and protect imperiled streamsides. Through our successes in previous reforestation efforts we have designed a pilot program to reforest 50 private and 5 public tracts of land with the hopes of generating carbon credits on each site. This program will improve stream quality, improve air quality, reduce energy consumption, and offset carbon emissions regionally. Carbon offsets are being sold to the Austin’s Office of Sustainability in order to help meet their 2020 goal of carbon neutrality. TreeFolks’ TCFRP is a novel, scale-able solution to global climate change that will increase resiliency at the local level while addressing global problems.”

TreeFolks and its volunteers work with communities planting trees in parks, preserves, at schools, and other places. They provide education about trees and urban forests, and restore forests in Central Texas after natural disasters.  Collin will tell us more about TreeFolks, its projects, and its regional plans. Don’t miss it!

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NPSOT-Williamson County meetings are free and open to the public.

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Program Summary from Jan 10 meeting-Seasons at Selah

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— by Pat Donica

Members and guests at the January 10, 2019 chapter meeting enjoyed a presentation by award winning photographer David K. Langford. David spoke about Seasons at Selah while sharing with us beautiful slides of his work at Selah/The Bamberger Ranch Preserve.

David donates $10 per book sold at an event to the hosting organization and there was a unanimous chapter vote during the meeting to donate those proceeds, instead, to Selah.  Thank you, David!

For more info about Selah, see https://bambergerranch.org/.   For more info about David’s work, see https://westernphotographycompany.com/.

image of book Seasons at Selah

You can see the January 10, 2019 business presentation slides here.

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Program Summary: Native Host Plants for Texas Butterflies

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– By Anna Marie Blair

Native Host Plants for Butterflies

On Thursday, November 8, 2018, Lynne and Jim Weber joined us at the AgriLife building to present information from their new book,  Native Host Plants for Texas Butterflies.  We were shown many of our familiar (and not so familiar) Texas native plants alongside the butterflies that use those plants as hosts.

We were also given information on butterfly life cycles. Did you know that the older larva of the Yucca Giant Skipper will burrow into the root of yuccas? Now we are better able to identify what’s munching a plant and plan to entice those butterflies we want to attract.

We were also given a sneak peak on their new, similar project: moths. This will be a great project for a group of pollinators that are beautiful but less publicized!

You can find a handout from Lynne and Jim at this link.


Download the November 8, 2018 business presentation slides here.

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