Connecting people to nature has never been more important.
Big or small, Texas land trusts increasingly are meeting the needs of their communities through partnerships, engagement and outreach.
That’s about 1,440,997 football fields!
Land trusts have already conserved 61 million acres of private land across the nation — more than all of the national parks combined. Help us conserve another 60 million acres by the end of the decade.
Together, let’s keep Gaining Ground.
Texas land trusts are community-led and supported and protect lands and waters that help the entire state.
35,082
2,983
98
21
300
70 years old (1952)
16 years old (2006)
30 years old
Acre by acre, land trusts are helping to conserve Texas lands, waters and ways of life.
Disclaimer: Land trusts conserve land in many different ways and every project is unique. Category totals may change depending on how acres are reported by survey respondents to reflect the most current data and minimize double-counting. In some instances, the total may be greater than the sum of the separate categories due to organizations that provided total acres not broken down by category.
This information reflects data collected in the National Land Trust Census, the longest-running comprehensive survey of private land conservation in America. Learn more about the Census and see which land trusts participated in the 2020 National Land Trust Census.
Land trusts across the state are helping find solutions to some of Texas' most pressing issues.
Providing access to land for all: The accredited Galveston Bay Foundation engages local teens in a wetland restoration project through Hip to Habitat. The students dig up marsh grasses to take back to their school, where they look after them in blue kiddie pools. Later in the school year, they return to Galveston Bay and plant them in a wetland restoration area.
Read moreTackling climate change: A Harris County Flood Control District study on property protected by the accredited Katy Prairie Conservancy in Houston found that prairie grasses absorb more than 8 inches of rainfall per hour compared to just half an inch for turf grass.
Read moreProtecting land for future generations: Bayou Land Conservancy manages the “No Child Left Inside” program, which literally gets the students’ feet wet and their hands dirty as they become field scientists for a day.
Read moreLand Trust Alliance member land trusts, listed below, commit to adopting Land Trust Standards and Practices as their guiding principles.