Diario del proyecto Where the Wilds Things are at GRCP

GRCP is a 105 acre vegetation island in an increasingly dense urban area. Although the preserve is a mitigation property donated to the TCMA in 1992 as part of the Lakeline Mall Habitat Conservation Plan (LLMHCP), there is still much we don't know about the land.
An initial karst assessment was performed by cave specialists (biologists and geologists) in the 1990s, and two major apertures were excavated. An in-cave biosurvey found endangered Texas karst invertebrates, including the Coffin Cave Mold beetle (Batrisodes texanus) and Bone Cave harvestman (Texella reysei).

Professional biomonitoring (species count) is performed in those caves every spring and fall, and a volunteer-driven cricket exit count takes place on the summer solstice every year as well. This event is often celebrated as the longest running cave biomonotoring effort in the US.

However, as development and climate change pressures intensify, conducting a full survey of all our natural resources (trees, plants, birds, reptiles, mammals) will allow us to manage the preserve more wholistically and not just for its caves. It is not so much a change in focus as a broadening of our attention since improving habitat for native surface species can only benefit our cave species.

As new technology becomes available, implementing such a survey is far less daunting.

So let's grab our phones and start observing.

Ten beautiful volunteers assembled on April 8 to work on the preserve. Our focus that day was establishing a preliminary bird survey, and working on opening some new karst features found in the vicinity of Nergal Cave, who received its name that day.
Nergal was (is?) the Mesopotamian god of the Underworld, a fearsome warrior and notable bringer of pestilence, no doubt aided in this task by legions of assassin bugs, some of which are seen fervently patrolling the grounds of this particular cave.
One of the new features appears to bell out and the limestone there is clearly more rotten and porous, two indications that it might reveal its secrets soon.
Although we did not break into anything that day, we increased the recharge of an area that most likely drains directly into Nergal.
As always, the hope is to restore pathways for rainwater to seep into the ground and ultimately collect into the aquifer, where it can serve both below and above ground communities.