The Woman’s Thursday Club gathered at the home of DJ Klutts for its first study session of a specific Ecoregion in Texas.
DJ introduced the club to the Gulf Prairies and Marshes Ecoregion. This region occurs along the Gulf Coast of Texas, stretching about 600 miles from Brownsville up to Port Arthur, and is about 60 miles wide (about 10 million acres.) The region is home to a diverse range of flora and fauna with its bays, estuaries, barrier islands, on the coast, and sandy dunes, brackish marshlands, floodplain forests, and prairie grasslands inland.
This ecoregion has an average annual rainfall of 30”-50”, increasing from west to east, spread evenly throughout the year. May and October are their dry months, the opposite of ours. It has a subtropical temperature range. It experiences fog in the summer, with a growing season of about 300 days per year.
DJ identified the main flora and fauna for this ecoregion, and also identified the main threats to many of these species. The main threats are loss of habitat (mainly from encroaching agriculture and urbanization), drought, and fire ants!
The Karankawa were the main Native group encountered by Europeans in 1680. Competing tribes, mainly Comanche, Tonkawa and Apache, along with Spanish Inquisitionists drove most of the Native tribes out of the area.
Today the main economic drivers are petroleum, agriculture, water transportation, fishing industry, tourism and aerospace. 1/5 of the nation’s crude oil, 45% of the nation’s petroleum refining, and 51% of our country’s natural gas processing occurs here.
Wanice Brown lived in that area and shared some of her observations about the ecoregion.
As a major birding area (Texas has the most species of birds of any state in the U.S., and this ecoregion hosts migratory as well as permanent bird species,) bird poop is a significant problem, polluting groundwater.
Also, very few workers are employed by the refineries. Most of the workers in the oil industry are contracted. The major city employing oil workers is Houston.
There is so much we learn about an area when we live there.
The club is looking forward to its December meeting, hosted by Wyndi Veigel-Gaudette and Fran Jurney, who will report on the Piney Woods Ecoregion. The club will also enjoy its Christmas gathering at that time.
It will be held at 4 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 12, 2024 at the First Methodist Church.