The Dublin Woman’s Thursday Club certainly has been busy!
First, Erynn Sprouse and Denise Weems presented a report, on a hot and windy day, Thursday, April 10, in the side patio of Denise Weems’ house.
The club learned about the Blackland Prairie Ecoregion, a temperate grassland ecoregion located in Texas that runs roughly 300 miles (480 km) from the Red River in North Texas to San Antonio in the south. It spans 12.6 million acres. The Blackland Prairie Ecoregion is adjacent to and east of the ecoregion in which we live, therefore much of the flora and fauna is familiar to us. As its name suggests, the soil is rich with organic matter and appears to be black in color. It is ideal for growing crops and grazing livestock. It boasts temperate weather patterns. All these factors combined to replace its native habitat with irrigated crops, ranchlands, and large cities. According to Texas Parks and Wildlife, only 50, or 60,000 acres remain under native cover in this ecoregion, so less than 1% of the original Blackland Prairie vegetation remains, scattered across Texas in parcels. For this reason the Blackland Prairie is one of the most endangered ecosystems in North America. In the past, periodic fires from lightning strikes and even Native American burns to flush animals, would manage the health of the prairie ecosystem for pyrophytic plants. The remaining 1% of the Blackland Prairie sanctuaries now include controlled burns to properly manage the ecosystem.
Conservation efforts by various groups are underway to protect what remains of this valuable ecoregion, for the sake of the flora, fauna, environment, and population who are enriched by natural systems, as God intended for us. Some conservation efforts that protect the Blackland Prairie are Clymer Meadow Preserve, northeast of Dallas; the Blackland Prairie Raptor Center in North Texas (which includes cool education opportunities, such as dissecting owl pellets, the undigested parts of a bird’s food); The Heard Natural Science Museum and Wildlife Sanctuary, in McKinney, Texas, founded by Bessie Heard at the age of 80!; and a project called Preserve the Prairie, an educational program started by a high school sophomore, Diya Balagopal, in Frisco. We are never too young, nor too old to care about our environment.
The next day, our field trip to celebrate the 127th anniversary of our Dublin Woman’s Thursday Club, which was postponed from a frigid March date, to a perfect day Friday, April 11. We were given a wonderful tour of Ft Griffin in Albany, hosted by Leta Sage’s brother, Frank Sharp, and a very knowledgeable young history buff-docent, Eric Abercrombie. Who knew forts could be so fascinating?! Our up close and personal visit from a small part of the longhorn herd at the Ft Griffin State Park was so special!
We followed that with a delightful lunch at Vintage Vanilla in downtown Albany. We topped off our visit with a guided tour of the Old Jail Art Center about a block away from our lunch spot!
Thank you Leta, Pam, and the rest of the 127th Anniversary committee for arranging this field trip!