Can you believe it’s almost April!? 2026 has been flowing along and our community of conservation partners and corporate members has remained focused on collaborating to steward our land, water, and wildlife.
Water remains a primary focus and funding driver as our state continues to face drought and population growth pressures. These themes are prevalent and discussed in every corner of the state at conferences likeWater in the Desert, hosted in Alpine in February and at the Rio Grande/Río Bravo Binational River Symposium, hosted in McAllen in November of last year (Texas Water Foundation recently released theirpost-conference report, check it out!).
During the last day of the Water in the Desert Conference, Taylor Keys visited Dixon Water Foundation’sMimms Unit in Marfa, TX, to see the Alamito Creek Conservation Initiative (ACCI) in action, which is a watershed enhancement project led by the Borderlands Research Institute, Rio Grande Joint Venture, and Dixon Water Foundation. These organizations partner with landowners to implement restoration and enhancement projects within a portion of Alamito Creek in Presidio County, as well as associated tributaries and uplands. Riparian enhancement efforts utilize low-tech process-based restoration techniques. These practices use simple structural additions to mimic riparian functions and initiate specific processes. Management of invasive brush and placement of brush weir dams slow floods and promote recovery. Learn more about ACCIhere. Rio Grande Joint Venture will be joining us for a project panel during our next TxWAC bi-monthly meeting in five days, on March 24(details below) - register here!
Projects like this not only benefit water but also benefit wildlife and plant communities. For many years, we’ve heard from our corporate partners that they are interested in biodiversity, but there is no standard framework or metrics to report biodiversity benefits. Thankfully, progress has been made in that arena.
LimnoTech partnered with the Pacific Institute, CEO Water Mandate, The Nature Conservancy, and Second Nature Ecology+Design to develop a standardized methodology forBiodiversity Benefit Accounting (BioBA)to account for terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity co-benefits of corporate water stewardship activities. This isn’t a silver bullet, but it’s a step in the right direction! Learn morehere.
The following projects from the TxWAC Project Portfolioare a sampling of efforts that directly support biodiversity:
Comal River Old Channel Aquatic Restoration - Restoration of the lower Comal River with native aquatic vegetation to improve water quality and increase the endangered Fountain Darter population.
(NEW)Wells and Water for Whoopers Cost Share Program - Conserving endangered Whooping Cranes by enhancing freshwater wetlands through cost‑share projects that fund up to $12,000 per new well.
(NEW)Freshwater Mussel Reintroduction Project - Reintroduces thousands of native freshwater mussels into the San Antonio River Basin to boost water quality, restore ecological function, and improve watershed health.
(NEW)Tomorrow’s Water - Helps communities boost Ogallala aquifer recharge and protect their future water supply by restoring up to 1,594 playas (~16,203 playa acres) alongside existing efforts to reduce aquifer overuse. Playas support 185 bird species, 450 plant species, 13 amphibian species, and 37 mammal species at some point in their life cycle.
The last three projects were submitted to TxWAC recently, along with 12 additional projects, which are now featured in theTxWAC Project Portfolio.
Contactprograms@texanbynature.orgfor more information, questions, or if any of the projects featured in this newsletter are of interest to you.
Cheers,
Texan by Nature’s TxWAC Facilitators - Taylor Keys, Chief Program Officer & Urvi Dani, Associate Director of Membership
The Texas Water Action Collaborative pairs companies and funders with projects that align with their goals, metrics, locations, project types, and reporting needs, ensuring high-impact, mutually beneficial partnerships. By using data-driven matching, TxWAC catalyzes fruitful collaborations that drive measurable impact.
To get involved in project matching:
Takethis surveyif you have a project that needs funding
5.7 million pounds of identifiable litter from over 3,400 clean-ups (and counting!) have been collected and reported to the Texas Litter Databasefrom 2020-2024. Litter poses costly damage to infrastructure, entangles and is consumed by wildlife, and negatively impacts water quality and human health. Texan by Nature’s Conservation Partners across Texas implement litter clean-up efforts to tackle this problem. A sampling of litter mitigation projects in the TxWAC portfolio include:
Install a litter trap, which could prevent more than 40,000 pounds of trash from entering the Trinity River annually.
Trinity River Basin | Funding need: $356,500 within the next 6 months
TxWAC Bi-Monthly Stakeholder Meetings
March 24: Joint Ventures in Conservation
We will be joined by John McLaughlin from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, along with Jesús Franco and Price Rumbelow from the Rio Grande Joint Venture (RGJV) for a project panel. Our panelists will share the important role joint ventures play in conservation in Texas and highlight two RGJV projects in the Rio Grande River Basin seeking funding:
South Texas Grassland Restoration Incentive Program- Landowner cost-share incentive program to restore grassland habitats to increase their productivity and to stabilize priority bird populations and provide associated ecosystem benefits.
BJ Bishop Wetlands- Maintenance and management for a 17-acre wetland and 3-acre upland revegetation site that will benefit wildlife and more than 330 acre-feet of water annually.
To start the year, we “Kicked Off ” 2026 by learning about Tricon International’s Sustainability Goals and FIFA Houston's Sustainability Outlook from Elizabeth Carlson, Chief Sustainability Officer at Tricon. Texas Water Foundation also provided policy updates. View the meeting recording (timestamps below), slide deck, and meeting chat.
Get the 2026 meetings on your calendar and join the dialogue all year long with sustainability professionals, conservation experts, and community leaders to learn about projects that need funding, corporate priorities, water policy, & resources.
We believe your ideas and expertise can help us shape the future of conservation for the globe. Each year, we unite leaders in conservation, industry, and communities all with the goal to drive dialogue, partnerships, and share successful models to advance conservation. We invite you to save the date for this unique annual gathering!
Where do you get your natural resources news? Let us know, and we’ll add it to the list!
Stay Connected
Stay connected with TxWAC on LinkedIn. With 235 members and growing, we post ways to get involved with TxWAC, news, and updates on this page AND we invite our members to share here as well!
Thank you to our Members
TxWAC Members underwrite Texan by Nature’s facilitation of TxWAC, including bi-monthly stakeholder meetings, aggregation of a statewide project portfolio, customized project matching, project development, and messaging/communications. Join today!
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