Taylor Wilcox, a Chambers County rice farmer, works with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to help migratory birds and to clean water on the Texas coast.
NRCS is one federal agency working every day with coastal landowners, farmers and ranchers on conservation efforts aimed at protecting, restoring and enhancing vital coastal resources and bird populations, according to the USDA.
Some of Wilcox’s rice fields are only 12 miles from the state’s upper Gulf shoreline, allowing his lands to be a part of the migratory waterfowl and shorebird flyway zone. He enrolled about 1,600 acres into NRCS’s Migratory Bird Habitat Initiative, which was a proactive response to the historic 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
“Private landowners are important stewards to the Gulf Coast,” says David Manthei, NRCS district conservationist. “Sustainable conservation practices like these prove critically beneficial during a time of crisis such as an oil spill.”