You attend our field trips and classes, see us at monthly membership meetings, and see us in your e-mail inbox every week, but there’s much more going on at Travis Audubon than meets the eye. Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at our organization? Executive Director Nancy Manning shares some details about where your donations, and the tireless efforts of our staff and volunteers, are being put to work to make Travis Audubon the best at what we do.
Conservation:
Chimney Swift Tower at Chaetura Canyon.
What does it mean to own sanctuaries? It’s a lot more than just owning land. To meet our mission of “promoting the enjoyment, understanding and conservation of native birds and their habitats”, we strive to manage our sanctuaries at an optimal level to protect and preserve native habitat and the wildlife that depends on it. Each of our three area sanctuaries is unique in its habitat, wildlife, location, and audience; and it is important to us to reach out to the friends and neighbors of these sanctuaries in a way that engages them to enjoy, learn, and conserve. To that end, we are diligently developing management plans for all three of our sanctuaries.
Each sanctuary has a core team operating under the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation, which allow us to ask questions like: Are our actions effective in achieving conservation goals? Are we having an impact? Are we making a difference in protecting habitat and wildlife?
The Open Standards process is as follows:
1. Identify conservation targets. For example, at Blair Woods our conservation targets are the riparian corridor, the savannah, and the woodlands.
2. Evaluate status of target. You need to know the health of your target when you begin–otherwise, you won’t know if you’ve successfully improved its health. Up to 2 years ago, the savanna at Blair Woods was 80 to 90% woody vegetation and less than 10% grassland. It was also 60% nonnative.
3. Identify direct and indirect threats to targets. Direct threats to our conservation targets at Blair Woods include nonnative and native invasive plants. An indirect threat is homeowners in the drainage basin growing the problem plants in their yards.
4. Set a goal for each target. This is a formal statement of the ultimate impact you hope to achieve. For our savannah at Blair Woods, our goal is that vegetation should be100% native, with 70-90% grassland and 10-30% woody plants.
5. Decide upon strategies for lessening or eliminating the threats. At Blair Woods, we will remove the direct threat by removing the invasive plants (with procedures outlined). We will remove the indirect threat through education, such as the Open House we held last September for the 39 homeowners in the drainage basin.
6. Decide how you will monitor for impact. Are our efforts working? How do we know?
Each management plan also contains information about the sanctuary’s history, a description of flora and fauna, land use history, infrastructure, education and outreach programs, and funding needs.
These plans then guide the stewards, Board of Directors, and committees in the best practices for managing these sanctuaries. Anyone who is tasked with maintaining our sanctuaries in the future should be able to pick up these plans and know where we came from and where to go next to best conserve this habitat. The idea here is not just that we own sanctuaries. We want to be leaders in the conservation field – models for how to effectively and efficiently manage our lands to have the most impact towards protecting and preserving habitat and wildlife.
Another major component of our conservation efforts is land acquisition. Travis Audubon often receives offers of land, either as a gift or for purchase. However, we know from years of experience that to manage land effectively is costly and time consuming. Therefore, our board is also diligently working on developing criteria for land acquisition.
Education:
Explore and Restore at Blair Woods.
Protecting habitat and wildlife will only be viable tomorrow if today’s youth are brought into the circle of awareness early on. Travis Audubon has been educating youth about the natural world since 1952. We have recently completed a very ambitious Youth Education Strategy (YES) and Youth Education program. We hope you will take some time to read these documents so that you have a good understanding of the effort involved, and importance we place on outdoor youth education. You can take a look at these important documents here on our website.
There are very few preserves on the east side of Austin, making Blair Woods unique in both habitat and location. Children who live in this area are often bussed from their schools to preserves on the west side of town. However much they enjoy those field trips, they don’t feel the same connection or sense of relevancy as they do when visiting a preserve in their own neighborhood. Therefore, it’s important to ensure that this habitat is restored, maintained, and managed in a way that will protect this opportunity for future generations.
Communications:
Hiking Club at Baker Sanctuary.
Like all environmental organizations in this country, we are facing a diversifying population that isn’t reflected in our organization. It is important to us to diversify our operations, programs, and communications to ensure that our mission remains relevant in the future. To that end, we are currently in the early stages of developing a diversity initiative. Reaching a broader audience taps in to our need for a solid communications plan.
There are a lot of questions to consider. How can we effectively engage more people with our organization? How do we communicate our mission to more young people, people of color, and other Central Texans in a manner that inspires them to enjoy, learn, and conserve? What inspires our members to lead field trips, teach classes, speak to the public, and staff tables at our events? Why is it important that people enjoy and protect birds?
In May of 2013, the Board of Directors adopted our first strategic communications plan – a plan that was several years in the making. The plan includes targeting new audiences, establishing better and broader distribution networks for our newsletter, and developing an Advocacy Plan to help guide our decisions about which issues we become involved with and how.
In Conclusion:
Travis Audubon is only able to do all of this “behind the scenes” work because of your support. Your generous donations of time, money, expertise, and good word-of-mouth help ensure that Travis Audubon will be leaders in conservation, education, and enjoyment of birds and their habitats for many years to come.
If you’d like more information about the variety of ways you can help support Travis Audubon, visit our ‘Support Us’ page.
