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  • County purchases El Rancho Cima riverfront
    PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER ZEBO Hays County purchased more than a mile of river front on the Blanco River for conservation.
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    PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER ZEBO The cypress trees line the banks of the river.
  • Article Image Alt Text
    PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER ZEBO The new preserve will include more than a mile of Blanco River frontage.

County purchases El Rancho Cima riverfront

“It is absolutely the hand of God. It was divine intervention,” Leslie Collier said.

More than two years ago, Collier and her husband began trying to raise awareness about the potential sale of the old Boy Scout ranch that ran from Devil’s Backbone to the Blanco River. Their hope was to find a way to preserve the 2,300-acre property.

Last week, the biggest part of that dream was realized as the Hays County Commissioners Court, in conjunction with The Nature Conservancy, voted to purchase the prime 530-acre tract of land encompassing more than a mile of Blanco River frontage.

“I think it is going to have a huge impact on Wimberley and on Hays County,” Hays County Commissioner Lon Shell said. “Not only is it a property that people know about – it is iconic – but it also has so much habitat to conserve and allows for public access to the Blanco River. It is just incredible to do all of those things.”

The tract of land — located on Farm-to-Market Road 32 on the outskirts of town — is a habitat for the golden-cheeked warbler and was formerly part of a 2,382-acre ranch owned by the Boy Scouts. After 60 years of ownership, the ranch was then sold and divided into several 250-500-acre tracts.

Shell went to work on trying to preserve the property and The Nature Conservancy was a willing partner.

“The Nature Conservancy has had a project to identify areas of the Blanco River to protect that has been going on for nearly 20 years,” Jeff Francell, director of land protection for The Nature Conservancy, said. “We identified the Blanco River as one of those special places in Texas that needed conservation… The Blanco River is intact. It is not dammed. It is a free flowing river. It has a lot of ecological integrity. It is not developed from bank to bank all up and down its reach. It is an intact system and functioning as a natural system should, and we were interested in preserving that aspect of it.”

The $13 million project includes $7 million from the 2016 Transportation Bond passed by Hays County. The county is required to offset any protected habitat that would be removed during the construction of roads by preserving other areas of similar habitat. This property will enter the county’s habitat mitigation bank, which is why the conservation funds from the Transportation Bond were used as part of the purchase.

The Nature Conservancy paid the remaining $6 million. Hays County plans to pay that loan off and own the entire property in the future, but The Nature Conservancy would still hold a conservation easement on the land.

Now the county will look toward finalizing how the property will be used. Shell said it is a process that could take a couple of years.

The tract would be used in the summer season for river recreation during the months of May-September. However, County staff said during a meeting in October that the main function of the area would be for habitat preservation, which means trails in the area would be closed during the golden-cheeked warbler’s mating season during March-August.

“In partnering with Hays County to protect this property, we have a rare opportunity to simultaneously safeguard this iconic piece of our state’s history and culture while meeting conservation goals and increasing the possibility of public access to nature in the fast-changing Texas Hill Country,” Laura Huffman, Regional Director of The Nature Conservancy in Texas, said in a press release. “And the credit really goes to Lon Shell and the rest of the Commissioners Court for their leadership and support of this project from the get-go. Collaborative land conservation deals like this are the only way to protect the nature we have left in a way that benefits both people and the environment.”

Many of the details will have to be worked out through a public process that will include a revision of the Hays County Parks Master Plan.

“The public part of it is important to talk about, because it is not going to happen over night,” Shell said. “We want to do it right. Something of this magnitude deserves us spending the right amount of time to make sure we have thought about everything and we have a good balance to make sure the preserve is functioning, which is to protect the warbler habitat, but allow the public to enjoy and learn to respect that type of property. That will take time.”

The Hays County Commissioners Court voted unanimously to move forward with the project, though Pct. 2 Commissioner Mark Jones was not present for the vote.

There are other plans in the works to potentially conserve other portions of the property. A neighboring property owner has already purchased one section of the ranch. Shell said they are interested in potentially placing a conservation easement on the property to make sure it isn’t developed in the future. A different group of Boy Scouts is trying to purchase the portion of the property that has most of the infrastructure from the previous camp. Collier is also trying to encourage Comal County to “step up like Hays County did” and purchase another section of the property for habitat mitigation purposes.

Wimberley View

P.O. Box 49
Wimberley, TX 78676
Phone: 512-847-2202
Fax: 512-847-9054