Bastrop, Tx–At a meeting this week Bastrop County commissioners approved the first two conservation easements as part of a program aimed at protecting the Lost Pines habitat of the endangered Houston toad.
Last year the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency charged with administration of the Endangered Species Act, approved the toad protection plan for Bastrop County, known as the Lost Pines Habitat Conservation Plan. Commissioners then named Roxanne Hernandez to manage and administer the plan for the county. Hernandez announced the two conservation easements Monday.
Each easement covers nine acres of separate 10-acre tracts in recognized toad habitat areas. The easement allows the property owners to build a home on one acre and restricts additional development on the remainder of the tracts, said Hernandez.
The easements also should result in the property owners paying property taxes based on the wildlife or agricultural value of the land (not its open market value) because of the altered development potential, she noted.
The easements adjoin each other and lie close to a large protected tract owned by the Captial area Boy Scout Council near Lake Bastrop. The easements “get us closer to a (protected) landscape,” said Hernandez.
The Houston toad, first identified in the Houston area, was soon extripated there and became on of the first species protected under the ESA in the 1970s. Today the Lost Pines of Bastrop County is home to the largest known population of the reclusive amphibians.