Thornscrub Sanctuary Draft Action Plan

Aside from serving as a research station, base of operations and waypoint for botanist and field researchers in the area, we hope to serve as an education center for the endangered plant community that occupies this habitat as well.

The majority of our focus will be on our 37 acre land project. The focus will be on :

- building and establishing trails,
-removing invasive species such as buffelgrass and guinea grass and continuing to maintain their eradication,
-planting thousands of native cactus species such as Astrophytum asterias, Ancistrocactus scheeri, Mammillaria heyderi,
-planting hundreds of native perennial Thornscrub species such as Asclepias prostrata, Galphimia angustifolia, Nyctaginia capitata, Agave univittata & asperrima, etc

Our immediate expenses will come mainly in the form of construction costs for an on-site, 2000 sq. ft building near the entrance and unpaved (for now) parking area and establishment of a tall fence to keep feral hogs away and mitigate unauthorized entry. We hope to eventually establish a grey-water system and composting toilets.

The building is to serve as a meeting space, library, presentation gallery, small lab for microscopy and potentially PCR and molecular sequencing of plant & fungal species, and will have a small kitchen, 2 bathrooms, shower and small lounge area.

Ideally, we hope to one day be able to host interns and have somebody live on site. Being that this is one of the most extreme climates in North America in terms of summertime heat, it would seem best if the building is constructed of rammed Earth walls that have a high heat capacity and insulation ratio. The property is somewhat sloped so there will be grading that needs to occur and part of the building will likely have to be built into the slope. Aside from one or two buildings and a storage container near the entrance to the property, there will be no other construction anywhere else on the 37 acres.

The vast majority of the property occurs on fossilized oyster beds of Eocene-Oligocene age. Half of the property has been root plowed in the past for cattle , but there have been two decades since of decent recruitment of black brush (Vachellia rigidula), Ancistrocactus scheeri, Erythrostemon caudatus, Galphimia angustifolia, and Asclepias prostrata, among other species.

There is a low-lying arroyo area on the property as well, and eradication of buffelgrass here will require monthly maintenance and walkthroughs to monitor seedling germination of buffel grass once it is cleared. It is in this area that we also hope to establish a few populations of the endangered cactus species Astrophytum asterias, as a common companion plant of that species - Varilla texana - is already found here.

On the Eastern side of this arroyo the property has never been root plowed, leaving the soil seed bank intact. Infiltration with invasive bufflel grass is somewhat extensive and likely still occurring. It is thus important to halt this process as soon as possible. The idea of removing this invasive species without the use of glyphosate is laughably impossible, so we will be using spot applications of this herbicide. Though application of herbicide is certainly not ideal, we recognize that it is certainly the lesser of two evils and that most restoration efforts anywhere in North America are impossible without responsible herbicide use. Once the large seed-bearing clumps of buffelgrass are removed, its eradication can likely then be maintained manually without the continued use of herbicide by doing monthly walk-throughs and walk throughs in the days or weeks following rain.

It is important to mention that a large part of what Thorn scrubs Sanctuary hopes to accomplish is also, in effect, the farming and mass-production of seeds of native and especially endangered plant species. We aim to do this by maintaining robust and genetically diverse populations of native plants, weather grouped together in small monocultures or mixed in with each other. Being that pollination is required for the production of seed, we hope to be monitoring and observing pollination studies on all of the species within our care and producing good data as to insect species observed and the plant species that they frequent. Being that this is one of the most understudied ecosystems in North America, we feel that this work is incredibly important to understanding how such a heat adapted ecosystem functions.