© Andy Sipocz, TPWD

Loss of Working Land in Texas

According to Texas Land Trends, ninety-five percent of land in Texas is privately owned. Private farm, ranch, and forest land comprised 83% or 142 million acres of the state land base. Driven by population growth, working lands are rapidly being converted to non-agricultural uses. Texas leads the nation in loss of working land acreage: between 1982 and 2010, Texas lost 4.1 million acres of working lands to urban uses.

Texas’ population grew by 500,000 new residents each year between 1997 and 2012. Most of this growth occurred in the top 25 fastest growing counties in Texas, with 87% growth rate in those years. Five of these counties (Brazoria, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, and Montgomery Counties) are on the upper Texas Coast. As population pressures rise, the price per acre of land has increased. This has swayed owners to subdivide and sell formerly rural land at a rapid rate in these counties, where total land conversion increased by 54%.  Between 1997 and 2012, the average ownership size of working land decreased from 581 acres to 521 acres¹.

While Texas experienced a net loss of 1.1 million acres of working lands between 1997 and 2012, 1,400 new working farms and ranches were added annually.  Alongside urban development, the increased value per acre of rural land, and this demand for agricultural lands in a declining land base, development pressure on  wetlands to meet  growing demand is likely to intensify.

The Relationship Between Working Lands and Wetlands

According to the National Resources Inventory (NRI) 2010 assessment of Texas wetlands, 34.48% (1,887,700 acres) of palustrine and estuarine wetlands on non-Federal land occurred on cropland, pastureland, conservation reserve program (CRP) land, and rangeland in the state of Texas. Additionally, forested land use ( 1 acre at least 100 feet wide 10% stocked by single stemmed woody species at least 13 feet tall at maturity) existed on 43.45% (2,378,400 acre) of land where palustrine and estuarine wetlands occurred in Texas.²

Just as with loss of working lands, significant wetland loss in our region is associated with development and population expansion in the Houston-Galveston metroplex.  Considering that almost 78% of estuarine and palustrine wetlands in Texas occur on non-Federally owned agriculture lands and forested lands, it seems that preservation of Texas working lands and forest lands from conversion to developed land use is vital to conservation of wetlands on the upper Texas Coast.

^{1 Texas Land Trends report published in 2014 by Texas A&M Institute of Renewable Natural Resources
2 National Resources Inventory 2010: Texas Wetlands by USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service}