Effort to Save a Houston-Area Prairie Comes Down to the Wire

The Deer Park Prairie is spared from development. Just hours before Tuesday’s deadline, Bayou Land Conservancy raised enough money to buy the land. In early August, Dean Lawther, a longtime housing developer in the area, agreed to sell the property to conservationists for $4 million. The initial proposal kicked off a campaign to quickly raise the money. On Monday night, a new agreement was reached. Lawther would come down on the price, to $3.8 million, and the prairie would have a longer name: Lawther Deer Park Prairie. Bayou Land Conservancy will hold the conservation easement, preventing the prairie from ever being developed, but will transfer ownership to the Native Prairies Association of Texas to manage and operate. The remaining donations will be used to maintain the park. Bayou Land Director Jennifer Lorenz calls the project the “fastest conservation campaign ever completed in Texas.” The group raised nearly $4 million, mostly from individual donors, in a matter of weeks. “Individuals made this happen, this truly is the people’s prairie,” she says...more  

That's how its done in a private lands state. Willing buyer, willing seller and resource is protected without delay. 

In a public lands state they would spend the $4 million on an EIS that would take years to complete, then appeals, then litigation and then turned over to federal mismanagement based on a Land Use Plan that would take another $4 million and more years to complete.  Meanwhile, the resource is damaged and the feds blame it on global warming and sequestration.