The goal of the Preserve is to acquire, protect, manage, and enhance approximately 1,400 acres of contiguous coastal habitats on West Galveston Island, including a 3-mile stretch of interior island ecosystems and a 3-mile stretch of living shoreline along west Galveston Bay. The Galveston community identified this area as priority landscape to protect in the West Galveston Island GreenPrint for Growth. The Texas citizenry and agency staff identified the project as a priority in the Texas Coastal Resiliency Master Plan as a Tier One Project. The settlement funds from DeepWater Horizon have funded this. The Preserve is adjacent to West Bay, part of the Galveston Bay system – an estuary of national significance. The conservation area is one of the largest unfragmented, undeveloped properties of its kind on Galveston Island. The Preserve is located approximately midway along the 32-mile barrier island.
The Coastal Heritage Preserve Initiative is a multi-phased project. The initial phase combines protecting habitat via land acquisition, providing a launching platform for the expansion of Artist Boat programming, and planning for long-term management of the Preserve. An intermediate phase will involve habitat restoration, plus the development of trails, boardwalks, viewing platforms, improved kayak access, parking, and interpretive signage. Eventually, the Preserve will host the Gulf Coast Environmental Education Center providing a “green” building that would be a model for coastal development and housing facilities for Artist Boat and the community, including classrooms, meeting space, an environmental art gallery, laboratories, dormitories for overnight stays, and administrative offices.
Implementation
Recent Acquisition
The most recent expansion of the Coastal Heritage Preserve is 141 acres, including The Peninsula, as section of land that would have been developed to hold 52 channelized second-homes.
The next goal for this Coastal Heritage Preserve (Preserve) project are to: (1) purchase in fee simple and conserve in perpetuity 204 acres of coastal habitats, to be protected, managed, and enhanced as part of the Preserve’s existing 1,039 acres, protecting critical coastal wildlife habitats in the Texas Gulf Coast Prairies and Marshes ecoregion of the coastal management zone; and (2) create a protected corridor of three miles for approximately 547 acres, of which 343 are already protected, running through the interior ancient relic dune core protecting the island from geohazards and keeping its functions as a coastal barrier in the special hazard area of zones AE and VE. In protecting these 204 acres, the immediately adjacent Preserve land along Stewart Road and back to the bay will be more fully protected, including coastal prairies and a brackish to freshwater slough that runs through the middle of the west end and supports important freshwater emergent marsh habitat. Without this addition, those adjacent lands will be subject to run-off pollution, light pollution, and other human hazards from the proposed development of the 204 acres, with its potential for 1,281 platted units of residential homes built immediately up to the wetlands with no buffer.
