Pineywoods Mitigation Bank: Texas’s Largest Wetlands Mitigation Bank

In September 2008 The Conservation Fund announced that Texas’s largest wetlands mitigation bank opened for business. The Pineywoods Mitigation Bank encompasses more than 19,000 acres along the Neches River, traveling through Angelina, Jasper and Polk counties. The new bank will restore native bottomland hardwood forest and provide a wildlife corridor between Davy Crockett and Angelina national forests.

“The Conservation Fund is pleased to offer this important conservation resource to the public and private development community in East Texas. We see mitigation banking as an additional tool, like Pineywoods ecotourism and sustainable forestry, that we and our partners can use to help protect East Texas’s outdoor legacy.”

- Andy Jones, Director, Texas Office, The Conservation Fund

Summary

The Pineywoods Mitigation Bank has been approved to immediately begin selling mitigation credits to public and private developers who must compensate for unavoidable impacts to wetlands across a designated service area. Given its landscape-level scale and conservation value, the bank offers developers a unique opportunity to leave a positive environmental legacy. For conservationists, the bank provides a critical source of conservation capital in the region.

With revenue from mitigation credits, the Pineywoods Mitigation Bank will restore more than 13,000 acres of bottomland forested wetlands and an additional 6,000 acres upland to original condition as a self-sustaining forest indigenous to the Neches River Basin. That effort involves removing exotic and weedy plant species, replanting native trees and performing related restoration work. In addition, the bank will maintain and enhance scrub/shrub wetlands, emergent wetlands and areas of open water on the property.

As part of the mitigation bank’s formation, the Texas Land Conservancy holds a conservation easement on the property.

Private, industrial or government developers whose projects impact wetlands in the Neches River basin and select surrounding watersheds can purchase credits from the Pineywoods Mitigation Bank. The amount of mitigation credits necessary for a development project will be determined by a standardized assessment, based on calculations of development impact.

Significant private investment in the bank includes support from, among others, the Houston Endowment, TLL Temple Foundation and the Meadows Foundation.

The Pineywoods Mitigation Bank meets federal and state criteria for mitigation banks, receiving approval after review by an Interagency Review Team that includes the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Texas General Land Office and the Railroad Commission of Texas.

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