Travis County Commssioners Court
March 9, 2004
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Item 25
Number 25, and I just want this laid out, is to consider and approve voluntary memorandum of agreement among Texas parks and wildlife -- is this one yours, joe?
>> yes.
>> city of Austin, Travis County, little colorado river authority, u.s.fish& wildlife service and lady birth johnson wildflower center to work cooperatively to conserve bracted twistflower, streptamthus bracteatus.
>> you bet you.
>> that's why they call it the bracted twistflower, judge. [laughter] paragraph.
>> it's a very lovely little florida.
>> I don't remember that in biology.
>> biology wasn't my strong forte either. I'm hoping my staff will show up soon.
>> your staff just left unless she is coming back in. Maybe give it a name like t rex.
>> I'm sorry, judge, I'm not very well briefed on this.
>> let me see if I can take a stab at this thing. This was brought to me within the first 90 or 120 days I took office and it frightened me because I thought this somehow might get in the pipeline of getting into this endangers species track and before you know it it's got everything stopped in the world. But I was assured by melinda and a number of people out of t.n.r. This was not what this was. This was a voluntary put it on watch. It is something that is a special species. You know, I guess it's -- this is indigenous the our area only, barbara?
>> yes, it's a threatened species. This agreement is a voluntary one that's designed to prevent the listing of the species. Basically it's my understanding from t.n.r. Staff that we have none of this plant on our list. And I mean on our lands that we currently own. If we were to discover some, what we would be obligated to do is protect it through fencing measures. So I think that staff felt there was no fiscal impact for this agreement, and we have many partners that are signatories to this agreement.
>> let me retract something. I can see i've frightened melinda to death. Now when I see rose and john, yes, I distinctly remember now that -- I mean and rose was the one that really got me comfortable with this deal.
>> i've always heard this described as an early action compact.
>> right.
>> for this flower. Is how it was explained to me in terms of voluntary actions we can do early to prevent bad things from happening which if those bad things happen, boy, it can be a very expensive related to like what's happened with the b.c.p. Kind of early voluntary actions, cooperation, basically not even get us down that path.
>> and I think the u.s.fish& wildlife service is viewing this as a model to use around the rest of the country help with endangered species concerns so they are very excited about this agreement.
>> and we're always excited about being the barometer. Anything we can do to outdistance portland, I mean.
>> I look forward to you making this motion.
>> is there any more explanation that -- rose, do you want to -- you or john want to bring anything to the table?
>> I don't think so. I think barbara.
>> then I would move going forward with the voluntary memorandum of agreement.
>> what are we committing to do besides be supportive?
>> basically --
>> and wish the little plant well? [laughter]
>> the only -- I guess additional work, it's really not even additional because we would always be looking for this particular species on the land we own and manage. Really, judge, it's just sort of a documentation of the fact that we are protecting its existing and future habitat is really all it is.
>> basically we don't cut them down if we see them.
>> and we meet even protect them from deer and so forth.
>> preceding that would be some education. If I want to learn more today and encounter this twisted flower, I would have no idea what it is.
>> it's on the west of the interstate. Or is it mopac?
>> mopac.
>> we are actually only talking about protecting -- the agreement is only about protecting it within the balcones canyonland preserve. We're not talking about outside or anything like that. We are promise to go protect it, -- promising to protect it which is similar we promise to do protect part of the bcp. The only thing we're adding is agreement to cooperate with the rest of the folks to do whatever we can do. Our b.c.p. Agreement required us to do some protection, but it really didn't specify exactly what and this specifies a little bit more and to say, well, if we find it, we may need to do some deer enclosures, but actually those are the kinds of things we do do anyway. I don't feel like this agreement really requires us to do anything we didn't have a requirement to do anyway.
>> but the education component you can't look over. Whoever employees are who would do the protecting really need to know this when they see it.
>> actually our staff have been trained up. We've -- we've helped with training other private individuals and we've been out for probably the last three years with our staff looking for the plant on our properties. We have not located it yet. We'll continue to look every spring with our staff and with volunteers to see if we find it and we'll protect it if found.
>> and judge, we would encourage you not to mow it down, but if you did, there would be no one showing up on your door step for phroeing down that plant.
>> which one of you all can pronunciate the biological name for this since we were having a difficult time doing it?
>> s.t.r.e.p.t.a.n.t.h.u.s. B.r.a. C s.t.r.e.p.t.a.n.t.h.u.s. B.r.a.c .t.e.a.t.u.s.
>> all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you very much.
Last Modified: Wednesday, March 9, 2004 6:57 PM