Background/Question/Methods The 8-county Gulf-Houston Regional Conservation Plan (RCP) is a long-term collaborative of environmental, business, and governmental entities working together to implement an ecosystem resilience plan for the expansive Gulf-Houston region through 3 Key Goals: 1) increasing the current 14.7% of protected/preserved land in the eight-county region to 24% of land coverage by 2040; 2) increasing and supporting the region-wide land management efforts to install nature-based stabilization techniques, such as green stormwater infrastructure, living shorelines, and bioswales, to 50% of land coverage by 2040; and 3) providing research and advocacy toward an annual increase of carbon sequestration in the region by .4% in native soils, plants, trees, and oyster reefs. Houston Wilderness facilitates the Gulf-Houston RCP, providing a bi-annual GIS-based database of a) the amount of protected/preserved land in the 8-county region b) all the nature-based infrastructure (NBI) projects in the region that are in need of full or partial funding (called the Working List of Projects), and c) the currently funded NBI projects. In addition, Houston Wilderness works with its partners to collect data and estimate the amount of carbon being sequestered annually through local, large-scale tree plantings of diverse, native trees, composting, native grasses, oyster reefs, and sustainable, green farming practices. Results/Conclusions With these databases and other corresponding research, the region is able to measure and report the progress being made toward achieving the 3 key goals. Since the Gulf-Houston RCP’s inception in 2015, the region has seen an increase from 9.7% protected/preserved lands to 14.7%, over $2 billion raised for NBI projects affecting over 700,000 acres of land, and over 500,000 diverse, native trees planted annually to help sequester atmospheric CO2. The Gulf-Houston RCP creates a road map for resilience against climate change, major storm events, such as the highly destructive Hurricane Harvey, and other stressors across the 8-county region by providing Tools in the Resilience Toolbox to accomplish the goals. Implementation of the 3-key goals of the Gulf-Houston RCP directly addresses ecological issues of habitat degradation and destruction, conservation of living shorelines, rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and biodiversity loss. It is our hope that other entities across the world will use our Resilience Toolbox to improve local environmental conditions and promote ecological sustainability and resilience.
