Ogallala Life

The winter has been hot & dry. But it'll rain again - will you be ready to catch it!?

Our friends at the Frying Pan Ranch invited us to explore a bit of country & assess prospective project sites. We looked at stretches of Cedar Creek, and Van Netta, which issue from the base of the and flow over & thru outcropping Trujillo & Tecovas (collectively, the ).

These watersheds occasionally carry tremendous volumes of stormwater, sediments & nutrients - it runs off and is lost.

But that's not inevitable!
We need to catch more rain & recharge aquifers 🤠

Rain to catch 😁

We're building soil! There's a central windmill (now solar) & tank

The slope below it was cut by deep gullies, highly degraded

In 2024 we built a series of bunds to spread, slow & sink and runoff from the road, to allow sediments to aggrade & better retain water & nutrients.

The hard packed clay'ey shale (?) is slowly rotting, and soil is building. Pretty cool to see over time.

The desired function for this spot is to serve as oasis for wildlife, an area to assemble & rest, be nursery to desired flora including perennials, and resilient to support & accomodate livestock.

We need find pics of the windmill area before our work ... Will work on that.

We helped out with a creek clean out day - kudos for for keeping the 9th Street Trails property maintained! It's a great spot, with tremendous volumes of flowing on down W Amarillo Creek - especially earlier this year.

The flow has dwindled, the growing season largely over. So a good time to clean out trash 💪

The mountain biking old timers spoke reverently of this old bridge - "the" original ...

The interface where the banks meet the water is super interesting! You can see the character of the roots change as they near the water level.

There was a professor and some students out there too, taking samples. We didn't get to talk, but glad they're out there using the access to learn more about our water cycling 😎

We've been looking at prospective projects - places with a lot of potential, readily achievable in a relatively short time frame, with strong community connections. This is tough here in the panhandle where most acreage is privately owned & generally inaccessible.

Check out this stretch of Rock Creek at Johnson Park in the City of Borger! Here water discharges naturally from the base of the formation, where it meets the quartermaster - a layer of dense dolomitic limestone that caps the Permian. This is the largely impermeable basement of the High Plains Aquifer System.

Holy smokes! This is uniquely prolific, we're blown away at the volume of baseflow - lots of water & perennially wet. Lots of stormwater influence too, from developed surfaces upstream. And a significant contribution of treated ...

We see historic sign, and lots to indicate it's continuing to incise. Our work would reverse the rapid drainage & retain freshwater & nutrients along the riparian corridor. Lots to work out yet.

To learn more about landscape rehydration work in drylands like these southern plains, check out the Roundtable on Landscape Rehydration with Erin Healy , on December 10, 2025. We'll share a link in our next post ...

Huge kudos due Six Pack Outdoors for their work maintaining trail out there! Truly an exceptional spot here in the , and a credit to the 🤠

Another Stewarding Our Aquifer Field Day - their first in Baca County. It was a smaller gathering but fantastic 💪

The TX Panhandle is densely occupied compared to SE CO, the quadrant home to only 40k people. This country is as rural as it gets, and the SE'most corner is entirely dependent on the High Plains Aquifer System.

On our way to Springfield we stopped at Campo Schools. We spent an afternoon with the middle & high school students talking about discovering a sense of place - here on the southern plains. The kids love spending time outdoors and express lots of interest (limited access).

Then, we engaged with adults - producers & enthusiasts - at the Springfield fair ground.

First to speak is Darryl. He helped found OC, and has been growing this vast bioregional effort this past 20 years.
He's enabled and helped administer >700 interns! Part of OCs workforce development & broader efforts to reverse rural "brain-drain". Then Will got 5 minutes to summarize our landscape rehydration works

Next was Henry Po***ck. His topic - Landscape Rehydration in SE CO and their overarching purpose is to restore 3 keystone species: bison, beaver, prairie dogs.

They've some "plains beaver" & build with reeds, grasses & mud - no trees required.

Lee Rinehart, NCAT spoke remotely, on the Abundant Ogallala Project & opportunities for producers in SE CO.

Last was Storm Casper, local producer in Springfield area, w/ decades of experience including working at NRCS, and involved with regenative ag before moniker was popular.

Storm showed his accomplishments with cover crops, and emphasizes that healthy grasslands can retain a tremendous amount of stormwater, which recharges the aquifer. He suggests 4 acres of healthy grassland can recharge about as much as 1 acre of healthy playa.

Storm took us out to see some of his operations, and a good look at the headwaters of Cat Creek - once perennially wet due natural discharge of groundwater...

This country N of the Canadian River, where we worked in 2023, got a lot of rain this year, including one day that got 5-8"

The roads were torn up and vegetation thick. It's been a while since we could check up on our work - but we finally made it to Shady Springs, where we built over a dozen woody structures to slow, spread & soak stormwater

This canyon runs thru the Trujillo formation which is part of the minor Dockum aquifer, underlying the Ogallala. The sandstone & whatnot can hold a lot of water, but rainfall tends runoff & fast.

Not so much anymore!

The structures are largely mature, in that the retention area upstream has filled with alluvial sediments - sponges, that retain water & nutrients

We'll get a video or more extensive review out soon.

Check out the "well" where some animal dug a hole, a foot deep or so, and the bottom fills with clean water 🤠

Our work is being recognized as a 2025 Conservation Wrangler - a program to catalyze the very best Texan led conservation projects 💪 a big day!

A short video is being released today, and we're excited to share it. We'll post a link soonest.

In the meantime, see how it's going, and check out these Return on Conservation values!? We invested ~$60k on landscape rehydration works at Wildcat. The results just in terms of perpetuating life on land & biodiversity (SDG 15) are valued at >$550k.
Excellent ☺️

TXN has some interesting posters up. One shows the estimated amounts of investment into conservation by eco-region.

The region that receives the LEAST investment in TX is ... the high plains. No surprise there.
The second most neglected eco region is the rolling plains.

Wildcat Bluff exists at the margin, where the southern high plains meet the rolling plains & breaks of the Canadian River valley. This part of the world deserves a great deal more investment and we're proud of the role that we've played to prove it.

Per TXN, every dollar invested in ecological conservation on the high plains generates over $5 in economic returns; on the rolling plains, the return exceeds $11.

Long story short, devoting funds to natural infrastructure makes good economic sense. Moreover, nature is good for us! It is life itself and we cannot live in isolation - clean air, water, a livable climate & biodiversity are absolutely necessary for the maintenance of life, human & otherwise.

Thanks for your support! To learn more, dm us. To support future efforts it'd be best to speak with the development teams at the and

Muchos Gracias & 🤠

October is chock full of high plains aquifer related education! Today, another field day - this out of Bushland.

Some great talks, the core question - what happens when we care for playa & the plains!?

The answer being, groundwater & 🤙

Much thanks to all making these happen!

, Quail Unlimited,