Phase I of NABA’s re-vegetation project is currently in progress. This project will establish approximately 10 acres each of two of the Lower Rio Grande Valley’s most threatened plant communities —Texas Ebony Resaca Forest and Subtropical Texas Palmetto Woodland.
Texas Ebony Resaca Forest Association is known only from a few sites in the lower Rio Grande valley of Texas, in Cameron and Hidalgo counties, although it apparently ranged (at least historically) into Tamaulipas, Mexico. Much of the original acreage of this community has been cleared for row crops and pasture. Limoncillo, Esenbeckia runyuni, a native to Resaca banks and swallowtail host plant, has suffered extensive loss of habitat so that only a few specimens are left in the wild in Texas, and, according to The Native Plant Project, is the rarest tree in Texas.
Texas Ebony Resaca Forest
Ruby-spotted Swallowtail larvae on Esenbeckia runyuni leaf
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Butterfly Park in Development

Support for this re-vegetation project includes the following:

Texas Parks & Wildlife Department
National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
National Park Service
Mission Economic Development Corp.
Meadows Foundation
Houston Endowment
Magnolia Trust