Ranch to become habitat

Letting go of the ranch that bears her late husband’s family name will be tough for Melba Fitzgerald.

But she hopes it can be more valuable as a natural habitat.

The Nature Conservancy Texas Program recently purchased the 6,000-acre Fitzgerald Ranch, located in Yoakum and Terry counties north of Seminole. The Nature Conservancy Texas Program intends to use the area as a habitat for lesser prairie chickens and other wildlife.

“I felt it was the best way to conserve the land,” Fitzgerald said. “We’ve always loved the land and the wildlife. This seemed like the best option.”

The land is considered valuable because it’s located in vegetated dunes, Niki McDaniel, Nature Conservatory senior media relations manager, said. The grassland helps make it stable for lesser prairie chickens, which are actually a member of the grouse family.

The animals, which number at least 300 at Fitzgerald Ranch, are known for their mating rituals, McDaniel said.

“They look kind of like a chicken, and they crow like a rooster,” she said.

The lesser prairie chicken is at risk of becoming endangered, Jeff Francell, Nature Conservancy’s director of land and water protection, said.

“It’s a declining species,” he said. “We’re trying to protect their habitat.”

Although public access to the area is still under discussion, Jeff Francell, Nature Conservancy’s director of land and water protection, said he expects to at least have it open during mating season.

While the Nature Conservancy has West Texas preserves in the Davis Mountains, near the Pecos River and elsewhere, Francell said this would be its first land in the Panhandle area.

The conservancy protects 250,000 acres of wild lands in Texas, according to a news release. It has more than a million members and has protected more than 15 million acres in the United States.

The conservancy paid $1.2 million for the land, the news release said. It’s partly being paid for by a 3-to-1 matching grant from the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Program through the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

The conservancy will have to raise a quarter of the purchase price along with $200,000 in startup costs through private donors.

Fitzgerald said she’s looking forward to having others see the natural beauty she enjoyed with her husband, Johnnie Fitzgerald, before his death two years ago. Along with lesser prairie chickens, she enjoyed seeing deer, antelope and dove turkeys at the ranch the Fitzgerald family established in 1904.

“It just means a great deal,” she said. “It’s like having a legacy to my husband and his family.”