PASSPORT LEGACIES -- JIM EIDSON: He's a man who's 
helping to restore the Blackland prairie ... meet him on 
Passport to Texas Legacies
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Passport to Texas Legacies from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Jim Eidson is a steward of the Texas Nature 
Conservancy's Clymer Meadow ... an 800-acre remnant of 
the 12 million acre blackland prairie. He's working with 
landowners to maintain and restore this important 
ecosystem.

The economics of using these native grasses as forage crops, 
is the fact that they have survived for tens, if not hundreds of 
thousands, of years in this particular landscape, have gone 
through the vagaries of climate that they will produce a forage 
crop when a lot of exotic things have gone belly up. And 
under the right conditions and the right management. We've 
tested some of the hay cutoff at Clymer Meadow, and it's 
produced a ten percent crude protein content, which is 
excellent. As a matter of fact, one hay crop I had analyzed 
here in 1997, a forage expert told me that it would take a 
lactating cow through winter without supplement. This is 
without fertilizer, and this is with burn only, was the 
management coming up to the cutting of the hay crop. So, if 
farmers and ranchers are able to use these natives, and 
produce a good protein content without using fertilizer - and 
the overhead that goes with that, the cost and also the 
environmental cost of doing that - it's going to take us pretty 
far down the road. :51

That's our show for today. We produced it in cooperation 
with the Conservation History Association of Texas. Visit 
them on the web at texaslegacy.org. 

For Texas Parks and Wildlife, I'm Cecilia Nasti.