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The Texas coast is one of the most ecologically productive and least appreciated natural assets of the United States. Unfortunately, this coastal resource is being destroyed by the various management actions (or inactions) of the state of Texas. It is not too late to reverse this destruction, but major policy shifts will be required to alter this trend.
The destruction of Texas coastal resources is a classic case of cumulative effects, which are impacts that accrue to an ecosystem by multiple actions that add impacts to each other, ultimately resulting in the loss of the entire system one small step at a time. Cumulative impact is seen in the graphic concept of “death by a thousand cuts.” No one cut actually kills, but together they add up. Decades of laissez-faire attitudes about granting water rights and allowing ecological impacts have led to the loss of Nueces Bay as a viable ecologic system as well as to the death of 23 whooping cranes in winter of 2008–09. If Texas water policy is not changed in the near future, flows will be substantially reduced in the San Antonio, Guadalupe, and Colorado Rivers, and major ecological and fishery productivity damage to San Antonio, Aransas, and Matagorda Bays will occur, with Galveston Bay and Sabine Lake not far behind. On the other hand, with a bit of forethought and planning, such a fate can be avoided.
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