By Elliott Blackburn | Avalanche-Journal | Tuesday, March 18, 2008Dave Haukos pushed through the dead salt marsh aster, waist-high plants common along the Texas coast that looked out of place in north central Lubbock. Cold, dry wind blowing through the field chapped lips and cracked soil desperate for planting season moisture, but Haukos slammed a shovel into the ground at a small clearing and produced a surprise - damp, sticky earth.

Haukos, a Tech professor and regional migratory bird specialist for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, ticked through the once common features of the fenced-off wetland surrounding him. Dark soil marked the depression in the short prairie grass that could quickly fill with water and wildlife after a hard rain.

The water would vanish just as easily, withering away under the wind and sun or slipping to the aquifer in a give-and-take that indicates a true, healthy playa.

The Panhandle boasts the highest concentration of the unique wetlands in the world. At least 25,000 playas soak up water in modern farm, range and cropland in the Llano Estacado.

Less than half work today as nature intended, Haukos said.

So the migratory bird specialist hopes to bring to Texas a program in place for years around farmland covering the rest of the country. The program uses federal dollars to purchase healthy playa acreage from farmers and create a series of refuges open to birders, hunters and hikers.

"People around here would have the opportunity to access and enjoy or experience playas in ways that they're probably not familiar with," Haukos said. "Very few people that live here actually know what a playa is."

A pothole puddle has about as much claim to the title of playa as most of the in-town formations Lubbockites call by the same name. Ponds the city topped with concrete, bunker drainage systems and ringed with park space, earn the much less exotic title of "stormwater retention pond" in their current form, Haukos said.

Real playas don't hold water year round. Ducks and other waterfowl blanket the southern High Plains when the playas fill for the winter wet season, and a chorus of toads always seem to materialize along the playas edge after any rain, Haukos said. But the water quickly evaporates in the dry season. Waterfowl give way to pheasants, jackrabbits and raccoons.

When the playas dry up, so do many of their state and federal protections. Playas lost protection under federal Clean Water Act laws in 2001, and Farm Bill language prohibiting farmers from interfering with a playa lake allow plow and harvest through the dry basins, though crops tend to fare poorly in the clays.

Even with the farm bill protections, playas struggle when surrounded by farmland. Soil erodes into the depressions during heavy rains and can disrupt the clays that line the basins.

Unless the winds clean the invading soil out of the playa, the wetland begins to die.

Hunting and environmental groups have pushed new legislation to offer stronger protections for playas. But Haukos and other wetland researchers will try to convince federal officials next fall to include the Llano Estacado in a program that purchases playas, rather than a series of penalties.

Through Wetland Management Districts, the Department of the Interior or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service purchase playas and small buffer tracts around the basins as a wildlife refuge with public access. The program creates small, primitive parks managed by the government that contribute payments in lieu of taxes to each county.

Landowners can sell off acreage that struggles to produce crops and the playa ecosystem enjoys new protections, said Loren Smith, a playa researcher and former Tech professor who now heads the Oklahoma State University Zoology department.

"It really helps diversify your economy if you can pay landowners to protect your wetland," Smith said. "These northern economies in the northern plains derive a lot of money from these government incentives, whereas in the southern plains, we don't see that as much."

Haukos believes 30 to 50 landowners with playas that could be protected would sign up under the first attempts at such a program, though he couldn't guess at how much money would be available for such a project. He hopes to have the Llano Estacado region included in such funding next year.

Landowners should have the same options for their property as farmers and ranchers in the northern plains, he said. And those who don't live around the playas could have better access to a unique feature of their landscape.

"It's a way to conserve wetlands but also improve the area for the people who live here," Haukos said.

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