Keep Big Bend Wild

Big Bend National Park is Texas’s first National Park and spans over 800,000 acres in Brewster County, West Texas. It is an incredibly important ecosystem and is the habitat of 450 species of birds, 75 species of mammals, and 67 species of reptiles/amphibians. It is also a critical habitat for the endangered Yellow-Billed cuckoo.

Big Bend is a popular tourist destination, amassing nearly 600,000 travelers in 2021. With more than 150 miles of hiking trails, one can walk through The Chihuahuan Desert and see cacti, desert oasis, and volcanic ash.

Recent infrastructure developments pose a threat to the area. Activist efforts have long pushed federal officials to designate Big Bend as a wilderness area. 

In 1978, the National Park Service recommended Congress to designate the Big Bend National Park as “wilderness”, but that never came to fruition. 44 years later, the Keep Big Bend Wild activist group is pushing for the same designation.

This designation would preserve the wild nature of the area and protect it from infrastructure development. But it would not impact what visitors could do. Congress must designate Big Bend as an official wilderness area to ensure that future generations can continue to enjoy the great outdoors in West Texas.