Andrew Stuart

At the threshold of Far West Texas, the Lower Pecos Canyonlands contain some of North America’s most remarkable rock art. Here, where the Pecos and Devils rivers join the Rio Grande, on cave walls, prehistoric hunter-gatherers painted more than 350 rock-art panels of a distinctive style.

Owl sightings aren’t unusual in West Texas. You might spot a great horned owl in Alpine or Marfa, a barn owl in a farm building in Presidio or a burrowing owl on the Marathon grasslands. And the irresistible elf owl – which, at less than 6 inches long, is the world’s smallest owl – summers in Big Bend.

Chihuahuan Desert grasslands are the main winter home for birds known as grassland specialists – chestnut-collared and thick-billed longspurs, lark buntings and horned larks, Sprague’s pipits and diverse sparrows. These birds are deeply imperiled, and supporting them is a top priority for West Texas conservationists.

Extreme drought tests nature’s resilience. And birds are a particularly vivid example of how the creature world responds to drought, and to a landscape recovering from it.

Big Bend Ranch State Park is promoted as “the Other Side of Nowhere,” and the park’s River Road – FM 170 between Lajitas and Redford – fits that billing. It’s a breathtaking landscape of volcanic badlands and imposing canyons, and it can seem like a timeless wilderness, untouched by history.

Facilitated by the nonprofit Texan by Nature, and funded by oil giant ConocoPhillips, the Delaware River Basin Restoration project aims to revive an historic stream in Culberson County, 70 miles north of Van Horn.

Known only from sites in southern Presidio and Brewster counties, “Big Bend Bold” rock art is distinctive for the size and style of its imagery, which is painted in black or dark green. The style was named by archeologist Tim Roberts, who argues it was created by Indigenous Big Bend farmers and foragers at the time the Spanish first arrived here.

It’s a fragile little grass, with a fragile future. Guadalupe fescue was first identified in the Guadalupe Mountains in 1932 – but hasn’t been seen in its namesake Texas range for decades.

Texas state parks showcase a host of treasured resources – canyons and caverns, dinosaur tracks and hiking trails, waterfalls and whitewater rivers. The parks also preserve a remarkable archeological record, rich evidence of Texas’s Indigenous past.

Researchers have studied the iconic ocotillo plant extensively. Yet they didn’t know the answer to a basic question: how long do ocotillos live? Biologist Peter Scott sought the answer in Big Bend National Park.