The Bahia Grande is an 11,000-acre complex of dried-up basins that were once an estuary teeming with marine life. Old-timers still remember the shrimp, waterfowl, and other life that once made it a sportsman’s paradise and an important habitat for fish and wildlife. In the 1930’s, the Port of Brownsville dredged a ship channel, cutting off the tidal system’s water supply with large spoil banks. The Bahia Grande became arid, dry, and barren, and its drifting and blowing sands the source of numerous health and industrial problems.

Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, Ocean Trust, USDI Fish and Wildlife Service, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Texas Coastal Program, National Fisheries Institute, Marco Sales, Episcopal Day School, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Gulf of Mexico Foundation, University of Texas Brownsville-Texas Southmost College, Port of Brownsville, Texas A&M, Marine Advisory Service, Brownsville-Port Isabel Shrimp Producers Association, Texas Coastal Conservation Association, Cameron County Parks , and others.

• Hydrological and archeological studies have been completed to obtain federal and state permits for channel construction.

• Ocean Trust, with grants from the Gulf of Mexico Foundation and NOAA, built two nurseries to grow native vegetation, 
including mangroves and marsh grasses, for the restoration.


• The project distributed mangrove seedlings to more than 1,000 students to grow in their classrooms during the school year. Students came to the nursery to plant the young trees they grew.


• Several partners are helping to collect seeds and propagate native estuary grasses. There are now 20,000 seedlings growing in local schools and in the Bahia Grande nursery.


• More than 100 local community members have volunteered to plant seedlings. Planting will continue once the channels are reopened and the area begins to return to a thriving estuarine ecosystem.