\u201cSan Miguel doesn\u2019t have to do this,\u201d McKinney says. \u201cThey could mine right through the plants, and they would not be violating laws. They\u2019re actually trying to learn to do a reclamation and build awareness about the species.\u201d<\/p>\n
Early that morning, I met Eason and conservation technician Cory Foshee at the San Antonio Botanical Garden. Eason packed a cooler full of snacks and drinks for the volunteers and showed me rows of plants they\u2019d collected during the first trip to the mine. We left the garden in separate cars and drove down to the mining site. When I arrived, a man in a hard hat took one look at me and said, \u201cAre you with the botanical people? They\u2019re over there.\u201d He pointed to a group of thirteen volunteers and employees surrounded by orange Home Depot buckets. Eason and Foshee arrived right after me, and we gathered with volunteers from SACXS, plus San Miguel environmental and fuels manager Dave Burris and permit compliance coordinator Nellie Frisbee, whose hard hat is adorned with the words \u201cCoal Guns Freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n
We listened as McKinney explained the reclamation process<\/a>. Before any mining could begin on this privately owned land, McKinney, who regularly consults for companies like San Miguel, was brought in with other experts to conduct an extensive baseline study of the environment. It\u2019s his job to make sure native grasses, soils, trees, and plants are repopulated, and that streams, ponds, and creeks are recreated when a mining or construction project ends. He discovered the black-lace cactus population in 2014 while mapping vegetation on the 30,000-acre area. McKinney says finding them there was a big surprise. This species of cactus doesn\u2019t usually live in this part of Texas; since it likes saltier soil, it\u2019s typically found closer to the coast.<\/p>\n McKinney recognized a huge opportunity. What if, out of the approximately 3,000 plants they would gather in those Home Depot buckets, they could propagate 10,000 to 20,000 more plants? \u201cThese are natural resources with intrinsic value to us,\u201d he says. \u201cOnce we lose it, it\u2019s gone. Some people don\u2019t care and think it doesn\u2019t impact their life, but a person has to decide what\u2019s important to them in this world.\u201d<\/p>\n San Miguel worked through a comprehensive revision of its mining permit\u2019s Fish and Wildlife Protection Plan and submitted it to the Railroad Commission of Texas Surface Mining and Reclamation Division, which provides a copy to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The project also required written approval from private landowners to ensure full compliance with the Endangered Species Act. The entire process of reclamation will likely take until the mid-2030s to complete.<\/p>\n Before that happens, there are cacti to collect. McKinney instructs us to watch out for Texas indigo snakes<\/a>, since it\u2019s their mating season, as well as rattlesnakes and javelinas. \u201cIt\u2019s called wildlife for a reason,\u201d says one of the SACXS volunteers. This cohort seems especially excited to get started. They are, after all, part of a cactus appreciation society. One volunteer, Ron Andring, says he\u2019s \u201cold enough and retired enough\u201d to devote his free time to things like this. Alyssa Danna, program director at SACXS and a gardener at the San Antonio Botanical Garden, says, \u201cWe\u2019re all like, we\u2019ve got to save them all!\u201d<\/p>\n As this gentle army of cactus gatherers fans out across the land, McKinney, who has a degree in wildlife biology, points out strawberry, horse crippler, fishhook, and prickly pear cacti, the latter species prompting Burris to declare, \u201cI like that prickly pear Shiner Bock.\u201d McKinney crouches to show me delicate beach seepweed and coastal stonecrop, which I never would have noticed on my own. \u201cIf you spend enough time looking closely, you\u2019ll see things,\u201d he says. Black-lace cacti only produce those fuchsia blooms one day a year, in mid to late March, and bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, and wasps depend on those flowers to survive. McKinney tells me about a black widow web he found over one of the blooms, marveling that the spider had only one day to spin it. \u201cThat spider got fed,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n In under three hours, the group gathers about eight hundred black-lace plants to take back to the garden. At their previous outing, they got close to 2,500 plants. The team plans to make another trip to the mining site this spring to collect seed. The plants will be stored in fifteen-by-fifteen-inch germination trays, which can hold about one thousand seedlings, making it possible for the team to bring thousands, if not tens of thousands, more plants back to the land than they dug up. More will be propagated on-site, too. The mining operation will eventually build a shaded yard to hold the cacti, which will be replanted in biodegradable pots once the mining ends and the land is restored to its natural state.<\/p>\n I spent only a few hours at the cactus-gathering mission, but McKinney and Eason will be working on this reclamation for several years to come. Eason, in particular, will be waiting for the seedlings to sprout, then calling on those volunteers again to help them replant, with a cooler full of snacks in tow. \u201cI could not do this on my own,\u201d Eason says. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely a feel-good moment when I see [thousands of] cacti in trays all about to bloom<\/a>. Whatever you can do to save a species makes you sleep better at night.\u201d<\/p>\n If you were driving along the road in South Texas past the mining site, you\u2019d notice the excavators or massive draglines, but you\u2019d never know about the tiny black-lace cacti nestled among the brush or the people who are patiently working to save them. Unlike a field of bluebonnets, these little prickly bulbs might not inspire families to snap yearly photos or advocate to protect them so they bloom again the next year, but they\u2019re just as important to the state. Just ask the birds, bees, and butterflies that rely on them to survive.<\/p>\n Read Next<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To the untrained eye, the clusters of tiny perennial succulents might seem unimpressive. When they\u2019re not in bloom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[47917,90673,4258,7809,2327,25776,82,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-234885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-cactus","tag-christine","tag-conservation","tag-endangered-species","tag-environment","tag-plants","tag-san-antonio","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/endangered-black-lace-cacti-2.jpg\")
Volunteers, San Miguel staff, and San Antonio Botanical Garden staff working together at a potting event.Courtesy of San Antonio Botanical Garden<\/p>\n