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Land owners, energy leaders gather for 'Healthy Lands and Energy Development Summit'

The summit was put on by the Borderlands Research Institute of Sul Ross.

MIDLAND, Texas — People from all over West Texas gathered Wednesday to discuss and listen to ideas on how to keep energy production up while keeping environmental impacts down.

"We're having a conversation with industry folk, landowners, community members, as many people as we can get around the table to have a conversation about balancing energy and conservation and community needs," said Billy Tarrant, Associate Director of Stewardship Services. 

The summit was put on by the Borderlands Research Institute of Sul Ross.

"We've been involved with the Respect Big Bend Initiative for about three years and that specifically is to look at ways to develop responsibly in this region," said Louis Harverson, Director of the Borderlands Institute.

Data was presented about where good places were to put energy development as well as places where it could negatively effect land, communities and wildlife.

"Fragmentation of habitat, overuse of water resources, not reclaiming the surface of the lands, you can have erosion and things like that, you can also have negative impacts on communities so you can end up in situations where roads are not well maintained, there's too much traffic," said Melinda Taylor, the senior advisor to the Cynthia & George Mitchell Foundation.

The conversation wasn't just about oil and gas, but other forms of energy too.

"It's a little less well known, but Texas is now of course the number one oil and gas producing state in the United States, but it's also number one in wind energy production, we have by far the largest wind energy resource in Texas compared to the other 49 states," said Taylor.

The point was not to decrease the amount of energy West Texas creates, but to preserve the beauty surrounding it.

"Migratory corridors for wildlife, view sheds and dark skies and some of the things that really speak to the character of the region," said Harverson.

From here, the hope is more conversation and more action. Sul Ross is opening up a new center that specializes in what this summit was about.

"We're rolling out a new center for land stewardship and stakeholder engagement and the primary purpose of that center is to facilitate conversations between energy industry and landowners and conservation partners and really challenging everyone to get along and to advance conservation in the energy industry," said Harverson.

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