In the list below, our projects are organized into broad groupings around shared or similar characteristics:
- Projects Focused on Natural Sites and Settings: conducted at a specific natural area in coordination with the area’s organization leaders.
- Projects Focused on Specific Activities: focused on a set of activities that are not necessarily site dependent.
- Projects Focused on Specific Subject Matter: may involve a range of activities, typically not site dependent, that focus specifically on a specific subject that aligns with the TMN curriculum.
Projects Focused on Natural Sites and Settings
| Project Name | Organizational Affiliation | Project Description |
| Beulah Acres Agroforest, Corinth | Beulah Acres at Global Spheres | Contributing expertise regarding the North Central Texas native ecosystem to support the design and development of an ecologically balanced agroforest that can serve as an educational model for the community. This project is spearheaded by the Beulah Acres team and involves collaboration with the Denton County Master Gardeners Association |
| Bob Jones Nature Center, Southlake | Bob Jones Nature Center | Helping restore and preserve plants and wildlife and educate the public through various activities for 758 acres of the Eastern Cross Timbers Ecosystem open to the public for education and outdoor activities. |
| Clear Creek Natural Heritage Center, Denton | City of Denton | Helping with trail maintenance and construction, assisting with nature hikes, research, conservation, and restoration projects. |
| Flower Mound Foundation, Flower Mound | Flower Mound | Working to help preserve the Mound by eliminating woody plants and invasive species and conducting educational programs for the public on prairies and their importance. |
| Fort Worth Nature Center, Fort Worth | Fort Worth Nature Center | Helping to care for animals, guiding canoe trips, leading nature walks, working on trails habitat restoration serving as a roving naturalist, and hosting in the visitor center. |
| Furneaux Creek Nature Trail, Carrollton | City of Carrollton, Friends of Furneaux Creek | Leading activities to restore the green belt with native plants, including butterfly gardens, to provide a natural ecosystem for wildlife along Furneaux Creek, and providing educational activities such as bird walks and nature talks. |
| Green Acres, Flower Mound | Town of Flower Mound, Keep Flower Mound Beautiful | Preserving and appreciating the park land by maintaining a monarch station, restoring a prairie, monitoring 8 bluebird boxes, encouraging a new wetlands area and observing and recording plants, insects, animals in the park. |
| Lewisville Extending the Green | City of Lewisville | Helping develop small nature parks in Lewisville over the next several years will provide opportunities to be involved in native species design, invasive removal and planting. Most of the sites are in so called “park deserts” in lower income neighborhoods, giving a chance to do community education and hands on outreach, particularly to children, about nature. |
| Lewisville Lake Environmental Learning Area, Lewisville | City of Lewisville, University of North Texas | Leading nature hikes for students and the public, assisting with bird banding, prairie, forest and wetland restoration, trail building and maintenance, angler education, nest box maintenance, manning the visitor center and giving tours of the homestead area. |
| Lantana Monarch Waystation, Lantana | Lantana HOA | Designing, developing and maintaining an official Certified Monarch Waystation adjoining the Lantana Community Center and serving as an educational focal point on the use of native plants for suburban landscapes, gardening for birds, monarch conservation, and other topics related to pollinators and native landscaping. |
| LBJ National Grasslands, Decatur Area | US Forest Service at LBJ Grasslands | Maintain and monitor bluebird nesting boxes and record data collected; assist in the collection of lichen species; assist in the search for, collection of and counting of particular plant species of interest as designated by the US Forest Service; participating in Bobwhite quail whistling call surveys on the property. |
| Lewisville ISD Outdoor Learning Area, Lewisville | Lewisville ISD | Documenting species of plants and animals, building and maintaining trails and native plant demonstration gardens, and assisting with outdoor education classes. |
| McCord Park Butterfly & Dragonfly Wildscape, Little Elm | City of Little Elm | Create and maintain a butterfly and dragonfly wildscape with Texas native and adapted plants in an area pocketed by an existing concrete walkway at McCord Park in Little Elm. |
| Pratt Nature Preserve at Hickory Creek, Hickory Creek | Town of Hickory Creek | Advising and assisting the Town of Hickory Creek to preserve the natural state of western side of an almost 8 acre savanna prairie remnant and to encourage its citizens to learn about and appreciate the value of the prairie ecosystem. |
| Ray Roberts Lake State Park, Pilot Point / Valley View | Ray Roberts Lake State Park | Leading guided hikes, monitoring and maintaining Bluebird boxes, greeting Nature Center visitors, and assisting TPWD with various educational events, and assistance in the development of a new park Field Guide. |
| Texas Our Heritage Demonstration Garden, Highland Village | Heritage Elementary School | Maintaining and restoring an educational garden at Heritage Elementary School in coordination with the Denton County Master Gardeners Association. Supporting an indoor learning center with rotational ecosystem informative displays. |
| Thrive Nature Park, Lewisville | City of Lewisville – Parks & Recreation Department | Providing design, development, and implementation support to the City of Lewisville as it transforms a 23-acre abandoned post oak savannah into a nature park that will serve as a community center for education and recreation. |
| Trophy Club Park Conservation Area, Trophy Club | Town of Trophy Club Parks and Recreation | Maintaining approximately 600 acres conservation areas within Trophy Club Park, providing education outreach, field observation, and study of Cross Timbers ecological zone and prairies. |
Projects Focused on Specific Activities
Projects Focused on Field Research and Citizen Science
| Project Name | Organizational Affiliation | Project Description |
| Benthic Monitoring, Denton | City of Denton, Watershed Monitoring Program | Collecting and identifying aquatic macroinvertebrates from local streams to determine water quality. |
| Bryo-Texana, Elm Fork Chapter Service Area | S.M. Tracy Herbarium at Texas A&M | Assisting the project manager in the collection, processing, and recording of specimen data on mosses, liverworts and hornworts found in the area. Processed specimens are sent to the S. M. Tracy Herbarium at Texas A&M. |
| CoCoRaHS Precipitation Monitoring, Elm Fork Chapter Service Area | Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University | Participating in a network of North American citizen scientists to collect and report precipitation data to the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University. The data is used by a wide variety of organizations and individuals. |
| GTWT Adopt-A-Loop, Denton/Cooke/ Wise Counties | Texas Parks and Wildlife Department | Perform site visits at the Great Texas Wildlife Trail Sites within Denton, Cooke, and Wise Counties. Each site will be visited four times each year (seasonally). The volunteers will complete the prescribed Site Visit Checklist and submit results to the Project Manager, who will compile the results and forward them to TPWD. |
| iNaturalist, Elm Fork Chapter Service Area | California Academy of Sciences | Using the iNaturalist application platform to contribute to projects organized and managed by Texas Nature Trackers as well as bioblitzes and other organized field data collection projects focused on mapping, sharing, and identifying flora and fauna observations within our service area. |
| NestWatch, Elm Fork Chapter Service Area | Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Helping to track status and trends in the reproductive biology of birds, including when nesting occurs, number of eggs laid, how many eggs hatch, and how many hatchlings survive. |
| Project Feeder Watch, Elm Fork Chapter Service Area | Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Counting birds that appear in your count site and reporting the highest number of individuals that you see in view at one time to scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. |
| Water Quality Monitoring | Stream Team, Denton County | City of Denton, Watershed Management Department | All volunteers must be certified by the Texas Stream Team before any sampling is done for this project. Testing water at stream locations on at least a monthly basis. Water quality is tested for temperature, turbidity, pH, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, E. coli, nutrient levels, etc., along with climate information. |
Projects Focused on Training and Education
| Project Name | Organizational Affiliation | Project Description |
| 4-H Entomology, Denton | Denton County Livestock Association | Educating 4-H youth in insect classification and life cycles by helping them collect and preserve insects for youth fair contests. |
| DISD School Days at Clear Creek, Denton | Denton Independent School District | Providing educational experiences to complement the Denton ISD field trips for 2nd graders in the spring and 4th graders in the fall. |
| Elm Fork Education Center, Denton | University of North Texas | Guiding groups of children and their adult chaperones between activities conducted in and around the Environmental Sciences Building on the UNT campus. |
| Growing UP Wild, Trophy Club | Trophy Club Parks and Recreation Department | Working with Parks and Recreation, schools and Keep Trophy Club Wild to establish environmental education programs for people of all ages. |
| Science with Attitude (SWAt), Denton | None | Providing assistance to the Junior Master Naturalist and Junior Master Gardener programs. School gardens, indoor and outdoor learning centers and demonstrating nature science kits to children’s classes. We work in partnership with the Denton County Master Gardeners. |
| Wild Rambles in Southern Denton County, Mainly Flower Mound, Lantana | Flower Mound Foundation | Guiding interpretive nature hikes for residents of Southern Denton County, on improved and unimproved existing trails, to promote awareness and appreciation for the nature that surrounds them, even in seemingly developed areas. |
Projects Focused on Outreach to the Public
| Project Name | Organizational Affiliation | Project Description |
| Advisory and Outreach, Elm Fork Chapter Service Area | None | Providing education and public outreach to various public groups and events. |
| Texas Native Plant Art Exhibition, Denton | Native Plant Society of Texas, Texas Woman’s University | Providing Denton ISD fourth grade students a creative way to learn about native Texas plants through an art exhibition. The artwork is judged and displayed in the community. |
| DFW Wildlife Coalition, DFW Area | DFW Wildlife Coalition | Answering hot line phone calls about wildlife emergencies. Direct the callers to help for injured or orphaned animals. Provide guidance to resolve animal/human conflicts. |
| Wildlife Rehab, DFW Area | DFW Area Licensed Rehabilitators | Supporting orphaned wildlife by providing resources to licensed rehabbers that help the injured and orphans until they are able to be released into the wild. Additional resources that can be provided include transportation of injured/orphaned wildlife to a licensed rehabber, rehabbing (if licensed), and educational initiatives. |
Projects Focused on Providing Technical Guidance
| Project Name | Organizational Affiliation | Project Description |
| Land Management Awareness, Elm Fork Chapter Service Area | None | Helping private landowners assess their property’s current wildlife habitat and making recommendations how to improve it. |
| QR Code Library, Elm Fork Chapter Service Area | None | Creating and maintaining a digital reference library based on QR codes that can be used at several Master Naturalist project sites, particularly those visited by the public. |
Projects Focused on Specific Subject Matter
Projects Focused on Specific Subject Matter and Community Support
| Project Name | Organizational Affiliation | Project Description |
| Community Cleanup Events, Elm Fork Chapter Service Area | Various Community Organizations | Participating in Elm Fork Chapter Service Area community cleanup events intended to remove foreign debris from natural spaces and waterways. |
| Tree and Forests Management, Elm Fork Chapter Service Area | Keep Denton Beautiful, Cross Timbers Urban Forestry | Providing education, outreach, and service dedicated to the better management of trees and forests within the three counties of Denton, Cooke, and Wise. Participating in Denton Redbud festival and set up and Children’s Arbor Day Presentations. |