Land clearing in Bandera

Steep cedar and oak

Bandera County is Eastern Edwards Plateau: stony hills, steep canyons, and shallow soil over limestone. Rainfall across the plateau runs from about 15 inches in the west of the region to more than 33 inches in the east. Cover is grassland, juniper and oak woodland, and live oak or mesquite savannah. Ashe juniper, honey mesquite, Texas red oak, and yaupon are on the plant list. The golden-cheeked warbler is among the nesting birds of this region. Stream corridors can hold bald cypress, pecan, hackberry, and sycamore. Ranching is the agricultural use.

Cedar closes the slopes between live oaks. Opening it means marking the oaks, then seeing whether a carrier can stand on the slope. A canyon is not a pasture.

Exposed rock

The Bandera soil survey is led by steep, rocky ground. Eckrant and rock outcrop cover slopes from 15 to 60 percent. Eckrant-Kerrville associations cover other steep ground. Kerrville gravelly clay loam sits on gentler slopes of about 1 to 8 percent. Eckrant is a very cobbly clay over limestone, described in rangeland. Kerrville is a gravelly clay loam with limestone fragments, also in rangeland. Rock outcrop in the name means exposed bedrock is part of the unit. A mulcher can work some of this. It cannot treat a 15 to 60 percent rock slope like a flat field. Access and what stays standing are decided on the slope, on foot.

Floodplain orders and Edwards maps

The county publishes a Flood Damage Prevention Court Order, adopted April 9, 2020, on the engineer's page, with a development permit application. That is the floodplain rule for unincorporated land. Inside the city, the city permitting office is the contact. Do not wound oaks on these slopes from February through June, and paint wounds immediately. Land clearing and cedar clearing are named by the Forest Service as sources of those wounds.

The Jack Mountain and Medina Lake quadrangles include Bandera County, and both are on the Edwards Aquifer Authority map index. A tract is in a regulated zone where the map says so. The San Antonio office phone list does not name Bandera County. Use the map viewer for the parcel.

What the slope allows

Forestry mulching and selective clearing are aimed at juniper and brush among oaks. Trail clearing is a walked line. Fence-line clearing follows a boundary that may cross rock. A homesite inside the city is a city permit question as well as a vegetation question.