League of Women Voters Dallas: The Great Trinity Forest, the Green Heart of Dallas
by Amy Martin with Kristi Kerr Leonard

April 16 Wed. at 5:30 pm

League of Women Voters Dallas

Harryette Ehrhardt’s abode in Oak Lawn
contact LWVDallas for address and reserve a place (women only): info@lwvdallas.org

The Great Trinity Forest: the Green Heart of Dallas

In the early ’70s, a business and political crony campaign to straighten and channelize the Trinity River from east Fort Worth to the Gulf of Mexico included plans to level much of the immense woods between I-45 and US 175. Ned Fritz, who was leading the anti-canal movement in North Texas, knew that the forest needed to be named in order for people to care about it. The name that arose among activists, attributed to Campbell Reed of First Unitarian, was the Great Trinity Forest (GTF). The 6000 acres of urban bottomland hardwood forest is the largest swath of such an ecosystem in the nation.

Learn about the GTF’s ecology and natural treasures through this talk with sumptuous photos from Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth. Discover where to hike it, from refined and paved trails to utterly wild hikes. Find out about Ned’s efforts to familiarize people with the GTF by leading annual March walks to view the Texas Buckeye blooms, now on the officially named Ned and Genie Fritz Texas Buckeye Trails. Understand the ongoing threats to the GTF’s autonomy and speculate on why it’s never been officially named or defined.

Amy Martin is the author of Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth, the only publication to include extensive info on the Great Trinity Forest plus easy information on how to access it in its five hiking chapters on the forest. She is also the writer/researcher of Ned Fritz Legacy, who was the first defender of the forest and brought attention to it through his annual Texas Buckeye Walks. Kristi Kerr Leonard, a North Texas Master Naturalist, is project manager of Ned Fritz Legacy and responsible for bringing the Ned and Genie Fritz Texas Buckeye Trails back from years of neglect by co-leading restoration teams.