Forbes 500 of Disappearing Texas Ecosystems

For the past year, I’ve been wrestling with an equation to identify the true worth of ecosystems one stripped of artificial inflation from extractive industries, government subsidies, and short-term exploitation.

Why Focus on the Blackland Prairie?

Texas has no shortage of endangered ecosystems, but this one is personal. I grew up on this land. George Strait wrote country songs about it. It's a vanishing relic paved over for another concrete dream.

But this isn't a eulogy it's a calculation.

This isn’t for the visualizers, the ones who see the world in color and geometry. This is for the non-visualizers: the ones who think in equations, balance sheets, and ROI. The ones who prefer money over trees.

Once stretching across 12 million acres, less than 1% of the Blackland Prairie remains, roughly 5,000 of its original 12 million acres statewide (Texas Parks & Wildlife, 2023). In San Antonio, historical coverage was approximately 175,000 acres, around 56% of the city's total land area (ESRI GIS, rough estimate)(2024 satellite data), and the EPA ecoregion shapefiles for Texas Blackland Prairie boundaries. No official citywide inventory exists.

This prairie sits directly in the path of urban expansion, yet no policy or pricing model reflects its ecological worth. That’s what makes it the perfect test case, to rethink how we value land especially rare, irreplaceable ecosystems hiding in plain sight.

ArcGIS. Pink blob signifies the Blackland Prairie in San Antonio. 2025.

Addressing Missing Data

San Antonio’s land valuation data is incomplete or missing from building permits, making it nearly impossible to track how much prairie-rich land is worth or how it's being priced.

Why it matters:

• Taxpayers can’t see how land is valued or what revenue is being missed.

• It hides the real cost of development.

• It enables underpricing of ecologically vital land.

Because of these gaps, I used secondary sources, environmental research, and economic models to estimate the true(er) value of the Blackland Prairie.

 1. The Extinction Forecast
Using a logistic decay model, the forecasted remaining Blackland Prairie within San Antonio will be at functional loss in ~75 years. If development rates accelerate this timeline shrinks dramatically, potentially within a few decades. This forecast aligns with habitat-loss models from Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute’s Texas Land Trends (2022), which estimate annual working-land conversion rates between 2-5% in high growth regions. 

Trends in Large-Scale Developments City of San Antonio Open Data. 2022

One of the most striking findings from this San Antonio development permit analysis is that the trend shows a steady, year over year increase in both permit approvals and applications. This linear growth suggests a consistent demand for large scale development.

2. A True(er) Market Valuation E³VF Formula 

I'll call it, the Exponential Ecological Economic Valuation. The E³VF model is a correction. It prices in what the market leaves out: mental health, carbon sinks, and extinction risk.

Current land pricing completely ignores ecological value, so to correct for that:

True Ecological Value (E³VF) = (Sn +HR) x (I X S) / (r + EV)

Where:

• Sₙ (Sustainable Net Worth): $5,000 per acre per year (carbon sequestration, flood control, soil health)
• HR (Health ROI): $2,000 per acre per year (mental, physical, and psychological health benefits)
• EV (Extinction Volatility): 0.05% (5% annual risk of ecosystem collapse)
• I (Intrinsic Factor): 1.5 multiplier (cultural, historical, and ecological significance)
• S (Scarcity Factor): 1.2 (to reflect the extreme rarity)
• R capitalization/discount rate = 0.05% (standard for ecosystem asset valuation)

Calculation Example:

1. Combine annual ecological benefits: 5,000 + 2,000 = 7,000
   
   

2. Apply multipliers: 7,000 × 1.5 × 1.2 = 12,600
   
   

3. Divide by total rate (r + EV = 0.10): 12,600 ÷ 0.10 = 126,000
   

Final E3VF Value ≈ $126,000 per acre

3. Comparing Market Price vs. True(er) Value
Final Estimate of Blackland Prairie in San Antonio:

Total Estimated Remaining Prairie: 14,399 acres
Protected Prairie (Conservation Easements): ~2,880 acres
Unprotected Prairie with High-Quality Soil: ~6,912 acres
Total Prairie Loss from Historical Extent: ~91%
Percentage of All Remaining Blackland Prairie in Texas Located in San Antonio: ~12%
Percentage of the Original Blackland Prairie That Still Exists in San Antonio: ~8.23%

4. What Would Buyers Pay for This Land?

• Current market price for suburban development: $132,300 per acre ($3.04 per sq ft) (2024 BCAD)

• Current market price for multi-use development: $198,450 per acre ($4.55 per sq ft) (BCAD 2024)

Using the E³VF model , the true ecological and economic value of the Blackland Prairie is approximately $126,000 per acre - a conservative, grounded estimate based on annual ecosystem services and a 5% capitalization rate.

That means the prairie’s ecological worth alone equals nearly the full market value of developable land. When both are combined, a more accurate total valuation for high-quality could approach $250,000-$300,000 per acre. 

If the remaining 14,399 acres of prairie were properly valued at this range, the total would exceed $3.6 billion, more than double what current development pricing captures. 

SOOO To Conclude

While San Antonio's Blackland Prairie holds a true economic value of about $6-7 per square foot, it’s still being sold off for pennies. If scarcity were properly priced, these last remnants would be nearly untouchable.

Here’s an underutilized opportunity: use true scarcity as the price gauge not speculation, not infrastructure, and definitely not what the land lacks.

I get being on sale every once in a while but San Antonio’s been on clearance its whole life. Y’all never priced nature like the irreplaceable asset it is. And now, the very thing that makes you proud to be from Texas is almost gone.

There’s an ironic market failure at play: the more self-sufficient and ecologically valuable the land, the less it’s worth on paper. That’s because today’s valuation system rewards the absence of nature. Concrete, not clean air; sprawl, not soil.

We don’t reward land that provides flood control, mental health, and biodiversity, we discount it. And in doing so, we turn economic scarcity into ecological collapse.