Before people settled along the bayous, when Houston was not yet Houston, the wetlands stretching across the Southeastern Texas coast were covered with prairie potholes and pimple mounds. These sunken freshwater holes and small knolls dotted the landscape, providing a home for tall prairie grasses and a host of wildlife.
Over time, however, the land was developed. For years, encroaching urban sprawl decimated thousands of acres of coastal prairie wetlands in Texas. Since the mid-1990s, the complex pothole and pimple system shrank by thousands of acres, according to reports, and continues to be developed, alarming residents, environmentalists and climate experts.
