A cattle ranch is, by design, engineered against water. Streams get straightened and ditched to protect crops and pastures. After 150 years of that at Riverby Ranch in Fannin County, Texas, the landscape had traded its original hydrology for efficient agriculture—moving water fast and moving it out.
When the North Texas Municipal Water District (NTMWD) acquired the 17,000-acre ranch to offset the environmental impacts of building a new regional reservoir, RES saw something different. Not just a mitigation site to restore habitat by habitat, but a hydrologic system waiting to be made whole.
"Water was the key to everything," says Matt Stahman, RES project manager. "Every RES team member who worked to restore Riverby would say the same."
“Switching to a turnkey delivery approach yielded approximately $100 million in contract savings.”
Cesar Baptista, NTMWD's Deputy Director of Engineering
The Bois d'Arc Lake Mitigation Project is one of the largest permittee-responsible mitigation (PRM) projects ever undertaken. NTMWD was building a 16,000-acre reservoir to serve 13 cities in the Dallas–Fort Worth region. RES was contracted to restore wetlands, streams, forests, and grasslands across Riverby Ranch, concurrently, not after the fact.
→ Watch the Bois d’Arc “A Stream is Reborn, Four Big Wins"
That timing was deliberate. By completing mitigation work before the reservoir came online, RES eliminated temporal loss. This is the gap between when a project impacts an ecosystem and when restored habitat is functionally providing equivalent value. The regulatory standard of "no net temporal loss" was met. Cesar Baptista, NTMWD's Deputy Director of Engineering, noted that switching to a turnkey delivery approach yielded approximately $100 million in contract savings.
→ Three Pennsylvania Case Studies: Restore the Stream, Restore the Valley StoryMap
What restoration at this scale looks like
Across 17,000 acres, RES restored 69 miles of streams, planted 6 million trees, built more than 300 constructed wetland basins, and re-established more than 3,200 acres of native grasslands. The work spans streams, forested wetlands, emergent wetlands, native grasslands, and riparian bottomlands, each habitat connected by one underlying logic: slow the water down and let the ecosystem rebuild around it.
By 2023, water was appearing where it should have been in a functioning North Texas landscape. Bobwhite quail returned within a year of planting. Beavers moved in. A wildlife corridor emerged connecting Riverby Ranch, Bois d'Arc Lake, and the adjacent Caddo National Grasslands, now considered one of the most significant in Texas.
The full story, told habitat by habitat, watershed by watershed, with field video, before-and-after comparisons, and an interactive restoration map, is in the storymap. RES will continue to monitor and manage the site through approximately 2040.
→ Explore The Bois d’Arc Lake Mitigation Project Storymap
→ Discuss your large-scale mitigation project with us
