A mailing list community for people who enjoy the plants and animals of Texas and adjoining states.

Texas and the surrounding area encompasses a wealth of natural areas and biodiversity. Many of us love these places and may have favorites among the things that live there (birds, herps, invertebrates, flowering plants, etc.). Usually we want to broaden what we know, whether we are birders who are curious about the frogs we’ve been seeing or herpers who would like to know more about the plant community in our favorite wetland. Almost all of us love to talk about wildlife and wild places.

There are specific resources, books and websites galore, on birds and mammals and reptiles and wildflowers and the rest. Finding a resource that helps integrate all these things is another story. The purpose of the Naturalist’s Connection is to bring people with diverse interests and knowledge together to talk about places they love, species they’ve seen, and to ask questions about the parts they don’t yet know about. We can help answer each other’s questions and feed each other’s appreciation of nature.

There are organizations with similar aims. The Texas Master Naturalist program is one. However, there does not seem to be an online community, open to any interested person, that fills this need.

Membership in this list is open to anyone with a fairly broad interest in the ecology and natural history of Texas and the surrounding areas. Subscribers may live in Fort Worth or Katmandu, as long as they stay on-topic. Members may be beginners, and we hope for a mix of those with little training or experience and those with a lot of those things. What we also hope for is a friendly atmosphere where the point of the discussion is to enjoy and share.