One sunny sunny morning in May, four high school students stood on a flower-dappled prairie in southern Dallas holding shovels, fighting prairie extinction in Texas. Before them swayed a Texas blazing star, a tall and spindly stalk that erupts in a bottlebrush of purple florets. Max Yan, a senior, made two putts on either side of the imperiled member of the aster family and was beginning to wedge it out when a siren wailed in the distance. He froze, his foot on the blade. There were no fences, no signs warning them off. But the land is, like 97 percent of the state, private property, and they were, strictly speaking, breaking the law.

“Hopefully that’s not for us,” he said.

The siren faded, and the teens — who attend St. Mark’s School of Texas, an elite, all-boys prep academy on the other side of town — resumed work. They are among the most dedicated members of its prairie club, rising early on weekends to rescue rare plants from bulldozers and move them to restoration sites. Their guerrilla campaign rattles some professional conservationists, but in an era of mounting climate anxiety, it offers a tangible way to make a difference and fight prairie extinction in Texas. Not to mention a dose of adrenaline. It is, one said, like “collecting my Pokémons.”

Coneflower Crest, as the boys call this place, after the dusty pink flowers that bloom here, covers nearly 300 acres of undeveloped land believed by some to be the last large intact prairie in Dallas County. Heavy machinery is expected to crush most of it, making way for hundreds of homes and businesses promised to revitalize a neglected corner of Dallas. The developers tout their project’s walkability and eco-friendliness, with ample open space, water-smart landscaping, and native vegetation. But even the greenest projects come at a cost: The city is trading an ecosystem that naturally mitigates the effects of climate change for still more impervious growth that only exacerbates them, demonstrating the importance of combating prairie extinction in Texas.

Read the full article about prairie extinction in Texas by Laura Mallonee at Grist.