The Quinta Mazatlan Birding Sanctuary Draws the eyes of the world to south Texas

"But Quinta Mazatlan also represents something else: a decades-long bet that what’s good for birds is also good for humans. Even land hemmed by strip malls and subdivisions can invite nature in. “You can still have places for people to go and be cooler in the shade of trees and have all this wildlife,” Brush says. That bet just got a lot bigger. Next door, Quinta Mazatlan’s $59 million Center for Urban Ecology expansion will open in October, with roughly double the acreage of the original preserve and more than 27,000 new plants represent-ing about 100 native species."