Brackenridge Field Lab serves UT Austin as a living laboratory, providing hands-on learning for undergrads and active research space for graduate training and faculty programs. My journey to becoming an ecologist started on BFL's winding trails as a first year undergraduate student.  Since then, I have lived in field stations through many institutions, from high deserts to tropical lowlands and coastal marshes. I can report that there is nowhere on earth like BFL and its community.

Like many others, I gained some of my most valuable lessons through BFL. I am a proud UT Austin graduate, and my time spent learning at the Field Lab has carried me through my PhD work and set me up with a strong foundation in natural history and ecological theory.

Through its rich biodiversity and decades-old experimental structures, BFL informs research and trains the next generation of biologists. The research conducted here has informed the battle against some of our most destructive invasive species. Every month, under its forest canopy, the Field Lab grounds function as an open space for public outreach, where UT's graduate biologists share their curiosity with the local community. 

BFL taught me to truly understand what the heart of Texas is made of. To destroy this habitat and its long-term projects would be the equivalent of collecting your neighborhood hard drives and your grandparents' photo albums, and burning them to the ground. This place holds ecological memory, and the work accomplished here is place-based: it cannot be relocated or replaced by indoor instruction. The loss of BFL to UT Austin's biology programs would irreparably lower the caliber of UT's education. 

BFL's property, in the center of Austin and crucially close to UT's main campus, should be preserved and protected as an integral part of the mission of UT Austin's College of Natural Science. If BFL -- its land, its inhabitants, its research -- has played a role in your life, please contribute to this petition.