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Trinity Audubon Center in Dallas Attracts 10,000 Visitors Opening Weekend
 More than 10,000 people attended opening weekend at the new Audubon Center in Dallas, offering a powerful example of how Audubon connects people with nature. Twice the number of visitors expected were drawn by workshops on topics such as backpacking, paddling, outdoor cooking, how to live near urban wildlife, planting community gardens and more. Kids joined arts-and-crafts projects; lectures included how to landscape with native species, make compost, and raise bees and chickens. Highlights at the center include hiking, bird-watching, hands-on exhibits, conservation and outdoor-skills workshops, yoga classes and a children's discovery garden.
Anne Brown, vice president of National Audubon Society, said, “We had an amazing turnout opening weekend as the community was ready to see the Center and to enjoy all the activities that we’d planned. Also, the building is uniquely designed so that everywhere you are, you are drawn to the outside, with the Blackland Prairie, bottomland hardwood forest and surrounding wetlands. It’s amazing that this site was once an eyesore, but now is helping nature come back to life.”
Built on top of a reclaimed, former landfill, the Trinity River Audubon Center is the first major signature development for the Trinity River Corridor Project, a $2 billion City of Dallas public works project. A flagship location for the National Audubon Society, TRAC is located just eight minutes from downtown Dallas on 120 acres of the Great Trinity Forest—the largest urban bottomland hardwood forest in the United States. The Center will serve as the gateway to the Great Trinity Forest, which is more than 6,000 acres in all. In addition to bird watching and outdoor conservation programs and clubs, the Center serves as a teaching facility for 25,000 students.
Audubon President & CEO John Flicker compared the gateway to the urban nature to his own backyard: Central Park in Manhattan. Noting that Central Park has 843 acres, and San Francisco has Golden Gate Park (1,017 acres), Flicker said no city can rival Dallas' 6,000-acre Great Trinity Forest. "You've got the largest urban park, urban forest in the country," Mr. Flicker said.
 On Saturday, November 2, the new Trinity River Audubon Center welcomed First Lady Laura Bush who spoke to a crowd of young volunteers and guests. “As the success of the Trinity River Audubon Center shows, a community that values natural resources can work together and build beautiful sites for everyone. I look forward to seeing how the boys and girls I met here continue these efforts, and make Dallas a better and more greener place for all of us to live,” said Mrs. Bush; “Today, students here at the Trinity River Audubon Center learned what they can do to carry on Lady Bird Johnson's legacy of promoting native plants. These students went on a hike, they learned how to identify native grasses, they planted native grass seeds of their own.”
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