Kerr County River Foundation plants trees, vision for a $3 million park, and waits for the community to understand the river

Forty to 80% of the native trees planted by volunteers along the Guadalupe River corridor after the 2025 flood survived the 2026 flood.

Jeremy Walther shared that number on Wednesday during Lead Live’s Nonprofit Week, not as a comfort but as evidence. Native riparian vegetation — the river grasses, the Roosevelt weed, the understory shrubs that look untidy to a manicured suburban eye — is doing exactly what it is supposed to do: holding banks, slowing water, filtering sediment, and anchoring the biological infrastructure of a river corridor that has been stripped bare twice in 13 months.

Walther founded the Kerr County River Foundation with a board that includes former Commissioner Jonathan Letz, Katie Graham, and Clint Carter. The organization serves as a connector — linking private landowners along the Guadalupe corridor to technical resources from the Texas Forestry Service and Texas Parks and Wildlife, coordinating water monitoring, and building the kind of long-term, science-based relationship between the community and its river that takes decades to establish and catastrophic events to make urgent.

The foundation’s most ambitious active project is a $3 million vision for Lions Park in Center Point — a deteriorating riverside parking lot that Walther wants to transform into a functional, well-maintained public green space with pedestrian access, environmental programming, and a $1 million endowment to ensure the park can sustain itself without relying on future fundraising cycles. A $1.8 million redevelopment phase would precede the endowment campaign.

“The river is our identity,” Walther said. “Its health is directly tied to the local economy, the local culture, and who we are as a place.”

The foundation needs landowners, volunteers, and donors willing to think about the Guadalupe on its own terms — as a living system, not an obstacle.

kerrcountyriverfoundation.org.