The Houston Wilderness Nature Traveling Exhibit, temporarily displayed at William P. Hobby Airport (HOU), is giving passengers and Houstonians an enlightening lesson on what the city really has to offer.

The Houston Airport System (HAS) has one of the largest collections of public art in the state of Texas. With over 8.8 million passengers traveling through Hobby Airport in 2007, and the open layout of the new Central Concourse, the airport serves as a perfect space to reach passengers and Houstonians that are unaware such things exist in the region.

“As a member of the Greater Houston Partnership’s Quality of Life Committee, we are always looking at ways to get the message out about the great ecosystem that the Greater Houston area has to offer,” says Mary Case, Hobby airport manager. “It began with the Audubon Society’s Faces of Flight exhibit and continues with Houston Wilderness. We are hoping to do more exhibits along these lines in the future as well.”

Houston Wilderness, a nonprofit organization, spans over a 24-county area in the Southeast Texas region. The organization was formed to remedy a gap in awareness about all that lies within a hundred mile radius of Houston. What most people don’t know is the region contains a wide array of ecosystems, from hardwood bottomlands and prairie grasslands to upland forests and coastal wetlands.

Believe it or not, Houston has more ecological systems than any other part of the country and more types of neotropical birds that migrate through the city.

“This is a dream of mine since we began Houston Wilderness, that we would be able to have this on display at the airports,” says Rosie Zamora, president and CEO of Houston Wilderness. “This is a fabulous way to let people know that Houston is not a brown spot on the map. We have this incredible nature in our 24-county region and we want to increase awareness so that people know that this exists here.”

It’s estimated that over two million people will see the thirteen pop-up displays that highlight and map each of the ten ecoregions in the Houston Wilderness area: Prairie System, Gulf of Mexico, Big Thicket, Coastal Marshes, Piney Woods, Columbia Bottomlands, Bayou Wilderness, Trinity Bottomlands, Estuaries and Bays and Post Oak Savannah.