Pipeline and drilling opponents will open three camps in the high desert north of Big Bend National Park over the next week or so, hoping to attract hundreds of protesters to West Texas to block a pipeline and the development of recently discovered oil and gas fields.

The organizers aim to follow the example of the hundreds of people who traveled to North Dakota, camping out and demonstrating for months to stop - at least for now - the completion of the Dakota Access pipeline, which would have carried oil from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota to Midwestern pipeline networks that connect to the Gulf Coast refineries. The Obama administration decided not to grant the permit needed to finish the project; the incoming Trump administration, however, has pledged to give the pipeline the green light.

An environmental advocacy group began working three weeks ago on the first West Texas camp, near Alpine, to protest a pipeline being built for Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, the same company building Dakota Access. The Trans-Pecos line would carry natural gas from the Permian Basin to Mexico. Picketers were arrested outside a pipeline equipment yard earlier this month. That camp opens on Wednesday, activists said.

The same group, the Big Bend Defense Coalition, is opening a second farther south near the ghost town of Casa Piedra, close to Big Bend Ranch State Park. The Society of Native Nations, an American Indian advocacy group based in San Antonio and instrumental in the North Dakota protests at Standing Rock, is helping organize it. They're calling it the Two Rivers Camp and expect 200 to 300 over the next month or so. It opens Friday, with plans to target the Trans-Pecos line.

"We have people coming in from North Dakota already," said Frankie Orona, executive director of the Society of Native Nations. "We have to open up this weekend."

Energy Transfer Partners did not reply to a request for comment.

The third camp is opening in Toyahvale, home to the famous spring and pool of Balmorhea State Park, and aims to stop the development of nearby oil and gas fields by Apache Corp. The Houston company said in September that it had discovered 15 billion barrels of oil and gas around Balmorhea and said it could drill as many as 3,000 wells over the next two decades.

Residents have since raised concerns that drilling and hydraulic fracturing around the area springs could contaminate the water and damage other natural resources. Several have vowed to fight.

"We're going to get Toyahvale on the map, finally," resident Neta Rhyne said. "Wish it were for better reasons."

Rhyne and her husband own about 400 acres there, abutting the state park, and are designating 30 acres for the new camp.

Rhyne said she and a few volunteers are clearing tumbleweeds off the land now and are building a gate in the property's perimeter fence. They hauled in portable restrooms but plan to build composting toilets. They hope to light their first campfire on Jan. 7, she said, marking the official opening of the camp.

Four campers have already arrived, Rhyne said, one from Austin and three from the Standing Rock protests.

Rhyne, a Houston native, said she came to Toyahvale in 1984 and stayed, after being diagnosed with lung cancer, to keep away from city air pollution. She is now cancer-free but said she already notices the change in air quality with just a few wells drilled.

"My goal would be for Apache just to go home, go away," she said. "I don't know how realistic that is."

In response, Apache said that "the safe and responsible development of natural resources" is the company's top priority. It is working with the University of Texas at Arlington on the first independent baseline water study in the region, and promises to bring jobs, protect the environment and continue communicating with the community.

The camps at Standing Rock have lost campers in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decided it would further study the impact of the pipeline under Lake Oahe on the Missouri River, delaying Energy Transfer Partners' progress and handing protesters a temporary victory. Then winter snows arrived.

Law enforcement officials recently estimated that just 500 are still in the camp, down from as many as 10,000 at the protest's peak.