Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

[ticking clock] Hear that? That’s time running out to register your team in the thirteenth annual great Texas Birding Classic. Shelly Plante.

The Birding lasts for an entire week. And we have events for all ages and all different kind of groups of people.

Plante oversees nature tourism for Texas Parks and Wildlife. If you don’t mind paying a late fee, you may register your team up until the day of the tournament, which is April 24. The event is open to birders of all skills and abilities.

With birding, everyone is equal. If you’re blind or visually impaired you can do birding by ear. And we actually have a tournament category for that in the birding classic—the Outta Sight Song Birder Tournament. We have ADA accessible trails throughout the Texas coast, so, anyone with mobility impairments can get out there and bird. It really is an equal opportunity activity.

It’s easy to register your team in this tournament.

To find out about registration for this year’s event, go to birdingclassic.org online.

Registration deadline is March 22. The event is April 24 through May 2, and concludes with an awards ceremony.

Winning teams decide which proposed avian habitat conservation projects receive funding this year.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Birders of a feather will flock together next month for the fourteenth annual Great Texas Birding Classic. During this weeklong event, birders from around the globe converge on the Texas coast for fun, and friendly team birding.

The area for The Great Texas Birding Classic goes from the Louisiana Border, all the way down to the Mexican border—in a forty-one county area of the Texas coast. So, it’s a very large swath of land, with a lot of different habitat types and a lot of different bird species you can see.

Shelly Plante oversees nature tourism for Texas Parks and Wildlife. The Birding Classic donates tens of thousands of dollars each year to avian conservation projects.

The top [winning] teams are the ones that get to pick what projects receive all this money. So, we give over fifty-thousand dollars to projects every year, and those winning teams are the ones that get that opportunity.

Three different flyways intersect the Texas coast, making that habitat essential to birds as they make their spring and fall migrations.

We hold this event to raise some money for that habitat for restoration projects, acquisition projects so that we can ensure that Texas remains a wonderful place for birds to visit year after year.

Registration deadline is March 22. The event is April 24 through May 2. Find a link to registration information at passporttotexas.org.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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For more information about how you, your business or community can be involved in this year’s event, please contact the Birding Classic Staff, call: ( 9 7 9 ) 4 8 0 – 0 9 9 9, or send an email to
Carol Jones, cjones@gcbo.org

 

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This is Passport to Texas

Before we had grocery stores, we had nature.

Whenever the edible wild plants were domesticated, tamed and cultivated, that’s when human culture could grow.

Human culture evolved, says Joe Roach, because people no longer spent their days searching for food in the wild. Roach, a park interpreter, occasionally takes visitors on wild food hikes in Tyler State Park.

The program is to have park visitors recognize and gain and appreciation of how edible wild plant support our human culture. We do that by taking a very moderate one half mile hike. We point out the various the various things that the Caddo Indians used [and others] when they were here. And we investigate how the human culture rose on the foundation of edible wild plants.

Roach warns never to eat any wild plant unless you are 100% certain it is safe, as some edible wild plants are similar in appearance to poisonous wild plants. One ubiquitous edible plant is the juniper tree, more commonly referred to as cedar.

You can make a tea out of them, or chew on the leaves. Some people have reported that it helps control various gum diseases. In survival training some people say you can chew on the juniper to freshen the breath.

And juniper berries are a classic seasoning for wild game dishes. There’s a Wild Food Hike at Tyler SP March 20; it’s accessible for the mobility impaired. Find details on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

That’s our show…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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March 20, 2010 — Tyler SP — Wild Food Hike — Explore the edible wildscape during a moderate, half-mile hike. Learn to identify and prepare some of the common edible wild plants and other benefits they have to offer. Accessible for the mobility impaired. 11 a.m.-noon (903) 597-5338.

 

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This is Passport to Texas

No matter what your outdoor interest, chances are you’ll find it at Choke Canyon SP. Bryan Frazier is our guide.

Choke Canyon State Park—a great place to go in terms of catfish fishing, which turns on a little later in the spring. Crappie fishing, white bass…Choke Canyon has just risen in the ranks, if you will, in the fishing world as a place to go to really catch lots of different kinds of fish. But, right now, bass fishermen, that’s one of their hot spots to stop and visit on the way. A lot of tournament fishermen show up there.

It’s far enough south—you’ve got great birding—even some of the things like the green jays and chachalacas…and the wildlife viewing is unmatched. Whether you’re looking for deer, or turkeys or javalina—they’re oftentimes viewable right from the park road in your vehicle. A great place to take the kids to get them familiar with nature. So,. Choke Canyon is definitely a place I recommend this time of year to people to visit.

Find more State Park Getaway information on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

That’s our show… with support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 

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This is Passport to Texas

How do you balance the needs of wildlife and habitat, with wind energy? Find out this month and next on the TPW TV series: Producer Abe Moore.

One of the areas we go is up in the Panhandle, where wind energy is threatening tall grass prairies and the Lesser prairie Chicken, which is there; and it’s got biologists a little concerned.

They don’t do well with change on the landscape. We think that we’re displacing or moving a nesting female away from where she wants to be, and we don’t have much habitat left for her to go to.

We also do a second part on wind energy and we go down to the coast, where wind energy is being developed even faster than in the Panhandle. And, it’s a concern because it’s in the Central Flyway where millions of birds migrate through. So you have all these birds and you’re putting wind turbines in there. So there’s a balance there. We talk with Penescal Wind Farm down there. And they have a radar system set up where they can see the birds coming before they get there.

The radar itself generates a curtailment command, and in less than one minute all the turbines will be turning at less than one RPM. And in within five minutes, all of them are completely stationary.

So, both on the coast, and on the Panhandle, it comes down to habitat issues and trying to site them in the right place.

That’s our show… with support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 

 TPW TV--Wind & Wildlife: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download