Passport to Texas

 Conserving Sea Grass: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

Redfin Bay is a popular destination for anglers.

In fact, this area is number one for guided fishing trips, and second highest along the Texas coast for private boat anglers. Visitors outnumber locals two to one.

Popularity comes with a price, says Faye Grubbs, a coastal fisheries biologist based in Corpus Christi. Seagrass provides essential food and habitat for marine life. Yet, submerged propellers severly trench the area uprooting the aquatic plants. There is a regulation to protects these plants.

And the basics of that regulation are, there’s no uprooting of Seagrass allowed inside this scientific area – that includes 32-thousand acres. Now, boaters are allowed throughout the area – no area’s shut down. Trolling motors and anchors are exempted from the regulations. So if you do uproot any seagrass by using one of those devices, you’re exempted from the law.

Trolling motors and anchors are exempt because any damage they might inflict is minimal.

[seagull call] Overall, what we’re trying to do is really get boaters to think about what they’re doing out in the water. The onus, the responsibility, is on the boater to know the area he’s fishing in, and also protect and preserve some of the habitat that supports the fish that he’s fishing for.

Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series. Through your purchases of hunting and fishing equipment and motorboat fuels, over 40 million dollars in conservation efforts are funded in Texas each year.

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

 Water Quality and Quantity: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

Water quality in Texas has improved from last century, but increasing demand, coupled with current drought conditions, means we have less of it.

Andrew Sansom, executive director of the River Systems Institute at Texas State University, leads a team of 2,000 volunteers, called the Stream Team. These concerned citizens signed on to track Texas’ water quality.

26—Our waters from a quality standpoint are much better than they were a generation ago. The waters in Texas were far more polluted in the 50s and 60s than they are today. The principle issue that we’re facing today is an issue of quantity. Because we are essentially running out of it. And the more our population grows, the worse this drought becomes, the more acute that problem will be.

If you take a look at the U.S. Geological Survey Web site, you’ll find a map of the United States—a map with dots representing current stream flow. The redder the dot, the more the stream flow is below average. Take a look at Texas and you’ll see it covered in dark, red dots.

11—Today, the hill country of Texas is in the most extreme drought conditions in the United States. You can see evidence of the drought in the hill country anywhere you look.

We’re nearing drought of record proportions. All citizens can make a difference by reducing water use in the home and landscape.

That’s our show…For Texas Parks and Wildlife I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 Houston Toads: From the Ashes: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

With its habitat ravaged by wildfires, the future seems bleak for the endangered Houston toad. But this lost pines local has a friend in Professor Mike Forstner from Texas State.

10—My students, myself, and a large group of collaborators do significant ecological restoration, habitat recovery, particularly focused with landowners in Bastrop.

Before the fire, toad populations were stable due to landowners conserving their habitat. Now, it could take 40 years before the land recovers. What’s a toad to do?

19—in 2006 and 2007, we began a head starting program that included a captive assurance colony held at the Houston Zoo, with additional individuals at Fort Worth. And, we have better than 60% of the genetic diversity that we have detected in the wild—in a decade—represented in the captive colony.

Bastrop State Park, which took a big hit from the wildfires, is a significant study site for the Houston Toad, and the State Parks division at Texas Parks and Wildlife funds part of the study.

Scattered pockets of Houston Toad habitat exist, and may receive captive bred animals, but work is needed to improve the genetic diversity of the species in these locales.

26—Outside of Bastrop, the majority of the population fragments that remain, are effectively like having a single family, not a population of wildlife. And we haven’t developed a strategy that’s been approved yet that will enable bolstering that genetic diversity and those populations. The core is getting the support of the landowners in those areas to become as engaged as the landowners in Bastrop currently are.

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

 Houston Toads: Surviving Wildfires: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

Hundreds of homes were destroyed, and thousands of acres of habitat were significantly altered last month when catastrophic wildfires raged through Bastrop County, including Bastrop State Park—a stronghold of the endangered Houston Toad. Biologists are just beginning to quantify impacts on habitat from the blaze.

13—The fire will have taken most of the arthropods on the surface. In some areas it will have been ground sterilizing, removing the duff and the other community layers that the foodstuffs for juvenile toads and adults rely on.

Professor Mike Forstner, from Texas State University, studies the toads, and focuses on ecological restoration, habitat recovery, surveys, and genetics research.

The toad’s habitat is significantly changed. How much so? Researchers may not know the full impact for months. Meantime, Forstner says a break in the drought could benefit the toad and its home, and yet with rain a new problem may arise.

10—Those same beneficial rains will result in runoff of the mud, ash and silt into the breeding ponds that will negatively impact breeding success next spring.

The toads are down, but don’t count them out just yet. There’s a plan, and we tell you about it tomorrow.

Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series. For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 Prescription Fire: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

Given the devastation produced by wildfires this year, it may be difficult to grasp the vital role fire plays in land management. Nature’s been using it for eons with great success.

David Riskind, director of natural resources for state parks, says there’s a difference between a fire burning out of control, and the prescription burns biologists recommend to landowners.

Controlled burning is a term that people use that you start at part A, and you burn until you get to part B. Professional land managers use the term prescribed fire because you have specific objectives, you have specific outcomes, you burn under very specific conditions. And so a prescription is a planning document… you lay everything out ahead of time and you then implement it with very specific objectives in mind.

Riskind says the objectives set forth in prescribed burns vary from property to property.

There can be a whole series of objectives. From very simple things like fuel load reduction. You can have specific habitat objectives…to change the vegetation structure and composition to support waterfowl, or to support antelope, or lesser prairie chickens…or Houston toads for that matter.

Houston toad habitat took a big hit from wildfires last month. Learn more on tomorrow’s show.

The Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series and works to increase fishing, hunting, shooting and boating opportunities in Texas.

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