Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

Giant Salvinia is a fast growing exotic aquatic plant from South America that loves the warm, nutrient rich environment of Texas’ protected waters. This invasive species develops into large floating mats of vegetation.

The water under the mat is quickly depleted of dissolved oxygen due to the lack of sunlight and contact with the air’s surface; it becomes highly acidic and basically unfit for aquatic life.

Howard Elder is an aquatic habitat biologist. Giant Salvinia can be controlled in small areas using integrated pest management.

We can only conduct herbicide operations during the warmer months when the plant is actually growing.

In South America, where Giant Salvinia is native, natural processes, including a weevil, control the plant’s growth.

We have investigated this Giant Salvinia weevil, as we call it, as a bio-control agent. And research began in 2002 after the USDA approved its importation and use and distribution in the field within the United States. The initial results of Giant Salvinia weevil introduction offers great promise as a long-term inexpensive alternative in the control of Giant Salvinia infestations in Texas and throughout the South.

That’s our show… made possible by the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program…working to eradicate invasive species from Texas waters.

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

 

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This is Passport to Texas

Buffalo soldiers were heroes in their time; examples of courage and hard work. But their accomplishments, seldom taught in classrooms, leave many young African American students, like Greg McClanahan, with a limited sense of their history.

They didn’t teach us nothing in school but that we were slaves. They didn’t teach us that we were heroes or nothing. In history, all you ever heard about was slaves this, and slaves that. You didn’t hear about no black heroes.

McClanahan attends public school in Kerrville, where he met Buffalo Soldier reenactors from Parks and Wildlife.

What we are doing is taking the legacy of the Buffalo Soldier into the cities and into the schools. And we feel that sharing this story, that we can instill some pride and some resolve in them.

Ken Pollard coordinates Buffalo Soldiers Heritage & Community Outreach for Parks and Wildlife. He said he found out about the Buffalo Soldiers as an adult, but wished he’d known about them earlier.

My relatives and kinfolk were cowboys, man. We didn’t have any black cowboys or soldiers, you know, to really look up to. For me, to have the black heroes there when I was growing up, that sense of pride would have been instilled in me. But if I had grown up with that—they would have been my heroes.

Find information about Buffalo Soldiers Heritage & Community Outreach on the TPW website.

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

 

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This is Passport to Texas

[military maneuvers] Establish, fade, roll under actuality & script.

[singing] I was once a captured slave. Now I’m just a black man who came to be….[fade and play under script]

In the 19th Century, Black men who served in the 9th and 10th Regiments of Cavalry and 24th and 25th Regiments of Infantry of the United States Army were known as…

I am a Buffalo Soldier!

It’s said the Indians whom they fought during the Indian Wars gave troops the name because of their hair texture and their courage and ferocity in battle.

He feared and respected the buffalo. And he learned to fear and respect the black soldier as well.

That’s Buffalo Soldier reenactor, John Olivera, who says Buffalo soldiers played a major role in settling Texas.

Seventy-five percent of the soldiers that settled this area were Buffalo Soldiers. The only white men that were with them were the commanding officers. Almost all of the forts were manned and built by Buffalo Soldiers.

Texas Parks & Wildlife Department offers Texas Buffalo Soldier Outdoor Educational Programs. Find their schedule on the Parks and Wildlife website.

The Buffalo Soldiers fought not only the Indians, and outlaws, but racism and prejudice. We had a job to do, and we done it.

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

 

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This is Passport to Texas

Planting native trees in your landscape provides pleasing aesthetics, shade in summer, and habitat for wildlife. Late winter is still a good time to add new trees to your yard.

They have the dormant season to spread roots out.

Certified arborist Scott Harris says planting trees before summer arrives gives them an advantage.

You can plant a tree if you really baby it in the summertime; but you won’t gain any growth on it until after that first cool season, anyway. The only thing you’ll gain is getting it behind you. You won’t have a bigger tree for it.

The best trees to plant are natives. Native trees evolved with local wildlife and weather, both of which keep them in check. Non-native trees have no such relationships, which can make them a nuisance.

Unfortunately, they’re still on the market out there, and you can still buy them everywhere. They’ll spread seeds that the people at the parks and preserves will have to spend hours and hours cutting down and taking away so that the natives can thrive, so that the wildlife can thrive, and the environment can function the way its supposed to.

You can find lists of native plants for your landscape on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

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

 

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This is Passport to Texas

When 19th century Texans wanted bacon or sausage, they had to make it–starting with raising the pig. See how it’s done when you visit the Sauer Beckman Living History Farm February 6 for their German Smokehouse Secrets demonstration.

This event, we actually go into not only the curing of bacon and sausage, but they also do some other German food that may not be familiar to everyone.

Iris Neffendorf is manager of the LBJ SP and Historic Site and the Sauer Beckmann Living History Farm in Johnson City in the Hill Country.

We decided this year that because of the interest in the past, that we would go ahead and offer this one-day activity, focused heavily on outdoor processing and nineteen hundred food preparations that relate to German traditions on a German farm.

People concerned about where food comes from and how animals are raised will appreciate this demonstration, says Neffendorf.

People are turning a lot more to organic gardening and organic animals and farmyard eggs. So this is what you have here at the living history farm is homegrown, or what we call now, organic types of food.

It’s free to attend the February 6 German Smokehouse Secrets demonstration at the Sauer Beckman Living History farm. Find details on the TPW website.

That’s our show… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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February 6, 2010 — Lyndon B. Johnson SP&HS — Old Time German Smokehouse Secrets — Experience some of the 1900s meat processing methods used on an old German farm. Watch the curing of bacon and the art of stuffing of sausage. Visit with interpreters at the farm on methods and ways of handling foods and compare them to today’s techniques. Then tour the buildings and houses where you’ll find a wood stove used daily by park interpreters. Accessible for the mobility, visually and hearing impaired. 10 a.m.-3 p.m. (830) 644-2252.

 

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