Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Wildlife Restoration Program

The key to healthy habitat and wildlife populations rests in the hands of landowners. In Texas, we honor their skillful management.

Lone Star Land Steward is an award program where we recognize those landowners in Texas who are doing an exemplary job of managing their habitats and their wildlife.

Linda Campbell oversees the state’s Private Lands and Public Hunting program.

We have all kinds of focus on these landowners. We have a great diversity of people. We have a regional award for each of the ten eco-regions. And then we have an overall award, the Leopold Conservation Award, for the overall statewide land steward.

Nominations for the awards opened June first, and will continue until the end of November.

Nominations can come from the landowners themselves, or those that assist them. We will take nominations from any member of the public. All of those nominations are evaluated, and we do site visited on those. We just want to make sure that we hold up those who are doing such an excellent job managing the resources of Texas.

Find a list of current winners and a link to nomination forms at passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show…with support from the Wildlife Restoration Program…funding the Private Lands and Public Hunting programs… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 

 Lone Star Land Steward Nominations: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Wildlife Restoration Program

Cut off from the Lower Laguna Madre, the Bahia Grande, a unit of the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, changed from productive tidal wetland to nuisance dust bowl. The tide started to turn for this basin with the new millennium.

It was not until 2000 when the Fish and Wildlife Service acquired the land surrounding the Bahia Grande Basin that you could start doing something—because the Fish and Wildlife Service was very supportive of restoring the area.

John Wallace is the refuge manager. Eight years later, the process of restoring Bahia Grande continues.

Restoring ten thousand acres takes quite awhile. We have had to go through an environmental assessment—public hearings—to just make sure what we were planning to do in restoring it was not going to cause some kind of impact.

Wallace says the project is at the stage of installing the main channel that will fully restore the area. He estimates the work to start in early 2009. When fully restored, humans and wildlife will benefit.

Besides just reducing the blowing dust, it’s going to increase the number of marine organisms in the area: anything from larval finfish, to shrimp, to blue crabs that are already in the area. And when we have it fully restored it’s going to do nothing more than become a nice estuarine area to benefit wildlife.

Find more information at passportotexas.org.

That’s our show… with support from the Wildlife Restoration Program… providing funding for wetland conservation through the Private Lands Enhancement Program.

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

 

 Wetlands Month--Bahia Grande, 2: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Wildlife Restoration Program

For the past seventy years, Bahia Grande, a unit of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, has been no more than a six thousand acre dust bowl. Before then, it had been a productive tidal wetland.

A tidal wetland is normally a coastal wetland that is influenced by the daily tide cycle that would basically push or pull water into that system on a daily basis.

John Wallace is the refuge manager. The construction of the Brownsville Ship Channel in the 1930s effectively cut off Bahia Grande from the Lower Laguna Madre.

The spoil from that ship channel was piled on the north side, and it blocked off those natural channels that allowed water to flow into the Bahia Grande.

Without water, the basin dried up, and eventually became a nuisance to local residents and businesses whenever prevailing winds came from the southeast.

Normally on a coastal area with prevailing winds, you would get winds ten to twenty miles an hour every day. And these winds would pick up that real fine clay dust, and blow it to the north and northwest. And the local communities north of there were suffering from this blowing dust. It was impacting people that had breathing problems. The local schools, their air-conditioning systems, it was getting into the classrooms. So, it was a major concern for the local communities.

Solving the problem…that’s tomorrow.

That’s our show… with support from the Wildlife Restoration Program… providing funding for wetland conservation through the Private Lands Enhancement Program.

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

 

 Wetlands Month--Bahia Grande, 1: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program

Squirrel hunting was considered a right of passage for young people, but that’s changing. TPW TV writer/producer Ron Kabele tells us about a story airing this month called Last of the Squirrel Hunters.

We followed a father and his daughter, who were hunting on Engeling WMA. Her name was Macy; and she was very enthusiastic—she was about 12 years old.

I have four daughters. Macy is my outdoors person, so she likes to go and tromp out in the woods as long as the bugs don’t bother her too much.

And, his fear is that at some point, Macy’s generation is going to be the last generation of squirrel hunters. Squirrel hunting is actually a very good way to get people into hunting, because you’re moving around the forest, you’re not sitting in one place, you have lots of targets to aim at if you’re in good habitat. In other words, there’s lots of action.

(ambience walking) That other squirrel’s gotta be right here. Dad, put it in your pocket. Whoa. That’s cool.

A lot of time with hunting, it’s that first experience that determines whether someone’s going to be a hunter or someone’s not.

That’s our show for today…thank you for joining us…we receive funding from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration program… providing funding for the operations and management of the Gus Engeling WMA.

We record out program at the Production Block in Austin, Texas. Joel Block engineers our show.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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Find out on which PBS stations the Texas Parks and Wildlife Television series airs when you click here.

 

 TPW TV Feature: Last of the Squirrel Hunters: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program

If you’re not a hunter, but you have friends and family who are, you probably get left behind when they go to public hunting lands to bag game. Not any more.

We offer a twelve dollar limited use permit, which is kind of a companion permit to the forty-eight dollar annual public hunting permit.

Vickie Fite is public hunting coordinator. While the permit is a type of companion to the annual public hunting permit, it is a stand alone document that’s good for an entire year.

With that permit, the only thing that you’re not allowed to do is any of the hunting activities. You can actually even fish with the limited use permit.

People who don’t know any hunters can still take advantage of this inexpensive way to access public lands.

If you’re not a hunter, you’re a birdwatcher or just a nature lover, you can spend that twelve dollars and you’ve got access to all of these areas. At times when hunting is allowed, you have to be careful and wear your hunter orange. But you’ve also got access tot his property at any other time also. For just doing the nature watching type things. Over a million acres of land. Ready. Right there. Waiting for you to come out and spend an afternoon watching nature.

Visit the Texas Parks and Wildlife’s web site for detailed information about public hunting and the limited use permit.

That’s our show…supported by the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program… funded by your purchase of fishing and hunting equipment and motor boat fuels.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

 

 Limited Use Permits: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download