Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

Lee smith is a Parks and Wildlife television producer. He’s currently working on the fourth in a series of water documentaries for the agency—this one is about the Gulf of Mexico.

But it doesn’t stop at the surf. It extends into coastal issues. So, we’ll be dealing with a lot of things going on in the bays.

Like red tide…the decline in flounder populations…and damage to oyster beds from Hurricanes Ike and Rita. It takes two years to complete one of these documentaries.

And that’s one of the great things about this job and about this show. We have the time to get the right footage, to find the right people, and to consider the topics and the issues.

The documentary on the Gulf will be ready for broadcast in 2011. Until then, view segments of previous documentaries on the PBS television series.

The issues are current. And each segment will have something that pertains to what’s going on right now and in the future.

One of the segments this month comes from the most recent documentary Texas—The State of Flowing Water, and discusses the value of rivers to all living things.

Rivers really are our connection to the natural world and if we don’t protect them we lose something that cannot be replicated by humankind.

We have a list of stations that broadcast the PBS series at passporttotexas.org.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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Where to view the PBS series from Texas Parks and Wildlife:

• Amarillo, KACV-TV, Channel 2, Sunday, 12:30 p.m.
• Austin, KLRU-TV, Channel 18, Sunday, 10 a.m.; Thursday 5:30 a.m.
• Bryan-College Station, KAMU-TV, Channel 15, Sunday, 5 p.m. & 10:30 p.m.
• Corpus Christi, KEDT-TV, Channel 16, Sunday, 12 p.m.
• Dallas-Fort Worth, KERA-TV, Channel 13, Beginning December 26, Sunday, 6:30 p.m. Also serving Abilene, Denton, Longview, Marshall, San Angelo, Texarkana, Tyler, Wichita Falls and Sherman.
• El Paso, KCOS-TV, Channel 13, Saturday, 4:30 p.m.
• Harlingen, KMBH-TV, Channel 60, Sunday, 5 p.m. Also serving McAllen, Mission and Brownsville.
• Houston, KUHT-TV, Channel 8, Saturday, 3 p.m. Also serving Beaumont, Port Arthur, Galveston, Texas City and Victoria.
• Killeen, KNCT-TV, Channel 46, Sunday, 5 p.m. Also serving Temple.
• Lubbock, KTXT-TV, Channel 5, Saturday, 10 a.m.
• Odessa-Midland, KPBT-TV, Channel 36, Saturday, 4:30 p.m.
• San Antonio and Laredo, KLRN-TV, Channel 9, Sunday, 1 p.m.
• Waco, KWBU-TV, Channel 34, Sunday, 2:30 p.m.
• Portales, New Mexico, KENW-TV, Channel 3, Sunday, 2:30 p.m.

Cable

Texas Parks & Wildlife can also be seen on a variety of government, educational and access cable channels in the following communities: Abilene, Allen, Atlanta, Baytown, Boerne, Cedar Park, Collin County Community College, Coppell, Dallas, Deer Park, Del Mar College, Denton, Euless, Flower Mound, Fort Worth, Frisco, Garland, Houston, Irving, Keller, Killeen, Lubbock, Lufkin, McKinney, North Richland Hills, Plano, Round Rock, Rogers State University, Seabrook, Temple, Texarkana College, The Colony, Trophy Club, Tyler, Victoria, Waco and Wichita Falls. Check your local listings for days and times.

 

 TPW TV: Water Documentary : Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

[Houston toad trill]

You’ll only hear that sound in a small area of Texas.

Like Gauss, or Bastrop, or places that a lot of people haven’t heard of, but those people that know them, that’s what they think of as home.

A home they share with the endangered Houston Toad… an amphibian that doesn’t have a voice when it comes to how humans alter their shared habitat… alteration of habitat is what put the toad in peril.

Mike Forstner is a biology professor at Texas State University, and for nearly two decades he’s worked to keep the toads from fading into oblivion…starting with habitat recovery. Today, with partners including the Houston Zoo, they’re raising toads—called head-starting—to supplement existing populations.

Head-starting is the last stand. It’s when your back’s to the wall, and you’ve got nowhere else to go. An ideal situation would have been that we recovered the habitat and that the populations became reinforced because we recovered the habitat. But we got caught—it stopped raining. And as soon as it stopped raining, we ran right out of room for natural recovery.

Unnatural recovery is better than no recovery at all. Tomorrow we attend a release of head-started toads in Bastrop County.

The Wildlife restoration program supports our series…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 

 Endangered Species: Head-starting the Houston Toad: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

Up to a million Attwater’s Prairie Chickens once occupied more than six million acres of coastal prairie in Texas. By 2005, only 40 birds were estimated in the wild.

That happened primarily because of a loss of habitat. You’ve got places like Houston, Corpus Christi, and as these cities developed, they took a lot of the coastal prairie away. And we also have the problem of Chinese tallow escaping and changing the coastal prairie into a tallow forest.

Mark Klym coordinates the Adopt-a-Prairie Chicken Program.

The Adopt-a-Prairie Chicken program is a fundraising program; seven zoos around the state put a lot of energy into raising birds that are going to be released on the prairie. And this is one way that the people of Texas can get involved and help us to support these zoos.

Thanks in part to this program, recovery efforts for the Attwater’s Prairie Chicken reached a new milestone this year when 6 hens raised 21 chicks to 6-weeks of age in the wild.

And this hasn’t happened before. One hen did do it a couple years ago, but she had a lot of help from the staff at the Attwater’s Prairie Chicken Preserve. This year, some of these hens did it with no assistance at all. And it happened not only at Attwater’s Prairie Chicken Preserve, but also on private land in Goliad county.

Today, there are an estimated 90 Attwater’s Prairie Chickens in the wild at three locations. We’ll tell you more about this bird tomorrow.

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

 

 Attwater's Prairie Chicken Revival: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

[Call of the Houston toad]

That sound is the Houston toad. And it’s become a very rare sound over the past two decades. Years of drought and habitat destruction have diminished the Houston toad population to only a few hundred.

Michael Forstner is a professor at Texas State University. And through the Texas Parks and Wildlife Landowner Incentive Program (L.I.P.), he’s working with private landowners in Bastrop County to restore habitat for the Houston toad.

Most of the people in Bastrop want to live in Bastrop County because it looks a certain way. And if it keeps looking like the lost pines, we keep the toad.

So what do these “lost pines” look like?

Imagine a cathedral forest. Most of the habitat that we find Houston toads doing the best in, whatever that means for its current levels, are gallery forests. Those are the forests that you see in the images for computer desktop wallpapers. Those are large-trunked trees with open space beneath them.

By planting the fast-growing loblolly pine trees, a habitat can be restored in about twenty years.

So if current efforts are successful, Forstner says the Houston toad population could make a comeback.

The best thing about the Houston toad is they make 6,000 eggs at a time. Those babies just need a place to grow up.

That’s our show…with research and writing help from Gretchen Mahan. You can find more information on passporttotexas.org. For Texas Parks and Wildlife, I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 

 Endangered Species: Houston Toad: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

For the past 17 years, the first weekend in October has been reserved for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Expo—but not this year.

Well, like many, many other events around the country, we have been a victim of the economy. It’s just been very difficult to raise the money that it takes to put the Expo on.

Ernie Gammage, Director of Urban Outdoor Programs says because of the economy, Expo is on hiatus for two years. The event cost a half million dollars to produce and most of that came from sponsor underwriting.

With every challenge comes and opportunity. And our opportunity now is to find places to take an Expo-like event—and we’re calling this the Life’s Better Outside Experience. And we’ll actually be taking these regional events on the road starting next year, and we’ll be holding them in San Antonio, Houston, Corpus Christi and Longview.

The Life’s Better Outside Experience will become part of existing events around the state, such as festivals and rodeos, and will be like regional mini-Expos.

They’ll be very much like a mini-Expo. There’ll be rock climbing, and archery, and fishing activities…and information about state parks, and a chance for people really to find out what’s in their own backyard.

We’ll have more on the Life Better Outside Experience tomorrow.

That’s our show… remember…Life’s better outside…for Texas parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 

 Parks & Wildlife Expo in Transition, 1: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download