The Kemps’ Ridley may be the best known—and most threatened—sea turtle that occurs along the Texas coast, but it’s not the only one.

19—The ones that we hear most commonly about are the Kemp’s Ridley, and the green sea turtle—the green sea turtle is threatened in Texas and the populations are increasing. Also in Texas, there’s the Loggerhead, that’s a threatened species. What we hear about less are both endangered turtles: The Hawksbill and the Leatherback.

Dr. Donna Shaver is with the US National Park Service at Padre Island National Seashore. She says if you ever see stranded or nesting sea turtles, report your observation to officials.

17—Many of our entrances to beach access roads, signs are posted that have a telephone number to call. And then once they call, they will receive a recorded message that will tell them the proper contact number for the particular geographic area where they are located.

The number to call is 1-866-TURTLE5…And if you come across a nesting female…

17—Stay back from the nesting turtle until she’s dug her hole with her rear flippers and is remaining mostly motionless and laying eggs. At that time, without touching the turtle, look for any tags, and without piercing anything into the sand, put a designating market next to where the turtle laid her eggs.

Find more information on sea turtles when you log onto the Texas parks and Wildlife website.

Our show receives support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

The news along the TX coast during late winter and early spring was the high number of sea turtle strandings.

:12—A stranded sea turtle is one that is found washed ashore, or floating. It can be alive or dead, but if it’s alive, it’s generally in a weakened condition.

Dr. Donna Shaver is with the US National Park Service and specializes in sea turtle research and conservation at Padre Island National Seashore. Between 250 and 750 sea turtles end up stranded each year, but Dr. Shaver says 2010 got off to an alarming start.

:18—We have already started out the year at a record pace. We had the largest cold-stunning event that’s been recorded since 1980. There were about 460 green sea turtles that were located stranded, and two loggerheads, during this particular event—January into February.

When I spoke with Dr. Shaver in late April, she said 76 sea turtles had stranded from the upper to the lower coast between April 4 and 24th

:15—One of the things that’s caught the attention for the spike on the upper Texas coast is that 20 of the 21 turtles were Kemp’s Ridley; whereas, those found elsewhere in the state were more of a mixture of other species.

The cause of the strandings is under investigation, and Dr. Shaver says it could be anything from predators, to fishing nets, to boat propellers, to debris.

Our show receives support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

Ocelots once roamed throughout Texas, Mexico, and into Arkansas and Louisiana. Jody Mays says today, only a few survive in the thick brush and shelters of the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

As far as we know, there less than 100 ocelots left in the United States. The ocelot’s range has disappeared, and now they only occur in the southern most tip of Texas, and that’s the only place in the whole United States that they occur.

Mays is a Wildlife Biologist at Laguna Atascosa Natural Wildlife Refuge. She explains reasons for the population decline.

Usually with an endangered species, you have multiple impacts that they get hit with. For the ocelot, the biggest one was the habitat loss. Some estimates say that over 95% of the native habitat in Texas has been altered. A lot of the thick habitats have been cleared for agriculture, and for development, and for other purposes. Another associated impact with that is habitat fragmentation, and that’s where, you say, have one large piece of thick habitat that gets cut up into smaller pieces that are farther and farther apart. Loss of genetic diversity is another big issue, and that’s as a result of this habitat loss and fragmentation.

That’s our show for today…supported by the Wildlife Restoration Program… helping to fund the operations and management of more than 50 wildlife management areas…

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

[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.

When the wind blows, its leaves shimmer, and in the spring, its beautiful white flowers bloom. It was this beauty that inspired J. David Bamberger to save the endangered Texas Snowbell.

Bamberger owns 55 hundred acres in Blanco County and is an avid conservationist. But one of his greatest success stories is the Texas Snowbell. In 1987, state officials estimated there were 87 Snowbells in Texas. Since then, Bamberger’s team has planted and maintained 682 more.

I spent five years going door to door, well ranch to ranch out in Edwards County, Real County, Val Verde County. And it took me five years to gain access to a ranch to look for the plant.

Once he did, Bamberger began collecting the seeds from the plants he found and replanting them on the ranches. But even with all his success, Bamberger says the Texas Snowbell will likely always be endangered.

Now the scientists are saying that they won’t be delisted until we have 10,000 plants. That’s never going to happen, never ever going to happen. I think they need to reassess that number because before we came along the reintroductions were basically zero.

Bamberger continues to monitor Texas Snowbells and conduct research at his ranch, keeping the Texas Snowbell alive and well.

That’s our show…With research and writing help from Gretchen Mahan. For Texas Parks and Wildlife, I’m Cecilia Nasti.

The Edwards Aquifer Recovery Implementation Program, or RIP, protects endangered and threatened species in the Edwards Aquifer.

Many of these species are no more than an inch long. The Comal springs riffle beetle is even smaller…only two millimeters long.

But Parks and Wildlife water resources branch chief, Cindy Loeffler, says preserving the species is crucial to the ecosystem.

These are, you know, you’ve heard the cliché canary in the coal mine. If we want to truly protect natural resources, fish and wildlife, these unique ecosystems. These species are indicators of the health of those ecosystems.

Loeffler also says if the program protects the identified species, it will most likely save many more in the process.

We have some species that there’s very little known about. And these are in a way the tip of the iceberg of the threatened and endangered species that are found associated with the Edwards Aquifer. There are many more species that are not listed that are found no where else.

Many of these species are found no where else in the world…like the San Marcos blind salamander and Texas wild rice. And pumping water from the Edwards Aquifer alters the habitat, putting these species in an unstable environment.

That’s our show…with research and writing help from Gretchen Mahan. Discover how you can help at passporttotexas.org. For Texas Parks and Wildlife I’m Cecilia Nasti.

[Whooping crane calls]

Last winter, twenty-three out of two hundred and seventy whooping cranes died after a decline in blue crab and wolfberries, two of the crane’s main food sources.

Tom Stehn is the whooping crane coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services. He says the decline is linked to two sources: drought and diversion of Texas rivers.

The human consumption of water has been increasing annually as the population of South Texas grows. This is a very critical issue for the bays that in some way we need to figure out a mechanism so sufficient freshwater inflows reach the bays to keep them productive.

Stehn says the fate of the whooping crane could rest in the hands of Texans.

There are management actions that people will have to do such as conserve water. And those are the choices that Texans have to make.

And many new threats are coming onto the scene.

As issues get worse for the whooping cranes, inflow issues, housing development issues, wind energy development, possibly taking away habitat from the cranes in migration. There’s a lot of threats out there right now, so I’m really leery of how the whooping cranes are going to do in the future.

The good news is there are sixty-one nesting pairs of cranes, which make some researchers hopeful that the population will increase next year.

That’s our show…with research and writing help from Gretchen Mahan. For Texas Parks and Wildlife I’m

[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.

The Hill Country is the crown jewel of Texas. And the Kerr Wildlife Management Area teaches landowners how to keep it polished.

We’re a 65-hundred acre wildlife research and demonstration area for the Edward’s plateau ecological area. And it serves as our experiment station for private landowners to come out and find out more about the basic tools of wildlife management.

Donnie Frels is the area manager. While wildlife species at the Kerr WMA are typical for the region, plant diversity is unique by Hill Country standards.

We keep animal numbers in check, and we make sure that we maintain our grazing animals within the carrying capacity of the range, and our plant species and diversity reflect that now.

Research on the site also protects three endangered species: the golden-cheeked warbler, black-capped vireos and the tobusch fishhook cactus.

And we do surveys for all three of these species; and our management program benefits not only white-tailed deer but those endangered species as well.

The site is open to the public for wildlife viewing during daylight hours when public hunting is not underway, and offers a driving tour brochure for those visiting the site. Learn more at passporttotexas.org.

That’s out show… made possible by a grant from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration program… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Texas is the only US state with suitable Ocelot habitat.

The habitat that ocelots use is extremely dense brush. The type of brush that not only can you not see through it, you can’t walk through it.

Dr. Michael Tewes (two-ES) researches wild cats with the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute.

The main problem for ocelots now is, like many other endangered species, the lack of suitable habitat. There are less than 100 of them remaining in Texas and less than 1% of Texas has that very special habitat or cover type that they use. And since most of Texas is owned and managed by private landowners and ranchers, it is in their ability to protect the habitat that is vital to the recovery of ocelots.

Fewer ocelots mean less genetic diversity.

When the populations are as small as they are in Southern Texas, almost any kind of a wildlife population will start to decrease genetic diversity and tend to go towards extinction. We have been working on revising the recovery plan and, although it’s not finalized, translocation is suggested as a tool. The genetic diversity is much greater in Mexico than it is in Texas. And by bringing them into Texas it would help alleviate some of the problems that come with genetic erosion.

That’s our show… with research and writing help from Sarah Loden… and sponsored by the Wildlife Restoration program…working to restore critical habitat for endangered species like the ocelot.

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