Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

During extended periods of drought, when the risk of wildfires is highest, your plant choices and their placement in the landscape could make your home vulnerable to fire damage.

While we do want to encourage the use of shrubs and brush around the home, we don’t want to encourage it right up against the home. Especially things that are extremely flammable…

Flammable plants include yaupon holly and cedar, among others. Marks Klym coordinates the Texas Wildscapes Program. With the Texas Forest Service’s FireWise program, Klym says the Wildscapes program helps people choose less fire friendly plants.

Something that’s got a higher water content. Things that don’t tend to take fire from the ground towards the roof, because the roof is a sensitive area in most homes. Things that don’t take fire from the ground up into your window frames, which is another very sensitive area. You want to avoid our tall native grasses, because they have a tendency to dry out and become a firebox. Certainly, the other thing you can do is use that area for your hardscapes. Things like rock walls…walkways. These become a good barrier that the firs has difficulty jumping, unless you’ve got forty mile an hour winds.

Find a link to the Texas FireWise website, at passporttotexas.org, as well as a list a plants to avoid planting around the foundation of your home, as well as plants that are better to plant around the home.

That’s our show… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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FireWise Information:
http://www.firewise.org/usa/files/fwlistsz.pdf
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/natres/06302.html
http://www.fws.gov/southwest/refuges/wichitamountains/downloads.html
Firewise Plant-List_East Texas_Draft for Review_working.pdf

Recommended large hardwood trees:
• Black cherry
• Black gum
• Hackberry
• Honey locust
• Post Oak
• Shumard Oak
• Other Common Oaks
• Pecan
• Sweetgum
• Sycamore

Medium-sized trees could include:
• Western soapberry
• Common persimmon
• Dogwood
• Eastern redbud
• Fringe tree(Old Mans Beard)
• Hophornbeam
• Magnolia
• Ornamental maples
• Red maple
• Serviceberry
• Apple and crabapples
• Wild plum

Recommended shrubs are:
• American beautyberry
• Crapemyrtle
• Viburnums
• Elderberry
• Pyracantha
• Witch hazel
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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Fall is a fantastic time to renew your landscape, but be careful what you plant.

A lot of times we’ll go into the businesses [garden center], and we see a plant that’s labeled ‘well-adapted’. Well, a lot of those well-adapted plants are actually highly invasive in our Texas
environment. There’s a movement afoot to do something about it – to cut down on their use.

Mark Klym oversees the Wildscape program at Texas Parks and Wildlife. He says well-adapted, yet invasive species create problems.

Those plants include things like privet, red-tipped photinia, ligustrum, pyrocantha.

While these species may show up in bird books as ideal plants to use in bird attracting garden…

Be careful with them. They are highly invasive; all across the US people are complaining about them in the landscape because they create a monoculture out there, and eliminate a lot of our native plants. And without our native plants, we could lose a lot of our native wildlife.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife website has a native plant database where you can find plants for your landscape that will benefit wildlife.

Just because it does look great in a landscape, and you do see a couple of birds sitting on them – I got one of my favorite pictures of a Costas Hummingbird sitting in privet down in Rockport – but, that doesn’t mean that’s a good plant for us to use in our garden.

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

 

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

Whooping cranes are coming back to Texas.

Whooping cranes generally start arriving in Texas around mid-October or so; and by mid-November, most of them have reached the Texas coast. In the area in and around the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, just north of Rockport.

Lee Ann Linam is a biologist with Parks and Wildlife.

In the 1940s, the Texas population of whooping cranes was about fifteen or sixteen birds. Last winter we had two hundred and thirty six in the population that came down to Texas. So it’s been a slow but sure success story for whooping cranes.

Linam says they hope to see that number jump to two hundred fifty this season. Texans between Dallas-Fort Worth and the edge of the Panhandle through Central Texas are asked to keep an eye to the sky beginning mid-October for whoopers in migration.

Because we’re very interested in learning what habitat areas they use in migration, and understand more about those, and the rate of their migration.

But don’t look for a huge flock.

Usually it’s family groups – two or three, or maybe groups of sub-adults that might number about five or six – but just small groups of very large white birds.

Find links to more whooper information at passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show…with support from the Wildlife restoration Program… providing funding for the Private Lands and Habitat Enhancement Program.

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

 

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Before you add plants to your landscape, ask yourself these questions:

Is it drought tolerant? Is it saline-tolerant? Is it alkaline-tolerant? Does it propagate easily? What’s it beneficial to? Horses, wild game or other types of livestock, is it pollinated by honeybees? Fire-tolerant?

Kathy Boydston is the Coordinator for the Wildlife Habitat Assessment Program at Texas Parks and Wildlife, which is home to a comprehensive online Texas Plant Information Database.

Most of them are natives; some of them are what we call naturalized plants. There is a list of 150 attributes for each plant that is in that database.

Users of the database, found on the Parks and Wildlife website can determine what plants will be the most beneficial to wildlife, which are best for a certain soil and what plants grow better in the heat of the Texas sun…

Trying to get people to plant more wildlife-friendly plants, rather than a lot of exotic species. We’re trying to get people to find other alternatives for lets say, grass species in their lawn, or we’re trying to encourage people to xeriscape more, use more native plants that use less water.

Fall is an ideal time to plant perennial plants, woody shrubs and trees.

To learn more about the Texas Plant Information Database, log on to our website, at passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show for today. For Texas Parks and Wildlife, I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 

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