Passport to Texas

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

Biologists Billy and Bonnie McKinney’s reintroduce black bears to West Texas. TV Producer, Ron Kabele, tells us about a segment this month that highlights their work.

Parks and Wildlife a few years ago decided to try to reintroduce the black bear back into west Texas; and that’s what Billy and Bonnie have been working on the last few years.

You see a bear out here in this country and they’ve been gone so long, and then to have them back—it’s a pretty incredible deal.

Hopefully we can give him some help to go ahead and finish his expansion into historic range.

And it’s also putting back a part of Texas that we thought was gone forever.

And what was interesting in one case was one of them got a call from Alpine; it’s a small town that’s close by.

There’s a bear in a tree at Alpine, and I’ve got the drug kit with me. Bill is in route, and Don’s gone over to pick up the covert trap, so we are on the way.

Billy went up into the tree and tranquilized the bear.

Okay, y’all get back a little bit. We’re going to drop him down. We’re going to attempt to drop him down.

And then, the bear fell out of the tree—which is what they do—and then they took it back into the bear’s original habitat.

We really moved him for his protection, not for people’s protection.

See it for yourself this month on Texas Parks and Wildlife TV series.

That’s our show…with support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program… providing funding for black bear research and relocation.

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

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