Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

The October issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine celebrates one creature’s incredible journey. Managing Editor, Louie Bond.

This month we’re going to highlight one of the most spectacular natural events anywhere, which is the monarch migration, which actually happens during October. These delicate little creatures that look like they could hardly fly into your neighbor’s yard actually fly 2000 miles every year.

So, it’s an incredible feat. But for me, I just have my mouth hanging open in awe and wonder at these tiny little creatures making this great journey.

The October issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine is on newsstands now.

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

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

If you’re already in the habit of admiring migrating monarchs, then consider taking part in a citizen science project called Texas Monarch Watch.

People can get involved with that by reporting their sightings. And they can go to the Texas Parks and Wildlife department website. Go under Texas Nature Trackers—and there’s a whole page with lots of information about it.

Michael Warriner, an invertebrate biologist at Parks and Wildlife, says there’s also a national Monarch Watch program that’s more hands on.

They want people to basically tag monarchs. You can order a tagging kit. And as you see monarchs, you can capture them with a butterfly net, and take one of these little tags and place it on the wing—there’s instructions and everything. What they’re trying to do is track where the monarchs were tagged and then when they come back, to kind of get an idea of how long the migration was and how long these things live.

Monarchwatch.org has more information and tagging kits. Warriner advises when catching monarchs or any butterfly to grasp only the outer edge of the front wing.

Because the wings are covered in scales, and if they lose those scales it would maybe become harder to fly and so on.

They need those scales to make that long migration. Visit passporttotexas.org for links to more monarch information, as well as tips on what to plant in your garden to attract these winged travelers.

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

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Texans are in for a treat this month and next because monarch butterflies are on the move.

Yeah, monarchs, in the insect world, have the longest migration. Basically, they spend the winter down in Mexico, and they come up to the US, spend their summer up here, feeding, laying eggs, and then they go back to Mexico.

Michael Warriner is an invertebrate biologist at Texas Parks and Wildlife. He says monarchs that head north in springtime are not the same monarchs that return to Mexico in the fall.

The Monarch that comes from Mexico, pretty much ends its life in Texas. It comes here, it lays its eggs, and the next generation is the one that moves further north

It’s only a few weeks from egg to butterfly. And you might be surprised by the number of generations it takes to complete this lengthy migration.

Oh, wow. You could probably have anywhere from three to six generations. So, the ones that come up from Mexico to Texas, it’s probably their great, great, great grandchildren that are coming back down at the end of the summer.

Tomorrow we talk about a citizen science project called Monarch Watch.

People can get involved in that by reporting their sightings.

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

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Passport to Texas Outdoor stories from Texas parks and Wildlife

When Scooter Cheatham convinced his anthropology professor to let him and a friend conduct an experiment—instead of writing a research paper—he had no idea it would lead to his lifelong passion.

What we proposed was that we go down to my grandmother’s ranch on the Guadalupe river near Concrete, Texas, and take with us replicas of some of these early cultures we’d been studying. We had mostly stone tools, deerskin clothing—we did the whole thing.

And you start looking around and the great diversity, the thing that supplies us all of our organic needs is rooted in the plant kingdom. It just became very obvious to me that this was very important. And I was sure that some group of scientists had already done studies all over the world and that there was a body of information about this. So, I came back to Austin expecting to find that and to tap into it—it didn’t exist.

So, he created it—a 12 volume encyclopedia of Useful Wild Plants of Texas and beyond. Volume three is at the printers now.

That’s our show… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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Visit the website Useful Wild Plants, http://usefulwildplants.org/encyclopedia.htm, and see what Scooter’s been up to all these years. [Just copy and paste the URL into your browser]

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, spoke to a group of educators in San Antonio this summer. He told them, as a child, he felt ownership of the woods near his home. But today’s kids may lack connection to the land.

I owned those woods to the extent that as an 8 year old—I’m sorry to tell you—I pulled out, I think, hundreds of survey stakes that I knew had something to do with the bulldozers that were taking out other woods. A developer told me a couple years ago I would have been a lot more effective if I’d simply moved the stakes around.

And then he began to cry in front of five hundred people. And despite his deep sense of embarrassment, he continued to speak about his sense of grief that his might be one of the last generations to have that kind of sense of ownership of land that has nothing to do with money—it goes deeper than that.

Help children connect with the land. Learn more at passportotexas.org.

For Texas parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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Visit the Life’s Better Outside website.

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