Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

Nobody faults you for wanting to be indoors when it’s cold outside. However, if you bundle up and brave winter’s chill, you could be in for a wild(life) surprise, as our State Park Guide, Bryan Frazier, explains.

50—Wildlife are a lot like us; they don’t like to move around a lot when it’s really cold. During the colder weather and months, you can regularly pattern their behavior a little bit better because they still do have to move around to find food and water and shelter. So, what you can do is, when it’s cold, you can set up strategic places—and if you’re patient—you can get a very predictable pattern of where to view wildlife. If you set up near a food source, or near the edge of tree lines—critters like edge. So, if you can be patient with that, a lot of times you can get glimpses and close ups and great photographs that you can get this time of year that you can’t get other times of year. In addition to that, this time of year, we have residents here—migratory birds, birds of prey—that aren’t here any other time. So, this is your only shot of getting a photograph, or a good view of some of those creatures that call Texas home for only part of the year.

Find downloadable maps of Texas Wildlife Trails on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

That’s our show for today…with funding provided by Chevrolet…building dependable, reliable trucks for more than 90 years.

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

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This is Passport to Texas

02—if they can’t get out there, they won’t get out there.

Ron Smith is talking about water. He’s the River Information Specialist for Texas. Helping you access water for recreation purposes is among Parks and Wildlife’s top priorities.

12—Our main initiatives include healthy outdoor activities, conservation initiatives, and getting folks out there so we can outreach to them, and so they can relax and enjoy the great outdoors.

Smith has traveled statewide for the better part of a decade identifying and characterizing public access points on rivers and lakes, putting them into a database. But he hasn’t done it alone.

23—We would not have been able to achieve a project of this level without our friends in the Law Enforcement Division. They became one of our stakeholders, and we actually held trainings to train them how to take the data. They went out to their specific counties where they were the boots on the ground and they helped us characterize and gather all these information pieces for the database.

The database contains nearly 24-hundred public water access sites; 18-hundred of those are boat ramps…

12—And about 500 of them are on rivers, and may not be boat ramps. They’re just places to slide your canoe in or get in your inner tubes.

Find out how to access the database information at passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show… with support from the Sport fish and Wildlife Restoration program…providing funding for boat ramps in Texas. For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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Call Ron Smith with your questions about water access in Texas at 512-389-8302.

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This is Passport to Texas

Making it easier for you to enjoy the wide open spaces is a big part of our job at Parks and Wildlife, and we take it seriously. You like spending time on the water, so we’ve made it our business to locate and document public water access points across the state.

15—What we tried to do is characterize these access points, because there are many different uses—whether you’re going to try to swim there, fish there, what you can launch there. Are they accessible during low water events, high water events? All kinds of different things.

Ron Smith is the River Information Specialist for the state of Texas.

30—About seven years ago we started trying to get a database together on where is the public water access in the state of Texas. And what we ended up with is the database that contains about 24-hundred public water access sites. About 18-hundred of those are boat ramps located all over the state, and about 500 of them are on the rivers, and may not be boat ramps; they’re just places to slide your canoe in, or get in with our inner tube. You wouldn’t be able to launch a “trailerable” boat at those locations.

Ninety-five percent of Texas land is in private hands, making these pubic access points all the more valuable. Tomorrow: collecting the information.

03—We actually held trainings to train them how to take the data.

That’s our show… with support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration program…providing funding for boat ramps in Texas.

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

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If you have a question about water access points near you, contact Ron Smith at 512-389-8302.

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This is Passport to Texas

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles—UAVs—look like remote controlled planes, and Texas Parks and Wildlife fisheries biologists use them to map habitat in reservoirs and rivers for species like Guadalupe Bass.

14—For species like Guadalupe Bass, we’ve done a lot of research, we understand what their habitat needs are. They rely on these boulder complexes, or log complexes. And, we know about how much structure we need in different segments of river to have healthy populations.

Tim Birdsong oversees the habitat conservation branch at Parks and Wildlife.

12—By using this unmanned aerial vehicle, to map these sections of river, we know where we need to put our conservation dollars and our conservation actions on the ground to add additional habitat so we can support healthy fisheries.

Applications exist for this and other high tech tools in much of the work Texas Parks and Wildlife does. And Birdsong says technology like the UAV is a boon to overall conservation efforts.

16—The technology better guides our conservation efforts and makes better use of available funding that we have within the agency. And it also supports our ability to monitor effectiveness of our programs, and do some follow-up that we haven’t historically had time or funding really to be able to devote to those things.

That’s our show…with support from the SFWR program……..providing funding to conserve habitat for Texas sport fisheries….…

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

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This is Passport to Texas

Sophisticated surveillance technology that once cost tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars is now within reach of the average citizen—including biologists.

14—That’s right. There are some technologies that were developed for military purposes, or oil and gas type purposes, that historically have been too costly for us to be able to apply for fish and game conservation.

Tim Birdsong is a biologist who oversees habitat conservation at Parks and Wildlife.

15—You can now purchase a side scan sonar until at Bass Pro Shops, or Cabela’s, or some other retail outlet for roughly $2,000. So, some of this technology that costs in the tens or hundreds of thousand dollars previously, anglers can go purchase off of a shelf.

One hundred ninety one-thousand miles of rivers and streams in Texas need to be surveyed, and biologists “on the ground” have traditionally collected the data.

24—And that limits our ability to be able to actually restore, protect habitat, for fish and other aquatic life. We may spend two to three weeks mapping invasive aquatic plants; [whereas] some of the newer remote sensing technologies such as Unmanned Aerial Aircraft, allow us to very cheaply map these areas in a fraction of the time…potentially 2-3 days to map a reservoir, compared to 2-3 weeks, historically.

More on this time and money saving technology on tomorrow’s show.

That’s our show…with support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program…..providing funding to conserve habitat for Texas sport fisheries….…

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

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