TPW TV–Last of the Bayous
Monday, October 3rd, 2011
This is Passport to Texas
Last of the Bayous airs this week on the Texas Parks and Wildlife TV series. It examines efforts to save Houston’s last natural namesake. Producer Ron Kabele.
Good grief! It’s the Bayou City and there are no more bayous. Now, they call it Bray’s Bayou and Sims’ Bayou, but they’re just channelized ditches. When I was a kid, we would play in bayous;
we would catch crawdads. The only thing you’re going to catch in a channelized ditch is a disease.
Did you learn anything about the effect on biodiversity from the channelization of bayous?
If you’ve ever seen Bray’s Bayou, it is basically concrete and mowed grass. Very similar to the hardwood bottomlands when they were replaced by pine plantations. Well, yes, there are trees—i.e. the
pines—but there’s no life around it. And around channelization, yes there’s the water, but there’s no functional ecosystem.
What do you want people to come away with after having seen this piece in October?
Maybe it will give them an idea of what Houston once was. And with other aspects of what made Houston the great city that it is—we’re just not going to throw it away for
the sake of progress.
Thanks, Ron.
The Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program supports
our series.
For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
Passport to Texas is a 
Passport to Texas is made available by: