Passport to Texas

Toyota Texas Bass Classic Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

The Fifth annual Toyota Texas Bass Classic Tournament returns to the Lone Star Convention & Expo Center in Conroe, October 28th through the 30th. Lenny Francoeur (Fran-Koor) is tournament director.

31—First and foremost, the Toyota Texas bass Classic raises funding and awareness for the Texas Parks and Wildlife.

So, you can come out with as many friends and family as you want to bring. Get your tickets in advance, and come out at the end of October and see some world class fishing and world class country music artists.

Francoeur says listeners may be able to obtain a pair of free tickets by going to the Bass Classic website and signing up for their newsletter …

08— …Until we have distributed the full quantity of tickets we have allotted.

Once the free tickets have been distributed, others will be available, says Francoeur, at a nominal charge.

06—We allow kids seventeen and under to get in free as long as they’re with a ticket adult. And we’re looking forward to seeing everyone in October.

Find a link to more information at passporttotexas.org.

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

Daingerfield State Park Re-opens Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

After one year of being closed to the public, and 5-million dollars in renovations and improvements: Daingerfield State Park in Northeast Texas has officially re-opened for visitation. Yet, our state park guide Bryan Frazier says before the official re-opening—they opened unofficially to give the renovations a type of “test drive.”

They tentatively took the lock off the gate to allow visitors in and to test out some of the things they had renovated, like the waste water treatment plant. They were able to make sure that big crowds of people—that it would handle it great—and it’s working fantastic.

And there’ll be activities for kids, park staff and park rangers will be there to show everybody what’s new, what’s great, what’s renovated. It’s a park that I wholeheartedly recommend that people get out there—and with the facilities and the new restrooms and things—it makes people’s experience that much more pleasant.

Thanks, Bryan!

That’s our show for today…with funding provided by Chevrolet, supporting outdoor recreation in Texas; because there’s life to be done.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Houston Toads: From the Ashes Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

With its habitat ravaged by wildfires, the future seems bleak for the endangered Houston toad. But this lost pines local has a friend in Professor Mike Forstner from Texas State.

10—My students, myself, and a large group of collaborators do significant ecological restoration, habitat recovery, particularly focused with landowners in Bastrop.

Before the fire, toad populations were stable due to landowners conserving their habitat. Now, it could take 40 years before the land recovers. What’s a toad to do?

19—in 2006 and 2007, we began a head starting program that included a captive assurance colony held at the Houston Zoo, with additional individuals at Fort Worth. And, we have better than 60% of the genetic diversity that we have detected in the wild—in a decade—represented in the captive colony.

Bastrop State Park, which took a big hit from the wildfires, is a significant study site for the Houston Toad, and the State Parks division at Texas Parks and Wildlife funds part of the study.

Scattered pockets of Houston Toad habitat exist, and may receive captive bred animals, but work is needed to improve the genetic diversity of the species in these locales.

26—Outside of Bastrop, the majority of the population fragments that remain, are effectively like having a single family, not a population of wildlife. And we haven’t developed a strategy that’s been approved yet that will enable bolstering that genetic diversity and those populations. The core is getting the support of the landowners in those areas to become as engaged as the landowners in Bastrop currently are.

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

Houston Toads: Surviving Wildfires Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

Hundreds of homes were destroyed, and thousands of acres of habitat were significantly altered last month when catastrophic wildfires raged through Bastrop County, including Bastrop State Park—a stronghold of the endangered Houston Toad. Biologists are just beginning to quantify impacts on habitat from the blaze.

13—The fire will have taken most of the arthropods on the surface. In some areas it will have been ground sterilizing, removing the duff and the other community layers that the foodstuffs for juvenile toads and adults rely on.

Professor Mike Forstner, from Texas State University, studies the toads, and focuses on ecological restoration, habitat recovery, surveys, and genetics research.

The toad’s habitat is significantly changed. How much so? Researchers may not know the full impact for months. Meantime, Forstner says a break in the drought could benefit the toad and its home, and yet with rain a new problem may arise.

10—Those same beneficial rains will result in runoff of the mud, ash and silt into the breeding ponds that will negatively impact breeding success next spring.

The toads are down, but don’t count them out just yet. There’s a plan, and we tell you about it tomorrow.

Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series. For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Fire and the Houston Toad Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

Wildfires that ignited Labor Day Weekend consumed more than thirteen hundred homes and tens of thousands of drought-stricken acres in Bastrop County, east of Austin, including much of Bastrop State Park: prime habitat of the endangered Houston Toad.

14—Even though the fire was incredibly intense on the surface, and would have affected all of the leaf littler that would have been on the forest floor, Houston Toads—even a few inches below the surface of the ground—would probably have been okay.

Mike Forstner, a professor at Texas State University whose work focuses on the toad, expects minimal mortality of adult animals as a direct result of the event.

Yet, months of severe drought in tandem with the fire add up to future challenges for this unique amphibian.

28—Depending on how the fire action was at a given location, the issues we will face is a loss of canopy cover, which for the toad is a bad deal. But we’ll also face drought impacts on the trees that remain. When we do get beneficial rains, the trees that have been killed will fall as their roots are loosened and hit trees that were not killed—exacerbating the affects yet again.

Food availability and poor water quality are future challenges for the toad, and we’ll talk about those issues tomorrow.

Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series.

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