Passport to Texas

South Llano River

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Wildlife biologists use data from field surveys to manage the state’s game and non-game wildlife populations.

One thing that’s important to remember is that we’re never going to count every single animal.

Biologist, Heidi Baily, says the public sometimes confuses “survey” with “census”. The latter implies a tally of all individual animals in a population. Instead, biologists look for trends.

We like to put it in context of the years behind us and look at it in relation to that. And determine what the trend is doing: are we on a steady incline; is the population decreasing; is the sex ratio improving? Things like that.

As the majority of the state is in private hands, landowners are encouraged to conduct wildlife surveys on their property.

We can actually go out there and teach them how to do surveys on their own property. Usually, when we go out, we have a look at their habitat, and we’ll visit with them about the things that they’re concerned about, and what they want to manage for. And then we can actually teach them ways to go ahead and monitor their own populations. They’ll forward the results of those surveys to us for any kind of habitat or population management recommendations.

Learn more about wildlife surveys on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

The Wildlife Restoration Program support our series.

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