Passport to Texas

Great Texas Birding Classic

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This is Passport to Texas

Now in its 23rd year, the statewide, Great Texas Birding Classic remains one of the premier birding events in the world. It offers tournaments for every skill level.

[Like] the general naturalist who’s just getting started and knows a few birds could easily do the Big Sit. There are people that are really avid birders and keep lists and travel for birding, and they might choose to do a Big Day or a Big Week. There are youth tournaments for the kids who are just getting started and have some mentors who are helping them along the way. And then there are some mixed age tournaments that I think are a lot of fun for families to do. So there truly is something for everyone.

Shelly Plante oversees nature tourism at Texas Parks and Wildlife. Find details about the tournament at birdingclassic.org. The Classic runs from April 15th through May 15th. Money raised from fees goes to fund habitat conservation projects.

We have funded acquisition projects. We have funded restoration projects—which is invasive species removal and restoring habitat back to its natural state with native species. We’ve done enhancement projects for birders, which is putting in boardwalks or bird blinds or pavilions. So, we have done a lot of projects throughout the state of Texas.

Sign up at birdingclassic.org for updates; register your team by the April first deadline. Do it for the birds.

We receive support from RAM Trucks: Built to Serve

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

TPW TV--Blanco River Recovery Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

When a forty-foot wall of water thundered down the Blanco River on Memorial Day weekend of 2015, it claimed 13 lives, destroyed hundreds of homes, and ravaged the land along the banks. The recovery process for humans and nature continues.

The flood of 2015 caused massive devastation to the Blanco River landscape, there was a loss of a lot of vegetation, a lot of trees, a lot of soil scour, and what we see here is an eco-system in recovery.

Ryan McGillicuddy is a Texas Parks and Wildlife conservation ecologist with Inland Fisheries.

Healthy native stream-side vegetation provides a number of ecological functions including bank stability, because its roots are deep and strong.  It also provides a water quality function by filtering run-off and pollutants, but also, importantly, this healthy stream-side vegetation is also an extreme benefit to our fish and wildlife populations.

Healthy stream-side vegetation benefits our fish and wildlife populations, including the Guadalupe Bass. At one time this fish had been pushed completely out of the Blanco River system by non-native small mouth bass. But through management and restocking, it’s rebounding.

We’ve been able to document that the fish that we’ve stocked are now reproducing in the wild, so it’s been a pretty remarkable success story.

Experience the story of the recovery of a community, a river and wildlife on the Texas Parks and Wildlife TV series the week of March 10 on PBS.

The Sport Fish Restoration Program supports our series.

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

Photo from the Texas Master Naturalist Facebook Page

Becoming a Texas Master Naturalist Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

There’s a training program for people with a passion for nature. It’s called the Texas Master Naturalist Program.

The Texas Master Naturalist Program is a volunteer based training program; we develop a corps of well-informed volunteers that provide education, outreach and service around the state in the beneficial management of natural resources and the natural areas within Texas.

Mary Pearl Meuth (MOYT) is the program’s coordinator. They train roughly 700 volunteers annually, and have training sessions annually.

Our curriculum that is used for the training, has 26 chapters in it. So, they march through those 26 chapters all with a large context of the state of Texas, but then developed even more within their local ecosystem.

Once trained, volunteers provide 40 hours of community outreach, and take 8 hours of advanced training annually. The program’s not just about taking or facilitating classes. It’s also about discovery.

Quite a few of our Master Naturalists have identified new species of plants or new species of animals located within the state of Texas.

Are you ready to help Mother Nature, and to make a name for yourself – or a new species? The Texas Master Naturalist program can help. Find a training session at txmn.org.

That’s our show…brought to you in part by RAM Trucks. Built to Serve.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

Trail Ranch

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This is Passport to Texas

Justin and Tamara Trail live in Albany, which is about a 10 minute drive from their 19-hundred acre ranch in Shackelford County.

Tamara and I always dreamed of having our own place to enjoy and manage and steward and then when you layer on top of that inviting people out to enjoy that, I can’t imagine anything better.

They acquired the ranch in 2009. Since then, they’ve disked, burned and sprayed their property to fight invasive mesquite, prickly pear and winter grass.

And in response, we get all these warm season forb plants.

Cattle have a role to play, too.

Over the last three or four years, we’ve re-introduced cattle back in just to try to change the grass composition from cool season winter grasses to more of the warm season plants that we’re looking for.

As 2018 Lone Star Land Steward Award Winners for the Rolling Plains ecosystem, the Trails are innovators. TPW biologist Jesse Oetgen [O-ta-gin (long O, hard G)] cites their use of a roller chopper as proof.

In a single pass he can use the dozer blade to push brush out of the way, the roller chopper to chop that prickly pear and immediately followed with herbicide application. That roller chopper – spray combination as an implement is something that nobody else around here has done and it’s really caught on in the last couple of years.

See their story the week of January 13 on the Texas Parks and Wildlife TV series on PBS.

The Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series.

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

Texas Horned Lizard

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This is Passport to Texas

With a flat, spiky body, the Horned Lizard has captivated the generations of Texans.

Everyone you meet, if you just mention horny toad, or horned lizard, they say” “Oh, I used to see those all the time when I was a kid; I would pick them up and put them into my pocket. But now I never see them. What happened to them”?

That’s a question editor Louie Bond addresses in an article for the December issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine. To get answers, she travelled to the San Antonio Zoo to meet with director of conservation, Andy Gluesenkamp.

And he is raising horned lizards in hope of having babies in a few months, and putting them back into their historic habitats.

Which includes arid and semiarid habitats in open areas with sparse plant cover. This habitat’s been fragmented by development. But it still exists.

We’re actually tying into a whole other program at the agency, which comes from the mapping department. And we have this incredible interactive vegetative map of the whole state, broken into pretty small parcels of land. The biologists can look at the map and judge the habitat by a variety of criteria. So, they actually can rate each piece of land and make sure that it actually does have all the things that are needed there.

The horned lizard article by Louie Bond is as fascinating as the animal itself. Read this in-depth feature in the December issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine. On newsstands now.

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