Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

The Texas Parks and Wildlife television series features a segment in June about an underwater “flower garden” you won’t want to miss. Producer Bruce Biermann explains.

Just a hundred and ten mile, east southeast of Galveston is a national treasure.

Flower Garden Banks are one of the most unique, diverse, and healthy coral reef ecosystem habitats, the northernmost coral reef on the continental shelf of north America.

And Texas A&M Corpus Christi has the contract to go out and monitor the coral reefs.

Organized monitoring of the Flower Garden Banks has been going on since 1989, and to date, all of our findings have been positive.

One of the interesting things is that what forms the coral heads is a big salt dome. Well, oil is underneath all this salt.

It is surrounded by the most active offshore oil and gas production area of the world. And so what we do is go out on annual cruises to ensure that there are no changes—no negative changes—occurring in the reef system itself.

Coral reefs take thousands of years to grow. And it doesn’t take but one oil spill to destroy an entire coral reef.

I think it’s important that Texans realize that this is a national treasure that’s sitting in Texas’ backyard.

Find stations airing the series at passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Visitors to Caprock Canyons State Park and Trailway, in the Texas Panhandle, leave with a better sense of Texas’ rich natural and cultural heritage than when they arrived.

It’s one of the unique Texas treasures that everyone should see.

Deanna Oberheu (O-bur-hew), former park manager, said that in recent years, the park added an overlook for viewing the state’s official bison herd and a new visitor’s center. The installation of interpretive exhibits this past November further enhances the visitor experience.

Really, this is the most important part of the process—is getting the exhibits installed. It’ll showcase to people what they might see if they get out in the park, and teach them a little bit about the geology, the plants, the animals and the past people of Caprock Canyons.

The relationship between Native Americans and bison is a recurring theme in the exhibit.

The thread of Caprock Canyons is that people have been there and occupied the site at since, at least, ten thousand years ago. So, out exhibits focus a lot on how the native people used plants, and how they used the bison, and really just how they interacted with the landscape.

Find more information about Caprock Canyons State Park & Trailway at passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

This tree is easily spotted by its fruit.

When you come up to a Bois D’Arc tree, you’ll see the fruit, which most people call horse apples. It’s a yellowish color and will get as large as grapefruit. I always kinda joke with people it can be kind of a hard-hat area.

Lee Ellis is Park Manager of Bonham State Park, where the Bois D’Arc can be seen in large numbers. Of course, the apples are not edible to humans, but Ellis says that people have found them useful for other purposes.

Some people actually still use bois d’arc apples to put around their homes. There’s food for thought out there that it’ll actually keep spiders and other insects from getting to your house.

But more valued than its apples, is the Bois D’Arc’s wood.

Especially before the invention of barbed wire, people would use it as hedges. The bark actually has spines on it, so it acted as a natural barrier. And the wood itself is very durable, very hard, and very elastic also, and it turned out to be very resistant to termites and other insects. So they would use it, the early settlers, for everything from fence posts, grave markers, foundations for houses. Matter of fact, at one time, the only way to get a loan for a house in Texas was if the foundation was made out of Bois D’Arc.

One gentle reminder: the wood, nor its fruit, can be taken from the parks. The animals need them too!

That’s our show…with research and writing help from Sarah Loden… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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Passport to Texas From Texas Parks and Wildlife

Just seeing all those maple trees in one location and when the weather changes it’s just so beautiful up there.

Which state park this visitor is talking about?

I’m Kevin Barker and I visited Lost Maples over there in the Hill country Area.

This gorgeous park got its name from the rare pocket of Big Tooth Maples that fill the area. But hike around, like Kevin, and you’ll find plenty other natural gems!

What I also enjoyed was finding little pockets of springs where the water was coming up through the aquifer and just kind of dipping in. You know, when you’re walking around in 90 degree heat on top of the mountain, it was real nice to kick off your shoes and kind of jump in with your bathing suit and cool off a little bit. So it was real neat.

Beyond the inviting refreshment of its pools, Lost Maples Park Superintendent, John Stuart, says those same waters quench the thirst of Central Texans…and it’s like drinking ancient history.

We’re right at the head waters of the Sabinal River and it comes out of springs out of the sides of the hills and caves and then it flows on down and most of the water drops into the Edwards Aquifer and then goes back over towards Austin. And they say it takes a thousand years for the water to get from here to there. Geologically speaking that’s just a blink, but it’s quite a long time for a man.

That’s our show…with research and writing help from Sarah Loden… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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Passport to Texas Legacies …from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Joe Moore is an educator and former Executive Director of the Texas Water Development Board. He understands the importance of freshwater inflows to the health of bays, estuaries and to us. Getting others to understand has been a challenge.

You cannot imagine the reaction you get from an audience in Lubbock when you tell them that instead of pumping the water to Lubbock, you’re going to let it flow into the Gulf of Mexico.

A major engineering consulting firm was meeting with an advisory group one time, and we were talking about freshwater inflows. He suddenly realized we were talking about assuring freshwater inflows, and he said, ‘You mean you’re going to give the water to a fish before you give it to people?’ They didn’t understand the economics of freshwater inflows.

There was a 1957 conference on this campus [Texas Tech] in which waste was described as a bucket of water that escaped into the Gulf of Mexico. The objective at that point was to dam every river in Texas so that there was not a drop of water that went out of a Texas river into the Gulf of Mexico. So the Trinity would stop flowing before it got to Galveston Bay. Every river in Texas would be so controlled that no water would quote, be wasted into the Gulf of Mexico, end quote. That’s how little understanding there was of the significance of freshwater inflows.

Protecting freshwater inflows protects out future.

Our show is produced in cooperation with the Conservation History Association of Texas. Visit them at texaslegacy.org.

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

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