Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Sport Fish Restoration Program

Biologists at the Heart of the Hills Fisheries Science Center in Kerrville for the past thirteen years have worked to reestablish the Guadalupe Bass, which had experienced a significant population decline.

It has two different problems it’s facing throughout its range. One is just habitat loss – which a lot of animals face. Here, and in most of the places it occurs, that’s not nearly as much of a problem as hybridization with the smallmouth bass.

Dr. Gary Garrett is a fisheries biologist at Heart of the Hills. The Guadalupe bass occurs only in the Texas Hill Country, in the headwaters of the streams that drain the Edwards Plateau. Smallmouth bass, introduced to these waters in the mid-1970s to provide additional sport fish for anglers, hybridized with the native species.

So, they’re not as well adapted for their environment. They may do well in the short run, but in the long haul they’re really not going to be as good a species.

Efforts to restore the Guadalupe bass population began with a study of Johnson Creek.

Here in Johnson Creek where we began the study, we started with about thirty percent of the fish were hybrids –and that wasn’t stable – it was still increasing when we started.

The prognosis for the state fish of Texas is excellent. And we’ll tell you about it tomorrow.

That’s our show for today…supported by the Sport Fish Restoration program, which funds research at the Heart of the Hills Fisheries Science Center…

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

The Texas Archaeological Society — dedicated to the study and preservation of the historic and prehistoric aspects of our past — offers its annual Field School next month in West Texas, just as its done since the 1960s.

It was a way to get people out and get hands-on experience doing archeology. Because you can read about archeology, but until you get out and get in the dirt and dig and find the artifacts in the proper context, that’s when you start understanding what archeology is all about.

Doug Boyd, is Co-Director of the school’s Youth Group.

Families can come to field school and their kids can participate with us while they participate with the adult group. And we’ll have anywhere from 35 to 45 kids in our youth group. We’re doing the same thing adults are. We’re learning hands-on excavation and survey techniques, and we also have a number of other activities set up for the kids.

Kids connect with history in a very personal way.

One of the things that we try and do with the kids is we make them aware of the importance of some of the things that they’re finding. When they learn how to do a certain archaeological technique right and they get complimented on that, and their faces light up, and you know that you’re connecting with them, that’s what it’s all about. That’s what makes it worth wild.

The Texas Archaeological Society Field Camp is June 9th through 16th in Menard, Texas. Online registration is available at www.txarch.org. Register by May 31st.

That’s our show for today…with research and writing help from Loren Seeger…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Window to the Past is a segment airing on the Texas Parks and Wildlife television series the week of May 13. Series writer/producer, Alan Fisher, says it examines prehistoric rock art in the lower Pecos River Region of Texas.

In the canyons and cliffs in and around Seminole Canyon State Park and Historic Site, there are these amazing pictographs – ancient rock paintings.

You go down right in that canyon and you step back three-thousand, four-thousand years.

We followed, not only the personnel at the state park there, but also some scholars who were doing some of the latest research on trying to figure out what these rock paintings really mean to the people who made them so long ago.

Now, another symbol in this rock art that is what is called a crenelated arch; it is there to represent the physical barrier between the real world and the spirit world, or the after world.

There aren’t too many places you can look at something that was made by human hands that is that old in Texas, or really anywhere in North America. So, it’s really remarkable to stand before a painting that was painted so long ago and try to imagine what the people who made it were thinking and what their lives must have been like.

The Window to the Past segment airs the week of May 13, as part of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Television Series.

Check your local listings.

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

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Sport Fish Restoration Program

Exotic game species compete with native animals for food and habitat. Landowners have developed strategies for managing these creatures, including working with Broken Arrow Ranch in Ingram.

The agreement that we make is that these ranchers have an overpopulation that they need to get rid of – and we’re one of their options.

Chris Hughes runs this family business, which harvests and processes the wild game.

We pay them [landowners] based on the carcass weight of the animals that we harvest. So, it’s really a win-win-situation all around. They help put their land back into an ecological balance, they get paid for it, and we get the meat, we process it, and we can sell it nationwide.

Hughes says a state meat inspector, one to two shooters, a skinner, and a mobile processing unit are deployed into the field.

The time of day that we go depends a lot on what we’re hearing from the ranchers. A lot of our harvests are at night, because that’s when the animals are active. But from ranch to ranch that varies. And some of the ranchers find that their animals are more active in the early afternoons. And so we’ll go out there during the daytime.

Learn about the humane harvest of these animals when you log onto www.brokenarrowranch.com.

We receive support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration program … funded by your purchase of fishing and hunting equipment and motor boat fuels…

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Sport Fish Restoration Program

The Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge had a feral hog problem. Their management strategy involved trapping and shooting the animals, and leaving the carcasses to decompose.

The pig, as an uninvited visitor to the refuge, has been utilizing our resources since they got there. So, we’re putting the resources back into the natural system.

The center’s Rob Denkhaus, agrees the hogs represented usable meat, but the center didn’t have a safe way to process it. That’s not an issue for Broken Arrow Ranch. They harvest hogs and other exotics, with on site processing and inspection. They age and package it at their facility in Ingram, and ship it nationwide.

On an annual basis we harvest about seventeen hundred deer a year, about eight hundred antelope, and last year about a thousand wild boars.

And that translates to more than 180-thousand pounds of wild game. Chris Hughes took over the business from his parents, who retired to a ranch in the hill country, where they first observed the exotic species.

They saw an untapped resource here in the area, and a potential market; worked through the government agencies to get all the appropriate regulations in line, and began harvesting animals and selling them to restaurants in 1983.

Tomorrow: How Broken Arrow Ranch works with landowners.

That’s our show… with support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration program … funded by your purchase of fishing and hunting equipment and motor boat fuels…

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

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