Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

Have you ever watched National Geographic specials about sea turtle restoration, including the release of baby sea turtles and wished you could see it for yourself. Well, you can…on South Padre Island. Bryan Frazier explains.

There’s a partnership effort going on for sea turtles. And you have Sea Turtle, Inc., non-profit rescue service. You have Texas Parks and Wildlife involved sea turtle restoration, you have the national park service and lots of other conservation groups.

Summer is the end of the hatchings being returned. They’ve all come out of the nest. The effort is year-round in terms of rescue and managing that habitat. And it’s a real success story. They’re slowly and gradually getting those populations back to viable numbers. And all stories like that are neat and interesting, but to see it firsthand…they’re just beautiful animals, and South Padre has established itself as a real flagship area for that.

Thanks, Bryan!

That’s our show for today…with funding provided by Chevrolet…building dependable, reliable trucks for more than 90 years.

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

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This is Passport to Texas

Texas has nine native bumblebee species. Loss of habitat to agriculture, use of pesticides, as well as European honeybees competing for food, threatens these important pollinators.

05— And so if we have a reduction in bumblebees, that spells trouble for our ecosystems.

Michael Warriner, invertebrate biologist says, because Texas bumblebees have evolved with native flora as pollinators, fewer native bees would eventually translate to fewer native plants, which would impact other living things…

10—The birds and the mammals and other insects that depend on plants for fruit, or seeds, or just the functioning ecosystem.

While we give non-native European honeybees credit for pollinating our food crops, in some instances, bumblebees outperform them.

14—Bumblebees, although they aren’t talked about a lot as important pollinators, they’re much better and more efficient than honeybees. They’re the best pollinators for things like tomatoes, blueberries, cranberries, melons, and those sorts of crops.

You can find more bumblebee information at Warriner’s website, texasbumblebees.com.

11—And if you’re interested in being a bumblebee watcher, check out the website, and if you see any bumblebees in your garden, just send in photos. We’re really trying to learn how bumblebees are doing.

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

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This is Passport to Texas

We all know about colony collapse disorder whereby colonies of European honeybees seem to vanish.

05—Less well known are the threats facing a lot of our native bumblebees.

Michael Warriner is an invertebrate biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife. Like other native wildlife species in Texas, habitat loss is taking its toll on native bumblebees.

09—Bumblebees need open, flower-rich habitat—like grasslands. And, a lot of that habitat’s been converted to agriculture.

Warriner says pesticide use is another concern, but the threats to these big black and yellow insects doesn’t stop there.

12—And also, there’s been the importation of bumblebees from Europe into this country which has brought in parasites and diseases that may be impacting them. So, there’s a lot of concern how they’re faring in North America.

One of the threats to Texas bumblebees might actually be honeybees, which have colonies in the tens of thousands compared to the hundreds of insects in a bumblebee colony.

19—Honeybees have these tens of thousands of workers, and so they can go out and monopolize a flower resource—like nectar or pollen—and that reduces what’s available for our native bees. And there’s some research that suggests that the presence of honeybees in natural sites can reduce native bees.

We’ll have the potential impact from bumblebee decline tomorrow.

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

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This is Passport to Texas

At first glance, hydrilla—an exotic aquatic plant—seems beneficial to large mouth bass.

08—The hydrilla acts just as a habitat, refuge, cover for the bass. And so they’ll hide out in that, waiting for a bait to come by.

John Wedig is a supervisor of aquatic sciences at the Lower Colorado River Authority. He says many fishermen use hydrilla to their advantage.

07—The fishermen realize that [the way bass wait for bait], and now they mimic or imitate that bait with their lure and it improves their chances of catching a bass.

But the fun and games don’t last. Hydrilla is an invasive species, and if it’s not controlled, it can grow into a thick mat that becomes detrimental to fish and frustrating to fishermen.

16—That’s what we actually experienced on Lake Bastrop years ago, where we had a 900 acre lake with about 600 acres of hydrilla in it. And so there was so much cover, they [the bass] couldn’t get to their food fish. So we actually had what was referred to as “skinny bass.”

Hydrilla has been controlled in many lakes using chemical herbicides and even grass carp.

But Earl Chilton, a Texas parks and Wildlife aquatic habitat enhancement director, says fighting hydrilla will be an ongoing battle, and complete elimination is highly unlikely.

11—Hydrilla produces tubers. They’re potato like structures that can remain dormant in the sediments for years, sometimes over a decade. So when you think you’ve got it under control, these things are sitting down there waiting to come back.

The Sport Fish and Wildlife restoration Program supports our series…and funds habitat research and restoration in Texas. For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

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This is Passport to Texas

David Bamberger knows something a lot of us don’t.

11—Grass on the ground is the biggest single, and the least expensive, and the quickest responding conservation measure that one can do.

That’s because the root systems hold water. After 40 years, countless man hours and tens of thousands of dollars spent reseeding with native grasses—water is plentiful on the once parched 55-hundred acre Blanco County ranch. Now Bamberger has a new project.

09—The idea behind this project is to capture all the water that falls here, and to keep that little perched aquifer charged up.

This perched aquifer is almost entirely on his property. Bamberger is bulldozing depressions into the tops of his limestone hills to catch rain.

21—And so when rain falls on the tops—and these are very shallow calcareous type soils—it quickly runs off. So, what we’re doing is we’re creating what I call water pans (I want 12 miles of those), about eight foot wide and eight to ten inches deep. When rain falls, it’ll fall into that pan and can sit there long enough to soak in.

And recharge the aquifer. The octogenarian says the project includes plans for 26-miles of terraced rock berms on the hillsides to further impede runoff.

06—When I explained this to the staff here, I said it’s going to take us 10 years. When you see it, you’re going to know why.

Find out how you can visit Bamberger Ranch at passporttotexas.org.

The Wildlife Restoration program supports our series. For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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