Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

At the end of January, two vessels collided in the port of Port Arthur; one was an oil tanker carrying crude, the other a barge towing ships.

This is the largest spill that Port Arthur’s seen in a very long time.

Winston Denton is a Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist who was at the site of the January 23 incident.

The Eagle Otome is an oil tanker; it was coming into Port Arthur [when the accident occurred]. Okay, we’re looking at the barge that was involved in the collision with the ship. The barge just hit it and went right inside the ship.

It’s estimated that 450-thousand gallons of crude spilled into the water… which translates to approximately 11-thousand barrels of oil.

Prior to this, what we considered a large spill was two to three thousand barrels; and this is, like, four times that.

Hundreds of people, including from parks and wildlife and the US coast guard, mobilized to mitigate damages and clean the spill. Booms stopped oil from migrating down the intercostal waterway into sensitive wetlands. More than a dozen animals died from the spill, but others were trapped, cleaned and saved.

That’s one more…I think he’ll make it.

At the time we recorded this show, oil sheen remained on the water.

That’s our show…with support from the Sport Fish Restoration Program… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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This is Passport to Texas

The April issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine, on newsstands now, will inspire families to get outside, and to maybe even do volunteer work. Editor, Louie Bond.

So, our idea this month is to get families out fishing together. So, we’re going to take you on six excellent family fishing vacations in Texas, and hope that you’re inspired to take your kids out, spend a weekend or a week out there, just with you and the water and a pole and lots of beautiful silence.

And most importantly, they found partners from everywhere. And, all of these different entities came together and did their part; there’s a lot to redone there, but it looks better than ever. So, people can actually come out this year and enjoy the park—and it’s a great success story.

Thanks, Louie!

That’s our show… with support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

[ticking clock] Hear that? That’s time running out to register your team in the thirteenth annual great Texas Birding Classic. Shelly Plante.

The Birding lasts for an entire week. And we have events for all ages and all different kind of groups of people.

Plante oversees nature tourism for Texas Parks and Wildlife. If you don’t mind paying a late fee, you may register your team up until the day of the tournament, which is April 24. The event is open to birders of all skills and abilities.

With birding, everyone is equal. If you’re blind or visually impaired you can do birding by ear. And we actually have a tournament category for that in the birding classic—the Outta Sight Song Birder Tournament. We have ADA accessible trails throughout the Texas coast, so, anyone with mobility impairments can get out there and bird. It really is an equal opportunity activity.

It’s easy to register your team in this tournament.

To find out about registration for this year’s event, go to birdingclassic.org online.

Registration deadline is March 22. The event is April 24 through May 2, and concludes with an awards ceremony.

Winning teams decide which proposed avian habitat conservation projects receive funding this year.

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

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Birders of a feather will flock together next month for the fourteenth annual Great Texas Birding Classic. During this weeklong event, birders from around the globe converge on the Texas coast for fun, and friendly team birding.

The area for The Great Texas Birding Classic goes from the Louisiana Border, all the way down to the Mexican border—in a forty-one county area of the Texas coast. So, it’s a very large swath of land, with a lot of different habitat types and a lot of different bird species you can see.

Shelly Plante oversees nature tourism for Texas Parks and Wildlife. The Birding Classic donates tens of thousands of dollars each year to avian conservation projects.

The top [winning] teams are the ones that get to pick what projects receive all this money. So, we give over fifty-thousand dollars to projects every year, and those winning teams are the ones that get that opportunity.

Three different flyways intersect the Texas coast, making that habitat essential to birds as they make their spring and fall migrations.

We hold this event to raise some money for that habitat for restoration projects, acquisition projects so that we can ensure that Texas remains a wonderful place for birds to visit year after year.

Registration deadline is March 22. The event is April 24 through May 2. Find a link to registration information at passporttotexas.org.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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For more information about how you, your business or community can be involved in this year’s event, please contact the Birding Classic Staff, call: ( 9 7 9 ) 4 8 0 – 0 9 9 9, or send an email to
Carol Jones, cjones@gcbo.org

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This is Passport to Texas

How do you balance the needs of wildlife and habitat, with wind energy? Find out this month and next on the TPW TV series: Producer Abe Moore.

One of the areas we go is up in the Panhandle, where wind energy is threatening tall grass prairies and the Lesser prairie Chicken, which is there; and it’s got biologists a little concerned.

They don’t do well with change on the landscape. We think that we’re displacing or moving a nesting female away from where she wants to be, and we don’t have much habitat left for her to go to.

We also do a second part on wind energy and we go down to the coast, where wind energy is being developed even faster than in the Panhandle. And, it’s a concern because it’s in the Central Flyway where millions of birds migrate through. So you have all these birds and you’re putting wind turbines in there. So there’s a balance there. We talk with Penescal Wind Farm down there. And they have a radar system set up where they can see the birds coming before they get there.

The radar itself generates a curtailment command, and in less than one minute all the turbines will be turning at less than one RPM. And in within five minutes, all of them are completely stationary.

So, both on the coast, and on the Panhandle, it comes down to habitat issues and trying to site them in the right place.

That’s our show… with support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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