Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

[cacophony of birds] This is the ruckus you hear during spring and summer days on North Deer Island after its temporary residents—18 species of marine birds and their nestlings—set up housekeeping.

[backhoes limestone] For the past nine years, after the birds vacate in winter, the roar of backhoes spreading tons of limestone rubble along the rookery island’s shoreline replaced their calls. Coastal ecologist, Jamie Schubert.

They’re constructing a rock breakwater. And it will trip the waves, reducing the wave energies causing erosion on the island.

Pounding waves eroded the landmass, and without creating water breaks and additional nesting area, the future well-being of the island’s full-time and part-time inhabitants would be at risk.

We beefed up this side of the island with the dredge material and armored that with limestone rock. The barge wakes had kind of breeched this shoreline in here, so this project should allow this berm to reestablish with marsh vegetation, and give us a nice little marsh pond in here.

The island has been instrumental in the recovery of the Brown Pelican, and its wetland marshes provide valuable nursery habitat for shrimp, redfish and other important fish species. Preserving this rookery island means wildlife will always have a place in Texas to call home.

That’s our show… with support from the Wildlife Restoration program…funding habitat restoration in Texas.

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

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This is Passport to Texas

Eighteen species of birds rely on North Deer Island, near Galveston, for nesting habitat. Yet, over time, pounding waves caused by high winds and barge traffic eroded the shoreline of this natural rookery island.

Erosion really accelerated over the last four or five years. A rough estimate is [we lose] probably three to five acres a year.

That’s Bob Galloway—Houston Audubon Society’s Island Warden. Without intervention, it’s estimated the island, located next to the gulf intercoastal waterway, would decrease in size by 30% over the next 30 years. Coastal ecologist, Jamie Schubert.

This northeastern bluff is the most visually striking area of erosion. It’s been undermined by barge wakes and northerly storms blowing in waves that have undermined the bottom of the bluff and caused collapse at the top with these shrubs and other bushes falling down.

So, Audubon teamed up with Texas Parks and Wildlife and to protect the shoreline.

What this crew is doing is they’re constructing a rock breakwater, and it’ll trip the waves, reducing the wave energies that cause erosion on the island.

We’ll have more about that tomorrow.

That’s our show… with support from the Wildlife Restoration program…funding habitat restoration in Texas.

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

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This is Passport to Texas

For more than a decade, researchers at the Heart of the Hills Fisheries Science Center in Kerrville have battled the hybrid progeny of Guadalupe bass—the state fish of Texas—and the introduced Smallmouth bass.

We’re raising thousands of pure Guadalupe bass here at the research station. And every year we stock them back into nature. Basically, what we’re doing is replacing the hybrids that are out there with these pure Guadalupe bass. And we’ll let nature take its course form there.

That’s Gary Garrett, who initiated the Guadalupe bass recovery program. The fish exists only in the Texas Hill Country—in the headwaters of streams that drain the Edward’s Plateau.

Shortly after non-native smallmouth bass were introduced to Texas waters, they bred with native bass, resulting in an explosion of hybrids. But using a technique called “saturation stocking,” Garrett and his crew have made exceptional progress.

So far we’re seeing here in Johnson Creek, where we began eh study, we started where 30 percent of the fish were hybrids. And that wasn’t stable—it was still increasing when we started. It is now down to around three percent. Which is excellent! Top go from thirty to three is great. Now we want to go from three to zero.

And Garrett expects to reach zero in the next four to five years.

That’s our show… we receive support from the SF Restoration program…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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This is Passport to Texas

Some ideas seem good when you first have them. Then after some time passes—not so much. Take smallmouth bass, for example, and their effect on the Guadalupe bass population.

Small mouth bass, of course, are not native to Texas, but were brought in as an additional sport fish. The problem is they can’t tell each other apart. Even though they look very different, but evidently, they act similar enough behaviorally that they’ll reproduce—and they have hybrids.

That’s Gary Garrett, Director of the Watershed Conservation Program. So, what’s wrong with hybrids, anyway?

Hybrids, by definition, are halfway between the parents. 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.

Besides, they’re the state fish of Texas, occurring only in the Hill Country. And, well, you just don’t mess with Texas.

The other thing we’re now seeing a little bit is that these hybrids are now also crossing with our largemouth bass…which is yet another problem we want to avoid.

And you definitely don’t mess with largemouth bass. But, we’ve started to turn the tide on these hybrids with saturation stocking.

And we’re confident that in the next four or five years we’re going to be able to solve this problem.

That’s our show… we receive support from the SF Restoration program…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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This is Passport to Texas

Ocelots once roamed throughout Texas, Mexico, and into Arkansas and Louisiana. Jody Mays says today, only a few survive in the thick brush and shelters of the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

As far as we know, there less than 100 ocelots left in the United States. The ocelot’s range has disappeared, and now they only occur in the southern most tip of Texas, and that’s the only place in the whole United States that they occur.

Mays is a Wildlife Biologist at Laguna Atascosa Natural Wildlife Refuge. She explains reasons for the population decline.

Usually with an endangered species, you have multiple impacts that they get hit with. For the ocelot, the biggest one was the habitat loss. Some estimates say that over 95% of the native habitat in Texas has been altered. A lot of the thick habitats have been cleared for agriculture, and for development, and for other purposes. Another associated impact with that is habitat fragmentation, and that’s where, you say, have one large piece of thick habitat that gets cut up into smaller pieces that are farther and farther apart. Loss of genetic diversity is another big issue, and that’s as a result of this habitat loss and fragmentation.

That’s our show for today…supported by the Wildlife Restoration Program… helping to fund the operations and management of more than 50 wildlife management areas…

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

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