Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

Up to a million Attwater’s Prairie Chickens once occupied more than six million acres of coastal prairie in Texas. By 2005, only 40 birds were estimated in the wild.

That happened primarily because of a loss of habitat. You’ve got places like Houston, Corpus Christi, and as these cities developed, they took a lot of the coastal prairie away. And we also have the problem of Chinese tallow escaping and changing the coastal prairie into a tallow forest.

Mark Klym coordinates the Adopt-a-Prairie Chicken Program.

The Adopt-a-Prairie Chicken program is a fundraising program; seven zoos around the state put a lot of energy into raising birds that are going to be released on the prairie. And this is one way that the people of Texas can get involved and help us to support these zoos.

Thanks in part to this program, recovery efforts for the Attwater’s Prairie Chicken reached a new milestone this year when 6 hens raised 21 chicks to 6-weeks of age in the wild.

And this hasn’t happened before. One hen did do it a couple years ago, but she had a lot of help from the staff at the Attwater’s Prairie Chicken Preserve. This year, some of these hens did it with no assistance at all. And it happened not only at Attwater’s Prairie Chicken Preserve, but also on private land in Goliad county.

Today, there are an estimated 90 Attwater’s Prairie Chickens in the wild at three locations. We’ll tell you more about this bird tomorrow.

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

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

The Plecos or Suckermouth catfish seems extremely beneficial when it’s in an aquarium. It keeps the tank clean by eating algae. But people sometimes dump the plecos into Texas waters. They think they’re saving the fish’s life. But the fish end up thriving in Texas waters and destroying the habitat of native fish.

Gary Garrett, a Parks and Wildlife fisheries biologist, says the plecos is harming endangered species in Texas streams.

Being a tropical fish, they do best in these spring systems where the temperature doesn’t vary that much over the year. And unfortunately in these spring systems, we have many of our fairly rare fishes, even endangered and threatened species there.

Two of those species are the threatened Devil’s River Minnow and the endangered Fountain Darter. And the fountain darter is only found in the San Marcos and Comal rivers.

Luci Cook-Hildreth is a Parks and Wildlife projects coordinator in Inland Fisheries. She says the plecos is much larger than most of the fish it threatens, giving it an unfair advantage. And this could be devastating to the ecosystem.

That one fish that we want to save is part of something bigger. It’s part of a food web. So that losing this one piece of the puzzle has a ripple effect.

That’s our show…with research and writing help from Gretchen Mahan. You can find more information at passporttotexas.org. For Texas Parks and Wildlife I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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This is Passport to Texas

The city of San Antonio recently voted to transfer three thousand acres of land to the Government Canyon State Natural Area because they didn’t have the funds to manage the land themselves.

Richard Heilbrun (High-ul-brun) is a wildlife biologist at Parks and Wildlife. He says the new land is important because it provides habitat for the endangered golden-cheeked warbler.

This is golden-cheeked warbler paradise. You’ve got these slopes, you’ve got good diversity. You’ve got old shredding bark juniper like that one right there. I just have to believe that they’re all over the place.

The land is full of a wide variety of trees, which are necessary for the warbler’s survival. But the land is also important to the Edwards Aquifer.

You can see just on the side of this road just holes in the ground, holes in the soil, and it goes directly into the aquifer. And this is why this is such a wonderful place because it has both habitat and aquifer recharge.

But as you look out over the land, you see newly built houses dotting the nearby hills. The land right outside the natural area is being developed because people want to live where there’s a nice view. But new homes only mean less habitat for the warbler and other species.

Fortunately, Parks and Wildlife will continue efforts to preserve the fragile habitat. And in five to ten years, the new land will have trails for public hiking and mountain biking, for all Texans to enjoy.

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

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This is Passport to Texas

This week the Texas Parks and Wildlife television series shares a hopeful story on the bald eagle, [SFX: bald eagle call] a bird that Producer, Abe Moore, says was once in trouble.

Really in trouble. And it came off the endangered species list in 2007. As far as the eagles that live in Texas year-round, we have like, 200 nesting pairs. We were down to four back in the seventies; four nesting pairs. We visit with a landowner down near Victoria that has an eagle nest on his property, and he gets to see them raise their eaglets every year.

They’re a wild bird that is doing its thing right out there in the open—right up there in that tree. It’s nice to be able to keep that kind of thing going.

We also visit with some professional photographers that follow a nest that’s a little more out in the open. Out near Llano, right along highway 29, there’s a nest that the eagles have been using since 2004.

There we go. (clicks) Oh, there goes the baby with it’s wings again. Beautiful. (clicks) That’s good. (clicks) There you go, baby. (clicks).

So, it’s just an amazing bird. And we also, in the story, look at the future of eagles in Texas, and kind of some of the struggles its going through.

Thanks, Abe.

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

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Passport to Texas from Texas parks and Wildlife and the Wildlife Restoration Program

A drought should end when it starts to rain, right? Well, not necessarily.

This is a major drought we’re in right now. A lot of people think it’s just right now. No it started three years ago.

That’s J. David Bamberger. Two streams at his fifty-five hundred acre ranch dried up ten months ago. At his ranch, Bamberger has created water trapping systems that help make efficient use of water. But even with his conservation system, he couldn’t keep the streams alive.

So, Bamberger says, when the rain cuts back, people need to cut back on their water and land use. Before the drought, Bamberger had two hundred and twenty-five cows on his land. He keeps selling them and now has only sixty-five.

Part of our mission here is to say to landowners, “You can have your cattle. You can have your sheep, your goats, horses. You can be a farmer. You can be a rancher. And you can be a protector of all the species. It’s just being able to manage your land and read natures’ signals and signs that she gives to you.”

Bamberger says he’ll need a lot more rain before his streams flow again.

We’d probably have to have sustained rain up in the twenty to thirty inches in order to get back to that.

…and that could be a while.

That’s our show…with research and writing help from Gretchen Mahan. The Wildlife Restoration program supports our Series. For Texas Parks and Wildlife I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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