Passport to Texas

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

Ocelots are small wildcats that are spotted like jaguars and leopards; some of these animals live in South Texas.

We only know of two breeding populations in Texas. They occur primarily in Southern Texas now. Historically, ocelots occurred throughout much of Central and East Texas.

And they lived along the river banks. Dr. Michael Tewes (two-ES) has researched wild cats with the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute for 25 years. He says these beautiful animals are being driven to extinction by development, inbreeding, and habitat loss.

The population here in South Texas represents the United States population and there are less than 100 of them remaining. Therefore, they’re an endangered species. When the populations are as small as they are, almost any kind of a wildlife population will start to decrease genetic diversity and tend to go towards extinction.

Hear about the proposed recovery plan to restore the Texas Ocelot population tomorrow.

By increasing the genetic diversity of such a small population you can help reduce the amount of mortality that is increased with low genetic diversity, and increase survival and increase reproduction. There’s a stronger, vigorous population in Mexico that can be used to help augment the two populations that we have here in Texas.

That’s our show… with research and writing help from Sarah Loden… and sponsored by the Wildlife Restoration program…working to restore critical habitat for endangered species.

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 and Wildlife Restoration Program

I’ve seen some pigeons up close before, but that’s the only bird that I’ve seen up close.

That’s San Antonio resident Marisa Harris, before participating in the program Bird in the Hand at Guadalupe River State Park.

It’s a bird banding program. We catch the birds at a bird feeding station we set up, and bring people and the birds together in a very hands-on, kind of personal way.

Craig Hensley, a certified bird bander, oversees the program. He routinely catches, tags, and releases birds for research and monitoring purposes, and wants others to have the same opportunity to see birds up close.

They learn to identify them, and once they learn how I go about aging and determining whether it’s a male or female, I can actually hold up the bird and go, “OK, what do ya’ll think?” You see how these feathers right here have a tannish edge? And you see how their rounded, not flat? So what does that tell me? Is that an adult bird or a baby bird? An adult? An adult bird? Exactly! I try to bring the science together with the kids so that not only are they learning some scientific methodologies that are really used in terms of birds, once I band a bird and we’ve recorded all the data one of our volunteers will take that bird out with the child and the child will help let that bird go. On your hand, alright? Now let it go. [flutters] there it goes!

That’s our show…with research and writing help from Sarah Loden…we produce our show with a grant 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 and the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program

Today we are in the process of trying to catch some birds.

Craig Hensley is a park specialist at Guadalupe River State Park and Honey Creek State Natural Area. He’s a certified bird bander who catches birds for research and education.

In the winter time at the park, we catch the birds at a bird feeding station we set up, and then we identify what they are. Try to age and sex them: male/female, are they a young bird or an older bird? Then we put a small metal bracelet, if you will, on the bird that they wear for the rest of their life and has a unique number, almost like our social security number, and it identifies that bird from all of the other birds of that kind anywhere it travels.

When banded birds are caught, identified and released in other locations, their individual movements can be recorded, which provides insight on birds’ lifeways.

Ultimately, it teaches us things about the longevity of birds, migration patterns, and with all the things going on with our climate these days, that’s one way to figure out if the birds are changing what they’re doing, because that’s a good indication of what might be going on a grander scale.

Craig Hensley hosts bird banding demonstrations at the park. Hear about them tomorrow.

More bird banding information is on our website: passporttotexas.org

That’s our show for today…with research and writing help from Sarah Loden…we produce the show with a grant from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration program

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

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

The Texas Parks and Wildlife television series features a segment in June about an underwater “flower garden” you won’t want to miss. Producer Bruce Biermann explains.

Just a hundred and ten mile, east southeast of Galveston is a national treasure.

Flower Garden Banks are one of the most unique, diverse, and healthy coral reef ecosystem habitats, the northernmost coral reef on the continental shelf of north America.

And Texas A&M Corpus Christi has the contract to go out and monitor the coral reefs.

Organized monitoring of the Flower Garden Banks has been going on since 1989, and to date, all of our findings have been positive.

One of the interesting things is that what forms the coral heads is a big salt dome. Well, oil is underneath all this salt.

It is surrounded by the most active offshore oil and gas production area of the world. And so what we do is go out on annual cruises to ensure that there are no changes—no negative changes—occurring in the reef system itself.

Coral reefs take thousands of years to grow. And it doesn’t take but one oil spill to destroy an entire coral reef.

I think it’s important that Texans realize that this is a national treasure that’s sitting in Texas’ backyard.

Find stations airing the series at passporttotexas.org.

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

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Passport to Texas Legacies …from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Joe Moore is an educator and former Executive Director of the Texas Water Development Board. He understands the importance of freshwater inflows to the health of bays, estuaries and to us. Getting others to understand has been a challenge.

You cannot imagine the reaction you get from an audience in Lubbock when you tell them that instead of pumping the water to Lubbock, you’re going to let it flow into the Gulf of Mexico.

A major engineering consulting firm was meeting with an advisory group one time, and we were talking about freshwater inflows. He suddenly realized we were talking about assuring freshwater inflows, and he said, ‘You mean you’re going to give the water to a fish before you give it to people?’ They didn’t understand the economics of freshwater inflows.

There was a 1957 conference on this campus [Texas Tech] in which waste was described as a bucket of water that escaped into the Gulf of Mexico. The objective at that point was to dam every river in Texas so that there was not a drop of water that went out of a Texas river into the Gulf of Mexico. So the Trinity would stop flowing before it got to Galveston Bay. Every river in Texas would be so controlled that no water would quote, be wasted into the Gulf of Mexico, end quote. That’s how little understanding there was of the significance of freshwater inflows.

Protecting freshwater inflows protects out future.

Our show is produced in cooperation with the Conservation History Association of Texas. Visit them at texaslegacy.org.

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

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