Passport to Texas

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.

J. David Bamberger on Drought Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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

In January and February and March there were nightly reports of homes that were being affected by the hogs with severe damage.

Willy Conrad, manager for Austin Water’s Wildland Conservation division, says in dry months, feral hogs come into neighborhoods to search for food. This is a growing trend around the state, and feral hogs now cause about fifty-two million dollars in damage annually.

In response, Austin has implemented a feral hog management system. By dialing 311, residents can contact city officials. Texas Wildlife Services will then investigate the damages and locate and trap the hogs in nearby wildlands. Conrad says when it comes to removing wild animals, that’s best left to the professionals.

If you’ve got a hog in a trap, you’ve got a caged wild animal. And we’re afraid that even if that animal is just there for a couple of hours in that cage that it poses a threat to curious people that want to come see the hog and see what happens.

Conrad says cities that don’t have hog problems still need to prepare.

Biologists with Texas Parks and Wildlife and A&M will tell you there’s only two kinds of places in Texas right now: those that have hogs and those that are going to have hogs. I think that other cities need to understand the scope of the problem they’re dealing with and come up with a solution because it’s only going to get worse.

That’s our show…with research and writing help from Gretchen Mahan. The Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series and is funded by your purchase of fishing & hunting equipment and motorboat fuel. For Texas Parks and Wildlife I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Hog Calling: Reporting Feral Hogs Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

A tree is a living history book. By analyzing its rings, researchers can determine the climate conditions of each year the tree was alive.

Malcolm Cleaveland is a professor emeritus of geosciences at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He and a team of researchers are trying to determine the climate patterns of central Texas.

On a recent day, they take samples from bald cypress trees in Guadalupe River State Park.

[Sounds of collecting samples]

That’s the researchers boring holes into the trees. It takes a while to collect the samples.

[Sounds of collecting samples]

Some of the trees aren’t old enough. Others, like this one have tree rot.

Well, Richard, thank you for trying…it’s all I can do…We have now bored this thing from almost every conceivable angle.

Cleaveland says if the results show that long droughts are fairly common, it will re-emphasize the need for water conservation.

These people who say we don’t need to conserve water cause we can pump as much as we want to out of the aquifer, they’re crazy. That’s the height of insanity. If we experienced a drought like the mega drought like 40 years of almost continuous hard drought pumping ground water would be an end game that would not work.

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

A Climate Story with a Ring to It Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

[Call of the Houston toad]

That sound is the Houston toad. And it’s become a very rare sound over the past two decades. Years of drought and habitat destruction have diminished the Houston toad population to only a few hundred.

Michael Forstner is a professor at Texas State University. And through the Texas Parks and Wildlife Landowner Incentive Program (L.I.P.), he’s working with private landowners in Bastrop County to restore habitat for the Houston toad.

Most of the people in Bastrop want to live in Bastrop County because it looks a certain way. And if it keeps looking like the lost pines, we keep the toad.

So what do these “lost pines” look like?

Imagine a cathedral forest. Most of the habitat that we find Houston toads doing the best in, whatever that means for its current levels, are gallery forests. Those are the forests that you see in the images for computer desktop wallpapers. Those are large-trunked trees with open space beneath them.

By planting the fast-growing loblolly pine trees, a habitat can be restored in about twenty years.

So if current efforts are successful, Forstner says the Houston toad population could make a comeback.

The best thing about the Houston toad is they make 6,000 eggs at a time. Those babies just need a place to grow up.

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

Endangered Species: Houston Toad Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

“Nay! I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak.”

According to legend, it was this brief reference to the European starling in one of Shakespeare’s plays that led Eugene Schieffelin to release starlings in Central Park in 1890.

There were several attempts, so we don’t know how many were brought in but several dozen is what I’ve read.

Cliff Shackelford is a Texas Parks and Wildlife non-game ornithologist. He says starlings have now multiplied to the tens of millions in Texas.

If you have the windows down at most intersections in Texas, you can probably hear one calling in the spring time.

[Starling calls]

But Shackelford says when he hears the starling, he doesn’t smile with joy.

For me the sound is annoying because I think of all the bad things that starlings have done and the main thing they’ve done is they’re cavity nesters and they’re looking for hollows and trees like woodpecker holes and there are a lot of native birds that are looking for those. Well the starling has done a good job at kicking birds out of their nest cavities so they can steal them.

The European starling is a fairly attractive, small black bird. But when they take over the nests of bluebirds and other native species, they lose their appeal. Still, starlings are here to stay, so the best thing to do is simply make sure they’re not nesting near your home.

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

Invasive Species: European Starling Play Now | Play in Popup | Download