Passport to Texas

Grilled Shrimp

Fish | Cook: Learning to Cook Seafood Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

We love seafood, but when it comes to cooking it—most of us leave that to the professionals.

06— Because a lot of people are intimidated [by] seafood. They have this impression that it’s hard to cook.

But it’s not, says Rhonda Cummins with Texas AgriLife and Texas Sea Grant. Whether you harvest it yourself or pick up fresh fish from a local market, seafood is easier to prepare than you realize.

06— If you can master just a couple of quick easy [techniques] in the kitchen, you can cook seafood at home

The FREE monthly Cooking with Seafood classes Rhonda coordinates provide attendees the skills they need to prepare fresh seafood at home. Volunteer cooks teach demos, while fisheries biologists and others talk about the resource.

11— Sometimes I have to put the meal on hold because they’re still asking questions to the presenter. They’re coming to learn. I actually believe that it’s become more about interesting topics than about the food.

But there is food. The next FREE Cooking with Seafood class is Monday April 13 at the Calhoun County Fairgrounds outside Port Lavaca, and will include some combination of oysters, crabs, shrimp and fish.

14—The basic concept of the evening is going to be, you’ve harvested it, or you have bought it in its almost natural state at the fish market—what do you do with it next? So, we want to teach them some basic cleaning techniques and then cooking techniques.

Find out how you can attend at passporttotexas.org (see below).

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

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If you want to attend the April 13, 2015 FREE Cooking with Seafood Demo, RSVP with Rhonda Cummins:

Cooking with Seafood
Free cooking demonstrations and samples using fresh, local seafood.
Calhoun County Fairgrounds, Bauer Exhibit Building
6 p.m.
RSVP to Rhonda Cummins: (361) 552-9747
Email: rcummins@tamu.edu

Girl exploring stream at Lost Maples State Natural Area

Event: Children and Nature Conference Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It takes a village to get kids and families outside these days; Jennifer Bristol, coordinator of Texas Children and Nature, is part of the tribe ushering them outdoors.

09— We are a network of organizations around the state of Texas; and we focus on connecting more children and families with the outdoors so they are happier, healthier, and smarter.

Next week, Jennifer tribe and their supporters gather in Bastrop for the Children in Nature Conference, to share ideas, successes, and future plans.

08—To really highlight all the issue and all the solutions that surround why it is important for children and families to have access to nature.

The theme of the conference is “Inspiration to Action”.

13— And it centers around our four concentration areas, which is health, education, community and access. So, we have everybody from architects who focus on bringing the outdoors in, to urban planners, to the health community….

In addition, they devote the first day to technology.

17— We know that we can’t get away from technology. We used to tell people all the time: unplug and get outdoors and things like that. That’s still an important message. But, it’s also important to say, ‘Hey, you know what? What can we do to let them use that smart phone in their hand or tablet in their hand that builds that confidence in the outdoors, too?’

We’ll check in with Jennifer after the conference for an update. Texas Children in Nature is co-hosting the conference with Westcave Outdoor Discovery Center and Children & Nature Network.

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

Children enjoying the outdoors

Nature: Feeling Ownership of the Outdoors Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods and The Nature Principle is coming to Texas in April for the Children in Nature Network Conference. As a child, he says he felt ownership of the woods near his home, the kind of ownership that often eludes today’s youth.

As an 8 year old, I pulled out –I think—hundreds of survey stakes that I knew had something to do with the bulldozers that were taking out other woods. I think I held ‘em off for a while. In any case, I was telling the story about pulling out stakes [at a conference]. And afterwards in the discussion period a rancher stood up, and he was sunburned, he was in his sixties, white handlebar moustache…And he said, you know that story you told about pulling out survey stakes? And he said, I did that when I was a boy. And then he began to cry in front of five hundred people. And despite his deep sense of embarrassment, he continued to speak about his sense of grief that his might be one of the last generations to have that kind of sense of ownership of land that has nothing to do with money—it goes deeper than that.

Help children connect with the land. Learn more about the Children and Nature Network Conference April 7 – 9 at passportotexas.org.

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

Image courtesy International Dark-Sky Association Facebook Page

Nature: Dark Skies Over Texas Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Few of us have ever experienced a truly dark sky.

09—A dark sky is what humanity saw for basically its entire history up until the invention of electric light a little more than a century ago.

While we may feel safer outdoors at night because artificial light illuminates our way, over time, it may actually do more harm than good, says John Barentine, with the International Dark Sky Association.

30—We know that artificial light at night has a measurable impact on wildlife; we know that it has an impact on human health. Light governs the night and day cycles of all organisms, so when we put light into the environment when our bodies aren’t expecting it, there are inevitable results—some of which we are just beginning to learn – but turns out that it may be related (at least in humans) to incidents of some types of chronic disease.

Until the advent and widespread use of electric lighting, the sun, and to a lesser extent the moon, governed the cycle of day and night. That set a rhythm among living things we’ve been disrupting ever since.

And we’ll have more about that tomorrow.

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

Dinosaur Footprint at Dinosaur Valley State Park

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There’s more to being a park ranger than putting on a uniform. That’s why the Citizen’s Park Ranger Academy exists at Dinosaur Valley State Park.

07— The academy is the brainchild of our then assistant manager Robert Enckhausen.

Tracy Mays is with Park Operations at Dinosaur Valley SP.

19—He came up with this idea so the citizens of the state could come and see firsthand what park rangers do. Not just park rangers, but police, EMTs, the wildland firefighters… and be able to be hands-on with the activities that we do day-to-day.

Tracy says the purpose of the academy is two-fold.

10—The academy basically is to get people intrigued about being a park ranger, and hopefully making more stewards for our future.

Last year was the first year for the academy, and one of the highlights happened after the helicopter landing zone class.

20—The day that they landed the care flight helicopter so that they could see what it was like to land a helicopter inside the park, well, maybe 30 minutes later we got a call that somebody had fallen, and we needed to land the bird again. And three of our Citizen’s Park Ranger Cadets were able to help us actually land the bird, since they had already done it.

I’ll have details about the academy tomorrow.

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