Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

Civil Restitution laws were passed by Texas legislature to make individuals accountable for illegally injuring, killing, or possessing a wildlife resource.

If someone’s convicted of illegally taking one of these resources, we ask them to pay for it. We even offer them a discount if they pay it early.

Kris Bishop, Assistant Chief of Fisheries Enforcement for Law Enforcement.

If they don’t pay it, they passed a law in 1998 that anybody that was in arrears to the state that they would not be able to get a hunting of fishing license, and thereby punishing them. If you don’t pay, then you can’t play anymore. If they don’t pay, then we’ll put a hold on their license and they’re not able to buy a license to go hunting or fishing.

These laws were put in effect conserve animals and create collective consciousness among the citizens of Texas. Of course, there are consequences for those who hunt without a license or have outstanding unpaid fines.

To kinda give that law a little bit of teeth, because a lot of people just say ‘Well then I don’t buy a license- what’s the worse that’s going to happen to me?’ Well, instead of having just your regular Class C misdemeanor, which is a fine of $25-$500, it’s been moved up to a Class A. So it’s a lot more severe penalty for doing that if you’ve had your license suspended already.

Details about Civil Restitution can be found on the Texas Parks & Wildlife website.

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

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This is Passport to Texas

Each day, hundreds of Game Wardens dedicate themselves to protecting our state’s natural resources. Texas Game Wardens face a variety of dangers in their line of work. While most of the people Game Wardens come in contact with are harmless, Game Warden Kris Bishop explains the risks of being in the field.

:46 Think you’ll see a couple of different scenarios- what Game Wardens experience in the field. In general, the people that we come in contact with are good, family people. They’re taking their family, their children out hunting, and fishing, and boating. That’s how they want to spend their free time. The kind of person who goes out and communes with nature is usually a good person and they have good intentions, and so that’s the average person that we meet. But occasionally, you are going to meet the criminal element no matter where you are. It’s going to be anywhere. You’ll always have that certain amount of danger out there because most of the people that we’re dealing with have knives, guns, things like that, on them. That’s part of what they’re doing. They’re either fishing they they’ll have a filet knife, or they’re hunting and have a rifle or a shotgun. There’s always that little bit of an element of you could possibly get into a situation with a bad person.

Details about Law Enforcement can be found on the Texas Parks & Wildlife website.

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

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This is Passport to Texas

Being a Texas Game Warden is an important and rewarding profession. Occasionally, though, it takes an outsider to recognize you have the right stuff to wear the badge.

09—When I was going to college, I studied a lot of science and as a Texan I grew up hunting and fishing. One of my professors actually was the one who thought I’d make a good Game Warden.

Kris Bishop, Assistant Chief of Fisheries Enforcement for Law Enforcement, outlines the steps involved in becoming a Game Warden.

15—To be a Game Warden, you have to have a four-year college degree. Once you’ve finished your four-year degree, if you are accepted into the Academy, it’s about a seven month live-in academy, and they teach you everything about the Code of Criminal procedures, Penal code, and then animal identification.

Graduates of Game Warden Academy enforce all state laws because they are Texas Peace Officers.

08—You’re a conservation enforcement officer, and then because you are a state peace office, you are responsible to know and be able to enforce all the laws of the state.

Whether you seek information on becoming a Texas Game Warden, or you need information on various hunting, fishing a conservation regulations and policies for our state—you can find all of it on the Texas Parks & Wildlife website.

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

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

The fifty-third Game Warden Cadet Class will be the last to graduate from the training Academy in Austin.

And, we’ll archive that class, and sometime in June and July we’ll unplug, and take the pictures off the wall, and load up the boxes and we’re going up to Hamilton County and open up that new facility.

Randy Odom is Chief of training. He says the Police Activities League of Houston donated land for the new center.

It’s large enough to house a new admin building, state of the art classroom, gymnasium, an indoor swimming pool — we hope to have constructed — a firing range, and also an emergency vehicle operating course. To have all of these facilities on site, keeps us from being at the mercy of other agencies and having to beg, borrow and schedule times for events. Not all folks are great at everything, and having on site capability allows us easy and quick remediation.

The sale of the Austin site, plus contributions from benefactors will fund building costs.

Our goal is twelve and a half million to build, and if we get fifteen million it will offer us an endowment to help offset the operating costs once its all constructed. :09

Learn how you can help make the new Game Warden Training Center a reality when you go to passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show for today… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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To learn about the New Game Warden Training Center, click here.

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

The facilities at the current Texas Game Warden Academy are limited.

We’re on about six point two five acres in downtown Austin. We have a dormitory; we have a classroom; and we have an administrative office. Other than that, we do a little physical training.

Randy Odom is Chief of Training. The center is next to an Austin neighborhood, so most training is off site – and that presents challenges to instructors and cadets alike.

Currently if we have someone that say, for instance, has a problem with firearms training, we have to schedule the range, go after hours, go on the weekends.

Odom says accessing off site training locations involves hours on the road that could be spent honing skills.

We are in the process now of calculating all of our travel time. We have to travel to a range, from a range. It costs us per diem to pay cadets to be out of county for firing range access. Travel time is built into there, so it cuts into our training time.

The firing range is only one aspect of cadet training that occurs away from the Academy. But that’s about to change.

This facility in Hamilton County, which was donated to us by the Police Activities League out of Houston, is about two-hundred and twenty four acres.

We’ll tell you all about the new Game Warden Training Center tomorrow.

Until then, that’s our show for today… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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