Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Tom Vandivier and his family have worked tirelessly to restore the natural balance to their 51-hundred acre Llano Springs Ranch in Edwards County. They did this in part by removing acres upon acres of cedar trees.

(birds) My family and I have cleared approximately 27-hundred acres out of the 51-hundred acres we have here.

The ranch contains the headwaters of the South Llano River, which flows into the Colorado. Years of work to remove water-sucking cedar and restore water-friendly native grasses have paid off.

(water) We’ve got one spring that wasn’t existent at all when we got here that’s running now. Things are working.

With less cedar and more water and native grasses, wildlife is abundant on the ranch, and that brings visitors.

It’s lots of fun to see people come out and discover pretty sights, or find a big deer, of fish in the river and catch a fish. All sorts of people have come out and enjoyed this. That’s one of our true pleasures is seeing folks enjoy this ranch. (birds)

The Vandivier family’s efforts have earned Llano Springs Ranch this year’s Leopold Conservation Award from the Sand County Foundation and Texas Parks and Wildlife, as part of the department’s Lone Star Land Steward Awards program.

The Leopold Conservation Award recognizes extraordinary achievement in voluntary conservation by private landowners. Learn more at passporttotexas.org.

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

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

The Vandivier family, owners of Llano Spring Ranch in Edwards County, is this year’s winner of the Leopold Conservation Award for Texas.

The ranch is over 51-hundred acres, and when they first purchased it, probably 80 or 90 percent of it, was covered with massive stands of re-growth cedar.

That’s wildlife consultant Fielding Harwell. The award, from the Sand County Foundation and Texas Parks and Wildlife, is part of the department’s Lone Star Land Steward Awards program.

(chainsaw) Tom has spent a horrendous amount of time clearing cedar. His entire family takes part in the ranching operation and just take all of these challenges with great zeal. (hawk call)

Tom Vandivier, an attorney who works near Austin, spends weekends with his family working on the ranch.

My family and I have cleared approximately 27-hundred acres out of the 51-hundred acres we have here in order to provide more food for the wildlife, enhance the water resources, and overall just bring this ranch into good productivity.

The Leopold Conservation Award recognizes extraordinary achievement in voluntary conservation by private landowners.

Tomorrow—the impact of the improvements.

That’s our show… 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

The key to healthy habitat and wildlife populations rests in the hands of landowners. In Texas, we honor their skillful management.

Lone Star Land Steward is an award program where we recognize those landowners in Texas who are doing an exemplary job of managing their habitats and their wildlife.

Linda Campbell oversees the state’s Private Lands and Public Hunting program.

We have all kinds of focus on these landowners. We have a great diversity of people. We have a regional award for each of the ten eco-regions. And then we have an overall award, the Leopold Conservation Award, for the overall statewide land steward.

Nominations for the awards opened June first, and will continue until the end of November.

Nominations can come from the landowners themselves, or those that assist them. We will take nominations from any member of the public. All of those nominations are evaluated, and we do site visited on those. We just want to make sure that we hold up those who are doing such an excellent job managing the resources of Texas.

Find a list of current winners and a link to nomination forms at passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show…with support from the Wildlife Restoration Program…funding the Private Lands and Public Hunting programs… 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

Cut off from the Lower Laguna Madre, the Bahia Grande, a unit of the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, changed from productive tidal wetland to nuisance dust bowl. The tide started to turn for this basin with the new millennium.

It was not until 2000 when the Fish and Wildlife Service acquired the land surrounding the Bahia Grande Basin that you could start doing something—because the Fish and Wildlife Service was very supportive of restoring the area.

John Wallace is the refuge manager. Eight years later, the process of restoring Bahia Grande continues.

Restoring ten thousand acres takes quite awhile. We have had to go through an environmental assessment—public hearings—to just make sure what we were planning to do in restoring it was not going to cause some kind of impact.

Wallace says the project is at the stage of installing the main channel that will fully restore the area. He estimates the work to start in early 2009. When fully restored, humans and wildlife will benefit.

Besides just reducing the blowing dust, it’s going to increase the number of marine organisms in the area: anything from larval finfish, to shrimp, to blue crabs that are already in the area. And when we have it fully restored it’s going to do nothing more than become a nice estuarine area to benefit wildlife.

Find more information at passportotexas.org.

That’s our show… with support from the Wildlife Restoration Program… providing funding for wetland conservation through the Private Lands Enhancement 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

For the past seventy years, Bahia Grande, a unit of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, has been no more than a six thousand acre dust bowl. Before then, it had been a productive tidal wetland.

A tidal wetland is normally a coastal wetland that is influenced by the daily tide cycle that would basically push or pull water into that system on a daily basis.

John Wallace is the refuge manager. The construction of the Brownsville Ship Channel in the 1930s effectively cut off Bahia Grande from the Lower Laguna Madre.

The spoil from that ship channel was piled on the north side, and it blocked off those natural channels that allowed water to flow into the Bahia Grande.

Without water, the basin dried up, and eventually became a nuisance to local residents and businesses whenever prevailing winds came from the southeast.

Normally on a coastal area with prevailing winds, you would get winds ten to twenty miles an hour every day. And these winds would pick up that real fine clay dust, and blow it to the north and northwest. And the local communities north of there were suffering from this blowing dust. It was impacting people that had breathing problems. The local schools, their air-conditioning systems, it was getting into the classrooms. So, it was a major concern for the local communities.

Solving the problem…that’s tomorrow.

That’s our show… with support from the Wildlife Restoration Program… providing funding for wetland conservation through the Private Lands Enhancement Program.

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

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