Passport to Texas

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

Conserving natural resources – air, land, water, plants and wildlife – is everyone’s responsibility.

Andy Sansom, Executive Director of the River Systems Institute < http://www.rivers.txstate.edu/> at Texas State University in San Marcos, and former Executive Director of Texas Parks and Wildlife shares his thoughts on this subject.

I think right now we’re in a bit of a crisis. Because people widely accept the values of what we do, but they don’t feel the urgency that perhaps they did a generation ago, and as a result, we have some issues that we’ve got to address, like the threats of land fragmentation, and the decline in our water supplies and the lack of adequate funding — are all potentially fatal threats to the values that all of these conservation activities represent.

What can you do to protect our natural resources? Education is always the best way to start. Log onto the Texas Parks and Wildlife Web site, and click on the link for “Land & Water” to begin understanding the needs of your environment.

That’s our show for today…we get support from the Wildlife Restoration Program…which also provides 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

Edited by Dr. Leonard Brennan, Endowed Chair for Quail Research at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute, the book Texas Quails: Ecology and Management is for anyone who wants to understand and manage this prized game bird.

And he approached myself, and about twenty-three others, to contribute to this book, which is pretty much everything that’s ever been studied, and ever been worked on — on quail in Texas.

Robert Perez is Texas Parks and Wildlife’s state quail biologist. Quail once ranged across thirty-six states, but are now only common in few states, including Texas.

The quail is a species that’s been surrounded by myth. Everyone’s got a reason why they’ve declined, or an old an wives’ tale about why they’re gone – because turkey are eating them, or because of fire ants, or because of some other reason. We as biologists understand that most any species, when it disappears, or gets drastically reduced on the landscape, it’s because of habitat.

Perez says, habitat loss is the main thrust of this volume.

Every chapter, fundamentally, is referring to habitat. And that’s something that we can’t repeat enough to folks. It’s human nature just to find an easy way, or a silver bullet, or a one-shot way to fix a problem. Put them out of a box – pen reared quail. There is no easy solution; we’ve got to work on repairing the habitat. And that’s, I think, a message throughout the text.

Find the book on Amazon.com.

That’s our show… made possible by the Wildlife Restoration Program… helping to fund the operations and management of more than 50 wildlife management areas.

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

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