Passport to Texas

Fishing with borrowed tackle

Borrow Tackle and Go Fish Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

If one of your New Year’s resolutions includes trying your hand at angling… but you don’t want to spend money on tackle until you know you’re going to like the sport… Texas Parks and Wildlife can help.

The tackle loaner program is a program where different sites have basic fishing rods, reels and tackle that folks can borrow to go fishing.

When you go to a tackle loaner site to check out equipment, you’ll receive a little tackle box with basic hooks and different sizes of bobbers and sinkers. You’ll also be able to check out a very basic spin casting rod and reel.

Anglers under 18 years of age must have an adult check out the tackle for them.

Each tackle loaner site has a simple form that the person who checks out the equipment signs saying that ‘yes’ they will bring the equipment back.

Just leave an ID, and you can check it out for up to a week. Which is perfect for those long camping vacations.

The Sport Fish Restoration Program supports our series and funds winter rainbow trout stocking in Texas. So borrow some tackle and reel some in in the New Year.

From all of us at Passport to Texas—Prospero Ano y Felicidad…said another way Happy New Year, y’all.

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

Endangered Ocelot

Why Did the Wildlife Cross the Road... Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

Roads provide convenient travel to work, school and home for humans—but not for wildlife.

You have habitat loss. And then that physical road can act as a barrier to wildlife. It can impact habitat connectivity. Which, then, in turn can impact genetic transfer of information between populations, and weaken the genetic background for a species.

Laura Zebehazy, program leader for Wildlife Habitat Assessment, studies the impacts of roadways on wildlife, known as road ecology.

Basically, it is where biologists, engineers, landscape architects… try to evaluate the impacts that road infrastructure has on wildlife habitat connectivity, air pollution, noise pollution, and try to find solutions to alleviate those impacts from that type of development.

Endangered ocelots that live in Rio Grande Valley brush country have died on SH 100. TxDOT, in consultation with US Fish and Wildlife Service and Texas Parks and Wildlife, completed four wildlife underpasses along this popular route to South Padre Island.

To allow ocelot and any other wildlife in the area to move under the road between the Bahia Grande to the south, and the Port of Brownsville area up north towards Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge.

With wildlife cameras in place, TxDOT will collect data on these solutions and adjust as necessary to save this (and other) rare species.

The Wildlife restoration Program supports our series. [WL.W136M8]

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

Beautiful, yes. But also an important protein source for hungry Texans.

Hunting to Feed the Hungry Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport

Feeding Texas is a non-profit association that represents area food banks. Hunters for the Hungry is one of the programs it oversees.

The way it works is, we recruit meat processors to help us get venison out to the families that we serve. For hunters it’s an opportunity to donate back to their communities. And, for our food banks, it’s an opportunity to have access to a really great lean source of protein that the families that we serve really need.

Celia Cole is Executive Director of Feeding Texas. Hunters for the Hungry enjoys enthusiastic hunter participation among deer hunters. Yet, Cole says they need more processors.

Our greatest challenge is bringing in enough processors. So, in all of the areas where there is a lot of hunting, we are in need of more processors. And that is the key to making this program work.

Cole says it’s easy for processors to sign up.

We have our website, huntersforthehungry.org, and processors can go there to sign up. Really, all they need to do is enroll with us
and show a copy of their inspection and be willing to package the meat in the packaging that we provide. So, it’s fairly simple for a
processor to register and become involved in the program.

Tomorrow: how Hunters for the Hungry benefits processors, hunters, and the community.

We receive support from RAM Trucks: Built to Serve

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

Musical whistling fills the air as the meadowlark sings its territorial song.

Protecting a Birder's "Best Friend" Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

If you are an avid birdwatcher, or are interested in becoming one, Texas Parks and Wildlife’s non-game ornithologist Cliff Shackelford recommends that you resolve to take good care of your two best bird watching tools in the New Year: your ears.

The most important to me is ear protection. And this is when you’re not birding. This is when you’re mowing the lawn, working the chainsaw, the vacuum cleaner, shooting guns. Anything that’s loud, and you do it a lot, you have to protect your ears, because, guess what: you’re going to use your ears to detect birds more than your eyes.

Your ears are really going to help you find birds when they’re calling. They’re little. They’re up in the trees. You can’t see them amongst the leaves, but they’re singing away like a Red-eyed Vireo. Your ears are going to lure you to that bird way before your eyes are. So, at any age – especially a young age – protect your ears because they are the best tool that you’ve got for bird watching.

Find more birding information on the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department website.

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

First Day Hike at Palo Duro Canyon.

Start 2019 with a First Day Hike Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

When it comes to making New Year resolutions, some folks are all talk. And then, there are other people walk their talk. For the past several years, the folks who walk their talk have been using the New Year as an excuse to bust a move on state park trails during First Day Hike events.

First Day Hikes is a nationwide initiative that Texas State Parks has been participating in for the last several years.

Thomas Wilhelm, with state parks. He says most state parks throughout Texas host First Day Hike Events. First days hikes have become a great way for Texans to begin the New Year in a healthy fashion.

Essentially, it’s the concept of getting outside on January first, and doing something to kick the year off right. So, almost all of our parks have some sort of first day hike. A few of our parks take it a unique way. But many of our parks do have those first day hikes. And they’re, of course, guided hikes with a park ranger. And it’s just a way to start the year off right on the good foot. Literally.

Find First Day Hike events at texasstateparks.org. While you’re there check out other healthy opportunities like yoga in the woods, women only hikes, hikes with shelter dogs, and more.

That’s our show for today… We record our series at the Block House in Austin, Texas…Joel Block engineers our program.

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