Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program

Amphibians are good indicator species because they live on land and in water during their lifecycle.

Amphibians, because of their very lifestyle, you can imagine are sensitive to a lot of changes in our environment. They’re kind of canaries in the coal mine.

Lee Ann Linam coordinates the Texas Amphibian Watch program. Because of their land/water lifestyle and semi permeable skin, amphibians experience the best and worst of both worlds.

They’re affected by habitat loss, by broader changes in the world around them. Things like climate change that may shift rainfall patterns. Or, they’re sensitive to UV radiation, so those kinds of changes can affect them. They’re sensitive to environmental contaminants that can be absorbed through their skin. So, you can see that they’re kind of a good picture of the overall ecosystem health.

If that’s the case, humans better pay attention.

A recent assessment by an international group of scientists showed that somewhere between one-third and one-half of all the six thousand amphibian species in the world are in trouble. One hundred and twenty-two of them are already extinct as far as we know. And so this is a rate of extinction that perhaps is unprecedented in this period of time.

Help monitor the health of amphibians. Find out how 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 and the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program

Migrating waterfowl worldwide are under scrutiny by public health officials as potential carriers of a highly contagious form of avian influenza known as H5N1.

There has been no evidence; there has been not a single confirmed case in the North American Continent, of highly pathogenic H5N1.

Dave Morrison, waterfowl program leader for Texas Parks and Wildlife, says some waterfowl species that winter in Texas may share migratory routes with birds from known influenza hot spots.

We are doing our due diligence. We are part and parcel to the early detection and surveillance efforts that are currently ongoing in the United States this year.

US health officials and wildlife authorities have embarked on a North American waterfowl surveillance program to identify potential problems before they manifest.

Texas is one of the level one states for sampling. Level one means that we have to collect a thousand samples from migratory birds – whether it be migratory birds or whether it be shore birds – we have to get a thousand samples. And what we’ll do is we will actually take swabs of these birds, submit them to labs, the labs will then run tests on these birds to determine does it or doesn’t it have highly pathogenic H5N1.

That’s our show…supported by the Sport Fish and Wildlife restoration program… working to increase fishing, hunting, shooting and boating opportunities in Texas.

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

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program

Avian influenza, also referred to as bird flu, has emerged as a worldwide public health concern.

We’re talking about a strain of avian influenza, which is the highly pathogenic H5N1. It really came to bear when the outbreaks started occurring in Southeast Asia and started moving through into Europe.

Dave Morrison is waterfowl program leader for Texas Parks and Wildlife. Although only about than four hundred cases of the flu have been reported in humans since the late 1990s…

This is not necessarily a disease of people; it’s a disease of birds, first and foremost. And migratory birds are a reservoir.

Health officials worldwide are scrutinizing migrating waterfowl as potential carriers of highly pathogenic H5N1. While the biggest outbreaks have been clustered in Southeast Asia…

A lot of the birds that migrate from Southeast Asia potentially come into contact with birds that migrate and nest and breed in Alaska. So in that overlap of birds, there could be some transmission of the disease with birds that filter from Alaska into Canada and the United States.

Tomorrow: Monitoring efforts in Texas.

That’s our show…supported by the Sport Fish and Wildlife restoration program… working to increase fishing, hunting, shooting and boating opportunities in Texas.

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

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

The Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, boasts a bat population numbering 1.5 million, making it a unique and appreciated tourist attraction. But that wasn’t always the case, says Barbara French.

There were modifications done to the bridge that ended up making just the perfect sized crevices underneath the bridge. There probably had been bats there for sometime, but they began moving in, in larger numbers then. It drew the attention of, you know, many different kinds of people and people began being worried, and thinking that this was a danger to the city. They were actually considering exterminating those bats.

French is a Biologist and Science Officer for Bat Conservation International. She says Austin had a change of heart about the bats thanks to Merlin Tuttle.

Merlin Tuttle, who is the founder of Bat Conservation International, was headquartered in Wisconsin, and he came here and talked to a lot of officials and explained that the bats were actually a tremendous benefit and was able to protect the colony. Once the colony started growing and once people started realizing just how important these bats were in helping to control the insect pests, they became more interested in having the bats. As it became a unique site and known to people around the country, and then even around the world, people began coming to Austin to visit just specifically to see these bats.

Learn more about Austin’s Congress Avenue Bridge bats at www.batcon.org.

That’s our show for today…with research and writing help from Loren Seeger…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Sport Fish Restoration Program

In the mid-1970s, non-native Smallmouth Bass were introduced into the Guadalupe River as an additional sport fish, and an alternative to our native Guadalupe Bass. Then something unintended happened.

Even though they look very different, the problem is, they can’t tell each other apart. Evidentially, they act similar enough, behaviorally, that they’ll reproduce, and they have hybrids.

Dr. Gary Garrett is a biologist at Heart of the Hills Fisheries Science Center in Kerrville. The hybrid offspring of these two species started to outnumber pure Guadalupe bass. For the past thirteen years — and with support from the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, http://www.ugra.org/, and the Hill Country Fly Fishers, http://www.hillcountryflyfishers.com/, researchers at Heart of the Hills have worked to reverse this trend.

We’re raising thousands of pure Guadalupe Bass here at the research station. And every year we stock them back into nature. Basically what we’re doing is replacing the hybrids that are out there with the pure Guadalupe Bass. And we’ll let nature takes its course from there. Here in Johnson Creek, where we began the study, about thirty percent of the fish were hybrids. And that wasn’t stable. It was still increasing when we started. It’s now down to around three percent, which is excellent. Now we want to go from three to zero.

Dr. Garrett says fish will be released in May and June.

That’s our show…we had help from Tom Harvey… our series receives support from the Sport Fish Restoration program, which funds research at the Heart of the Hills Fisheries Science Center…

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

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