Passport to Texas

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

If you’re not a hunter, but you have friends and family who are, you probably get left behind when they go to public hunting lands to bag game. Not any more.

We offer a twelve dollar limited use permit, which is kind of a companion permit to the forty-eight dollar annual public hunting permit.

Vickie Fite is public hunting coordinator. While the permit is a type of companion to the annual public hunting permit, it is a stand alone document that’s good for an entire year.

With that permit, the only thing that you’re not allowed to do is any of the hunting activities. You can actually even fish with the limited use permit.

People who don’t know any hunters can still take advantage of this inexpensive way to access public lands.

If you’re not a hunter, you’re a birdwatcher or just a nature lover, you can spend that twelve dollars and you’ve got access to all of these areas. At times when hunting is allowed, you have to be careful and wear your hunter orange. But you’ve also got access tot his property at any other time also. For just doing the nature watching type things. Over a million acres of land. Ready. Right there. Waiting for you to come out and spend an afternoon watching nature.

Visit the Texas Parks and Wildlife’s web site for detailed information about public hunting and the limited use permit.

That’s our show…supported by the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program… funded by your purchase of fishing and hunting equipment and motor boat fuels.

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

More than one-hundred marine mammals a year strand on Texas beaches and most of them die. The Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network tries to figure out why. The network covers the entire Texas Coastline in efforts to save the few mammals that strand alive.

Even though we’re based in Galveston, we have six different regions across the state. When we do get animals in, we’ll rehab them either in Corpus Christi or in Galveston depending on where they strand.

Lindsey Godlove is a volunteer with the Network. We caught up with her at Parks and Wildlife Expo.

We do get, just mostly dolphins and whales. Not the bigger whales, we get some of the smaller ones. We’ve had sperm whales before and kogias, which are pygmy sperm whales. The most of what we get, ninety percent, are bottle nosed dolphins. We get some interesting species like striped dolphins or rough tooth dolphins, things like that.

The Network believes dolphins and whales can tell us about what is going on in the oceans.

Since, obviously, that’s their environment. We can kind of tell when they do come in and we run tests on them maybe what bio-toxins and things like that are going on in the ocean and that can help us in other areas of research. We work with other agencies to help figure out what’s going on in the ocean at that time.

Learn how to volunteer with the Marine Mammal Stranding Network at passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show…the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series …we had research and writing help from Kate Lipinski… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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How to Volunteer with the Texas Mammal Stranding Network

The next volunteer training day will be held February 2nd, 2008. Contact tmmsn at tamug.edu or call the State Office at (409)740-4455 if you would like to attend.

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

It’s fall hunting season in Texas, and various game species are “on the menu.” According to the most current statistics, hunting is good business.

Break duck hunting out if you will. There’s about almost fifty million dollars of economic impact to the state through retail sales.

Dave Morrison is waterfowl program leader. He says the statistics he’s quoting are ten years old, and he expects new data soon. Nevertheless, overall, hunting has been good to Texas and Texans.

The economic impact to Texas, based on 1996, was over a hundred million dollars, and it supported about a thousand jobs and earnings of almost twenty million dollars.

It’s the small Texas towns, says Morrison, that really feel hunting’s positive economic impact.

And you look at some of these small towns…you go down to Katy…on opening day of duck season. There are people everywhere. The motels are full. People never need to lose sight that even though it is for enjoyment and recreation, it is a very, very big business.

Not only does hunting support the economies of many small towns, the various fees paid by hunters support conservation in the state.

That’s our show…with support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration program… funded by your purchase of fishing and hunting equipment and motor boat fuels.

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

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