Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas Outdoor Stories

Insert sfx of hogs roaming around

Opportunistic eaters, a campsite packed with trail mix and hot dogs would be prize winnings to a feral pig – except, they’re not always welcome.

Hearing a raid on his campsite one night, young camper, Shea Prihoda tells us about the scare his grunting visitors gave him.

21 – I was camping once and I was sleeping and I woke up because something fell beside my tent and it caved in. So I started hitting and it started growling like a boar. So I started screaming because I was scared cuz it was right by my head. Then, one of the adults, I heard his tent unzip and he threw something, and then we heard a bunch of boars stampeding through our campsite. Anyone that woke up from my screaming heard it.

That night, the pigs and the food were left unscathed; but another encounter is something Shafer…and the pigs…want to avoid

03 – I would kill a pig if I could these days. Let’s go hunting!

Before you go hunting, Shea, you’ll need to pass a hunter education class and purchase a license.

Frightening or fun: we want to hear your memorable outdoor experience. Share it with us at passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show…we record our series at Block House Studios in Austin…the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration program supports our series… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

This is Passport to Texas

Legendary Texas rancher, Charles Goodnight helped preserve the last of the southern plains bison… the descendants of which are the Texas State Bison Herd at Caprock Canyons State Park.

Texas parks and Wildlife TV Producer Bruce Beirmann says expect a segment this month that explores the herd’s legacy and their new enclosure.

56—Just recently, the park opened up a whole other pasture so they now have a thousand acres to roam.

So, our goal is to expand their territory here in the park and have a unique experience to where you come in the park you are in the habitat with the bison.

The day they opened up the new pasture, I was at ground level looking into the gate where those bison were coming out. The experience of being at eye level with the bison as they’re charging towards you into this new pasture was just really awe inspiring.

These magnificent animals, the last remnants of the great southern plains bison…these animals belong to the state of Texas. They’re your animals. It’s a great opportunity to come view these animals –the last of their kind –as we do our best to expand their range and grow the herd.

You have to go see these bison. It’s the one place where you can still get right up to them [but you must remain in your vehicle] and experience it. It’s an experience you don’t want to miss.

Thanks, Bruce.

The show air the week of January 13

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

Passport to Texas with support from the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program

When it comes to quail, TPW biologist, Robert Perez, says they’ve had it rough. Habitat fragmentation and drought beat them up in Texas. Working with adjacent landowners to manage their properties for quail is helping to address fragmentation – but what about drought?

26— Where it’s dry, what you can do is be proactive. And so you have proactive strategies for drought, which is leaving residual cover; leaving standing grasses; leaving standing vegetation and not mowing it down; shredding it, or putting cattle on it or other livestock that will remove that vegetation. So you have to have something standing there for them, which is difficult to do in a drought. But there are areas that you can protect. And those quail will kind of hole up in those refugia until things turn around.

Thanks to a new grant from the Wildlife Restoration program, Robert Perez says the agency can now monitor the recovery efforts to help these native game birds.

20–By monitoring I mean you need to go in and count how many animals there are on the front end, and then you have your treatment or your improvements. You then continue counting and seeing if there is actual response by that species. So, we just got a grant from the Pittman Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act Fund – a federal grant – to go in and start measuring the impacts of our works at three different locations in the state over the next four years.

And we’ll follow along and report on their progress.

The Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program supports our series and funds diverse conservation programs throughout Texas.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

Passport to Texas with support from the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program

The northern bobwhite quail may have the largest range among the four quail species found in Texas, but it is also the most threatened.

07— Bobwhites are the big concern as far as our constituents go for parks and Wildlife, and its populations have been in decline range wide.

TPW biologist, Robert Perez, says population decline isn’t new for the bobwhite.

17–In recent history in the 40s, for instance – in the 1940s post WWII – bobwhites were very abundant in east Texas. But since that time they’ve all but disappeared from east Texas and other pine woodlands across the SE United States. And that big decline has continues as you go west across Texas; little by little as time goes by.

If you were to draw a line along the I-35 corridor from Dallas to San Antonio, quail habitat east of that line is highly fragmented.

13– A lot of the native types of grasses and prairies have been replaced by other things; either concrete or by exotic grasses like Mexia or Bermuda, things that quail don’t live in. So, that’s really the main reason of decline in those areas of the state.

Quail need a minimum of 1,000 acres of appropriate, un-fragmented habitat to maintain a viable population. West of I-35, plentiful habitat that includes the bunchgrasses quail need, still exists… but years of drought has taken its toll on the land and the birds.

04– Quail just don’t have that longevity where they can wait through those long drought periods.

More on that tomorrow. The Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program supports our series and funds diverse conservation programs throughout Texas.

Passport to Texas with support from the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program

Habitat protection and hunting restrictions (in place since the early 20th Century) saved the last wild migratory flock of whooping cranes from extinction.

06— Our whooping crane population in Texas is getting larger. We’re approaching about 300 birds in that population now.

That’s up from a low of 16 birds. Lee Ann Linam, a biologist in the Wildlife Diversity Program, says last year a few whoopers wintered farther inland than usual. To better understand this event, Texas Parks and Wildlife created a new monitoring program called Whooper Watch.

18–If we have whooping cranes that linger either in migration or in some of these non-traditional wintering areas, then we are training volunteers at workshops to go out and to observe those cranes in a way that’s not disturbing to the cranes, but would let them gather some data for us about the habitats they’re using and their behavior in those habitats.

Anyone can and should report a whooper sighting to Texas Parks and Wildlife, but if you want to go deeper, Lee Ann Linam recommends taking the training.

18– We’re using methods that are used by animal behaviorists – especially those who study cranes around the world. So our volunteers are learning some of the real techniques that biologists use. But anybody who enjoys watching wildlife and is a good observer, can learn from us how to gather this data in a way that is really useful to us.

Find information on Whooper Watch at the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

The WSFR program supports our series and funds diverse conservation programs throughout Texas.

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