Passport to Texas

Guadalupe Bass (Micropterus treculii)

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This is Passport to Texas

Dang it! Was that a fish? Yes, He was right in that foam line!

Anglers like Courtney and Brandon Robinson love to fish for Guadalupe bass, named for the Guadalupe River.

Fish on! This is why I love catching Guads, they’re little fish, but they use the river to fight!

The Guadalupe is a stronghold stream for this lone star native, which the legislature dubbed the state fish of Texas in 1989. Decades ago, this little fish seemed destined for extinction. But today it’s coming back.

I want my kids to catch Guadalupe bass. And I want them to be able to do it in the same places that I do.

Chris Johnson leads guided fly-fishing trips. The beautiful rivers the bass live in have a growing army of passionate advocates working to keep these waters clean.

 At end of the day, lovers will always work harder than workers. And if you love what you’re doing, and you love what you’re about, you love your fish, you love your water, you love your state, you love the ground that it flows through, then you’re going to fight to protect it.

Learn more about efforts to restore the Guadalupe Bass and preserve our rivers on our podcast Under the Texas Sky this July. Find it at underthetexassky.org, and wherever you get your podcasts.

The Sport Fish Restoration Program supports our series.

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

Gulf oysters in repose.

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This is Passport to Texas

Texas reefs once held what seemed like an endless supply of oysters. But times have changed. Over the years the daily sack limits have been cut back.

It used to be a hundred and fifty sack a day.

Mauricio Blanco has been an oysterman in Lavaca Bay for 30 years.

Now it’s went down from one hundred and fifty sacks to ninety sacks, and then from ninety sacks, they went down to fifty sacks; this year the state limit is thirty sacks. So, every year we getting less, and less, and less. And the bad part is that fuel, it don’t go down, it goes up and up. But like right now, we probably going to make twenty sacks all day long. Maybe.

In a Texas Parks and Wildlife TV segment that airs the week of May 26, viewers visit the coast where a section of Galveston Bay receives much-needed TLC in the form of new reef bottom. Bill Rodney is a Natural Resource specialist with Texas Parks and Wildlife.

Recent science has indicated that most oyster reefs are operating right on the border of sustainability. Everybody realizes that something needs to be done. The key to restoring the habitat is putting fresh cultch out there, cultch can be any materials that oysters can grow on.

Witness the rebirth of an oyster reef and the measures taken to ensure the success of the resource and those who depend on it…on the Texas Parks and Wildlife TV series, the week of May 26 on PBS. Check your local listings.

The Sport Fish Restoration Program supports our series.

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

Working together to restore Desert Bighorn Sheep.

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This is Passport to Texas

Restoring Bighorn sheep to the American landscape is an enormous undertaking.

Texas Parks and Wildlife and I form part of what’s called the Wild Sheep Working Group. So, there’s 19 state and Canadian provinces where some sort of wild sheep occurs.

Froylan Hernandez, the Desert Bighorn program leader for Texas Parks and Wildlife says reintroducing Bighorn isn’t a project we could undertake alone. The Texas Bighorn Society has been a huge driving force from the beginning of the restoration process.

We also partner with the wild sheep foundation, TWA, Dallas Safari, Houston Safari, and just numerous other organizations that we’ve partnered with to help the restoration effort.

Bighorn aren’t just being reintroduced to public lands.

We also have private landowners that have bighorns on their property and so critical that they allow us and give us access to go in and remove surplus animals to take them to other places. So, the private land owner is certainly a huge part in this thing.

It’s a massive project but Texas Parks and Wildlife, along with their partners, are up to the challenge. Results are promising, but there’s still plenty of work to do.

Our show receives support from the Wildlife Restoration program.

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

Bighorn Sheep release

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This is Passport to Texas

We almost lost the [Desert] Bighorn Sheep from the American landscape. What was the cause of such decline?

Primarily the introduction of domestic sheep and goats into Bighorn habitat. Diseases that domestic sheep and goats had that Bighorns had not been exposed to. Net wire fencing has also been associated domestic sheep and goat industry that prevented Bighorn movement. And then unregulated hunting.

Froylan Hernandez is Texas Parks and Wildlife’s Desert Bighorn program leader. He is one of many individuals tasked with returning Bighorn to their native habitat and things are going well.

So what we are doing now is translocating free ranging animals into unpopulated habitats… we’ve been able to restore sheep to three mountain ranges that haven’t seen Bighorns in over 60 years in the last 8-10 years.

Bighorn still face many challenges, but the future looks bright.

Luckily we don’t have the problems that you see in other states as far as disease goes. And so we are not immune to that but we certainly don’t have those problems. But yeah, I’m very hopeful.

Things are looking good for Bighorn sheep populations but there is a lot of work still left to restore balance back to our Texas landscapes.

The Wildlife Restoration program supports our series.

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

Working on a prescribed burn.

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This is Passport to Texas

We welcome rain in Texas as it promotes lush vegetative growth. Yet, in the absence of fire, such growth can become a problem.

The lack of fire on the landscape has been a big issue. Especially in East Texas, but across the state. We’re seeing a lot of our habitat go from those grasslands to being more dominated by woody vegetation.

Jason Hardin, Turkey Program Leader at Texas Parks and Wildlife, says woody vegetation with an open understory is good turkey habitat.

A turkey’s main defense is its eyesight. Its sense of smell isn’t much better than ours; it’s sense of hearing is good—but it’s not going to keep them alive. So, their vision is most critical for them. So, they need to be able to see where they’re going. If they can’t see through it and move through it easily, it’s not good habitat.

Fire creates an open understory, which affords usable space for turkey, especially in rainy East Texas.

When you see forty, fifty, sixty inches of rainfall a year—you’re going to get a lot of rapid growth on that woody cover. So, burning those forests is essential. We don’t have a fire culture in Texas; people know it’s important, but they’re scared of it. So, we’re trying to provide funding where we can, and work with partners to try and get fire on the ground with certified prescribed burn bosses doing that fire—some of our staff as well—to educate those landowners. And try to—as much as we can—begin to develop a culture that if they’re not willing to burn it themselves, at least they can support fire as a management tool.

The Wildlife Restoration Program Supports our Series.

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