Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

Some ideas seem good when you first have them. Then after some time passes—not so much. Take smallmouth bass, for example, and their effect on the Guadalupe bass population.

Small mouth bass, of course, are not native to Texas, but were brought in as an additional sport fish. The problem is they can’t tell each other apart. Even though they look very different, but evidently, they act similar enough behaviorally that they’ll reproduce—and they have hybrids.

That’s Gary Garrett, Director of the Watershed Conservation Program. So, what’s wrong with hybrids, anyway?

Hybrids, by definition, are halfway between the parents. So, they’re not as well adapted for their environment; they may do well in the short run, but in the long haul, they’re really not going to be as good a species.

Besides, they’re the state fish of Texas, occurring only in the Hill Country. And, well, you just don’t mess with Texas.

The other thing we’re now seeing a little bit is that these hybrids are now also crossing with our largemouth bass…which is yet another problem we want to avoid.

And you definitely don’t mess with largemouth bass. But, we’ve started to turn the tide on these hybrids with saturation stocking.

And we’re confident that in the next four or five years we’re going to be able to solve this problem.

That’s our show… we receive support from the SF Restoration program…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Guadalupe Bass--A Hybrid Problem Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Conservation, Freshwater, Land/Water Plan, Research, SFWR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.