Passport to Texas

Photo courtesy: Merlin Tuttle

Why We Fear Bats Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

On a nightly basis, bats devour tons of agricultural pests and biting insects, like mosquitoes. And that’s just scratching the surface of the benefits they provide. Nevertheless, we remain leery of them, and even afraid. But why?

The big problem they face is they’re active only at night.

Merlin Tuttle founded Bat Conservation International; he currently oversees Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation, which he also founded. He says we fear what we cannot see…or do we?

Even humans, if you work the night shift and you’re walking home at night instead of in the daytime, God knows how much more likely someone will think you’re probably up to no good. So, being nocturnal, flying erratically, living in places people are already a little spooked of sometimes—there’s this whole aura of mystique and misunderstanding. We don’t know much about bats. Ironically, what’s fascinating is that where bats have almost six-foot wing spans and are right out there where people can see them—people don’t fear them! But, in places where we have little tiny bats that couldn’t possibly do any significant damage to you—people fear them!

Find a link to Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation website at passporttotexas.org.

[Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation: https://www.merlintuttle.org/]

We receive support in part from RAM Trucks: built to serve.

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

Great Texas Birding Classic begins April 15 and runs through May 15.

Make Plans for the Big Sit Next Year Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

If you didn’t enter a team in the Great Texas Birding Classic by the April 1st deadline because you think you and your friends aren’t good enough birders. Fuhgeddaboudit.

Next year, enter The Big Sit.

The Big Sit is a wonderful category if you only have one or two good birders, and everyone else just has an interest in nature.

Shelly Plante is nature tourism manager for TPW and organizes the classic. Only one person on a Big Sit team needs to ID a bird for it to go on the team’s checklist.

It’s super easy, it’s easily accessible to everyone. And you go and bird in a 17-foot diameter circle for as much as you want in a day. I’ve seen people do it at their local park; I’ve seen people do it in their backyards, which is a lot of fun. So, there are so many different ways that you can do a Big Sit, and it’s just a lot of fun. We like to call it the tailgate party for birding, because people usually have a great food spread, and just a lot of camaraderie throughout the day. So that’s a lot of fun.

Food…friends…feathers? That just screams good times. Find out what this year’s teams spotted across the state between April 15 and May 15 at birdingclassic.org or eBirds.org, where teams upload their checklists.

Every team fills out a checklist and they upload it into eBird, which is an online bird checklist system through Cornell Lab of Ornithology that we use. So, teams are contributing to citizen science on an international level when they do the birding classic. Once they’ve submitted their checklist, they share that checklist with birding classic staff, and that’s how we know what was seen or heard.

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We receive support from RAM Trucks. Built to Serve.

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

Alvin Dedeaux

Texas is a Fly-fishing Mecca Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

Few people think of Texas when the topic of fly-fishing comes up, unless you’re Alvin Dedeaux, that is.

Well, we’ve got some great fly-fishing opportunities here.

Alvin is a sought-after Texas fly-fishing guide. He’s partnered with Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation, the nonprofit arm of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to help recruit new members. Anyone who goes to WeWillNotBeTamed.org and becomes a new foundation member by April 12 will be entered in a drawing to win a half-day fly-fishing trip with Alvin.

I guided for trout all over the Western US, and I think what we have here in Central Texas rivals a lot of that stuff. Especially the rivers. Because, as a lot of people know, our rivers are kind of an underutilized resource. We’ve got tons of really beautiful small streams with very little pressure and really aggressive, hungry fish. And I think it rivals anything anywhere—you know, it’s just different. On top of that, we have the Texas coast. And the inshore fisheries on the Texas coast are world-class for like casting for redfish and speckled trout. So Texas is really, I think, an undiscovered central Mecca for fly-fishermen.

Learn more about the work of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation and how to become a member, and entered into a drawing for a half day fly fishing trip with Alvin Dedeaux at WeWillNotBeTamed.org.

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

Alvin Dedeaux

Go Fly-Fishing with a Pro Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

Members of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation represent a diverse cross section of the population that share a passion for the outdoors. Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation is the nonprofit arm of Texas Parks and Wildlife department  and helps to fund initiatives that conserve our wild places and wild things.

Join TPWF by April the 12th to be entered into a chance to win a half day fly fishing trip with Texas fly-fishing guide Alvin Dedeaux.

Jay Kleberg is Director of Conservation Initiatives at Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation. The Colorado River is the staging area for this fly-fishing trip.

There are very few people who know that the Colorado River that flows through the Hill Country and to the coast has some world-class fishing because it goes through some major urban areas. And Alvin’s one of the few people who really knows that water, and has focused not just on the Hill Country, but the coast and the Colorado River, itself. So, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go with a true expert.

Become a member of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation by April 12 to be entered in a drawing for a half day of fly-fishing with celebrated fishing guide, Alvin Dedeaux. We’ll speak with him about fly-fishing next time.

People are drawn to it, and once they get into it—for most people—it becomes a lifelong passion.

Learn more about the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation and how to become a member at wewillnotbetamed.org.

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

Paddlefish

TPW TV--Progress on Paddlefish Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

Alongside Big Cypress Bayou seems an unusual place to perform a surgical procedure. That doesn’t stop Mike Montagne with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from carrying out surgery on a paddlefish—a species that’s more than 300-million years old.

They are one of the most ancient fishes and species that we have on the planet. They don’t look like any other fish, and they are super cool.

Montagne  inserts an acoustic transmitter into the abdomen of a fish that’s been anesthetized before stitching it up and releasing it back into the water. Receivers along the bank track the fish. Overharvesting and manmade changes to habitat, caused the species to disappear from east Texas waters. Restocking, with an emphasis on recreating natural flows, helped the fish and habitat to rebound.

 [Laura-Ashley Overdyke] The Paddlefish were the perfect poster child to explain and test out our theory that more natural flows would help the forest as well as all these fish and other animals.

[Tim Bister] We’ve been reintroducing paddlefish since about 2014; we started out with about 50 fish that we radio-tagged and pout inside the Big Cypress and Caddo Lake, and we followed those around for about a year. One of the things we really wanted to find out is if the fish would stay in the system…

That was Laura-Ashley Overdyke with the Caddo lake Institute and Biologist Tim Bister.

Find out if the fish stayed in the system, or went over the dam, when you watch the TPW TV Series on PBS this week.

The Sport Fish Restoration Program supports our series.

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