Passport to Texas

Galveston Bay Estuary Teaming with Life, Image © Gary Seloff

Fisheries: Galveston Bay Estuary Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

If you’re looking for a way to cap off your summer or kick off your fall, a fishing trip to the coast may satisfy that craving.

04— Fishing is phenomenal on the Texas coast in the late summer and early fall.

Bill Balboa is a fisheries biologist for the Galveston Bay system – a great place, he says, to cast a line.

18— It’s the largest estuary on the Texas coast, and we have a real diversity of fish species; they run anywhere from blue catfish, which are freshwater species – because there’s a lot of river flows into the bay – all the way to spotted sea trout, tarpon, red drum, black drum, and the other saltwater species you see farther down the coast. So, it’s a very diverse environment.

Here’s the best part: you’re not going to need a boat to get the most out of a fishing trip to the Texas coast.

17— Absolutely not. And that’s a really good point, because in the summertime and the early fall, there’s a lot of really good fishing all up and down the Texas coast – specifically on the beach. Prevailing winds that blow all spring and summer calm down a bit, and so the water along the beachfront improves, and the fishing is phenomenal.

Bill Balboa says fishing in the bays is like opening packages at Christmas – you never know what you’ll find. Everything you need to know to fish in Texas is at the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

Support provided by Ram Trucks. Doing what’s right and good regardless of the degree of difficulty — takes guts. Those are the people who build Ram trucks. RAM. For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Texas River School; image courtesy https://www.facebook.com/TexasRiverSchool

Outdoor Education: Wisdom from the River and its Source Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Texas River School in Austin takes kids in fourth through sixth grade, who come from under-served populations, on daylong river outings. Joe Kendall is program founder.

10 – We teach them how to canoe, and we go down river to the mouth of Barton Creek, and float up the creek, and then take the kids to the Splash Exhibit so they learn how an aquifer works and why it’s so important to take care of it.

The Splash Exhibit is part of Austin’s Barton Spring’s Pool, named for the spring that feeds it. The school also teaches kids to snorkel to enrich the experience.

11 – So, they hopefully can dive to the bottom of the pool and feel the source of the aquifer and understand that creates the pool, the creek, the river… So, they can get an appreciation of where the water comes form.

The program is open to kids of all abilities. Kendall says it’s not just important to get kids outside, he says it’s vital to help kids develop a life-long love affair with rivers.

05 – There’s only one word that’s in more song titles than the word River, and that’s the word love.

Start your love affair with rivers at the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

That’s our show… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Texas River School; image courtesy of www.texasriverschool.org

Outdoor Education: Texas River School Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

About twenty years ago, Joe Kendall and some of his friends decided to help protect Texas Rivers by getting people involved in their care.

05 –We started doing cleanups, and started the foundation with the idea of having an adoption program.

Kendall is the founder and executive director of the Austin Chautauqua Foundation.

13 – We did festivals and Chautauquas—which is to combine entertainment and education and races. We ended up doing a program with some fifth graders, and we discovered that was probably the most rewarding thing for us; and we thought, also, for the rivers.

Rewarding for the rivers because the more people who know and love rivers, the more people there will be to protect them in the future. The Texas River School, borne of Kendall and company’s original idea, gets a diverse group of kids on the water.

23 – Fortunately, we have Texas Parks and Wildlife to thank for that. They have provided us with a grant every other year to take kids to the river that wouldn’t normally get a chance to go. They identify them as their non-traditional constituents…people that don’t use the parks. And they see that’s the minorities, economically disadvantaged, females and at-risk kids. So, we target all those areas and have taken over four thousand through our discover the source program.

The source, in this case, is the spring that feeds Barton Creek in Austin. We’ll tell you more about River School activities tomorrow.

That’s our show… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

No one holds a candle to Texas State Park volunteers

State Parks: Volunteering at Parks Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Texas State Parks rely heavily on volunteers.

07—Over the last several years it’s been pretty consistent; we clock about six hundred thousand hours of volunteer time.

And that’s just manual labor, says Lori Reiley, state park volunteer coordinator. Those 600-thousand volunteer hours translate into big savings for state parks.

06— Our volunteers make up about a third of our workforce. So, we really couldn’t function as well without them.

Volunteers do everything from mowing lawns and scrubbing toilets to taking entrance fees and leading interpretive programs. Reiley says state parks encourage and welcome new volunteers.

16—We could always use their help. And while we get the occasional civic organization or nonprofit that wants to volunteer for service projects, we really could always use more individuals just on a regular basis to come out and volunteer in the parks.

Find out how you can volunteer at state parks on the Texas parks and Wildlife website.

That’s our show for today…with funding provided by Chevrolet, supporting outdoor recreation in Texas; because there’s life to be done.

We record our series at the Block House in Austin; Joel Block engineers our program.

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

Michael Forstner, Image courtesy www.bio.txstate.edu

Texas Outdoor Story: MIchael Forstner Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

An encounter with a rare Texas sea turtle inspired Texas State University Biologist Dr. Mike Forstner to pursue a career in the great outdoors.

52 – I can remember a day standing on a jetty just off of South Padre Island. We’d been fishing most of the day. As I stood on the jetty, and all of us have seen our coast in a situation like this, I realized that the water column had slowed down, the waves had slowed down and it had begun to clear. I saw a Kemp’s Ridley swim up ending an otherwise perfect day. I was 11 years old. Ultimately, I think that day led me forward to a career that I spend outside. That day was perfect. We caught fish, we had a good meal and I saw an animal that I knew was incredibly rare. It’s not just being outside, it’s knowing about the outside, and understanding it that brings you to the knowledge in which it’s one of the most important aspects of your life.

That’s our show for today…with funding provided by Chevrolet, supporting outdoor recreation in Texas; because there’s life to be done.

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