Passport to Texas

Houston Toads: From the Ashes Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download

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With its habitat ravaged by wildfires, the future seems bleak for the endangered Houston toad. But this lost pines local has a friend in Professor Mike Forstner from Texas State.

10—My students, myself, and a large group of collaborators do significant ecological restoration, habitat recovery, particularly focused with landowners in Bastrop.

Before the fire, toad populations were stable due to landowners conserving their habitat. Now, it could take 40 years before the land recovers. What’s a toad to do?

19—in 2006 and 2007, we began a head starting program that included a captive assurance colony held at the Houston Zoo, with additional individuals at Fort Worth. And, we have better than 60% of the genetic diversity that we have detected in the wild—in a decade—represented in the captive colony.

Bastrop State Park, which took a big hit from the wildfires, is a significant study site for the Houston Toad, and the State Parks division at Texas Parks and Wildlife funds part of the study.

Scattered pockets of Houston Toad habitat exist, and may receive captive bred animals, but work is needed to improve the genetic diversity of the species in these locales.

26—Outside of Bastrop, the majority of the population fragments that remain, are effectively like having a single family, not a population of wildlife. And we haven’t developed a strategy that’s been approved yet that will enable bolstering that genetic diversity and those populations. The core is getting the support of the landowners in those areas to become as engaged as the landowners in Bastrop currently are.

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

Houston Toads: Surviving Wildfires Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download

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Hundreds of homes were destroyed, and thousands of acres of habitat were significantly altered last month when catastrophic wildfires raged through Bastrop County, including Bastrop State Park—a stronghold of the endangered Houston Toad. Biologists are just beginning to quantify impacts on habitat from the blaze.

13—The fire will have taken most of the arthropods on the surface. In some areas it will have been ground sterilizing, removing the duff and the other community layers that the foodstuffs for juvenile toads and adults rely on.

Professor Mike Forstner, from Texas State University, studies the toads, and focuses on ecological restoration, habitat recovery, surveys, and genetics research.

The toad’s habitat is significantly changed. How much so? Researchers may not know the full impact for months. Meantime, Forstner says a break in the drought could benefit the toad and its home, and yet with rain a new problem may arise.

10—Those same beneficial rains will result in runoff of the mud, ash and silt into the breeding ponds that will negatively impact breeding success next spring.

The toads are down, but don’t count them out just yet. There’s a plan, and we tell you about it tomorrow.

Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series. For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Fire and the Houston Toad Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download

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Wildfires that ignited Labor Day Weekend consumed more than thirteen hundred homes and tens of thousands of drought-stricken acres in Bastrop County, east of Austin, including much of Bastrop State Park: prime habitat of the endangered Houston Toad.

14—Even though the fire was incredibly intense on the surface, and would have affected all of the leaf littler that would have been on the forest floor, Houston Toads—even a few inches below the surface of the ground—would probably have been okay.

Mike Forstner, a professor at Texas State University whose work focuses on the toad, expects minimal mortality of adult animals as a direct result of the event.

Yet, months of severe drought in tandem with the fire add up to future challenges for this unique amphibian.

28—Depending on how the fire action was at a given location, the issues we will face is a loss of canopy cover, which for the toad is a bad deal. But we’ll also face drought impacts on the trees that remain. When we do get beneficial rains, the trees that have been killed will fall as their roots are loosened and hit trees that were not killed—exacerbating the affects yet again.

Food availability and poor water quality are future challenges for the toad, and we’ll talk about those issues tomorrow.

Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series.

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

Prescription Fire Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download

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Given the devastation produced by wildfires this year, it may be difficult to grasp the vital role fire plays in land management. Nature’s been using it for eons with great success.

David Riskind, director of natural resources for state parks, says there’s a difference between a fire burning out of control, and the prescription burns biologists recommend to landowners.

Controlled burning is a term that people use that you start at part A, and you burn until you get to part B. Professional land managers use the term prescribed fire because you have specific objectives, you have specific outcomes, you burn under very specific conditions. And so a prescription is a planning document… you lay everything out ahead of time and you then implement it with very specific objectives in mind.

Riskind says the objectives set forth in prescribed burns vary from property to property.

There can be a whole series of objectives. From very simple things like fuel load reduction. You can have specific habitat objectives…to change the vegetation structure and composition to support waterfowl, or to support antelope, or lesser prairie chickens…or Houston toads for that matter.

Houston toad habitat took a big hit from wildfires last month. Learn more on tomorrow’s show.

The Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series and works to increase fishing, hunting, shooting and boating opportunities in Texas.

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

Fall Foliage at State Parks Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download

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Historically people associate fall foliage in Texas with Lost Maples State Natural Area.

01— And rightfully so…

Our State Park Guide, Bryan Frazier.

51—It is a unique place. You’ve got the big Sawtooth maple trees that are holdovers from the last ice age. Someone forgot to tell the trees they shouldn’t be there. But they’re there, and they’re there and they’re beautiful and people love it and flock to that park in late October and early November to see that. But one of the overlooked places for fall foliage is NE Texas.

You can actually find that out on our website texasstateparks.org/foliage, and we’ll do the fall foliage reports. And hopefully this year it will be good.

Thanks, Bryan!

We always knew Texas was a colorful place, and the fall foliage in NE TX is simply further proof.

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.