Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

For the past year, Texas Parks and Wildlife has been reaching out to the public via social media. Social media allows people to connect with one another using Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Blogs, and various apps.

Whitney Bishop is a Texas Parks and Wildlife video and web producer who helps oversee the agency’s social media efforts, and who spoke with me about the value of social media to the agency.

I think the value of social media is, it give s our agency a human face. We’re not just a big anonymous agency. We’re letting people know what we do, and we having conversations with people, interacting with them. So, it helps us talk to people out there, Texans, and people who are interested in the Texas outdoors.

Yes, in fact, we are going to produce some how-to videos about how to Geocache to help people understand what geocaching is all about, and the correct way to do it, so you don’t damage the environment.

So be on the look out for those videos on YouTube. Also we encourage you to join or start a conversation with Parks and Wildlife on our Facebook fan page.

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

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This is Passport to Texas

Buying ready to cook food wasn’t an option for early Texans. The majority grew vegetables and raised animals to feed their families. Timing was everything when processing certain foodstuffs.

05—Things like this butchering that we’re doing today, or making sausage, has to be done in the wintertime.

Summer heat would spoil fresh meat, says Stephen Baethge, Sauer-Beckmann Living History farm park ranger and interpreter. The farm, at the LBJ State Park and Historic site, interprets early Texas life.

05—What we’re doing on a daily basis down here is just trying to show you how people would have lived a hundred years ago.

Which means this early 1900s farmstead did not have the benefit of refrigeration. If families wanted bacon or sausage in summer, for example, they had to plan ahead and make it during the cooler months of the year.

05—Because a lot of the meats we prepare, they take about ten days to cure.

Taking 10 days in Texas’ summer heat to cure meat would raise a stink. Staff uses 60 % beef to 40% pork when making sausage, a favorite of the German families that settled Texas Hill Country communities.

10—You know, these people ate a lot of lard, they ate a lot of fat. But they were working so hard that it really didn’t make them fat, because they burned it all off. They worked their way through all those calories.

Something to consider next time you’re in air conditioned comfort, eating a BBQ sandwich, needing to unbutton the top button of your jeans. That’s our show… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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This is Passport to Texas

Garner State Park, which may be our most popular park, seems to have it all, including access to water, beautiful scenery, cabins and campsites, and even a nightly dance during the summer. And now it has one more thing—money for much-needed repairs. Our state park guide, Bryan Frazier, explains.

Garner State Park is one of those iconic natural resource wonders that we have in Texas. So many people have visited Garner State Park and love it and enjoy the Frio River, and the cabins.

We’ve been able to spend a couple of million dollars toward those renovations. Toward those projects, and those are all due to voter approved, legislative approved increases in the previous two biennium. And I think people are going to see that in the next several months.

Go to the Texas Parks and Wildlife YouTube channel where you’ll find a video of Garner State Park…it’s like being there.

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

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This is Passport to Texas

For $10-dollars by mail, or $9 online, anyone can enter Big Time Texas Hunts for the chance to win one of seven exclusive hunting trips, including the popular Texas Grand Slam—an opportunity to hunt all four of Texas’ premier big game animals:

07—White-tailed deer, mule deer, pronghorn antelope, and desert bighorn sheep, which is very rare to get the chance to do that.

Linda Campbell is Program Director of the Private Lands and Public Hunting Program. Other packages include the Whitetail Bonanza, Premium Buck, Big Time Bird Hunt, Exotic Safari and more.

14—Enter as many times as you wish to for one or more packages. Most of our hunts are held on private lands—high quality ranches with great lodges. We feed people well, and they’re fully guided. And it’s a really neat opportunity.

The goal of the program is to raise money for wildlife management and research, habitat conservation and public hunting opportunities in Texas. Deadline to enter is October 15.

13—And that is so we can draw the hunters, get them in touch with the outfitters and people can get in the field. In certain areas the rut happens early, so we want to get the hunters in touch with the outfitters and get them going by the time deer season begins.

Find a link to Big Time Texas Hunts on our website, passporttotexas.org.

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

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This is Passport to Texas

Most people support conservation in theory. Yet, hunters and anglers support it in practice when they buy licenses.

12—All of the money from hunting and fishing license sales finds its way back into wildlife conservation and wildlife management, whether it’s a hunting activity or a fishing activity.

Tom Newton, a license revenue manager, says money from the sale of licenses is significant.

12—License sales, which includes hunting and fishing, of course, all of our recreational licenses, and our commercial licenses…we usually net somewhere around ninety million dollars depending on how the year went.

Resident hunters and anglers aren’t alone in supporting conservation in Texas, their non-resident counterparts also make an important impact.

11—It’s a very large impact. For the hunters, the licenses generate 2.7 million in annual revenue. And fishing licenses, approximately 3.5 million in license revenue.

Even if you don’t hunt or fish, when you buy hunting or fishing licenses, you help support conservation work in Texas.

Hunting licenses go on sale August 15; with dove season fast approaching, Newton recommends buying early to avoid lines.

That’s our show… made possible by a grant from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program…funded by your purchase of fishing and hunting equipment and motorboat fuel.

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

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