There are two types of aquatic mussels in Texas: those that belong here, and those that don’t.

Texas Parks and Wildlife aquatic habitat enhancement director Earl Chilton says native mussels indicate when rivers and lakes are healthy.

10—Native mussels often have pretty strict environmental requirements, and you can tell whether a system is healthy or not by the kind of native mussel population it has.

Invasive species like zebra mussels aren’t native to Texas. Because they have no natural competitors here, they reproduce quickly. And large numbers of zebra mussels can clog pipes and even kill native mussels.

14—Unlike native mussels, zebra mussels have byssal threads they use to attach to various objects. They also can attach to native mussels and when enough of them attach to a native mussel they can actually suffocate that mussel.

So how can you tell the difference between these good and bad mussels?

07—Zebra mussels are small and they’re going to attach to things. If you see a mussel attached to something it is a non-native mussel.

But native freshwater mussels don’t attach to anything. Now that you know the difference, you can find out how you can help stop the spread of zebra mussels and protect the native species www.texasinvasives.org.

That’s our show… the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration program supports our series… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Holidays challenge the creativity of gift-givers everywhere. However, if you have nature lovers on your list, gift giving is easy—and the giving is twice as nice.

A seventy-dollar Texas State Parks Pass is a thoughtful and sensible gift for your outdoor enthusiast. Pass holders enjoy twelve months of unlimited visits to more than ninety state parks and historic sites.

They also receive discounts on camping, park store merchandise and recreational equipment rentals. Money spent on the pass supports your Texas state parks.

For thirty dollars each, you can give the drivers on your list a conservation license plate. Twenty-two dollars from every sale goes directly to help fund conservation efforts in Texas. The horned lizard plate, in particular, funds research and conservation of non-game species such as the iconic horned lizard.

Give every outdoor lover on your list access to more than a million acres of public land—with the Limited Use Permit—for the ridiculously reasonable price of twelve dollars.

Permit holders receive twelve months of access to Texas’ wildlife management areas, where they can fish, hike, bird watch, cycle, and camp.

When you give one of these gifts, you delight the receiver, and help support state parks and conservation in Texas.

That’s our show…we receive support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration program…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

This is Passport to Texas

Redfin Bay is a popular destination for anglers.

In fact, this area is number one for guided fishing trips, and second highest along the Texas coast for private boat anglers. Visitors outnumber locals two to one.

Popularity comes with a price, says Faye Grubbs, a coastal fisheries biologist based in Corpus Christi. Seagrass provides essential food and habitat for marine life. Yet, submerged propellers severly trench the area uprooting the aquatic plants. There is a regulation to protects these plants.

And the basics of that regulation are, there’s no uprooting of Seagrass allowed inside this scientific area – that includes 32-thousand acres. Now, boaters are allowed throughout the area – no area’s shut down. Trolling motors and anchors are exempted from the regulations. So if you do uproot any seagrass by using one of those devices, you’re exempted from the law.

Trolling motors and anchors are exempt because any damage they might inflict is minimal.

[seagull call] Overall, what we’re trying to do is really get boaters to think about what they’re doing out in the water. The onus, the responsibility, is on the boater to know the area he’s fishing in, and also protect and preserve some of the habitat that supports the fish that he’s fishing for.

Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series. Through your purchases of hunting and fishing equipment and motorboat fuels, over 40 million dollars in conservation efforts are funded in Texas each year.

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

This is Passport to Texas

Water quality in Texas has improved from last century, but increasing demand, coupled with current drought conditions, means we have less of it.

Andrew Sansom, executive director of the River Systems Institute at Texas State University, leads a team of 2,000 volunteers, called the Stream Team. These concerned citizens signed on to track Texas’ water quality.

26—Our waters from a quality standpoint are much better than they were a generation ago. The waters in Texas were far more polluted in the 50s and 60s than they are today. The principle issue that we’re facing today is an issue of quantity. Because we are essentially running out of it. And the more our population grows, the worse this drought becomes, the more acute that problem will be.

If you take a look at the U.S. Geological Survey Web site, you’ll find a map of the United States—a map with dots representing current stream flow. The redder the dot, the more the stream flow is below average. Take a look at Texas and you’ll see it covered in dark, red dots.

11—Today, the hill country of Texas is in the most extreme drought conditions in the United States. You can see evidence of the drought in the hill country anywhere you look.

We’re nearing drought of record proportions. All citizens can make a difference by reducing water use in the home and landscape.

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

This is Passport to Texas

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.

This is Passport to Texas

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.

This is Passport to Texas

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.

Although a popular source of renewable energy, wind turbines are responsible for tens of thousands of bat deaths annually. Sometimes the animals fly into the structures or, because of the rapid pressure drop that occurs as air flows over the turbine blades, bats’ lungs become…let’s just say… damaged.

Ed Arnett, a conservation scientist at Bat Conservation International and coordinator of the Bats and Wind Energy Cooperative, says he expects an increase in bat fatalities.

7.0—I do believe the threats to threatened and endangered species will increase as we enter into the range of those creatures.

As bats hunt for insects during low-wind periods, turning off the turbines during these times may save the animals.

11—By reducing the amount of operating hours during those low wind periods we reduce the fatalities of bats at least half and up to as high as 87 percent of the fatalities can be reduced.

Other solutions under development include white noise emitted from the turbine to possibly keep the bats away altogether.

12—Bat Conservation International certainly supports the development of renewable energy resources. But we want to do that wisely. And we don’t want to develop at the expense of today’s resources for tomorrow’s hopes.

Ultimately, Arnett says, animals need to be taken into consideration as we develop renewable energy.

That’s our show… with support from the SFWR Program, funded by your purchase of hunting and fishing equipment and motor boat fuel.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife I’m Cecilia Nasti.

This is Passport to Texas

Almost lost to extinction, a small herd of southern plains bison—the state’s official herd—roams 300 acres at Caprock Canyon State Park in the Texas Panhandle.

04—This herd was started back in the 1870s by Charles Goodnight.

Park Superintendent Donald Beard says Goodnight, a legendary Texas cattle rancher, brought bison to Palo Duro—after his wife Mary Ann expressed concern about the number of animals being slaughtered.

08—They are probably the last true example of the great Southern Plains Bison. This is how they were when the roamed freely.

Superintendent Beard says the herd has unique genetic markers not found in other bison, which is just one reason to preserve their lineage.

15—Strictly for science, it’s a very important herd. Not only that, but the history behind this herd is amazing. This is one of the five foundation herds that bought bison back from the brink of extinction in the late 1800s.

And not just in Texas.

09—Charles Goodnight made a deal with the National Park Service, and sent some bulls to Yellowstone. So this herd here helped bring the Yellowstone herd back up as well.

Soon, the official herd of Texas will be a step closer to roaming wild. That’s tomorrow.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife I’m Cecilia Nasti.

SFX [Houston toad call]

The Houston toad makes that sound, and it’s become a rare sound over the past two decades. Years of drought and habitat destruction have diminished the Houston toad population to only a few hundred.

Michael Forstner is a professor at Texas State University.

Through the Texas parks and Wildlife Landowner Incentive Program (LIP), he’s worked with private landowners in Bastrop County to restore habitat for the Houston toad.

10—Most of the people in Bastrop want to live in Bastrop County because it looks a certain way. And if it keeps looking like the lost pines, we keep the toad.

So what do these “lost pines” look like?

21—Imagine a cathedral forest. Most of the habitat that we find Houston toads doing the best in, whatever that means for its current levels, are gallery forests. Those are the forests that you see in the images for computer desktop wallpapers. Those are large-trunked trees with open space beneath them.

By planting the fast-growing loblolly pine trees, a habitat can be restored in about twenty years.

So if current efforts are successful, Forstner says the Houston toad population could make a comeback.

07—The best thing about the Houston toad is they make 6,000 eggs at a time. Those babies just need a place to grow up.

Find more information on endangered species, including the Houston Toad, on the Texas Parks And Wildlife website.

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