Ninety percent of the 12-hundred vertebrate species in Texas—that’s including fish—are non-game.

04—It doesn’t even include all the invertebrates that we have.

Invertebrates are estimated at 50-thousand. Matt Wagner, deputy Director for the Wildlife Division at Parks and Wildlife, says hunting and fishing license sales support conservation of game species and their habitats.

13—When you talk about non-game, and the species that aren’t hunted, there’s a lack of funding there. Although hunters have been paying for habitat work, we need to expand the number of folks that are contributing to conservation through their pocketbooks.

There are several ways for Texans to do that, and one way Wagner suggests celebrates a spiky Texas icon.

08—If you buy a horned lizard license plate for $30, $22 comes back to the agency to do non-game programs.

Sales of the horned lizard license plate generate between a quarter million to 300-thousand dollars annually.

12—We take that money, and then we leverage it with grants that come from the US Fish and Wildlife Service into the agency so that we can implement our Texas Conservation Action Plan.

Tomorrow: species that have benefited from Texans’ purchase of the conservation plate.

Our show receives support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program…funding the private lands and public hunting program.

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

During July, TPWD biologists collected environmental samples from along the Texas coast, creating a baseline record to gauge any impact in Texas from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. We caught up with biologist Chip Wood on Galveston Island in early July.

38—We’re working on trying to establish the normal conditions that we see along our coastline.

You know, how wide it is, you know, what types of plants or vegetation may be there, uh, if there’s any presence of any oil at all on the beach already from any other source. We started up in the Beaumont Port Arthur area earlier this week, and we hope, weather permitting, that we’ll be able to complete the entire Texas coast by the end of next week.

The team completed the task of sampling 21 stations along the Texas coast in just two weeks.

The effort is part of a plan developed by multiple natural resource trustee agencies in coordination with BP.

If you see oil in Texas waters or shorelines call the Texas General Land Office oil spill reporting line at 800-832-8224.

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

How do you balance the needs of wildlife and habitat, with wind energy? Find out this month and next on the TPW TV series: Producer Abe Moore.

One of the areas we go is up in the Panhandle, where wind energy is threatening tall grass prairies and the Lesser prairie Chicken, which is there; and it’s got biologists a little concerned.

They don’t do well with change on the landscape. We think that we’re displacing or moving a nesting female away from where she wants to be, and we don’t have much habitat left for her to go to.

We also do a second part on wind energy and we go down to the coast, where wind energy is being developed even faster than in the Panhandle. And, it’s a concern because it’s in the Central Flyway where millions of birds migrate through. So you have all these birds and you’re putting wind turbines in there. So there’s a balance there. We talk with Penescal Wind Farm down there. And they have a radar system set up where they can see the birds coming before they get there.

The radar itself generates a curtailment command, and in less than one minute all the turbines will be turning at less than one RPM. And in within five minutes, all of them are completely stationary.

So, both on the coast, and on the Panhandle, it comes down to habitat issues and trying to site them in the right place.

That’s our show… with support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

For more than a decade, researchers at the Heart of the Hills Fisheries Science Center in Kerrville have battled the hybrid progeny of Guadalupe bass—the state fish of Texas—and the introduced Smallmouth bass.

We’re raising thousands of pure Guadalupe bass here at the research station. And every year we stock them back into nature. Basically, what we’re doing is replacing the hybrids that are out there with these pure Guadalupe bass. And we’ll let nature take its course form there.

That’s Gary Garrett, who initiated the Guadalupe bass recovery program. The fish exists only in the Texas Hill Country—in the headwaters of streams that drain the Edward’s Plateau.

Shortly after non-native smallmouth bass were introduced to Texas waters, they bred with native bass, resulting in an explosion of hybrids. But using a technique called “saturation stocking,” Garrett and his crew have made exceptional progress.

So far we’re seeing here in Johnson Creek, where we began eh study, we started where 30 percent of the fish were hybrids. And that wasn’t stable—it was still increasing when we started. It is now down to around three percent. Which is excellent! Top go from thirty to three is great. Now we want to go from three to zero.

And Garrett expects to reach zero in the next four to five years.

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

Some ideas seem good when you first have them. Then after some time passes—not so much. Take smallmouth bass, for example, and their effect on the Guadalupe bass population.

Small mouth bass, of course, are not native to Texas, but were brought in as an additional sport fish. The problem is they can’t tell each other apart. Even though they look very different, but evidently, they act similar enough behaviorally that they’ll reproduce—and they have hybrids.

That’s Gary Garrett, Director of the Watershed Conservation Program. So, what’s wrong with hybrids, anyway?

Hybrids, by definition, are halfway between the parents. So, they’re not as well adapted for their environment; they may do well in the short run, but in the long haul, they’re really not going to be as good a species.

Besides, they’re the state fish of Texas, occurring only in the Hill Country. And, well, you just don’t mess with Texas.

The other thing we’re now seeing a little bit is that these hybrids are now also crossing with our largemouth bass…which is yet another problem we want to avoid.

And you definitely don’t mess with largemouth bass. But, we’ve started to turn the tide on these hybrids with saturation stocking.

And we’re confident that in the next four or five years we’re going to be able to solve this problem.

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

To hunt ducks, you need to know where to find them.

People know where ducks typically are—along the coastal zone, maybe in the playa lake region of the Panhandle—but oftentimes they don’t think about these other places.

And those other places might surprise you, says Dave Morrison, waterfowl program leader at Parks and Wildlife.

Had we not been surveying places like the Blackland Prairies and Rolling Plains, people wouldn’t understand that there’s a large number of ducks in Texas on the stock tanks out in the central part of Texas. Sometimes we’ll see upwards of 800-thousand birds there. Those numbers actually, a lot of times, rival the numbers of ducks we count on the coast.

Biologists are presently conducting the annual mid-winter waterfowl survey, where they visually count and ID birds throughout the entire state, in a small plane 150 feet overhead. It helps them understand the birds’ movement, which they discovered is weather dependent.

You get conditions that are dry on the coast, but you get a hurricane that pushes a lot of water up on that brush country, puts a lot of water—guess what—a lot of ducks show up there….that otherwise people wouldn’t know they’re there. They say, well, the ducks aren’t here. Well, yeah they are. They just moved. Habitat conditions forced them into other areas. So, it gives us the ability to better understand where do birds go under different circumstances.

That’s our show…we receive support from the Wildlife restoration program…working to increase shooting and hunting in Texas.

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

It’s time for the annual mid-winter survey of waterfowl.

Mid-winter surveys are pretty much a snapshot in time that states conduct every year the first week in January.

Dave Morrison is waterfowl program leader at Parks and Wildlife. He says the survey gives biologists an idea of how many of what species are “on the landscape.”

And, what it does for Texas, it gives us a comparison of what Texas has within the Central Flyway. Typically, when we do the mid-winter surveys, compared to the other nine states, seventy percent of the ducks are in Texas during that snapshot in time.

And this is good news for Texas duck hunters, because the survey can tell them where the ducks are.

It provides an opportunity for us, when people start questioning—well, there’s no ducks in Texas—well, we can say ‘no…here’s what it shows.” Because our surveys are designed to be able to detect changes over time. So, if there was a significant decline in numbers of ducks, we’d see it. But, by and large, we’d say, ‘well, they may not be where you’re at, but we know where they’re at. They’re over here.’

See what I mean? What factor moves ducks to unexpected locations? Find out tomorrow.

That’s our show…we receive support from the Wildlife Restoration Program…working to increase shooting and hunting in Texas.

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

Could spending more time in nature help kids with attention-deficit hyperactive disorder?

The research so far suggests that there’s a relationship between contact with nature or playing in green space and improvements in attentional functioning.

Dr. Andrea Faber Taylor researches child environment and behavior at the University of Illinois. In one study, she had children with ADHD take guided, 20-minute walks in a downtown area, a neighborhood, and a city park, and afterward, tested their ability to concentrate.

What we found was that after the children walked in the park they generally scored higher on the measure of attention. And surprisingly, the neighborhood and the downtown area were not significantly different in scores. That said to us, there’s something about the park that makes it, perhaps, more restorative than the other two settings.

Taylor’s findings match other research as well, which suggest it’s the setting, not just the activity, that’s important.

Based on our work and the work of others, we feel very confident that children benefit from contact with nature or even just what we call green space, a small pocket of trees and grass. Certainly, we’re not suggesting that it’s going to cure a child from ADHD, but it appears to, at least, temporarily reduce their symptoms.

That’s our show…For Texas Parks and Wildlife

Texas is known for its bass angling, but chief of inland fisheries management and research, Dave Terre, says catfish angling is gaining popularity.

Today in Texas, about 50 percent of our anglers say they prefer largemouth bass. But, about 20 percent of anglers prefer fishing catfish in Texas.

Parks and Wildlife is meeting the challenge.

We’re trying to launch an initiative that will help us understand what our anglers needs and desires are for catfish angling in the state. And then study catfish more intensively to determine how we can make fishing for catfish even better.

September first, new regulations governing the harvest of blue catfish went into effect at Richland Chambers Reservoir, Lake Waco and Lake Lewisville—water bodies offering trophy potential for catfish. Find the regulations on the Parks and Wildlife website.

Meanwhile, Terre says as our climate changes, and extended droughts continue to plague our state, catfish will have an important role to play.

Catfish are able to deal with fluctuating water levels better than largemouth bass which have been, and will continue to be, a popular sport fish in Texas. So, managing catfish more intensively will mean that we may be able to provide more fishing opportunities for Texans in the future years.

Our show receives support from the Sport Fish Restoration Program…supporting fisheries research in Texas. For Texas Parks and Wildlife I’m Cecilia Nasti.

The military…corporate America…and sports teams all depend on good recruiting—something they have in common with the endangered Attwater’s Prairie Chicken.

Historically, this bird went through periods of time when a population would be devastated, and then it would recruit from neighboring populations.

But they’ve had to change their recruiting tactics, says Mark Klym, Adopt-a-Prairie Chicken Program coordinator.

Today those recruits have to come from the zoos.

Development destroyed the prairie chicken’s coastal habitat, reducing its population from a million birds at the turn of the 20th century to just 90 animals today—and that’s up from an all time low of 40 in 2005. Currently Three small populations are being maintained in the wild.

The bird is being reproduced for release. We are confident that we have enough birds that we can maintain these three populations now that we have in the wild. But there are biologists out there working with landowners every day trying to get land back in condition. And we have a number of landowners just waiting and asking for release of the birds on their land.

Klym maintains the Attwater’s Prairie Chicken will continue to rebound, and not go quietly into that good night.

We frequently get emails and calls asking when we expect this birds to go extinct. We don’t expect it to go extinct. This is going to be another good news story.

Learn about the adopt-a-prairie chicken program at passporttotexas.org. The Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.