One of the most endangered birds in North America is the Attwater’s Prairie Chicken. Learn about efforts to help protect this species this month on the Texas parks and Wildlife TV series. Producer, Abe Moore.

57—There used to be close to a million of them in Texas and Louisiana; now they’re teetering around a hundred or so. I went down to the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge by Eagle Lake. It’s kind of their last stronghold right now.

So, the team goes through some serious struggles this breeding season, and one of the things that happens is they have an ace up their sleeve to kind of help the Attwater Prairie Chicken from going extinct.

Abe says he won’t provide any clues to that ace. We’ll just have to tune in to find out. Check your local listings.

The Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program supports our series; it’s funded by your purchase of fishing and hunting equipment and motor boat fuel. For Texas Parks and Wildlife, I’m Cecilia Nasti.

By the early 1960s native Texas bighorn sheep, which once populated 16 mountain ranges in the Trans Pecos, were gone. Unregulated hunting and disease from domestic sheep brought in by landowners did them in. But Texas Parks and Wildlife TV producer Bruce Biermann says a segment [on the TV show this month] spotlights a successful restoration project.

64—This story is called Home Again, because the bighorn sheep are finally being brought home again. For the very first time they are being released on a state park.

Forty six sheep were captured at Elephant Mountain and released. And, of those forty-six that I know of, they’ve had three die to mountain lions. But, that’s part of the normal cycle. They’ve had many babies already born. So, the birth rate is far outgrowing the death rate. And the population is surviving and thriving.

Thanks Bruce.

The show airs this week.

The Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program… funded by your purchase of fishing and hunting equipment and motor boat fuel.

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

The last naturally breeding wild flock of endangered whooping cranes winters along the Texas Coast at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, near Rockport.

04—they spend from about mid-November to about mid-April here in Texas.

Lee Ann Linam is a biologist with the Wildlife Diversity Program at Parks and Wildlife. We spoke in mid November when the birds were just beginning to show up along the coast following their long migration from their breeding grounds in Canada.

10—We have about 25 or 26 whoopers that have been sighted on the Texas coast. We normally, though, don’t get our final count until late December or perhaps early January.

The flock was nearly extinct in the late 1930s 1940s with fewer than 20 members, but its population has grown slowly thanks to well-coordinated efforts to protect habitat and the birds.

20—We had a peak of 283 in Texas last winter, which was a new record. We had approximately37 to 40 chicks that were fledged and were ready to fly I n late august in Canada, according to aerial surveys. So, if we get good enough survival, then we might hit that magic 300 mark.

The Aransas National Wildlife Refuge has a website that updates whooper arrivals, but…

04—The very best experience is to go down and see whooping cranes for yourself.

That’s our show for today. The sport fish and Wildlife restoration program supports our series and fund conservation programs in Texas. For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

As many as 1,400 whooping cranes migrated across North America to the Texas coast in the mid-1800s. By the mid 1940s, the population that wintered here was down to just 18 birds.

08—In the early days, it was primarily unregulated shooting that was causing loss of whooping cranes. And that was something that was fairly easy to control.

Lee Ann Linam is a biologist with the Wildlife Diversity Program at Parks and Wildlife. Because of well-coordinated efforts to protect habitat on the part of both agencies and private landowners, the birds have rebounded, but challenges remain.

11—But now the issues are pretty complex. Things like drought and climate change contributing to things like reduced freshwater inflows. Even the red tide occurrences are threatening the coast this year.

Healthy estuaries are critical to the survival of this magnificent species.

17—In the long-term, we as Texans have the challenge of figuring out how to keep those entire ecosystems healthy with sufficient freshwater inflows; balancing water needs and water uses, because everyone really is affected. So things like water use planning that are going on too, is an important part of the picture.

How many whooping cranes might we see in Texas this winter? Find out on tomorrow’s show.

The Sport Fish and Wildlife restoration program supports our series. For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

08—(AMB: prairie dogs calling”)

The black-tailed prairie dog population has declined dramatically throughout its range in Texas.

09—They originally covered a large portion of the state. And we currently have somewhere around one percent of the population that was originally here in the state.

Marsha may coordinates Texas Nature Tracker programs for Texas Parks and Wildlife. You can help wildlife biologists understand this population decline by participating in the Texas black-tailed prairie dog watch. There are three ways to get involved.

19—Volunteers can get involved just monitoring a population of prairie dogs on public property. Then we have adopt-a-prairie dog colony, where folks can go out and monitor a colony wherever they find a permanent colony they’d like to research. And then the third was is the most intense, and that’s a density study.

You’ll need a monitoring packet, and can get yours online from the TPW web site, or have one mailed to you. It’s important to preserve all native species, even this chubby ground-dwelling rodent; because if prairie dogs were gone…

09—We would lose habitat for burrowing owls and food for many hawks. We would lose, also, the prairie habitat that they maintain.

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

08—(AMB: prairie dogs calling”)

The lonesome, high-pitched staccato vocalization of the black-tailed prairie dog resonates throughout the Panhandle Plains.

09—Prairie dogs are a keystone species. A keystone species is a species that needs to be there for other species to survive.

Marsha May coordinates Texas Nature Tracker programs for Texas Parks and Wildlife. Once numbering in the millions, prairie dog colonies in Texas currently occupy less than 1-percent of their historic range. And their decline does not bode well for the other species that depend on them.

19—Prairie dog’s colonies are used by up to 170 other animals. They are directly or indirectly dependent upon the colony. And they aerate the soil; they actually keep the prairie a prairie. They will chew down any shrubs that are within the colony. So, they’re very important for that ecosystem.

Texas Black-tailed Prairie Dog Watch is a program designed to involve citizens to collect data about prairie dog colonies. Researchers use the information to understand the species’ dramatic decline. To help you help them, there’s a monitoring packet available.

08—We created this because we need to find out what’s going on with prairie dog colonies throughout the state of Texas; mainly the Panhandle and West Texas where they’re found.

And we’ll tell you how you can get involved tomorrow.

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

When the wind blows, its leaves shimmer, and in the spring, its beautiful white flowers bloom.

It was this beauty that inspired J. David Bamberger to save the endangered Texas Snowbell.

Bamberger owns 55 hundred acres in Blanco County and is an avid conservationist. But one of his greatest success stories is the Texas snowbell.

In 1987, state officials estimated there were a mere 87 snowbells in Texas. Since then, Bamberger’s team has planted and maintained nearly 700 more.

12—I spent five years going door to door, well ranch to ranch out in Edwards County, Real County, Val Verde County. And it took me five years to gain access to a ranch to look for the plant.

Once he did, Bamberger began collecting the seeds from the plants he found, replanting them on the ranches. But even with all his success, Bamberger says the Texas snowbell will likely always be endangered.

17—Now the scientists are saying that they won’t be delisted until we have 10,000 plants. That’s never going to happen, never ever going to happen. I think they need to reassess that number because before we came along the reintroductions were basically zero.

J. David Bamberger continues to monitor Texas snowbells and conduct research at his ranch, keeping the Texas snowbell alive and a part of .

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

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.