- NARRATOR: The Texas Parks & Wildlife television series
is funded in part by a grant from the
Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program.
Through your purchases of hunting and fishing equipment,
and motorboat fuels, over 50 million dollars
in conservation efforts are funded in Texas each year.
And by Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation.
Helping to keep Texas wild with the support of proud members
across the state.
Find out more at tpwf.org
Additional funding provided by Ram Trucks.
Guts.
Glory.
Ram.
- NARRATOR: Coming up on Texas Parks & Wildlife ...
- We think about these concepts of sustainability for kids
and young people, and when you look at him you realize
that it's never too late.
- Tree and debris was just folded over, snapped in half.
It could have been a lot worse.
- There is nothing more unique to West Texas than
the pronghorn antelope.
- They are just part of the landscape.
I can't imagine not seeing them.
- [theme music]
♪ ♪
- NARRATOR: Texas Parks & Wildlife ,
a television series for all outdoors.
- ALBERT PECORE: Our place is a little to ragged-looking
to suit most people from the city.
The more rugged this place looks within reason,
the better I like it.
- JIM WILLIS: They are the epitome of what our creator
wants us to be, and what Albert Leopold,
the father of conservation, expects us to be.
- ALBERT: It's funny how things change over time,
how your plant diversity changes with, probably,
the management of your place.
- If I were him, I would say,
"I'm going to sit back and enjoy it."
He's still going.
He's still doing research and he's still implementing
new things.
It just amazes me how much enthusiasm both of them have.
- LEIGH ANN MORAN: We think about these concepts of
sustainability for kids and young people, and when you
look at him you realize that it's never too late.
He admits to you that they did it wrong for so many years.
- ALBERT: The first thing I planted up here was
coastal Bermuda grass.
We thought it was a wonder grass.
Turns out, it really wasn't.
Those seeds might be viable.
- It was a prevalent idea at the time, so they planted
all the Bermuda grass that they could.
And he was doing this research and realizing, before everyone
else, these native grasses are actually the way to go.
- ALBERT: If you have some native grass and some other
pasture grasses, forbs, legumes, you've got an insurance policy
that will benefit you in these drought years that we've had.
- LEIGH ANN: When you go into the native prairies where the
native grasses are, that's when you get this beautiful idea of
what it's supposed to look like.
And when you reach down and you see that the temperature is
20 degrees cooler underneath there and that it's still moist
when the whole rest of the ground is cracking, you go,
"Oh! Duh! Now I get it."
- ALBERT: This grass is growing from seed that we gathered
growing wild along the shoulder of state highway.
We have a little nursery down in an open place in one of these
riparian easements.
Most of the grass you see in here is eastern gamma grass.
There was one stock tank on the place when I acquired it
and now we've got five stock tanks.
I just hated to see it run off.
We've got one in particular that stays almost full
most of the time.
Cattle are very important.
Cattle take 20% of what they graze away from the land,
and leave 80%.
That's a pretty good trade-off.
- Wilda and Bert both understand that they're
not raising cattle, they're growing grass.
And cattle are just one of the tools used to manage that grass.
- ALBERT: I can remember the first cross-fence we had
on this place, where we had two pastures instead of one.
Well you don't do much rotation with two pastures,
but it was an improvement over the way we were grazing.
- LEIGH ANN: And my mom is awesome.
She is that quiet force and energy behind a lot of what
goes on up here, helping us all to see the rainbow.
- ALBERT: She's been a great help to me in what we've
done up here, and is still very enthusiastic about what we're
trying to do in the future.
- WILDA: I'm getting this mesquite that got too big
for me.
- JIM: They have the faith that anticipates it happening,
and they have the hope that believes it will happen,
and they have the patience that quietly awaits for it to happen.
- ALBERT: Start as soon as you can.
And someday, people are going to look across the fence
and realize what you're doing, and how that would benefit the
whole county if everybody did it.
[music]
- My name's Ethan Belicek.
I am the Park Superintendent at Blanco State Park.
The thing that flows through it behind me is the Blanco River.
Memorial Day last year started out pretty typical.
The weather, it had been raining for two, three weeks.
That particular day was my wife and I's sixth anniversary.
- We were going to grill out.
Unfortunately, you couldn't sit around the fire
because it was pouring rain.
- ETHAN: I looked across the river to where our
new playground was, and it was underwater.
[rushing water]
- Up in the campsites, even though the river
wasn't up there the campsites were still flooded, almost,
just from the rain, a foot.
It was up to my knees.
- BRANDY: And we started gathering people because
they were just looking for somewhere to go.
- BUFFIE MARQUEZ: So as the river started rising,
going over our low water crossing, those had to be
closed off, and all those people on this side of the
park went up to the residence, Ethan Belicek's house.
- We immediately changed our plans from a nice,
relaxing afternoon, to, you know, taking care of things.
Getting people up, getting them safe, and make sure we got
through the night okay.
- BUFFIE: That next morning, I get a call from Ethan.
He said, "When you go in, start documenting."
- MARTIN: We had 20 feet to 40 foot wall of water come
through the park.
It was impassable.
- BUFFIE: Now, I've got the camera ready and I see just
debris everywhere.
I'm sorry.
[solemn music]
Tree and debris was just folded over, snapped in half.
Just the sand, the dead fish, the fence lines pushed over.
And then, of course, the maintenance shop just
windows broken out of it, and everything, all the equipment
just gone or just washed out.
Mud everywhere.
[splashing]
It could have been a lot worse.
- ETHAN: I think we all have breathed a pretty grateful
sigh of relief that we hadn't lost anything but property,
and that can be replaced.
We didn't get anybody hurt.
We didn't have anybody lose their life, and yeah,
I'd consider that a blessing.
[upbeat music]
We're a community here, you know.
As I mentioned earlier, we're inside the city limits.
So the flood didn't just happen to Blanco State Park.
It happened to our neighbors in the community.
We had a tremendous out-pour of support.
I know one lady said, "You've got an army waiting,
just take advantage of it."
That statement alone probably helped me realize
we're gonna get through this.
We're gonna rebuild this park and we're gonna get
back on our feet.
- BUFFIE: There was a lot of heartfelt genuine,
"I wanna help."
- MAN: Stand by, you can see where the water came up.
- BUFFIE: It wasn't just Blanco that was hit, it was Wimberley,
it was San Marcos, so everyone's heart was tied just all the
way down the river.
[upbeat music]
- ETHAN: We definitely want to say that it was not
a single effort.
I had a team here and we are most definitely that here
in Blanco, we're a team.
When all was said and done, after the cleanup,
we ended up taking 432 trailer loads of debris out of here.
- I'm just glad we had the team we had.
As you can see today, the park is beautiful.
- WOMAN: I'm proud that they had the common goal that this needs
to get back into the public's hands, so that they can start
sharing memories again.
- ETHAN: My wife and I did finally get to cook our
anniversary steaks three to four days later.
Every year, around Memorial Day, several people call
and ask if we're having steaks, if they should get
the boats ready.
So we may try chicken next year.
[music]
- NARRATOR: These researchers are trying to solve a puzzle.
- JAMES WEAVER: Going to be up on the side of that hill Shawn.
In a coyote den.
- NARRATOR: They are looking for a missing pronghorn antelope.
- SHAWN: Pretty close now.
There it is.
- NARRATOR: All that's left of this particular animal
is a radio-tracking collar.
- JAMES: Well?
I think it's probably predation.
- SHAWN: Because we don't have a body on this collar,
we can't determine anything other than that it's gone.
- NARRATOR: But this much is known: pronghorn antelope are
fading away, suddenly, in a place they were once abundant.
- MAN: There's nothing more unique to West Texas than
the pronghorn antelope.
Until four or five years ago,
they were just part of the landscape.
We've just seen a huge decline.
- LOUIS HALVERSON: When we lose the pronghorn, we lose a little
bit of us, and we've got to figure it out here pretty quick
before it's too late.
[helicopter whirs]]
- NARRATOR: Above the fields of the Texas Panhandle,
a helicopter hauls some unusual cargo.
[animal groaning]
These pronghorn are being transported from far north Texas
to supplement populations in west Texas.
- BILL MILLER: You used to be able to drive from Valentine to
Marfa and maybe see 2 or 300 of them just from the highway
and now you're lucky if you see one.
[helicopter buzz]
- NARRATOR: To help the dwindling herds around Marfa,
Texas Parks and Wildlife is transporting some 200 pronghorn
from the northern Panhandle.
[antelope groaning]
Pronghorn are the fastest land mammals in North America,
so catching them is not easy.
[net gun pops]
[music]
[truck passing]
- NARRATOR: After a nine-hour drive, the pronghorn take their
first steps into their new home.
- MAN: I just want to check on this one here.
Billy, you want to take a look in?
- NARRATOR: Biologists will monitor the new arrivals
and study their fawns born in the spring.
[music]
- BILLY TARRANT: We're hopeful that they will prosper
and do well.
The best feeling is going to be when they start making babies
and these populations come back to what they used to be.
- NARRATOR: The population began to crash in 2008.
- SHAWN: Five dead here, four dead there.
- And we blamed a lot of that on the drought
but we began to get rains and watch the antelope continue
to decline and then we knew we had a problem.
- NARRATOR: To unravel the mystery, Professor
Louis Harveson and his wildlife management students began to
investigate causes of mortality.
- LOUIS HARVESON: We started sampling some of the pronghorn,
and one of the first clues that we found from those necropsies
was the haemonchus.
- NARRATOR: This common pronghorn parasite was being
found in alarming numbers.
- LOUIS: If you have thousands of these worms in your stomach,
then obviously you become anemic, you're weakened,
you're not going to evade predators and cold spells
and heat spells like you would if you were a more
healthy animal.
- NARRATOR: The stomach worms may be just one prong
of the pronghorn problem, but initial findings make way
for further study.
- BILLY: Were you picking up that one from over there?
Is that one from over here?
- SHAWN: How many were predator-related?
- JAMES: So far?
Five we contributed to some type of predation.
- NARRATOR: By summer, Marfa has not been very welcoming
to those relocated pronghorn.
- There's not a lot out there for pronghorn to eat.
So it's just pretty rough on them right now.
- LOUIS: It's going down on the records as one of the
worst droughts that we've experienced.
- NARRATOR: And drought has not been the only challenge.
- SHAWN: We've had several huge fires in the Trans Pecos region.
- LOUIS: A lot of livestock have been lost, a lot of fences have
been lost, hundreds of thousands of acres, but in the end,
if there is a silver lining, it is that those rangelands
actually will come back in healthier condition,
if and when we ever get rainfall.
[car passing]
- NARRATOR: What little rain has fallen has heightened
another threat.
Runoff has greened up the roadsides, making these perilous
places all too tempting to wildlife.
- SHAWN: Within the last few weeks we've had several
vehicle collisions.
- NARRATOR: And there may be other connections
to the drought.
- It's pretty dry.
They don't have a lot to choose from, you know,
they're going all day long.
- NARRATOR: Without enough weeds and forbs, poor nutrition could
be a piece of the puzzle.
- MIKE: They have to expend a lot of energy to come find one
piece to do any good.
- SHAWN: They could be filling up on some sort of vegetation
but they're not really getting what they need to survive.
- NARRATOR: Pronghorn survival here, ultimately depends on the
health of their offspring, so fawn mortality is the focus
of graduate student, James Weaver's, research.
- JAMES: We've been experiencing some extremely low fawn crops
throughout the region, and so I'm out here trying
to figure out why.
It's really good if you can spot a doe right before dark
and see the fawn up and watch it until it beds down.
[engine shuts off]
Finding the fawn is the hard thing.
That's the only fawn that's still around, so I think
that they've just...
- SHAWN: Have fawned and perished?
- JAMES: Yeah.
- NARRATOR: The researchers watch the herd until sundown,
in hopes they can locate fawns after dark.
[4-wheeler driving]
Armed with spotlights, they scan for eyes
on the horizon.
- MIKE: See something?
- JAMES: Our population is pretty sparse, so we spend
a lot of time just searching.
Yeah, there was big eyes there.
Just keep going like this and we'll go right back down...
Sometimes we come across them pretty quick.
Other nights we've spent several hours out here
and not caught a thing.
- There he is.
- JAMES: Shhhh...
Aw!
[playful music]
- NARRATOR: The fawns may be young, but they're already fast.
- Got him, got him, oh [bleep]!
- JAMES: How'd we miss it?
[playful music]
- SHAWN: These are very labor-intensive research
projects.
[playful music]
[thud]
- JAMES: Ah, he won this battle.
- NARRATOR: The crew gives up the chase for the first fawn,
but for the rest of the night, the captures go smoothly.
- JAMES: Come on.
[fawn cries]
- Good catch James!
Nice snag, dude.
That worked.
- JAMES: It did work.
We got one!
It's a big one too!
[fawn bawls] Okay, baby, okay.
The main thing is the weight.
The weight's really a strong correlation to survival.
No, no, nope!
So the heavier the animals are at birth,
the more likely they are to survive.
- Nine pounds.
- JAMES: Nine.
Where's the clipboard?
We measure them from the nose to the tail head,
look at new hoof growth...
- Dam present?
- JAMES: Yes.
...we put ear tags in the animal, and then we also
collar it.
Alright.
We had some success.
- MIKE: It was a good night.
We've had some really hard nights so far.
This was a pretty good night.
- NARRATOR: The fawn seems dazed at first, but as the crew
packs up, it is off and running again... hopefully on to a long
life as an adult pronghorn.
- MIKE: No, you did good except for that one catch and release.
[laughs]
- JAMES: It's going to be an early night, you'll be
home by 3:00.
- MIKE: What am I going to do until 5:00 in the morning?
[laughs]
- SHAWN: We've got a great team working on this, so I'm very
hopeful that we'll find answers.
- NARRATOR: As research into the plight of the pronghorn builds,
so does support for this West Texas icon.
- JAMES: It keeps you going to know that you're helping
the species out.
It's definitely a joint effort.
[music]
- LOUIS: In the midst of a drought, optimism is hard to
embrace, but I think we have the right team together.
Everyone wants to know what's going on with the pronghorn,
and so I know with that kind of support from the community,
we can turn this around.
[music]
[birds call]
- RUDY MESA: The sunrise here at Choke Canyon is just
extravagant, just the different colors that come through,
the birds in the background.
It's just all worth getting up early in the morning just to
hear and view that.
[music]
[motor boat revs]
[birds call]
[truck passes by]
- NARRATOR: Halfway between San Antonio and Corpus Christi,
Choke Canyon State Park may be quiet, but it's never dull.
- If you're looking for an outdoor experience that will
keep you busy the whole time you're visiting here
at the park, Choke Canyon is the place to go.
You can view the birds.
You can catch the fish.
- ANGLER: Here we go!
- RUDY: You can relax and enjoy nature at its best.
- NARRATOR: Located on the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail,
Choke Canyon is a Grand Central Station for migrating birds.
- See where those egrets are over there, snowy egrets
and great egrets?
- NARRATOR: A variety of other critters make their
home here, too.
- See the rabbit, the cute little rabbit?
- NARRATOR: And if you think it's lively on land,
wait until you try the water.
[energetic music]
- ANGLER: Hey, got another one!
- NARRATOR: The 26,000-acre Choke Canyon reservoir is
one of the best kept fishing secrets in Texas.
- ANGLER: There he is, folks, Choke Canyon.
Look at the gut on that fish!
- NARRATOR: It's also a place to reconnect with what's
important in life.
- All of our grandkids have been down here.
Every one of them has been down here and camped with us,
saw the gators with us, because I think camping and fishing
is family.
- Dad look!
Dad!
[music]
- NARRATOR: Sometimes a little nature can go a long way.
[music and birds calling]
[water lapping on shore]
[Cicadas call]
- JIM MUELLER: We're at Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife
Refuge where we have the endangered Black-capped Vireo,
and here we're studying their reproductive success.
[Chicks cry for parents]
This species builds its nest about three to four feet off the
ground in shrubs or small trees.
The nests typically have three to four young in them.
These chicks are about two days old, their totally reliant
on their parents.
Here you can see both birds at the nest, you can see they
look a little different.
The mom has a grey cap, the dad has dark black cap,
hence the name Black-capped Vireo.
[Chicks cry]
This is something people may find gross, but the chicks
produce their poop in a little sack it's kinda like a diaper
with the poop in it.
Both parents will either eat the sack or carry it away from the
nest and dispose of it to keep the nest clean.
[Chicks cry]
These chicks will grow about 800 percent over the
course of the next 10 to 12 days before they fledge.
Under optimum conditions they'll continue to breed throughout the
summer, and if everything works out they can actually produce
up to two successful broods in one year.
This species is endangered but we are creating a lot of habitat
on the refuge and elsewhere.
And with continued success we may see that this species
recovers and is able to be taken off the endangered species list
sometime in the future.
- Everybody ready?
[bikes on trail]
[bikes on trail]
[bikes on trail]
[bikes on trail]
[bikes on trail]
[bikes on trail]
[bikes on trail]
[bikes on trail]
[bikes on trail]
[bikes on trail]
[bikes on trail]
- NARRATOR: This series is funded in part by a grant
from the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program.
Through your purchases of hunting and fishing equipment,
and motorboat fuels, over 50 million dollars in
conservation efforts are funded in Texas each year.
And by Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation.
Helping to keep Texas wild with the support of proud members
across the state.
Find out more at tpwf.org
Additional funding provided by Ram Trucks.
Guts.
Glory.
Ram.
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