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This Month's Features
Bois d’Arc Goodbye
New reservoir brings a flood of memories of childhood explorations along a creek.
By Russell A. Graves
If I close my eyes, I can almost hear the old country songs drifting through the dilapidated farmhouse near the tiny Texas community of Edhube.
Thirty years ago my family lived in this old dwelling. It came complete with well water, a barn with a loft, and a screened back porch, where I would sleep when the weather was mild. Out in the country, there wasn’t much to do except roam the pastures and creek bottoms at the northern edge of the Blackland Prairie. That brings us to this story.
This is a story about how a creek, muddy and I suppose insignificant to most, transforms. The transformation affects not only the landscape, but people as well. This is a story about a creek’s cultural, natural and historic importance to a rural part of Texas. This is a story about an attempt by me and my brother Bubba to record the creek in film, still images, writing and any other way we can before a lake project floods 16,000 acres of old-growth bottomland hardwoods and permanently alters the flow of the creek that helped shape who I am today.
This is my story of Bois d’Arc Creek.
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In the Blink of a Golden Eye
The ocelot is on the brink of U.S. extinction.
By E. Dan Klepper
Only two populations of ocelot are left in the U.S. that we know of,” biologist Jody Mays of the Rio Grande Valley’s Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge reports. “Both are extremely small and at high risk of extinction.” One population resides at the refuge, the other on private property farther north.
The ocelot (Leopardus pardalis), a midsized wild cat covered in spots and streaks, once roamed the southern states of America, including Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and Arizona. From here, their historic range extended into South America. But over the last century, the U.S. population has been dramatically reduced, and now the cats, along with their natural habitat, have reached a tipping point.
After 25 years of ocelot field research, biologists can confirm for certain only a small number of known ocelots surviving in America today. Past estimates were based on the amount of available habitat, confirmed kills and sightings and trapper surveys. Decades-old estimates suggested at the time that only 80 to 120 cats remained in the wilds of the United States. Today, when known ocelots are totaled from the remaining two populations in the Valley, verified by trapped cats in-hand and those photographed by wildlife trip cameras, the current confirmed count of ocelots in the country stands at less than a few dozen.
Attack of the Killer Fungus
Will white-nose syndrome spread to Texas bats?
By Wendee Holtcamp
Dusk settles over Austin’s Lady Bird Lake as a few hundred people mill about, talking, waiting and watching the sky. Some peer over the edge of the Congress Avenue Bridge. Others gather on a grassy knoll below. A man juggles to keep people entertained, and others sell glow sticks and snacks to excited kids. A handful of people stand nearby, examining the four-panel educational kiosk. It’s my third visit, but I’m excited by the presence of my friend Doug, a first-timer. Soon, the reason why we have all gathered will become apparent. It’s one of nature’s most beautiful and inspiring spectacles — the nighttime emergence of hundreds of thousands of bats. Bat watching, particularly in Austin, has become an international phenomenon.
But what if all these bats were to vanish?
A mysterious ailment, white-nose syndrome (WNS), has killed more than a million hibernating bats of six species since 2006. Its rapid spread radiated outward from New York, and by the winter of 2008-09, had killed bats in eight other states: Pennsylvania, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Virginia and West Virginia. It has affected one endangered species, the Indiana bat, and imminently threatens three others.
As WNS spreads across the country, Texas must sit and wait, watching a ticking time bomb. It’s “the most precipitous wildlife decline in the past century in North America,” according to a consensus statement by scientists who gathered in Austin in May 2008 to discuss WNS as they prepared for a June 4 presentation to the U.S. Congress to plead for research funds.
Related Videos
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As you read some of the articles in this issue, you will find related TPWD videos embedded with the stories. |
Keep Texas Wild (PDF)
Buffalo Soldiers
