- ANNOUNCER: The Texas Parks and Wildlife Television Series is supported in part by Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation -- conserving the wild things and wild places of Texas, thanks to members across the state.

Additional funding is provided by Toyota.

Your local Toyota dealers are proud to support outdoor recreation and conservation in Texas.

Toyota -- Let's Go Places.

- NARRATOR: Coming up on Texas Parks & Wildlife... - We are not able to separate ourselves from bayous.

We have to stop viewing bayous as our adversary and start embracing them as our ally.

- It's 6 a.m. here at the Franklin Mountains State Park and we're here to hike with our dogs.

- It's a 5,000 acre lake, so there's a lot of space out there.

[theme music] ♪ ♪ - NARRATOR: Texas Parks and Wildlife, a television series for all outdoors.

[gentle music] - MARK KRAMER: Places like this are living museums.

♪ ♪ They're places where we have collections of the original historic diversity of life.

♪ ♪ And really, as coastal residents that's what we have, is an abundance of diversity.

♪ ♪ We don't really have topographical features like the Grand Canyon here.

We don't have iconic species like the Redwood forest, but what we have around us right here is a richness of life that is really hard to duplicate anywhere else.

♪ ♪ So not unusual for me on a morning paddle to be able to go out and see American alligators, river otters, brown pelicans, and bald eagles.

♪ ♪ Increasingly, it's difficult for us to find any place in Harris County where we can look back at what the land looked like before humans so dramatically altered it.

[gentle music] ♪ ♪ [latch clanks] Welcome to Armand Bayou.

Glad to have you guys on the boat today.

My name's Mark Kramer, I'm the Conservation Director and Chief Naturalist here at Armand Bayou Nature Center.

Armand Bayou is the most beautifully preserved bayou left in the Bayou City.

So by definition, bayous are short coastal streams.

Most of us growing up in Houston area are only familiar with the way bayous have been altered.

They haven't really been exposed to what the historic nature, what a bayou would've originally looked like.

Once you come here and have a little bit of background understanding that this bayou is the way those bayous looked before they were so dramatically altered, then it begins to make more sense.

If we could go back in time and we could visit the Houston area right at the beginnings of the formation of Houston, it would be a stark dramatic contrast to what we see today.

Houston, primarily, was composed of the waterways, but also, those bayous were surrounded by these forested areas that line the edges of the bayou.

But the great expanse of the area was actually coastal prairie, grasslands.

Many hundreds of thousands of prairie wetlands, forested wetlands would've died at the landscape and worked very much like a sponge.

So when the rain would fall on the landscape, they would hold the water and then slowly release it back into the bayou.

♪ ♪ Well, Houston began to grow pretty significantly.

30s, 40s, 50s, business, industry, many, many hundreds of thousands of people began to move to the Houston area.

And as they did, many of those ecosystem services that the prairies and forested wetlands had were removed.

Those wetland sponge effects were replaced by rooftops, roadways, parking lots.

Those are impermeable surfaces.

So when it rains, those rainwaters hit the roofs and roads and they're quickly ushered into the bayou.

One of the things that occurred were more frequent flooding events.

So for a number of decades, the primary tool that we use to mitigate those flood events was the process of channelization.

The process of straightening, widening, deepening, and on occasion, even lining the streambed of the bayou with concrete.

Bayous were treated exclusively as conduits of water, as ditches, and that their only real value was to try to keep water out of our homes by moving it out as quickly as possible.

So when you look at that, you don't see a productive, beautifully diverse ecosystem.

♪ ♪ [light music] ♪ ♪ - SUSAN CHADWICK: I grew up on the bayou.

We used to play on the sandy banks, but I never actually paddled down it until I came back in about 2014.

Was probably my first trip all the way down.

And I just thought, "There's no way I'm gonna let them kill this river."

♪ ♪ - You know, right here you've got examples of human attempts to control the bank and erosion.

You can see this sheet pile wall that's tilted over and you've got these concrete interlocking blocks that are collapsing and breaking apart.

But what you see quite a bit of is just this random sort of dumping of chunks of concrete.

You see that all over the place.

- SUSAN: We try to educate people about the danger and the folly of cutting down the trees and removing the vegetation because it just destabilizes the bank and removes wildlife habitats and they're just gonna have a lot of problems.

[gentle music] So all of this used to be forested.

We talk about the riparian forest that used to exist.

This was all -- it was called River Oaks for a reason.

♪ ♪ - Now it's interesting, this little section right here has been left natural and there're a bunch of cottonwoods and sycamores and willows that are coming up.

And I don't really see any issues, any erosion problems.

Vegetation absorbs so much more water and stabilizes the soil so much better than any engineering solution.

[gentle music] ♪ ♪ - SUZANNE SIMPSON: Houston is the Bayou City.

Bayous are a huge reason as to why Houston was founded in the first place.

We are not able to separate ourselves from bayous.

We have to stop viewing bayous as our adversary and start embracing them as our ally.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ The main way that Bayou Land Conservancy protects habitat is through conservation easements and conservation easements are a voluntary agreement that says this land is going to remain natural forever.

And by conserving the flood plains of Houston, we're making sure that these habitats that need to be flooded are flooding and not someone's home.

[gentle music] The wetland loss of Houston has been described as death by a thousand cuts 'cause its these little projects that have, over time, taken away our wetland ecosystems.

Preserving places like this and restoring places along our bayou systems, we can turn death by a thousand cuts into life by a thousand pieces.

[gentle music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - KELLI ONDRACEK: Clean water, clean air, wildlife habitat, erosion control, urban heat island effect, preventing flooding.

An ecosystem service is a service that nature provides.

You know, all the benefits that are not given a value, that people take for granted because, you know, they're not told about them but they're benefiting from them.

And when you lose them, then that's when you notice that they're gone.

The development of Houston is spreading.

And so I think it's important that we focus on these areas that we can create habitat.

Parks is a really good, easy first start.

We did the restoration at Milby Park, which we put in over 2,000 trees along the bayou.

We've just decided to create our riparian restoration initiative where we're targeting every park that's adjacent to a bayou to create a riparian buffer.

[gentle upbeat music] There's unlimited possibilities for restoration in some of these parks.

And one thing that I've noticed is that some of, even these smaller areas like Milby Park, are very concentrated with wildlife, where you go to some of these larger refuges and have to, you know, actively look for wildlife.

You go to a city park and it's right there.

[gentle music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - There are hundreds of species that live along the bayou systems.

And one of the most interesting ones, in my opinion, are the Mexican free-tailed bats.

So probably the most famous bat colony in the Houston area is the one that lives in Waugh Drive Bridge.

And we have close to 300,000 Mexican free-tailed bats living in the bridge.

They live in the crevices.

♪ ♪ They provide a whole food web that goes around that colony.

So you have bats that are providing food for a lot of different species, such as hawks, owls, peregrine falcons, snakes, herons, and then you also have turtles, fish, things like that, that live in the water of the bayou down below.

And they're eating bats and bat guano and things like that.

And then you have the bats that leave the bridge every night and they go out and eat the insects.

They're helping humans by being insect pest control at night.

♪ ♪ They're also a nature tourism opportunity for people.

So people can come down, spend the evening watching the bats, enjoying being down by the bayou, watching all the different wildlife species interact.

So it's a economic moneymaker for Houston.

♪ ♪ The challenge in urban planning is to consider the needs of both humans and wildlife.

And the fact that we have to share the space.

- MARK: As a native Houstonian, I believe that bayous really don't get the respect they deserve.

But I think our identity is changing as the decades go on.

We now identify ourselves as being Bayou City.

We now are beginning to improve and enhance bayous both ecologically and recreationally.

- KELLI: And I just think that there is a need to create this nature-based infrastructure, which has not been focused on before.

♪ ♪ - TOM: If you look at what we've got here, we've got this wild, natural spot right in the middle of town, and it's our local waterway that's our connection to the natural world.

It's worth caring about.

♪ ♪ - SUZANNE: We are just scratching the surface of what urban and wild land interfaces are able to provide.

And it really is eye-opening to see what can coexist with us in a cityscape.

- DIANA: And I think in the long run, we have a choice to make.

Do we work with nature to make things better, or do we still travel down the same path we've been doing?

We have an opportunity to find a better balance that benefits both people and wildlife.

[gentle music] - ADRIANNA WEICKHARDT: It's 6 a.m. here at the Franklin Mountains State Park and we're here to hike with our dogs.

[barking] So today we're doing our "Bark in the Park" hike, introducing new hikers, both dogs and people to beginner-friendly trails.

[dogs barking] All the dogs that come in in the morning are all starting to get adjusted to this new environment.

It's going to be a lot of barking, a lot of excitement.

[dogs barking] We let the dogs get it all out of their system, get to know each other, and it doesn't take much time at all for the dogs to settle down and make some new friends.

[energetic swing music] So today we're starting at 6:00 in the morning.

We wanted to be able to beat the heat since we're still kind of in our hot summer season.

[footsteps] We chose the lower sunset trail.

This is going to be about two and a half miles and it's slightly on the more advanced level of a beginner-level trail.

So, there's going to be some incline, there's going to be some rough spots, but for the most part, this is a beginner-friendly hike that we can take.

It circumnavigates one of the ridges here, and it's really beautiful.

[energetic swing music] Adoptable dogs will come out, and so today we're actually going to have seven adoptable dogs join us.

People love dogs, for the most part, and you really see some camaraderie happen out there on the trails.

[energetic swing music] A good rule of thumb for hiking out with your pets is stopping every 30 minutes or so.

[mellow music] We'll stop and assess situations to make sure the dogs are still behaving and enjoying themselves.

Then be thinking about your dog's nutrition and health.

So you want to make sure that you check your pet's pads.

At least offer your dog some water or treat.

[mellow music] Because we do have wildlife out here, pets are to remain on leashes throughout their time in the park in case they scare up something unexpected like a rattlesnake.

We're protecting the wildlife but we're also protecting our pets.

Usually we talk about "Leave No Trace" in regards to people, but dogs, since they're our responsibility, we want to make sure that they're leaving no trace as well.

Sometimes you have to carry that with you throughout the hike.

[energetic swing music] Sometime you want a little bit more of an adventure.

Some people just like to have some of that social interaction.

It's a fun environment, it's a learning environment, and we do this at a slow pace so that everybody can have a good time.

[energetic swing music] Even if people aren't looking for the tips or suggestions, just having the opportunity to hike with some other dogs, get some good training in, or even hang out in the back and just enjoy the scenery, you're always welcome.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [gentle music] - STEVE CLARK: In east Texas, you've got trees everywhere.

It's quite peaceful to be out in the woods.

- It's another way to commune and to get back to nature.

That you can get out and actually hear what's happening.

[soothing acoustic music] - NARRATOR: Trees, trails, water, and wildlife make Martin Creek Lake State Park a refreshing East Texas destination.

- STEVE: You can leave your cell phone off and maybe catch up with civilization, you know, another time.

With the noise in life, you know, noise around towns and roads, you get out here and instead of your ringing in your ears you start to calm down, your soul kind of quiets and you start to feel like there's possibilities.

You think about things.

[kids playing] - Well, it's safe, clean fun.

It's uh, don't really have to worry much.

There's no worries.

Having fun with the family, getting the kids outdoors, fishing, trying to teach them a little bit about nature.

- The lake's good.

We got a lot of good fishing out there.

- Yeah there's another one down there, right here.

- LEE: Catfish, bass, crappie, brim.

But the vast majority of people are coming out here for bass and catfish.

It's good fishing for catfish.

[lapping water] - NARRATOR: A power plant on the lake keeps the water warm, supporting a bountiful fish population year round.

Thanks to the lights on the dock, folks can fish any time of day or night.

- LEE: A lot of people come out to go fishing.

Some of them just come out to go boating.

[boat engine revs] It's a 5,000-acre lake so there's a lot of space out there.

We have day use at the swimming beach area.

A lot of people come out with canoes.

Two little volleyball courts where people can play volleyball.

The island is our primitive campsite.

Over there, there are 12 sites that have no water or electricity.

- Two bridges, we'll cross the two bridges.

- LEE: There's a trail around the island that a lot of people go on.

A lot of people come here for the hike and bike trails.

- PAUL: The trail is very clear.

You can follow it easily.

This time of the year there's a lot of leaves on the trail.

Real pretty.

- LEE: We're right now in the process of fall actually catching up with us.

So within a couple of weeks we'll have a lot of good color out here.

We have anything that you would want to observe out here from foxes to squirrels, bobcats, deer, a lot of deer are out here.

- STEVE: There's a huge draw to returning again to a peaceful place that makes you feel better about yourself.

You get peace here.

You can get the calmness.

It's kind of got a cozy feel to it here in East Texas.

I guess the word I'm looking for would just be a home away from home, really.

[soothing music] [gentle breeze] [birds squawking] [birds squawking] [birds squawking] [birds squawking] [birds squawking] [rolling thunder] [birds squawking, rain falling] [birds squawking, rain falling] [birds squawking, rain falling] [birds squawking, rain falling] [birds squawking] [birds squawking] [birds squawking] This series is supported in part by Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation -- conserving the wild things and wild places of Texas, thanks to members across the state.

Additional funding is provided by Toyota.

Your local Toyota dealers are proud to support outdoor recreation and conservation in Texas.

Toyota -- Let's Go Places.