- 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 and Wildlife... - The threat to the Ogallala has led to folks rethinking the value of playas.

[chainsaw whirs] - If you want a good workout, clear brush.

[bear groans] - This is the first time to rehabilitate bears and release back into the wild.

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

[soft music] - RYAN: The habitat here is undisturbed.

Some of the best habitat in the area.

To get to adequate bear country which we've selected here, Devil's River State Natural Area, you have to get off the beaten path.

We're hoping that this is the first step in reestablishing this population of bears in west Texas.

[bear groaning] It's a great opportunity to put some bears back on the landscape.

[dramatic music] - NARRATOR: This is a happy story about bears but it did not start that way.

- REPORTER: A black bear and her cub were spotted roaming around a Del Rio neighborhood causing quite a scene with neighbors.

It was a somewhat chaotic situation that had a tragic ending.

Officials said the mother bear was shot and killed by a resident.

The cub is now in custody of state officials.

- NARRATOR: Two separate black bears in sad circumstances.

- One was orphaned from a Del Rio resident that shot the mother.

The other bear was in a horrific train accident.

The party that she was a part of two were killed by the train.

And this is the last one of the group.

Four to five year old female.

They weren't in good shape.

And given the age of the cub, it was my feeling that we weren't gonna be able to do anything for these bears.

- This bear has gone from 60 pounds, she weighed in at 128.

- NARRATOR: Enter Dr. Kathleen Ramsey.

- So she's really put on a lot of weight.

- NARRATOR: She is a veterinarian in New Mexico.

- Such good hound dogs.

Animals need help.

That's why I'm a veterinarian.

I will look again.

They can't just knock on your door and say, here I am.

All wildlife.

I don't care what it is, needs help.

So pretty.

Yes.

- NARRATOR: At her wildlife clinic, Dr. Ramsey has successfully rehabilitated more than 600 black bears.

- Been doing rehabilitation for over 40 years, now.

It's been an interesting challenge.

The first two Texas bears that I know of being rehabilitated.

I live in Northern New Mexico, we do Northern New Mexico bears and not Mexico bears.

So I had to first figure out what does she eat?

They're getting their second chance.

This is what it's all about.

Okay, one, two, three.

- Okay.

Our success in rehabilitation is by getting these animals on the natural diets that they would be eating in the wild.

So she's been eating acorn, she's been eating pecans, road kill, Juniper berries, prickly pear fruit, prickly pear petals, making her eat what she should be eating in Texas.

- NARRATOR: The bears must have liked the menu because they put on some weight.

- RYAN: Gives them a better chance of survival.

- DR. RAMSEY: The big bear, she came in about 60 pounds, went out at 128.

Yeah, right there Ty is probably good.

This little cub, she came in at 30 pounds and Miss Texas went out at a whopping 102 pounds.

- RYAN: All Right, she's ready to go.

[cage clanging] She's free.

- DR. RAMSEY: Very healthy.

- RYAN: Good water, good food.

Good place to let her go.

- DR. RAMSEY: Next couple of days are really hard for these bears.

They've gotta figure out where the other bears in the territory are.

They've gotta figure out where the food bases are.

So they've got a lot of exploring and a lot of learning to do.

And so they don't have to worry about eating.

[dramatic music] - NARRATOR: While the bears pose little threat to people, they can endanger one another.

So releases happen miles apart.

- This bear would just go turn around and go kill that other bear in minutes, just by nature.

And so I really like to keep my adult bears away from my younger bears to give 'em a better chance.

- This one?

- Yeah.

- DR. RAMSEY: When you release an animal, it came in because something was wrong.

It wasn't doing well.

She's just been sniffing and sniffing and sniffing.

- RYAN: Smelled like home.

- It's home.

It's totally dependent on me making it do perfect so it can survive in the wild.

Did I do a good enough job?

Did I teach her well enough?

And unfortunately I'm not gonna know this for a while until Ryan calls me one day and says she's in a yard or we never ever hear about this bear again.

Then I did my job right.

- RYAN: Dr. Ramsey did an outstanding job getting these bears ready for release.

- NARRATOR: And her fee for months of expert bear care, nothing.

- It's been an honor for me to be the veterinarian that gotta work with them.

Bring it to my door and I will make an honest attempt to get that animal back into the wild where it belongs.

Just watch her, she's pissy.

This bear is ready, ready to go.

- NARRATOR: It's a big day for a couple of bears, for the people who care about them.

- DR. RAMSEY: Everybody ready?

- NARRATOR: And for West Texas wild.

- DR. RAMSEY: Look at her, she's just gonna fall right out.

The joint effort between these two states has been phenomenal.

And that's what allowed these two kids to go back into the wild.

- RYAN: I am ecstatic.

I think she's gonna do quite well.

- DR. RAMSEY: I'm hoping big mama within a year will raising her first baby big bear.

And we've increased the number here in Texas.

- GARY: If you want a good workout, clear brush.

[saw whirs] [saw whirs] Yeah, a couple of hours of yaupon clearing is as good as an hour of bike riding.

It's a good workout.

- DIANA: We enjoy being outside and working really hard.

- GARY: I'm Gary Kocurek.

- DIANA: I'm Diana Kocurek.

- GARY: And we're on the Fayette Farm, just about in the middle of the Fayette Prairie.

Our house is sort of unique for this area.

I think it's the only castle on the Fayette Prairie.

We are a smaller acreage.

Half of it or a little more is savanna, and the other half is restored prairie.

[upbeat music] - So we grew up in the big city, but the wide open spaces attracted both of us.

And so when we reached a point in our life, we moved out to this place.

- We've got into prairie restoration by discovering when you could do it.

Two, bringing a biologist out here to give you some guidance on how to do it.

We said, "Okay, what can we do with our small portion?"

- They put a lot of work into this property.

They've done some native prairie work on the uplands.

And then in the woodlands they've done a tremendous amount of understory clearing.

We're close to I-10, and also to another major highway.

It's constantly cars kind of going up and down the road.

That's part of fragmentation.

This native grass prairie in this part of the state, millions of acres have been lost.

And in order to fix fragmentation, kinda like eating an elephant, you have to just do one bite at a time.

- GARY: A lot of these new landowners, they're interested in native prairies.

The idea of wildflowers outside their back porch sounds good.

- The Kocureks are founders of the Fayette Chapter of the Native Prairie Association of Texas.

They're kind of like evangelists.

Parks and wildlife can go out and talk to landowners, but usually it takes a landowner seeing what another landowner did to really bring it together.

- GARY: You know, you learn very quickly you can't go back in time, but you can make a pretty reasonable habitat.

- DIANA: What brings us joy here is being out in nature.

It's not just for us.

It's for, you know, those again that come after us.

- GARY: You know, it's not hard to envision that in the future, we could have this as a public open prairie savanna.

We can see down the road.

[upbeat music] Celebrating a century of Texas State Parks.

[upbeat music] - BIKER: I'm loving the flowers this time of year, it's beautiful.

- NIC: So Government Canyon is different from most parks, it's a natural area, it's a wilderness environment.

[upbeat music] And it's completely within the city of San Antonio, so you can come out inside the city and have a natural area experience that you can't get anywhere else.

[upbeat music] - Over 10,000 acres of our property is the back country.

[upbeat music] This is an area that will forever be left primitive, wild, and as natural as possible.

- NIC: As a state natural area, our primary focus is the resource.

We are here to protect the water quality and quantity of the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone.

Most people come out here for our 40 miles of hiking and biking trails.

These trails range from kind of flat, rolling savannah, all the way up into rugged hill country trails.

- SORUBH: Our first time here in the park.

- CHILD: I'm fast.

- It's a little bit rocky, but it's pretty flat.

She's walking too fast for me.

[Sorubh laughs] It's been great, very quiet, actually not too many people outside today.

- CHILD: Oh!

- SORUBH: If you keep quiet, you can really hear all the birds, you can hear nature.

It's just a wonderful place to be, you know?

[bird chirping] - HIKER: I think we're here.

- JOHN: One of the most amazing aspects of Government Canyon is we have some beautiful overlooks.

[bird chirping] - HIKER: The view is pretty from up here.

- JOHN: And you really ought to take the time to explore them.

There's the South Bluff Spurs Overlook.

There's the overlook on the cliffs above the dinosaur tracks.

- Look, there's three different sets.

- In the end, we have over 200 tracks in the upper trackway.

So this is one of the larger theropod tracks that we have.

We see the three toes clearly defined as well as the talon marks that would have come off of each toe.

- So our campsites are designed with an impact area that encompasses the tent pad, the fire ring, the picnic table, all into one impact zone.

This is one of the hutches that you'll find at all of our campsites.

You can put your food in here, your food, your gear, anything you wanna keep protected from the wildlife and elements.

- MAN: Oh yeah.

- LESLIE: Those looking melty?

- CHILD: Oh yeah!

- They love to be outside.

We do tend to try to go camping at least, you know, three times a year.

So far, mainly the campsite set up, that it's set up a little more remote.

You don't have neighbors right next to you, but it's not a primitive walk-in that you have to really hike in.

So, perfect mix.

I've never seen a campsite like this.

[children chattering] [gentle upbeat music] - We are on the ranch road.

This is going to pretty much cut right through our Front Country Trail System.

[bird chirping] It's a bunch of Blackland Prairie Savannah.

There's the painted.

Yeah.

We have anything from small songbirds to large raptors, and anything in between.

- BIRDER: There's some Crested Caracaras, there's a pair of them.

- JESSICA: Uh, huh.

- BIRDER: Oh, they're cleaning themselves.

- JESSICA: Yeah, they're preening.

[camera clicks] But that's what makes Government Canyon so great.

- BIRDER: Oh here, right here, right here.

- JESSICA: Is because we do have that large diversity of birds out here.

- So the recharge zone for the Edwards Aquifer is a large component of what we're about here at Government Canyon, but it's not just recharge of the Aquifer.

I think you'll find that when you come out and walk our trails... - RUNNER: Morning.

- JOHN: Listen to the birds... [bird chirping] Look at the wild flowers, take in a gorgeous sunrise or sunset from one of our overviews, you'll find your own spirit and soul recharged.

[gentle music] [upbeat music] - It's a semi-arid climate, not a lot of rainfall.

- In this area of Texas, we have less surface water than anywhere else in the United States.

- This is a heavily irrigated part of the state.

Those crops are all very important.

Those are things that people are consuming every day.

- KATHERINE DRURY: Water has always been there for us.

We tend to forget about the vitalness of this resource until we don't have it anymore.

- We're extracting more than we're putting back in.

This problem is prevalent across the Great Plains.

- DON KAHL: It's a landscape that's changed drastically over the last 150 years.

- KATHERINE: There's 300,000 people in Lubbock County alone.

- DON: From both residential water use, as well as for irrigation and other purposes, we have areas of the Ogallala Aquifer seeing drastic declines in water to the point where some feel that within the next 50 years, some of the aquifer could be completely dry.

- If we're going to have future generations on this land, we have to get our water usage rate in balance with our recharge rate.

- The water that people drink in Lubbock comes from recharge through the playas.

So we've gotta keep these things in good condition to provide water for people.

- CHRIS GROTEGUT: It is ultimately the cheapest water solution for this region.

[soft dramatic music] [footsteps] - I'm Don Kahl, I'm the Region One Migratory Game Bird Specialist.

Playas in essence are a low spot on a relatively flat landscape where water collects.

These clay basins are dependent upon rainfall to fill them and then water infiltrates through these basins down into the aquifer below.

[thunder rumbling] The Ogallala Aquifer is one of the largest aquifers in the world, and the largest in North America.

And it ranges throughout the Western Great Plains, into the Texas Panhandle and Eastern New Mexico.

The water from the Ogallala comes from thousands if not millions of years of infiltration through playa basins.

Some of the threats to these playa systems include outright farming, where they've been broken out and they're actually farmed through and crop production occurs in the basin.

Also, with farming, the loss of grass buffers.

Short grass prairie has been removed around these playas.

And what that does is it leaves those Playa basins at threat for sediment buildup.

As we build up sediment over the top of the clay soils it affects the functionality of those playas.

There's a lot threats that have come about to playas in particular.

Very important system, both from a wildlife perspective, and from a aquifer recharge perspective.

[soft dramatic music] [gentle wind blows] The Texas Playa Conservation Initiative began back in 2015.

It's a multi-agency, multi-partner initiative that works to restore and conserve playas in the High Plains of Texas.

We cover parts of 46 counties, so we have a very large area that we work within.

Whenever there's no crops growing, and the fields are barren, you can really see the playas begin to pop out.

Based off of satellite imagery, we actually find playas that fit our criteria for restoration.

We're looking for playas that have old pits that were dug into them for irrigation.

We can see that there's grass around it, and we can see there's a pit in it, and that pretty much tells us we need to try to contact that landowner.

These pins indicate some projects that we've completed.

We've got a wealth of potential projects out there, we just need willing landowners to work with us.

[bulldozer rumbling] We wanted this program to be as landowner-friendly as possible and so we cover 100% of the cost of the restoration.

We also find the contractor, we hire the contractor, and oversee the contractor.

And so there's no work on the landowner's part.

And then additionally, we also pay a small one-time incentive payment for working with us and doing conservation on their playas.

And so that system has been very popular with landowners that we've worked with.

They're very happy to see both the wildlife benefits as well as the water quality and quantity benefits that they see for their wells.

- Aquifer recharge under a flat piece of land is gonna be less than half of an inch on an average year.

A lot of that water is evaporated or used by plants before it can actually reach the aquifer.

So these playa lakes serve as super recharge zones.

We experience between 10 to 100 times more recharge depending on the soils underneath that playa lake.

- The dry times, maybe they're not that noticeable, but that dry period is very important because it also serves a very vital function of a playa.

Which is, when it dries up, then cracks form in that lake bottom.

And then the next time we do have adequate rainfall and that water does reach that basin, those cracks that have developed, since it was dry, help really facilitate the infiltration of groundwater.

Because it is underground and we don't necessarily see it, monitoring is so very important.

- KATHERINE: The High Plains Water District goes out annually and measures 1,400 observation wells across the district.

- JASON: We measure that water level at approximately the same time as the previous year to determine what change has occurred.

[alarm beeps] - The water level's 113.85 feet.

- JASON: We've been able to observe water level trends over many decades.

Certainly over time the aquifer has exhibited some decline, but that's where we say our job of conservation and informing people about stewardship is very important.

[soft dramatic music] - The threat to the Ogallala has led to folks rethinking the value of playas.

Somebody tried to plow through this and farm through this.

And so we just kind of let the weeds and grasses come back, just trying to take this land back to nature.

This is a playa lake that's in the restoration process-- it's not complete.

Part of it is sedimented over.

You can see that berm because that was once farmed.

Getting as many of those lakes restored back to their original function is extremely beneficial because if you don't do that, those are gallons of free water that aren't available.

Those are wildlife areas that are not available for the wildlife that travels through here.

[birds calling] - Playa lakes are known as biodiversity centers, and that's everything from amphibians and toads, to sandhill cranes, waterfowl.

Basically in an arid landscape, these features provide water for all the wildlife.

The playas go from Texas all the way to Nebraska.

That's the central flyway, that's the migratory path.

They're hosting a couple million waterfowl during migration.

And then over the winter they'll hold one and a half million waterfowl.

So very, very important resource.

[soft dramatic music] - CHRIS: If we can enhance the water-holding capacity of the land with the native grasses, and still be able to crop on that land with no-till technology, then when a raindrop falls on the earth, maybe we can catch 90% of it in the field.

And 10% of it goes to the lake.

And hopefully that lake is functioning properly, to where we catch a very high percentage of that 10%.

We get some wildlife benefit of water on the lake so the wildlife have a place to land and it encourages that natural biodiversity also.

That is ultimately what we're shooting for, is to balance our ecology with our economics.

- I grew up hunting waterfowl in the Midwest, and came to the High Plains of Texas, and saw these playas, and really enjoy the habitat that they provide and the ducks that they draw.

My wife and I started a family here.

And so knowing the threats to our water, whether that's water quality or quantity, this work, from a water perspective, is pretty important to me.

In the fall and the winter, these playas are incredible.

You can come to a playa and potentially have tens of thousands of waterfowl.

It's very impressive and it's something to behold.

Folks are beginning to buy in and beginning to become more excited about playa restoration and conservation.

And that's very exciting for us.

[ducks calling] [birds singing] [birds singing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [water flowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [birds singing] [birds singing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] 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.