- 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 provided by the Toyota Tundra.

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

Adventure: it's what we share.

- NARRATOR: Coming up on Texas Parks and Wildlife... - It's a gift, having the bears return to Texas.

And I feel honored to play just a tiny part of that.

- They are the second smallest bat in North America, and we call them the chicken nuggets of the cave because a full-grown adult, they are about the size of chicken nuggets.

- I mean, you just cannot help but just sit in this and get a spiritual healing of what's here.

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

[wind blowing] [traffic passing by] [gentle music] - This is not for me, a generic plot of land that you can find anywhere.

The fact that it is heavily bear populated means it really requires additional consideration for its future.

The entire drive into this region is a period of decompression, but it's not until I get to the ranch property line that it all melts away.

Because this place is my own little slice of heaven, I come here and I've had some seriously profound spiritual experiences here.

I love it and it's my happy place.

Life in the big city's challenging and you get bogged down in the daily grind.

I was searching for a way to feed my soul.

I never thought it would be this place, but this is absolutely where I come to feed my soul.

So this ranch is part of the Trans-Pecos region, Chihuahuan Desert and fell in love with Big Bend about 2 1/2 years ago and knew I wanted, at the time, I thought to own a part of it.

But I've since discovered that I'm really not owning the land, but I'm more of a steward of the land.

Time to check the game cam.

There are five game cams operating on the ranch.

Come out and I check the cameras, replace the cards, replace the batteries.

Is it gonna be another bear?

Is it gonna be 10 bears?

And that's it for that one.

It started out with one or two trail cams just to see and set up the trail cams before we saw any bears.

[solemn music] I spend hours and hours going through that trail cam footage.

And there's always, always unexpected surprises.

[gentle music] [fox whimpers] ♪ ♪ [chirping] ♪ ♪ [crickets chirp] [bear sniffing] ♪ ♪ Some of my favorite footage comes from one particular camera [bear groans] that's on a 500-gallon guzzler and it has a trough big enough for bears to sit in.

And the bears like to go hot tubbing.

They're absolutely, they're the most fun to watch.

[water sloshes] 'Cause I love bears.

[chuckles] [gentle music] Being an amateur rancher, I knew I wasn't an expert coming into this.

Without really knowing how many bears there were around, I was starting to feed... and the bears came.

And I realized at some point, after consulting with the Borderlands Research Institute people that it's not the best decision for the bears to make them dependent on the food coming from the feeders, that they need to learn how to forage in nature.

And I stopped.

[gentle music] The trail cams have revealed that the bear populations are increasing in this area.

There's no way I could have anticipated 12 bears in a single season.

As they reclaim their territory, we have to learn to live with them.

[gentle music] We work around them, not the other way around.

♪ ♪ I understand what a rare gift this land is.

And because I consider myself a steward of the land, I really view it as my responsibility to allow the experts in the field to come out here and conduct their research.

I came into contact with Matt Hewitt from BRI.

He had asked if he could come out and capture bears for the purpose of tagging and collaring them.

And of course, I said yes.

- MATT: Well, it looks like they had all the donuts out of the front and everything we threw here.

- NICOLE: Looks like we got some bear tracks here going through the old seed.

- MATT: Yeah, he is definitely been here.

I wonder what's on the camera?

- NICOLE: Yeah, there's definitely some activity around here.

- All right, here you go.

We'll look at that one on the phone and see if there's any bears on it.

- Vultures.

Lots of birds on this one.

Oh, we do have a bear.

We have a bear that came in on the 29th.

[bear groans] - Oh, that's cool.

He stuck his nose in the trap.

That's awesome.

The bears are native to Texas and as Texans, as people, we have a responsibility to ensure that they have a place in this state and in this landscape.

[gentle music] The black bears were extricated from Texas in the 1950s, started recolonizing again starting in the 1980s.

And really in the past three to five years, they have kind of started flooding into this area.

So understanding how the bears are using this landscape, what sort of things they're eating, you know what different population metrics are will be really important for management of this species.

We are out here attempting to trap and radio collar black bears in the Trans-Pecos.

We have four culvert style traps that we are monitoring and hopefully we get a capture today.

[winch clicking] [door slams shut] [tires on gravel] - Woke up to a notification from one of the traps that we had a bear caught.

We ran out here this morning and we got a young bear we're gonna work up soon.

- So right now, we are pulling up our anesthetic drugs to make this bear go to sleep.

So I'll go around the front and tap and talk to try and get the bear's attention.

If you wanna go around the back of the trap.

- NICOLE: Yeah, sounds good to me.

- Okay.

My favorite part about all this is walking up on a bear in a trap.

You know, there's just something very majestic about, you know, seeing a 200, 300-pound animal looking at you.

It sparks something in you.

Hey, bear.

Psst psst psst psst, hey, bear.

Over here, over here, over here.

Right here, over here, bear.

- NICOLE: Got it.

- We should see what we call first effects within about five minutes where he just starts to get a little out of it.

And then he should be what we call safe to handle at 15 minutes.

It's not a bad thing to give him 20 minutes.

Then we'll tickle the ear.

Boy, he's laying out beautifully.

The ear response is the last thing to go away and the first thing to come back.

We tickle their ear and they don't move their ear, we know that they're safe to handle.

That's when we will go in and blindfold them, get them out, get them on the tarp, get position to start our procedure.

Pulse is 44 beats per minute.

- Rear width is 9 1/2.

Take a bunch of body measurements, a bunch of samples from that animal, fit it with a radio collar and wake it up and send it on its way.

This project is gonna be a five, 10-year duration.

And at the end of which, I hope that we can compile enough data and hand over the information necessary for the management of this population.

Now giving the reversal agents to our anesthetic drug.

This allows the bear to wake up and go on her merry way.

- This is our first female in Texas since I got here.

They had one more before, but other than that, we've been only catching males.

So this is very exciting.

- We got two females now.

- Yes.

[gentle music] - MATT: These black bears are moving into West Texas, kind of from the mountains in Mexico.

But the human population is also growing on this side of the state.

And having the information produced from studies like this will help better understand these bears and how to mitigate any conflict that could possibly arise.

[gentle music] ♪ ♪ - MELANIE: This place feeds my soul in a way that I could have never anticipated.

For a region that people consider to be desolate with not a lot to offer, it's given me more than I ever could imagine.

It's a gift having the bears return to Texas, and I feel honored to play just a tiny part of that.

[calm music] [seagulls squawking] [seagulls squawking] [seagulls squawking] - The pier is 1,622 feet long.

It is great fishing there for black drum, red drum, speckled trout, flounder.

Plenty spacious for everybody to be able to go out and enjoy a good day of fishing.

[seagulls squawking] [wheels rolling across pier] - Wow, Dad, that was a far cast, geez!

Getting some bites here.

It's actually pretty fun.

There's some big fish.

My grandpa's caught a couple of big fish.

- This is called a gafftop.

This is a catfish you can eat.

Your daddy bring his camera?

- DAD: Smile.

Say cheesy.

- GIRL: I'm getting some good bites.

- DAD: Reel it up, babe.

- GIRL: He's a strong fish.

It's really cool.

It's actually my first saltwater fish.

- EDWIN: It is perfect for your novice fisher.

- I have no idea what I'm doing.

[laughs] - Catch your shark.

I wish y'all luck!

- EDWIN: It is ADA accessible, so it does have some rails that drop a little bit lower for anybody that just be able to come out and fish comfortably.

- Not at work, so that's good.

I love it.

I love it.

- Well, just spending a little time here before the sun sets.

After hours, that's when the bite really starts.

- I don't know, I'm just kind of throwing it out there.

See if anything hits it, to be honest.

[laughs] - CHILD: Just put him on the ground.

- EDWIN: We do have an overnight activity permit that allows you to stay past 10:00 PM, so you can fish all night long at the fishing pier.

- ANGLER: A speckled trout.

- The part I like the most is, whenever we catch a fish, Lolo or Pop take a picture of it.

It took about one second before I freaked out.

I was so freaked out, I was like, "We gonna put it back in the water."

[laughter] - WOMAN: Whatever.

- MOM: Get a fish yet?

- BOY: Maybe!

- MOM: Oh, it took your bait!

- BOY: Ah, man!

- EDWIN: Later in the evenings, the popular spot at the fishing pier is towards the end of the pier.

- [laughs] I mean, it's only 10 minutes in.

I saw my pole getting bent.

Pulled it back, and sure enough, I had that big black drum.

It was awesome.

- EDWIN: We have a lot of our seasoned anglers that like to come out.

And what they're doing is they're fishing for black drum.

- ANGLER: First fish of the night.

- EDWIN: They're bringing these big monster black drum and they're just basically measuring those, taking pictures, and then just releasing them back into the water.

So that is a popular spot.

- All right, let's throw him back.

[water splashes] - ANGLER 1: Big old, big ugly.

41-inch drum.

- Can we touch it?

Aaah!

Slimy!

- ANGLER: Guessing the stairs would be the best way to let him down, huh?

[waves lapping] Whoo!

- CAMERAMAN: What next?

- I don't know.

Hopefully another one just like that.

[waves lapping] [birds singing, wind blows] [light upbeat music] - CARTER: The Southmost Preserve is aptly named.

I mean it is the southern most place in the continental United States.

- Southmost Preserve is this incredible 1,000+ acre preserve right on the banks of the Rio Grande.

[speaking foreign language] - SONIA: And we work a lot with testing different types of ecological restoration with these native plants.

[speaking foreign language] - SONIA: We are expanding that conservation elsewhere, working with students, being a place where people can do research, can learn from all aspects of ecological restoration.

- It was a place in which TNC would do community-based conservation, would experiment with some compatible farming, would also work on revegetation and restore former brush lands that have been converted to crop lands.

[speaking foreign language] [speaking foreign language] [speaking foreign language] [upbeat music] - CARTER: We ultimately put together this public private partnership to acquire the ranch and have some of it go into the low Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.

And then the Nature Conservancy to keep the largest portion of it as kind of an acre preserve in the valley.

♪ ♪ - I love teaching.

It makes me keep feeling young.

The interaction with a new crop of students every year, different faces, different interests is rejuvenating, I would say.

- SONIA: One of our main projects is a native plant nursery where we collect native seed from the forest here at the preserve.

- This process right here is us sorting the seeds and that's what we're doing right now.

We are removing the hard shell.

So we're just left with the seed that we can then plant.

- One seed from the simple seed that we first started, that led to thousands.

And I think each plant, each individual, work that we're doing towards creating a more sustainable future makes a difference.

- Now they had all kinds of little plants down here.

There is a hidden story with the biodiversity of this range right here.

This is a half mile of what we call now the Montezuma Cypress Preserve.

The origins of Montezuma Cypress go back to the time of the Mochica and the Aztecs and all that 'cause they were sacred trees for them.

And this is unique as a biosphere.

There are plants here that do not go any further north than here.

This is the absolute last stand of what you call planted by the hand of God because you see them throughout the valley and they landed by the hand of man.

- SONIA: We hope we're a model for other areas.

Adding more pieces of the puzzle that was destroyed years ago from urbanization or agricultural production.

I'm from South Texas, I grew up here.

This is protecting home.

And the diversity of habitats and wildlife.

It's, it's got it all.

It's got plants, it's got herbs, it's got mammals and at the end of it all, it's beautiful.

- I mean, you just cannot help but just stand and sit in this and get a spiritual healing of what's here.

♪ ♪ [dramatic slide guitar music] - EVAN ARCHILLA: Longhorn Cavern State Park is one of the most unique places in the state of Texas.

We are the only publicly accessible cavern in the state of Texas that was largely formed by the work of an underground river.

We have literally centuries of Texas-sized stories that took place right here within the park and largely within the cavern itself.

[wind noise] I can think of really nowhere else in Texas where you can walk in footsteps of Civil War era bat guano miners, nuclear fallout shelter survivors, underground dancers and live entertainment from the 1930s.

All of it happening right here in Longhorn Cavern, and you can learn all about it on a cavern walking tour almost every single day of the year.

- MISTY SYNDER: Geologists believe that the rocks that surround this cave are about 500 million years old, but the cave itself is relatively young, just a few million years old and so we still have a lot of growing left to do here.

[playful music] Watch your head you tall ones.

It does get low right here for a second.

So, I'm going to show you one of the bats we have in our cave.

They're called tricolor bats.

They are the second smallest bat in North America, and we call them the chicken nuggets of the cave because a full-grown adult, they are about the size of chicken nuggets.

- EVAN: We are one of the best places in Texas to be able to get up close to bats and really admire these interesting creatures at a distance and a level of depth that you just don't get other places.

[crickets chirping] - BRIAN JOHNSON: There's more to do here than just see the cave.

We have over a mile of walking trails, plenty of green space, picnic areas, lots of things to do here.

[hawk call] - EVAN: Longhorn Cavern State Park opened Thanksgiving Day of 1932, but in 1934 things really stated to change when the Civilian Conservation Corp arrived to begin a formal excavation and development of the park.

The CCC removed over 3,000 dump truck loads of debris.

- The CCC when they came into remove the debris, all the work they did was all done by hand.

There was no machinery that was actually inside the cave.

They removed everything with uh, 50-gallon buckets, five-gallon buckets, shovels, pickaxes.

They used levers up top to pull it out of the sink holes that we have in the cave.

- EVAN: They installed our first lighting systems.

They laid down the first trail surfaces.

They built Park Road 4 uh, up above ground, and they also built some of the beautiful CCC era buildings that we have here on the property.

There's really a lot for visitors to take in and the historical significance of what the CCC did here is pretty amazing.

[dramatic music] - MISTY: Anybody scared to go down there?

- CAVER: Uhhhhhhh.

- Longhorn Cavern offers a more adventurous tour, um, called the wild cave tour.

You crawl around in the dirt.

It's not uncommon to get in the water.

You're crawling through uh, tunnels that are very low.

[smack] Ow.

With the wild caver tour, you're crawling on your hands and knees, army crawling on your bellies, and all you have is one little light on your head.

I'll take you down a 3-hour adventure you'll never forget.

[wind blowing, water drips] - EVAN: Longhorn Cavern State Park makes a great day trip.

If you're looking to come out into the hill country to explore some of the diverse typographies that we have in the hill country, we're a natural stopping point on any hill country itinerary.

[dramatic music] There are more ways than ever to help Texas Parks and Wildlife protect the outdoors through the Conservation License Plate program.

More than nine million dollars has been generated from the sale of these plates, funding wildlife research and big game restoration, protecting native species and their habitats, studying fish populations to improve Texas fishing... - GUIDE: How ya like that?!

...improving state parks through reforestation and other projects.

- VOLUNTEER: We got one!

- WOMAN: Yes, yes!

[honk, honk] Every plate on a car, truck, trailer or motorcycle means more money to support wild things and wild places in Texas.

[water flowing] [water flowing] [water flowing] [water flowing] [water flowing] [water flowing] [water flowing] [water flowing] [water flowing] [water flowing] 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 provided by the Toyota Tundra.

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

Adventure: it's what we share.