- 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... - You can feel it tense up as soon as you touched it, it was intimidating.

One, two, three.

- Good job.

- The Kemp's Ridley, this is a species that was nearing an extinction event.

- Bracken Cave is the largest single concentration of mammals on Earth.

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

- VICKI: Oh my goodness.

Nervous?

- ZACK: Little bit.

- VICKI: Little bit?

[laughs] - We are honored to be with you today, our 62nd Game Warden Academy Graduation.

[applause] Give them another round of applause.

Your new state game wardens!

[cheering and applause] - NARRATOR: Our lives are made up of a series of moments.

Some stay with us.

And a few change our lives forever.

- Zack, I'm proud of you.

You earned this badge.

- ZACK: Thank you.

- Okay hold it, one, two, three!

- ZACK: I made it.

- VICKI: I am so incredibly proud of you.

That's just incredible son.

I love you.

- I love you too.

- PHOTOGRAPHER: One, two, three.

Let's shoot several because somebody always blinks.

- NARRATOR: For Zack Stephenson, this is a momentous day.

He is now, officially, a Texas Game Warden.

But this day might never have happened if not for one weekend a decade earlier.

[tape rewinding] - ZACK: Where's this one coming from?

- It's going to be number one.

It's going to go out straight away.

- ZACK: Pull!

[shotgun blast] - INSTRUCTOR: Very good.

Good shot.

- It tested like everything.

If you knew how to lead and if you knew where it was coming from and follow through with it.

I did all right.

[shotgun blast] When I was a kid I wanted to be outside and I wanted to go hunting.

I was raised by a single mother and I told my mom I wanted to go hunting and she didn't know where to start.

She didn't know the first thing about hunting.

- Parents and all, first off, I want to thank y'all, it's going to be a lot of fun this weekend.

- What we do is we offer a program.

We can furnish the firearm, we can furnish the ammunition, we can furnish the place to hunt.

All they have to bring with them is the desire to go hunting and enjoy the outdoors.

- INSTRUCTOR: Gentlemen, y'all get in line.

Get you something to eat.

- ZACK: She had friend that was a part of the Texas Youth Hunter program and that's how we found out about it.

- What time are we getting up?

- We're getting up at 5 o'clock like normal time.

- VICKI: Five o'clock in the morning?

- INSTRUCTOR: Uh huh.

[laughing] - VICKI: This isn't for tomorrow afternoon?

[laughs] - No, 5 o'clock in the morning.

- INSTRUCTOR: It's going to be deep at first but it'll end up being about this deep so when we get to walking so just stay in single file.

- ZACK: For me, because I did grow up relatively close to Houston, I didn't get to go out a whole lot.

[duck calls] - VICKI: It's something that he wants to do... [duck calls] that's something that he can do forever.

- INSTRUCTOR: Get em!

[shotgun blasts] - VICKI: They've started out with the gun safety.

- INSTRUCTOR: All right.

- ZACK: That was actually pretty fun.

- VICKI: It wasn't near as bad as I was thinking it was going to be.

- ZACK: While we were on that youth duck hunt, we actually had a large group of game wardens come out and talk to us, and it was the first time I ever heard about what a game warden does.

[water sloshing] That was the day it clicked for me, that was what I wanted to do and pretty much since that day, I've started working towards it.

- NARRATOR: The moments that make up our lives are interconnected.

One leads to the next, eventually shaping who and what we are.

- ZACK: So you're volunteering to go first, right?

- CADET: Nope!

Have you ever seen an alligator?

- Oh yeah, I've seen ‘em all the time yeah but there's a difference in seeing one and handling one.

- INSTRUCTOR: Watch this thing, cause this thing will come up and get you.

All right.

There you go.

Hold on tight.

Gotta be quick.

Push it down when it's flush on the ground, then curl your fingers up and lock it in those jaw bones.

That way if you just push down, you know that mouth is closed.

- ZACK: Okay.

- INSTRUCTOR: There you go, work it underneath there.

All right, whenever y'all are ready.

- ZACK: One, two, three.

- INSTRUCTOR: Good job.

- I believe it's the finest training in a law enforcement academy in the country.

- INSTRUCTOR: Just because we're down to the last three weeks, don't unplug.

By this point, you've got to own it.

- GRAHAME: They go through conservation law enforcement, they go through standard law enforcement... - INSTRUCTOR: Yeah, what's your question?

- GRAHAME: Wildlife identification training... - INSTRUCTOR: So that's going to be the Guadalupe bass which is the state fish.

- GRAHAME: You know, how to deal with hunters and anglers.

I mean really the gamut.

[rushing water] - INSTRUCTOR: We're giving the cadets a basic understanding of swift water awareness.

What the water does, how to react.

All right go ahead.

- CADET: Right step!

Step!

[rushing water] Right step!

Step!

[rushing water] - INSTRUCTOR: And it's an eye opener for them.

You look at it and think, "Oh, it's really not that bad," and they get in it and realize, "Oh my gosh, this is a lot harder than I thought."

[rushing water] Hold him up!

Get back!

Fight it!

See what happened out there, they got turned around.

What should they have done?

Just turn around and the back guy's now the front guy.

It's hard isn't it?

[upbeat music] This is the strainer.

This is everybody's favorite part.

If you get stuck on a strainer, I don't care how strong you are, you can not pull yourself off of it okay?

Oh!

You do not want to go under.

If you go under it, you die.

Swim, swim, swim!

Keep swimming!

Keep swimming!

- ZACK: Definitely a little more difficult than I thought it was going to be.

I'm pretty tired, but I do.

I feel like if I ever needed this training, I have it in the bank.

- GRAHAME: Y'all wanna talk a little bit more or you want to figure out where you are going?

All right!

[laughter] Nathan Lavender!

Lotta game wardens, a lot of people that work for us, grew up, it's their dream.

So it's truly, when they graduate, today when they get that assignment, it's a dream come true for them.

Zackary Stevenson.

Duval County.

- ZACK: Thank you.

- Congratulations.

- ZACK: Thank you.

- GRAHAME: Every person that graduates from this academy gets to serve a mission.

It's the mission of protecting the natural resources of Texas, helping the communities that they live in.

Responding during some of Texas' darkest hours.

But that core mission of protecting our natural resources, I mean, what could be more important?

- ZACK: Duval County, it's very rural and the population pretty much doubles or triples every deer season.

It's a deer hunting county and that's what it is and that's what it's known for.

There's no place to stop for food around here either.

You better pack a lunch or you won't have one.

[upbeat music] - NARRATOR: The moments that make up our lives don't all unfold the same way.

Some happen by chance.

- CAMERAMAN: Shoot something?

- ZACK: Yes I did.

Got a green teal.

- Green wing teal.

- ZACK: Green wing teal.

- CADET: Right step!

Step!

- NARRATOR: Some only happen through hard work.

- CADET: Right step!

Step!

- NARRATOR: And every so often, we get a little help along our journey.

- ZACK: It was a great experience being able to do that duck hunt with my mom you know, it was totally out of her element and I don't know if I could get her into a pair of waders now but I'm so thankful she got into a pair for me back then.

- CAMERAMAN: What are you feeling right now?

- Just pride.

Just so happy for him and so excited for his future and where he's going to go.

[upbeat music] - ZACK: I plan on retiring in this job.

It's something I really love to do.

All right guys, state game warden.

We're going to do a quick compliance check.

Can everybody pull out their hunting license?

Looks like you had a pretty good morning.

- ZACK: Appreciate it.

- HUNTER: Yes sir.

- ZACK: The same opportunities that were provided to me when I was a child, I want to make sure those same opportunities are available for the next generation.

[duck calls] And that's why I do what I do.

[engine rumbles] [bats chirping] [upbeat music] - Bracken Cave is the largest single concentration of mammals on earth.

[bats chirp] - If you wanna know what a little angel is, Mexican free-tailed bats, they can see in the dark, they can find their own baby out of 10 million babies up in a dome.

If that ain't a miracle.

It's like winning the lottery every night, 'cause mama comes home to you, hanging up there on that ceiling, in the pitch black.

[upbeat music] - From March to October, bats are gonna eat tons of bugs.

Those are primary agricultural pests in the area.

So, you got cotton bowl moth, or corn earworm moth.

Because of that, farmers, one, don't have crop damage, two, don't have to spray a lot of pesticides on their crops to kill those bugs.

[engine hums] - They're about to come.

- Yep.

[bats chirp] - You sit there with your mouth hanging open.

Those bats eat the volume of two 747 jet airliners every night.

So, think of the ecology, and how wonderful.

All he wants to do is live in the ground, be left alone, and eat our insect population for us.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ - JEFF: But in the early 2000s, a very large property that surrounded the property that Bat Conservation International owned was purchased by a large development company.

[hawk screeches] - FRANK: So, development was encroaching on all that, and you had streetlights that were gonna be within 100 yards of the cave, and that would screw up the bats being able to navigate.

[gentle music] - And this was the last piece of property that was supposed to be developed.

They were gonna put 3,600 homes on 1,500 acres.

- Bat Conservation International and the Nature Conservancy recognized that this was really an existential threat to the long-term viability of Bracken Cave.

- KAREN: Bats were gonna be falling on people's patios, and the bats we're gonna lose.

[uplifting music] - Finally, we were able to get traction with the landowner, with the City of San Antonio, and a partnership with Bat Conservation International to raise private dollars to help acquire what we call the Galo property, which is now divided between Bat Conservation International and the Nature Conservancy.

- We were working with our partner, Bat Conservation International, but we had to raise $10 million, and it took us a long time to do that.

He said, "I'm gonna help you with that bat cave."

And I cried.

[chuckles] Then, we named the preserve after him, and it's known as Frank Klein Cibolo Bluffs Preserve.

[dramatic music] ♪ ♪ - And so, here's an opportunity to protect recharge zones into the Edwards Aquifer to ensure that the quality of water going into that [thunder rumbles] was gonna be forever protected.

[rainfall pattering] ♪ ♪ - We're on the recharge zone of the Edwards Aquifer, so if we have pristine land on top, you'll have pristine water underneath.

And that's the game plan, kids.

If you don't have water, you got nothing.

[birds chirp] - So, we did a lot of work on the golden-cheeked warbler, which is the only bird that nests exclusively in Texas.

It nests in the Texas hill country in the oak juniper woodlands.

- FRANK: If you let things grow, and you keep things in balance, if you build it, they will come.

And it's just amazing.

[chainsaw whirs] - JEFF: The amount of development is expanding.

The issue in the hill country is that our riparian systems are extremely vulnerable to degradation.

We all need some place to live.

Development is necessary, development is important.

But at the same time, preserving something is also important.

♪ ♪ - FRANK: So, it's been quite the journey, and little angels, like the Mexican free-tailed bats, have been a big part of it.

Go to Bracken Bat Cave and watch that miracle.

You'll be a different person.

♪ ♪ [bat wings fluttering] [waves lapping against the seashore] [waves lapping against the seashore] [Hawaiian music] - LARRY MCKINNEY: The Kemp's Ridleys, this is a species that was nearing an extinction event.

By 1985, there were maybe three or 400 of these things left.

- DONNA SHAVER: This species almost went extinct within the blink of an eye and we know it was human activities that caused the decline without question.

- MIKE RAY: They're the smallest of the sea turtles.

They're only found in a very small part of the world.

It doesn't take a lot of human interaction to probably destroy it.

[Hawaiian music] - The Kemp's Ridleys binational program to recover this endangered species is probably one of the most successful I've been, participated with.

And, it's one of the most involved and difficult.

I mean in 1947 or so, there were 120,000 of these turtles that would come ashore and nest, many of them, 30 or 40,000 at a time.

And this program basically saved that specie's life.

[rolling waves] - DONNA: For many years, it wasn't known where Kemp's Ridleys nest.

It was a mystery.

It wasn't until 1960s, Dr. Henry Hildebrandt discovered a film that was shot by a Mexican engineer that showed an estimated 40,000 Kemp's Ridleys females nesting on this small stretch of beach near the village of Rancho Nuevo in Tamaulipas, Mexico.

When biologist began to go to the beach however, they found that the number of turtles nesting had declined tremendously.

- What you have to understand too, well, like in, particularly in the along the nesting beaches, it's a pretty poor area.

They could get a dollar an egg and then the turtles themselves could feed the family for a week.

It was pretty important.

And, trying to get people to want to conserve and not consume was a major undertaking.

There was a lot of years where not much survived that came on the beach.

- DONNA: The decline was so precipitous that in the 1970s, they came up with a concept of forming a secondary nesting colony of Kemp's Ridleys turtles at Padre Island National Seashore so that if a political or environmental catastrophe was to occur at that main nesting beach down in Mexico, there would be a safe are in the U.S. where Kemp's Ridleys could nest and be protected.

[airplane landing] It started small as a concept in the 1970s where we received eggs, 22,507 eggs from Mexico.

We had the first confirmed returnee from this project, I saw here in 1996, 10 years after we began our first patrols looking for returns from that project.

- MAN: Okay, there's the egg cavity, with the eggs.

- GIRL: She said there's about 100.

- MIKE: One thing we found out years and years ago, from the years we started stocking or releasing at least 100,000 hatchlings a year, you could start to see the population build.

So, in the years we were getting up to like a million or close, I mean we know we had some giant, giant impacts then.

- LARRY: What accelerated the recovery of this species more than anything else, all the science we did, all the volunteers we have had, have had a positive impact, but this one thing has done more to recover Kemp's Ridleys sea turtles than anything else, and that's Viagra.

They used to say a turtle egg and a shot of tequila and I'm ready to go.

I mean that was, that was what was reality.

And, to the point where there was a time when they actually backed up 18-wheeled tractor trailers into the edge of the dunes and were loading turtle eggs on them as fast as they collect them.

That's really what, that's really what almost destroyed over that period of time almost destroyed them.

And so, they literally put out posters with women in lingerie holding a Viagra pill and a turtle egg and saying this will do more than this, but it apparently worked because all of a sudden all of our efforts down in Mexico with our partners there to save eggs, they started bearing fruit.

[crowd cheering] - Today we're here at Padre Island National Seashore.

We have a large group of people here today.

All excited to come out and support the sea turtles and see their return back into the Gulf.

You can take a picture.

- SPECTATOR: All right, smile.

- Thank you.

- He's so cute.

- He's even tinier than you are.

- Awww, he's so cute.

- HILARY: He is really cute.

- They're probably like babies.

- They are little babies.

They're only a couple hours old.

- DONNA: The public has always been involved in, to some extent, in our releases of Kemp's Ridleys hatchlings at Padre Island National Seashore.

With the advent of social media, then the message is spread and our attendance at these releases really shot up.

So now, it's typically hundreds to more than 1,000 people.

We hold about, about 20 public releases each year, sometimes more than that, sometimes a little less, it all depends on the schedule of the turtles.

- No, those are turtles.

[crowd chatter] - HILARY: When I see the baby sea turtles, they're just the culmination of everything we've done this year.

That is our success story, that we were able to protect them from eggs into developing hatchlings.

And, once they hit the water and go back to the Gulf of Mexico, it just warms my heart, and you hear a great cheer come up from the audience and it's a really cool thing to be a part of.

[crowd cheering] - DONNA: That's it!

[laughs] We're really thrilled because great strides have been made, the numbers nesting here have increased dramatically, but we haven't won the game, so to speak.

It's going to take more years of effort to fully recover the species.

[waves lapping] - LARRY: This last 40 years has frankly been remarkable.

When you think back in 1985, there were literally 300 of these animals possibly left alive, and now, I think it was 2011 about this time of year, uh, almost 4,000 Kemp's Ridleys turtles came up on the beach.

That was the first time that had happened since 1947, so to go from almost gone to on the road to recovery is remarkable.

I, I don't know any other species we've done that for anywhere in this country.

- NARRATOR: Wish you could spend more time with nature?

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[wind blowing, birds chirping] [wind blowing, birds chirping] [wind blowing, birds chirping] [wind blowing, birds chirping] [wind blowing, birds chirping] [wind blowing, birds chirping] [wind blowing, birds chirping] [wind blowing, birds chirping] [wind blowing, birds chirping] [wind blowing, birds chirping] 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.