- NARRATOR: 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.

Funding also provided by Academy Sports and Outdoors.

Helping hunters, anglers, and outdoor enthusiasts of all ages get outside.

Out here, fun can't lose.

[theme music] - ANNOUNCER: Coming up on Texas Parks & Wildlife... - The sheep are moving a lot so we have to be tracking them constantly.

I see them.

Especially those ewes that are pregnant or with lambs.

- The mission of the design lab is to try to increase ecological literacy particularly the coastal environment.

- It's really fun to find out what they are and like, their habitats and what they do.

- Okay, well, put your binoculars on it and watch it.

[theme music] - ANNOUNCER: Texas Parks & Wildlife , a television series for all outdoors.

♪ ♪ [sheep bleating] [helicopter whirs] - NARRATOR: There's a roundup happening in Alpine.

[on radio] One o'clock.

- NARRATOR: For decades, the mountains of West Texas have been missing their native desert big horn sheep.

Thanks to restoration efforts, they're making a comeback.

These big horn from Elephant Mountain are being relocated.

- This is a ewe, and we've been doing an ultrasound on all of the ewes to check their pregnancy status.

Right there on the bottom, there's the feet kicking.

Right there.

- NARRATOR: Many of the ewes are pregnant with hopes for lambs in the spring.

[upbeat music] This project will establish a new herd in a location where bighorn sheep historically roamed... the Franklin Mountains.

[upbeat music] - When I see the first group going up the mountains, it was just a sense of, like, wow, relief and amazement.

What a majestic creature.

They're coming back into what once was their home.

Bighorn sheep are gonna have all this land to roam around, and hopefully, they reproduce and bring new generations of bighorn sheep to West Texas.

[upbeat music] [sheep bleating] We are on the northeastern section of the park.

We'll see if we are able to spot any lambs using the signal from the radios.

[radio static] The stronger the signal, the closer the animal is.

[beeps] It's coming from that direction.

[beeps] I'm listening for females that were hanging out in this area.

[radio static] They're not gonna be here.

They're not in this area, so we have to move to another area further south of the mountain range.

The sheep are moving a lot across the landscape, so we have to be tracking them constantly, especially those ewes that are pregnant or with lambs.

We really want to monitor them closely, ensure that they're doing okay.

Hey Matthew, let's open up the website with the GPS location for the sheep so we can see where they are.

And this is the group that we're gonna try to see tomorrow.

- So these are the four females that we're mentioning?

- Yes, this is the four females with their lambs.

So hopefully they're still in that vicinity, so we can have a good visual of them.

We're gonna have to start at the parking lot at 5:00 a.m.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ Pretty steep climb.

Pretty sure that they wanna be behind a couple of fields from here.

- MATTHEW: This is quite a workout, man.

Geez.

I'm surprised they're even up there.

I mean, look how high up there.

That's crazy.

I don't even know how they're able to just climb here like nothing.

I mean, they're super adapted to this type of terrain.

- CESAR: Yes, they are.

- MATTHEW: It's crazy.

- CESAR: So we have to get to that outcrop over there to see if the females with the lambs are still in there.

- MATTHEW: Cool.

- NARRATOR: Each lamb they find is a sign the herd is thriving, healthy, adapting, and writing a new chapter in the Franklin Mountains.

- CESAR: Look over there.

I think I see something.

- MATTHEW: Oh, yeah.

I think I see the silhouettes, yeah.

- CESAR: How many do you see?

I think, yeah, I see one.

I see a little one.

- MATTHEW: I'm seeing at least three.

- CESAR: Oh yeah, there's a bunch.

Oh yeah.

- They're there.

- They're thriving in these mountains now.

This is a sign that they're gonna do well and the population is gonna grow.

Mission accomplished.

Let's head back.

[bright music] Well, Matthew, we did it.

We found them.

- I say it was worth it.

- Yes.

- That was pretty cool.

- CESAR: We brought these sheep to this mountain range surrounded by the city, and they seem to be thriving.

The future looks bright for this population in the Franklin Mountains.

[upbeat music] [sheep bleating] [children chattering] - CHAPERONE: Binoculars on it, kids!

[children chattering] [bird tweeting] - LUKE: It looks like a... catbird?

[bird tweeting] Is it a catbird?

- CHAPERONE: The what?

- Kind of like a catbird.

Wait, look at the picture.

It, it could be a flycatcher.

- We're here to look for birds.

We're going around different spots for the Rough Wings category of the Great Texas Birding Classic.

- It wasn't even-- - Oh, man-- [group oohing] [group laughing] [group chattering] - ROWENA: Rough Wings is ages seven through 13.

- ZAHRA: We do not have the green heron.

- Look it, there, just a heron head popping out of the reeds.

- Okay, now it's further right than all the fulvous whistling ducks.

- LUKE: It looks like a green heron.

- FIONA: I think that is.

- CHAPERONE: Use your binoculars and... [laughs] Not just guessing.

- ROWENA: We have eight hours of birding.

We try and spot as many different species as we can.

- Can I write it down?

- Did Zain see it?

Did Amanda see it?

- No.

- AMANDA: See what?

- That was still really cool to see.

- Oh, wait.

There's the duck I saw.

There's the duck I saw.

- It's a great way for the children to observe what kind of birds live in each habitat.

[fulvous whistling duck chirping] Yeah.

Oh, there's something in the tree.

Yeah.

Amanda spotted it.

Well, good well spot.

- CHAPERONE: Yeah, it had black wings.

[children chattering] Yeah, they did.

- Yeah.

- I thought it was a cardinal but then I looked at it's wings and they were black.

It's really fun to find out what they are and like, their habitats and what they do.

- CHAPERONE: And you guys saw the anhingas?

- LUKE: And, yeah, we saw both anhingas.

- Anhingas?

- LUKE: And then- - FIONA: Because if they become endangered, someone has to help them.

- Over to the right, it's flying now.

Snowy egret, see that?

- ROWENA: Yeah.

- Does everyone see the snowy?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, I saw the snowy.

I saw snowy.

- Birding is really good because you can see a lot of how birds interact with their environment and also other animals too.

Oh, is that a limpin?

Limpkin or whatever?

- ROWENA: No, look at the beak everyone.

- LUKE: It's an ibis.

Yeah, a white ibis.

- I think it's an ibis.

- LUKE: It's a white ibis.

- ROWENA: Okay.

- AMANDA: Do we already have white ibis?

- LUKE: A lot of the time those patterns can kind of show what's, like, going on in an environment.

[birds chirping] If the birds leave, then it might be because there's something wrong with the environment.

- If no one cares about them, they'll probably go extinct.

It's just fun to come out and look at them.

I think we do have house finch.

We have house finch already.

[bird tweeting] - ROWENA: It's exciting for them when they get to know the birds and then they recognize them.

- LUKE: Okay.

- CHAPERONE: Fiona, do we have great blue on the list?

I think we only had little blue.

- LUKE: No, we don't.

- CHAPERONE: You want me to check?

- AMANDA: I can't understand her writing.

- ROWENA: That's okay.

- FIONA: I'm writing while walking.

- Yes, this is hard.

All right, so let's pop over to the other side.

We'll just walk a little bit of it and see if there's anything over there.

[gentle music] - What is that?

On the other side?

- ROWENA: Well, this island is turning into a rookery, which is great.

A rookery is?

- AMANDA: A nesting site.

- A nesting site, yes.

I enjoy it.

Their enthusiasm is catching.

- LUKE: We see a glossy.

Glossy ibis right here.

- AMANDA: Glossy ibis!

- Oh, and there's a yellow legs right by it too.

- ROWENA: I really enjoy the wonder that they experience when they see a bird for the first time.

- LUKE: That's a... house finch, right?

- ZAHRA: Yes.

- ROWENA: That sense of wonder is so infectious.

I really enjoy it, and their enthusiasm.

- FIONA: Did everyone see it?

- AMANDA: It's up right there!

- ROWENA: Okay, well, put your binoculars on it and watch it.

- LUKE: You see that?

- ROWENA: If they care about the birds, they'll care about the habitat and they'll care about the environment.

And I'm hoping that will make them environmentalists for life.

- FIONA: Can I see?

- Oh, is that a scarlett?

- ZAHRA: No, that's another baltimore.

- ZAIN: Yeah, it's up there.

This is fun.

[gentle music] - What's up?

- NARRATOR: It is early summer, and these University of Texas students are preparing for a trip.

- Is it open?

- I think so.

- ANDRE: We've got 12 students, and our professor.

- NARRATOR: The group is heading from Austin to the coast... - We're heading down to Galveston Island State Park.

- NARRATOR: ...But not for a break on the beach.

- ANDRE: Today we're packing up for the first site visit.

- NARRATOR: These advanced architecture students are heading to Galveston to design and build.

- Toodle-oo!

- Bye!

- NARRATOR: All anyone can say for sure is that, by the end of this summer, a lot will be learned.

- COLEMAN: This is a project we have to do in a very short time.

Ten weeks from the first day to the last day.

It will be an interesting summer for these students.

- NARRATOR: If they are successful, the end result will be a finished structure that the state park needs.

[upbeat music] [waves crashing] - Welcome to Galveston Island State Park.

Super excited that you're here.

I'm a Park Interpreter.

Essentially, I try to connect people with the natural resources that we have.

We are almost an island within an island, surrounded on all sides by development.

As we get out here, you might notice some algae on the ground, you see the little bubbles?

- NARRATOR: One pressing need is a pavilion for educational programs... - So, it's a nursery habitat for all the fish that we like.

- NARRATOR: ...a structure to provide some of the only shade on the park's bay side.

- We have a lot of school groups that come out here.

I have a lot of hurdles to get over in order to make them start to care about this place.

To get them to some of those higher thoughts and higher concepts, you have to meet their basic needs.

- COLEMAN: The students are concentrating on working closely with their stakeholder, the park rangers.

- This is the proposed site, with an emphasis of orientation towards the water here.

- COLEMAN: They're going to try to get an idea of what it is that they want, and through that they'll begin a design process.

- PATRICK SCHOONOVER: Hit that corner, Joey?

- COLEMAN: They'll be camping very close to where they're going to build.

It gets them immersed in the climate they're going to be working within.

[waves rolling] The mission of the DesignLab is to try to increase ecological literacy, particularly of the coastal environment.

[dramatic music] - REBECCA KENNEDY: How many renders are there going to be?

Four?

- ANDRE: Yeah.

- Okay.

- HUGO: That's much better.

It's been like Santa's little workshop in here.

[playful music] - COLEMAN: What are you working on?

- A lot of cardboard, a lot of Elmer's glue.

We spend a lot of time at Hobby Lobby.

Sweet.

We're getting a Master's in Architecture but we're getting a Ph.D.

in craft supplies.

- We had a pretty long design process.

Obviously, designing something with a group of 11 people, it's hard to come to a consensus about things.

- We floundered for about a week there to try to really find something we could all get behind, um, but that's great, because that's how real-world practice is and it also ensures that we have a really good, strong idea.

Given that it's a shade pavilion, we can test if it really does provide shade.

I can hit 'apply' and then we can see that at 10 AM, we're getting dappled light through the structure.

[playful music] - COLEMAN: These early models are design studies that they were doing individually.

They're all meaningful in that they lead to something.

That one design that they're actually now going to present.

- It was a little bit Frankenstein-y for a little while, but we've got something good here.

I think it's, uh, definitely come together as a collective idea.

- You know, everything that we're doing now, we're trying to minimize long-term maintenance.

Things really get beaten up.

- COLEMAN: We have milestones that we have to hit.

And the big milestone of the first half of the semester was getting the design and presenting that to the folks at the park.

- That's the shoreline we're counting.

- I like your orientation.

I think it's very good.

So, your prevailing breeze is coming from the water.

- The next milestone then is develop drawings and to get the technical folks with the Parks Division to approve that.

- When you walk around the corner and it all kind of opens up in front of you.

I just think that's a great idea.

- COLEMAN: We will have about two and a half to three weeks to actually put this thing together, so it's very fast-track.

- HUGO: Fabricating components.

[buzzing] - We've been getting a lot of welding practice and sweating a lot.

[laughs] [saw revs] - There's a team working solely on wood, a team working on mostly steel, so that allows us to work really quickly.

- Theoretically, we're supposed to start this uh, this Friday, making shade.

- HUGO: Found a way to get through all the procedural hurdles, and we're moving forward.

- COLEMAN: You know, it was right down to the wire.

On the day we started construction is the day we got our approval.

So, all's well that ends well is what I say.

- HUGO: We lost a day on the front end, but for the most part we are on track.

[upbeat music] A lot of dirt has been dug.

- SEAN: Getting there.

- HUGO: It was extremely hot the first couple of days, I think it was record highs, but the human body is pretty resilient.

- Woo!

- HUGO: We've been doing great.

Great attitudes all around.

- In that direction, yeah.

What's your suggestion?

[upbeat music] - HUGO: You have to, essentially, in space, make a perfect square, and determine perfect placements, which is surprisingly challenging to get it right.

You know, especially if you don't do it every day.

Measure 20 times, build once, is kind of what we're going for.

- REBECCA: I think we all were really excited today when all the rocks went into the wall.

We were all like, "Wow, it actually does what we want it to do," which is pretty exciting.

- HUGO: That's why the studio is so fantastic, because it bridges that gap between paper and real life.

Are we doing okay?

- I think you're doing great.

- Alright!

- SEAN: Not to jinx anything, but it's been going really well.

- What's your time on those, I'm just curious?

One?

Okay.

- We've had some sequencing things where we've had to kind of stop and pause and make sure we're not stepping on our own toes as we go, but I would say it's been surprisingly smooth.

- This is our second to last cut.

[saw revs] We've been getting a lot done despite the odds, and, knock on wood, nothing else comes up.

[thunder clap] - SEAN: The weather has been our biggest hang up I think.

- HUGO: Here comes the rain.

Let's uh, let's get some stuff put away.

[rainfall and thunder] - COLEMAN: Working in August, it's both a gift and a curse.

We've probably lost a few hours to summer rains, but you build that into the schedule, knowing that's going to happen this time of year.

[thunder] We have had nothing but a great relationship with Texas Parks and Wildlife, and this is our fifth project.

We've done three projects at Goose Island State Park, down in the Rockport area.

The fire circle for the youth nature interpreter there.

A birding platform, where the nature interpreter, again, uses that for her bay walks.

We've done a project at Sea Rim which is up at Port Arthur.

It's a camping platform that's out in the wetlands that the only way you get to it is kayaking.

People can rent for the weekend.

It's also used by biologists, bird counters, to keep tabs on the health of that particular wetland.

So all of these projects have something to do with the ocean environment, bay environment, where the public comes and learns something about the local ecology.

[rocks banging] - ANDRE: Here we are, it's like 95, 100% humidity and we got the chain gang out here with rocks.

- They're just masochists.

They just wanted to do it.

[energetic music] - I'd rather be moving rocks than lifting louvers.

- ANDRE: Yeah, those are probably 80 to 100 pounds, depending on how soaking wet they are.

- HUGO: Oh yeah.

Oh yeah!

[grunts] It's almost there.

It's been a very laborious undertaking, but we are on the tail end now.

Just the finishing touches- the fun part really.

[rocks clanging] [water pouring] - And repeat.

[energetic music] - It's tough to work in these conditions for 12 hours a day.

When you can see the finish line, it's a lot easier.

- HUGO: We're going to finish, guys.

I can't even describe the level of happiness that makes me feel.

- When they put up the first six louvers, we were like, "Oh my God!

"We're standing on the deck and it's shaded!

We did this!"

- HUGO: One, two, three.

Teamwork makes the dream work.

Alright, let's drill it.

[energetic music] - JOEY: We had some rough days in the beginning.

- We really were questioning whether we would even be here right now.

- It was pretty tough.

I'm really happy about the result though.

- Because we're kind of wrapping it up, we're finally seeing what we've made come to life.

I wish we could see the first group that's going to experience it.

- HUGO: I'm pretty happy.

I'll come back sometime, but I'll be happy to drive over the bridge, headed back to Austin.

- I will not feel guilty if I lay in bed all day tomorrow.

[drill hammers] - Last one!

Amazing experience.

- Nice work.

[laughs] [broom scraping] - SEAN: We're excited to be wrapping up today, for sure.

[uplifting music] - ANDRE How about this group shot?

- SEAN: I hope they're as satisfied with it as we are.

- Y'all ready?

- SEAN: For us, it's a win at least.

- One, two, three.

[shutter] [laughs] - Digging the shade.

Above and beyond.

I love this crew.

This is amazing!

So, lessons learned?

- COLEMAN: Do this in November.

[laughs] - This place I think is going to be highly used, and, of course, I think the shade is going to be really appreciated in the future.

Please consider this a personal invitation to come back and see how this place lives.

- There isn't like a ribbon cutting ceremony or anything.

- LISA: High five.

Yes.

Good game, good game.

- SEAN: There will be some mild celebration and then some careful driving home, because I think we'll all be very tired.

- LISA: Good game, yeah, America.

[uplifting music] [wind and uplifting music] [uplifting music] - NARRATOR: Next time on Texas Parks & Wildlife... - Bumble bees are great pollinators because bees deliberately collect pollen.

- Every time the male shows up with a stick she's so excited.

Oh my God, a stick, a stick, a stick a stick.

Very rewarding for the male.

- Ideally you want to see a tail and try to throw right in front of which way you think the fish is facing.

[plop] - NARRATOR: That's next time on Texas Parks & Wildlife.

[wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [coyote yips] - NARRATOR: 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.

Funding also provided by Academy Sports and Outdoors.

Helping hunters, anglers, and outdoor enthusiasts of all ages get outside.

Out here, fun can't lose.