- 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... - That looks good.

- We're not dumping garbage in the lake, we're actually providing good habitat for these fish.

- I'm out here patrolling the San Marcos River.

We're out here to make sure everybody's having a safe and fun time on the river.

- The mountains hold a lot of different secret places.

Or I would say sacred places for some people.

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

[traffic rumbling] [pigeon cooing] - This park is very special because it's one of the largest urban wilderness parks in the world.

It's almost 27,000 acres, and it's in the middle of a major city in Texas, El Paso.

[gentle music] - LYDIA: The mountain really does just kind of come right out of the middle of the city, and it's really like you just stepped into another world.

A lot of our visitors, that's why they come here.

They wanna get away, and they wanna feel like they've just left everything behind.

- MALE CLIMBER: You got me?

- FEMALE: Yep, I got you.

[heavy breathing] - CESAR: The mountains holds a lot of different secret places, or I would say sacred places for some people.

[gentle music] This park was created by the community.

The community back in the 1970s fought to protect the mountains and persuade the local government and the state government to purchase the land and establish Franklin Mountains State Park.

[gentle music] [footsteps on gravel] - That's kind of an interesting thing about a lot of these trails, you stay in the shade.

For the most part, people come out to Franklin Mountains State Park for the trails.

- So we're out here hiking the Aztec Cave Trail, which is about a mile and a half getting to the top.

- Hiking is one of my lifelines.

I love it.

It helps me to clear my mind and I can meditate.

[birds chirping] - Breathtaking views of El Paso.

Where else could you hike and see two countries and three states?

Yeah, you would be hard pressed to find any place that matches this, any place in the world.

If you look from the road actually, it looks like a small opening, but it actually opens up to a very large cave.

- LYDIA: You can see the whole valley below us.

There's a lotta different tours that we offer each month.

Some of them, like the one to Aztec Cave... but sometimes, we'll also do tours to our mines.

With the mines, you're crawling down in these small spaces and getting to explore this old mine shaft.

[upbeat music] - BIKER: Woo.

Go, go, go, go.

- We've got over a hundred miles worth of trails.

So you can ride all day and you will never ride the same trail.

You can get to some of the trails right from a parking lot, so you don't have to even go very far.

You just basically ride off your car and ride a nice, smooth trail as a beginner.

Or you can hit some of the more technical stuff and go all the way to the top.

- BIKER: Push it, push it, all right.

Good job.

Whoo!

[hawk calls] [cycle rumbles] - Whoa!

[cycle rumbles] [hawk calls] [cyclists chattering] - Go, go, go, go.

You got it, you got it!

[riders encouraging] - Awesome job!

- You can ride with groups.

You can ride solo, and you've got this whole mountain behind you that you can ride all the way around if you want to.

[bikers chattering] - It was good.

It was good.

- LYDIA: What's nice about our campsites is it's an easy weekend getaway.

[cyclists chattering and laughing] - Nice.

- LYDIA: We're about 15 minutes away from the nearest big store.

- Get this party started now.

[gentle music] These mountains are challenging, but they're also so rewarding.

Watching that sunrise.

Every moment, the colors change, every shadow on the mountain is changing, and it almost makes it like it's a new trail every single time.

- We have so many people that come here to heal.

Natural therapy.

They're not only doing exercise, but their mind is getting clearer.

- You could have the worst day ever, and you come out and you're not feeling it, and by the time you're done, you feel like you could do anything.

You can conquer the world.

[inspirational music] - Here we have fresh air.

You breathe, you feel alive, and then you re-energize... - Woo.

- every time that you come to these mountains.

[inspirational music] [water sloshing] [gentle music] - My name is Emily Slubar.

I've been a game warden for a little over 10 years.

I was an intern in college with Parks and Wildlife game wardens, and I fell in love with everything they did, everything they stand for, the job.

- ADAM: You gonna drive or you want me to?

- EMILY: Well, if you could tell me where to go, I'll drive and it's- - ADAM: I would stay in the water.

- EMILY: Yeah, obviously.

[water sloshing] So when we're out on the water, safety is number one priority.

We're obviously wanting to make sure people have the appropriate life jackets on their boat.

That kids are wearing their life jackets if needed.

[alert beeping] - Game warden, how you doing today?

Gonna do a quick water safety check on the boat.

Make sure you got all your safety stuff.

There's a life jacket, okay.

So our main thing today is to look for life jackets.

That's the number one priority.

I mean, all the safety stuff is important, but the life jacket is what saves more lives than the others.

- I was gonna say, just as long as each boat, there's enough life jackets for everybody that's in the water, on the boat.

And then fire extinguishers for both boats.

Do you mind if I step on board so I can test it?

- Go ahead.

Yeah.

- Okay.

Got it, Adam?

- So is this what it might be?

Something else in there?

- Nope, that's it.

All right, thank you, appreciate it.

A lot of times it's just easier to step on board and check a few things out and get a look.

Sometimes you just board on a boat and there's nothing but beer cans all over the floor.

It's a little early, but you never know.

[chuckles] - ADAM: We'll also be looking at the way the driver's operating.

You don't see a lot of alcohol out here on this lake, but it does happen.

So we're looking to make sure that they're not showing any signs of intoxication.

- You'll see it anywhere you go.

Anytime people are on the water boating on a weekend, there will always be some alcohol involved.

That's what people do sometimes, but I don't think it's as crazy here as if you look at like Lake Travis or the San Marcos River.

- Hey, do y'all mind picking up that can for us?

You're gonna have to come this way anyway.

That portage is over here.

Thank you.

I'm out here patrolling the San Marcos River.

We're out here to make sure everybody's having a safe and fun time on the river.

[water sloshing] We're also out here looking for people who might have consumed over their alcoholic limits, people who might be under the age of consuming alcohol.

Just gonna check your ID.

All right, perfect.

Thank y'all for bringing it.

- Here you go.

- Thank you.

And what's your date of birth?

- 7/15/90.

- All right.

Thank you, Elinda.

We're not out here to be a buzzkill.

We wanna make sure you have fun, but we wanna make sure you do that in a safe manner.

Well, how was it?

Did you have fun?

- There's a lot of rafts.

- JOANN: A lot of times, people are just enjoying the beautiful waterway, but we wanna make sure if something were to happen down river, that we did everything we could when we made contact with that person to make sure that they were safe in the public water space.

- ADAM: Ninety-nine percent of the time, I would say there's no violation.

They haven't done anything wrong.

We're just there to make sure they have enough life jackets, all the safety equipment that they need on their boat.

When you've done this job for as long as we have, we've seen what the outcome can be when you're not wearing a life jacket.

- Sometimes a warning is the best situation, the best consequence for that situation.

Sometimes a citation is needed, and education goes a long way a lot of times versus writing a ticket.

All right, thank you, sir.

- You have a blessed day.

- You too.

Hopefully you catch some more fish.

- Well, I'll work on it.

- ADAM: This job is not just enforcing the laws.

We do a lot of community outreach, and one of the groups that we really try and focus on is kids.

You come work with us?

Yeah, we're not gonna have any fun, we're gonna work.

You wanna go on the other boat.

All right, so there's two.

That looks exactly like our badge so you can be like us out there today.

If you can educate them early about what we do, what they can do in the outdoors, then it can turn into a lifelong passion for them.

[gentle music] - NARRATOR: On a spring afternoon, Kody Corrin and Calvin Lamont are out to do some fishing.

- CALVIN: What color do you need?

- KODY: Watermelon red.

- CALVIN: I may switch up here in a second.

- NARRATOR: Serious anglers, like Calvin and Kody, work every angle to hook a nice fish.

- KODY: I got one.

- CALVIN: He ain't very big.

- No, came off.

- NARRATOR: Otherwise they might not hear the end of it.

- CALVIN: Didn't even get him in the boat, huh?

- KODY: We fish together quite a bit.

- CALVIN: Come on to daddy.

Oh, you little flipper!

That's part of fishing with Kody... - KODY: Oh man, it's a monster!

- CALVIN: Pretty normal for us to rib each other.

Little dude.

- KODY: That's huge!

[laughs] - NARRATOR: But these veterans know the key to a respectable fishing trip is finding the right location.

- CALVIN: I think we need to go hit them ones.

See what they've got to offer.

- KODY: That group that's on that point over there.

- We'll go to this one for now.

- NARRATOR: And they happen to know of some promising new spots to fish because of a project they helped with more than a year earlier.

[heroic energetic music] ♪ ♪ - Watch your head!

♪ ♪ [bubbles] [hammer tapping] [drill whirs] To the uninitiated, that project might not have looked like anything that would improve fishing.

- CALVIN: It's got enough tentacles hanging out.

- KODY: Somebody that doesn't really know would think that we're just piecing recycled garbage together and we're really not.

- LYNN: So it's going to be 24 arms for each base.

- We need three more.

We're not dumping garbage in the lake, we're actually providing good habitat for these fish.

- TIM BISTER: We are at Lake Cypress Springs to construct some artificial fish habitat structures.

[drill whirs] There is not a lot of structure for fish like largemouth bass or sunfish to relate to underneath the water.

And fish need habitat structure in general.

Even in reservoirs that left timber standing, over time that timber in the water breaks down and the habitat for fish declines, so we're at a point where we really need to start doing something with these reservoirs to improve fish habitat.

[boat engine revs] That looks good.

♪ ♪ We have done work with Christmas trees in the past, but the PVC that we're using in these structures that we are building today are going to last for many, many years.

[bubbles] I think these attractors will start working pretty much right away as soon as the algae can start growing on them, they are going to start attracting fish and really make the angling experience that much better.

Today, materials have been purchased with money from the conservation license plate program.

We're partnering with the Franklin County Water District here, we have got a couple of members with a new Bass Unlimited chapter here to volunteer and help make fishing better in Lake Cypress Springs.

- We love fishing tournaments, but we both understand that without conservation of the lakes, we are not going to be able to do that.

So, it is on our part to make sure we help take care of that, take care of the resource that provides our recreation.

- NARRATOR: Of course, artificial structures are just one way to help fish.

- Check out this little buddy right here.

This is flat stem spike rush, water star grass, wild celery, white water lily, square stem spike rush... - NARRATOR: Native aquatic pl ants provide natural habitat.

- The more different species we have in that plant community, the more stable that plant community is.

- NARRATOR: The man behind the ol d-timey mustache is Rick Ott.

- RICK: People tell me I look like Wild Bill Hickok, and if it makes people smile, I'm all for it.

Weeding my garden.

- NARRATOR: Rick manages a native aquatic plant nursery at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens.

- It's not just the structure, it's also the actual food that's being produced here.

Structural habitat is very important because the fish use it as a place to hide, but the vegetation is producing food that invertebrates consume, small fish consume the invertebrates, bigger fish eat the smaller fish, and we eat the bigger fish.

That same basis to the food chain is occurring on those plastic structures as we have with the plants.

We're just growing a little teeny tiny garden on the surface of that plastic.

Here we've just got a bigger garden with a bigger type plant.

- NARRATOR: But getting that big garden started is the tough part.

- RICK: Let's go look at those pond weed cages.

- NARRATOR: On the water, Rick and his crew check on past efforts.

- RICK: We're at Purtis Creek State Park.

We're coming back to evaluate some of the native aquatic plant plantings that we've done years ago.

We would prefer that it was full of plants.

- NARRATOR: They find some failure and some success.

- I'm liking this a little bit better.

- NARRATOR: While cages can protect the plants from being eaten, they cannot protect against drought or high, muddy water.

- We just don't have optimal conditions for plant growth right now, with the water being so turbid, there's not as much sunlight getting to the bottom.

- NARRATOR: The crew can only hope conditions will improve and re-plant.

- RICK: It's kind of comfortable in the summer.

- TYREK: You got it there?

- RICK: My mom used to tell me not to get all wet and muddy but now I can.

Synchronized swimming, uh definitely.

We had our Ester Williams, Ken, going underwater and putting those plants in a little deeper water than we typically plant.

Ken is our deep water guy.

A lot of times all we can see of Ken is the bottoms of his feet, but we know he's working if we can see the bottoms of his feet.

[playful music] If we get a little bit of luck involving the kind of weather conditions that we have this summer, we should see good survival of the plants we put in today.

- NARRATOR: Nearby Lake Athens demonstrates what these desirable plants can look like when well-established.

- We've got a very diverse native plant community here.

We've got extensive coverage of a number of species, so ultimately, this is what we're trying to produce.

We're getting more and more Friends of Reservoirs groups all over the state, allowing us to fund these projects in a number of different places.

[reel whirs] - It's the key to having a great fishery, you know?

- NARRATOR: After their workday is done, the crew's intern, Tyrek Landry... - There's one on there.

- NARRATOR: ...shows what native plants can do for fishing.

- That's a good fish, guys.

You see what it produces.

Beautiful fish.

I'll go ahead and turn this guy back.

[splash] That made my day.

- NARRATOR: Whether with native plants or strange-looking artificial structures, improving fish habitat makes for better days of fishing.

- CALVIN: Here we go, there they are, see them?

- NARRATOR: Back on Lake Cypress Springs, Kody and Calvin find some fish at home, near habitats they helped install.

- Got him.

Everybody likes a home to stay in.

If you've got extra places that you can fish that you know is holding fish, that's always advantageous when you're fishing.

- KODY: If you start catching fish, that's always a bonus.

There's a good fish.

- CALVIN: Glad you finally caught one.

- KODY: Some inside information improves the odds in the fisherman's favor.

- NARRATOR: And these secret spots are really no secret.

- KODY: Most anglers probably don't know they can go on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website and get those grid coordinates for the habitats that we placed.

- CALVIN: You can do the same thing with a cell phone, absolutely.

You can punch those grids in and it will take you right to it as long as you've got cell phone service.

Get the net, get the net.

Oh, we ain't got one!

[laughs] Look out.

There's enough habitats in here that the fish are going to be on one of them.

- KODY: No it is a crappie.

It's a white perch.

Hey!

- CALVIN: So these habitats are holding crappie.

Caught some crappie and caught quite a few largemouth today.

- KODY: Great day on the water.

- CALVIN: It was a good time.

[birds and insects chirping] [birds chirping] [gentle music] - The loss of the last of the Blackland prairie would be a loss of the connection that we have to our natural history in this region.

And that's unacceptable.

It's simply unacceptable.

[gentle music] To understand the prairie remnant, it's important to get out and listen to the birds, feel the plants, and understand how they're communicating with one another.

The system is dynamic.

It's always changing.

I learn new things every day.

I continue to find new plants every year.

I'm watching and learning from the animals continuously.

There's always something that is at its peak while at the same time there's something that's fading away and something new coming on.

The early settlers and explorers, the naturalists, the scientists that traveled through these areas, they wrote about an endless sea of grasses punctuated by an occasional large tree.

These prairies were vast and ripe for exploration.

This is very likely what the landscape looks like as it probably were 1000, 3000, 10,000 years ago.

And so it is a step back in time.

- Clymer Meadow is an amazing Blackland prairie remnant.

And when we say a prairie remnant, we mean it's a place that has never been plowed.

Everything that we would expect to find in a native prairie is here.

To have Clymer as this special place that shows us what we used to have so much more of, is just really amazing.

And on the other hand, you drive around and 99% of the rest of the prairie is gone.

[dramatic music] Prairie species rely on their seed falling in a place where it could potentially grow.

Today, when these seeds fall a few feet or a few hundred yards, they may end up in a road.

They may end up in a parking lot.

The prairies that we have left are essentially little islands of native habitat.

- In other words, the connectivity has been broken and lost.

It is impossible that we will rebuild that, but we can do many different things to improve what we have.

We think of restoration as reigniting the natural processes of the native ecosystems.

We are able to rebuild more prairie or increase the quality of the habitats that are surrounding our remnant spaces.

- If we want more prairie, we have to go out there and actively create it.

And that means that we need to find landowners who are willing to work with us and restore prairies on their properties.

- I'm Eric Poole.

I own a 53-acre piece of property with my wife and my daughter, Emily.

It's encumbered by a conservation easement, which means I can only do certain things with it.

Luckily, those things correspond exactly with what I wanna do with the property, which is bring it back to its native state.

Enjoy a place to come out on the weekends, share it with my family and friends.

Get out of Dallas and enjoy the sounds and smells and things that you just don't get anywhere else.

Biodiversity loss is everywhere.

So you read articles about insects declining and birds declining, and right here, you know, 99% of this environment's gone.

Even today, you're losing one to five percent a year of what's already 99% gone.

And so, you know, the second that I learned about this place and that I could actually do something about it, ownership of the land came with ownership of that problem at the same time.

That first time that Monarch butterfly comes in and lands on your property, you're like, we, you know, got these plants here to let these butterflies come in.

That's pretty amazing.

[gentle music] - CHARLOTTE: One of the things that we need to think about going into the future is what we want our Texas to look like.

And we think prairies should be a really big part of a future Texas.

They store carbon, they help improve water quality, and they also provide habitat.

We want to make sure that they're part of the future of Texas.

- BRANDON: This is a dynamic landscape.

Watching those small changes with the great changes across the landscape really touches inside a person.

It's actually grabbing something inside each of us as a space that belongs here in North Texas.

[gentle music] [ducks quack, insects chirp] [ducks quack, insects chirp] [insects chirp] [gentle breeze blowing] [gentle breeze blowing] [gentle breeze blowing] [gentle breeze blowing] [gentle breeze blowing] [gentle breeze blowing] [gentle breeze 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.