- 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... - The white bass run is very exciting because the numbers of fish you can catch.

Sweet!

- People when you tell them they displace fire ants, it's like, "Yea!"

But the net effect if very negative.

- So, we're really just trying to explore what we can do.

- And that's added up to protection of over 200 miles of rivers and streams in Texas.

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

[birds chirping] - RAY: Are we going to do the biggest fish and the most fish?

- EVELYN: Yes!

- RAY: It's going to be a nice day.

- EVELYN: It is.

- NARRATOR: On a cool spring morning in mid-March, Ray Arquette and his daughters, Evelyn and Elizabeth, are going fishing.

- RAY: We're on Yegua Creek, which is a feeder creek for Lake Somerville.

- NARRATOR: This time of year, Yegua Creek is a popular spot for a particular fish.

- We're out here looking for white bass during the white bass run.

Uh-oh, I got first fish, the first white bass of the day!

It's a keeper.

It's about an average white bass.

They have to be 10 inches to keep, 16 inches is a trophy.

We always do first fish, biggest fish and most fish.

So I just got first fish.

The white bass run is very exciting because the numbers of fish you can catch.

Number two for me.

- ELIZABETH: Got one.

- RAY: Yeah, Elizabeth.

- EVELYN: Go sis.

- Got a nice one.

Now I got to get the hook out.

- RAY: You got one on?

- Yeah, I caught a fish.

- RAY: That's nice.

Nicely done.

- Bigger than yours.

[Ray laughs] A beautiful fish.

Look at the sun shine off that thing!

Sweet!

[laughs] [upbeat music] - NARRATOR: White bass, also known as sand bass, are fun to catch in rivers and lakes year-round.

But from January through May, large numbers of white bats make their way upstream to spawn.

This annual event is known as the white bass run.

And it's a fishing tradition for many Texans.

- We in Texas have some really top notch, world class white bass fishing.

I got a couple of bumps in that little pocket.

Three main factors impact the white bass run.

As the days get longer and longer, the white bass start perking up a little bit and they start moving towards these tributary streams.

They like water temperatures around 50 degrees for them to really commit to coming up into the river and then a little bit of rain, a little bit of extra flow really helps too.

There's a nice fish.

Nice white bass.

Cool to see them in such good health.

This one's a really nice chunky fish.

A single, large female can lay up to a million eggs.

We're gonna release this fish.

It's gonna go on to make a lot more white bass.

[birds chirps] - I like fishing because I enjoy it.

It's like a sport to me.

It's fun to see how many I can catch each time that I go.

You want to keep your point of your rod low down, so that when you jerk your jig it goes straight.

Also, keep your line taunt.

If the line's not taunt, you can't feel the fish bite.

There you go.

- RAY: Yeah!

Nice fish!

- Got a nice size white bass.

- Fishing for white bass is really active.

Sometimes we'll fish for long enough that your arms get really tired.

Got a fish!

- RAY: Fish on!

- Not a very big one.

- Nicely done, though.

- Didn't even realize I had a bite at first.

I thought I had a snag.

- Evelyn just caught her third fish in this hole.

Elizabeth has one out of here, and I haven't got one yet out of this hole.

One of the main things I learned from my dad in fishing is to adapt to the situation.

Sometimes you get to one hole and you might not catch a fish at all, but then you move down to another one and you'll catch five or eight back to back.

That bend look good girls, right down there?

- Yes, it does.

- Let's go try that.

- EVELYN: I love hanging out with my family, catching fish.

It's also just fun to be out in nature.

- ELIZABETH: Hearing the birds sing and the water run, it's just very serene.

[sandhill crane calls] - EVELYN: Those are sandhill cranes.

Yeah, they sound awesome.

[sandhill crane calls] - I've been taking my daughters fishing since before they could fish.

I would carry them in a car seat, and I'd bring them out to a fishing spot where they could catch bluegill.

We would go fishing and get them catching fish.

- EVELYN: I've been fishing as long as I can remember.

- ELIZABETH: I am very happy that I have a dad that always takes me out.

Part of the reason he always takes us out is because he enjoys seeing us have fun.

- One of the most enjoyable things about fishing for me with my daughters is watching them catch fish.

- Got a white bass.

- RAY: When they light up and you see that smile.

That's the success.

- Got one.

- Woohoo, nice job!

I'm really looking forward to all the future times I get to come back here and do this with my girls.

[gentle music] - ED LEBRUN: Sweeping up dead ants every day.

Millions of ants inside their house.

Ants getting into the electrical equipment and then the electric circuit shorts out-- Just much, much worse.

- NARRATOR: The script is familiar.

An exotic ant invades, wreaking havoc.

But these are not fire ants, and this is not a horror film.

- FILM NARRATOR: There is no word to describe THEM!

[scream] - NARRATOR: Yet like the movies, native species battle for survival.

There is public alarm.

- FILM NARRATOR: Stay in your homes!

- NARRATOR: And scientists race to combat the menace.

This is one crazy ant.

- FILM NARRATOR: I tell you gentlemen, science has agreed-- - NARRATOR: The tawny crazy ant, native to South America, was first documented near Houston and in Florida in the early 2000s.

Since then, it has invaded around the Gulf Coast.

- They are found in a variety of habitats-- urban, suburban and also in natural environments.

In Texas, we know that when you get an invasion of crazy ants, you lose lots and lots of insects, and you also lose all the ants except for a few small species.

- NARRATOR: Researchers, like Ed LeBrun, are concerned by the impacts of crazy ants on natural systems.

- ED: Very active today.

They cause a lot of damage to the native ecosystems by greatly reducing abundance and diversity of other insects in the system.

- NARRATOR: And some natural places are especially fragile.

- ED: This many ants in any environment will have negative consequences, typically, but there's a lot of endangered species in these caves, right Todd?

- Yeah.

- NARRATOR: At the entrance of a protected cave on the outskirts of Austin, LeBrun and Natural Resource Specialist, Todd Bayless, know swarms of crazy ants on the surface are bad news for rare cave bugs below.

- We got a call from Texas Cave Management Association to tell us that there was a major infestation of ants that they'd never seen before in their cave, and sure enough, found this tawny crazy ant in huge numbers inside the cave itself.

That was a concern to us because this is one of the caves we hope to protect for some species of concern.

We knew that they had the potential of being found in other endangered species caves nearby.

[cave crawling] - Onward and inward!

My name is Travis Clark, I'm a Natural Resources Specialist for Travis County at the Balcones Canyonlands Preserve.

The BCP was created to provide protections for eight endangered species, six of those are karst invertebrates.

We're at a cave in South Austin that's been impacted by tawny crazy ants.

And the reason we're entering today is to do one of our quarterly karst faunal surveys to assess impacts by tawny crazy ants.

There he is right there.

- MARK SANDERS: This is one of the species of concern that we're trying to protect.

The species name is Rhadine Austinica.

- TRAVIS: The species are essentially canaries in a coal mine, and so they're going to be indicative of cave health.

These cave systems are important because they're recharge features.

People benefit through drinking water, through recreation where this comes out in springs.

- MARK: Cicurina Bandida.

- And that was two?

- One.

That's it.

- TRAVIS: So essentially what we're charged with is providing all the safeguards we can for these caves.

- TODD: The underground ecosystem is very unique, not just in North America but all over the world.

Knowing we had a problem, we looked for experts in the ant community that could possibly help us out and we found Ed LeBrun over at UT's Brackenridge Field Lab.

- ED: This is the invasive species research group at the University of Texas at Austin.

And we are working on a lot of invasive species problems in the state of Texas.

Most people in Texas, when you're talking about invasive ants are thinking about red imported fire ants.

They actually do less harm to the native Texas ecosystems than these crazy ants do.

- NARRATOR: Crazy ants, so named for their erratic movements, eat or outcompete most of the spiders and insects around them, including the formidable fire ant.

- Fire ants are very tough.

They have this extremely toxic venom.

She actually goes up and literally takes the venom droplet off the end of the fire ant stinger.

And crazy ants, they go, they fight, they get hit with fire ant venom, they just keep fighting, they keep charging in and they should all be dying.

And so then here's the crazy ant detoxing from the venom.

People when you tell them they displace fire ants, it's like, "Yea!"

But the net effect if very negative, so you can really change the whole system by altering the arthropod community.

Here's a trap.

- NARRATOR: Such threats have biologists searching for ways to control crazy ants.

Texas Parks and Wildlife contributed funding to an early investigation of boric acid bait stations in the field.

- Unfortunately, it's not very promising.

- We discovered that, although the crazy ants loved the bait, brought the poison back to their nests, that it just didn't reduce the densities of the ants that we were hoping for.

- NARRATOR: In the lab, there is now hope for a natural enemy that some crazy ants already carry.

- ED: These are uninfected ants, so these were our control ants in that experiment.

The microsporidian that we're working on is showing quite a bit of promise.

- NARRATOR: A fungal parasite specific to these ants could help keep them in check.

- The development of larvae to workers is greatly reduced by infection, and the life span of workers is reduced by about a quarter.

There are these phydolese, solonopsis, dipoloptrims, they are very tiny.

And most of your ant diversity is down at this kind of size.

Tawny crazy ants are just a very small component of the overall ant assemblage down in Argentina.

- NARRATOR: The world of ants... - ED: Leaf-cutting ants... - NARRATOR: ...is complex.

- ED: ...we have here in Texas as well, we have Atta texana .

- NARRATOR: So further studies of ant interactions, where crazy ants are native, and where they are not, may provide more ways to minimize their impacts.

- FILM NARRATOR: The subterranean nest, where the beast spawns its terrible progeny.

- NARRATOR: Meanwhile, we should remember that the very best solution to invasive species problems is to avoid creating them in the first place.

- ED: Crazy ant queens don't fly.

What that means is they don't have a way to infest new areas except for people moving them.

And that's unfortunately what's happening all over the state.

So, people move them when they take a potted plant somewhere that has ants in it.

When you go to a garden store to buy something, it's important to look for ants.

I mean you don't have to be an ant biologist, just look for ants and if they're covered in ants, don't buy it.

Recreational vehicles are a problem as well.

Being sure that there aren't any ants in your vehicle when you go to visit a new place.

[door slam] [intriguing music] Species invasion, it's a natural process, right?

Species have been moving around the planet since there's been a planet.

The problem is, humans with our commerce and everything we do, elevated the rate at which these invasions happen by many orders of magnitude.

And so the natural system doesn't have time to adjust before the next invader comes.

The natural systems are very resilient.

If you can give them time to adjust, they will.

We should be paying attention, and we should be investing resources in offsetting the impact.

That's why I work here.

That's what we're about is trying to change the dynamic so that we can preserve the natural systems that we all grew up with.

[intriguing music] [upbeat music] - NARRATOR: To celebrate 40 years of our television series, we are taking a trip back in time to look at some of our earliest episodes.

♪ ♪ [phone ringing] - CLARENCE: Parks and Wildlife Department, Beezley.

[upbeat music] - NARRATOR: In this age of information, keeping up with the latest is an awesome task, but keeping up with Texas Parks and Wildlife is as easy as a free phone call.

By using our toll-free WATS line, you can access a truly remarkable database of information about Texas.

The latest innovations in communication technology will bring you in direct interface with the highest technology of all, people.

Clarence Beezley and Paul Hope are veteran information specialists, whose combined experience makes them the most authoritative source on many Texas topics.

If there's anyone who can answer your questions, they can.

- I'm amazed at how little the human mind can really remember.

And the day that you stop learning, and the day you stop asking, is the day that you ought to hang it up, really, because every day there's something.

I think people think we know everything, which we thank them for, but we don't know everything.

- Now, there isn't anything wrong with saying you don't know.

If it's a real good, legitimate question, you tell them, we'll find the answer and call you back.

- And we get little kids, and they really ask things, and they generally, things like send me everything you have on wild animals.

You know.

My gosh, I could fill up a dump truck full of that stuff.

"What's an endangered animal?"

"What do we do to protect animals?"

"What animals can you hunt?"

"What animals can't you hunt?"

"Why can't you hunt eagles?"

"Why can't you hunt?"

"Why do you do this?"

And if you listen to a kid, and kind of don't turn him off, just let him ramble on a little bit, he will ask some very pertinent questions, and stuff that maybe we take for granted.

- Another call that we get quite occasionally is when little birds fall out of the nest.

People expect the Parks and Wildlife Department to come and get a little bird if it's falling out of the nest, which is a very highly impractical thing.

And she wanted to know what would happen to this little fledgling bird that was out in the backyard.

And I said, "Well, the little bird will either learn to fly or the neighborhood cat will eat the bird."

[phone ringing] - NARRATOR: Clarence and Paul work in a dynamic, changing environment.

It's their job to keep track of what's happening so that you can stay informed.

- Parks and Wildlife, Paul Hope.

- NARRATOR: If you have a question or if you'd like to subscribe to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine, call us toll free.

[phone ringing] - GROUP: 1-800-792-1112.

[upbeat music] [water trickling] [upbeat music, wind blowing] - And you just wanna tap it?

[water gurgling] Good one.

- That's cool.

Can I hold one of them?

- RYAN SMITH: Water is life.

[group gasps] Water is life not just for these fish that were so interesting to me growing up.

But I think as I, as I learned more and more about ecosystems and learned more and more about the nature of how all aspects of our culture depends on water.

Needing drinking water, but also just recreational, spiritual, [upbeat music] all those ways in which people like me that are recharged by being out there on the river fishing, that all depends on healthy aquatic ecosystems.

[upbeat music] [water gurgling] I went to work for The Nature Conservancy first with the Freshwater Initiative.

That was really the group that figured out how to bring the Nature Conservancy into being a player in water conservation.

[upbeat music] But this was an organization that wasn't just a fire-breathing environmental organization trying to save rivers for fish, but recognized it was about people and nature.

- Oh, I got a goggle-eye.

Hey, baby daddy.

- RYAN: Which is critical because there won't be an environmental solution that works unless it also works for people.

- When I'm sitting here fishing like this, I don't have a care in this world.

[upbeat music] - RYAN: I knew of some projects that these old guys had done in Texas protecting these critical aquatic habitats.

- JOHN: At that time, The Nature Conservancy had a very, very influential board member who was Dr. Clark Hubbs from the University of Texas.

He's a world expert on fishes, but especially on desert fishes and especially on Texas fishes.

[upbeat music] - DR. HUBBS: I would argue that water is important to the future of the globe because if you don't have water, the normal biological processes that include us will disappear.

[upbeat music] - JOHN: And this promotion of water conservation and aquatic biota conservation for Texas, were seminal and foundational for the importance of aquatic conservation.

[upbeat music] - Biodiversity is why things will be fine for my great-great-great grandchildren.

And if we don't have those animals and plants in there, my great-great-grandchildren may go extinct.

We need the biodiversity for our future.

[upbeat music] - There's not a river or a spring system that The Nature Conservancy has not been a critical player in.

- We want to keep working lands working and that ag producers can actually continue to make an economic living off of the land.

[upbeat music] So we're really just trying to explore what we can do.

[sprinklers spraying] - RYAN: How to drive more efficient use of water and drive some of that water that's already permitted for environmental purposes.

[upbeat music] - SUZANNE: We're trying to figure out conservation practices that we can work with landowners to see if they can look at regenerative ag practices that have rotating of their cattle or rotating of their crops, if there's ways that they can reduce their water use.

[upbeat music] [water trickling] - RYAN: Whether it's for paddling a kayak on the Devils River, or whether it's maintaining the globally significant agriculture in the Rio Grande, farther downstream from there.

There are reasons we care about these things.

[upbeat music] And that's added up through protection of over 200 miles of rivers and streams in Texas.

[upbeat music] All of which is critically important to ecosystems that both people and nature depend on.

[upbeat music] And has added up to protection of some of those most iconic rivers and landscapes in the state.

[upbeat music] - You know, you ask, am I hopeful?

Well, you have, you know, these two big risk to your resources, land use changes, and that could be pumping, agriculture.

[water trickling] Another one of the things that we couldn't talk about just a few years ago is climate change.

[upbeat music] There was a period where, you know, climate change was really not well received, but it is now.

[splash] People are starting to accept some of these new concepts, and because of that, I think that there's hope for the resources.

[crickets chirping] - And there are places where we can work with the constituents, with the agencies, with yes, even the politicians to, you know, to develop the will to do it, to do it right.

[upbeat music] [birds singing] [birds singing] [birds singing] [water trickling] [birds singing] [water trickling] [birds singing] [birds singing] [water trickling] [birds singing] [birds singing] [birds singing] [birds singing] [bee buzzing] [birds singing] [birds singing] 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.