- [Jay] Funding for this program was provided by... - [Chrissy] The J.W.

Couch Foundation.

- [Jay] Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M University - Kingsville.

- [Chrissy] Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi.

- [Jay] The Gulf of Mexico Trust.

- [Chrissy] Threshold Foundation.

- [Jay] Shield-Ayres Foundation.

- [Chrissy] Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation.

Gossamer Gear, Cina Alexander Forgason, Pam and Will Harte.

- [Jay] Helen Alexander, Blair and Wade G. Chappell, Clair Dewar, Cheryl and Paul Drown, Deborah and David McBride, Myfe Moore, Shirley and Dennis Rich, and the Texas Water Foundation.

- [Chrissy] For more information and a complete list of funders, please visit chasingthetideseries.com.

- [Jay] The Texas coast.

- [Chrissy] From the Sabine River to the Rio Grande.

- [Jay] It's diverse.

- [Chrissy] It's industrial.

- [Jay] It's a buffer.

- [Chrissy] A gateway.

- [Jay] And it's rapidly changing.

- [Chrissy] We're gonna show it to you as we walk every inch.

- [Jay] This is "Chasing the Tide."

- [Chrissy] The ferry onto Galveston drops you off on the north side of the island, so we headed over to East Beach and began our walk.

(upbeat music) (rain falling heavily) Unfortunately, it decided to rain a little bit that morning, but at least it wasn't hot.

(wind blowing fiercely) (wind continues blowing) The rain broke after a couple of hours and we were soon walking the historic Galveston seawall.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) And Galveston itself is rich with Texas history.

- [Jay] The first known inhabitants of Galveston Island were the Atakapa and Karankawa peoples, dating back to 600 A.D. Galveston got its American name from Bernardo de Galvez, the Spanish colonial governor who ordered the first survey of the Texas coast in 1786.

Galvez never actually stepped foot on the island though.

Galveston's first European settlements were built in 1816, and as a natural port, it became the largest and richest city in Texas by the latter half of the century.

On June 19, 1865, General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas, a date now celebrated as Juneteenth.

Established as a federal holiday in 2021, Juneteenth serves as a day to celebrate the emancipation, resilience, and achievements of the African American community.

- [Chrissy] Everything for Galveston changed in 1900.

The category four hurricane that struck Galveston on September 8th of that year is still the deadliest natural disaster to ever hit the United States, killing between six and 12,000 people and causing over 100 billion in damage in today's dollars.

Galveston's port status was superseded by Houston and industry moved up the bay.

After the horrific storm, the city constructed a 17-foot sea wall around much of the old quarter and elevated the entire island and its 2,000 buildings.

From the 1920s to the 1950s, Galveston earned the nickname Sin City of the Southwest, with illegal bootlegging and gambling serving as important economic drivers.

Today, Galveston has a population of just over 53,000 and still caters to tourism.

Beach homes and condominiums dot the 27-mile long coastline.

- [Jay] The only reason we're able to walk the Barrier Islands of Texas, every mile of them, is because of the Open Beaches Act of 1959.

Championed by then-State Representatives Bob Eckhart and Babe Schwartz, the act guarantees the public unrestricted access to the shore from low tide to the line of vegetation.

And for decades, public property moved with the tide line.

- [Chrissy] However, in the 2012 Severance versus Patterson decision, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that owners would retain their property rights even after the tide line changed as a result of hurricanes.

The decision would keep the public off of sections of beach now deemed private.

As a result, the General Land Office has canceled beach nourishment projects on Galveston and other Texas coastal areas because of the implications of using public funding for now non-public lands.

- [Jay] Texas is one of the few places in the country where the beaches are accessible to the public, and the people of Texas have voted to enshrine that access in the Constitution.

For our part, anything that limits the access to the shore would mean we couldn't do this journey, and it's something we shouldn't take for granted.

The coast may be Texas' last great gathering place.

Like Saturday Night Live.

- Oh yeah, everybody- - Next to each other.

- [Chrissy] When we started researching this trip, we met up with Ellis Pickett, the founder of the first chapter of the Surfrider Foundation in Texas.

- Doesn't have anything to do with hurricanes.

- [Chrissy] Ellis had been up and down the coast his whole life, and he knows it as well as anyone.

Once the trip began, Ellis offered to join us for a few days, but got so wrapped up in the adventure that he became determined to help us reach the finish.

To escape the elements and grab the occasional shower, we decided to stay in houses instead of tents, and we weren't sure we'd have room for one more.

But like any true surfer, he didn't mind sleeping on couches.

So we had a beach-loving guide shadowing us as we made our way down the coast.

- I've been surfing since 1963.

Fell in love with the coast, enjoyed it, had a great time.

Now that I'm 74, I wanna make sure my grandchildren have as much enjoyment of the coast as I have.

I've volunteered to be a helper, and his initial intent was to get an interview with me of knowledge of the Upper Coast.

But as we progressed along, starting at Sabine Pass, my intimate knowledge of the coast that we were driving down, and I was able to help guide them through problem areas and give them a lot of education on what's happening on the Upper Coast and how the battle between the builders and the Gulf of Mexico was going.

After the first day, I was asked to stay the second day, and I was enthusiastic.

I'm loving this, I'm loving this, this is great.

It's a great way to get information out to the people, get them involved, get them informed, and make things happen to preserve the coast.

So at this point, I've kind of been from a tag along to an actual member of the team, and I really appreciate the invitation, and this is gonna be a hoot.

I expect this to be my last great adventure.

- [Jay] It's impossible to talk about the Texas coast and not talk about development.

In Galveston, development means a few things, housing, visitors and jobs, something that the community needs.

The $250 million Margaritaville development in Galveston's East End will be 314 resort rooms and beach side cottages on 95 acres.

This, in addition to the nearby 32 acres San Luis Resort and Spa.

But this human development comes with an added cost.

Those acres that become resorts are no longer green space for wildlife, and they are no longer resilient wetlands or coastlines that stave off flooding.

They no longer stabilize the shore or allow groundwater to recharge.

- [Chrissy] Neither Margaritaville nor San Luis Resort and Spa include easements for wildlife to access the shoreline.

These are large blocks of habitat, often fenced off and taken out of play for wildlife, leaving a number of species with increasingly little place to go.

In fact, Galveston Island's future development plans don't require wildlife corridors or green space.

Is it any wonder animals are forced to live amongst humans?

- [Jay] On Galveston Island, all kinds of wildlife survive amidst a growing human footprint.

Plenty of shorebirds and nesting birds make their living along the coast and in the back bays.

Dolphins are routinely spotted at the entrance to Galveston Bay.

But one animal has caught the imagination and adoration of Galveston Island, the ghost wolf.

- [Chrissy] Red wolves, the world's most endangered wolf, were once widespread throughout the eastern United States.

They were nearly driven to extinction by the late 1960s.

Only a small population remained in Western Louisiana and East Texas, and the only wild population is the result of a captive breeding program.

But Ron Wooten, a former field biologist living in Galveston, thought he saw something in the coyotes, the same ones that took his dog.

- I started doing a little bit more research on red wolves and I looked at pictures of red wolves and pictures of coyotes and I said, "These animals look more red wolf than they look coyote."

Fortunately, I was able to see coyotes out in the wild, and the comparison of what I saw with these animals versus the animals that I saw in the College Station, Texas area was very different.

They just didn't look the same.

- [Jay] Ron sent a biological sample from these coyotes to Dr. Bridgett vonHoldt at Princeton University and Dr. Kristin Brzeski at Michigan Tech, who ran genetic tests and confirmed that these coyotes carried up to 70% red wolf DNA.

- We had this really interesting interplay between kind of wilderness and then this urban environment, but these animals maintaining similar red wolf ghost genetics.

It took us a little bit of time in the very beginning to figure out what to call this.

Just the whole like phenomenon of, we're finding this red wolf DNA floating around in these animals, so that is a rediscovery, and I think that's the proper name, is we have rediscovered DNA that has considered to be extinct in the wild.

But this ghost is an added layer of beautiful richness and complexity.

It's the DNA in these animals that's unique.

We don't see it anywhere else on this continent except on Galveston Island, so that is a ghost.

- This habitat was the natural habitat of the Gulf Coast animal historically, and they can swim, so low tide off the west end, they can move on and off.

We definitely can see both genetically and with collar data that they will move on and off the island, so there's gene flow to the mainland to here.

The collar data's really exciting, 'cause it shows us both this transiency aspect of some of these animals that they are just shooting back and forth across island off, like around the whole coast, moving in incredible distances.

- [Chrissy] Perhaps even more surprising is the reaction of the people of Galveston to the news that ghost wolves live among them.

One night in January, 2023, over 400 people showed up to a town hall where Bridget and Kristin presented some of their research.

(audience applauds) - We have email chains going back several years from 2016 with a Galveston Island resident, Ron Wooten, who had some curiosity.

(audience applauds) I know, Ron is amazing.

They have been doing this on their own, and still in the face of coyote elimination every year, hunts and recreational whatnot, so I'm fascinated with that, and a lot of Kristin's on the ground ecology work, finding that green space and these, just even tiny protected parcels, be it private land or state land or just public parks where you can't have gunshots and trapping.

Those are really important urban sort of islands of safe haven for any wildlife species.

In addition, the ghost wolves are using that too.

When we look now at the coyotes and the ghost wolves living on your island, those actually retain a lot of the DNA that can no longer be found in the captive breeding red wolf population.

And yet they are entirely related and they come from the same ancestor.

So the wolves that we see and the coyotes we see here are the ghosts.

They are carrying the thing that we thought was extinct in the wild.

- [Kristin] So why is this important, why are we here, why do we care?

And a big part of that is we don't have the historic red wolf here.

We now have its descendants, and its descendants we can learn from to protect and conserve the red wolf as we know it today, as well as retain what is now here.

A big part of that is understanding the landscapes and habitats that retain these unique ghost genetics and these unique animals, that's both here on Galveston and understanding how landscape features promote those higher red wolf ancestry individuals as well as work that we're doing elsewhere along the Gulf Coast.

And ultimately, we're really interested in understanding, how do we recover that purple bean, right?

That lost, extinct red wolf genetic information that now persists in this ad mixed mixture of ancestry of the individuals that we have here in Galveston.

Right now for our research, we are in the process of developing a citizen science program where you all can help us by collecting scat of these animals here, on the island, off the island.

And we can use that to look at their genetics and their diet.

We don't have it up and running completely yet, so do not send me poop right now, please.

(audience laughs) When we are ready, we will do a big launch and have lots of good information and instructions on how to do it.

I would say the most help is being vocal about wildlife and the desire to have it here in your backyard in appropriate ways, without feeding them, and being an advocate for the ghost wolves as well as the rest of the ecosystem.

- The natural habitat that's here on the island, it's been swallowed up by development, and it's been very slow in some ways, but with the way the real estate prices have gone up recently, people are wanting to build, build, build.

And so property gets taken, their habitat is destroyed, and they get pushed out of a certain place.

- For me, it's like something that's been hiding in plain sight, and it took science and some ingenuity and persistence on your part to prove, but yeah, what would be your takeaway message for folks?

- I think that we all need to open our eyes, and I think we all need to pay attention to what's around us and listen and learn.

- [Chrissy] The ghost wolf's very existence speaks to the larger question of habitat and preservation in spaces that humans have developed for their own purposes.

And yet wildlife still finds a way to survive.

- [Jay] The ghost wolves of Galveston have managed to find a way to persist even in the face of humans, who in the past have looked for ways to eradicate them.

(rain falling heavily) (rain continues to fall) - [Chrissy] Day four, more on and off rain, but it wasn't hot and we were making miles, so it really could have been worse.

Galveston Island's shoreline changed as we made our way down, shifting from urban hotels and restaurants to beach houses and even some green spaces.

- [Jay] Nonprofit groups like the Galveston Bay Foundation and Artist's Boat have dedicated a lot of time and resources to ensure that the wild spaces of Galveston Island persist.

- (speaking foreign language) My name is Strongwind, and in English, my name is Alexander Joseph.

I'm tribal linguist and cultural advisor to the Karankawa Kadla.

(Alexander speaking Karankawa) In early spring and summers, we subsisted on scallops, oysters, and fish like the red and black drum, trout, sheep's head, flounder, alligator gar, and various plants like the cattail, cactus, dewberries, mesquite, and pecans, of which other foods were derived and medicines made.

During the fall and winter, we moved up to 60 miles inland to hunt bison and deer in smaller groups and would send people upwards of 200 miles to trade goods like seashells and naturally-occurring waterproofing material we called kuha or tar unique to the coast.

Euro-American colonizers depict the Karankawa as a savage people in Texas, a myth unfortunately that persists to this day.

Over time, our population dwindled by disease, displacement and warfare, and further changed through intermarriages.

But we are still here.

In the 1850s, after being forcibly removed from our homelands by Euro-American settlers, and out of the need to survive, we assimilated into an ever-growing society which grew around us like thickets as deep as the Texas woodlands.

Today, as we have become reunited with each other, we now have an established tribal council, which is rooted in Galveston, Houston, and Corpus Christi areas.

We are aware that we indeed have other relatives scattered throughout the state, in northern Mexico, as well as other places, as one might expect in this modern era.

After centuries of strife, Karankawa descendants indeed do remain in our homelands as well as other places locally and abroad.

We remain a persistent and adaptive people, as adaptation has always been our truest tradition.

- [Chrissy] Just as the Karankawa Kadla are reconnecting the fibers of their fractured heritage, so too is the Galveston community, piecing together a home for a resident once thought extinct.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - [Jay] Eventually, the rain cleared for us as we made our way down Galveston Island to San Luis Pass.

Wash out, right, right, this one right here.

- [Chrissy] That?

- Yeah.

But we had some unfinished business back on McFadden Beach we had to take care of.

So we had planned initially to walk 20 miles into McFadden Beach and then continue on to Highland on day two.

And so it was like a 40-mile stretch where for 20 at least miles of that we were gonna be totally unsupported.

And we looked at each other, we talked to the team, and realized that that was probably gonna be a problem the further we got away from this 20-mile section that we had to complete.

Otherwise, we would've been able to tell people that we walked all but 20 miles of- - Oh no, yeah.

- The 370-mile long coast.

- I'm too competitive to do that.

- Yeah.

- So skip a part.

- [Jay] Next time on "Chasing the Tide."

- Climate change has come upon us much sooner than we anticipated, and the rate of loss has just increased and the effects are greater than we've anticipated.

- [Jay] Funding for this program was provided by... - [Chrissy] The J.W.

Couch Foundation.

- [Jay] Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M University - Kingsville.

- [Chrissy] Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi.

- [Jay] The Gulf of Mexico Trust.

- [Chrissy] Threshold Foundation.

- [Jay] Shield-Ayres Foundation.

- [Chrissy] Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation.

Gossamer Gear, Cina Alexander Forgason, Pam and Will Harte.

- [Jay] Helen Alexander, Blair and Wade G. Chappell, Clair Dewar, Cheryl and Paul Drown, Deborah and David McBride, Myfe Moore, Shirley and Dennis Rich, and the Texas Water Foundation.

- [Chrissy] For more information and a complete list of funders, please visit chasingthetideseries.com.

(flute whistles)