- 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 & Wildlife... - The material that these mountains are made out of collect water, so because of that, people have visiting this park for 10,000 years.

- The technology has changed by leaps and bounds.

It's really what made the restoration of the wild turkey possible.

- They're major rodent predators, hence the name rat snake.

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

[crickets chirping, birds calling] [drumming music] ♪ ♪ - NICOLE ROQUE: You'll hear it over and over again that this is an oasis in the desert.

You look around and there's trees and there's water and there's ferns and mosses and things that you don't expect to see in the desert.

And it's just something really exciting.

- CASSIE COX: What makes Hueco Tanks special is that the Hueco mountains are an oasis in the desert.

The material that these mountains are made out of collect water.

And so because of that, people have been visiting this park for 10,000 years.

[wind blowing] - This place is so special because you can step back in time.

And you can walk around and you can see why people have been here.

You can see why this is such an important special place.

- HIKER: This place is pretty amazing.

Check that out.

- NICOLE: There's the stories of these people, the history of these people in every single place that we step.

[wind blowing] - For us, as native people, this is our mother.

The land is us and we are the land.

When I come out here, I feel like I'm visiting my mother or my grandmother.

What makes it sacred doesn't start with us native people or what we left here, the sacredness starts with the place itself.

[wind blowing] So, I would say for someone never having come here before that that should be first and foremost in their mind.

[upbeat music] - NICOLE: Coming out to Hueco Tanks, there's plenty of things you can do out here.

Of course, you can hike.

You can climb.

[upbeat music] Birdwatching is also a really popular thing that you can come out here and you don't really have to have any sort of experience in it.

- BIRDWATCHER: He's looking right at us.

- NICOLE: There's over 200 species of birds that are here year-round.

- BIRDWATCHER: There's a curved bill thrasher.

There's a blue grosbeak way up there.

- CASSIE: The thing that most visitors come for that we're most known for are our rock painting pictographs.

We have pictographs that are thousands of years old up to modern historic graffiti, like the 49ers that were headed to California looking for gold.

Visitors can see over 200 Jornada Mogollon masks either on their own in the self-guided area or by signing up for a guided tour.

- GUIDE: Our first stop is going to be right up over here behind the ranch house.

I'll take you guys up.

There was a little story I want to tell you about it.

- NICOLE: You that you can come out on a pictograph tour with a guide who knows some of the history and some of the interpretation of the imagery.

You can see parts of the park that are typically closed to the public.

- GUIDE: Okay, so this is, where we're at is called Comanche Cave.

There are some white horn dancers pictographs right here, Mescalero Apache.

If you're wanting a time period, most likely you're talking about maybe 1600s.

Could be older than that.

- CASSIE: One of my favorite spots in the park that I send people to if they're willing to go on a treasure hunt per se is Cave Kiva.

You can crawl into this spot that you can tell that people have been crawling in there for maybe thousands of years.

And then you can turn around and lay on your back and up on the ceiling of the shelter are these beautiful masks made by the Jornada Mogollon people in different colors and different shapes and sizes.

And it's just really neat to lay there on your back and reflect on the people that made those thousands of years ago and what, what they meant to them.

- JASON KEHL: Hueco Tanks is this labyrinth of rock, just maze of fun and so much to get into and so much to explore.

Bouldering in Hueco Tanks is probably the best bouldering in the United States, in my opinion.

Everything is super steep.

You've got these crazy caves and the formations of rock are insane.

My favorite thing about Hueco Tanks is probably just the vastness, and I like going to a different spot every time I go out.

When I go out, I explore.

I look for new things, you always can find something under like some crevasse opens up into a huge room.

There's just so much life out here and you won't find this anywhere else.

It's really recharging.

You know, there's so much chaos in town and then you come out here and it's so nice and chill, and it's just like a great kind of meditation.

I think when you come here, you should respect it and respect that people have been here before you.

And, you know, just trying to leave it as nice as you found it.

[Alex] I have yet to meet anybody that doesn't leave and have some sort of a different way of feeling and thinking and viewing the place.

And I can't say that 100% of the time everybody makes an emotional connection with the place, but I think more often than not, people do.

[dramatic music] [dramatic music] - SCOTT STOVER: Most of us are able to enjoy the outdoors without much effort.

We get in our cars.

We go to a site and we just enjoy it and don't really think about difficulties we might have if we were disabled.

- SANDY HEATH: Thirty-one years ago, the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed.

So it's not only looking for ways to update infrastructure, but it's also looking at how a person has access to a space.

- SCOTT: We didn't have an ADA coordinator before Sandy started.

So she kind of had to develop that program from the ground up.

So she had quite a bit of thing going on all at once and a lot to learn all at once.

She's done all that plus more.

Sandy's amazing.

- SANDY: Being outdoors feels good to me, like, it feels spiritual.

It feels therapeutic.

Being able to provide that and give access to that feeling to other people, I think that's a spark of where my passion comes from.

[ding] - MAN: Bingo.

- I've been a hunter since I could talk.

I've been fishing since I had the strength to hold a fishing pole and I also grew up being visually impaired.

I was born with bad eyes and it's just always been a part of my life and I didn't know how I could combine the two-- outdoors and being visually impaired.

That by expressing that interest, was a big reason why I wanted to work here at Texas Parks and Wildlife and that's how I got hooked up with Sandy to begin with.

- SANDY: Our team, we like to say, we're learn it all because we're constantly just asking questions, finding new ways.

We're identifying new ways and then we're acting on these new ways of trying to make the way we do things just more accessible for everyone.

If the barrier is a boat ramp or parking near a boat ramp, then let's figure that out.

That can create a life-changing hobby for someone and how they interact with the world and how they recharge or interact with their family and let's do that.

- COLE: Sandy is very very good at her job as the ADA coordinator.

The wealth of knowledge that she has is crazy.

She's not just doing her thing, I'm not just doing my thing.

We worked together.

She's a fantastic boss and I really couldn't ask for a better one.

- SCOTT: Texas Parks and Wildlife areas belong to the citizens of Texas and we're finding more and more people with disabilities really wanting to get out and visit parks whether it's a local park, a state park, a national park.

Just enjoying the outdoors like the rest of us and it's our responsibility to give that opportunity to them as well.

[dramatic music] [energetic music] - NARRATOR: Texas leads the nation in wind energy production.

With little regulatory oversight in place, this new industry can build wherever there's good wind.

- We need to change where we are getting our energy sources, we will have to locate wind turbines in places that are precious to lots of people.

- NARRATOR: And here on the coast where the wind may be strong, it's also home to the Central Flyway-- a major migratory bird corridor.

- Millions of birds cross the Texas coastline each spring and fall during migration and the question is 'Why would you put a wind farm in a site like that?'

[dramatic music] - NARRATOR: Songbirds like the Hooded Warbler, to migrating raptors like these Swainson's Hawks, to the threatened Reddish Egret.

Hundreds of species either live on the coast or migrate through Texas as it sits squarely in the Central Flyway, a migration route from breeding grounds in the North to winter quarters in the South.

And in this same area wind farms set up to capitalize on these prime coastal winds.

- The real concern is not the day to day collisions that might take place but the circumstances that might create a major migratory bird fall out where you have a storm and literally thousands of birds trying to find a place to land and flying through the middle of a wind farm.

[wind turbines whoosh] - NARRATOR: One wind farm that's concerned about the birds and the Central Flyway is the Penascal Wind Plant situated on the Kenedy Ranch along Baffin Bay.

- The wind blows hard here in South Texas.

Everybody knows that, but the wind blows hard when everybody needs it the most, so it's almost a perfect location in terms of customer demand.

- JIM SINCLAIR: We can have well over a hundred species at one time in these motts.

- NARRATOR: Penascal staff biologist Jim Sinclair studied the property for four years before any of the 82 wind turbines went up.

- When they come in, they come in very high.

- NARRATOR: And one top priority was to keep the turbines away from these sheltered bird resting spots called oak motts.

- JIM: This is where the songbirds will stop to rest and feed during the daytime during the migration, but one of the reasons for creating a buffer around these oak motts for the turbines is it's going to significantly reduce the chances of strikes because the birds concentrate in the oak motts, and there are times when there can be a lot of birds in here... - JAN: Yeah!

[hum of radar motor] - NARRATOR: Working to reduce bird strikes even more is Merlin.

- GARY ANDREWS: And we can see some low level bird activity occurring.

- NARRATOR: This radar system can see what birds are coming from four miles away.

- We can actually see the turbines and we can see the birds as they move around the turbines.

Most of what we are detecting today the birds are moving above the wind farm and above 500 feet.

[hum of radar motor] - NARRATOR: Now the magic of Merlin, it has the capability to actually shut off the turbines if birds fly into the wind farm.

- JIM: The radar itself generates a curtailment command and within less than one minute all the of turbines will be turning at less than one RPM, very very slowly, and within five minutes all of them are completely stationary.

[hum of radar motor] The ability to shut down the turbines under abnormal conditions is what really helps turn wind energy into truly green energy.

[wind turbine whoosh] - ANDY: Will the costs of turning off the turbines be so high that they won't do it.

And so the real issue is not so much whether or not they can do it, it's whether or not they will.

- NARRATOR: That's just one of the questions on the minds of both Andy Kasner and wildlife biologists from Texas A&M Kingsville.

- BART BALLARD: Boy this strong south wind probably had some good movement.

- NARRATOR: So right next door on the neighboring King Ranch, they are using another Merlin to monitor the birds as well.

- STUDENT: User friendly screen with biological targets moved in.

- NARRATOR: Andy is here to meet research scientist Bart Ballard, to get a feel for just how many birds could be affected by further wind development along the coast.

- BART: Well our main objectives for this study are to assess how many birds travel through this area, the altitudes they fly, how weather affects their flight characteristics.

There's potential for some pretty large impacts.

- NARRATOR: This study funded in part by Texas Parks and Wildlife will look at several migration seasons.

A bird count before more wind development arrives.

- ANDY: Because of the tax credits that are available to wind energy production, it's beneficial for them to develop a sight as quickly as they can and get the wind turbines up and running.

But the flip side of that you don't have time in that case to do adequate scientific studies to monitor and make decisions based on wildlife impacts and whether or not that sight is safe for wildlife.

[duck calls] - NARRATOR: Back at the office... - BART: It's interesting, these peaks.

- NARRATOR: Bart crunches the numbers, and in one fall migration Merlin counted three million birds coming through the corridor in just three months.

- I think during most of the time these birds are flying high enough and have good visibility it's not going to be an issue, it's those times when they do migrate when it's foggy out, their visibility is very poor, and we think it pushes em down at a lower level, lower altitude when they are flying.

Those are the conditions we are concerned about at least in terms of some development along the coast.

[wind turbine whoosh] - JIM: We're going to be able to observe large avian movements during a variety of weather conditions that we have never been able to see before.

- NARRATOR: There are wind farms using the latest technology.

- And if we can make sure that were doing it in the most responsible way, taking it very, very seriously that is one way to help us clean up our energy supply.

- NARRATOR: Scientists... - BART: We have 14 Reddish Egrets.

- NARRATOR: And their long term studies on protecting these Texas treasures.

- BART: Our hope with this research is that it'll be used in the future to help sight some of this development, where it will have less impact on our bird populations.

[wind turbine whoosh] - ANDY: We just have to make sure that the individual developers make the right sorts of sighting decisions, that's really what it boils down to in Texas or anywhere else.

- NARRATOR: Chances are, this new renewable energy source is here for good.

[ducks fly off] And now it's up to us to make sure it stays green.

- Hi, I'm Andy Gluesenkamp and today I'd like to talk to you about the Texas Rat Snake.

The Texas Rat Snake is the most commonly encountered snake in Texas, and they occupy a wide range of habitats.

This snake is harmless, they are completely non-venomous, they don't attack people, in fact they are major rodent predators.

Hence the name rat snake.

[rattle] Probably the best way to tell a rat snake from a venomous snake in Texas is to look at the head shape.

Pit vipers, which includes copperheads, cottonmouths, and rattlesnakes, they tend to have a very chunky head with steep sides to the face.

Whereas if you look at the head of a rat snake, the head tends to be more rounded and less angular.

This snake is in the process of shedding, during that process we call them in the blue, that individual will get an opaque color to its skin, its eyes become milky blue.

It's not sick or injured, they just need a few days to find a quiet place to hang out while they shed their old skin to reveal a new fresh layer underneath!

Rat snakes get a bad rap - they are large snakes, they are frequently encountered, they are not particularly friendly.

But I'd like to point out that their primary diet is mice, rats, and other rodents - that's pretty beneficial snake to have around.

So three things to remember about the Texas Rat Snake, they're the most commonly encountered snake in Texas, they're completely harmless, and they're beneficial.

- I am spreading what amounts to chicken scratch.

- NARRATOR: Bret Collier is trying to tempt some turkey... - We'll have birds out here probably tomorrow.

- NARRATOR: ...he's setting out breakfast and setting up a trap, all to learn more about the birds.

- BRET: We bait up an area and we set up a trail camera.

We set up a big net, and wait and see if the birds are coming to the bait.

[winch gears clicking] - NARRATOR: Fortunately, Bret has some help.

- BRET: One, two, three... - There's a lot of different organizations that are all pitching in.

Texas A&M, you have Parks and Wildlife, ranch personnel.

- You could not find a better place to have a collaborative relationship between a university, a state agency, and a private landowner than right here where we are in Duval County.

I'm in, all those... - NARRATOR: This high-tech turkey work is taking place on the Temple Ranch, two hours south of San Antonio.

Being open to research is just one way the ranch works to enhance turkey habitat.

- The last few years we've had some pretty rough droughts here in South Texas and we've lost I'd say up to 50 to 70% of our hackberries, which is the main roost tree here in this part of South Texas for turkeys.

So what we're trying to do, we're putting up some artificial roosts in place of the hackberries that have died due to drought and they're really getting some good use out of them.

- NARRATOR: More traditional improvements, like brush management and the use of prescribed fire, have also helped wildlife here.

But fully understanding what Rio Grande turkey need requires being aware of their every move.

For Bret and crew, that means some very early workdays, in this high-rise office of sorts.

- BRET: We get up about 4:45 in the morning, make sure that everything's working, and then we wait on the birds to come in.

Wow.

That's a good number of hens.

Twenty-five or 30 in sight right now, and there's a flock of about 15 males.

Look at that.

Our primary focus is to look at the habitat use of Rio Grande wild turkeys in South Texas.

[turkey gobbles] - JUSTIN: There's a lot that goes into it but it only takes just a couple of seconds to happen.

[turkey gobbles] - BRET: Are the deer gone?

I can't see...

When the net goes off our primary goal is always the safety of the bird.

[net releases] Drop!

Drop!

Drop!

Drop!

- JUSTIN: It's pretty exciting when that net drops.

- BRET: Any birds on the edge -- back corner!

It is very fast and furious.

Roll 'em up underneath if you need to!

- ROBERT: We try and do it as fast as we can, and reduce stress on the birds.

- BRET: What took you guys so long?

- ROBERT: It's quite a rodeo sometimes.

[banjo music] [banjo music] - BRET: Good work, everyone.

We're going to leg band about 10 of them, maybe 12, and then transmitter the rest.

[box closes] [rummaging for pliers] - KYLE MELTON: Putting leg bands on them, putting radio collars on them, or backpacks in this case.

- BRET: Go ahead and grab one more... We put a backpack transmitter on them that uh we can use to follow the birds around.

And currently we've developed some that are using GPS technology.

- KYLE: Frequency number 151-340.

- BRET: You can use that information to identify habitat.

[transmitter beeping] - NARRATOR: Traditional tracking technology only allows locating an animal when a biologist is available to go look for it.

- KYLE: The transmitter emits a beep.

We can receive that beep.

We can hone in on an individual and figure out where it's at and triangulate and determine what kind of habitat types they're located in.

Just down the road here.

- NARRATOR: But this requires manpower and does risk disturbing the birds.

- KYLE: He's on the move.

We're pushing him.

- NARRATOR: Newer GPS technology allows much more location data to be collected unobtrusively.

- It's not us going out once or twice a day and saying well there's the bird at 10:00 in the morning and there's the bird at 4:00 in the afternoon.

We can tell where they're going on their timeframe.

- BRET: We can map daily movements, seasonal movements, we can identify the core areas the birds like to spend their time in, um we can really do a lot of neat stuff, and to be honest we're really probably just scratching the surface with some of the things we could do with this type of information.

- Now with this project we're learning where they like to nest, where they like to roost, where they like to raise broods.

[turkey flapping] It's just really helping us out to where we need to work on certain spots on the ranch.

- BRET: Let her loose.

- NARRATOR: The research is ongoing, but the findings are already shedding new light on what turkey need to succeed.

- ROBERT: We're happy with how it's going.

[turkey flapping] - JASON: We're getting better at answering the question 'What do these landowners need to do to really provide quality habitat?'

I think whenever we're done here in a couple of years we'll have something really valuable for the people of South Texas and hopefully Texas in general.

[crickets and birds chirp] [crickets and birds chirp] [flowing water] [flowing water] [flowing water] [flowing water] [flowing water] [flowing water] [flowing water] 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.