- 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... - I just help provide the information from what I see from forty plus years of tromping around Texas.

- If you love trees, this is the place.

It's the land of the oaks.

- In all this work we're doing, it's in an effort to lay the groundwork for protections for this river so that it doesn't disappear.

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

[ducks quacking] [inspirational music] ♪ ♪ - I end up driving all kind of weird ways out here.

Backwards, forward.

♪ ♪ He's about a 10-inch-long bird, but he's just very nicely framed in good light.

Really nice reflection on him and the water.

[camera clicking] They're really neat looking birds.

[dramatic music] [car starting] What else is down here?

I don't have any formal biological training.

I'm a field observer and a photographer.

I just help provide the information from what I see from 40 plus years of tromping around Texas.

[camera clicking] What little I can help with, I see my role as providing the information and letting others figure it out because I'm not a biologist and I'm not a scientist.

[gentle music] I've been involved with nature and wildlife since I was a Boy Scout.

I got the bird study merit badge when I was 12 years old.

[camera click] I probably have a hundred thousand images of wildlife, but I can look at an image-- I may find one from 10 years ago and I can look at it, I remember every detail about taking it and where I was and who I was with.

And it brings back memories, kind of a travel log of what you've done.

[camera clicking] My profession was in law enforcement.

So I spent 25 years as a law enforcement officer but I went out on bird watching trips.

I had to stay in the closet for a long time.

You know, I didn't let people know I was out birding but you have to maintain a persona, you see.

[dramatic music] There's a small bird called a Ruby Crown Kinglet that only winters in Texas but they breed in the conifer forest of Canada.

One year in October, we caught a Ruby Crown Kinglet in a net and so we banded this Ruby Crown Kinglet and released it.

The follow year, we caught a Ruby Crown Kinglet and here was old number 6-3-4-7 that we'd banded a year earlier.

Now this bird that weighs just a few grams had flown all the way to the Conifer forest of Canada, had nested and had flown back.

This little tiny bird that you can't even feel the weight in your hand had not only found Texas without a map, had not only found Hays County, Texas had not only found this property but found the same little grove of trees where he'd been caught a year earlier.

We caught that bird for seven years in a row and I've always thought that was kind of magical.

- VICTOR: Being here brings back so many memories of all the times we were here with Greg.

I mean, Greg probably came out here almost once a week or more.

He loved the dragon flies here particularly over on Platt Lane, but everywhere.

- CHUCK: Every time I see a dragon fly, I think of Greg.

- What young man would take his girlfriend on the first date to go look for snakes?

[laughter] - Greg Lasley was one of the most avid naturalist I ever met.

One of the most focused on detail and that made him one of the best photographers of nature in Austin.

- BARRY: Greg was very active on iNaturalist.

It's a, a massive database where the public can take photos, submit them into the database and experts will come on and identify or confirm what they saw.

And Greg was prolific in that way.

- By the end of his life, he had helped something on the order of 40,000 different people on iNaturalist and had offered an identification on something nearing a half a million observations.

- VICTOR: And Greg spent countless hours, thousands of hours identifying things for these people.

He was making friends all over the world.

[inspirational music] ♪ ♪ - Greg has so many slides.

I, I was the beneficiary of his throwaways.

His throwaway slides were better than anybody else's best slides.

♪ ♪ - Half are going to the high school and half to UT's art department.

- NANCY: He just completely opened my eyes to another whole beautiful world.

And I'm so grateful for of that.

- If I could say anything to people is you have to set aside places for nature or man just overwhelms.

And I think I've seen that so often in my life from the time I was a kid, until now, it just it's drastic.

And you don't realize that at the day, you're looking at it but you do when you have a perspective of years.

[inspirational music] ♪ ♪ - STEVE: We're at Cooper Lake State Park.

We're located in northeast Texas, only about an hour and 20 minutes from downtown Dallas.

Just an easy drive from the metroplex.

We have a 20,000-acre lake as a backdrop.

The land around the lake is all publicly owned, which means when you're out on the lake and you look back to the shore, you'll see a ring of green.

It takes you to a different place and a different time.

There's just so much to see and do here at Cooper Lake State Park.

[light music] - Woo woo!

♪ ♪ - WOMAN: Glad y'all are here today at Cooper Lake State Park.

Hey, we're gonna go on a hike down Coyote Run Trail.

[clicking] And we're gonna listen, because if you're quiet, you can see and hear the squirrels.

[clicking] - STEVE: If you love trees, this is the place.

It's the land of the oaks, with the predominant species being the Post Oak, these large, majestic shade trees that you'll find in our campground, in our day use areas, that just beckon visitors to relax underneath on a hot summer day.

[light music] Cooper Lake is blessed with two really nice swimming areas.

We have a swimming beach at the South Sulfur unit and also a swimming beach at the Doctor's Creek unit.

We have added white sand to both of these swimming areas.

It's just a great place for families to enjoy a summer afternoon swimming and the cool waters of the lake.

[light music] If you love being out on the water, we have kayaks for rent.

You can actually fish off our kayaks, or just cruise and enjoy the scenery.

The Corps of Engineers built and impounded this back in the early 90s.

And it has created one of the best blue catfish fisheries in the state.

- Headed into the timber right now to go look under some birds, see if there's any fish hanging around them.

Cooper Lake is primarily a shallow lake.

It's about divided halfway in timber and halfway open water.

Lots of white bass, crappie fishing is pretty decent.

Got a lot of good catfish in there.

There's the first blue cat today.

Best thing I like about this lake is low pressure, not crowded, never too many boats around.

Makes fishing peaceful, anyway.

- We've got a monster right there.

[Chris laughs] He's mad at me.

I must have poked him.

- He's talking to you.

Good job.

[splash] - Man, the site was really good.

This is beautiful.

And we love being this close to the water.

It's been beautiful to listen to the wind and the trees and we've loved every minute of it.

We get to sit around the fire and talk without a TV screen or anything around to distract.

- STEVE: We have a wide variety of camping opportunities.

- MAN: Oh man, he's got a stick.

- STEVE: We have campsite on the water, cabins on the lake with the back decks overlooking the lake.

We have 30 amp and we have 50 amp RV hookups.

We have shelters.

We have something for everyone.

[chopping] - Tonight, we are doing bratwurst, and then we'll do some roasted vegetables.

I've got some potatoes in here.

- It's great for the family, and it's great, I think, for your personal health to get out of the city and get out here where you can relax and you know, be outside and enjoy nature and the fresh air and kind of slow down a little bit.

- They're nice, big spacious campsites and plenty of room, and we're here by the lake.

It's just beautiful.

- LEE: It's our way of changing pace for a little while.

And you kind of always go back a little refreshed and a little different perspective on life I think.

[light music] - STEVE: What I love about Cooper Lake State Park is the views.

It's the vista views over the lake.

It's the white tail deers that you see browsing on the forest edge.

It's the happy campers.

Just a short drive away from the city, and you can immerse yourself in nature.

It's a great place to recreate, relax, and recharge your soul.

[water lapping] [upbeat music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [gentle music] - The absolute importance that this team carries and what they do for everybody and what they do for visitors to Texas State Parks.

When you're having trouble finding it online and you're having trouble working through it.

If you're somebody who maybe doesn't wanna do the technology, and you just wanna reach out to someone, the fact that it's a localized team here in Texas answering the questions.

I mean, you're talking to people who have been to the Parks, who go to the Parks on a regular basis.

You cannot get that type of insight, that type of first handed experience anywhere else.

And they provide that and they provide that every day and they do it with a smile on their face.

- Over the last year we've had a lot of hurdles that our call centers face, for sure.

Whether it's COVID, whether it's the winter storms that we had, we had even a tornado thrown in there.

Parks are dealing with the same weather, we never had an impact where the call center was really closed.

So yeah, no, we've had a lot of struggles over the last year for sure.

And the team has really come together to make sure our customers were taken care of.

- We were on that growth trend, COVID what it did was, it really just kind of took all that, this five to six year growth and it just condensed it and said, "How about we do this in five to six months?"

You would have press conferences being given by the governor who would talk specifically about Parks and that would just cause a huge amount of interest that would come our way.

So we, we didn't have the opportunity to experience those growing pains.

We didn't have the opportunity to roll out the slow set plans and how we're gonna adjust to new visitation.

We were just throwing into it.

- I would ask for volunteers to stay late or, again to work on the weekends.

Our folks didn't hesitate because they know how important the job is that we do here.

And we had several agents that were taking a hundred plus calls a day, but that wasn't just a few days, you could look at it, that was weeks at a time.

- Never ending year, this past year.

We're the first point of contact for most of these people that are wanting to visit the State Parks.

It's all about the customer service.

The people that I work with and the customers that I get to talk to on a daily basis, it makes you look forward to coming to work and helping people.

It's all about that, it's just giving them that experience.

- The agents were really helping to facilitate people to an outlet where they helped people to really, I mean find a release from all the stress, even if it was just temporary.

And how to be that kind of assistance and mental health and wellbeing and making sure that they weren't alone through the process.

- Whether it's our customer service team, whether it's our reservations team, whether it's our groups, we have several different teams that operate out of this call center and everybody has kind of rolled with the punches.

I'm extremely proud of this group.

And definitely look forward to the future with them.

- We've come above and beyond what is expected of us because we've all put in the time and helped everybody that we possibly could.

Taking those calls, getting people out, that wanna get out.

Everybody here is amazing.

[wind] [gentle acoustic music] [river riffle] - NARRATOR: You're about to watch a love story.

- This is just a little bit of heaven here.

- NARRATOR: Alice loves this water.

Joe loves this landscape.

- It's Ocotillo, it's very thorny, as is everything out here!

- NARRATOR: Dell loves this river valley.

- And it is, it's just absolutely gorgeous, it's what I love about this country so much.

- NARRATOR: And Sarah, well, she loves science.

- SARAH ROBERTSON: I got a redbreast sunfish, one eighteen.

- NARRATOR: They all share a deep and lasting passion to protect the Devils River.

It's a wild part of Texas that's vulnerable, and fragile.

There are now new threats to the Devil's River Valley, that's lead these folks to unite as advocates for the Devils River.

And this is their story.

[gentle acoustic music] Aquatic biologist, Sarah Robertson, is out with her river studies team to do some seining.

- SARAH: Let's go up and come down the side of this grass.

[water riffle] One reason this place is so special is because there's a lot of unique species that occur here.

So, there are a lot of minnows that we don't find many other places in the U.S.

This is the Devils River minnow, so it used to occur in about five or six streams in West Texas, and over the last few decades we believe it's been extirpated from some of those areas.

- BIOLOGIST: Forty-Six.

- SARAH: So now it's down to about three, three streams in West Texas.

- NARRATOR: The worry here is unregulated groundwater pumping.

As Texas' population increases, the demand for water grows.

[river riffle] Which could threaten this pristine river.

- The threat of groundwater pumping, it's a real worry out here.

We're not exactly sure how much water could be pumped before we start seeing impacts to the springs and the species that are out here.

So, it's something that's definitely on the radar, we're putting a lot of research efforts in to try to better understand the system and how pumping like that would affect it.

- NARRATOR: Alice Ball Strunk... - ALICE: There's so many butterflies out today!

- NARRATOR: ...is also worried about the health of the river.

[spring riffle] The headwaters of the Devils River pretty much start right here.

- ALICE: This is what we call Seven Springs.

[spring riffle] So, these are the seven major springs of the headwaters.

[spring riffle] It's so beautiful and we just all love it, it's just so dear to our heart.

- NARRATOR: Alice and many other folks worry that since there are no laws that say you can't sell your water, the threat to pump and move that water for oil and gas or for big cities is real.

- ALICE: If there are huge withdrawals of ground water, that will definitely affect the river and it belongs to all of us in Texas.

What we're fighting for goes away.

[dramatic somber music] We only have one chance to keep it flowing.

You know, if it gets eaten up by pumpers and it gets dried up, then there's no river left.

[dramatic somber music] - NARRATOR: Downstream from Alice's place is the Devils River State Natural Area.

- JOE: Big canyon country.

- NARRATOR: And Joe Joplin's the area manager.

[footsteps] His job is to take care of the 37,000 acres of conserved land that sits along the Devils River.

- JOE: I feel very much at peace out here, there's no noises, just you, the wind, can't beat the solitude.

It's good for the human soul.

[canyon wren sings] The Devils River State Natural area is a rugged location, it has bluffs, steep canyons, and of course, the Devils River.

You can come here and see what Texas was, yesterday, before development, before heavy population growth, it still has that wild feel, where you can refill your senses.

- NARRATOR: But there are threats encroaching on this scenic river valley.

A wind farm has been built just miles from the Devils River State Natural Area.

And there are worries more wind farms are headed for this valley.

- JOE: Texas only has three percent public lands remaining.

And places like the Devils River State Natural Area are true iconic features within those public landscapes.

If there ever is industrialization in this area, it needs to be very thoughtful, and done with community involvement.

- DELL: They'll kind of move out.

- NARRATOR: One neighbor who lives across the river couldn't agree more.

Dell Dickinson and his family have ranched in the Devils River valley since the late 1800s.

- DELL: It's about two and a half miles straight that way to the river.

I don't advice walking.

It is rougher than a corn cob.

- NARRATOR: Dell spent his entire life here and has always loved his evenings by the fire.

- DELL: Mesquite, good ol' burning mesquite, [fire whooshes] To me, sitting in front of a fire just takes all the bad stuff out, and there's nothing left but good.

- NARRATOR: But now, there is something else sparkling in the distance.

- Over the years, I've been able to look out over the horizon and see nothing but serenity and now I look up and see something on the horizon that I just consider a flat abomination.

- NARRATOR: And just past sunset is when the problem truly presents itself.

- This is one of the most wondrous, beautiful times of the day.

It's called twilight, going into full dark.

And now I look out there and I see these, pardon my language, god awful lights out there.

You can't get away from em.

They're there forever!

- NARRATOR: Dell worries that Texas will lose one of its truly iconic landscapes if wind farms were to expand here .

- We see this panorama in front of us, imagine how it's going to be if they are successful in further encroachment, we'll be able to go horizon to horizon and see em everywhere.

And again, I have to say, I don't think this is what the citizens of Texas, that own this river, bargained for, ask for, or deserve.

- NARRATOR: From preservation minded landowners like Dell.

- SARAH: Ready!

- NARRATOR: To Sarah and her seining for science.

- SARAH: Samplings been going good, we've been getting a lot of species.

Texas shiner, fifty-three.

So, this is the Rio Grande darter.

It's only found in the Rio Grande basin in Texas, and it's listed as state threatened.

- NARRATOR: There's common ground here.

This iconic Texas wonder is worth protecting.

[uplifting music] - This is a really special river.

It's really unique.

It's one of the last wild and scenic places in Texas.

Rio Grande darter, forty-two.

And all this work we're doing, building partnerships, doing research, it's in an effort to lay the groundwork for protections for this river so that it doesn't disappear.

- JOE: People often comment when they leave the Devils River that they left with more than they came with, meaning they got a refill of their spirit, maybe it's the ruggedness of the steep canyons, but when you leave here, you have a sense that, man, I really saw something that was Texas- it feels wild, it feels untouched.

That's the goal to keep it that way.

♪ ♪ [flowing water] [flowing water] [flowing water] [flowing water] [flowing water] [flowing water] [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.