- NARRATOR: 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.

Funding also provided by Academy Sports and Outdoors.

Helping hunters, anglers, and outdoor enthusiasts of all ages get outside.

Out here, fun can't lose.

[theme music] - ANNOUNCER: Coming up on Texas Parks & Wildlife... - There is not another museum devoted to the wildlife of Texas to the extent this one is.

- Texas Game Wardens received an Operation Game Thief call that there were individuals catching undersized sea trout.

Trout?

Okay.

- Two, two, two of 'em!

Oh my God, now this is what we do what we do.

[theme music] - ANNOUNCER: Texas Parks & Wildlife , a television series for all outdoors.

♪ ♪ [gentle music] - In a way, it's a story.

It's almost a mystery, and you have a case full of clues to see where they might lead you.

[gentle music] My name's Walt Davis.

I'm the retired exhibits director for the Dallas Museum of Natural History for approximately 25 years.

During most of that time, I was building exhibits, the wildlife dioramas that are still here.

[gentle music] You could take a tour of all 10 ecological regions in the state, in one building, in one afternoon.

The architecture of the building itself is remarkable.

The number of buildings that were built in a short period of time is pretty impressive.

Fair Park is one of the finest examples of Art Deco architecture in the United States.

The stakes were really high, putting the centennial together.

- COMMENTATOR: The whole nation is talking about this big Texas exposition.

- The Texas landscape and its inhabitants have changed, so this is a permanent record of something that is changing rapidly.

[guns firing] There was a period of time that some people considered a war of extermination.

[soft music] The very end of the bison hunt happened in Texas, completely eliminating the herds.

It happened in the blink of an eye.

A lot of buffalo hides and a lot of buffalo bone went to market right through Dallas, Texas.

[train chugging] [whistle blowing] Texas was full of wild game, and so people found ways to turn the game animals into food for a growing market.

About the early '20s, they began to realize that they were running out.

White tailed deer that are so common now were almost extinct in Texas.

The turkeys, the quail, all plummeting in numbers.

We were losing forests, soil and wildlife.

People got really worried and that's where the museum idea entered the picture.

Dallas planners began to think about the Texas Centennial and most successful festival grounds had natural history museums.

It has a civic purpose, it has a conservation purpose, let's do it, and they did it right.

They had basically five months to build a museum with exhibits.

It was one thing to get the animals, get them taxidermied, but the setting for the animals, the artwork had to be handcrafted, so if you needed a green leaf, you made a green leaf.

If you need a boulder, you sculpted a boulder.

And so almost everything in those original exhibits was a winter scene.

The background painting was done by Granville Bruce, and he told me when he was doing this painting, the building was not finished.

It was a simple scene to do.

There were no leaves on the trees and snow could be simulated with salt, which just had to be poured in place, and right away you had an exhibit.

Now it did take some time to do the background painting, but Granville Bruce, he went on to do 28 more.

If you removed everything but the background murals, you would have an art museum.

Fifty-three excellent examples of landscape art depicting the state of Texas in its pristine condition.

Olin Travis was an important artist in Dallas at the time he did murals for these backgrounds.

He was born here in 1888.

Went to the Chicago Art Institute for his training.

His roommate had been doing paintings for the Field Museum and so early on, he had an inkling of what that kind of work was like.

Came back to Dallas, started an art school, the first professional art school in Dallas.

Olin Travis was one of the artists tapped to do a very important pair of murals in the Hall of State depicting East Texas in the cotton era and in the oil discovery era.

They're quite different, very large and colorful.

They're allegorical.

If you look at those and you look at pictures like the one behind me here, you'll see that he could master different genre very well.

One of my favorite dioramas Olin Travis was involved in is the Brown Pelican Exhibit.

It gives you the illusion of immense distance in one of the smaller windows.

Look how this grouping is mirrored by the cloud bank behind it.

And the outlier has an outlier cloud, so he's matched the foreground to the background beautifully.

I also like the Gray Wolf exhibit, which is set in Palo Duro Canyon.

The setting is interesting in the big S-shaped curve into the distance, one of the signatures of Olin Travis.

Reveau Bassett was another artist who worked here.

The artist has to make something look right within three feet that's really 50 feet in depth.

That's hard to do.

He was a specialist in aquatic scenes and ducks and geese and game birds.

This exhibit is a masterpiece of perspective.

He's also a master at rendering water and sky, and he's got all those here.

Granville Bruce went to the Chicago Art Institute, just as Olin Travis had.

When Granville graduated, he decided that he was gonna take a field trip through the west.

He got as far as Galveston and ran outta money.

He had been to the Milwaukee Museum as a child and loved the dioramas there.

And when he came to Dallas and found out they were building a natural history museum that was gonna have dioramas, he came immediately.

They gave him the job.

This is the initial field sketch that Granville Bruce produced for the very first exhibit, Great Horned Owl in Winter.

Interestingly, on the back, says "Number 1, 1936."

So this was the very first diorama done for the Natural History Museum.

For Granville Bruce, both of the bears are masterpieces.

The depiction of the Piney Woods for the black bear, well done.

And Sawtooth Mountain and the Davis Mountains is well done.

There is only one record of a grizzly bear in Texas, and it is a skull in the collection of the US Biological Survey picked up by Vernon Bailey.

Based on that one specimen, we have a beautiful diorama depicting what that would have looked like in a specific spot in the Davis Mountains.

[gentle music] Building dioramas takes three skill sets.

The first would be the background mural painter, the artist.

Second would be the taxidermist.

They basically had to do a sculpture of an animal and then pull a skin on top of the sculpture.

My focus was the three dimensional objects that came in front of all of that, the accessory maker.

These are Plaster of Paris molds to use in fabricating post oak leaves.

Leaves, and all of that, had to be handcrafted.

Spread molten wax, close it, and when you open it up, you have a replica in wax accurate on both sides.

[gentle music] If we had a scene like the coyote scene with just a sea of wild flowers in it, we couldn't just put wild flowers in there because they fade.

That required us to come up with durable materials that could be tricked into looking like flowers, cactus, complex plants.

We didn't work with plastics or anything.

Plaster of Paris, beeswax, paraffin, fiber, thread, wire, we would figure out a way to build it out of those basic ingredients.

Sort of a combination of art and science.

[insects chirping] Having spent years looking closely at things in nature has given me an education that is invaluable, and part of that education is just take the time to look.

Nature is infinite in its creativity.

[birds singing] To this day, when I take a walk and look at a leaf, I think about how could I make that?

And what is it that makes that leaf unique?

We had quite an educational program, and from time to time, we would take an expedition and film it and then bring it back and show it to an audience.

[bright music] That's me preparing to make my pitch to the director to take this expedition down to Station 'C' Cave.

The first one we made was a film of the exploration of a cave in the Hill Country.

Takes a lot of stuff to get down in a cave and take a picture and make molds of formations.

There we are from the inside looking up.

We molded formations to put into an exhibit.

So he's putting a flexible mold on a cave formation, and then with Plaster of Paris, we can replicate exactly that surface.

It was quite an adventure.

Another time we got an opportunity to accompany Texas Parks and Wildlife banding birds on the Texas coast, islands where herons and egrets and all kinds of shorebirds nested.

Roseate spoonbills.

They were just feet away.

They, and most of the other birds that you see coming in, were just about obliterated around the turn of the century.

You see how beautiful the feathers are.

That would be a great addition to a lady's hat.

That's a real success story in conservation, the preservation of those birds.

Look at the numbers.

Dioramas were critical in early conservation efforts.

Teddy Roosevelt created the first bird sanctuary in America based on a diorama of this size.

There was a flurry of Audubon societies created.

It is possible in Dallas today to see a fully operational heron rookery right in the middle of the city.

That is a testament to all of the hard work that people did to turn around a nationwide opinion about birds rather than seeing them as a commodity.

There are animals in the museum now that cannot be seen in the wild anymore.

We have ivory-billed woodpeckers.

There are no more.

One was actually collected in 1900 in the Trinity River bottoms just south of Dallas.

Jaguar, gray wolves, they're probably not coming back in Texas.

There are other endangered species, like we still have ocelots down in the lower valley.

Some of the prairie chickens in grave danger.

On the other hand, you'll see things like bald eagles, an alligator diorama, the brown pelicans.

And so something that was once rare is now quite common and we can see the practical benefit to regulation to protect wildlife.

[gentle music] These dioramas can capture a place before it's gone and remind us what we've lost and how important it is to save what we have.

[gentle music] My relationship with the institution goes back to my childhood when I was three years old.

In those early days, it was one of the prime sources of information about nature, so we felt like we were doing important conservation work.

[gentle music] It's been a good way to spend a career.

After I retired, I decided to write a book.

This is the work of a lot of people.

I'm just able to tell the story.

[gentle music] These are wonderful teaching tools.

They are rich environments.

There's a lot packed into there.

So it's a training ground for close observation, and the closer you look, the more you see, the more you appreciate.

[gentle music] It helps to make nature and the out-of-doors accessible.

[gentle music] There is not another museum in the world devoted to the wildlife of Texas to the extent this one is, and so it's well worth preserving.

[gentle music] - OFFICER 1: Come in dispatch.

We received multiple reports that fishermen are catching undersized fish at Port Isabel.

We're gonna check it out.

- OFFICER 2: Because without them, we wouldn't make these cases.

You know what I mean?

- OFFICER 3: Yeah, take a look at fishing licenses and all that good stuff.

- Texas Game wardens received an Operation Game Thief call that there were multiple groups of individuals at Port Isabel catching undersized spotted sea trout, keeping them.

- Some trout, okay.

- Yeah.

- OFFICER 2: Hey Duke, I need your check stick please.

- OFFICER 3: How's it going guys?

How's the luck, any fish?

- SUSPECT 1: It's been here and there.

- OFFICER 3: Yeah, cool, there we go.

Let's see here.

- MILES: The Game Wardens did great.

They received that call at night.

They went in and investigated it, conducted interviews and determined that these groups of fishermen were in fact, in possession of undersized spotted sea trout.

- MILES: So these individuals needed to have a measuring stick with them and be measuring every spot of sea trout that they were catching.

And be aware of the laws.

- OFFICER 3: Y'all said you were measuring them?

You know how big they have to be?

- SUSPECT 2: Isn't it 13 inch?

- OFFICER 3: 15.

- SUSPECT 2: 15?

- OFFICER 3: Yeah.

- MILES: So the individuals, while they did have their fishing licenses, most of the fish that they were catching were 13 inches or under.

While the length limit at that time is 15 inches for spotted sea trout.

- OFFICER 2: 13 and a half, all right, so they're all undersized.

- SUSPECT 2: Oh shoot.

- Oh shoot.

- This is my first time.

- OFFICER 3: Oh shoot, is right.

- MILES: It's important for the public to be involved with this because Game Wardens can't be everywhere all the time.

The Operation Game Thief provides a 24/7 outlet for the public to report these hunting, fishing, and boating violations.

So whenever the public sees something, they should say something.

They can do that by reporting it to Operation Game Thief.

[gentle music] - JOSE: 148290.

- JUSTIN: Yep.

- JOSE: Yep.

- JUSTIN: Clean separation, that's what you want.

They were programmed to stay on the animal for two years and they have a drop off mechanism built into them so when that timer rolls over, they fire a little charge and it comes right off the animal.

- JOSE: It's pretty nice when you get to do this because you know there's still pronghorn out there, you know, we're not coming in an investigating a mortality.

So, that's a plus.

- Right now in Northern Hudspeth, we have data for about approximately 60 animals that we're looking at their different habitats selections.

- JUSTIN: We're keeping an eye on their survival, keeping track of how long they're living and how they're making a living, but also what kind of habitats they're using and where they go.

[truck doors slam] - JOSE: It's probably one of the most prestigious grasslands that we have in West Texas in the Trans-Pecos.

It's been our stronghold for pronghorn population for hundreds of years.

[dramatic music] - JOSE: By having these animals collared, we're able to track some of the potential barriers.

- JUSTIN: What's that buck in the back look like?

- JOSE: Pretty decent.

- JUSTIN: That's a good place for us to walk out ‘cause we can see what he's chomping on.

- JOSE: Yeah, what he's eating.

- JUSTIN: Here's one of this year's flowers right here and that buck that's standing right over there, he came by and just...” [tongue click] - JOSE: They really like to eat forbs or what we consider weeds so everything that you see out there that has a flower, they're going to eat it.

- JUSTIN: It's like pronghorn super-greens.

[country music] - JOSE: Brush hasn't been a big issue 'till probably in the past 15-20 years now.

We're starting to see brush encroachment coming from the east and slowly moving up to some of these grasslands.

[music] - JOSE: Creosote bush is a native species found in the Chihuahuan Desert.

It's really not real palatable.

There's not animals that consume the plant and also it sterilizes the ground around it.

We're facing a lot of areas where the creosote is encroaching and it's becoming a really invasive species prohibiting a lot of grass growth or forb growth which is real crucial for our pronghorn.

[light music] - JOSE: We really ramped up our efforts in Hudspeth County where we were treating close to about 8,000 acres a year treating creosote and tarbush to try and promote grassland restoration.

- JOSE: We're up to about 36,000 acres of treated areas that we're trying to just have more grassland.

- DAVID HORAK: It works.

There is absolutely no doubt about it.

We're maybe 10, 15 years ahead of our neighbors as far as getting the creosote killed off and seeing the grasslands return.

[quail call] This success story we have here with the pronghorn are going to be seen next-door on our neighbor's ranches also.

- JOSE: So right now where we're at this is an area four years post treatment after we did the spike work.

So as we can see, there's already really good grass response like right here, this is one of our blue grama grasses, those are some of the grasses that you want to see.

They start covering up more open space and start really working to infiltrate the water into the soil.

[upbeat music] - JUSTIN: Two!

Two of them!

- JOSE: Two of them!

Two of them!

Oh my God.

Now this what we do what we do.

[upbeat music] - It's just a blessing when you see babies on the ground.

If we don't have babies, if we don't have fawns, our populations are going to continue on a decline.

Everything we do for pronghorn, all these efforts that we're putting in there.

All these years, all this money we've invested in it and now you're seeing animals that are utilizing that potential new grassland footprint.

That's why we do it.

- NARRATOR: Next time on Texas Parks & Wildlife... - We are going out into all these overhangs, crevices, rock shelters, caves and things like that and we're looking for unrecorded pictograph sites.

- People enjoy coming here to Cedar Hill State Park.

It's a fun place to hang out and it's a gem here.

Woo!

- We are talking about the Crested Caracara which is a really interesting bird here in the state of Texas.

- NARRATOR: That's next time on Texas Parks & Wildlife.

[birds chirping] [birds chirping] [birds chirping] [birds chirping] [birds chirping] [birds chirping] [birds chirping] [birds chirping] [birds chirping] [birds chirping] - NARRATOR: 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.

Funding also provided by Academy Sports and Outdoors.

Helping hunters, anglers, and outdoor enthusiasts of all ages get outside.

Out here, fun can't lose.