I sit down with Kyle O’Haver, Superintendent of Galveston Island State Park to discuss Galveston’s Coastal Ecology, Birding, Avian Migration, and Galveston’s balancing acre between conservation and economic expansion.
Kyle O’Haver is an avid birder, wildlife enthusiast, and has been with Texas Parks & Wildlife Department for over 16 years.
Galveston Island State Park: https://tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/galveston-island
Watch this episode on YouTube: Coastal Conservation and Avian Migration at Galveston Island State Park with Kyle O’Haver
https://youtu.be/M5vc--aFWus
Subscribe to Galveston Unscripted on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts for more historical insights and stories from this remarkable island: https://www.galvestonunscripted.com/podcasts
Check out the podcast and audio tour that is transforming Galveston into the world's largest free museum! https://www.galvestonunscripted.com/
Support the show! Buy me a book! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jrshaw409
Galveston Unscripted Digital Market: https://www.galvestonunscripted.com/store
I sit down with Kyle O’Haver, Superintendent of Galveston Island State Park to discuss Galveston’s Coastal Ecology, Birding, Avian Migration, and Galveston’s balancing acre between conservation and economic expansion.
Kyle O’Haver is an avid birder, wildlife enthusiast, and has been with Texas Parks & Wildlife Department for over 16 years.
Galveston Island State Park: https://tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/galveston-island
Watch this episode on YouTube: Coastal Conservation and Avian Migration at Galveston Island State Park with Kyle O’Haver
https://youtu.be/M5vc--aFWus
Subscribe to Galveston Unscripted on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts for more historical insights and stories from this remarkable island: https://www.galvestonunscripted.com/podcasts
Check out the podcast and audio tour that is transforming Galveston into the world's largest free museum! https://www.galvestonunscripted.com/
Support the show! Buy me a book! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jrshaw409
Galveston Unscripted Digital Market: https://www.galvestonunscripted.com/store
We are a destination not just for the birds, but you know our, our history here on the island attracts a lot of people from around the world. We find a lot of people traveling Texas to seek that history. Many of them come to Galveston because it's so rich in the history of not only Texas but the United States.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Galveston Unscripted. In this episode, I sit down with Kyle O'Haver, Superintendent of the Galveston Island State Park. We discuss the park, wildlife and ecology and, of course, birding on the upper Texas coast, and we get into the importance of protecting these natural habitats. And luckily we have the Galveston Island State Park right here on our island. One thing I learned from Kyle while sitting down with him is that the Galveston Island State Park is within the top 10 state parks in Texas by visitorship and revenue. Now that is highlighting how important that state park is to Galveston Island, not only ecologically but economically. We had a lot of fun during this conversation and I know you will enjoy listening. Without further ado, let's hop right into this episode with Kyle O'Haver, Superintendent of the Galveston Island State Park. Welcome to Galveston Unscripted. Well, Kyle, thank you so much for joining me on Galveston Unscripted today. I really appreciate you making the trek all the way from the West End To come down here, all the way to the East End.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of West Enders will say this East End is too far away, so we kind of keep to that side a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if we have to drive past 61st Street going that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's pretty far, it's a day.
Speaker 2:You might as well be driving to Houston, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, so you are the Superintendent of the Galveston Island State Park.
Speaker 1:Yeah, day number four.
Speaker 2:Oh man, so you're fresh.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep, absolutely. I was Assistant Superintendent for six years and have been very lucky given the opportunity to now lead the park as the Superintendent.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about your background before you arrived here in Galveston, sure?
Speaker 1:I was born and raised in Missouri.
Speaker 2:That's awesome.
Speaker 1:You know I'm a show me state boy, so been in Texas for 16 years. My first full-time job out of college was with Texas Parks and Wildlife. Down in the Rio Grande Valley I went to school for park recreation and tourism management, so my literal focus whenever I was in college is to go and manage in run parks. That was my goal and my dream and started out down in the Rio Grande Valley at Astero-Yono Grande State Park and World Burding Center. And that's where my passion and hobby for birding kind of was forced upon you.
Speaker 1:You can't be down there at a World Burding Center site and not be just fully inundated with birders from around the world. You pick up a bird book and look at the guides that are in there, the people that are writing them. They were down there every single year. So I got exposed to some amazing opportunities to get to meet people and then met my wife down there. I had a couple of wonderful children and was in the Valley for about six years. Moved to West Texas to a small park called Lake Colorado City State Park and was superintendent there for about five years. And then, right before Hurricane Harvey hit the week of Hurricane Harvey, I was moving to Galveston for my assistant job, got everything unloaded and into the house and the staff was saying are you watching the weather? And we're like, no, what's going on.
Speaker 3:We have no idea. We weren't paying attention.
Speaker 1:We were focused on moving and they were like well, in about three days you're going to have a hurricane hit us, so you need to figure out what we're doing.
Speaker 1:And it wasn't our first hurricane. We were in the Rio Grande Valley during Hurricane Dolly so, but it was, you know, within a week of being in a new place. So we were like we're not sure, we're not ready for this. So we went up to some family in Austin and actually it probably had more road closure, some power outages and flooding in the Austin area than we would have if we had to stay right here on the island. So I learned that pretty, pretty quick is, you know, there's there's definitely some need to seek refuge sometimes, but we've got a pretty good place even there on the West End for for storms that are that are fairly manageable there there is a it's an okay thing to stay here in our house, stayed here through Nicholas, which was a pretty big tropical storm, I think it even maybe hit hurricane. So have rode one out here on the island before and we're we're used to it a little bit now. So it's been a been a pretty amazing journey.
Speaker 2:With Harvey. I know, obviously the floodwaters in Houston were horrendous, but you know, here on the island when I've been here for other hurricanes and tropical storms, like the street flooding was just outrageous. But for whatever reason, harvey didn't seem to impact Galveston as much Was the state park affected by Harvey at all.
Speaker 1:So there there was some, you know, some general wind damage of blowing a few things around any major storms like that tropical storm hurricane. We were going to bring some some wind damage, you know, losing a few shingles, some tree limbs blown around. So it took us about four or five days to get stuff cleaned up, but major damage it wasn't. It wasn't that bad. The water did not. The water did not sustain in the park and build up, you know, from from Ike. The actual storm surge is what was so bad. The storm surge of Harvey was was nowhere near that.
Speaker 1:It was just the the torrential downpour, and the good thing about living on an island is you can give us lots and lots of rain, and it's going to go to the gulf or it's going to go to the bay.
Speaker 1:We'll flood but we're not going to be holding water because it's going to go somewhere else when it hits a certain peak. So that wasn't nearly as bad and and actually the cleanup after Harvey didn't have nearly as much rain as the amount of water that tropical storm Nicholas put into our park. It actually flooded us to levels that the park hadn't seen since Hurricane Ike. Oh my gosh. You know Ike was definitely way worse, but there was water in sections of the park that have not gone underwater since Ike and it had to do with how that storm system came in and put a lot of pressure on the bay and the bay really rose up and those those water levels really, really came up in the park and it was. It was impressive to see that much water. I was in my house, which overlooks some of the campsites, you know, got a pretty high subfloor on the house. Water about six, eight inches underneath the house and we were watching birds like cormorants swim down the road and dive, because there was three or four foot of water on the road.
Speaker 1:They were diving, looking for fish where we were just driving two or three days before.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:There's so much water in the park, so it was really that was really unique opportunity to see that.
Speaker 2:Man, well, you know, going out to that, that area, the state park area or anywhere on the West end, it really highlights what the island would have been like prior to the grade raising. The elevation was very, very low. Do you happen to know the elevation or, I guess, average elevation, of the state park?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's one of the things we kind of look at. So the main ridge that runs through the park ridge, you say just in elevation terms, obviously you go to the beach on the golf side and that's zero because that is sea level. Right there you get to the middle of the park where our nature center is kind of the spine of the island and it's somewhere in the eight to 12 foot or so of elevation I think it's a little closer to like eight or nine and then you know tapering off on the bay side to get back to sea level because you know we're tapering off on that side. So it's not a tremendous amount in general ground elevation but it only takes a few inches of elevation to push water one direction or another. So rising eight feet coming across the middle of there. The water as long as I've been there and the storms I've seen, the water's never come close to the middle of the nature center and stuff, like it did with Ike whenever the wave came across the island.
Speaker 1:But yeah, that middle section is high enough that everything kind of pushes to it and you'll see all the wildlife and animals really congregate to the middle, which they're used to doing, escaping water, going to higher ground, and it's that middle spine, running down through a park that seeks a lot of refuge of creatures.
Speaker 2:So on the topic of hurricanes and, I guess, inundation from the bay side, that saltwater inundation coming up from the bay during a hurricane, how does that affect the I guess the bay side ecology?
Speaker 1:Sure, that's a great question. A lot of the plants, as you can imagine, that are right there near it are constantly getting high tides, getting saltwater, so there is a lot of the grasses and plants that are used to salty environments. The soil is very alkali in certain areas. As the water starts to approach the middle, it will potentially kill some plants or make plants go dormant. You know the grasses in our campgrounds, in our yards that are mowed a lot of times. They will absolutely go dormant or some of the grasses will die out. It'll take a few months before you start seeing green again.
Speaker 1:But the native plants they know how to hold on. They know how to go dormant for a bit. They're okay with getting a little bit of saltwater inundation because that's how they've developed. They've seen a lot worse than any of us have that are alive today on this island in terms of their time on the island. So they know how to deal with that. So water coming in it'll create some effect. The biggest effect on the plant life that I've seen there has actually been our freezes the last couple of years that we've had.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, and it has laid back some of those plants for quite a while to get them to come back, because cold is a different aspect than salt to them.
Speaker 2:That's super interesting. Yeah, looking at it from a freeze perspective because it only happens once every 15, 20 years maybe, but we had a couple back to back in the last few years and there's sections of the salt grasses, marshes and stuff like that that really get impacted and they're still brown.
Speaker 1:They're trying to green up even from a year or so ago. There's still life there, but they're definitely not as thick and lush because a lot of them froze out on top and they're starting to come back a little bit better.
Speaker 2:So of course I can ask you the basic question what are some of the wildlife out there? But what are some wildlife out in the state park that surprises people or visitors to the park? They're like oh, I didn't realize you had those out.
Speaker 1:You know, still, with everybody on the island talking about canids, like we've talked about the coyotes we were discussing earlier, people are still pretty shocked when they see them. Visitors from out of the area. They will misidentify them in very interesting ways. Everything from deer and moose and wolves and mountain lions and things, and everything that we can find that they've seen has usually been a coyote on the large side of it. So that is usually surprising to people. When they do get to see them in the park they're pretty shy, so it's a special situation whenever you do get to run into one. A little bit more of what they see.
Speaker 1:Right now the swamp rabbits are coming out. They're along the sides of the road. You know a little cottontail looking rabbits. Armadillos are starting to make a scene and those are quite entertaining to watch. On the sides of the road rooting for stuff. You'll see raccoons, maybe a possum or two in the area. But birds are definitely my favorite thing in the park because it's my biggest hobby. But that is the area that surprises me and a lot of folks that I know, even though we know it's coming. It's always that excitement of finding the rare or odd bird or the unusual species that you never know what you're going to. Go out there any day and see.
Speaker 2:I know we started, we talked about this before we got started, but the people traveling to Galveston to come see these birds, these migratory birds that come through our island, I mean, are there people coming from all over the world?
Speaker 1:Literally all over the world. We we are a destination not just for the birds, but you know our history here on the island attracts a lot of people from around the world. We find a lot of people traveling Texas to seek that history. Many of them come to Galveston because it's so rich in the history of not only Texas but the United States. So we see that. But in birders in particular, the upper Texas coast is very legendary. High Island is very legendary for birding. The Rio Grande Valley, where I was at, boasts some of the largest number of species per county that there is in the United States.
Speaker 1:A lot of times Texas is at the very top of birding in the US.
Speaker 1:So these areas are where major migratory pathways come for birds and you come here during the springtime and you're going to see amazing numbers of birds come over when the conditions are just right and they're not just shooting over the top of our of our heads. At times, if the wind conditions are in their favor, they can fly a little farther. So in spring, whenever they're returning north, they may shoot over the island a bit more. But if you're here in your birding you will get to see some things. What we say a lot, drop in in the afternoon, mid mornings and afternoons because they're leaving the Yucatan, they're leaving Central and South America and that flight especially if they're trans-golf migrants flying right over the water, they're going to seek refuge at the closest place that they can if there's any wind or any precipitation over the golf. You know, as explained to me whenever I was learning, this is a lot of the warblers, the small warbler species people really enjoy. They're about the size of a ketchup packet.
Speaker 1:So, if you create something like the size of a ketchup packet that has a little bit of an ability to soak up water like a sponge, and you weigh that thing before and then you put a few drops of water on it, the percentage of weight that you gain so much quickly, you know it's a lot. So you think about that. A little bird flying from the Yucatan and it hits. It hits rain All of a sudden. All of its resources that it put into flying, it now has 10 to 20% more body weight than it had before. They are absolutely drained of energy and they try and hit the first place that they can.
Speaker 1:Galveston Island is a really big stopover spot for them. Very important that we're out here. High Island is really famous for it. It's also, you know, it is a raised dome in the land, so really far off. If you're a bird flying way high up over the water on the horizon, you'll see High Island a little bit easier sometimes. So there is a really big concentration that will show up there and there's a lot of trees over there. So birds kind of do what's called a fallout. If the conditions are right, where everything that's migrating is so tired, they have to drop out the first place we get to see it here on the island A couple of springs ago was pretty amazing on the island.
Speaker 1:We say amazing whenever you look into the ecology of it. Sometimes it's a little difficult to stomach that it really is birds trying with every fiber in their being that they have left to make it to land. The reality is not all birds do that. That's why they're so important to save their breeding habitats and things and have these stopover points, because it's the entire journey that's important. It's not just the beginning and the end spot for them. So the better we do at managing our resources like the state park, having wonderful places like High Island. Lafitte's Cove is a place that I bird a lot in the spring because that big, beautiful canopy at Lafitte's Cove is a wonderful place to go. There's a number of parks in town. You can see me at Kempner quite often because it's got big, beautiful old growth trees in that neighborhood. I'm walking around the neighborhood looking for birds in the trees.
Speaker 2:Yellow crown night herons.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cedar Lawn area is really interesting place for that. I've got some friends that are over in that area. A couple of bird friends and I. We were walking the neighborhood because we'd heard that was good for that. It's so fun to see the number of people that would walk out of their house and at first you're like are they going to get mad? We're birding in their neighborhood with a binoculars or the paranoid. No, they all wanted us to see their yellow crown night herons Every one of them. There was five or six different people that wanted us to see the nest in their yard and I absolutely love that because they are very proud of that bird, even though it's a little stinky whenever those nests get there they can be a little loud, but to see a community absolutely come out and be proud that hey, there's somebody with binoculars, they need to see my bird in my yard.
Speaker 2:It's like a migratory pet.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, I love that so much that they were proud of that situation in their community.
Speaker 2:So those listening who don't know what a yellow crown night heron is, they're pretty large birds. And when they make a nest, usually in Galveston. They make them in oak trees and high up in oak trees and when you walk under their nest you see tons of crab claws and bodies of crabs and things like that.
Speaker 1:They eat a lot of crayfish in the area. Their nest building ability. To most people, whenever you think of a nest, you think of something like a robin nest, because that's you know, whenever you type in nest or you see it on cartoons, it's this perfect little bowl shape of woven small fibers. Well, these birds will find branches that are pretty close together and they will just lay and lay and lay and stack and stack and stack sticks on there, and it doesn't look that great. It doesn't look like your typical nest. It's more of a platform is what they're building, and you know they're raising babies there and there's a lot of waste and there's a lot of byproduct of their food and stuff that will drop down, and it isn't pleasant the smell from fish eating.
Speaker 1:You know crayfish eating creatures, though, but they are absolutely wild. The babies look like Muppets. They really do. They don't even look of this world as their babies and growing up. But yeah, it's a heron species, so it's a long legged wading bird. They like to be in shallows and marshes searching for crabs and crayfish in the freshwater, ditches and things like that.
Speaker 2:So, speaking of migratory patterns, I know every bird species probably has a different migratory pattern. They're either coming from up north, from somewhere different than another species, or going south, to Mexico or central and South America. What is one of the birds with the furthest migratory path? Oh very interesting.
Speaker 1:And one thing that I always point out and try and teach people is, especially when you're here on the coast and they say well, what do you mean? This bird migrates. It's always here. Whenever you're thinking of migration, it's traveling from resources to resources for different reasons. We are at the top of some things southern migration and we are at the bottom of some things northern migration. So sometimes there are species that are absolutely migratory, that most people say they're not migratory. Those birds are always here.
Speaker 1:Well, we're in an area that they have enough resources that some may never leave and they may be residential, but you will, if you really pay attention, see a migration. You'll see a day where you're used to seeing your mockingbird that's here. Well, mockingbirds will kind of regionally shift and migrate and pass through areas. So someday you walk out there and there is 15 mockingbirds in a tree that only had one in it the day before and then there's no more the next day. Well, that could be birds passing through.
Speaker 1:You know, our herons and egrets do that. Even our brown pelicans will shift and migrate along the coast, but we have them here all the time. Sometimes you see huge numbers all pulled up and they're just moving to find the resources they need. Some of them that go farther in birds up north mean that they have to travel farther south to find those resources. At times Some of the longest migrants are actually shorebirds, you know plovers and knots, and then there's some of those furloughs, things that are looking for coastal ecosystems. But they'll go up and they'll breed up in the tundra and then they may be going all the way as far as the tip of South America sometimes.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Some of those shorebirds are unbelievable migrating birds.
Speaker 2:I had no idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they literally travel from the top of North America to the bottom of South America for a trip.
Speaker 2:Oh, and then you can see them walking on the beach here in Galveston.
Speaker 1:You can see them and they may just need to stop over. You know, you see knots on the beach or you see godwits or something that are stopping over and you don't know where they've gone or how far they're truly going to go before the end of their journey. But it could be, you know, thousands and thousands of miles, not just North America, but all the way through Central America to South America.
Speaker 2:Wow, what are some of the rarest. You seem like we're on your, your this is your wheelhouse right here.
Speaker 1:Oh, this is. You know, that's what I said, so I like this. The thing I love talking about the most, this is great, this is great.
Speaker 2:So what are some of the rarest birds we can see in Galveston Sure?
Speaker 1:And that rarity, too, is something that you have to kind of understand. There's rarity in different meanings, meaning something like a whooping crane.
Speaker 1:That's rare because in the entire world there is not a very big population left. You know you can go down to Port Aransas and see a great number of them that still exist. Go to Goose Island State Park over to Big Tree. You can see 20 of them there. Sometimes there's a one or two that maybe in the county High Island gets them a little bit more often. Galveston Island isn't a great place for a whooping crane, but if you're talking about rarity in in the species with a number, that is an extremely rare bird.
Speaker 1:And that's something that you should see in your lifetime because even with all the efforts we do, something could happen and they could.
Speaker 1:They could disappear. Another form of rarity is something that shows up that may have a huge population somewhere else, but it's in a very odd place, so that makes a rare bird of itself, even though it has a population that's way bigger than a whooping crane. We may have seen a whooping crane in the area and never seen this species before, so that's an interesting situation in rarity. One of the rarest birds that I've ever seen in my life down in the Rio Grande Valley when I was first starting out birding, I remember the first big, mega rare bird that I've seen was called a Jabiru and it is actually the heaviest flying bird that could ever visit this area. It's the height pretty close to Sand Hill Crane or so, but it's a very big, dense bird and it comes up out of South America, usually comes up whenever there's a big hurricane or storm that comes through, and that was right around the time of Dolly down in South Texas.
Speaker 1:There's actually been one over in the High Island area I'm wanting to say early 2000s when was over there but that was rare because there had only ever been a couple of them seen and there hadn't been one seen in almost a decade whenever I'd seen it. So that was pretty spectacular to go see a bird that stood up there like the size of a human out in this field. That came from South America.
Speaker 2:It's that big.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's big.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:They're pretty impressive. They look like a small person walking out in a field.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh like an e-boo or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a little bit smaller than those but they fly and they're like a really big heron is what they are, really dense-bodied. So that was a really neat experience. I got to see many super, mega rare birds down in the valley First time. Us records and things that were coming across that now there's four or five species that have been found in, four or five individuals that may have been found in the US by now Up here in the upper Texas coast not exactly a claim to fame, but I guess in the birding world around here my most notable bird that I discovered was a white crowned pigeon which most people would be like okay, you found another pigeon up here.
Speaker 1:I'm wanting to say it was only the fifth record in Texas, or so. It come out of the Bahamas and it flew up and it was in the fall and to remember it was not long after a tropical storm event I don't remember which one it was, but the area over by Lafites Cove where all the peacocks are. I was just driving down that road in the afternoon enjoying the peacocks, because I still enjoy looking at. Even though they're not wild and they're non-native species, they're still really beautiful.
Speaker 2:They're a fun bird.
Speaker 1:Birds are all amazing to me. Well, I was driving down that road and I noticed there's usually always a bunch of doves on the power line up there, and one of them just looked really big to me and so I got my scope out and looked at it and I seen this white blaze go right up its forehead. I've never seen one before in my life. I'd never studied it very, very hard, but because of my experience in birding and knowing what should be in this area, instantly knew this bird should not be in the area.
Speaker 1:It looks like a pigeon to a lot of normal folks, but we don't have one that has quite that head shape or has that white blaze on top of its head and I instantly knew, without even looking in a book, just because of my exposure of reading them and stuff, this was a white crown pigeon and it brought a lot of locals very, very quickly out there to look for it. They didn't see it that afternoon, they seen it one more time the next day but, like I said, there'd only been like maybe five or so seen before that and I just went over there to look at some peacocks and found that crazy bird on the power line.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, do you carry a camera with you every now and then?
Speaker 1:I used to carry a camera a lot, but now the technology, the way it is, our phones. I'm not a photographer, I am a documenter. So I don't have to have a wall hanging beautiful picture, I just want to show somebody that I've seen it or help document it for science. So my cell phone I actually use it for what's called digi-binning and digiscoping. So I will use the recording capability and the magnification on my phone to go through my binoculars or through my scope, to use that extra magnification and I can take pictures farther away not with the same clarity but with enough to identify it more than most people can with their cameras and just getting really good at that quick documentation. So that I don't have to carry another piece of equipment. I've already got my binoculars, I've already got my phone. I don't want to carry another big camera into the field.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's using your resources right there and that's a fun little last minute thing you figure out on the fly. It's like, oh wait, I can do this Just put your camera over it.
Speaker 1:It takes a little skill, but there's a lot of really cool technology now with cameras that match up with it.
Speaker 2:well, so last time I was at the park went out with my family, we were walking around and there's a big statue out there, right before you walk across one of the little bridges out there on the bay side. Could you tell us a little bit about that statue and what that means? Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So that statue is. It's part of the Lost Bird Project artist Todd McGrane. He creates these memorials. It's tough to define it. I don't want to necessarily call it memorial. It's a remembrance and it's not just to remember what we had but it's to think forward at what we don't want to lose. And he created the Eskimo Curlew statue that's at our park. He has that Lost Bird Project which I encourage everybody to look up, and he works with communities and the birding communities and creates a statue of a bird that is presumably lost, extinct, hasn't been seen in a very long time For all intensive purposes, is no longer existing for some reason or another. And he will create these statues and place them as close to the last known locations of one of the sightings of the bird so that when people go to that area they can learn what we have lost. And hopefully that'll inspire you to think about that in a way into what we need to protect, moving forward.
Speaker 1:And we were extremely excited to get the opportunity to bring that to the park. Galveston Island Nature Tourism is the one that really was working with Todd on bringing that to Galveston Island and then, in the search for the right location for that, they brought him out to the state park as a potential site. But the many supporters and benefactors and GINTC is what got that for our community. When Todd came out to our site, the things he was looking for to place it was a place that one was close to, a location that the bird was last documented, a place that the public could view it but would be in an area that could be kind of protected in terms of education and also to make sure that nobody tries to take the statue away. So he was very excited that the park was interested in this opportunity. There was a lot of great places on the island that were looking into it.
Speaker 1:But one of the things that I think clinched it there's a book by Victor Manuel who is a very prominent ornithologist and bird guide. In his book One More Warbler, the bird of his life was the Eskimo Curlew and there was a group of people in the late 60s that they found the bird and hadn't been seen in many years and they documented it. And in his book it's described as west of 13 Mile Road and talking to him on a cattle ranch and back then in the mid to late 60s when he would have been in the area. Our state park was a cattle ranch at that time and 13 Mile Road is our border. So, in his best recollection and talking to Victor, somewhere between possibly, galveston and state park over to Jamaica Beach, was the field that they were in whenever they documented this bird as one of the last times it was ever seen. It wasn't the very last time, but of one of the last times it was seen. And that was another reason why, because we could tell the story of being a cattle farm, potentially being one of those last places and then talking about it from our stewardship perspective of the things that we need to do to protect this.
Speaker 1:Our state park is an extremely valuable resource To developers. It's an extremely valuable piece of land. You know there could be many homes, there could be many things put on that, but the value is way, way greater for our community and for the nature community for us to preserve it like it is, for us to make sure there's a place people can come and camp and make that connection to nature, but also so we can steward land. There's a bird out there right now that there's some research going on, called the black rail. It's one of my favorite birds of the park. It's a really difficult bird to see. It is a very small, think like baby chicken, solid black. It loves to run through the grasses on the edge of the marsh, doesn't like deep water. It doesn't like tall, tall grass fields where there's no water. It has to have a very specific habitat and it loves the Gulf Coast.
Speaker 1:The eastern species, the eastern subspecies of the black rail is something that is of concern and there's a lot of research going on and Texas A&M and partnership with Texas Parks and Wildlife is doing some unbelievable cutting-edge research and we're one of the sites that they're doing it at. The researchers are actually at the park today right now. They come every few weeks for the last couple years and what they're doing is they're going out and doing some approved Documentation of the birds on site and then the cutting-edge technology that we have with thermal imaging and drones. They are learning to identify that bird by its heat signature at the right time of day and the right time of night so that we can get better population studies on those birds. Wow, unbelievable that we are able to use something like that and you know it's all through an approved process. It's very scientific, set up through A&M, but we, along with some other sites along the coast, are sites that they are using this to research to find out if this is now going to be an Acceptable way for us to go in and not just do what's called a presence absence.
Speaker 1:Yes, there's black rails here, because I hear them. Well, that's important to know, but it's really important to know the density. Do I have two black rails here? Do I have 30 breeding pairs? Because the difference in how we protect it very much demands that we know that and we may be able to, with some of this new research, be able to fly a drone at a very specific time in a very approved way and Identify them by their heat signatures in grass, where researchers cannot without being disturbing in other manners of doing it. So it's very fantastic stuff.
Speaker 1:That's amazing that you can differentiate the type of bird based on his heat signature and size and things like that size shape where it's at what it's doing, and they can Identify it down to species in a lot of cases.
Speaker 2:Wow, I wonder how long this type of technology has existed or if this is brand new.
Speaker 1:I don't know if there are other studies that have been completely finished on Using it for birds. I mean, you know we've been using it. Police have been using it for searching for people, for a long time.
Speaker 1:But exactly this application to my understanding for trying to identify the species of rail. This is, if this isn't the first one, it's one of the very first ones to attempt to use these methods to help locate that in these areas and it's it's important. One of the things that we're gonna do in carrying on that research when she's done, is to try to continue finding when these birds are in our park, because it's fire is a very important management tool for our resource. It's a very important and we're seeing Devastation that fire can do in North Texas right now. Fire management and prescribed fires is something that we use at the park, but we don't want to approach that in a way that we know is detrimental to one of the most Threatened species in a park.
Speaker 1:So if we identify where they are, we can approach fire towards them in a manner that'll let them Escape or not put fire in that area for a certain amount of times and things, and it's it prescribed fires exactly what it is. There's a group that comes out, studies the area the conditions have to be perfect wind, humidity all of that before we will approach the fire. And then, in using using the proper techniques, we enhance the land, we enhance habitat by making sure it doesn't get too thick, by making sure Woody debris doesn't come up and grow. This island shouldn't have massive forests, should have small clumps of trees and lots and lots of coastal prairie. So this information that we find out on the black rail helps us make sure that what we do with our fire management is better and safer for Many species, but in particular that one.
Speaker 2:So these prescribed burns, these? This goes back to the coastal prairie Preservation that you guys are are really, really heavy into now. So what are some threats to coastal prayer, the coastal prairies that we have here in Galveston? I know, I think coastal prairies are one of the most endangered Types.
Speaker 1:Yeah, less than three percent left of that habitat, and it's not just saying that on the island we're talking. In the United States there's less than three percent of the original coastal prairie. Prairies in general are just one of the most endangered things, and the reason is is because we're talking about vast open land and as a society we usually see that as an opportunity to Turn it into agriculture or turn it into communities. So we take all that grassland out and we we do something else with it and we are realizing a lot of doing that is been extremely, extremely Terrible for a lot of species plants, animals. It's a vital, vital ecosystem for us. So at the park we do a lot of management on that and education on that.
Speaker 1:The the biggest threats to it, without a doubt, is ourselves in developing places and not setting aside some of that land. It is very easy for us to take this whole island and just put another place, put another house, put another something there, because that is, without a doubt, much more lucrative. But if we look beyond the monetary value of that land just being a dollar figure and look at it as a benefit to to us, to learn to connect, to have, have these wild things that we love. That's whenever we see it's not. It's not just the dollar figure there. So development is, without a doubt, anywhere along the coast. Everybody wants to live on the coast, so we're losing coastal prairies. The other thing that is is very detrimental to them is invasive species Getting in things that are non native grasses and stuff into our coastal prairies and then, if we don't have proper management of Controlled burns, of removing invasive species, things like that, it will turn over into a field of plants that are that are not meant to be there. They don't hold up in storms as well.
Speaker 1:One of the one of the things that actually shocks people is whenever you learn what the root system looks like of a prairie. If you've ever been to one of those displays, they'll show you what your yard grass looks like and it has a root system of a few inches, and then they'll show you what a clump of coastal coastal prairie, like blue stems or things like that, and sometimes it's eight to twelve foot of a system. That is literally what holds the island together in the middle. If we lost all of our root systems that were that deep, if there weren't this stuff around, it would be really easy to just blow all the sand off the top of this island. We already shift, we already move. That's part of life on the island. But we would have been gone long ago if all of our prairie and all of the things holding it together are gone. It's pretty amazing what it does for us.
Speaker 2:Man, that is. It's fascinating. It's fascinating, it's so. It's so nice to have the state park to go to and actually enjoy today, but there's also an economic benefit to having a park like the state park and it is a pretty large park. Of course you have the beach side and the bay side. But just on what we've been discussing, just the birding you think about how many people come to the island to bird from around the world. Yeah, that has a major economic benefit to Galveston Island and this region. Absolutely yeah, and we've got.
Speaker 1:You know there's a lot of great partners in the area that have set aside this beautiful habitat that we have that you can go see. You know the the parks board City parks set aside Wonderful places to see these birds. Artists boat has great places. Galveston Bay Foundation, you know Audubon has a couple places on the island. There is a lot of great organizations that are all doing doing some of the same amazing work of preserving and interpreting and helping people connect to it.
Speaker 1:Birding is definitely something that draws people to the area, but the the biggest reason that people come to our state park is to camp and go to that beach. You know they they do it all along Sea wall, all along the whole island. They really like our park because we've got nice bathrooms and rinse off showers so that that helps us out. But we we are Newly, we're not a brand new park. You know 1975, really interesting connection that I didn't learn until a few years ago is the park's actual opening day was Valentine's Day on 1975, and that's my birthday, so it's kind of like it's meant to be a feel that you know the birthday of the park and me get to celebrate at the same time.
Speaker 1:But the park is new because we just went through that major remodel and it feels like a brand new park. It doesn't feel like a park that sat here for 75 years but it has, I mean, since 1975, just about 50 years but it has those connections in the community and people coming back that let you know it's been here for a while. That remodel was one of the highlights of my career. I've always wanted to build a park and I was here at the time to get to be a part of influence on how this park was shaped. Very, very special moment in my career to do that. And now that we're fully open we're into our complete full second year of being wide open for visitation. We're in the top 10 out of, you know, 80 plus state parks in Texas.
Speaker 2:Really and we're climbing.
Speaker 1:Galveston before IKHIT was regularly in the top five of state parks in visitation and revenue and I mean you know we're talking up there competing with Brazos, bend and Huntsville and Palo Duro and Garner and parks like that that are up on the top of this. And Galveston is already back within its first couple of years to be up in the top of that list again.
Speaker 2:Wow, I had no idea.
Speaker 1:People love, love, love to come and visit here. It's hard to book a campsite, right?
Speaker 1:now, if you want water and electricity. You know our reservation window opens six months out and people are booking it six months out sometimes to get into our park. So it's pretty spectacular. So it is a huge economic benefit. There's great parks. You know where our community is getting ready to do some great stuff out at East Beach. Stewart Beach just got some nice new things and I think they're gonna get a new building here in the near future.
Speaker 1:There's wonderful parks but none of them are quite like Galveston Island State Park because we're a little more nature specific Come and see the beach, things like that. But then we have a little bit more to offer and that's not for everybody, but we do invite everybody. We want everyone to come out and see this park because my job and all the staff's job is here, because people care about this park and we really want to invite every single person, especially on this island. But everybody in the whole world we'd love to come out and see. That'd be great. It'd be great for revenue and visitation.
Speaker 1:But one of the things that I learned whenever I was studying this in college is you are more likely to go meet somebody from another country by standing in that park than you are finding the neighbor to that park, because people that are in this community are less likely to visit their own state park. They're more likely to go someplace else. But we really encourage you to come out. One of the first camping trips for a lot of people is in their backyard and we love that and we say you should do that Camp in your backyard first, camp in your closest state park second. That's where it should be at. So as you're learning those experiences, let us be a part of that journey. Before you go camping in Big Ben, why don't you try your camping gear out here? Before you go up to Cap Rock or Palo Duro, try it right here in your park and your backyard. So that's perfect. Love to see everybody from Galveston say that they know what their state park looks like.
Speaker 2:I love that. I love that. That's really good. I really like that. So the park was established in 1975 here in Galveston. What is the process of starting a state park Like? If you wanted to start a state park today anywhere in the state, how does that process look? Give?
Speaker 1:me some land and money and I'll get you on your way. You know it comes about lots of different ways. There's lots of different possibilities to make a park, but what it comes down to is having a way to protect and preserve that land. Sometimes it's leases that we have Some of our parks are leased. Sometimes there is donated land, sometimes it's purchased land. There's lots of different ways.
Speaker 1:Fortunately for me, I'm just a superintendent and I don't have to make those big decisions. I've got some wonderful bosses that do amazing stuff with making decisions on where the next parks are going to be. But if there was a giant piece of land out there that somebody said there should be a state park, we'll reach out to parks and we'll definitely look into it. And then it comes to be by setting it aside, doing assessments, let's find out what the true value? Did it have? Historical significance? Does it have something as rare as a coastal prairie on it to preserve and protect? So we study it for a very long time and find out what it is we're gonna highlight in that park.
Speaker 1:You don't just grab that land and say, here's where the campsites are gonna be, let's put a lake over here. You got to look at that land and see what we're able to do with it and make sure that we are highlighting the things that need to be highlighted for the reasons it needs to be there. And then it takes a while because it's not putting up a shed in your backyard. You're building something for the public that is going to be viewed by hundreds of thousands of people a year and you need to make sure the facilities and the roads and things are there.
Speaker 1:If anybody wants to see what that process is like, I highly encourage you to get on Facebook and follow Palo Pinto Mountain. It's going to be our newest open state park. It's going to be open very soon and they're showing right now what it's like to build a park headquarters and they're showing right now what it's like to push new roads into a state park. Follow that page and see what Palo Pinto was. You look back in their photos and what it is now. I got to visit that site before they started building on it. It's pretty spectacular. It's going to be a really neat park.
Speaker 2:Where is that?
Speaker 1:That is just a little bit to the west of the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the potential for the newest state park in this area may come around in ooh, maybe in the 2030s or so. There's a park that parks and wildlife. There's a piece of land that are looking to develop called Davis Hill along the Trinity north of Houston area. That will be potential for us in the next couple of decades to have a new state park in the Houston area.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. I love that. So is that kind of the process that Galveston Island State Park took? That was the land donated. Do you know if the land was donated or purchased?
Speaker 1:So I don't know the exact history of how the land came to be. I know that there was some purchase. I know there was some donation and things like that.
Speaker 1:I wasn't around in the 70s, so exactly how it came to be. I was at a park before this that was a leased park and it is a little bit of a different feeling to be at a leased park. One of the hits that Texas Parks and Wildlife took this year is what happened with Fairfield. It was a leased park situation. The leased came up and developers took over that park and it was emotional for park staff, friends and colleagues that worked at places like that. So we want to protect all of our parks to make sure that things like that don't happen again.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we do have leased parks and, like I said, a park that I worked at before is called Lake Colorado City. It's still on a leased piece of land. So it is out in West Texas over by Abilene Big Spring Midland area and it's on a lake. It's got about 500 acres. Some of it Small pieces are owned, but for the most part it is a lease that could go away and those people may not have a park in the future. I don't see that happening with that park, but that's a reality when the state doesn't own the land. So we're looking for opportunities to own everything we can going forward.
Speaker 2:You know I don't believe the general public really realizes that, because when I think of a state park, I think of it. You know I went there as a kid. I bring my kids there and my kids will bring their kids there. You think of it kind of being this infinite resource, honestly, but it's not always the case.
Speaker 1:Well, I tell you, one of the things that the public does know is to support it, and they showed that to all Texans, showed that in passing Prop 5 and Prop 14, and that helped with funding. That helped with getting the potential to buy more land for parks. So, you know, we were very, very proud to be a part of one of the agencies that benefit from those decisions and we know that people were voting that may not have ever been to a park before, but they know the value of it. So that's important stuff and those are the decisions that will make sure that our parks are still here in the future.
Speaker 1:That's where you can show. Come to our park and visit, but make sure you are a steward and you're a proponent of saving places like this Well, have you ever heard of South Galveston?
Speaker 2:Have you ever heard the name of it? I absolutely have heard of South Galveston.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so a little bit of South Galveston history we're trying to bring up. We did an event last year called Destination Exploration as a part of our centennial year, and the whole purpose of Destination Exploration is, as I mentioned at the beginning. My background and my passions and my knowledge is more in the natural resource side. I do love the cultural and historical side but I'm a little more timid in that area. So we were deciding a big event to do for the park and I said, hey, I love natural and cultural history but I'm afraid to do a lot of that for the park because I'm not as good with it. So let's do a big event and bring a lot of people in to make us look good at that. So it worked out very well and our park staff at that time found some great connections and we brought people in to talk about Lafitte and the great explorers. We brought some folks in to discuss Caronquans and early people that were on the island and we had a section that discussed the town of South Galveston in particular. It was a small activity that was done over the area that we called Jenkins Bayou, because the town of South Galveston is actually easiest to see out there and the town of South Galveston was laid out in the prairie area that is on the west side of our park, the big open expansion that was between us and Jamaica Beach.
Speaker 1:There's still some trails and areas out there that you can hike that are very straight lines and you're like why would a park? Most of the time they're meandering. Well, the reason is we're following old road beds that were the town of South Galveston and we brought up as an activity a map and we cut out some pieces and we said, okay, you make your town of South Galveston, and so people would kind of glue some things down and then we would show them then what the town of South Galveston laid out was to be. So there was a racetrack out there. There was multiple areas where there was businesses and houses laid out on those streets.
Speaker 1:The pond at the very end on the right hand side of Jenkins Bayou was at one time a pond that was supposed to have a big fountain in the middle of it for the town of South Galveston. So some pretty interesting things there. I think at the end of Park Road 66, there was supposed to be a very large hotel that sat out there. So, yeah, what we have now as a state park almost wasn't. You know, like we talked about earlier. The development was much more valuable as a community and as houses and in terms of monetary value. So we are very lucky that we have Galveston Island State Park and not the town of South Galveston sitting right there on our spot.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, that's kind of you know one reason I brought it up. You mentioned development earlier. You know that South Galveston was meant to be established in the 1880s and 1890s and they really got some good progress going, had investors laid out there.
Speaker 1:It was really laid out.
Speaker 2:They had investors from all over the country looking to build that out and it started going. And then, of course, the 1900s storm hit and stopped. They even had a rail line running from this side of the island, east End of the. Island out to South Galveston. But yeah, it's a very real thing that the entire island could have been developed at one point and still could in going into the future. You look at the expansion of Houston, the population growth in the Houston area and everyone wants to live on the coast, like you said.
Speaker 1:But it's so nice that we have the state park today. That storm of 1900, it was definitely the most devastating natural disaster you know in recorded history. But there's also some things that you can look at and say, besides the devastation, thankfully that happened and stopped some stuff that would have happened on this island in terms of situations like that. And we were set up to be Houston, we were set up to be the mega port and the mega place and I wouldn't have a job down here.
Speaker 1:We wouldn't have this beautiful tourism spot that we had, we would be a major industrial complex, 30 miles of nothing but major, major heavy development. So you know, through all that tragedy that happened, nature came back and said hey, you guys are moving a little too fast. So we learned from it. We got a sea wall out of it, we raised an entire city, all of that stuff, but we kept this West end because we weren't developing it. And we're learning. I think our community is learning a lot from that.
Speaker 1:If we didn't have that sea wall there, the water would have washed our dune system away along there long ago. Water would be across town every time that there was a storm, every single time. Our dune system out at the park is as natural as we can get it and it washes away with every major storm. But because of the way that we manage our park, we pick up trash and debris like that off our beach but we do not rake it and clean it of the plant life that comes up. It's very important that nourishes the beach and that helps build our dunes. At most, after a big storm we'll push some of the logs and stuff up into the dunes to help build it. But now we actually have two full dunes and we have a third, one kind of starting, and you go to other sections on the island and they're lucky to have one dune system there. So that is the original sea wall.
Speaker 1:Right there is a dune system that protects the West end from things, so you gotta use nature sometimes as the way it was intended.
Speaker 2:So, of course, of course. And one thing I just thought of thinking back on the plan that I saw for the Ike Dyke or the coastal barrier system they wanted to elevate essentially from the sea wall all the way down to the West end of the island. If that goes through, if that happens, how is it gonna affect the state park?
Speaker 1:I don't know the 100%, the full extent. I'd seen lots of different plans. There was some talk and they were looking into going down the highest point which, like I said, that elevation would have put it right down the middle of the park. I don't know if that is a possibility. They talked about going down the dune system and reinforcing that. I don't know where that honestly is. When that stuff comes to us, we will. We will deal with that as an agency in a park. I understand as a community that there is some concerns and needs for protection. As a park manager, I also have to make sure that we're protecting our park the best that we can. So where that will end up in life for us, I really just don't have the answers and I wish I understood a little bit more of what might come out of it. But I think there's still a lot of plans to be understood in that aspect.
Speaker 2:Of course, of course. Was there anything else you wanted to cover that I may not have asked you Anything else you want to talk about with the same park?
Speaker 1:No, I've had a great time. This has been a lot of fun. I'm glad to hear that you are a park visitor. You know, like I said before, I just encourage everybody to come out and visit your state park and let us know what you see, what you like, what you don't like. Everything that we've done probably isn't what everybody wanted, but in managing and building what we had with the resources we had, and looking at trying to sustain this park long term, after the lessons we learned with Ike, I'm really happy with where we are with this park and even more things going forward.
Speaker 1:You were talking earlier with me about going out to that first hiking tower and hiking the trails. We are really focusing in the next couple of years to try to improve some of the trails and accessibility. We're going to try to pave from that parking lot out to that first tower to make it completely accessible, do some crush-granted on trails. Hopefully do some more work on our boardwalks and improve that area and make some of our trails more accessible for all visitors. Some potential great partnerships coming forward and accessibility too.
Speaker 1:So come out and find something in the park that's for you and, if you've never been to a park before. One of the things that some of our leaders have just said is come out and let us teach you how to park. If you don't know what it is to come to a park or how to enjoy it, come out and ask our staff and we'll suggest a trail for you. We'll suggest a spot to go fishing, to go look at birds, but we're the park experts and we can teach you how to park if you've never done it before.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. I love it I have a question. You got a question.
Speaker 3:Okay, so you were talking about hurricanes and storms and everything. Do you ever see like a flux in any sort of like birds or other mammals, when storms are hitting other animals?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, so, absolutely, that is a very real thing and one that we can point out and how it affects. So here locally, you will see animals start to act a little bit different birds and things, whenever there is a storm approaching even our fronts, even our really big fronts, that come through because they can tell things like barometric pressure changes and stuff better than we can. So you'll see them start to act different. But really really big storms that are coming in, some crazy phenomenon will happen with that. There are birds out, pelagic birds, which are birds that stay out over the ocean and out in the out in the Gulf Pretty much their entire lives. Some of them will actually get caught up in storms. They will sometimes get pushed ahead of them. Some of them will actually have been documented as staying in the eye and traveling with it and we will see a bunch of pelagic species push up on the coast and then the craziest stuff that happens is if this is a hurricane that stays together, a storm that stays together and pushes up into Texas, some of those pelagic birds will end up on lakes way up in North Texas or in other areas because they held inside of that storm on their way up there.
Speaker 1:A great example of how storms can affect birds and disperse them are the flamingos. You all heard how many flamingos were hit all across the United States. We had them here on Galveston a number of times. I missed them every single time. It's still a life bird for me. I like I would get the note oh, somebody's seen it. This morning I'd run out there and there was no flamingo for me.
Speaker 1:But a storm hit a really big colony of them and whenever it hit them it disperse them north and they had them in a record number of states All the way up the East Coast, a few of them in the Midwest, in same places.
Speaker 1:That would not have happened if that storm wouldn't have hit those birds, because they wouldn't have just overshot migration. It hit them and they pushed in front of that storm as it went up the coast and it was a very, very unique situation. Do you mean they migrate back down? Yep, they for the most part. There may be a couple wandering that haven't been seen, but after a while they got their bearings. Especially with a bird like that, the resources it's looking for, it's it starts to realize it can't get those resources in the same way that it wanted to. It likes to eat certain crustaceans it has to feed in a certain way and they were not finding success. So they all started to push back south and there hasn't been any documented up inland in quite a while and only a few sightings along the coast in a number of months now.
Speaker 3:Another question Do you think the, do you think the Eskimo Curly will ever be introduced back then, Wow.
Speaker 1:That is a question for scientists of the future.
Speaker 1:I can tell you how I feel about that, more than if I, if I know it will happen, or think about it, I don't think we should.
Speaker 1:I don't think we should reintroduce species like that again that is presumably extinct, in terms of recreating that creature and putting it back out there Because the world that it lived in no longer exists and the things that it needed may not be there anymore. So we're going to create something that doesn't know how to survive anymore, because that's part of the reason that it disappeared in the first place is issues like over hunting and removing prairies, coastal stopover spots and stuff. We did that to such a massive extent that that bird couldn't exist in this location anymore. So I personally, as a naturalist and professional in this field, think we shouldn't bring something back that we don't have the world for anymore, because it would almost be sad to say, like a second death for them to live through that again. So we need to look at the things that we can save and work harder on that than worrying about trying to bring something back that we don't have the world for anymore.
Speaker 2:Isn't it interesting that this is the first time in history where we can actually we have the ability to scientifically bring these extinct creatures back to life. Like I know, they're working on a woolly mammoth right now over in Siberia. And it is fascinating that that's possible.
Speaker 1:and now the debate begins whether we should, Whether we should yeah, like I said my thoughts on that, wherever it goes is wherever it goes, but if we're looking to just grab a species that once existed and bring it back, we have to recreate that situation. So great. If they bring that woolly mammoth back, what are they going to do? Is it going to be in a pen eating hay like a cow, or are we going to create a refuge for something like that? So same with the Eskimo Curlew. We have species that represent a very similar situation to that bird. You know, it's related to our long build curlews, it's related to our wimberles and things like that. So let's enjoy those and not miss out on seeing those birds because we do things that make them disappear. Let's enjoy those and remember the Eskimo Curlew for what it was.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Anything else. Jade, you got anything else?
Speaker 1:I enjoy questions Maybe.
Speaker 2:Sure, I should have mic'd you up. I got a paragraph here.
Speaker 3:Go ahead, go ahead. Yeah, go for it. So you also were talking about, like the long migration. How, like, how, like? How do they survive coming from like really cold, cold areas to now migrating south towards like incredibly hot?
Speaker 1:Well, think about. One of the reasons that they're leaving is because it's getting cold, cold. It's not cold cold yet. So they're leaving from those areas because the day is changing, the length of day, because temperature is changing, because resources are disappearing, so that that shore bird that may go up there and nest in the tundra that ends up in South America. Yes, it's going to go through extreme temperature changes, but it's not going from the dead of winter in the north to the peak of temperature in the south. It is definitely going to go through a temperature change in their bodies are made for this. You know.
Speaker 1:They put on certain amount of weight for going up there and living in a cooler time and certain amount of fat and stuff in their body needed to be up on the breeding grounds and go through that process of their life. And then they fatten up pretty good and get a lot of reserves and then they just take off flying. Some of them won't even eat on their trips. Some of these birds that migrate will not eat until they get down there. And all the reserves in their bodies, all they have, some of them will. Some of the birds will stop over and eat. Some of them will eat on the flight down.
Speaker 1:Different things like that, just depending on what it is Raptors, shorebirds, warblers, different. There's a different niche that they fill and they need resources in different ways. So that's one of the things that why I'm so drawn to birds is because the diversity. It's like a giant Easter egg hunt out there and I know there's something out there. Don't exactly know where it's at or what I might find Maybe a multicolored egg, maybe a discolored egg, that color egg, whatever. But the diversity and the treasure hunt of going out and birding is what has always appealed to me. Finding new things, but pretty amazing, what they do to their bodies to fly south and they just give it all they've got.
Speaker 3:That's awesome, morbid question then yeah, as they're migrating is there a survival rate.
Speaker 1:It is very, very, very low survival rate to be a bird and live a couple of years. That's why clutch sizes, birds having multiple eggs and stuff that's why it's very important that is also a reason for demise in some species is because they're not able to reproduce at a rate that they are disappearing at. So sometimes that is an issue of wildlife, but there is a high mortality rate on birds whenever they migrate. So things that we can do, besides having these wonderful places and stopovers, is to make sure that whenever birds are in migration, we don't do terrible things to overstress them out. Whenever you see sick or injured birds, get them to a professional or leave them alone and let their body take over and gain the resources back. But if we're out there in the middle of migration on a really bad day of bad weather and we keep continually just scaring birds and scaring birds out of bushes, they already don't have anything in their reserves.
Speaker 1:I have unfortunately seen a massive, massive fallout event where birds were so tired we were watching them die whenever they would land. There was almost nothing we could do about it, just the storm hit them at the exact wrong time in their migration and you could go to the beach and wash them, wash up on the shoreline. You go to nature, parks and trails and you would see some on the ground there. But the ones that did make it are stronger genetically. That's the survival of the fittest and they're going to go on and potentially, if you follow those beliefs, going to make a genetically stronger bird that will be able to potentially handle that a little bit better. The next journey, wow.
Speaker 2:That is fascinating. Anything else you get, I'm good, okay.
Speaker 3:I have a question, but it's more of a question that I can Google and answer on my own.
Speaker 2:Well, how about we do it and go ahead? Yeah, go for it.
Speaker 3:It's kind of the difference between like a state park and, since I work for Lone Star Coastal Alliance, like the difference. Is it better to have like an NRA to a state park? Is the funding?
Speaker 1:different, absolutely. Funding will be different State parks, federal parks, you know the local parks and stuff. Is any one of them better than the other? Of course the state park is the best, because that's where I work, you know they're all important. I'm not going to say that any one park is better than the other. I think the most important park is the first park in anybody's journey, because that's where it's going to lead them. My first park was my backyard, was my grandparents farm, and that led me to a park in Texas that I'm now running. So every one of those parks is important. It's important to save our city parks. It's important to save unbelievable resources in our national parks. You know those were set aside by true geniuses like Roosevelt saying, hey, these things are important and we need to save them now, before they go away. So every type of park that is created, whether it's a non-for-profit, whether it's a government funded, whatever, that's important, it's important at that moment, at that time and we need to do whatever we can to help them out.
Speaker 1:So you just celebrated 15 years at the Texas parks, yeah, I hit 16 years in the agency and on February 28th, oh, 16 years.
Speaker 2:Well, congrats on that and congrats on becoming the superintendent of Galveston Island State Park. So, Kyle, this has been great. Thank you so much for coming in. This was very informative. Very happy you were able to make it down today. I really appreciate it, yeah.
Speaker 1:I appreciate the opportunity.