While some wildlife recreation, such as hunting, has seen a decline in participation, birding is an activity that has grown. In Texas, private landowners have an opportunity to build bird ecotourism into their management plans as an alternative income source for their property. In this talk, we will discuss the basics of birding that you should know as a landowner, the different types of birding activities, and some management strategies to improve your bird habitat.
Texas A&M NRI
The Western Massasauga is a small rattlesnake of the North American prairies. We studied the genetic relationship between populations and also used modeling to determine the current distribution as well as looking at past and future hypothesis of distribution. All of this work is meant to help with a listing decision for the Desert Massasauga subspecies.
Private Land Stewardship (PLS) lessons are a series of free-to-access online courses which present wildlife and natural resource conservation topics in a fresh and engaging way. There are now over 15 lessons ranging from biology and ecology (as in “Anatomy of a Quail” and “Learn About the Western Chicken Turtle”) to landowner How-Tos (“How to Find Natural Resource Professionals in Texas” and “Learn How to Construct Wildlife Ramps”) and overviews of major conservation challenges (“Texas Bats and the Growing Threat” of white-nose syndrome). Each lesson features elements of self‐guided learning, interactivity, links to resources for more information, and a simple quiz to gauge understanding of key concepts. We will demonstrate how these lessons can be used not only as a new form of distance education, but also as a means of increasing the reach and impact of some of our most important face-to-face programs.