Representatives from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the US Fish and Wildlife Department will be presenting on cost share programs designed to assist private landowners with conservation habitat practices on their lands for the benefit of healthy terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. We’ll be covering programs from the NRCS Farm Bill, TPW Programs & the US Fish and Wildlife Service Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program.
TPWD
Financial Assistance Programs for Conservation Practices on Private Lands in Texas
Representatives from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the US Fish and Wildlife Department will be presenting on cost share programs designed to assist private landowners with conservation habitat practices on their lands for the benefit of healthy terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. We’ll be covering programs from the NRCS Farm Bill, TPW Programs & the US Fish and Wildlife Service Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program.
Recently, TPWD also initiated an aoudad disease monitoring and surveillance program to look for pathogens and/or diseases that could potentially be transmitted to desert bighorn sheep. Preliminary results are finding a pathogen in the same group of pathogens that leads to bighorn die-offs in some western states. Therefore, to protect the habitat, as well as the native wildlife populations that inhabit the land, aoudad populations need to be drastically reduced. But recognizing the growing popularity of aoudad hunting, this level of reduction will be difficult to achieve. Aoudad hunting continues to be a supplemental source of income for some landowners, which adds to the challenge. Until the detrimental impacts of high aoudad densities are better understood, it will be difficult to make progress.