Highlight the ART OF GRAZING and how any landowner can utilize grazing to complement their wildlife habitat. Much like an artist creates a painting, so a land manager stewards a landscape. Each property is unique and each artist creates a different landscape, utilizing the knowledge in their palette. It is our goal to increase that skill set and empower landowners with the skills and/or contacts and resources they need to successfully create the landscape they desire.
Wildlife 2020
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.
Managing land for plant diversity is a goal for most landowners interested in wildlife. When invasive or noxious plants interrupt the balance within a native plant community, landowners are often faced with deciding the best tool to control the problem plants. Although land managers would certainly like to limit the amount of herbicide used on their properties, this is often one of the best tools for correcting noxious weed and brush issues. Additionally, new herbicide technologies continue to be developed within the range and pasture industry to more effectively control these plants with more environmentally friendly herbicides and techniques. Herbicides also limit soil disturbance and provide flexible opportunities to selectively remove individual plants with foliar, stem, or cut stump treatments or to broadcast herbicides where populations are too large. Keeping up with regulations, understanding herbicide labels, and knowing where to turn for the most accurate information can be overwhelming. This presentation will start with the basics and build a knowledgebase about herbicides to impower land managers to make data-based decisions that will be best for the long-term health of their land.
Since 1995 managing for native Texas wildlife has been an accepted Agricultural use in Texas. Designed to allow the good folks out there in production to have a slightly easier time of things, it has grown to be a very popular Ag use. There are many misconceptions from how many acres are required to can I still build a bonfire on my property, and a multitude of other more common misunderstandings about the valuable program. This short presentation will answer many of those questions and provide enough of an understanding of Wildlife Exemption or Valuation for any landowner to be able to make and educated decision about whether Wildlife Management is right for them and their property.
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.
Senator Charles Perry congratulates TWA on 35 Years.