Shoal Creek @ Pease ParkWe are Austin based and Texas bred. Shoal Creek is our neighborhood, a slim needle of a creek that splits the heart of Austin into two equal halves. Shoal Creek is dressed Texan, a rarely wet swath of white rocks and cedar trees. To be precise, the white rocks are Georgetown limestone, and the cedar trees are ash junipers. No matter. A Texan would understand.
Like many of you, we are concerned about our place on the planet. Shoal Creek, like so many that we have worked around over the years, is scarred from a history of disinterest and misuse. Our creek flows too little at times, the result of development impinging on the aquifer and springs. At other times the creek flows too much, as rainwater from surrounding neighborhoods rushes to the Colorado River rather than settling slowly into the soil. Our creek is polluted in places, with E.coli counts that spike due to animal waste from pets. In places garbage litters the bank.
Nothing about this differs much from most of America’s urban waterways. The creek’s ills are sins of omission, not commission. Water still runs in a creek bed that has somehow escaped the alterations and improvements that reduce a native waterway to a pipe. Shoal Creek still lives within its banks, waiting for the right moment to spring.
The resurrection of Shoal Creek is our commitment, and to that end we have begun to work with a variety of interests in Austin to advocate for the creek. One important beginning has been our relationship with the Pease Park Conservancy, an Austin organization that is focusing on the restoration of one of Shoal Creek’s iconic parks.
Shoal Creek @ Lady Bird LakeFor our part we have developed a new SmartTrail that interprets Shoal Creek from Lady Bird Lake to West 38th Street. For those not familiar with Austin, Lady Bird Lake shoulders the downtown district, and this new SmartTrail bisects much of what a tourist or visitor might be interested in: the Texas State Capitol, the University of Texas campus, Austin City Limits, and a bottomless serving of chips-and-salsa. The SmartTrail is available now for the iPhone and Android. Download the app, and then access the Shoal Creek and Pease Park SmartTrail.
To see the content of the SmartTrails, go to this webpage. There we have included a widget feed of two of our SmartTrails: the Indiana Beyond the Beach Discovery Trail, and the Austin, Texas: Shoal Creek and Pease Park SmartTrail.
We care about every place we have worked, all 50 states and a jumble of foreign countries. All matter. But Shoal Creek is home, our place. The time has come for us to help our place as well as the places of others. The time has come for Shoal Creek.
The following a gallery of Shoal Creek and Pease Park photos by Ted. Click here for a slide show of the complete gallery.
The current gusher despoiling the Gulf of Mexico has captured the attention of the world, and no aspect better illustrates the sickening impacts than the birds. Photographs of oiled birds litter the media, and discussions of effects on the coast usually include people and birds. No one can gaze at the grisly photos of brown pelicans completed immersed in toxic goo without feeling both compassion and fury.
No one knows this part of the world more intimately than we do, at least when it comes to the places where birds are to be seen along the Gulf. Since our inception in the early 1990s we have worked on numerous birding projects in the Gulf, including the development of the first birding trail in the world, the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail. The following is a list of the Gulf of Mexico birding projects we have been involved in, with links to the trails themselves and, in some cases, our reports and products as well.
RARE invited Ted Eubanks to aid in the original establishment of the Mesoamerian Ecotourism Alliance, or MEA. MEA includes representatives from the Yucatan, thus the connection to the Gulf. Meetings were held in Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras. Through those meetings we met Jon Kohl, who works with Fermata on guide training. This photo, taken by Ted, is from the meeting in Lancetilla (Honduras).
RARE staff in Lancetilla, Honduras
Texas
Madge Lindsay of Texas Parks and Wildlife and Ted met while working on Governor Ann Richards’ nature tourism plan for Texas. After completing the plan the two of them began to plot ways to actually implement the recommendations (including brainstorming at the Watchable Wildlife conference in Corpus Christi in 1993). The result? The Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail, the first in the world.
Here are the first three trails, in their order of development. The dedication of the first trail took place in Rockport, with Roger Tory Peterson as the guest of honor.
Formal trails are relatively new, having begun in Texas in 1996, when the first of three segments of the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail, the brainchild of Ted Eubanks and Madge Lindsay, were opened. The rest, as they say, is history, with similar trails popping up across North America. The trails, often marked roadways with site-specific stops, fuse regional education, conservation, and ecotourism. Most of these birding trails also have detailed accompanying maps, providing guidance to the sites and to the birds (and usually other wildlife) to be found along the trails…American Birding Association
The success of the birding trails led to establishment of the World Birding Center and its partner sites in the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) of Texas. The following is research that Fermata conducted as part of the feasibility study.
However, another article predated this research that should be mentioned. Earlier Ted, Dick Payne, and Paul Kerlinger published High Island: A Case Study in Avitourism (Birding 25: 415-420. Eubanks, T., P. Kerlinger and R. H. Payne, 1993), an article noteworthy in two aspects. First, this survey is among the first conducted in Texas regarding the economic impacts of birding. Second, in this article Ted coined the word “avitourism,” a word that has come into worldwide usage.
The following are but two of the studies that we completed for the World Birding Center and its member communities. We also completed strategies for Hidalgo, Weslaco (which ultimately led to the creation of the Llano Grande State Park), and Mission. Our economic feasibility study for the South Padre Island WBC resulted in a sizable ($ 1 million) grant from the Texas legislature.
In 2002, a meeting was sponsored by the George P Mitchell family. Amongst those attending this meeting were members of the Mitchell family, several local birders and naturalists, members of the Parks Board and Councilwoman Ms Lyda Ann Thomas. The meeting was led by Ted Eubanks a renowned ecotourism expert and local son. A direct result of that meeting was the creation of a Galveston Nature Tourism council with Lyda Ann Thomas as its Chairman, and the decision to put a Birding festival, to be named “FeatherFest” on the Galveston calendar during the first week of April…GINTC
Ted, along with his coauthors, compiled their decades of birding in two landmark publications. The following are the two books, published by Texas A&M University Press.
Fermata organized an interpretive exhibit comprised of many of Ted’s bird photographs. The exhibit, Faces of Flight, showed in Galveston as well as Houston Hobby Airport. The interpretive panels that accompanied the exhibit informed the public about the habitats of the Texas coast and the need to protect them.
Faces of Flight poster, Galveston exhibit
Fermata also created an interpretive sign for the Galveston Seawall, informing visitors about the birds in the area. During Hurricane Ike volunteers rescued the panel, and stored it until after the storm. Little remained atop that stretch of the seawall, and our sign surely would have been destroyed. It has been reinstalled, and is back to telling people about the incredible birds of the Gulf coast.
Galveston's Nature at the Beach interpretive sign, designed by Fermata
Fermata aided The Conservation Fund in the establishment and organization of the Texas Pineywoods Experience. This intiative generally focuses on the woodlands and rivers of East Texas, but it does extend south to Beaumont, Port Arthur, and the Gulf. Andy Jones and the TCF staff have been instrumental in the recent establishment of the Neches River NWR (against withering opposition from Dallas and the water boards), and the expansion of the Big Thicket National Preserve.
Slightly to the west, Fermata completed a study of the nature tourism market along the Trinity River. The river flows south from Dallas to Galveston Bay. Our results are available here.
Two additional Texas coastal projects are still in their nascence. Bird and Bayou is focused on the birds and bayou system of Houston. Buffalo Bayou, where Houston began, flows into Galveston Bay. We are also hopeful that we can get Tides to Tall Timbers off the ground as well. This initiative will connect the Galveston region to the Texas Pineywoods Experience.
Louisiana
Inspired by Texas, Louisiana followed with a series of birding trails of their own. The state engaged Fermata to develop the trail, beginning with the coast. America’s Wetland adopted that trail, and it has become the America’s Wetland Birding Trail. Fermata then completed the remainder of the state.
The Mississippi River Birding Trail (now known as the Great River Birding Trail) is a highway trail connecting prime birding sites along the Upper Mississippi River. The upper GRBT is a project of the Minnesota office of the National Audubon Society, as well as a number of partners from Minnesota and the adjacent states of Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri. The coalition contracted with Fermata Inc. to conduct a seminar to give purpose and direction to the project.
The Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program also contracted with Fermata Inc. to conduct an introductory workshop on creating a Louisiana Coastal Birding Trail.
Mississippi and Alabama
Mississippi and Alabama developed their coastal trails around the same time as Louisiana. In Alabama, Fermata aided in the creation of the North Alabama Birding Trail. Mississippi is part of Audubon’s Great River Birding Trail which extends from Minnesota to the Gulf. Ted spoke in Mississippi at a Governor’s rural development conference to aid in the development of their birding trail (as he also did in Minnesota to help in the Great River Birding Trail).
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has developed a series of spectacular birding trails along their coasts. Staff from Florida met with Fermata early in the project, and we were happy to provide tips on how its done. Ted Eubanks also traveled to Florida and spoke at their annual ecotourism conference about developing birding trails.
Should the oil catch the Loop Current and head up the Atlantic Coast, we have important experiences and projects to share as well. Virgina developed their birding and wildlife trails on the heels of Texas. Representatives from Virginia visited Texas to see how the trails worked, and soon hired Fermata to help develop the trails in their state. These trails, a project of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, became the first birding trails to encompass an entire state. Of particular interest is the initial trail developed along the coast.
Virginia Birding and Wildlife Trail
Fermata also worked with the New Jersey Department of Fish, Game, and Wildlife to assess the value of wildlife viewing in Delaware Bay. This study aided the state in better understanding the risks of over harvesting horseshoe crabs and the subsequent decline in red knots. Our report can be downloaded here.
Ted also met with representatives on the Delmarva Peninsula about birding trails on a number of occasions. Jeff Gordon and others have developed a wonderful series of birding trails in Delaware.
Pennsylvania has no Atlantic coastline, unless you consider (as we do) the Chesapeake Bay simply to be an extension of the Susquehanna River. Fermata is currently completing a Conservation Landscape Initiative (CLI) for PA DCNR for the Lower Susquehanna. The final report should be available soon.
Finally, if the oil somehow wanders as far north as Maine, we have been there as well. Fermata assisted the state in developing an implementation plan for nature tourism, including coastal Down East. Here is a link to our recommendations.
Sunrise from Cadillac Mountain, Maine
We pray that our efforts along both the Gulf and Atlantic coasts aid the public in understanding what is at risk. These are rich, complex, diverse ecosystems that are under assault. As Theodore Roosevelt said, “The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased; and not impaired in value.” Each American generation must embrace that responsibility. Will we accept ours?
Shinkansen in Utsunomiya Station
Our trip is at its end.
We arrived in Austin last night. Today has been one of jet lag and travel recovery misery. Jet lag is part of the yin-yang of international travel. The enjoyment of spending time with your granddaughter is balanced by the pain you suffer once home.
Our last Shinkansen ride brought us back to Tokyo, this time to Ueno station. UT (the University of Tokyo) is located near there, in the Meguro District. Cassady’s apartment is nearby as well. We stayed in a roykan within walking distance of her, and on Saturday we visited the Komaba campus where she will be studying the next two years. UT has five major campuses, with Komaba housing Arts and Sciences.
Saturday evening we met Cassady’s friends, Lee Taniguchi and his wife, Kaoru, for a departure dinner. Lee grew up in Harlingen (Texas), and his family remains in the Valley. He attended the University of Texas, and we shared stories of Austin and his time here. Of course I wanted to know how the Taniguchi family came to live in South Texas, and how he eventually settled in Tokyo.
Let me digress (or veer off) for a moment. I am a Texan, and as one I grew up in the Jim Crow South. I remember the bill boards along the highway that said “Impeach Earl Warren” (who, for those younger, led the Supreme Court in the Brown vs Board of Education case that integrated schools). The Supreme Court issued its “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” ruling in 1954, but opponents were able to drag out implementation for my entire educational career (assuming that I accept that it is complete today).
Here is an example. In 1968, my senior year in high school, a high-school teacher in Sugarland (the town memorialized in Leadbelly’s Midnight Special), Henry Keith Sterzing, had been relieved of his duties by the John Foster Dulles High School board members. His crime? In response to a question from a student about the marriage of Dean Rusk’s daughter to a black man, the teacher stated that he saw nothing wrong with interracial marriage. They fired him.
In the Houston downtown library, purportedly a bastion of free thought and learning, you were greeted by a water fountain near the front door. The fountain had been placed by the Daughters of the Confederacy, and dedicated to those who served the Gray. My mother taught at St. Vincent’s, where Dick Dowling, the Confederate hero of the Battle of Sabine Pass, is buried. One of Galveston’s mayors had operated one of the largest slave markets along the Gulf coast before the Civil War.
While attending the University of Houston, Lee Otis Johnson became one of the liberal causes. Lee Otis had given a marijuana cigarette to a Houston undercover cop, and had received a thirty-year prison sentence for his crime. When Governor Preston Smith visited the campus, students greeted him with chants of “Free Lee Otis, Free Lee Otis.” When asked afterward what he thought of the display, Smith said that he could not understand why students were chanting about refried beans (frijoles, frijoles).
The Texas travel industry tagline is “Texas – it’s a whole other country.” Does Texas believe itself to be a foreign country? No, but the remaining 49 states rightfully do.
Because of the civil rights movement, and liberal parents, I suppose that I had a more balanced perspective of the plight of African-Americans than most white Texans. But the La Raza movement would come later, and by the time I could focus on other minorities (as though Texas ever has) I matriculated. Cassady and Virginia at Todai
This is a very circuitous way of saying that I knew nothing about the Japanese in Texas, or in America, for that matter. I knew that a few Japanese had settled near Houston as farmers, and my mother had taught children of one of those families, the Kobayashis. But otherwise I am certain that I did not meet anyone of Japanese ancestry until I graduated from high school. My school administrators felt no need to educate us about ethnic groups we would have little contact with. Interestingly, I do not remember any classes that discussed Viet Nam’s history or plight either, and we had (and have) plenty of contact with them.
Like the downplaying of Japanese militarism in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and my criticisms of that selective telling of history, I can equally criticize my own education and its gaps. At dinner Lee had mentioned that his great uncle had settled in Harlingen after the war. Lee said that he had been interned in Crystal City, and had recruited other Japanese families to join him in Texas. I decided to use Lee as an excuse to fill one of the many holes in my cheesecloth education. I knew of German prisoner-of-war camps in Texas, since one had been situated near my grandmother’s home in Mineral Wells. But I knew nothing of Japanese internment camps here.
What I have now learned is that there were three internment camps in Texas – Seagoville, Kenedy, and Crystal City. The camp in Crystal City had been built, at least initially, for those of Japanese ancestry. Crystal City was the location of the largest internment camp administered by the INS and Department of Justice. At its peak there were over 3000 people interned in Crystal City. There were Japanese-American citizens interned there, as well as those of Japanese ancestry brought there from throughout Latin America (such as over 700 from Peru).
How did this fundamental failure of civil rights and the protections of the constitution transpire in my home state? Until talking to Lee I had no idea that the government had established one of the internment camps here, not to mention three. Then I came on this quote from the Texas Handbook:
The official reasons for the deportations were to secure the Western Hemisphere from internal sabotage and to provide bartering pawns for exchange of American citizens captured by Japan. However, the Axis nationals were often deported arbitrarily as a result of racial prejudice and because they provided economic competition for the other Latin Americans, not because they were a security threat.
The Texas legislature in 1921 passed an alien land law that prohibited foreign-born Japanese from purchasing or leasing additional farmland. Racial prejudice? Economic competition? Now, I can relate to those forces. This is the Texas of my youth.
Lee’s great-uncle, Isamu Taniguchi, was one of the California Japanese interned in the Crystal City camp. Born circa 1902, he immigrated to Stockdale (CA) in 1915. There be began a business in bonsai plants and crops. He married his childhood sweetheart in Japan, the only time in his life that he returned.
During WW II, they were interned (along with 120,000 other Japanese-Americans). Isamu was interned at Crystal City. After the war, he remained in Texas, raising cotton, crops, and flowers in the Rio Grande Valley. He retired to Austin in 1967 to be near his son, Alan, Lee’s cousin. By the way, Alan is an architect that has served as Dean of The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture and Director of Rice University’s School of Architecture.
According to the on-line accounts:
Out of gratitude for his sons’ education at the University of Texas at Austin, Taniguchi offered to create a Japanese garden for the City of Austin. The city parks department let Taniguchi have three acres of land in Zilker Botanical Garden. With no more than one assistant at a time, Taniguchi worked as a volunteer for 18 months to create the gardens. All plants and material were donated from local nurseries. The gardens feature a series of ponds that spell “Austin” when viewed from the air, a 12-foot waterfall, a teahouse, a Half Moon bridge, a lotus pond with a miniature island, and extensive Japanese landscaping.
This is the origin of the Taniguchi garden? He created the garden out of “gratitude for his sons’ educations at UT?” After being locked up and denied all civil liberties?
My grandchildren are perfect. They are the ideal blend the two cultures. They are seamlessly bilingual and bicultural. They are, in my mind, the personification of Jefferson’s ideal for our democracy.
But Jefferson never could bring himself to free his slaves. He chose to live in two conflicting worlds, one of idealistic democracy and the other of pragmatic (and, yes, evil) prejudice. I firmly believe in the former, but I have lived in the latter. I know prejudice. I know hated, envy, and mindless fury. I know that these forces lie quietly under America’s skin until allowed to surface. And, since the election of an African-American president, they have been stirred once again. In America, you just can’t keep a good hate down.
Now, at the end of this almost three week trip, I return to America to feel the brutal irrationality of this hatred. In contrast, before we returned to Tokyo we spent one night in Utsunomiya. Cassady’s grandparents live there, and we wanted to see them during the trip. They are wonderfully gracious hosts, and Mrs. Yokoyama had prepared a scrumptious meal (with vegetarian croquettes) for dinner. We sat around the kotatsu as a family, sharing funny stories. We laughed at jokes, and loved each other’s company.
This is my trip. When reduced to common people, to common interests, getting along is difficult enough. But at the national or global level, these interactions are dictated by the additional interests of business, power, imposition, and greed. I can only hope that my grandchildren’s generation, those who were raised without racist water fountains, will carry humanity forward. They have my confidence and my prayers. Virginia, Cassady, Ted, Kaoru, and Lee at dinner in Tokyo
