Green Jay, Laguna Atascosa NWRFermata began working in the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) of South Texas in the early 1990s. Our first project involved developing the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail for Texas Parks and Wildlife in that area. We followed that work with the feasibility study for the World Birding Center, the strategic plan for the World Birding Center, nature tourism strategies for several of the communities there such as Mission, Weslaco, and South Padre, a feasibility study for the new centers at Weslaco and South Padre Island, and interpretive enhancements at Quinta Mazatlan in McAllen.
Early in our work we assessed the economic impacts of nature tourism in key LRGV sites such as Santa Ana NWR, Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park, and the Sabal Palms sanctuary near Brownsville. At that time (at least 15 years ago) we estimated an annual impact of $125 million from nature tourism in South Texas. A number of people were surprised by that figure, and questioned its accuracy. How could birders and other nature tourists contribute so much to that economy?
In recent months a study by Texas A&M has covered the same ground. This research comes after the implementation of much of the work listed above. Texas A&M now estimates that the impact is $300 million per year, almost three times our original estimate made prior to the community, state, and federal investments.
The communities there have been on board from the very beginning, and the results show the importance of their commitment and investments. Texas Parks and Wildlife has led the effort from the outset, and their investments (including two new state parks) have been invaluable. Congratulations to all involved in making South Texas a model for nature tourism development!
Scarlet Colley, telling Woodrow Davidson about the lives of dolphins, June 2010Last week our little family group traveled to South Padre Island to celebrate my wife’s birthday, and to expose my grandson to southmost Texas. On the 25th we joined Scarlet Colley (Fin to Feathers Tours) for a morning boat ride around the Laguna Madre. We met in Port Isabel, the seaside community where I stayed with my father in the early 1960s to hunt and fish. We always lodged at Harvey Courts, a thread-bare conglomeration of cabins that nestled up to one of the boat canals. Back then to reach Padre Island you drove across the original causeway and were met by three or four weather-beaten buildings and endless undeveloped barrier island. Thanks to Ralph Yarborough and other Texas leaders, the Padre Island National Seashore preserves much of this wild region. Between the south end of Padre and the National Seashore, though, what I remember as a child has been transformed into Miami Beach.
Within minutes of our leaving the dock with Scarlet we had seen our first dolphins, and at times during the trip they ventured so close that we could hear them breathe. Of course my grandson could not believe that these “people of the sea” were so confiding, so engaging. But, in truth, Scarlet is the one who made the trip so memorable.
I have been in the nature interpretation business for over two decades. What I have come to believe is that great interpretors are born, not taught. This is not to say that training is not important at the entry level, such as certification through the National Association for Interpretation (NAI). But being a great interpretor is like being a great writer or great artist. The world is full of learned journeymen, while greatness is bestowed on a very few.
Scarlet is one of those who has been blessed. First, she knows her subject (the Laguna Madre and southmost Texas). Second, she has been years on, in, and around the water, and her complete mastery of the element is comforting. Third, she is, by nature, a wonderfully engaging human being, and does not seem to ever tire of showing the same old stuff over and over again.
More importantly, Scarlet is passionate. Scarlet’s love of the Gulf is palpable, and her stories are not intended to be “fair and balanced.” Of course, in some interpretive circles such a bias is forbidden. There are those who say that the interpretor should be dispassionate, leaving opinions to be expressed over a beer after work. Perhaps this is why so may interpretors are little more than “books on a stick,” reciting the script that has been approved by a bureaucratic management deathly afraid of any political faux paux. Scarlet also talks to the dolphins, calls them by name, whistles to the mangrove warblers, and whoops and hollers when one of them returns the favor. All wrong, no doubt, but endearingly effective.
Scarlet reminds me of my dear friend Karla Klay. Karla’s nonprofit, Artist Boat, works with many underprivileged kids from the Houston/Galveston area. Karla and her staff load the kids into kayaks, and take them on discovery tours around Galveston Bay. After the boat trip each kid makes a model, a tile, of something they noticed in the Bay. Eventually all of these tiles are melded into a mosaic at the respective schools. Click here to watch a video about the development of one of these mosaics.
Karla Klay, Virginia Eubanks, Hugh Burris, and Woodrow Davidson, Christmas Bay, Texas, August 2008Karla grew up in the Florida Keys, and shares Scarlet’s unbridled passion for the Gulf. They are both children of the ocean, and my impression is that each feels most comfortable when out at sea and away from land. But they both are forceful in speaking about their concerns for the Gulf, and have no time to be impartial. Oscar Wilde said that “most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” With Scarlet and Karla, their lives are as true as their passions, and their opinions shape those of others. In this age of junior-league environmentalism, I am thankful that there are still a few like Scarlet and Karla to fight the good fight, even when the passion of the moment may water their eyes.
Please support Scarlet and Karla and their efforts!
Black tern, South Padre Island, Texas, 25 June 2010In this alleged advanced age we presume that all has been discovered, all is known. Why bother looking around your backyard or neighborhood or state when surely scientists and naturalists have covered all of the angles? What could possibly be new to find?
If you live on or around the Gulf of Mexico, particularly that segment in Texas, the answer is everything. Consider the black tern. Black terns are a marsh-nesting bird, breeding in the Northern American interior away from the coasts. This tern is a migrant along our Gulf coast, thus we only see them as they come or go. Fall flocks can number in the tens of thousands, and such aggregations have been noted at tidal flats such as San Luis Pass for over a century.
Yet in mid-summer, for example late June, black terns are found in sizable numbers along our coast. They do not breed here. They do not winter here. These are nonbreeders, mostly young birds, that migrate only as far north as the Gulf before settling in for the season.
Black tern, South Padre Island, Texas, 25 June 2010As I said, most are young birds, the product of last year’s breeding season. But this is not always the case. On 25 June I counted over 300 black terns feeding around the South Padre Island jetties (Texas). Most were what I presume to be second-year birds, but several (perhaps 1 out of 15 or 20) were in immaculate breeding plumage. Are these failed breeders? Are these early migrants (which I sincerely doubt)? Or is there something else at work here, something that we have yet to learn or to understand?
With the Gulf Gusher still spewing offshore, wouldn’t it be important to know how many of these black terns are summering along our coast? This tern is a Category 2 Candidate for the U.S. Endangered Species List, and is either listed or is being closely monitored in states along its southern breeding range. Surely these young birds are important to the future of the species, and they are, at this moment, at risk.
