Saturday

Earth Day Bay Day Festival April 9


Join the Coastal Bend Bays Foundation to celebrate the 23rd annual Earth Day Bay Day, Saturday, April 9, at Heritage Park in Corpus Christi. The Coastal Bend Bays Foundation hosts this free festival each year to raise awareness of the need for stewardship of the area’s natural resources — this year, it’s back in person. 

The popular event provides education and outreach in a fun, family environment that’s FREE for all Coastal Bend residents and others visiting Texas’ “Sparkling City by the Sea.” Since 1999, the CBBF has hosted this local event to help promote and encourage citizens to learn about our bays and estuaries, wetlands, native plants and animals, recycling, sustainability, conservation and other environmental issues through interactive activities and local exhibitors.


 

Earth Day Bay Day has all sorts of things to do and see, such as educational activities and giveaways for all ages, food, animal exhibits and more. Follow the latest updates on Facebook and on the website. Thanks to event sponsors, the 2023 Earth Day Bay Day celebration will feature the following fun activities.

 

  • Up-close animal encounters
  • Birds of Prey raptor show
  • The Texas Zoo
  • Catch-and-release fish tank
  • Texas Parks and Wildlife Coastal Expo and Operation Game Thief trailer
  • Native plant giveaway by Valero
  • Rock-climbing wall
  • Giveaways galore

 

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Friday

Friday's Future Conservationists (Part One)

Welcome to our new weekly blog feature: Friday’s Future Conservationists. Every Friday, we’ll share inspiring work from the students who one day will be our biologists, park rangers, nature photographers, game wardens and stewards of all wild things and places.

 

Thanks to Amanda Asher and the teachers/students of Cibolo Creek Elementary School for helping us get started. 

 

Did you know that living organisms in any environment depend on each other and their environment to meet their basic needs?  

 

Second grade students at Cibolo Creek Elementary School recently completed their science unit — “Investigating Organisms and Environments” — by creating an article for Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine. 

 

The students each drew an illustration for a specific environment and the organisms that live within it. They wrote articles describing how the organisms and environment depend on each other to meet their needs. To complete the project, students mapped out the food chain from their environment, displaying the transfer of energy from one organism to another for survival.  

 

Check back next Friday for more amazing “articles” from our future conservationists.

 

 












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Tuesday

Meet the Women Who Protect Texas Wildlife

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Wildlife Division is home to many talented, dedicated and enthusiastic female professionals. In honor of Women’s History Month, here’s a small sample of the wonderful women who work to preserve and protect Texas wildlife. 

From top left in the photo collage, row by row:

 

Shannon Grubbs is a district wildlife biologist covering Victoria, Calhoun and Refugio counties. She enjoys helping landowners manage their land for wildlife. In this photo, she is banding a mourning dove.

 

Heidi Bailey is a district biologist for Kaufman, Van Zandt, Henderson and Anderson counties in East Texas. She provides technical assistance and public outreach programs to the general public, private landowners/land managers and recreational enthusiasts. Her favorite part of the job is getting her hands dirty when demonstrating on-the-ground wildlife and habitat management. Her former supervisor describes her as “one of the most highly qualified burn practitioners we have in this region, if not the state.”

 

Arlene Kalmbach (pictured with the all-female project team of Gaby Tamez, Krysta Demere and Megan Bean) is coordinator for the Landowner Incentive program and Pastures for Upland Birds program. 

 

Jessica Schmerler is a habitat assessment biologist for Central and West Texas. She reviews environmental documents for development (including energy) projects and provides recommendations to minimize adverse impacts to wildlife resources. In this photo, she’s visiting a wind farm in far West Texas, where several smaller wind turbines were proposed to be replaced with larger ones. 

 

Gaby Tamez is a district biologist for Pecos County in far West Texas. She provides technical assistance and public outreach programs to the general public, private landowners/land managers and recreational enthusiasts. In this photo, she is teaching youth volunteers how to band a dove.

 

Caroline Ellison is as a wildlife biologist and assistant area manager on the Matador Wildlife Management area in Paducah. She facilitates public hunts and conducts wildlife research and habitat management on the WMA. In this photo, she is banding a vermillion flycatcher.

 

Courtney McInnerney is a district biologist for Tyler, Hardin and Liberty counties in East Texas. She loves to educate the public (especially youth) on nature and native Texas wildlife. She finds ways for them to get hands-on experience with alligators, snakes, pelts, skulls, plants and other fascinating things. This is a picture of her fixing a water leak. 

 

Kelly Simon is an urban wildlife biologist in Central Texas. In addition to being a published author, Kelly works to retain natural resource conservation as a priority in municipalities and communities. She is committed to improving the diversity of our profession, too: she managed an urban coyote research contract/project with Huston-Tillotson University that facilitates field research experiences to study how coyotes and their prey use habitat within the urban environment.

 

Olivia Kost is a district biologist for Eastland, Brown and Mills counties in North Central Texas. She provides technical assistance and public outreach programs to the general public, private landowners/land managers and recreational enthusiasts. In this photo, she is banding a white-winged dove.

 

Andrea Webb is a district biologist for Panola, Shelby and San Augustine counties in East Texas. She provides technical assistance and public outreach programs to the general public, private landowners/land managers and recreational enthusiasts. In this photo, she is banding woodcock.

 

Anna Strong, one of two state botanists, administers federal pass-through and state funding for rare plants, works in conjunction with USFWS to review Species Status Assessments for federally listed (and petitioned) plants and reviews the state conservation status ranks of Species of Greatest Conservation Need plants. Additionally, Anna conducts in situ status surveys of SGCN plants and then creates and catalogs field reports and maps populations in the Texas Natural Diversity Database.


 

If you want more content like this, subscribe to Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine. Whether in print or through our mobile app, choose the version that works best for you.