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More Than Bison: The Hidden Wildlife of West Texas · Conservation Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:08
  Speaker B: And welcome back to another episode of Conservation Stories. I'm Tillery Timmins Sims, your host. As you probably know if you've listened to us before, Conservation Stories is sponsored by the Sand Hill Area Research association, or SARAH, as we like to call it. And we keep making new friends and meeting new people that are in our area and like, thinking, why is a school from Kingsville in Lubbock? So I've asked Levi, my new friend Levi, to join us. Give us a little bit of information about what you're doing in Lubbock.
• 0:45
  Speaker A: Sure, yeah. And that can. That can be as long or as short of a story as we want to do.
• 0:49
  Speaker B: Yeah. Well, tell us. Tell us about the center first at the research center.
• 0:53
  Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, my name is Levi Heffelfinger, so I am faculty with Texas A and M University, Kingsville, but specifically within the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute. And so the very abbreviated history on that is there was a man named Cesar Clayburg who worked on the King Ranch way back in the day, back when it was over a million acres. And he was a very prominent figure for the ranch, helping manage their cattle, was instrumental in developing the original railroad system down through there, and had a lot of assets. But one of his big passions was wildlife. And many of you have maybe heard of a man named Aldo Leopold, who is, who is known as the father of wildlife conservation, probably for all of North America. Cesar Claiberg is known to be the father of wildlife conservation in Texas. And he was one of the original people that came up with the idea of, hey, maybe we don't shoot everything we see. Maybe we should be strategic in what and when we harvest or how we might manage these species. So all that being said is when Cesar Claiberg passed, he had a large amount of assets and he never married, didn't have children, had no next of kin. And so he left all of his money in a foundation that he wrote into his will to be specific, for wildlife conservation. Fast forward to 1981, and those funds were allocated to develop a wildlife research institute housed within a university. And Texas A and M Kingsville was chosen to be that university.
• 2:32
  Speaker B: That's really cool.
• 2:33
  Speaker A: So now fast forward 45 years, and here we are, and I'm one of the nearly 20 faculty members that work in that institute at that university. But then back to your original question is, why am I in Lubbock, Texas.
• 2:45
  Speaker B: Instead of way deep South Texas, way down there? Yes.
• 2:49
  Speaker A: And so for the first time, 30 ish years, CKWRI that's our acronym really focused on applied wildlife research in South Texas. Okay. And so doing research that's directly applicable to managers in South Texas instead of kind of more theoretical ecology research that a lot of other institutions do.
• 3:10
  Speaker B: So help me, help me with my geography here. Kingsville, is it closer to. What's it close to down on. On that? Cuz it's down way down on the coast area. Right down. Is there is a King Ranch down there? Do you have King Ranch?
• 3:27
  Speaker A: The King Ranch comes up and Borders campus, actually.
• 3:29
  Speaker B: Okay, that's good.
• 3:31
  Speaker A: That right up next to the town? Yeah, straight south of Corpus Christi about 45 minutes. So way down the southern tip.
• 3:38
  Speaker B: Okay. All right.
• 3:39
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 3:39
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 3:40
  Speaker A: So yeah, the first 30 or so years really focused on that region, but the institute has become very well known, especially on the applied research side. One of the nation's leading. And obviously I might be biased in that, but I think a lot of people would agree. And so because of that kind of notoriety that was developed for the first three or 30 years, we started expanding in the scope of the research, started getting involved at a national scale or even very minimum across Texas, started developing close research partners like Sol Ross State University and Texas Tech University and collaborating together on research projects that spanned into areas like where we're sitting now.
• 4:24
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 4:25
  Speaker A: And so with that expansion, we decided that maybe another kind of remote subunit of the Cesar Claiborg Wildlife Research Institute would be beneficial. And that is what I'm the director of. So I'm the director of the North Texas Research Program of Cesar Claiborg Wildlife Research Institute, based here in Lubbock.
• 4:45
  Speaker B: Okay, so the next question, I think people are thinking, what wildlife?
• 4:51
  Speaker A: Great question. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the South Plains, this whole region has a plethora of wildlife species and many of them are frankly understudied compared to across the country.
• 5:02
  Speaker B: I can believe that because I think it's just really easy to think that there's really not any.
• 5:07
  Speaker A: Right. Yeah. And once you get outside of that kind of 100% cropland especially, and there's a lot of wildlife species that use those agricultural landscapes. But when you get into the mixed grass prairie or areas that are kind of broken up, that sort of landscape, there's some very incredibly iconic species. I'm sure we've all heard of the lesser prairie chicken, pronghorn, which are really unique species to North America. Mule deer, those sorts of critters.
• 5:34
  Speaker B: I knew we had mule deer and I've seen pronghorn close to eastern New Mexico in that like Bailey county area before.
• 5:42
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 5:42
  Speaker B: 11 lone. By himself. And I was like, what is that?
• 5:47
  Speaker A: It looks like something from Africa or something, right? Yeah, no, they're a really cool species. They, they evolved. They're the only members of their family. They are not an antelope like a lot of people like to call them. And they evolved independently on this.
• 6:01
  Speaker B: Okay. You know what I think I saw was an antelope. You're talking about the ones that have the.
• 6:07
  Speaker A: Nope, no, those are bighorn sheep. Yeah. So pronghorn, kind of orange and white. They've got the black horns. Yeah. That is what you saw? Oh yeah.
• 6:14
  Speaker B: My gosh. That is what I saw.
• 6:16
  Speaker A: Yep, yep. And so that's, that's not an. Technically an antelope. They do behave and kind of look very similar to some of the African antelope species. But they are native, they are native to North America. Yep.
• 6:29
  Speaker B: I just, I think I've always just assumed they escaped from somebody's wildlife. I mean like emu, you know, like somebody's like, I'm tired of feeding these suckers. Let them go.
• 6:38
  Speaker A: Right. Yeah. No, what's really, I mean, we could talk about pronghorn for an hour even. But one thing that's really cool with this area particularly is we are right at the edge of their range. And so they span all of the western states, so all the way up to, you know, know, Washington, Idaho, down through parts of Mexico. And that kind of eastern edge is right about where we're sitting right here. And so that's why you probably haven't seen many of them as they're kind of rare to see.
• 7:01
  Speaker B: So, you know, when I think about like this area, you know, pre. Us, you know, coming in like, I don't. Colonizing, I guess, for lack of a better word. I don't know that that's the right word. But settling this area, that may. That's the best word. I, I just think of when I think of wildlife. I think jackalope and buffalo and might be some ground dwelling birds. Yeah, well. Or, you know, prairie chicken, I guess.
• 7:32
  Speaker A: Sure. Yeah.
• 7:33
  Speaker B: But I don't, I never thought. I, I never thought about there being those that.
• 7:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean this, the, you know, the Texas panhandle as a whole, from a large mammal perspective is something that's overlooked incredibly. Because like you just said, a lot of people think, well, there used to be bison here, but that's, that's it. But no, there are. We're at the edge of the range for pronghorn. We're almost at the edge of the range for mule deer. There are whitetail deer. There are now elk coming into this region as well.
• 8:05
  Speaker B: I saw like, this is a long time ago. This was probably 2007. And on. I saw a huge bull elk Crossing Highway 70 between Muleshoe and Earth, Texas. And I was like, the kids and I were like, you could see it from a long ways off. And we got up on it and I couldn't. I was like, that is surely not. But you know, it was pre. Like, get your phone out.
• 8:31
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 8:31
  Speaker B: Take a picture, you know.
• 8:33
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, all those species, people travel all the way to Yellowstone national park.
• 8:36
  Speaker B: To see, to see them.
• 8:37
  Speaker A: Yeah, we, we have them or rios.
• 8:39
  Speaker B: So they're all over rios.
• 8:40
  Speaker A: Right. But yeah, we, we have them existing or kind of slowly coming back into this area, which is cool.
• 8:46
  Speaker B: Did we ever have wild horses? It's something that's come back into Radosa too. They're everywhere.
• 8:51
  Speaker A: Yes, there are some over there, but no, still mostly kind of those western states, Nevada, Utah, that kind of area.
• 9:00
  Speaker B: So I know that. I mean, I've seen. It's not. I'm not too surprised, you know, to see deer here. In fact, I was coming down 50th, that new. The new wing of 50th, coming towards Milwaukee, and a whole group passed like right in front of my car. And I was going slow enough. One of them actually like bumped into my. The side of my car. You know what I mean? It didn't hit it. I heard it, I mean, you know, but it moved my mirror over, you know what I mean? Just like. Because I, I saw them soon enough to go slow, but I was like, it wasn't just like one or two. It was like a whole group of them. Do you call them a group or do you call them a herd?
• 9:42
  Speaker A: A herd, usually. Yeah. But a group works too. Yeah.
• 9:46
  Speaker B: So. And we do have some short hunting seasons here. They're just like, not like months long.
• 9:57
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yes and no. You know, from the, the kind of big game perspective, um, generally speaking, you know, white tailed deer season is. And I don't know the specific dates, but you know, November through December, so two months. But mule deer specifically have a much shorter season. So depending where you're at, it can be 10, 11, 12 days, depending.
• 10:19
  Speaker B: That's what I think. That's what I was thinking.
• 10:21
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 10:21
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 10:21
  Speaker A: And then pronghorn, especially, being, you know, again, there's not huge numbers in the state, really kind of limited to a landowner by landowner basis.
• 10:30
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So what do you think the chances are when you Know, we've, excuse me, had several, you know, people are acknowledging they're probably going to have to, you know, put some land out of, turn their irrigation off or there won't be irrigation and they're going to go back to grazing land. And will that think that'll increase the population? Like it'll draw them further in, More of them will come?
• 10:57
  Speaker A: Yeah. That's a great question and a tough one to answer. But is one of the, one of the main or one of the reasons that we're in this area researching those sorts of critters is we have an incredibly dynamic landscape that, as you said, is gonna change. It's not if, but it's when. And how are these critters gonna react to that? How does that change how we might manage them or allocate harvest? Like you mentioned hunting, like, what's that gonna look like in the future? And so that's where really the big knowledge gap has been and why we're here. Because my background specialty is researching those kind of large mammal species. And so my research program and all my graduate students are addressing those types of questions.
• 11:39
  Speaker B: Yeah. So question being, what is the impact of deer on row crops?
• 11:44
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 11:44
  Speaker B: Commodities. What are they going to do to my peanuts?
• 11:47
  Speaker A: Yep. Yep. And that was kind of the first big project that started this whole remote research branch. And why I'm here is my dissertation work, when I was getting my PhD was addressing that question. Exactly where we had both landowners and a management agency, Texas Parks and Wildlife, concerned about all these deer that are standing in a crop field. Right. And landowners are going, what are they doing to my crops? Landowners are also concerned. There's certain months of the year that I see 150 in my field and other times of the year that I can't see a deer for a month or two. So are they migrating? Are they moving back and forth? Texas Parks and Wildlife is obviously interested in that. And like if we're managing for some amount of harvest for this landowner, but those deer don't stay there year round. Are we miscounting them? Are we misallocating harvest? So from both perspectives, they were concerned about it. And so we did a big research project all around the panhandle where we, with a helicopter net, gunned and captured almost 150 mule deer in different sites around the panhandle. And we put GPS collars on them to see where do they move throughout the year.
• 12:59
  Speaker B: Right.
• 12:59
  Speaker A: And also depending on where they move, how does that influence the population? Is the population stable? Are they surviving? Are they Reliant on cropland or do they not really need it? Because in the future irrigation is going to look very different, cropland is going to change. And so we did that. It was a four year study and that was ultimately what led to my dissertation getting my PhD and yeah, just kind of assessing both the movement as well as how the population reacts to cropland that.
• 13:31
  Speaker B: So what was the outcome? If this is a dissertation, let me know. What, what did you find out?
• 13:38
  Speaker A: I'll give you the abbreviated version. Yeah, so from like, you know, splitting it kind of those two veins, we got movement and then how the population's doing on the movement side of things. There were some kind of basic things we learned. One is that they're not migrating. Simple as that. They are, they're not migrating. They're not migrating. They're resident deer. There are no migratory mule deer, at least in the Texas panhandle. But what we did also find is that they do move a lot. Not in a migratory fashion, but for example, a mature buck's home range in this region with cropland and grassland is almost 10,000 acres for a year. And so if you're a landowner, say with a 2000 acre parcel and you do like to do some hunting or you've got some friends that like to hunt and there's a buck you see on your property and like, oh, I'll let him go and get them next year when he's bigger, he may not be there. Yes, that's only 20% of his, his range. And so we found some kind of basic things like that. But, but getting to the agriculture side of things, you know, one of the surprising results which might explain what landowners are seeing is that they're not migratory, but they, they use cropland seasonally, much different. And again, I think a landowner would, would say, well, duh. But you know, we identified particular months and so it's typically in this area those winter months, December through March. And really honing in on that winter wheat is the, say that's what they're.
• 15:08
  Speaker B: They'Re just foraging on that wheat.
• 15:09
  Speaker A: Exactly, but only when it's at its early growth stage, which was another thing we found. So once it is lignified or becomes kind of stemy and more that darker green color as opposed to light green, it has too much fiber in it that they, their digestive system can't process. Unlike a cow, they don't, they don't like super high fiber food. And so they only want it when it's just coming up and that's when they'll see 150 mule deer in a field.
• 15:36
  Speaker B: Does it impact it? I mean, is it, does it impact. Does it have a negative impact?
• 15:40
  Speaker A: Great question. And that was another thing we looked at is okay, we see 150 deer in the field. Like that seems like a bad thing from a farmer's perspective. But when we looked at the collar data, they are on average using actual crop fields less than 20% of their time and many of them as low as 5% of their time. Meaning, yes, you're seeing 150 deer in the field, but it's really only that like twilight hour right before dark. And okay, during. They're not out there all night, they're not out there all day. It's just those an hour or two every day.
• 16:13
  Speaker B: I wonder if it has like some impact. I know that the Dixon Water foundation has done some research, you know, mob grazing and the impacts of keeping, you know, managing with grazing, like how it does good for the plant itself for it to be grazed some at a certain stage. And so I, I wonder if, I wonder if that is. Would be true in.
• 16:39
  Speaker A: Yeah. With a.
• 16:39
  Speaker B: From a wild. Yeah, because I would think that it's the same, you know, idea. They're just there for a short while and then they move on.
• 16:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I wasn't out there measuring the, the specific plants and nor would I really want to.
• 16:53
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's not your part of it. You need to soul science for that.
• 16:55
  Speaker A: Yeah, but, but yeah, yeah, I mean that's from just a general habitat perspective, usually a little disturbance is good. So. Yeah, I mean that, that was kind of one finding, but it's still kind of left open. Where. Why do I seem just. Or where are they the rest of the year? Right. If they're not migratory and I see them certain times of the year because.
• 17:14
  Speaker B: They'Re, where are they going? Because there's not a lot of places like where are they going?
• 17:17
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I mean it's kind of a simple answer is they're still there. They're just not standing out in an open field. They're in that brushland kind of that neighboring native brush habitat, grassland habitat. And they're just a little more secretive than a lot of people think they are when they see 150 of them standing in a field. And we even looked at, you know, at what distance from cropland are mule deer staying in and at what distance is it not worth them traveling to even in those peak months of January, February, and, and we found that it's right at about A mile. And so if a deer is living more than a mile away from cropland, even in those peak times, it's not going to travel that far to get to it. However, if they're living closer, within a mile of cropland, then they will use it seasonally. Like.
• 18:05
  Speaker B: Well, you just, you know, you look around here and especially in the winter, and you think, where else would you get food?
• 18:11
  Speaker A: Right.
• 18:12
  Speaker B: What else are they eating?
• 18:13
  Speaker A: That's exactly right. And we, we had a master's student on that project at the very early, and he went out and he was clipping plants and looking at the nutritive values of it and found that exact inverse relationship where in the wintertime, all of the native forage super low in protein and energy and all of the nutrients that a deer needs. But right next door in that winter wheat field, that early growth stage, high in energy, high in protein, high in nutrients, everything that they need. And so that's exactly what's going on.
• 18:43
  Speaker B: So they're just supplementing.
• 18:45
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 18:45
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 18:46
  Speaker A: What.
• 18:46
  Speaker B: What isn't really? So do you think if we didn't have that cropland, would they, would they leave if they couldn't supplement in the winter?
• 18:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, good question. So that, that's kind of the second half of the project is like, how reliant on it are they?
• 19:00
  Speaker B: Right.
• 19:01
  Speaker A: And so we, we kind of did it in multiple stages. One of it, one of which is we had all these collared deer in areas with a lot of agriculture and not a lot of agriculture. And we first looked at of the deer that used agriculture, are they different in survival and nutritional condition compared to those that never did? Right. Because like I said, there were some that are too far away and they never used agriculture. And the way that the project worked out, it worked out great because of Those hundred, nearly 150 deer we had collared, half used cropland and half did not. And so we had this like, perfect. Let's compare these two groups. And. And we found that there really wasn't much of a difference between the two of them. Those that used agriculture or crop sources versus those that did not, did not differ in body weight. They didn't differ in kind of their structural skeletal size, and they only varied in their kind of fat accumulation. So their body condition for the younger bucks, and they're putting a lot of growth and trying to get bigger. So that little bit of agriculture helps.
• 20:07
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 20:07
  Speaker A: And also found the survival rates between the two were no different as well.
• 20:11
  Speaker B: So does that mean that like in their. Their bodies are maybe evolved to maybe Their metabolism slows down or the needs that they have during the winter months shifts.
• 20:26
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 20:26
  Speaker B: To what's available.
• 20:28
  Speaker A: Yeah. Great job. Yes. There is some seasonal fluctuations in their nutritional needs also. Deer are really all the kind of larger herbivores are really good at balancing their nutritional intake to. To prepare for seasons where it's not great. Right. And if you rewind to when we weren't on the landscape, they still had harsh winters to go through.
• 20:51
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
• 20:52
  Speaker A: They still had all the native vegetation drying up in the winter. And so they pack on all those calories and those nutritional stores to ride it out through the winter. And so that's what led to kind of the second part of this, the second part of the study looking at the population. So we had these deer that used cropland versus didn't, and we didn't find much of a difference. We then zoomed in on just the deer that used cropland and we looked at. Okay, so there's not much of a difference. But within those that did is what if they use the cropland more? Right. So what if there's a deer that uses. Spends 30% of its time in a crop field versus a deer that spends 5% of its time. Is there a difference there? And that's where we started seeing some differences where they don't. They're not necessarily reliant on using cropland, but if they do choose to use it, like foraging on winter wheat, there's an additive benefit to their overall body weight, their body condition, as well as even antler size. For the bucks. We saw a little bit of a difference there. And so it. They're not relying on it, but it's there. If they choose to use it, they could even boost up those nutritional stores even more. And in a year where there's extreme drought or if irrigation changes cropland practices in the future, they are not going to have that little extra buffer anymore. Again, not relying on it, but they're just not going to have it.
• 22:17
  Speaker B: It's just not going to be there. Gosh, that is so interesting. Yeah, it's just to me, I mean, I don't even. I just don't even think of this area. It's hard to imagine what it'll be like because when I think of this area, you know, I don't even think of brushy areas.
• 22:34
  Speaker A: Right.
• 22:34
  Speaker B: You know, we have some, what we call the draws, you know, that. And there's still some old, rangy, you know, sand, sandy land, you know, and stuff like that. But I do, I do think that as we convert to grassland. If are we able to consider managing that land in a way where hunting can become another piece of income?
• 23:05
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, absolutely. I mean, there's. Especially in other regions of Texas specifically, there's a lot of landowners that balance multiple sources of income that way. And particularly it's very seasonal in your sources of income. And hunting can provide either a little addition in a particular season or fill the gap between seasons where there's no income coming in. And, you know, we talked about hunting seasons earlier, but there are programs that Texas Parks and Wildlife provides where if you do have a lot of deer on your property or using your cropland, you can enroll in the managed lands deer program. Mldp.
• 23:40
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 23:40
  Speaker A: And that allows you to have some extended hunting seasons and even some extra permits where you can have your friends and family come and hunt deer for a longer period of time and also kind of control the numbers if you are in an area where there's too many.
• 23:56
  Speaker B: That's so interesting. And I think that that's something that's important to know. Like, people don't always think of hunting as part of conservation, but it really is an important, important part. I mean, I have been in and seen areas of Texas where there are so many deer and they are in bad shape. They're in bad shape.
• 24:17
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 24:18
  Speaker B: But I, I wonder as the population continues to grow in that, you know, central Texas Hill country area where I know a lot of people have traditionally hunted there, if it will move, it'll push some of those hunting opportunities our way.
• 24:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, perhaps. Yeah. Texas is a big state, so, yeah, them just migrating out of a region isn't really the case. But I mean, hunting is a really deep rooted culture in Texas and there's a lot of regions that are enrolled in like, those kind of programs. And, and I mean, there's some larger properties I can think of that harvest over a hundred deer a year just on their property. And so a lot of folks are thinking that way for sure.
• 25:03
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's a good, I think it is a good thing to think about, especially here. So shift gears away from deer and pronghorn. I still can't get over that. And tell me about birds because I know we've had, you know, controversy back and forth about the prairie lesser prairie chicken. And as my understanding, it did get listed on the endangered species list. Is that correct? Because it's been off on, off on.
• 25:38
  Speaker A: It has been a back and forth battle. And to be honest, I don't know. Yeah, I really focus on the Large mammal side of things. And I'm not really rooted in the bird world or especially the controversial bird world.
• 25:52
  Speaker B: Yeah, I've wondered about that because I didn't hear. I haven't heard anything in a long time. And um, you know, I think a lot of concerns people have is just that government overreach of, you know, I don't want them on my land because then they can come on anytime and they're only supposed to come for this, but they came for that or you know what I mean? And so it's a, I think it's, it's too bad that you know, you have those incidents where that has happened, you know, and then that really does, that does keep people from wanting to participate. But an organization like yours that is non regulatory.
• 26:31
  Speaker A: Yep, yep.
• 26:33
  Speaker B: Is that you have much better opportunity. And I think people then don't necessarily have to work with a government entity. They can come and work with you guys.
• 26:42
  Speaker A: Yeah. And that's, that's one of the, the beautiful aspects of academia or my job is yeah, I don't, I don't work for a government agency and, and I can really be that middle person. And even, you know, endangered species are pretty controversial. But back to like the mule deer research is. I was right in between the landowner and the state agency. And as a neutral party, like right. We're here to, to collect objective data and provide it to both parties. You know, every year during that research I'm providing reports to Texas Parks and Wildlife of here's what we're finding. And I also provided a yearly landowner report. Here's what we're finding and here's how it might be beneficial to you. And so even over to. Though I don't know much about endangered bird or chicken stuff but you know, researchers typically are that neutral party in between.
• 27:32
  Speaker B: Right. And I think it's, you know, you were referring to that the fact what you're doing is applied. It's applied science. And I think so often with. That's a piece that gets missed. You know what I mean? And we don't have a, we haven't had a good avenue to like make sure people are aware of hey, we did this research over here. Now how can we get that out to friends and neighbors?
• 27:57
  Speaker A: Absolutely. Yep. And that, that's one reason I love working for the institute that I do. Caesar Claibor Wildlife Research Institute is so focused on that to where even my bosses when they look at. You know, actually just yesterday filled out my annual evaluation packet for 2025 and the way they evaluate US researchers is they valued a scientific peer reviewed manuscript just as much as me writing a magazine article that goes out to landowners.
• 28:27
  Speaker B: Okay. The magazine is fabulous.
• 28:29
  Speaker A: Oh, thank you.
• 28:30
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 28:30
  Speaker A: Yeah. Or even, or even going to a public engagement event. Like last year I presented, I presented this sort of research at the Brush Management Day where a bunch of landowners came and talked about how can I manage all the brush on my property. And then I talked about how it might influence the larger big game species in their area.
• 28:51
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 28:52
  Speaker A: And so again, love working for who I do because they value both of those components just as much.
• 28:58
  Speaker B: That is so important. And you had a researcher that was with us in our booth farm show.
• 29:04
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 29:04
  Speaker B: That was great.
• 29:05
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I've got six graduate students that are all working on these wildlife questions in this area. And so we've got those six graduate students are overseeing seven or eight different research projects for that have various questions, but all kind of revolving around how is the landscaping or landscape influencing these large mammal species in this area.
• 29:29
  Speaker B: It's just amazing. Yeah. And I think it's going to just become more and more important for us to know those things. And I know we've one time there was a beaver in like over in like the, the lakes.
• 29:46
  Speaker A: Yep, yep.
• 29:48
  Speaker B: Region over here.
• 29:49
  Speaker A: Yeah. The lake system through town and then going down to the same system that goes to Buffalo Springs and Ransom Canyon. Yes.
• 29:55
  Speaker B: And I don't know a lot about beaver, but I have heard someone talking about beavers. They are fascinating.
• 30:02
  Speaker A: Oh yeah.
• 30:03
  Speaker B: And everywhere. And I mean of course we, everybody was, it was a big deal on Facebook. Everybody was talking about it. And then I think someone found it. I think it maybe it got run over or something.
• 30:14
  Speaker A: Oh, really? I didn't know that.
• 30:15
  Speaker B: Yeah. But it's likely that there's probably more out there.
• 30:19
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I mean not a ton of water in this region. But again, if you rewind before we settled in this area or manipulated landscape, beavers are part of the ecosystem just like the other critters we were talking about. There used to be a lot of bison and elk and all of those sorts of things. And that's again, what makes this region really cool is we are right on that cusp of where some of these species are at and sometimes get some kind of cool sightings like that.
• 30:47
  Speaker B: So if you were a landowner and you're saying, okay, I think I'm going to turn a third. I'm gonna have to just turn the water off on a third of my land and I'm gonna go back to grazing. Would you tell them. Yeah, put in a windbreak or put in some kind of COVID Yeah. If you want to attract. Also you want to maybe. And I'd like to make, you know, even if it's just for myself, I'd like to have some. I'd like to be able to attract some kind of wildlife.
• 31:15
  Speaker A: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And it's. I mean, that's tough to answer because you have to really get down to each species is different. But one very general theme across almost any wildlife species is the more variation there is in the landscape, the better. And whatever that variation is, I don't want to say it doesn't matter, but, I mean, it's better than no variation. And so, yeah, a windbreak or leaving the corner sections of that field of your center pivot to be native vegetation. Right. If there's a particular field or two that isn't really profitable, enrolling in a program like CRP can do great things, from grassland birds all the way up to mule deer.
• 31:57
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 31:58
  Speaker A: And we saw that with some of our research and the. The months where mule deer are not using cropland, they're actually using CRP specific fields in greater proportion to even just the native rangeland.
• 32:11
  Speaker B: So that's interesting because, I mean, like, a lot of the CRP that I. I see, which would be, you know, south is in bad shape.
• 32:20
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
• 32:21
  Speaker B: You know, like, it is. And I think part of it is that I think that the grass that was recommended at the time was not really. We probably need to go back and revisit what we were told to put out there.
• 32:34
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I. Yeah, I don't know a lot of specifics, at least for the species, but I do know that there has been a lot of movement in that realm just in the past 50 years, and that's. Even. There's one kind of subsection of our institute. It's called Texas Native Seeds.
• 32:51
  Speaker B: Oh, I didn't know that was you guys.
• 32:52
  Speaker A: Yeah, that is us. Yeah. And, yeah, they develop and a lot of seed mixtures for that kind of application.
• 32:59
  Speaker B: I didn't know that was y'. All. Yeah, we. We are good friends with Bammert.
• 33:02
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
• 33:03
  Speaker B: And they've done. They've done work here for, like, over 50 years, I think. Yeah. Developing seed trip for here. Yeah.
• 33:08
  Speaker A: Texas Native Seeds works closer with. Closely with them as well in the past. Yeah. Yeah.
• 33:13
  Speaker B: I didn't realize that. Yeah. So do you guys have somebody up here that represents Texas native seeds?
• 33:18
  Speaker A: Yep. But they've have regional offices all over the state, so there's An East Texas one. There's a Panhandle one a Permian basin out in the Trans Pecos. There are employees already all over to develop those direct connections with landowners. Yep.
• 33:32
  Speaker B: Well, we might have to have them on and.
• 33:34
  Speaker A: Yeah, I can definitely get you in contact.
• 33:36
  Speaker B: That'd be great. Yeah. And I'd really love for us to follow up with this with maybe some of your researchers.
• 33:43
  Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
• 33:44
  Speaker B: Love to hear what's happening on these projects.
• 33:47
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 33:47
  Speaker B: Yeah, this is really fun.
• 33:49
  Speaker A: Yeah, we've got research projects. We've got two big ones in Oklahoma, one on pronghorn, one on mule deer. I've got a researcher that's. That's Ashlyn, who you met. Yeah, yeah. She's GPS collaring elk in the Texas Panhandle. Mule deer, whitetail. It's pretty incredible to see a bull elk hanging from under a helicopter as we're about, before we put the water.
• 34:11
  Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. I bet it is.
• 34:12
  Speaker A: Yep. Yeah.
• 34:13
  Speaker B: Wow. So are you seeing those, like, north of like the canyon area?
• 34:19
  Speaker A: Yep. Yeah. Along the Canadian river kind of drainage?
• 34:22
  Speaker B: Sure. Yeah.
• 34:22
  Speaker A: There are elk appearing, which likely coming from New Mexico or even Colorado coming through, and they seem to be expanding in that area. And so we've. We've got a project in partnership with Texas Parks and Wildlife that are trying to understand where they're moving from to how that influences like mule deer and whitetail. And there's also some disease concerns in that area as well.
• 34:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, I haven't thought about that too. Especially are there diseases that these elk and deer can carry that can transfer into cattle?
• 34:55
  Speaker A: Yeah. Elk in other regions of the country, brucellosis can be a concern. Um, but that's about the only one I can think of off the top of my head. But yeah, I mean, it's such a low density that I don't want people to be worried about that. I mean, they're. Again, this is like. Right. A novel. Right at the beginning stages of some elk coming in.
• 35:19
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 35:19
  Speaker A: The bigger concern is chronic wasting disease, which is a deer family specific disease.
• 35:24
  Speaker B: It's bad. That's what I've seen.
• 35:26
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And so that's kind of what our project is hinged on, is just understanding what's going on as well as trying to predict what might happen with that disease in that area.
• 35:36
  Speaker B: Interesting. Okay, well, we'll. We'll just schedule some more podcasts.
• 35:40
  Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah.
• 35:42
  Speaker B: Great. Thanks for coming and giving us your time.
• 35:44
  Speaker A: Yeah, thank you so much.
• 35:45
  Speaker B: And Kingsfield to Lubbock.
• 35:48
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 35:48
  Speaker B: That's quite a leap.
• 35:49
  Speaker A: I. I've enjoyed the transition.
• 35:51
  Speaker B: And you guys are over there right by jnb. Coffee.
• 35:54
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
• 35:55
  Speaker B: I remember walking past her one day going, what is that? And then I was there a few months later, and my brother's like, you need to go talk to those people.
• 36:03
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
• 36:04
  Speaker B: I was like, what is it?
• 36:05
  Speaker A: I'm glad you stopped in. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 36:07
  Speaker B: It was. It's been great. Well, thanks, friends, for joining us for this episode of Conservation Stories. And thank you for your support and listening and, like, review. Share all that fun stuff, and we will see you next time. Thanks.
• 36:21
  Speaker A: Thank you.