[birds]
[flowing stream]
[music]
- Megan Bean: A lot of our water resources are being stressed right now. Whether it be drought
or people pulling water out of the rivers. It's really important to understand how that impacts
our rivers and fish and aquatic resources.
[gurgling water]
- Meagan: I grew up as an urban youth in the DFW area
and my idea of what a healthy river looked like
was like a channelized river and stream.
And so I grew up not knowing that we had native fish in Texas or what our rivers were supposed to look like.
And I actually met my husband in high school, and he took me on my very first fishing trip.
I'm like really nervous going into the water because I don't know what's in there and and being introduced into this world of the diversity of out
there and what's healthy and what's not. And our streams are beautiful across the state. That's
what really got me into fish.
[fast running stream]
- Nate Smit: Parks and Wildlife and the fishery side of things kind of has a dual mission and that
we want to provide fishing and usage but also maintain a conservation focus and maintain the
diversity of fish that we have in the state.
- Megan: A lot of people have Texas pride in Texas, so showing them species and rivers and
critters that are found nowhere else in the world like for example, like Guadalupe Bass.
Just a little guy
[music]
- Gary Garrett: It's important to Texas as many other native fishes in Texas are important.
The Guadalupe Bass,
however, is one that the public can identify with a lot more easily. A bass is a lot more
charismatic than a minnow. It's an entree to the public to kind of understand the value and the
pride of having these unique things adapted to our state. Guadalupe Bass is the only place in
the world it occurs is in the streams of the Edwards Plateau. The Hill Country of Texas.
They exemplify some of the beautiful things about Texas. So what a tragedy to lose that.
- Megan: Travis and
Nate are going to go down as they come this way and we'll be able to scoop them out right here.
[net splash]
- Megan: The State Fish of Texas is Guadalupe Bass, and in the 1970s and 1980s, smallmouth bass were introduced
to some of our streams in Texas, and Dr. Garrett and others at Parks and Wildlife noticed that
there is a hybridization issue, and we didn't realize that was going to be an issue and those
we're stock to begin with. So in order to start addressing this, we started a hatchery program.
[water flowing into pond]
- Megan: We can tell that this is a Guadalupe Bass. If you look down the side,
he's got some coloration patterns that go down the side. We bring in Guadalupe Bass from the river,
from locally right here. We've collected them from here and we put them in the hatchery. Once
they're in the hatchery, we're able to make millions of really small baby Guadalupe Bass.
[water running through pipe]
- Megan: When we bring the Guadalupe Bass
out from the ponds, we bring them into here until they're ready to be stocked out into the river. So
these are our holding tanks.
[water running into tank]
- Megan: It's a numbers game. We're trying to put lots of pure Guadalupe Bass back into the
river so the small mouth and hybrids don't have as great of a shot as reproducing. So
we're able to use these Guadalupe Bass to kind of reset the genetics of our local streams.
[bug noises] [music]
- Travis Walderp: We're going to come
upstream this way. We're going to release all the Guadalupe Bass right here in this flowing water.
[flowing water]
- Megan: Today, we are going to be stocking Guadalupe Bass into the Guadalupe Basin.
[water pouring into tank]
- Megan: This project is what we
call the Guadalupe Bass Restoration Initiative. And not only is the stocking a component of it,
but we also are working on a watershed basis. So we work with private landowners, we work with
local watershed groups, universities, to learn more about these systems and how Guadalupe thrive
and persist in these systems. One of the things that's also happening very rapidly in the Hill
country is, you know, lands being split up and divided. And as more people develop this area,
it changes the whole look and feel of our aquatic system. So it's really important to work with
those landowners, to have them realize how special it is and that they're caretakers of Texas.
[birds]
- Gary: If nothing else, if you don't
get anything else about it, see them as indicator species. And what we call an indicator species
is one that when it's healthy, that means the system it's living in is healthy. When it starts
to decline, it means the system is declining. And this is how we've explained to a lot of,
say, a West Texas rancher who goes, “What good is that minnow? There's plenty of minnows.”
And we explain this minnow has been here for several million years and in the last
two decades its numbers are going way down, which means there's something we're worried about with
the river. I don't know what it is yet, but that fish is telling me I better look and I guarantee
you the light is come on and the eyes of so many of these skeptical people and they go, “Oh, okay,
I get it because I love the river. There's plenty of minnows, but I love that river. So
you all go study it.”
- Megan: We have several studies going on for Guadalupe Bass and the Guadalupe River.
One of the ones is we're marking them to see how far and how fast they travel.
[fish splashing into bucket]
- Megan: I feel
like my position and the work that I do is really important to Parks and Wildlife mission and how we
engage with our natural resources because we're charged with caring for our natural resources.
Right. It's not a one-person job. The state is way too big and there's way too many species.
[door locking] - Megan: If we lose these species,
we don't get them back.
[car door closing] - Megan: So if we can take care of our rivers, we can work with our landowners,
we can learn more about them with universities,
then we keep what's here and we get to share that with our kids later on when we've only got one shot at this
and we don't want to lose what we already have and what's really special to Texas. [music]
[water running]
[birds]