Nature Notes

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Nature Notes episodes

December 15, 2016 Javelinas – Pig-Like Icons of the West Texas Borderlands
They're small, but they aren't dainty. They're not exactly pretty. And they definitely stink.
The javelina is the New World answer to the pig. And it's one of the distinctive creatures of the American Southwest.
Rugged, wary but sociable with its own kind, the javelina is a true West Texas native.
Javelinas aren't pigs – they're peccaries. Distant relatives of Old World hogs and boars, and of hippos, peccaries evolved in the Americas. They're a distinct family of hoofed mammals.
Edna Flores is a ranger at Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Visitors often report baffling encounters with wild, piglike creatures. It's part of Flores' job to set them straight.
“A lot of times ...
5 min
December 08, 2016 At Big Bend Ranch, Archeology Reveals Region’s Cosmopolitan Past
Isolation defines the Big Bend today. The border town of Presidio, and the surrounding river valley, can seem especially remote.
But along the roads here, on riverbanks and in nearby canyons, ruins and traces tell a different story.
The Presidio Valley is La Junta de los Rios – the confluence of the Rio Grande and the Rio Conchos. And a few centuries ago, it was a hub of Native American life, a center in a complex interplay of diverse societies.
Big Bend prehistory is closely associated with hunter-gatherers. For more than 10,000 years, nomadic peoples hunted game and harvested desert plants.
In the 1940s, Texas archeologist J. Charles Kelley began to study the Presidio area. W...
5 min
December 01, 2016 Where the Great Plains Meet the Mountains: the Native Grasslands of West Texas
The West Texas grasslands are a sight to see. In autumn, the golden expanse of the Marfa Plain or the Diablo Plateau shines beneath a brilliant blue sky, to dazzling effect. The grasslands are also a foundation – central to the region's ranching industry and to native wildlife. And, in much of the Trans-Pecos, 2016 was an outstanding year for grasslands.
In 2011, Texas witnessed an unprecedented drought. The hardiest of plants – lechuguilla, prickly pear – withered and died in desert lowlands. West Texas became a tinderbox, and the Rock House Fire burned 300,000 acres of the Marfa Plain and Davis Mountains.
But in 2016, monsoon rains transformed the landscape – particularly the...
5 min
November 17, 2016 El Solitario: Singular Geology on “The Other Side of Nowhere”
Geology can seem abstract. Its scale and sweep are remote – how do we grasp the breadth of continents, the span of epochs and eons?
El Solitario, in Big Bend Ranch State Park, is a storied West Texas landscape. But armed with the perspective of geology, it's also a revelation. Here, the Earth makes its ways comprehensible, transparent. Here, in the heart of the Texas Outback, impersonal processes become intimate and tactile.
The Solitario's dimensions are most easily grasped from above. Ten miles in diameter, it could be mistaken for an impact crater. Aerial photos reveal a circular depression, surrounded by concentric rings of angled ridges, or flatirons.
“The lonely one,” �...
5 min
November 03, 2016 In Fight Against Chronic Wasting Disease, New Rules for West Texas Deer Hunters
It was first identified in captive mule deer in Colorado. It's now spread to 23 states and two Canadian provinces. In 2012, it was detected in Texas mule deer.
Chronic Wasting Disease, or CWD, is a fatal neurological disorder that affects deer, elk and related species. While its origins are mysterious, it's among a class of disorders known as spongiform encephalopathies, which also includes BSE, or “mad cow disease.”
In our region, the disease is confined to deer in the Hueco Mountains, east of El Paso. It's not known to be transmissible to humans. But there's a statewide effort to monitor CWD – and to limit its spread.
In 1967, managers at a Colorado wildlife research facilit...
5 min
October 27, 2016 “In the Shadow of the Chinatis”: A New History of Big Bend’s Pinto Canyon
West Texans know it as one of the region's signature back-country experiences. Ranch Road 2810 – Pinto Canyon Road – crosses 60 miles of Presidio County, connecting Marfa with the Chinati Hot Springs and the riverside hamlet of Ruidosa. From winding blacktop to rutted dirt road, the journey showcases unbroken grasslands and forbidding mountains.
Much of Pinto Canyon itself is owned by Jeff Fort, retired CEO of security-systems company Tyco. Recently, Fort commissioned Alpine scholar David Keller to write a history of the canyon.
“In the Shadow of the Chinatis” will be published by Texas AandM Press in 2017. Keller has unearthed an overlooked past, in a rich portrait of a place....
5 min
October 20, 2016 A Rite of Autumn: Fall Colors in McKittrick Canyon
The man who once owned it said it was “the most beautiful place in Texas.” It’s a West Texas place where desert meets flowing water and where the plants of the arid grasslands – sotol, lechuguilla, prickly pear, agave – grow beneath pines and tall maples.
For many visitors to Guadalupe Mountains National Park, an autumn walk in McKittrick Canyon is an annual tradition.
McKittrick Canyon is a spectacular hike in any season, but for a few weeks each fall, the canyon can feel like an outpost of New England. For those weeks, bigtooth maple trees paint the canyon the colors of a cornucopia – orange, yellow, apple-red and burgundy wine. Late October and early November are typical...
5 min
October 13, 2016 The Laramide Orogeny & the Tectonic Story of the Trans-Pecos
Eighty million years ago, North America teemed with the life of the Cretaceous Period. Dinosaurs roamed the land. Giant marine lizards prowled the waters, and flying reptiles hunted from the skies.
But there was activity of a slower, quieter form as well. From modern Canada to Northern Mexico, parts of the continent's ancient foundation were being thrust from the depths toward the surface. Western North America was squeezed and broken.
This was an “orogeny,”or mountain-building event. Named for Wyoming's Laramie Mountains, the Laramide Orogeny is a defining geological chapter. It was a 40-million-year “event,” and it affected West Texas.
“Even continents are impermanent,�...
5 min
October 06, 2016 “Greening the Big Bend”: Fall Native Plant Sale Extends Tradition of West Texas Gardening
Shade from the summer sun, shelter from the spring wind, radiant colors in fall, a welcome canopy of green in a landscape of ruddy browns and yellows.
The Chihuahuan Desert may be known for thorns and barbs. But the Trans-Pecos is also home to a magnificent diversity of native trees. They endure the shifts in West Texas weather. Planted at home, they add beauty – and connect the garden to the desert-mountain ecosystem.
The Big Bend’s Native Plant Society hosts its fall sale Saturday, Oct. 15, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Brown Dog Gardens in Alpine. It's a special opportunity to purchase native trees and shrubs.
Whether it was adobe construction or barn dances and fiddle tunes, Big ...
5 min
September 29, 2016 “Peyote at a Crossroads”: Documentary Traces an Ancient Bond Between Plant and People
It's an unassuming cactus – with an outsized cultural impact. From its home range in the Texas-Mexico borderlands, it's been incorporated into the religious lives of Native peoples across North America.
Peyote has mind-altering effects. It's been an illegal narcotic under U.S. law since 1965. But there's legal protection for Native use. Hundreds of thousands of indigenous people participate in peyote rituals. For those practitioners, the cactus is a sacrament, and a living bond with the ancestral past.
Alpine's Megan Wilde explores this tradition – and the existential threats it faces – in a new film, “Peyote at a Crossroads.”
Peyote has a deep history in the Texas borderl...
5 min

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