Nature Notes

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Nature Notes episodes

June 30, 2016 The Coyote Fire: A “Good Burn” in the Guadalupes
They were a homeland for the Mescalero Apache, and a landmark for Butterfield Stage drivers. The Guadalupe Mountains rise 5,000 feet above the desert plains and sand dunes in Far West Texas.
The surroundings are misleading. The high country of Guadalupe Mountains National Park is an oasis – forested in pines and firs, oaks and aspens.
In spring 2016, much of that forest burned for the first time in a century. But officials say the fire was a boon for the park, and for the mountain ecosystem.
It began May 7th, with a lightning strike at the park's north end. It struck near Coyote Peak. The blaze that followed was named the Coyote Fire.
John Montoya is the Guadalupes' fire manage...
5 min
June 02, 2016 Spring-Fed Gem of the Borderlands: The Hydrology of the Lower Canyons
The writer Edward Abbey, no stranger to Western rivers and canyons, described it as “the most primitive country to be found along the Rio Grande, a harsh and lonely land of spectacular beauty.”
The Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande are legendary for their beauty, and their inaccessibility. The canyons run for 140 miles between La Linda, in Brewster County, and Langtry, and there's no access by paved road. It requires a boat, and at least a week, to see this country.
But the Lower Canyons are more than a wilderness destination. They're also a unique ecosystem. In recent years, scientists have begun to better understand the ecology of this remote part of West Texas.
A soak in the ri...
5 min
May 26, 2016 Return of the Rio Grande Silvery Minnow
Fish – not what leaps to mind when you think of the native wildlife of the Southwest. But the Rio Grande historically has been home to dozens of fish species – including some not found in any other river system.
The Rio Grande silvery minnow was once the most abundant fish species in the river. But by the 1960s, it had vanished from Texas.
Now, wildlife specialists are working to reintroduce this endemic, native creature.
The Rio Grande silvery minnow once flourished in the river, from the southern Rockies to the Gulf of Mexico. Three to 5 inches long, it was at the base of the food chain.
But flows in the Rio Grande have declined in the last century, as water demands from ag...
5 min
May 19, 2016 Traces of the Supercontinent: Landscapes of the Marathon Basin
Africa collided with what's now the eastern United States, while South and North America fused near the equator. Three hundred million years ago, the continents had joined to form a single land mass – the supercontinent known as Pangaea.
The Appalachian Mountains were produced in that collision. But Western landscapes were shaped by more recent tectonic events.
Yet, near Marathon, Texas, lines of low mountains speak of an ancient chapter in the earth's history.
For even a casual student of Texas mountains, the landscape between Marathon and Big Bend National Park is anomalous – it's unexpected. Across the region, most mountains trend to the northwest. But here, low ranges run ea...
5 min
May 12, 2016 Ancient Primates of the Big Bend
Naturalists know that the Big Bend's harsh conditions mask a tremendous diversity of living things. The Chihuahuan Desert is home to plants and animals found nowhere else on earth.
But did you know it was once home to an assortment of distinctive, endemic primates? Today, excavations are shedding light on this surprising part of West Texas history.
As primates ourselves, we can't help but take a special interest in the history of these mammals. It's a story that stretches back 65 million years.
Scientists say primates emerged in Southeast Asia in the early Paleocene Epoch, just after the disappearance of the dinosaurs.
For ages, they were limited to the Asian jungles. But about 5...
5 min
May 05, 2016 In the Fight with Salt Cedar, Leaf Beetle Makes Headway
When it comes to the rivers of the Southwest, tamarisk, or salt cedar, has long been public enemy number one.
Introduced for erosion control, the non-native tree came to dominate riverside habitats where cottonwoods and willows once flourished. It's been blamed for declining water quality and quantity on the Rio Grande and the Pecos River in West Texas.
Tamarisk was attacked with herbicides and bulldozers. More recently, scientists have imported one of the plant's natural enemies – the tamarisk leaf beetle. Beetle larvae feed on tamarisk leaves.
A leaf beetle project launched in the Big Bend in 2006. And the results here have been promising.
An Old World native, tamarisk was in...
5 min
April 28, 2016 “Lone Star Lizard” Points to a Lush Epoch in West Texas History
Limbless, essentially sightless, it burrowed in the soil for a meal of insects or insect larvae. It was a lizard – but it looked like an earthworm.
In February 2016, paleontologist Michelle Stocker announced the discovery of a new lizard species in the Big Bend. She named it Solastella cookei – the “Lone Star Lizard.”
You won't find the lizard today. It made its home in West Texas 40 million years ago, when the land was lush and tropical, and when animal life as it exists today was just beginning to take shape.
Michelle Stocker is a research scientist at Virginia Tech University. Her PhD studies at UT-Austin took her to the Dalquest Desert Research Station, 60 miles southeas...
5 min
April 21, 2016 For Earth Day, A Native Plant Sale in Alpine Saturday (April 23)
As every school child learns from Johnny Appleseed, bringing plants to the people is good work.
Since 2002, the Big Bend chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas has been spreading the news about native plants. And on Saturday, April 23, the nonprofit will host a plant sale, as part of Earth Day celebrations in Alpine. The sale will feature more than 75 native species, and as many as 1,000 plants.
Planted in a garden or lawn, native plants can reinforce a sense of place. And they provide food and habitat for wildlife – from hummingbirds and solitary native bees to monarch butterflies and more.
But it's not easy to find these plants in a commercial nursery.
At the sale, m...
5 min
April 07, 2016 In Pronghorn Restoration, Biologists Keep A Close Watch
The blue of the sky contrasts with the gold of the landscape below, as pilot Cade Woodward dips and circles his plane above the Marfa Plateau. It's a treat for any West Texan – a bird's-eye view of where the grasslands meet the Davis Mountains – but this is not a recreational flight.
On a spring outing, Woodward and biologist Nan Nourn are tracking pronghorn. It's part of the effort – now five years old – to prop up a struggling pronghorn population in these Trans-Pecos grasslands.
The Trans-Pecos once had the state's largest pronghorn herds. But by 2010, scientists had confirmed an alarming decline – the population fell from 17,000 in the mid-80s to just 2,200. Herds north o...
5 min
March 31, 2016 Examining the Legacy of Elephant Butte Dam at 100 Years
In October 1916, dignitaries gathered at the Rio Grande, near present-day Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, for an event said to be “of world-wide importance in the irrigation field.” It was the dedication of Elephant Butte Dam, then the largest impoundment reservoir in the world.
It would store the river's spring floodwaters. By regulating flows, it promised to “make the desert bloom” from Southern New Mexico to El Paso and Juarez.
But the dam also triggered a chain of unintended consequences. The riverside habitat was transformed. A century later, scientists are still tracking these sweeping changes.
The Chihuahuan Desert is outstanding in many respects. For example, ...
5 min

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