The Environment
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Watery Wonderland
Aldo Leopold, the father of the wildlife ecology, spelled out his land ethic in stark and simple terms. Land management is done right, he wrote, “when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty” of…
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Choose Native Plants!
Under a gazebo in the South Texas Plains area at the San Antonio Botanical Garden, Michael Eason, who collects and curates the garden’s vast array of native plants, is addressing members of the …
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Hella Hail coming Down in Texas
Nearly a month after a catastrophic storm with hail the size of baseballs pummeled Central Texas, half of the roofs in an office complex in Round Rock are still topped with…
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Shrikes in the City
In Old Settler's Park in Round Rock, loggerhead shrikes make their homes in small trees next to asphalt streets and busy playing fields. "There's tons of human activity, packed parking lots, lots of people on the…
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Citizen Scientists are Indispensible to Conservationists
“Okay, now, everyone together! Let’s go!” Craig Hensley, Texas Nature Trackers biologist for Texas Parks and Wildlife shouted the starting gun…
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Made to Move
Pronghorn, named for the prongs on their horns, are neither antelope nor goats despite their Latin name, Antilocapra americana, which means American antelope-goat. They are the only…
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Deer Love Bigtooth Maples to Death
As daylight hours shorten each fall in the Texas Hill Country, the leaves of bigtooth maples transition from green to hues of bright yellow, orange and red. The brighter the leaves…
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Cave Catfish
Since 1992, Dean Hendrickson, a fish expert at the University of Texas at Austin, has been studying Mexican blindcats (Prietella phreatophila), endangered aquifer-dwelling catfish that are about the size…
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How Prescribed Burns Aid Endangered Species, Restore Grasslands and Help Train Troops (Among Other Things)
A 150-acre prescribed burn intended to prevent wildfires in Bastrop State Park escaped control …
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Trained Master Naturalists Indispensable to Conservation Studies
At the crack of dawn on a perfectly clear Wednesday morning in November, Craig Hensley, a Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist, was joined…
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Climate Change Puts Tubing on Central Texas’ Rivers at Risk
Memories from tubing on one of Texas’ cool, spring-fed rivers tend to stick. Robert Cooper, in his seventies, recalled one about floating down the Guadalupe decades ago…
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Texas’ Powderhorn Ranch Purchase: Folly or Foresight?
Buying land surrounded on three sides by a creek, a lake and the Gulf of Mexico might seem like folly in a time of unprecedented flooding…
Social Issues
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Recogniton Increases for Native American Students at Texas Universities
“What the United States did towards native people is a genocide,” said Professor Scott Langston…
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AIDS Changes Lives Forever
Bill’s body shook as he quietly cried during an interview in June. The 69-year old was sharing his reaction to antiretroviral drugs that became available…
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Amid Population Decline, Rural Texas Towns Look to Future
Despite Texas gaining more people than any other state in the past decade, more than half of its counties lost population, according…
Travel
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Loving Lockart
As I enter Lockhart, a huge red steel building on my right - home of the legendary Kreuz Market - signals my arrival in 'The Barbecue Capital of Texas."