Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission
Regulations Committee Meeting
November 17, 1999
Commission Hearing RoomTexas Parks & Wildlife Department Headquarters Complex
4200 Smith School Road
Austin, TX 78744
1
8 BE IT REMEMBERED that heretofore on
9 the 17th day of November 1999, there came on
10 to be heard matters under the regulatory
11 authority of the Parks and Wildlife Commission
12 of Texas, in the commission hearing room of
13 the Texas Parks and Wildlife Headquarters
14 complex, Austin, Travis County, Texas,
15 beginning at 2:35 p.m. to wit:
16
APPEARANCES:
17 THE PARKS AND WILDLIFE COMMISSION:
18 REGULATIONS COMMITTEE:
CHAIR: Lee M. Bass
19 Dick Heath (absent)
Ernest Angelo, Jr.
20 John Avila, Jr.
Carol E. Dinkins
21 Alvin L. Henry (absent)
Katharine Armstrong Idsal
22 Nolan Ryan
Mark E. Watson, Jr.
23
24
THE PARKS AND WILDLIFE DEPARTMENT:
25 Andrew H. Sansom, Executive Director
.
2
1 NOVEMBER 17, 1999
2 AFTERNOON SESSION: 2:35 p.m.
3 * * * * *
4 REGULATIONS COMMITTEE
5 * * * * *
6 AGENDA ITEM NO. 1: BRIEFING - CHAIRMAN'S
7 CHARGES.
8 CHAIRMAN BASS: This will reconvene
9 the public session of today's committee
10 meetings. Before moving into the Regulations
11 Committee, I will note for the record that the
12 Chairman's charges to the committees over the
13 remainder of this biennium have been
14 distributed to the Commission and be part of
15 the public -- submitted as part of the public
16 record today. They're available to all who I
17 think can probably read them faster than I can
18 read them to you. So I will save you that
19 endeavor. And we will be working from those
20 with staff going forward from here and look
21 forward to any feedback or comment that staff
22 or Commission Members may have in that
23 department.
24 Regulations committee, we'll convene that
25 at this time. And first order of business
.
3
1 would be the approval of the committee minutes
2 from the previous meeting which have been
3 distributed. Are there any comments in that
4 regard? Chair would entertain a motion.
5 COMMISSIONER WATSON: So moved.
6 CHAIRMAN BASS: I have a motion by
7 Commissioner Watson. Second?
8 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Second.
9 CHAIRMAN BASS: All in favor. Any
10 opposed? Thank you very much.
11 (Motion passed unanimously.)
12 AGENDA ITEM NO. 5: BRIEFING - STATUS OF LOCAL
13 PARKS GRANTS SCOPING.
14 CHAIRMAN BASS: We're going to go
15 out of sequence. First we'd like to do Item 5
16 which is a briefing item, status of local
17 parks grants scoping process. Would you --
18 Mr. Hogsett, please.
19 MR. HOGSETT: Yes. Thank you,
20 Mr. Chairman.
21 CHAIRMAN BASS: The floor is yours.
22 MR. HOGSETT: I appreciate you
23 taking me out of order. Mr. Sansom has asked
24 me to give you --
25 CHAIRMAN BASS: I didn't say you
.
4
1 were out of order. I said you're out of
2 sequence.
3 (Laughter.)
4 CHAIRMAN BASS: If I said you were
5 out of order, I meant to say you're out of
6 sequence. When you're out of order, I'll let
7 you know that, too.
8 MR. HOGSETT: Now where was I?
9 Mr. Sansom asked me to give you a briefing
10 today of the process that we're going through
11 right now of updating the rules for the grant
12 administrations under the Texas Recreation and
13 Parks Account program. You'll probably recall
14 in the last session of the legislature, the
15 legislature passed House Bill 2108 that I'm
16 going to give you a little more information
17 about in a second. They also increased the
18 appropriations available for the next two
19 years by appropriating the unexpended interest
20 that's being earned on the Texas Recreation
21 and Parks Account in the amount of additional
22 $5 million a year.
23 We're currently going through the process
24 of doing scoping meetings around the state.
25 We've done six. I have one to do tomorrow in
.
5
1 Lubbock, which will be the final one. We've
2 gotten a lot of good public input, and I just
3 kind of wanted to give you an opportunity to
4 know where we are in the process with the
5 anticipation of coming back to you in January
6 with a set of rules, draft rules, for your
7 consideration.
8 As a beginning, I'll remind you of the
9 three grant programs that are administered
10 using the Texas Recreation and Parks Account.
11 We have the outdoor parks grant program, the
12 50 percent match that you're probably most
13 familiar with. It's been around in one form
14 or another, either federally funded or state
15 funded, since 1965. It's the largest single
16 amount of the amount of money that's
17 appropriated to us.
18 In 1994, we began giving indoor
19 recreation grants to local governments. Those
20 are also 50 percent match projects. Also, in
21 1994, we began a program that we call the
22 Community Outdoor Outreach Program.
23 By way of refreshing your memory, I'll
24 show you some of the kinds of facilities and
25 projects that are eligible under these two
.
6
1 grant programs. Outdoor program, everything
2 from land acquisition to active sports and
3 play fields to very passive and open space
4 preservation projects are eligible.
5 The Indoor Recreation grants, again to
6 local governments at a 50 percent match,
7 everything from things such as gymnasiums and
8 athletic fields, to nature centers, to arts
9 and crafts facilities, things that you would
10 think of in a typical urban recreation center
11 or a rural -- more rural setting in a nature
12 interpretive center.
13 The Community Outdoor Outreach grants are
14 different in that they do not require a match
15 currently, and they are program-type grants as
16 opposed to construction grants. The idea is
17 to make available to populations which have
18 traditionally been underserved by things that
19 Parks and Wildlife does, make those
20 opportunities available to these special
21 populations or to these persons who have not
22 traditionally had the opportunity to
23 participate. By giving program grants to
24 either political subdivisions or non-profits
25 to do such things as bring kids to state parks
.
7
1 from the inner city. We've done fishing
2 derbies. We've done many kinds of nature
3 outdoor interpretation projects, most of which
4 have been done on Parks and Wildlife
5 facilities, and many of which have utilized
6 our staff. And we've also done some things
7 related to historical and cultural
8 interpretation.
9 Again, these are programmatic grants,
10 which is the primary difference between these
11 and the other two grant programs. And all of
12 the activities have to be related back to the
13 mission of the department to be eligible.
14 As I said earlier, in the last session of
15 the legislature, House Bill 2108 was passed.
16 It's the first significant change to the Texas
17 Recreation and Parks Account since it was
18 created back in 1993. And in addition, the
19 legislature, as I said earlier, has
20 appropriated to us an additional $5 million
21 for each of the next two years. And this
22 chart will give you a rundown on current
23 programs, i.e., fiscal year 1993 through 1999.
24 And then the column on the right will be an
25 indication of the amount of money available
.
8
1 for the programs beginning in fiscal year
2 2000, and again, that same amount in fiscal
3 year 2001.
4 The Outdoor Program remains the same. An
5 increase in the Indoor Recreation Grant
6 Program of a million. A significant increase
7 in percentage of the Community Outdoor
8 Outreach Program by the increase of a million.
9 A regional parks initiative at a million
10 dollars a year. And finally the facility
11 transfer initiative that Mr. Dabney told you
12 about this morning at a total of $2 million a
13 year.
14 So bottom line as we've increased from 15
15 and half million to $20 and half million for
16 each of the next two fiscal years.
17 The changes that House Bill 2108 made in
18 the Parks and Wildlife code, it set up the
19 facility transfers program. And I won't go
20 into any more detail than what you heard this
21 morning, but it will be a grant program to
22 provide incentive to possibly have someone
23 else operate and maintain some of our
24 facilities.
25 The Community Outdoor Outreach Program
.
9
1 since its beginning in 1994, has only been in
2 terms of legal authority, been contained in a
3 rider to the annual Appropriations Bill that
4 the legislature writes for our agency. So one
5 of the things that we're very pleased about is
6 that as a result of House Bill 2108, the
7 Community Outdoor Outreach Program is actually
8 in the laws. It will be in Chapter 24 of the
9 Parks and Wildlife Code, and we feel that
10 gives it much more prominence and legitimacy.
11 It also defines eligibility, political
12 subdivisions, and non-political, non-profit
13 groups are eligible to apply for those grants.
14 And it specifies what these grants will be for
15 programs. Again, the difference being
16 programmatic as opposed to the bricks and
17 mortar of the other two grant programs.
18 It codifies our authority to capture the
19 administrative costs, the costs associated
20 with our staff, the travel related to site
21 visits, contracting, et cetera. That has not
22 previously been in the code, and it now is.
23 I'll tell you that it's -- all of our
24 administrative costs come out of the interest
25 on the Texas Recreation and Parks Account.
.
10
1 None of the money comes out of any of the
2 grants that we would give, but instead from
3 the interest. And it, as a matter of a
4 housekeeping measure -- and this is something
5 that we, as staff, requested and we're pleased
6 the legislature did -- when previously when
7 you were acquiring land using the Texas
8 Recreation and Parks Account, you were
9 required to have two appraisals which we
10 really saw no need for. It was expensive. It
11 was burdensome on local governments. So the
12 legislature has now changed that requirement
13 from two appraisals to one.
14 The regional park concept grew out of the
15 study that Texas A&M University did before the
16 last session of the legislature. One of the
17 things that they recognized in that assessment
18 of the parks and recreation needs in Texas was
19 that there are very large, great needs in
20 particularly the urban areas of the state for
21 projects that would do large intensive
22 use-type facilities and/or water related and
23 conservation projects. The idea was that
24 through public and private cooperative efforts
25 and public agency interactions with other
.
11
1 public agencies that they could together do
2 things and provide for the needs in the future
3 of the urban areas in ways that individual
4 sponsors can't.
5 So one of the things that the legislature
6 did with House Bill 2108 is set aside the
7 ability for us to be able to do regional
8 parks. The problem is, unfortunately, we only
9 received a million dollars a year for the next
10 two years, but at least the initiative is in
11 the act. Maybe if we have some very
12 successful projects with that million dollars
13 a year, possibly the legislature will, you
14 know, see the need or importance of maybe
15 raising that in the future.
16 This is probably the area of the law that
17 we have the least guidance in terms of the
18 legislature, and really the most flexibility
19 in how we use the funds.
20 As I told you, we're doing public
21 hearings around the state. Some of -- I will
22 tell you that there have been no very
23 significant items of concern come up. In
24 general, the feedback has been positive. Keep
25 doing what you're doing. You may want to make
.
12
1 some minor changes in your administrative
2 procedures. But in general, most of the
3 discussion has been about the new money. With
4 more money, we're hearing an awful lot of
5 folks say that the current Commission adopted
6 cap on indoor recreation projects of 500,000
7 is probably too low. Most suggestions of
8 raising that range from anywhere 600, 700,
9 750,000 dollars in that neighborhood.
10 COMMISSIONER AVILA: That's per an
11 individual project?
12 MR. HOGSETT: Correct. Correct.
13 Currently you can only submit an application
14 for a half million dollars in match. Most
15 recreation centers are much, much more
16 expensive than a million dollar project.
17 They also are saying consistently that we
18 should raise the amount of money available for
19 a Community Outdoor Outreach programming
20 project. Currently that's 30,000, and the
21 most popular figure that we're hearing is
22 50,000.
23 CHAIRMAN BASS: Any comments on the
24 outdoor park, which is also capital?
25 MR. HOGSETT: No. Everybody seems
.
13
1 to be pretty satisfied with half million
2 dollars on that program.
3 MR. SANSOM: Actually, it was just
4 the opposite. There's some downward --
5 there's some interest in lower funding.
6 Right?
7 MR. HOGSETT: Um --
8 MR. SANSOM: I mean, in other
9 words, what's your next point?
10 MR. HOGSETT: About half of the
11 people that we're hearing from, though, say
12 that they're concerned about smaller
13 communities' and smaller projects' ability to
14 compete in our current scoring system. An
15 example, a small community only wants to build
16 one ball field. It's the only grant
17 application that they would ever make to us.
18 They are able to scrape together, you know,
19 $100,000 in contributions for their 50 percent
20 match. Well, lots of folks feel that under
21 our current scoring system that a project like
22 that is probably not going to be competitive.
23 And there is some truth in that. Larger
24 projects right now are doing better than
25 smaller projects.
.
14
1 On the other hand, it's certainly not
2 true that small communities don't compete
3 well. I think as you saw in the last review
4 that we did in August, more than half of the
5 projects in the proposed funding list were
6 smaller communities.
7 So this is something that it would mean
8 if we do this it -- if you do this, you would
9 set aside some money for smaller projects to
10 compete without having to compete with the
11 larger ones. The downside to that, obviously,
12 is that you further dilute the big pool that
13 you have. We'll see how that comes out in
14 terms of the actual numbers we're getting from
15 questionnaires.
16 The regional park initiative, it's really
17 raised more questions than it has given us
18 information. People don't exactly know what
19 it is and how it should work. And honestly, I
20 don't think we do yet either. We've got some
21 real work to do in that regard.
22 COMMISSIONER AVILA: That's the
23 same criteria as matching funds and --
24 MR. HOGSETT: Yes, yes. We are
25 consistently hearing, though, that with only a
.
15
1 million dollars available for each of the next
2 two years, that probably we ought to rather
3 than write an elaborate set of rules and do an
4 elaborate scoring system, that we should maybe
5 do some pilot projects, go through something
6 like a request for proposal process, and maybe
7 even the staff should proactively promote some
8 projects around the state.
9 COMMISSIONER AVILA: And that's not
10 only a new park, that could be an existing
11 urban park that they're doing the same thing
12 we're doing where they're doing land
13 acquisition to expand the park so it is in
14 fact a larger urban park.
15 MR. HOGSETT: Yes, yes. A couple
16 of the types of projects that we've heard
17 initiatives raised about are multiple
18 jurisdictional trail projects where there's
19 greenbelt linkage between two or three
20 communities. Another example is what's called
21 the Trinity River Corridor Project in Fort
22 Worth, all the communities between those two
23 cities.
24 Again, they've said don't -- pretty
25 consistently they request that we don't
.
16
1 initiate, at least at this point, a real
2 elaborate review -- criteria and review
3 system. But hopefully if we do a few pilot
4 projects that they will be significant enough
5 and will bring the kind of recognition to the
6 need for the program and to the success of the
7 program, possibly the legislature will see fit
8 to increase the amount of money in the next
9 session.
10 A couple of other rather minor, but
11 something we've heard consistently, issues,
12 many of the sponsors would like to have the
13 ability to access the application process
14 online through the Internet. And we're -- I'm
15 very receptive to that. We're working on that
16 already.
17 And we're hearing consistently that we
18 should speed up the process of reimbursing
19 people. As they do the work, it's a
20 reimbursement process. And that we try to
21 speed up the process between the time that you
22 approve a project and the sponsor has all of
23 the needed materials where we can contract
24 with them. And I'm very sensitive and
25 understanding of those, and we're going to
.
17
1 work real hard on that.
2 The schedule, as I said -- I don't know
3 what happened to that -- we did -- we've done
4 six hearings thus far, and six hearings with
5 230 plus people in attendance. We're going to
6 do one tomorrow in the Panhandle, and that
7 will be our final one. Each one of those
8 public hearings is also being followed up with
9 a questionnaire. And also we're going to do
10 some selective sending of some questionnaires
11 to folks that we don't feel like were
12 represented in these meetings. That will give
13 us the quantitative information that we will
14 need to come back and put together a package
15 of recommendations to bring back to you.
16 We'll do our draft in-house proposal and
17 review it with the executive director, post in
18 the Texas Register in early December. That
19 will be another opportunity for public input
20 and comment. And then we propose to bring
21 back to you for your consideration a set of
22 draft rules in the January meeting. That's
23 essentially where we are.
24 CHAIRMAN BASS: I have one
25 question. On the new program, the Community
.
18
1 Outdoor Outreach Program, this slide terms it
2 programming for underserved populations. Does
3 that have a legal definition, or what -- how
4 do we go about defining eligibility
5 vis-a-vis --
6 MR. HOGSETT: House Bill 2108 and
7 the changes it made in the Parks and Wildlife
8 Code are so new that I'm going to hedge a
9 little and say I believe that the Code says
10 that it will -- defines it as low-income
11 minority, physically, mentally challenged, but
12 I'm not 100 percent sure, to be honest with
13 you, without going back and looking. But that
14 is what we would propose in terms of
15 rulemaking, though, that we identify what
16 those criteria are and what you have to do to
17 meet those criteria.
18 CHAIRMAN BASS: Your understanding
19 is, there is a statutory definition of what
20 segment of the population is underserved.
21 MR. HOGSETT: I don't believe so,
22 no.
23 MR. SANSOM: I don't think so.
24 MR. HOGSETT: But I think -- I
25 would think that it would be important for us
.
19
1 to define some of that.
2 CHAIRMAN BASS: Yeah. I just
3 didn't know whether it had a legislative
4 meaning that might be -- might or might not be
5 different than groups out there that don't use
6 Parks and Wildlife things are therefore
7 underserved. It could be a broader population
8 that -- or potential customers of ours that
9 are legally eligible for this particular plan,
10 but that would be something I would be
11 interested in getting a handle on a little bit
12 more.
13 MR. HOGSETT: We will do that as
14 part of the draft rule process.
15 COMMISSIONER AVILA: It's not
16 people who want to use equestrian trails,
17 that's what you're saying, or birders
18 versus --
19 CHAIRMAN BASS: Birders versus, you
20 know --
21 COMMISSIONER AVILA: Low income.
22 CHAIRMAN BASS: -- urban kids of
23 every walk of life that are as unengaged as
24 some that are economically --
25 COMMISSIONER AVILA: Got ya.
.
20
1 CHAIRMAN BASS: -- defined. My
2 personal vice would be to make it as broad as
3 possible of those who -- work towards as
4 large a group of potential customers as we can
5 rather than try to segment it that only
6 certain socioeconomic groups might be
7 targeted.
8 MR. HOGSETT: Which, in my view,
9 the projects that we've already done in the
10 last couple of years without having a
11 legislative guidance at all, are much closer
12 to what you're talking about than having a
13 segmented segment of the population being
14 targeted for funds. We've done just a wide
15 variety of different types of groups,
16 different types of projects, not just kids,
17 adults, you know, across the board.
18 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: You said that
19 this was going to be primarily for programs.
20 Is there any flexibility there if, say, you
21 needed to improve an existing room and turn it
22 into a classroom to facilitate an educational
23 program at a park?
24 MR. HOGSETT: Probably not.
25 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Probably not.
.
21
1 Okay.
2 COMMISSIONER AVILA: Then you are
3 back down to that small project that we don't
4 have the vehicle for. We need to look at
5 that.
6 CHAIRMAN BASS: These are really
7 operating dollars.
8 MR. HOGSETT: Operations and
9 equipment.
10 MR. SANSOM: Could buy canoes or
11 sleeping bags or camping gear or shotguns.
12 MR. HOGSETT: And we've had -- in
13 the past we've had several projects that have
14 done that kind of thing.
15 CHAIRMAN BASS: Okay. Any other
16 questions? Thank you very much. Good job.
17 MR. HOGSETT: Thank you.
18 MR. SANSOM: Good job.
19 AGENDA ITEM NO. 2: BRIEFING - ISSUES FOR
20 STATEWIDE PARKS, HUNTING AND FISHING
21 REGULATIONS FOR 2000-2001.
22 CHAIRMAN BASS: All right. Let's
23 go back to our sequence of Item 2, another
24 briefing item, issues for statewide parks,
25 hunting and fishing regulations for 2000-2001,
.
22
1 believe it or not.
2 MR. KURZAWSKI: Good afternoon,
3 Commissioners. My name is Ken Kurzawski of
4 the inland fisheries division. And today I'm
5 here to report to you on our fall public
6 meetings, which I had the responsibility for
7 coordinating our efforts this year. Our goal
8 for these meetings was to solicit public input
9 on all department programs, as we've been
10 trying to do the last few years, just not on
11 our hunting and fishing regulations. So we
12 were hoping to get some good attendance at the
13 meeting and hear a variety of issues.
14 We had four meetings scheduled this fall.
15 We held meetings in Grapevine, San Antonio,
16 Corpus Christi and Beaumont. I'll give you
17 just a quick summary on each meeting and
18 highlight the major issues that we heard at
19 those meetings. These major issues will be
20 addressed later by staff from the relevant
21 divisions except for the reciprocal license
22 issue, which I'll address later.
23 First meeting we had at Grapevine at Bass
24 Proshops. We had an attendance of 110 people.
25 Thirty-five persons commented. The major
.
23
1 issues we heard there were on the Hueco Tanks
2 climbing access and on the Lake Fork
3 tournament exemptions.
4 Next meeting at San Antonio, we had
5 24 persons with 22 commenting. Once again, we
6 heard a little bit on the Hueco Tanks climbing
7 access, also heard about the use of crossbows
8 and locking devices in archery seasons, and
9 sort of a variety of topics, including
10 wildlife in urban areas. And also we heard a
11 little bit on equestrian use of state parks,
12 which we usually hear in the San Antonio area.
13 I also would like to thank Commissioner
14 Watson for showing up at the San Antonio
15 meeting. We enjoyed having him there for
16 that.
17 Next, at Corpus Christi, we had our
18 lowest turnout, 16 persons, had 10 persons
19 comment. Some of the topics there were park
20 funding acquisition and then regulations of
21 speckled trout fishing guides and also on sea
22 turtles.
23 We ended up at Beaumont, had a good
24 turnout there of 80 persons, with 30 persons
25 making comments. The major issues there dealt
.
24
1 with the senior fishing license and reciprocal
2 license agreements and the Keith Lake boat
3 ramp.
4 Overall, we had 240 people show up at
5 these meetings, and I think we heard a variety
6 of topics, just not on hunting and fishing
7 regulations. So in that regard, they were
8 successful.
9 The one issue I would like to touch on
10 briefing is that dealing with reciprocal
11 fishing licenses that, if you recall, we made
12 some recent changes to those agreements.
13 Effective October 1st, we no longer offered
14 license exemptions to seniors from Louisiana,
15 Oklahoma and Kansas. This change was in
16 response to complaints we received since 1965
17 when the $6 special resident license became
18 required of those turning 65 years of age.
19 Now the seniors are upset about these recent
20 changes primarily because now with the no more
21 reciprocal license agreements, they have to
22 pay to fish in Louisiana and Oklahoma. And
23 down in Beaumont, it was mainly people who
24 were fishing over in Louisiana.
25 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: How much do
.
25
1 they have to pay there?
2 MR. KURZAWSKI: I believe the
3 license -- an annual license is $31 for
4 freshwater, and I think a saltwater would be
5 30 -- an additional $30 plus that, and then
6 there are some three-day licenses that they
7 could purchase also.
8 MR. SANSOM: For seniors?
9 MR. KURZAWSKI: Yes. Well, that
10 would be any non-residents. At this time,
11 Louisiana doesn't have any special licenses
12 for seniors. We are investigating some of the
13 possible alternatives. We have talked to
14 Louisiana, and they're in the process of
15 looking at their whole licensing structure,
16 and there might be some possibilities we could
17 work on a reduced license for seniors on both
18 sides.
19 And I guess one thing I would like to
20 note that the Commission does have the
21 authority to waive or lower fees for
22 nonresidents over 65 years of age. We
23 wouldn't necessarily have to go back to the
24 legislature for that authority.
25 MR. SANSOM: I think it's important
.
26
1 that we go back and reflect on why this
2 happened. It happened because we were getting
3 complaints because we charge our senior
4 citizens a discounted fee, and there were
5 citizens coming into Texas from other states
6 who were fishing free. So you had an angler,
7 an older angler from Texas who was paying in
8 Texas, and an angler from Louisiana or
9 Arkansas or some other place, who was not.
10 And there generated just as many complaints as
11 this did.
12 MR. KURZAWSKI: It was combined to
13 those three states, Kansas, Oklahoma and
14 Louisiana since 1965.
15 COMMISSIONER AVILA: And now we
16 just have reciprocal agreements. Do we match
17 them?
18 MR. SANSOM: Well, we --
19 MR. KURZAWSKI: Excuse me,
20 Commissioner, I didn't hear your question.
21 COMMISSIONER AVILA: So what did we
22 do?
23 MR. SANSOM: We no longer allowed
24 senior citizens from other states to fish
25 free.
.
27
1 MR. KURZAWSKI: Right. For those
2 three states we did away with the reciprocal
3 agreements. The only really reciprocal
4 agreement we have remaining is with Louisiana
5 on the border waters where people can fish
6 both sides, at say Toledo Bend, on whatever
7 license you're carrying from either Texas,
8 Louisiana.
9 MR. SANSOM: So now when a Texas
10 citizen goes into a state where it's free,
11 they have to pay.
12 MR. KURZAWSKI: As I said, we're
13 going to continue to look at this issue and
14 continue our discussions with some of the
15 neighboring states to see what any ideas we
16 can come up with there. I would be happy to
17 answer any questions on this issue or any of
18 the public meetings that you have. Thank you.
19 MR. SANSOM: Good job, Ken. Ken
20 arranged for this entire scoping process to
21 occur and organized the logistics, which were
22 extensive, and he did a very good job.
23 MR. KURZAWSKI: Thank you. Is
24 Larry going to go next?
25 CHAIRMAN BASS: I commend you that
.
28
1 your lowest attendance was 16 persons. The
2 first public meeting I went to as a
3 commissioner, I was one of two people there
4 that wasn't wearing a badge or other Parks and
5 Wildlife --
6 MR. KURZAWSKI: Well, even with
7 Corpus Christi being at 16, the last one we
8 had there had zero. So that's a pretty good
9 increase from zero.
10 MR. MCKINNEY: Don't even mention
11 that one.
12 CHAIRMAN BASS: You must have just
13 stirred up some controversy down there to make
14 it look good.
15 MR. MCKINNEY: We didn't go on
16 Friday night, which is football night.
17 Mr. Chairman, Larry McKinney, for the
18 record, senior director of aquatic resources.
19 I just have a couple of quick issues to bring
20 forward because you will be hearing briefings
21 on these items tomorrow, but because they do
22 contemplate rulemaking process, going to bring
23 them to your attention very quickly this
24 afternoon.
25 One set of -- one area in regards to our
.
29
1 seagrass conservation work we're doing down in
2 the middle coast, that work, task force has
3 completed its initial phase of work and has a
4 proposal before us, and Dr. Bill Harvey will
5 brief you on that tomorrow, but in order to
6 implement the plans that are coming forward,
7 we do contemplate designating a couple of
8 areas as scientific areas. Chapter 81,
9 Subchapter F of our Parks and Wildlife Code
10 provides the authority of the department to do
11 these types -- to designate these types of
12 areas. We've done it in the past for our
13 coastal preserves, for example, so we could
14 develop management plans in conjunction with
15 other agencies.
16 We would contemplate that process here,
17 and I think Dr. Harvey will explain it more
18 fully tomorrow, to enable us to, for example,
19 put our signage out, to put signs out to mark
20 areas, to protect those signs from vandalism,
21 those types of things. So he will cover that,
22 but it would be something we would contemplate
23 bringing before you-all in your January
24 meeting for consideration. So I certainly
25 would answer any questions, but you'll hear
.
30
1 the briefing tomorrow.
2 CHAIRMAN BASS: Could be public
3 comment on the proposal prior to January?
4 MR. MCKINNEY: No. It would be --
5 well, we're having our task force -- is that
6 what you mean? I'm sorry.
7 CHAIRMAN BASS: I mean areas that
8 we're proposing to --
9 MR. MCKINNEY: Oh, we'll put them
10 out as rules, there will be public comment
11 and --
12 CHAIRMAN BASS: As of January or
13 before?
14 MR. MCKINNEY: Before. We would be
15 doing that probably before. It would be a
16 normal rulemaking process as we would go
17 through for (inaudible). The second area is,
18 and again we will brief you on this tomorrow,
19 but this is in developing an aquatic
20 vegetation management plan for the state of
21 Texas as allowed under House Bill 3079, a
22 section of that 11.082 basically states that
23 the department shall develop and by rule adopt
24 a state aquatic vegetation management plan
25 following the generally accepted principles of
.
31
1 integrated fish management.
2 So we are beginning to work on that
3 management plan. We will give you a briefing
4 on it tomorrow, but it would have to be
5 adopted by rule. One area that we're
6 exploring, and we've done this in other
7 situations, is adoption by reference because
8 of the guidelines, and we will explore if
9 that's a possibility. But we anticipate that
10 coming before you in May for consideration.
11 So we will have a bit of time to development
12 it, but we would probably go that direction if
13 it were allowable under law.
14 CHAIRMAN BASS: Could you explain
15 the distinction of adopting by rule versus
16 reference.
17 MR. MCKINNEY: I would think that
18 once we develop the state plan, which could be
19 quite extensive, that rather than, say,
20 publishing this entire plan in the Texas
21 Register and having to keep it that way, that
22 we would have a simply rule that basically
23 says the statewide management plan is adopted
24 by reference has titled under this document,
25 and we would keep that document here so we
.
32
1 wouldn't have to put that in the Register and
2 update it in that way. It would just be a
3 shorter way of coming at it, if in fact we can
4 do that, and we'll just have to get an
5 interpretation as to whether or not we can.
6 We would still have a process any time we
7 wanted to amend that plan, a public process to
8 go through, but it wouldn't necessarily have
9 to be a rulemaking process every time that we
10 want to perhaps make a change. Again, we'll
11 just have to see if that is allowable, and I
12 do not know yet, but that would be our plan.
13 That's -- those are the two, and we will talk
14 to you about them tomorrow.
15 CHAIRMAN BASS: Thank you.
16 MR. DUROCHER: Mr. Chairman,
17 Commissioners, I'm Phil Durocher with the
18 inland fishery division. I'm going to be
19 talking a little bit, spend a few minutes
20 going over one primary issue that we heard
21 about in the scoping process and begin to look
22 at potential regulation changes for the year
23 2000-2001 that have been brought to us by the
24 staff.
25 First of all, I would like to echo Andy's
.
33
1 comments and recognize Ken for the job he did
2 on the scoping meeting. But I want you to
3 know that we still want him in inland
4 fisheries. He does a good job for us.
5 The comments that we had at the meeting,
6 primarily the meeting in Grapevine were from
7 people in opposition to the six tournaments
8 plan to study the slot limit exemptions. If
9 you've been reading your mail and reading your
10 newspaper, you know inland fisheries is
11 involved in a study at Lake Fork, a slot limit
12 exception study. The status of that study is
13 so far we've had one tournament that was held
14 on October the 9th and 10th. The results of
15 the study are listed here. I'm not going to
16 read them off for you, but this is
17 basically -- the results of the biological
18 part of that study.
19 We're also studying the social and
20 economic impacts of allowing these type of
21 exempted tournaments. I want to stress to
22 you, though, that this is -- to remember that
23 these are results of the first tournament, but
24 this is only one part of the study. Our plans
25 are to do six tournaments. So we're going to
.
34
1 look at the average of all six and not just
2 deal with this one.
3 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: What was the
4 reason for the postponement?
5 MR. DUROCHER: They didn't have
6 enough people registered. We -- for us to get
7 the type of data we need, we estimated we
8 needed at least 75 entries, which were boats
9 or team entries, and they just -- they didn't
10 make it for this last tournament. I don't
11 know what the reasons were. I think it had a
12 lot to do with the controversy there and
13 people not wanting to be involved. But I
14 spoke to the people today, and they're in the
15 process of trying to schedule another
16 tournament probably for mid-January sometime.
17 And we're hopeful that we can get through
18 this.
19 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: This study
20 was really mandated by the legislature, was it
21 not?
22 MR. DUROCHER: By several
23 legislators. Right.
24 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Not
25 officially by the legislature itself.
.
35
1 MR. DUROCHER: No, sir. This is
2 not a new issue. As Andy knows, we've been
3 dealing with this issue for nine to ten years.
4 It came up once before, and at that time, the
5 staff decided not to pursue it, not because of
6 biological concerns. We felt like if it was
7 controlled and done right that it would not
8 have a biological impact, but we were
9 concerned about the conflicts between
10 tournament anglers and anglers, which is
11 exactly what we're seeing.
12 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: I'm having a
13 little hard time urging the opposition that
14 maybe don't want this to happen, because if
15 they're so sure it's a bad deal, why wouldn't
16 they want the scientific study to be made to
17 prove it somehow or another the mitigations
18 are bad or something? Because they seem to be
19 fighting against themselves really.
20 MR. SANSOM: Well, they are to a
21 great extent. And Phil and I have discussed
22 it with the members involved, and it's our
23 determination to continue to do the studies in
24 the face of that opposition because I think it
25 will give us the answers we need once and for
.
36
1 all, and we haven't been successful in
2 convincing these folks that --
3 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: The more they
4 interfere with the process, the most likely
5 they are to get (inaudible) anything else.
6 MR. SANSOM: And that's a good
7 insight.
8 MR. DUROCHER: Very good. You
9 know, most of the opposition is based on a
10 fairness issue. You know, they say why should
11 one group of people be able to do something
12 that everybody else can't do. That's not
13 something new for this agency.
14 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: That's really
15 not the issue, though. We're not saying that
16 should be allowed, we're saying let's find out
17 what happens if they were.
18 MR. DUROCHER: We haven't made a
19 recommendation. We're studying the issue.
20 COMMISSIONER WATSON: How many fish
21 were caught?
22 MR. DUROCHER: How many fish were
23 brought into the weigh-in?
24 MR. KURZAWSKI: A little over 300.
25 MR. DUROCHER: 300 or so fish. And
.
37
1 the mortality of those fish was estimated
2 around 39 percent. And that's -- that seemed
3 rather high to us when we looked at it, but
4 from looking at the data from studies that
5 were done all over the country with the water
6 temperature that was there, that number fell
7 within the range of some of the findings that
8 other people had. So it really wasn't that
9 unexpected.
10 Now, these are the potential regulation
11 changes that were brought to us by the staff
12 at our annual meeting we have in August.
13 These are the ones that we've looked at and
14 decided that we may possibly bring these
15 forward to you in January. We plan to do some
16 more scoping and meeting with people in the
17 area before we bring these proposals to you in
18 January.
19 The first one deals with a statewide
20 regulation for spotted and Guadalupe bass.
21 We're processing to remove the 12-inch length
22 limit on those species, but retain the five
23 fish bag. And our goal here is to allow
24 harvest, additional harvest of spotted and
25 Guadalupe bass.
.
38
1 What we're finding is in most areas, very
2 few of these fish actually grow past 12
3 inches. And they're actually competing
4 because they grow as adults, they're actually
5 competing with other species. So it may be
6 another opportunity to allow some harvest here
7 and not affect the populations.
8 The second one deals with harvest
9 regulations for largemouth bass on individual
10 reservoirs. What we're probably going to
11 bring to you is three reservoirs -- is changes
12 on three reservoirs and three state park lakes
13 for more restrictive regulations. An our goal
14 here is, of course, to maintain and improve
15 angling quality.
16 Let me just say that most of these came
17 to us from the public. They asked us to help
18 them to improve the fishing on those places,
19 but we're going to go back and scope it to
20 make sure that the people are for what
21 we're -- most of the people are for what we're
22 asking.
23 At Lake Jacksonville, Cleburne State Park
24 and Meridian State Park, we're asking to raise
25 the length limit from the current 14-inch
.
39
1 minimum to an 18-inch minimum. And the bag
2 limit would remain the same.
3 On Lake Austin and Town Lake here in
4 Austin in Travis County and Buescher State
5 Park near Bastrop, we're proposing to change
6 the limit on largemouth bass from the current
7 14-inch minimum to a 14 to 21-inch slot limit,
8 with a five-fish daily bag only one bass over
9 21 inches or greater. These populations we
10 feel like have the potential to be something
11 special, and there's -- because of
12 restrictions that are here on how people can
13 fish, there's an opportunity here to do
14 something.
15 On Town Lake, we've been looking at this
16 for several years, and we feel like we have
17 the opportunity now because several weeks ago
18 the city lifted the restriction on consumption
19 of fish because of high chloridane levels. We
20 weren't going to propose a slot limit because
21 we thought maybe this would be perceived as an
22 attempt to get people to eat fish which they
23 should be eating. But now that that ban has
24 been lifted, we feel like we have an
25 opportunity to do something here, and these
.
40
1 people can keep the smaller fish and we'll be
2 protecting the larger ones.
3 There's also another small one that's in
4 your book. It deals with description of a
5 community fishing lake in San Angelo. And we
6 believe we can handle that one just by
7 changing the wording in the outdoor annual, so
8 we're not going to actually make a regulation
9 change.
10 And that's all the proposals that we're
11 going to have that we know of now that we'll
12 bring to you in January.
13 CHAIRMAN BASS: Are there any of
14 these that you see as potentially being great
15 deal of controversy?
16 MR. DUROCHER: No, sir. Not at
17 this time. Like I said, most of these came
18 from anglers in those area, but we are going
19 to go back in those areas and --
20 CHAIRMAN BASS: And find out which
21 one it is later.
22 MR. DUROCHER: We'll tell you about
23 it in January.
24 CHAIRMAN BASS: Thanks, Phil.
25 MR. DUROCHER: Thank you.
.
41
1 CHAIRMAN BASS: As the Executive
2 Director points out, we're making a reg change
3 in Austin, so there will be some comment at
4 that one. We should have our next meeting in
5 Waco.
6 MR. OSBURN: Good afternoon,
7 Mr. Chairman. I'm Hal Osburn, division
8 director of coastal fisheries. Before I brief
9 you on some of our proposals for the
10 statewide, I wanted to update you on our
11 shrimp management initiative. This is a
12 process that we started in earnest nearly a
13 year ago, consists of an in-depth look at the
14 scientific data that we have collected and
15 others around the country, also a very
16 extensive outreach effort with all the
17 affected stake holders. We hope that this
18 process will give us some insights to
19 recommending some shrimp rule changes to you
20 by next summer.
21 And I wanted to note that it has been a
22 very massive undertaking, and most of the work
23 has actually fallen on the shoulders of my
24 ecosystem leaders, eight of them along the
25 coast. And as a follow-up to our meeting
.
42
1 yesterday, I asked a number of them to stay
2 over, and some of them are in the audience
3 today, and I want to acknowledge their hard
4 work.
5 The coastal fisheries division is always
6 conducting scoping, and we have combined that
7 effort with the department wide scoping
8 efforts that were held in October/November,
9 and developed some -- a number of comments
10 from folks. This is a list of those that got
11 some of the top priorities. We are obviously
12 concerned about the shrimp over harvest that
13 was noted, the sea turtle protection, those
14 two items will be addressed in our shrimp rule
15 review. The shark conservation will be an
16 item that we will be actually briefing you on
17 in January as part of the statewide. And we
18 will be conducting additional scientific
19 review and scoping efforts on the trophy trout
20 and fishing guide issues this next year.
21 Let me move on to the items that we have
22 been investigating for the statewide hunting
23 and fishing proclamation this next year.
24 First is the question of whether to provide
25 consistency with new rules in federal waters
.
43
1 that have been established by the National
2 Marine Fishery Service. Certainly, there are
3 benefits to consistency. You can get a
4 conservation effort. You can get enhanced law
5 enforcement, better angler cooperation. But
6 there's also the issue of determining whether
7 the Texas Fishery Management Strategy is
8 adhered to in adopting those rules.
9 Federal rules have been changed recently
10 on sharks. They formally had an unlimited bag
11 limit and no size limit. They have changed
12 that to a one Atlantic sharpnose per person
13 and one other pelagic shark over four and a
14 half feet per vessel. I have to tell you that
15 the federal reference to vessel probably
16 precludes us from having strict compatibility
17 because in Texas, we do have a substantial
18 shore-based fishery, and we want our rules to
19 provide for that.
20 Since 1989, Texas has had the most
21 restrictive bag limits and gear restrictions
22 on the harvest of sharks applied to both sport
23 and commercial fisheries than any other gulf
24 state or federal waters. We do think, though,
25 that the commercial longline fishery that has
.
44
1 been prosecuted in federal waters, that is
2 what led actually the federal government to
3 enact more strict regulations on the shark.
4 That overfishing has reduced the populations
5 to the point that we will need to look at
6 reducing our bag limits, imposing a size limit
7 and cooperating with that conservation effort
8 in state waters. Actually, we're just glad to
9 see them finally cooperating with our
10 conservation effort in federal waters.
11 Commercial long-lining in federal waters
12 also has had an effect through bycatch on our
13 billfish populations, and they -- one of the
14 outcomes of that was their recommendation in
15 federal waters for changes in the billfish
16 size limits, to increase those. We
17 consistently have matched those and will
18 likely recommend those to you for our sport
19 anglers in January.
20 There also have been some differences in
21 the state and federal rules on the king and
22 Spanish mackerel. There's still not
23 finalization of those rules, and we would not
24 recommend any changes until we actually see
25 exactly what's going to happen at the federal
.
45
1 level, because it's not always something you
2 can -- you can guess.
3 It's also true for the red snapper
4 fishery. That fishery continues to go -- a
5 great deal of instability. The National
6 Marine Fishery Service has been provided a
7 recommendation from the Gulf Council, they're
8 considering a recreational fishing season of
9 only six and a half months. It would go from
10 mid-April to the end of October. That season
11 would have very serious consequences for the
12 Texas fishery, as it's historically been
13 fished. We will continue to work with the
14 federal entities and the industry in trying to
15 find an equitable solution to this situation.
16 CHAIRMAN BASS: Hal, what do you
17 think the odds of some kind of a resolution
18 coming out of that is?
19 MR. OSBURN: I think in the
20 short --
21 CHAIRMAN BASS: The winter fishing
22 season is what really impacts the party boats,
23 isn't it?
24 MR. OSBURN: Yes, it is. About 70
25 percent of the red snapper harvest off Texas
.
46
1 is by our party boats who've been in business
2 for numbers of decades here. I have to tell
3 you that in the short term, I don't think
4 there is a real good chance of a resolution of
5 that. Certainly there was a process that's
6 been gone through with the federal entities,
7 and they certainly know the Texas position.
8 There is a box that the fishermen in the Gulf
9 of Mexico have been put in, the fishery
10 managers as well, have been put in a very
11 small box and told to decide, you know, really
12 kind of who gets pushed out of the lifeboat.
13 And at this point, the Texas headboat winter
14 fishery has been pushed out of the lifeboat.
15 I think their course of action as they've
16 indicated to me is judicial. And at the
17 federal level, fishery management level, I
18 don't hold out a lot of hope that there's
19 going to be any salvation for them in the
20 short term.
21 CHAIRMAN BASS: How many headboats
22 are there really operating, or how many
23 operators?
24 MR. OSBURN: We have about 24
25 headboats in Texas. And that fishery has
.
47
1 stayed stable, actually declines a little bit,
2 but if you go back to the 1970s and look at
3 some of when the department started sampling
4 those headboats, we see virtually the same
5 numbers of fish coming off those headboats,
6 snappers, as we do now. Their size is much
7 greater, but they have been a long-term
8 stable, steady fishery providing access for,
9 you know, at $30 a head for people that have
10 no other access to Gulf of Mexico fishing, you
11 know, as opposed to $600, $700 charter boat.
12 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: So what are
13 the federal regulators worried about?
14 MR. OSBURN: They have determined
15 that a reduction in fishing mortality is
16 needed on the red snapper. We do not contest
17 that. We contest the fact that the deep
18 waters off of Texas preclude you achieving
19 your goal when our fishermen are throwing back
20 red snapper and they're still dying because
21 you bringing them up from such deep waters.
22 We think that the Texas fishery should be
23 managed differently than the shallow waters
24 off of Florida and Alabama. And we don't
25 think they're achieving their goal, but on
.
48
1 paper they're achieving their goal with
2 restricting the season to six and a half
3 months and raising the size limit. And we --
4 it's just a dilemma that fishery managers have
5 not resolved among themselves yet.
6 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: So your view
7 is that there's a different problem than the
8 one they're attacking.
9 MR. OSBURN: Yes.
10 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Or the way
11 they're attacking it.
12 MR. OSBURN: Right. And we think
13 if you're going to achieve your goal of
14 recovering red snapper that you have to do it
15 in the water not just on paper. And also, the
16 problem is those historical participants that
17 help build this fishery shouldn't have to go
18 out of business while we're trying to figure
19 out how to calculate numbers. I think we have
20 a responsibility to grandfather them in to the
21 fishery as we've done with all of our limited
22 entry systems. There is limited entry
23 proposed for the four higher fishery in the
24 Gulf of Mexico, and we can accept that. But
25 we want those historical participants to not
.
49
1 be sacrificed to some statistical and legal
2 arguments.
3 CHAIRMAN BASS: Out of the 24 boats
4 that are operating, are they more or less 24
5 different owners, or is there an entity that
6 has 10 boats, or what's the nature of the --
7 MR. OSBURN: I probably have some
8 staff here that can answer that question
9 better. I think that two or three boats is
10 the most that I know of an owner having. You
11 know, some of them have a couple, two to
12 three, like the Wharf Cat Scat Cat down in
13 Port Aransas.
14 CHAIRMAN BASS: Those 24 boats, do
15 they operate pretty much all up and down the
16 coast?
17 MR. OSBURN: There are boats from
18 Galveston, Freeport, Port Aransas and South
19 Padre and Port Isabel are the main sites. But
20 yeah, they're up and down the coast. And they
21 have served, you know, historically that
22 winter Texan coming down and the locals trying
23 to have some winter fishery that the Texas
24 weather provides for. And we think that if
25 they were going to make seasonal changes, that
.
50
1 they needed to have allowed for that. And we
2 just kind of got out voted in terms of numbers
3 of charter boats in the Florida/Alabama area
4 that didn't really have a winter fishery and
5 have a small boat fishery don't fish in the
6 winter, and sort of the self-preservation,
7 they went for the summer fishery. And --
8 But we'll continue to work with them.
9 We've got some avenues, but I'm not going to
10 tell you that it's going to be pretty.
11 CHAIRMAN BASS: We'll expect to
12 read articles and letters about it in the
13 coming months.
14 MR. OSBURN: Yes. Let me
15 desperately try to move beyond federal waters
16 issues here. In our limited entry for our
17 Texas commercial finfish fishery which was
18 enacted by Senate Bill 1303. This last
19 session, we did get new authority. We will be
20 coming to you in January with the details of
21 this new program. It will involve changes to
22 three separate proclamations.
23 This management program will be very
24 similar to that for the shrimp fishery and for
25 the crab fishery, which are already
.
51
1 established, including the very important
2 element of license buyback. The legislature
3 set the license fee at $300, and that includes
4 $60 which will go into a license buyback fund.
5 Rule changes will also be necessary to
6 set numbers allowed in buoy marking
7 requirements for trotlines and the crab traps
8 for bait within that fishery.
9 And in conclusion, let me just note that
10 the industry members commercial fishermen that
11 worked with us as partners in developing this
12 legislation continue to work with us and help
13 us on the implementation phase, and I want to
14 thank them.
15 And that concludes my briefing. I would
16 be glad to answer any questions.
17 CHAIRMAN BASS: Thank you, sir.
18 State parks.
19 MR. DABNEY: Walt Dabney, state
20 park director. When you were talking about
21 your next meeting at Waco, I don't guess you
22 meant at Hueco Tanks. Accommodations would be
23 a little rusty out there.
24 The three issues I'm going to talk to you
25 about, two of them are from the scoping
.
52
1 process, one of the came up at the last
2 Commission meeting. The two in the scoping
3 process, one little longer than the other, are
4 Hueco Tanks and the climbing issue. And I
5 know Phil was glad to have us in the audience
6 to take some flak on climbing when he was
7 taking flak on the fishing.
8 But horse use, and that will be a very
9 short one. And then Palo Duro and some
10 flooding problems we've had out there that
11 came up in the last Commission meeting. We
12 told you at that time that Dan Patton and I
13 were going to go out and look at that, and we
14 did, and I wanted to bring you up to speed
15 about that.
16 Hueco Tanks, fascinating place, and one
17 of my hot issues. In six months of being
18 here, I think I've been there four times now.
19 And Commissioner Watson got to listen to three
20 or four of the folks in San Antonio. There
21 were quite a few more in Dallas the other
22 night.
23 This issue -- the problem with Hueco
24 Tanks and as it relates to climbing is folks
25 will try to draw a comparison between Hueco
.
53
1 Tanks and other places where climbing occurs,
2 like Enchanted Rock or Mineral Wells or
3 Yosemite, or wherever else. It's a very, very
4 different situation. The climbing is great.
5 It's great in all those places, but the
6 problem here is you are starting your climb in
7 a major world-class archeological site. And
8 Dr. Dolman just handed me December issue of
9 Scientific American with Hueco Tanks in it.
10 And some of the technology, some of the things
11 we found just recently that I'll show you in
12 this.
13 But why Hueco Tanks? Hueco Tanks is out
14 west of -- or, I'm sorry, east of El Paso.
15 It's out in the desert. Huecos are in fact
16 natural depressions in the rock tanks, if you
17 will, that water collected, and it collected
18 in rather large amounts. It was used we know
19 at least from 9000 BC by Native American
20 people as a water source, and that's why in
21 this great desert they came to this place. So
22 for 11,000 years, they have been coming there
23 continuously.
24 The place was an El Paso County Park. It
25 was heavily hammered. We picked it up in I
.
54
1 think 1969 and in poor condition at least from
2 erosion and some other things. The
3 legislature in essence told us pretty clearly
4 what they wanted us to do with that, as is
5 depicted, in improving, preserving restoring,
6 protecting the land and property and the park/
7 and it was a mess, and it -- there are places
8 that still exhibit the graffiti, and certainly
9 erosion problems that are out there now.
10 But in the '90s, you started to see a
11 phenomena that while it started maybe in the
12 outdoors moved inside into climbing gyms and
13 became in essence a gymnastic sport, sport
14 climbing, with artificial holds and that kind
15 of thing. Hueco Tanks was discovered to be an
16 outdoor setting where this was truly a
17 world-class opportunity to do what is called
18 boldering or sport climbing. People literally
19 came from all over the world.
20 And as I'll show you in a minute, where
21 they were doing their climbing, we know a lot
22 more now than we did certainly when we got the
23 place, and even than we did a couple of years
24 ago. These two gentlemen from no telling
25 where walking in, the thing on the guy's back
.
55
1 on the left of the screen is a crash pad.
2 He's going to go into the base of one of these
3 and roll the mattress out, and they're going
4 to climb above that and hopefully when they
5 peel off from not making the climb, they will
6 hit the pad and not the rocks and the ground
7 below. But they would haul in all their stuff
8 for the day, including maybe their dog, and
9 they would begin to tie him to a tree if we
10 were lucky, or turn him loose if we're not,
11 and of course dug around wherever.
12 Where it was digging and where these
13 folks were climbing, we've since found, and
14 we're not even through yet, there are 273
15 known rock art sites. That doesn't mean
16 individual panels. That's areas where rock
17 art is that we know, and we have not done a
18 complete assessment yet. There could be
19 multiple panels in each of these sites. 164
20 rock shelters where people actually lived; 334
21 bedrock mortars, and I have seen them this
22 deep where obviously for many, many years
23 people sat there with a pestle of antler or
24 whatever and ground their stuff enough to
25 deepen those; 11 water control structures
.
56
1 where they actually made improvements to
2 enhance the ability of the place to hold water
3 for drinking and farming and that kind of
4 thing; at least one farming village site; at
5 least nine burial sites where people are
6 buried right out there. We cannot even
7 disclose where those are legally. And surface
8 artifacts everywhere. You cannot walk through
9 there without seeing pottery shards, and that
10 kind of thing.
11 Well, it's also, as I said, a great
12 bouldering area. The white material that you
13 see on that rock is not naturally occurring or
14 oxidation. It's climbing chalk. It's used to
15 keep your hands dry. And you can see just on
16 those two boulders which are above a natural
17 rock shelter, there are many roots. So people
18 would stand there literally watching each
19 other climbing up this rock, trying to make
20 each individual climb, walking through the
21 rock shelters and around the base of each one
22 of these. If you needed to go to the bathroom
23 and went and dug a hole somewhere behind a
24 tree or in a rock shelter, you are digging in
25 an archeological midden without a doubt.
.
57
1 The 45 degree wall, again the chalk you
2 see on it, is literally a wall that lays back
3 like so, and you're doing your climbing route
4 up that. Where that person is standing, that
5 bolder at one time was level with the ground,
6 and all of the material that was in there
7 because of erosion now because the vegetation
8 was denuded is washed out. That's a bedrock
9 mortar or several of them in the foreground
10 there where people actually sat on that rock
11 century -- for centuries and worked their
12 evening meal.
13 What are we talking about washing away?
14 Well, here's another site where climbing
15 activity occurred. The site was denuded, and
16 at least two feet of the materials have washed
17 out of there, including any artifacts that
18 were in there at the time.
19 Some of the technology that's reflected
20 in this magazine, we've gone back in, not
21 extensively yet and certainly not completely,
22 and filmed rock art sites that -- looking at
23 the site at the picture on the left, the one
24 on the right is the same picture. The
25 photograph was taken and enhanced with a
.
58
1 computer, and you can see a whole lot more
2 information. Those are the same site. And if
3 you walk up to the one on the left, even if
4 you're a well intentioned climber and say I'm
5 not climbing where there's any rock are, the
6 reality is there's -- there may be fascinating
7 stuff underneath.
8 This article points out that this is the
9 largest collection, known collection, and
10 that's just with what we know right now, of
11 masks, painted masks in North America in Hueco
12 Tanks.
13 Another site up on the right you see --
14 you don't see it very clearly. Enhanced in
15 the lower left, it's very clear there's all
16 kind of rock art up there.
17 What does it look like? The red dots
18 that you can see, again, the rocky part is in
19 the middle, the red dots are the known rock
20 art panels. We just did an archeological
21 survey, and we did not survey the rocky area.
22 The area in below is basically the base of all
23 these boulders, rock shelters and that kind of
24 thing. All of that is archeological deposits.
25 When you lay the rock art sites on top of
.
59
1 the archeological deposits, you can't start
2 climbing in here without standing right in the
3 middle of no telling what, with deposits that
4 at least three feet that are mostly in tact,
5 with the archeological records still mostly in
6 place with at least four tribes that claim a
7 historic tie to this location here. It is not
8 like comparing this place to Enchanted Rock or
9 anyplace else. We have got to air it toward
10 protecting the resource. And that is
11 unpopular with the things that are in the
12 current climbing plan. And of course, the
13 more we know, the more important that that's
14 going to be.
15 We have a public use plan. There is a
16 promise to review that at the end of the year.
17 And this will continue to be controversial.
18 Folks do not like the fact that there are
19 restrictions on climbing in this place. But I
20 do like -- and if people refer to this as a
21 museum, and the reality is, you are in fact
22 starting your climb standing on the exhibit
23 cases in Hueco Tanks, and that's just a fact.
24 You can look at what we just showed you up
25 there on the maps.
.
60
1 Currently there is a reservation system.
2 There are limited numbers. We will be going
3 back out in the next two weeks with a draft
4 plan to folks who have exhibited an interest
5 in this process up to now, and we will be
6 asking for their input. The campground is now
7 very limited. The place closes -- the back
8 country closes basically at dark or a little
9 before. If you're staying in the campground,
10 you're with a guided group. You are with a --
11 or we furnish a guide. There are very few
12 people that are doing that. We propose that
13 this place just be when it's time to go home,
14 it's time to go home, and this be like a
15 museum in fact, and you do, and there's no
16 after hours use of the place.
17 We had prohibited pets and bicycles
18 entirely. If you come in with a pet or
19 bicycle now, we're going to propose that you
20 can keep that in the developed area along the
21 road, whatever it is. You can ride your bike
22 certainly on any of the designated roads, but
23 you can't take the pet in the back country,
24 and you cannot take your bicycle in the back
25 country on these trials.
.
61
1 We're going to require an activity fee.
2 What has happened and we can show you in the
3 numbers is somebody calls up and says, "I want
4 to go climbing on December the 10th and
5 there's ten of us," and out of 50 reservation
6 slots for north mountain. Well, they show up
7 and there's two of them, and they probably may
8 well have known that all along. But that's
9 just eight folks that could not make a
10 reservation, and there was no down side to it.
11 So we're proposing, okay, you can make that
12 ten reservations, but you're going to pay for
13 that day up front, unrefundable. And we think
14 that will help us get a handle on this so that
15 we're not excluding people.
16 This place is open to climbing still.
17 It's also open to other uses for people to
18 come in, but it's not if you as a climber book
19 up all the spots and then no one show up,
20 because we've had to turn people away.
21 We need to close two additional areas
22 that are just so sensitive either for burials
23 or you can't climb in there because of the
24 rock art, and we can't protect it or you can't
25 climb it in a way that will not damage the
.
62
1 resource. Folks the other day in Grapevine
2 and San Antonio said, well, you ought to go
3 mark these places so we know where they are.
4 You saw what that map looks like. It would
5 turn into a sea of signs. You would change
6 the whole character of the place. You
7 couldn't mark all these sites. We don't even
8 know where they all are now.
9 This is Enchanted Rock. We have very
10 good relationships with the climbers there.
11 We're doing lots of climbing there and Mineral
12 Wells and other places where it makes sense.
13 We need to put some limits and maintain some
14 limits and air towards protection of the
15 resource at Hueco Tanks.
16 MR. SANSOM: Members, the comment
17 at the hearing was overwhelmingly opposed to
18 the philosophy that you just heard. We
19 informed them that we do intend to protect the
20 resource, but the scoping process there was no
21 one there who said we like what you're doing
22 here.
23 MR. DABNEY: There were a couple in
24 San Antonio, rock art people, that did. But
25 the climbers are very vocal and they show up
.
63
1 and they've got a good communication, and that
2 will continue. You'll get some mail. I
3 certainly will get some mail. And we don't
4 see how we have another choice. You cannot
5 protect this site.
6 One other thing we are doing is putting
7 in a trail system, which will really help
8 protect the area, but it's so difficult. If
9 you remember that slide, we had the trail laid
10 out. We did the archeological survey. We
11 just had it marked. We had our trails going
12 through places that you just can't put the
13 trail. We're having to move some of that. So
14 we've got to be very careful there.
15 Horse use that came up especially in San
16 Antonio.
17 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: I went to
18 Hueco Tanks this time last year, and it was
19 really nice weather. There were quite a few
20 climbers there. And it wasn't just the rock
21 art that looked to be imperiled by the
22 climbing but also the vegetation because they
23 lay those pads on that very fragile
24 vegetation. And I think we need to make sure
25 that we're protecting that as well as the
.
64
1 archeological features.
2 But I think the climbers need to be aware
3 that that is not locally significant or
4 statewide significant, but that really is
5 quite a remarkable site. And I think
6 destroying those, you know, incredibly long
7 history that you have at that site for
8 enjoyment by the rock-climbers is not a good
9 trade-off for future generations. And I think
10 we need to be very vigorous in protecting
11 that, because it's just -- you know, I saw the
12 briefing last year when we put the plan into
13 effect, but I did not realize what the place
14 was like, and the park superintendent spent I
15 guess half a day with us. It was quite a lot
16 of time. And we walked a long way in Hueco
17 Tanks. And when you see how remote the area
18 is, you really have a better sense of why we
19 have no idea, so many places where the art
20 could be. And I really think that we have a
21 very strong responsibility to protect that
22 area.
23 And if we get criticism for it, I think
24 we just have to respond that we appreciate
25 that, you know, they have an immediate desire
.
65
1 to use it, but that we have a
2 multigenerational need to protect that area.
3 MR. SANSOM: It's important for us
4 to know, Commissioner, that we committed
5 ourselves to allow a review of the plan with
6 proposed revisions, and the proposed revisions
7 that Walt has laid out for you would actually
8 strengthen it.
9 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: They looked
10 like good revisions.
11 MR. SANSOM: It will strengthen the
12 plan with respect to protection.
13 MR. DABNEY: What you have here is
14 you have science in the bank. This technology
15 right here we didn't even know a year ago.
16 And we didn't know a lot of those places
17 existed that were even cataloged in the '30s.
18 You go back in there now and the stuff is just
19 everywhere. So what will we know in another
20 ten years?
21 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: I think we
22 need to point out continually that under the
23 archeological code here in Texas and under the
24 National Historic Preservation Act and under
25 the mandate from the legislature for that
.
66
1 part, we have a lot of responsibilities that
2 go far beyond the rock climbers. And I think
3 you need to keep emphasizing that when you
4 issue the revisions for the plans because I
5 think protection of that area, you know, ought
6 to be within the framework of existing laws to
7 project artifacts like that. You know, I
8 imagine that if that park came into the system
9 today that (inaudible).
10 MR. DABNEY: You're exactly right.
11 That map, the composite map, we're adding to
12 this letter that's going out to everybody.
13 Because in fairness to climbers, I had a
14 number of climbers came up after this thing
15 and looked at those maps and said, "We didn't
16 have a clue. We don't want to hurt that stuff
17 either." And so climbers are not insensitive,
18 they're just, "We didn't know."
19 CHAIRMAN BASS: Let me ask this:
20 It's obviously somewhat of a unique site from
21 an archaeological point of view. From a
22 rock-climber's point of view, the natural
23 features that they find attractive to climb,
24 how unique is it? And I say that not just in
25 the realm of what's a public access place to
.
67
1 go climb, but just in terms of the geological
2 feature.
3 MR. DABNEY: This is a bouldering
4 area, and it's probably one of the best in the
5 world. I mean -- and that's the conflict. It
6 truly is an outstanding place, but --
7 MR. SANSOM: They come in the
8 winter, as well.
9 CHAIRMAN BASS: See, what I'm
10 wondering is in the 97 percent Texas that's
11 private land, are there other places that from
12 a climbers point of view, would be as
13 attractive?
14 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: The ones I
15 talk to say no. Is that right?
16 CHAIRMAN BASS: How would they
17 know? They don't know what's on --
18 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: But that's
19 almost a unique geological feature.
20 (Simultaneous discussion.)
21 MR. DABNEY: It's a very unique
22 feature geologically. I would assume,
23 Chairman, that there are a lot of good places
24 on private lands to climb. And these are
25 unroped climbs. These are gymnastic moves. I
.
68
1 mean, a full climb maybe the height of this
2 wall here as opposed to a roped climb. And so
3 I can't answer you because I don't know
4 either.
5 CHAIRMAN BASS: Yeah. I guess
6 where I'm kind of going with that is there any
7 other -- might there be places that have the
8 recreational potential without the
9 archaeological dilemma that we could either
10 help identify, do a public/private venture
11 with somebody that we lease it from them and
12 we operate it. We help show them how to
13 operate it as a private entity and they get,
14 you know, a lot more revenue per acre than
15 they're getting for whatever agricultural use
16 they're doing, or whatever, and try to --
17 MR. DABNEY: I'd love to find such
18 a place.
19 CHAIRMAN BASS: I wouldn't know
20 what to look for because it's never occurred
21 to me to climb that wall, but apparently --
22 but I just wonder if that might long-term be
23 some kind of a solution because, you know,
24 there's an awful lot of land out there that
25 doesn't produce very much revenue per section,
.
69
1 much less per acre, that if we could get
2 identified some place -- and these people are
3 obviously willing to travel a long way. So if
4 we could identify some place that we could
5 work something out or help a private landowner
6 realize that he has an unexplored resource
7 that he could do without us. It doesn't look
8 like these guys want very much. They just
9 want access, and they'll pay -- how much a day
10 did you say it is to climb?
11 MR. DABNEY: Well, I mean it's
12 going to cost -- 4, $4 a person to come in
13 there.
14 COMMISSIONER AVILA: Walt, how many
15 climbing sites are there?
16 MR. DABNEY: I'm sorry?
17 COMMISSIONER AVILA: How many
18 climbing sites?
19 MR. DABNEY: Sites?
20 COMMISSIONER AVILA: Yeah.
21 Climbing, you know.
22 MR. DABNEY: Thousands. You just
23 go out there and look at this place, you
24 just -- there's guidebooks. There is a thick
25 guidebook. I should have brought it in here.
.
70
1 COMMISSIONER AVILA: Climb here,
2 climb there.
3 MR. DABNEY: Climbing Guide to
4 Hueco Tanks.
5 COMMISSIONER AVILA: But the
6 highest of which is no more than what?
7 MR. DABNEY: Well, there are roped
8 climbs on the west mountain primarily.
9 CHAIRMAN BASS: But that isn't what
10 they really come for. They come for a 14-foot
11 climb on an 87-degree diagonal.
12 COMMISSIONER AVILA: You can build
13 it.
14 COMMISSIONER WATSON: Well, I don't
15 understand why you're letting people climb on
16 it when you don't know what they're climbing
17 on. I mean, do we have an obligation to let
18 people go in there? And it looks like to me
19 you ought to just close it down until you can
20 figure out how to let them use it.
21 MR. DABNEY: That's an excellent
22 question, sir. I think, as somebody said, if
23 we got this park today and climbing were not
24 established, I would be a strong proponent, as
25 I think Andy would, of saying, "You climb
.
71
1 somewhere else. This is not the place." We
2 inherited something that truly was, in fact --
3 COMMISSIONER WATSON: It doesn't
4 look like to me we can get people any more
5 angry than they already are.
6 MR. DABNEY: That could be.
7 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: You haven't
8 heard all of them yet.
9 COMMISSIONER AVILA: We got 90
10 percent of the letters now, what's another 10
11 percent?
12 MR. SANSOM: And we have shut it
13 down twice, which is the only state park where
14 that's the case. We completely closed it
15 twice in this decade.
16 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: I think we
17 need to do what Carol is saying and appeal to
18 their -- in addition to being tough about it,
19 I think we need to try to appeal to their
20 reasonableness, the ones that have it, and
21 particularly with things like this magazine
22 article and other things we've been hearing
23 about the scientific ability to enhance the
24 art so that places that obviously no one,
25 other than -- even an expert wouldn't have
.
72
1 known there was something there. If these
2 people are exposed to those facts, I would
3 have to think that most of them would
4 recognize the legitimacy of the concerns.
5 There's going to be some that won't anyway.
6 I know the first ones that I talked to
7 about it were avid climbers and felt like the
8 Parks and Wildlife Department was being unfair
9 and restricting it and that they downplayed
10 the archaeological features, and not the ones
11 that are obvious artwork, but the other
12 aspects of it. And so I'm not sure how much
13 they could be convinced by the more recent
14 studies of what's out there, but they ought to
15 at least be exposed to it as much as we can.
16 MR. DABNEY: The impression I got
17 from the reaction of some of these people,
18 they didn't have those maps before. Those
19 maps are graphic. And I mean, they know by
20 looking, they've stood right in the middle of
21 some those -- a lot of those places
22 themselves.
23 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: I think we
24 can probably reduce some of the animosity
25 anyway.
.
73
1 MR. DABNEY: We're also writing --
2 staff is preparing an article. We're going to
3 be putting it out. It's these latest
4 findings. We need to do better getting our
5 message out to other folks so that the
6 understanding is --
7 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Exactly
8 what's there.
9 MR. DABNEY: Yes, sir.
10 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: Well, I
11 think it's several things. I really think
12 that it's important to educate the climbers
13 about the other aspects of that resource
14 because it is an incredibly unique area. But
15 I think we also need to make sure that those
16 who would support the work of the department
17 in trying to protect that archeological
18 resource are aware of what's out there and
19 know that they need to speak up in favor of
20 the restrictions that you're putting on them
21 because of the (inaudible).
22 MR. DABNEY: I will tell you that
23 this is an area where we and the THC are very
24 closely working together and they are very
25 supportive of this. And were we to move
.
74
1 backwards, they would be all over us
2 appropriately so.
3 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: Yes. But
4 I'm saying that those among their particular
5 constituency would be well-advised to educate
6 themselves about Hueco Tanks and weigh in with
7 this department about the importance of
8 protecting that resource. I just -- I never
9 understood what Hueco Tanks was until we
10 started looking at that plan, and after that
11 hearing, but I still couldn't fathom what it
12 was. And I've always lived in Texas, and I
13 was not aware that that was out there.
14 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: I never knew
15 it was there, either.
16 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: And you live
17 closer to it.
18 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: I live close
19 to it. That's right.
20 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: But I think
21 some public education on Hueco Tanks would be
22 a very important thing to gather support for
23 what you're going to need to do to protect
24 that area.
25 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: It's tragic
.
75
1 to see some of those 1930s pictures of what
2 was there, so much of which is already gone.
3 It's been ruined. You know, it's just a huge
4 amount of it has been already been badly
5 messed up, not necessarily by the
6 rock-climbers but just by people in general.
7 MR. DABNEY: By unsupervised use.
8 The equestrian, just one thing quickly, is we
9 are working with horse users everywhere it's
10 possible. We've got 15 parks that have
11 opportunities, and 12 of those have overnight
12 good accommodations in many cases with
13 horse -- separated horse camps and corrals and
14 that kind of thing, and over 200 miles of
15 trials.
16 The last issue has to do with flooding,
17 and specifically at Palo Duro. Dan and I went
18 out there and looked ourselves and had the
19 opportunity of having a one-inch rain event,
20 one inch. I've got actually some pictures
21 that we saw of that.
22 What we've got here is a situation at
23 Palo Duro, I think it's flooded three times
24 since I've been here in six months, where we
25 have I truly do believe a visitor safety
.
76
1 issue, recurrent damage to facilities, the
2 staff impact -- and I'll show you some
3 examples of what I'm talking about --
4 interruption of our revenue stream and
5 certainly a local economic concern. This is
6 one of the campsites with what came through
7 the picnic table. And the safety concern is
8 if you're putting people in their tents in a
9 sleeping bad in the middle of night and we got
10 some event like this coming through, with the
11 kind of deposits of this, you might not even
12 mind them. Now, that hasn't happened before,
13 but there is no reason why it couldn't happen.
14 This is one of the roads, and you're digging
15 down with that huge front-end loader down
16 three or four feet just to get the road open
17 again.
18 When Dan and I were there, it rained one
19 inch. It put water this high in two of the
20 bathrooms we went in, this high, one inch.
21 And closed four out of six river crossing, I
22 think. This is one of the bathrooms from not
23 the one-inch event, but one of those -- this
24 bathroom and two of the campgrounds are still
25 closed. We propose to leave them closed, and
.
77
1 that's going to be the issue because people
2 locally are going to be pressured. We need to
3 go back in and look at this.
4 You see where the waterline is on the
5 urinal and that door there. It's just
6 demoralizing to the staff to go back in and
7 put these things back together. You have wall
8 heaters and everything that are ruined
9 virtually every time the water comes into
10 this. If you've got wallboard in that, you're
11 just rotting it out. You've got to literally
12 pull the drains out and flush them because
13 they're packed solid with sand. I mean, so
14 you're just literally shut down. It happens
15 time and again.
16 So we need to go back in there and look
17 at Palo Duro. We've talked to local officials
18 there. We told them what our problems are,
19 and in some cases we're going to be bring them
20 down in there to look, but we've got to do
21 something different at Palo Duro, probably
22 someday move the campsites out of that area,
23 but certainly we're not going to open those
24 hazardous ones again for now.
25 And those are the three issues that I had
.
78
1 today.
2 MR. GRAHAM: Mr. Chairman, Members
3 of the Committee, I'm Gary Graham, director of
4 the wildlife division, and I'm accompanied up
5 here with Dr. Jerry Cooke, director of the
6 upland wildlife ecology program. And we're
7 going to discuss the proposals for the
8 wildlife division on regulation changes for
9 this upcoming year.
10 We also conduct scoping meetings whenever
11 there are issues that come up, and we had a
12 scoping meeting at the Canyon of the Eagles in
13 Burnet in mid-October, and fortunately,
14 Commissioners Watson and Armstrong were there,
15 and there were some very interesting issues
16 discusses there. And I would just summarize
17 to say they included inconsistencies in the
18 way we handle some of our deer permits,
19 included some communication issues that we're
20 going to address, and they included some of
21 the questions on the opening and closing dates
22 of the season.
23 And Dr. Cooke is going to address some of
24 those seasonality issues as well. Part of the
25 reason that he will do that is in response to
.
79
1 your request in April to address the opening
2 dates of the deer season in response to the
3 proposal that we had from the Doss Wildlife
4 Management Association. So with that intro,
5 I'll ask Jerry to present the wildlife
6 division presentation.
7 DR. COOKE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman
8 and Members. My name is Jerry Cooke, program
9 director for upland wildlife ecology in the
10 wildlife division. And as Gary pointed out,
11 my briefing is going to be twofold. Part is
12 going to be reviewing the opening and closing
13 dates for white-tailed deer on a statewide
14 basis, going from ecological region to
15 ecological region. And following that, we'll
16 deal with the biological and legal issues that
17 we'll be addressing with proposals in January.
18 In reviewing the opening/closing dates,
19 essentially there's one major biological
20 issue. Our definition of a buck deer is a
21 deer having a hardener antler protruding
22 through the skin. An antlerless deer is
23 otherwise. So the earliest possible opening
24 dates can't be before the shed of velvet if
25 you're going to have a buck hunt. And it
.
80
1 shouldn't be significantly longer beyond
2 antler cast for the same reason. Although,
3 harvest intensity is also an overriding factor
4 in these things.
5 In dealing with ecological regions, we're
6 only going to be addressing nine major
7 (inaudible) from this map. So all the area in
8 Edwards Plateau will be lumped together, South
9 Texas, et cetera.
10 In looking at population and harvest
11 figures, the graph on the top is the density
12 of white-tailed deer by ecological region
13 statewide based on our white-tailed deer
14 survey. The graph below is the hunter kill
15 per thousand acres by ecological region based
16 on our hunter survey. As you see, they're
17 essentially the same graph.
18 COMMISSIONER WATSON: Per thousand
19 acres.
20 DR. COOKE: Per thousand acres.
21 I'm sorry if I misspoke that. In looking at
22 hunter intensity, on the bottom graph, you'll
23 see that hunters in the Piny Woods spend more
24 time afield than any other ecological region
25 in Texas. And they're the highest hunter
.
81
1 density in the state is found in the gulf
2 prairies and marshes, which doesn't really
3 balance out with the way you normally think of
4 distribution of hunting in Texas. However,
5 this has ameliorated a great deal, and I'll
6 show you further along the importance of our
7 technical guidance program in effects.
8 For instance, the graph at the top is the
9 percentage of yearlings that are found in the
10 buck harvest. The gulf coast prairies and
11 marshes has among the smallest percentage of
12 yearlings in their harvest. And I think this
13 is also reflective of the fact that it has
14 probably the highest density of cooperative
15 landowner groups. The technical guidance
16 program in that district is highly
17 significant. And obviously, the education of
18 hunters and those landowners have a tremendous
19 impact on that harvest.
20 CHAIRMAN BASS: Jerry, what's the
21 significance of the percentage of yearlings in
22 the harvest?
23 DR. COOKE: It normally is
24 reflective of how heavily you're harvesting a
25 deer herd. If you, for instance, in the Piny
.
82
1 Woods, parts of the Pineywoods where you would
2 expect anywhere from 40 to 50 percent of the
3 buck harvest to be made up of yearlings, your
4 cropping in that population very, very, very
5 close. And it means that that population is
6 independent on the previous year's fawn crop
7 to even have a hunt. And you're getting
8 pretty dangerously close to the opportunity of
9 passing that statutory definition of
10 depletion.
11 So when you have a very small percentage
12 of yearlings in the harvest, then you're
13 harvesting mature animals, and you have a good
14 stable age structure from it.
15 CHAIRMAN BASS: Using it as an
16 indicator.
17 DR. COOKE: As an indicator only of
18 harvest intensity. It's one of our criteria
19 for choosing a one-buck limit in a county.
20 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: How much
21 sampling do we do to get these numbers?
22 DR. COOKE: We do age structure
23 collections annually, not in every county, but
24 we do that annually. And we do a lot of
25 antler measurements along with that. We don't
.
83
1 take weights every year. We normally do body
2 weights every three to five years depending.
3 And it's kind of a staggered arrangement, but
4 a lot. For instance, in a group of counties,
5 you may take as many as a hundred ages to
6 stabilize a sample. That's what we kind of
7 aim for.
8 This graph is from the Kerry deer pens to
9 illustrate a relationship that's pretty
10 important in the ultimate performance of buck
11 deer. While these animals were grouped by the
12 number of points that they had as yearlings,
13 they could have as easily been grouped by
14 their weights. The most important part about
15 this graph is to show that these categories
16 stayed distinct. All the significant change
17 in those animals' weights and growth occur in
18 the first 18 months of their life. And so the
19 population relationship to habitat then is
20 very critical to the ultimate performance of
21 that buck herd.
22 This data is supported by other data
23 sets, as well, but this is a pen set that was
24 readily available.
25 That map is a distribution of entries for
.
84
1 Texas big game awards in 1998. Obviously the
2 darker counties are in South Texas, but there
3 are a good distribution of entries statewide.
4 In fact, it's considerably better distributed
5 than that. We get the game award entries from
6 throughout the white-tailed deer range.
7 Basically, where populations and habitats
8 are drawn together in a good relationship
9 quality animals result. And I wanted to give
10 you have that background on harvest and
11 populations before we go into the next segment
12 which is going to be dealing with breeding
13 dates as they relate to the season openers.
14 In each of these graphs, the numbers are very
15 small on the bottom, so I added three lines to
16 give you a gauge for interpreting these
17 breeding dates.
18 The yellow line is the opening of the
19 archery season in each ecological region. The
20 white line is the opening of the general
21 season. And the red line is the close of the
22 general season. So you can see the
23 relationship of breeding to these dates.
24 The earliest breeding in Texas takes
25 place in the gulf prairies and marshes where I
.
85
1 discussed earlier that our technical guidance
2 program has been very effective at
3 ameliorating harvest.
4 The two different curves represent the
5 two different portions, the Northern and the
6 Southern portion. And you'll see these
7 throughout these ecological regions. They
8 were clustered based on the behavior of these
9 animals as we studied them.
10 The next in the consequence of breeding
11 chronologies is in the Post Oak Prairie --
12 excuse me -- the Post Oak Savanna where 8
13 percent of our Texas big game awards animals
14 come from. In looking at yearling weights
15 through time, we have seen an increase in
16 yearling weights through time, showing an
17 improved relationship between habitats and
18 populations.
19 The Edwards Plateau that shows the
20 gradient here between the eastern and the
21 western plateau is the next earliest breeding
22 dates. Almost throughout our data yearling,
23 buck weights are flat. They're stable about
24 70 to 74 pounds. Almost no change through
25 time, which shows that essentially we're in a
.
86
1 very overpopulated condition there and have
2 been for a very long time.
3 In the Pineywoods, which is the next in
4 the sequence, 16 percent of Texas big game
5 award entries come from this ecological
6 region. And it has shown also, though
7 somewhat cyclic, an increase in yearling
8 weights. I use these three to show that while
9 some are earlier and some are later, basically
10 the relationship is population to habitat.
11 And it's even clearer in looking at the last
12 one of these graphs.
13 This shows South Texas which has the
14 latest breeding season in Texas. A
15 significant fraction of the overall hunt --
16 hunt in those counties take place before
17 significant breeding takes place. And despite
18 the fact that we have a higher minimum Boone
19 and Crockett score for entry, entries from
20 this area represent over 32 percent of big
21 game awards annually.
22 So in summary, the major points of our
23 evaluation is this: Over half of Texas has a
24 one-buck limit. We have that -- that limit
25 because of the intensity of harvest on those
.
87
1 populations, and changing the season length
2 could influence that in terms of increasing
3 harvest. We would be concerned about that.
4 We have an MLD program that allows us to be
5 flexible on properties where good management
6 is occurring, and greater flexibility is
7 required. Extending season later with a later
8 closing date, where you're shifting
9 significant harvest later in the season is
10 going to be confounded by antler cast. You'll
11 have buck deer taken that were intended to be
12 taken as antlerless deer.
13 No place that we have evaluated in Texas
14 has the opening date had an influence over
15 animal performance. And based on the biology
16 and population dynamics that we've evaluated,
17 we have no real recommendation for changing
18 opening or closing dates anywhere in Texas.
19 So before I move on to the specific proposals
20 that we'll be working toward January, do you
21 have any questions over this part of the
22 briefing?
23 CHAIRMAN BASS: Jerry, tell me
24 again the purpose of going through this
25 exercise and how it relates to the meeting or
.
88
1 by the lands advisory committee.
2 DR. COOKE: The -- there was some
3 concern amongst people, particularly the Doss
4 Wildlife Management Association who wanted to
5 ship their season later, because they were
6 concerned that large deer were being taken in
7 the hunt before they had an opportunity to
8 breed, and they felt that this could have a
9 significant genetic impact on the overall
10 populations performance. That was their
11 concern behind their proposal earlier.
12 We feel that there are other factors that
13 may be involved in performance of deer, and
14 it's basically habitat population related. So
15 rather than look at only those few counties
16 that were involved in that proposal, we
17 thought it would be easier for the Commission
18 to understand if we placed it in a statewide
19 context. And by showing that there are
20 earlier breeding dates, there are much later
21 breeding dates, the relationship that they
22 felt was part of their concern isn't reflected
23 anywhere else in this state in the way that
24 they indicated. So basically what we wanted
25 to bring to you is a discussion of that
.
89
1 argument a little more complete than you
2 normally would hear in a hearing setting with
3 people walking to the mic.
4 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: It wasn't
5 reflected in their area either. Correct?
6 DR. COOKE: Correct.
7 CHAIRMAN BASS: Thank you.
8 DR. COOKE: Thank you, sir. I
9 would like to move now to some of the
10 proposals that our staff are working on.
11 CHAIRMAN BASS: Just so I'm sure I
12 understand, basically what you're illustrating
13 here does not relate to the issues that
14 Dr. Graham was referring to that came out of
15 the meeting.
16 DR. COOKE: Of the MLD?
17 CHAIRMAN BASS: Right.
18 DR. COOKE: No, not at all.
19 MR. GRAHAM: This was just in
20 response to your request in April to follow it
21 up.
22 CHAIRMAN BASS: Thank you.
23 DR. COOKE: Thank you.
24 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Excuse me.
25 Do we communicate that information back to
.
90
1 those people in the Doss area specifically?
2 DR. COOKE: Routinely.
3 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Without any
4 difficulty.
5 DR. COOKE: In fact, Commissioner
6 Watson was available and met with a group of
7 them in Chairman Turner's office to discuss
8 these issues. And we essentially covered the
9 same points, but not at this detail.
10 MR. GRAHAM: We do have a formal
11 request from Representative Turner to
12 re-examine that issue on behalf of -- he's
13 requesting that on behalf of the Doss Wildlife
14 Management Association.
15 DR. COOKE: Which I will get to in
16 more detail in just a minute. The first
17 proposal that our staff is bringing forward is
18 to add eight new counties to the Eastern wild
19 turkey spring season. This counties would be
20 Kent, Franklin, Hunt, Morris, Panola, Rains,
21 Shelby and Titus Counties. They're the yellow
22 counties on the map, and the map is intended
23 to show the relationship to the currently open
24 counties. This would be a standard season as
25 we have in all the other counties in East
.
91
1 Texas.
2 We propose four doe days for three more
3 counties, which would extend that compartment
4 to the north. They would be Cass, Marion and
5 Harrison Counties. The four doe days would
6 open on Thanksgiving day and close the
7 following Sunday.
8 In the southeastern portion of the
9 Pineywoods, we have a compartment that allows
10 23 doe days. Depending on the year, that
11 doesn't always include Thanksgiving holidays.
12 So to clarify our intent here, we would
13 like -- rather than say 23 consecutive days,
14 simply say we close on the Sunday following
15 Thanksgiving from beginning on the opening
16 day. And we would also like the add three
17 counties to that compartment, which would be
18 San Jacinto, Trinity and Walker Counties.
19 There would be no other change in the season
20 or bag limit.
21 In those original 11 counties that had
22 the 23 doe days, our staff would recommend
23 that we allow a muzzleloader season, special
24 muzzleloader season as it is elsewhere in the
25 state, which would be for nine consecutive
.
92
1 days following the closing of the general
2 season, and it would have the same bag limit
3 as is elsewhere in those counties.
4 We also had during our scoping process a
5 question about including some of the counties
6 in the Northern Edwards Plateau that are
7 either sex counties, possibly extending the
8 muzzleloader season of that. We're going to
9 be reviewing that and seeing if that's
10 appropriate in those counties.
11 CHAIRMAN BASS: Explain to me how
12 that bag limit works in relation to the bag
13 limit of the general season.
14 DR. COOKE: It's the same. In
15 other words, if you have two bucks and two
16 does allowed in a county during that
17 muzzleloader season, they could take two
18 antlerless deer and two spikes. So basically
19 it's the same as the bag limit in the county
20 except the only bucks that could be taken were
21 spike deer.
22 CHAIRMAN BASS: So it --
23 DR. COOKE: And if you recall, the
24 reason we included spikes in that is it's
25 almost impossible to have an antlerless only
.
93
1 hunt and not take some spikes. So it's not
2 necessary to encourage the harvest of those
3 buck, but to allow them to be used if they are
4 taken.
5 Some other issues that's come up through
6 our scoping process, as you probably know from
7 your mail and certainly from my mail, there
8 remains some very strong feelings about
9 drawlock devices among archers and the concern
10 over the possibility of allowing crossbows
11 during their archery-only season. We have no
12 proposal at this time, but it's again to alert
13 you of that issue that it has been ongoing.
14 We have a very recent issue that has
15 come --
16 CHAIRMAN BASS: Pardon me. In that
17 regard, is there an active effort by -- to
18 allow crossbows in the archery-only season, or
19 only a fear of traditionalists that will be
20 allowed.
21 DR. COOKE: Fear, is my sense of
22 it.
23 CHAIRMAN BASS: There's not a group
24 out there at this point lobbying for further
25 liberalization?
.
94
1 DR. COOKE: Not that I'm aware of.
2 Not that I'm aware of.
3 CHAIRMAN BASS: But there is a
4 group lobbying to repeal what we did last
5 year.
6 DR. COOKE: Yes. A very recent
7 issue that has come up is the request to
8 consider Edwards Plateau counties for the
9 South Texas season and bag, which would be a
10 five-deer bag, no more than three bucks. As I
11 said, it's been a very recent issue. We have
12 not fully explored this at all, and we had not
13 identified specific counties that this would
14 be considered, but if you don't object, we'll
15 be working toward the possibility of including
16 some of those counties in the January
17 proposal.
18 In Dimmit, Uvalde, and Zavala Counties,
19 the state owned riverbeds are closed for the
20 hunting of game animals, game birds and fur
21 bearers. All those rivers, as they extend
22 further to the coast and those counties are
23 closed statutorily as sanctuaries. The
24 original closure of these riverbeds was in
25 response to a depleted Rio Grande turkey
.
95
1 resource. And at that time, closing off of
2 all of those different forms of hunting was
3 thought necessary to protect that Rio Grande
4 resource.
5 We do not feel at this time that we have
6 the biological justification to maintain that
7 closure, particularly since it has been
8 statutorily addressed in other counties. And
9 that may be the more appropriate way for
10 dealing with this. So we will be proposing to
11 delete that closure and reopen that season on
12 those river bottoms, unless you have an
13 objection to that.
14 CHAIRMAN BASS: So to the west or
15 upstream, the river bottoms are open?
16 DR. COOKE: No. They essentially
17 start in those counties. Those are the
18 headwaters of those rivers.
19 CHAIRMAN BASS: But downstream from
20 those counties they are closed by statute.
21 DR. COOKE: Yes, exactly.
22 Beginning in LaSalle County, it's a sanctuary
23 all the way to the gulf.
24 CHAIRMAN BASS: Basically we're
25 talking about Nueces, is that what we're
.
96
1 talking --
2 DR. COOKE: Nueces and Frio,
3 primarily those.
4 CHAIRMAN BASS: By -- if we were to
5 eliminate the closure, are we going to open an
6 issue of public hunting corridors through
7 private lands?
8 DR. COOKE: Yes. And that was
9 basically the cause of the depletion of the
10 Rio Grande resource initially.
11 CHAIRMAN BASS: Is that also the
12 cause of the statutory closing down the
13 stream?
14 DR. COOKE: Probably. Possibly, if
15 not probably.
16 COMMISSIONER RYAN: How long has
17 that been in effect?
18 DR. COOKE: Since the late '60s.
19 CHAIRMAN BASS: Who is asking us to
20 do this?
21 DR. COOKE: We're asking ourselves
22 to do this because basically our authority as
23 a department and as a Commission is to be
24 based on resource issues. And when we -- and
25 we're specifically obligated to prevent
.
97
1 depletion or waste. If there's a resource
2 available and the harvest of it would be
3 appropriate for that population, then we
4 should be considering making that available.
5 Particularly since this is a sunset cycle, if
6 it is going to be a statutory issue, it would
7 be appropriate to be pointed out as such.
8 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Currently do
9 adjoining landowners know that it's closed and
10 are they by practice not violating that
11 closure?
12 DR. COOKE: Yes.
13 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Have you got
14 any feedback from the private landowners about
15 opening this?
16 DR. COOKE: No. We're discussing
17 it with you now.
18 CHAIRMAN BASS: They're discussing
19 it with us before --
20 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Well, I
21 thought maybe somebody had --
22 DR. COOKE: As a basic rule, while
23 we talk generally about possibilities of
24 change, we don't talk about specific changes
25 until the Commission gives us permission to
.
98
1 publish.
2 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: I understand
3 that. I thought perhaps somebody had brought
4 it up to you, or --
5 DR. COOKE: It's basically an
6 internal issue. Our legal staff and our own
7 staff have brought up the concern because it's
8 our obligation to point out to you issues that
9 could lose if it were ever brought to court.
10 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: What you're
11 saying is that if somebody went in there and
12 violated the law, they could challenge the law
13 or the rule.
14 DR. COOKE: Yes. And it has been
15 in the past on a number of occasions.
16 MR. SANSOM: You just can't hunt
17 there.
18 DR. COOKE: You can actually -- you
19 can drive those river bottoms and fish. It's
20 open to fishing and there are fishing holes
21 along that, but essentially any form of
22 hunting has been excluded, including dove
23 hunting, squirrel hunting, whatever.
24 COMMISSIONER RYAN: But if we
25 change this, it will be open where there's no
.
99
1 trespass laws problem, there's no hunting
2 problems, restrictions.
3 DR. COOKE: I'm not sure I
4 understand your question.
5 COMMISSIONER RYAN: Right now
6 there's no trespass restrictions there if they
7 travel the riverbed.
8 DR. COOKE: That's correct.
9 COMMISSIONER RYAN: Then what
10 you're saying is then they would be allowed to
11 hunt in there, too.
12 DR. COOKE: Hunt in there as well,
13 correct.
14 COMMISSIONER RYAN: And that would
15 be defined by what the natural riverbank is?
16 DR. COOKE: Well, the definition of
17 state owned riverbed varies from river to
18 river. And I would hesitate to really
19 specifically go into it. I think in this
20 particular, it's cutbank to cutbank.
21 CHAIRMAN BASS: There are some
22 places that's somewhat of an enforcement
23 problem in that if somebody come out of a
24 creek or a riverbed with a game animal if it's
25 open, they can always say, I killed it in a
.
100
1 riverbed. If it's closed, whether they killed
2 it in a riverbed or used the riverbed as that
3 conduit and poach, so to speak, that's
4 irrelevant because they're breaking -- it's an
5 illegal --
6 COMMISSIONER RYAN: The game laws.
7 CHAIRMAN BASS: Breaking the game
8 law no matter where they do it.
9 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: I want to be
10 sure I understand. We're talking about
11 allowing hunting on state owned riverbeds,
12 which by legal definition is cutbank to
13 cutbank, or whatever it is for each river.
14 Currently people are allowed with a valid
15 fishing license to go up the river and fish,
16 you know, to be on private property, your own
17 private property over there or whatever, no
18 problem, you mind your business, you can fish.
19 That same person can now take a rifle along
20 with his fishing poles and fish that or hunt
21 those riverbeds.
22 DR. COOKE: That's correct.
23 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: He can do
24 that in any other stream bed in the state now.
25 DR. COOKE: That's correct. This
.
101
1 is basically the only state owned -- that's
2 the real issue.
3 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: That's the
4 point right there.
5 DR. COOKE: The real issue is that
6 this is the only state owned riverbeds in the
7 state of Texas that is -- that has -- that is
8 closed that has not been closed statutorily.
9 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: So whether
10 it's a good idea or not, it's an exception
11 that needs to be changed.
12 COMMISSIONER RYAN: You're talking
13 about two rivers.
14 DR. COOKE: Well, basically three
15 rivers. Two Nueces and one Frio.
16 COMMISSIONER AVILA: Well, that
17 question becomes where it's not closed in
18 other parts of the state, do people actually
19 go out and do that, i.e., hunt on private
20 property?
21 COMMISSIONER WATSON: They do.
22 DR. COOKE: Well, hunting on
23 private property is a trespass issue, and you
24 can't confuse that.
25 (Simultaneous discussion.)
.
102
1 COMMISSIONER AVILA: But you know
2 what I'm saying. They are hunting on private
3 property.
4 DR. COOKE: Yes, I do.
5 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: It's a big
6 issue in the Panhandle.
7 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: They're
8 hunting on state property that intersects with
9 the private property. The distinction is
10 whether there's a biological basis for that.
11 We don't have the authority here to decide
12 that it's not a good idea.
13 MR. SANSOM: The issue of the
14 authority relates to the fact that when this
15 area was closed, as Dr. Cooke said in the
16 beginning, the issue of the resource was an
17 issue with Rio Grande turkey. Our authority
18 becomes far less clear when there is no
19 resource issue.
20 DR. COOKE: Thank you. Correct.
21 MR. SANSOM: Your welcome.
22 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: So do you
23 need some -- do we need to do something with
24 that motion, or we just don't object to it or
25 what?
.
103
1 MR. SANSOM: Well, what he's asking
2 you to do is to reflect on whether or not you
3 want this to go out as an issue for the
4 public. He is proposing to go out and hold
5 public hearings and provide -- you know,
6 provide the public with the opportunity to
7 comment on taking this closure and removing it
8 because there is no longer any biological
9 justification for doing it.
10 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: We can expect
11 to hear a lot of controversy.
12 MR. SANSOM: It will be
13 controversial.
14 DR. COOKE: It will be
15 controversial.
16 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: But that's no
17 reason to avoid doing it.
18 CHAIRMAN BASS: And I guess to
19 follow his point Dr. Cooke raises is that
20 these are the only riverbeds that are closed
21 by our authority as opposed to closed by
22 legislative authority.
23 DR. COOKE: Correct.
24 CHAIRMAN BASS: If this does
25 generate discussion and controversy amongst
.
104
1 the public, it will be done so in the context
2 of the department's sunset and perhaps our
3 authority or the legislative's -- legislative
4 directive might be further delineated,
5 refined, directed, et cetera.
6 DR. COOKE: Essentially the
7 legislature could either not act, close it by
8 statute as a sanctuary or provide the
9 Commission with authority to maintain the
10 closure.
11 CHAIRMAN BASS: Maintain it here
12 and elsewhere without -- with due to concerns
13 other than Rio Grande turkey.
14 COMMISSIONER RYAN: If we don't do
15 anything, just leave it as it is, what's the
16 chances of it coming up in sunset?
17 MR. SANSOM: It's not an issue of
18 coming up in sunset. It's an issue of whether
19 or not someone might challenge it from a legal
20 standpoint.
21 COMMISSIONER RYAN: Why would
22 somebody challenge it at this point in time
23 and they haven't since the '60s?
24 MR. SANSOM: I mean, that's a good
25 question.
.
105
1 DR. COOKE: They have twice. They
2 have twice since the '60s. One in district
3 court and one in county court.
4 COMMISSIONER RYAN: What years were
5 those, do you know?
6 DR. COOKE: I'm sorry. I would
7 have to look the years up.
8 COMMISSIONER RYAN: Are they
9 recent?
10 DR. COOKE: We essentially won the
11 district issue at the time because it was
12 immediately after closure and we had resource
13 support for it. The late other one was a
14 county court issue and we lost essentially
15 that one calling into question if you're
16 allowing hunting on both sides of the river,
17 why would you close it in the middle, you
18 know. So the farther away you get from the
19 resource issue, the higher the probability of
20 losing it, and if you lose it, you could lose
21 that section of the proclamation.
22 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: Well, but I
23 don't think that it's an issue of whether
24 we're concerned if somebody else is going to
25 challenge our authority. I think we need to
.
106
1 be comfortable that we're appropriately
2 exercising these rights (inaudible).
3 DR. COOKE: Which is why we bring
4 up the issue.
5 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: This is kind
6 of -- the river bottom usage is a battle all
7 over the country. In several of the western
8 states are changing their laws to fit the way
9 our law is.
10 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: But it is
11 within the purview of the legislature and
12 not --
13 (Simultaneous discussion.)
14 DR. COOKE: Correct.
15 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: I think we
16 should pursue it even though it's going to be
17 uncomfortable.
18 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: I agree.
19 DR. COOKE: Similarly, in Henderson
20 County, we have an area that's marked by the
21 black line, and inside of that little
22 compartment, hunting is only allowed by
23 shotgun and archery equipment only. And the
24 origins of this restriction vanishes into the
25 mist of time because we really have no real
.
107
1 understanding why this came about or what
2 support it was. If in fact it was for safety
3 issues, that is more appropriate for the
4 Commission's Court of that county to address,
5 which is covered in the local government code.
6 We know of no resource issues for this
7 closure. So similarly, we would propose to
8 delete that to allow to be addressed by the
9 more appropriate authorities.
10 CHAIRMAN BASS: You may find out
11 for us where --
12 (Simultaneous discussion.)
13 DR. COOKE: I can almost guarantee
14 you we'll find out where it came from.
15 COMMISSIONER AVILA: If we're going
16 to do the other one, we might as well do that
17 one, too, right?
18 DR. COOKE: As Gary pointed out, we
19 bring this last issue back to you at the
20 request of Chairman Turner, and it's the Doss
21 Wildlife Management Association's request to
22 shift its season essentially a week or so from
23 the first Saturday in November to the Saturday
24 nearest November the 15th. This was in the
25 last regulatory cycle, and at the time your
.
108
1 ruling essentially was it represented an
2 unnecessary restriction on the flexibility of
3 private landowners. And of more concern was
4 the fact that less than one percent of the
5 effected landowners commented, and of those
6 who commented, the opinion of absolutely
7 divided 50/50.
8 CHAIRMAN BASS: Okay. Now, on that
9 one I go back to my opinion that the reason
10 for a management coop such as the Doss is so
11 that they can unify and on their own take
12 positions that are within the framework we
13 give them, but if they want to be more -- be
14 less restrictive, or excuse me, more
15 restrictive they can. They certainly -- the
16 Doss can open early.
17 COMMISSIONER WATSON: Are you going
18 to recommend this?
19 DR. COOKE: No. As I said -- well,
20 let me nail my last slide here. My last slide
21 essentially is this: These are the issues
22 that we have seen and heard that we are asking
23 your advise on working toward in January. If
24 there are other issues that you have heard of
25 that we have not, that you would like for us
.
109
1 to work toward in January, than we shall. If
2 there is any of these that we've brought
3 before you now that you do not want us to
4 pursue, now would be a very good time for you
5 to tell us that.
6 COMMISSIONER WATSON: Well, you
7 know, I've had obviously a little more
8 exposure to this, this specific thing than
9 some other people may have had, and I agree
10 with the Chairman. You know, I just don't
11 think we ought to go and start cutting up
12 different parts of the state just because, you
13 know, a coop thinks that they want us to set
14 the rules that they ought to be setting for
15 their own members. If they can't -- if they
16 can't police their own membership, you know, I
17 don't think we ought to have to do it for
18 them.
19 DR. COOKE: I think in our earlier
20 guidance from the Commission was this: If a
21 county or group of counties wish to do
22 something experimental with their seasons that
23 has very broad support, then certainly that
24 would be appropriate. This particular one
25 wouldn't really qualify in that respect.
.
110
1 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: One
2 flexibility they don't have with the current
3 regulations is to go a week later in the
4 season to make up for what they cut off the
5 front end. Is that right?
6 DR. COOKE: Well, they do through
7 the MLD program, but basically not other than
8 that. And they also have a muzzleloader
9 season in those counties. Again, as I said --
10 CHAIRMAN BASS: And they're also
11 getting into antlers are off if they're --
12 DR. COOKE: Right. Exactly.
13 CHAIRMAN BASS: In that area, I
14 understand antlers do drop about the time of
15 the regular season.
16 DR. COOKE: If you have a very dry
17 year, they can drop as early as Christmas. I
18 have seen that. But routinely, normally
19 they'll maintain them pretty well through the
20 end of the season.
21 CHAIRMAN BASS: Like maybe this
22 year.
23 DR. COOKE: This year comes to
24 mind. But as I said, the meeting that
25 Commissioner Watson was with us at, we assured
.
111
1 Chairman Turner that we would bring this back
2 before you. Two of these counties are in his
3 district. We've done so and await your
4 instruction.
5 CHAIRMAN BASS: All right. And I
6 would think, unless there's further comment
7 from the Commission, the sentiment is to stick
8 with the position that we took in our last
9 regulatory cycle concerning the Doss request,
10 which is to deny it.
11 DR. COOKE: Thank you.
12 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: Mr.
13 Chairman, I thought that they were very
14 powerful in their appeal to the Commission
15 when they were here, and I appreciated their
16 preparation. But the way it came out after
17 listening to them, they simply had not built
18 the base of support that I think was necessary
19 for us to make the change like this. And when
20 I see something split 50/50 like that, and you
21 have a, you know, a populous here that well
22 knows how to communicate their feelings on
23 something like that, I think you should leave
24 it alone. If they really are -- continue to
25 be committed to this course of action, I would
.
112
1 urge that you respond to them that the
2 Commission would have to see a lot more
3 support for that, at least this commissioner
4 would than what we saw in the last go around.
5 CHAIRMAN BASS: Chairman concurs.
6 Well put. Okay.
7 MR. GRAHAM: Do we have specific
8 directions to go forward with all those
9 proposals, excluding the Doss proposal?
10 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: The archery
11 one?
12 MR. GRAHAM: That was not a
13 specific proposal.
14 CHAIRMAN BASS: The archery one was
15 just to notify us that there is still
16 discussion and controversy in that realm, but
17 no proposed changed.
18 MR. GRAHAM: Right.
19 CHAIRMAN BASS: But you are going
20 to -- some more considering expansion of the
21 South Texas deer regs to portions of the
22 Edwards Plateau, the riverbed issue we talked
23 about, Henderson County we talked about going
24 forward with as well, the Doss, we, I think,
25 would like to not go forward with until such
.
113
1 time in the future that there is substantially
2 more widespread public support demonstrated
3 for us to consider that. So as we would say,
4 the ball is in their court on that one, not
5 ours.
6 Anything else you seek guidance on?
7 DR. COOKE: No. I think the
8 others -- the others are basically biological
9 issues, and we pretty well worked those, but
10 we will complete them for January.
11 CHAIRMAN BASS: Okay. I assume
12 that you're going to keep your seat and do the
13 scientific breeder regs for us.
14 DR. COOKE: I guess I could.
15 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: Mr.
16 Chairman, the slides organized this way in the
17 notebook were enormously helpful on this
18 presentation because I can't see some of that
19 stuff up on the screens, and also we can make
20 notes on it. It's really helpful and we
21 appreciate it.
22 CHAIRMAN BASS: I think (inaudible)
23 good format we appreciate it. It saves me
24 having to ask the magic egg to go backtrack
25 when there's something that neglected to --
.
114
1 AGENDA ITEM NO. 3: ACTION - SCIENTIFIC
2 BREEDER REGULATIONS.
3 MR. GRAHAM: With respect to the
4 next presentation, the scientific breeder, as
5 I said before, we take the opportunity to go
6 through a scoping type of process whenever
7 some issue emerges. And this one is a good
8 example of how successful that process can be
9 because Jerry and David Sinclair and law
10 enforcement visited with some of these folks
11 who were concerned about how the scientific
12 breeder process is working. And through those
13 meetings, we were able to develop these
14 recommendations that have had by end from the
15 effected constituents.
16 DR. COOKE: Specifically, besides
17 the scoping meetings that we had, after our
18 meeting in August when you approved
19 publication of these proposals, we mailed a
20 copy of the proposal to every single permit
21 holder in the state. So we got the broadest
22 possible response from that group.
23 Basically, as I mentioned before, we have
24 about 275 facilities distributed pretty well
25 throughout the deer range in Texas. And our
.
115
1 proposals are fairly straightforward. We
2 would propose an alternative marking method to
3 the unique number as we have been previously
4 issuing them. Again, this is at their
5 request, those who wish to continue with our
6 unique number, certainly can.
7 We would defer tattooing until the
8 animals are actually leaving the facility.
9 This would minimize the handling of animals
10 and would address the welfare concerns for
11 those animals. And we would delay the
12 requirement that all deer in the pen be ear
13 tagged with a statutory required ear tag until
14 March the 1st, which is just before reporting
15 time.
16 On the purchase and transport permits, we
17 would rescind the requirement for a fax return
18 before the permit is activated. We would
19 allow the permits to remain valid until they
20 are actually used instead of lapsing and
21 essentially going out of effect with the
22 scientific breeder permit cycle. And we would
23 allow a amendments either before transport or
24 after actual delivery, as long as they report
25 it back to us within 48 hours by fax.
.
116
1 We would also clarify based on some of
2 the comments that we've had some of the
3 language about when ear tags have to be
4 changed. I think that really should be up to
5 the two breeders to decide. Also to clarify
6 the requirement for both the seller and the
7 receiver to sign the permit. It just needs to
8 be in their files, not necessarily before the
9 transaction takes place.
10 There were some concern about requiring
11 the exact number of fawns to be reported
12 November 1, primarily because some of these
13 pen facilities are solid brush. But I think
14 after discussing with law enforcement, we can
15 use reasonable enforcement approaches to this.
16 If they report 40 deer November 1 and they got
17 80 deer later, that could be a problem. A
18 few, one way or another shouldn't matter.
19 Also, to allow the temporary transfer of
20 adult animals between breeding facilities for
21 breeding purposed or fawns between facilities
22 or to a nonfacility for nursing purposes and
23 allow these transfers to take place based on a
24 receipt system rather than an actual transfer
25 of ownership.
.
117
1 There was some concern about the
2 requirement to marking vehicles and trailers
3 where deer are possessed during transport.
4 One compromise that was offered by one of the
5 breeders themselves is instead of using an
6 arbitrary letter designation like TDB, which
7 we had in our proposal, why not just put their
8 TX number which their permit number on it.
9 That way a warden could check it on the fly to
10 see if the permits were in place and avoid
11 stopping the individuals that were certainly
12 complying in every other way with the law.
13 And we would propose that amendment to the
14 proposal, that instead of using an arbitrary
15 designation of letters to use the actual TX
16 number of whoever is transporting the animals.
17 By policy, we would be inspecting
18 facilities and records at reasonable times.
19 And we're also, just as a matter of
20 information to you, we're going to be
21 reviewing all of our form that's used in
22 reporting this program because there's
23 significant ways we can simplify those and
24 still have the enforceability that we require.
25 This is the suggested motion that would
.
118
1 be required tomorrow. At this time we're
2 asking this committee to forward this proposal
3 to the full Commission for consideration and
4 adoption tomorrow. Sir?
5 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: What kind of
6 expense do you see from the department to
7 administer all this stuff? I mean, is this
8 something you've got a handle on yet, or is it
9 too soon? And I don't mean the things you're
10 talking about changing but the overall
11 program.
12 DR. COOKE: The overall program,
13 basically --
14 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: I guess the
15 question --
16 DR. COOKE: This may be available
17 for consent agenda, also. I'm sorry.
18 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: The question
19 would be really are the fees in line with what
20 it's costing?
21 DR. COOKE: I believe that are,
22 sir. We have a permit fee which is an
23 application fee for the permit itself.
24 There's a $25 fee for purchase permits, a $25
25 fee for transport permits. These fees
.
119
1 essentially, just the increase alone for the
2 purchase and transport permits essentially
3 funds our database of the entire system. And
4 the other permit fees are essentially used by
5 law enforcement for inspections of themselves.
6 I don't have a good handle on what the law
7 enforcement cost of that would be.
8 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Even these
9 simplifications are pretty complicated.
10 DR. COOKE: No. I understand it
11 from -- and Mr. Sansom and I have discussed
12 this. At times it seems like at times there
13 are fine tweaks, and they are fine tweaks to a
14 certain extent. The breeders understand their
15 program very well and so do our law
16 enforcement entities. And these are
17 essentially allowing these people to do
18 business in a better way which is a better
19 welfare issue for the animals that are
20 involved while law enforcement still maintains
21 their enforceability of our only real concern
22 of these are breeder deer and these are wild
23 deer but they just look a lot alike.
24 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: What kind of
25 violation rate do we have so far?
.
120
1 DR. COOKE: If David Sinclair is
2 here.
3 MR. SINCLAIR: I'm David Sinclair
4 with the law enforcement division. There
5 haven't been that many cases. Several
6 investigations, but I guess over the last 13
7 months, there has only been three cases filed.
8 And those are still pending. Well, the most
9 recent I think has been disposed of and it
10 involved (inaudible) where deer where brought
11 out of Oklahoma illegally and went to the
12 state court and I think it's been handled by
13 now.
14 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: I guess one
15 other question. What are we going to do with
16 all the data that we're getting from these
17 facilities?
18 DR. COOKE: We do very little with
19 it, to be very frank with you. As far as
20 applicability to some of the kinds of research
21 that we do, it would be minimal importance in
22 that respect. Basically the permit exists
23 because of a statutory allowing of the permit
24 to allow these kinds of activities to take
25 place which date way back into the '30s as far
.
121
1 as game breeders were concerned.
2 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: How would it
3 effect the enforcement aspects of it if some
4 of the reporting aspects were changed or
5 eliminated? I mean, is that -- it seems to me
6 like a lot of data that I'm just wondering
7 what the purpose of collecting it is.
8 DR. COOKE: The main purpose of
9 collecting the information from them is to
10 identify when animals have been trapped in the
11 wild and brought into those facilities, which
12 is a specific prohibition of the statutes
13 themselves. And that's the main concern.
14 I've said it before that if every single
15 deer in every breeder facility in the state of
16 Texas were turned loose tomorrow, it would not
17 be a resource issue in this state. So
18 essentially we're following --
19 MR. SANSOM: Unless they all for
20 some reason perished tomorrow, it would not.
21 DR. COOKE: It would not make any
22 difference. So basically what we're doing
23 here is trying to follow our statutory
24 obligation of keeping the wild deer wild, and
25 wild --
.
122
1 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Because it's
2 really a law enforcement almost entirely.
3 DR. COOKE: Exactly.
4 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: I move
5 approval of the recommendation to be carried
6 to tomorrow's meeting.
7 CHAIRMAN BASS: Motion for approval
8 to put it on the consent agenda for tomorrow.
9 Second?
10 COMMISSIONER RYAN: Second.
11 CHAIRMAN BASS: All in favor? Any
12 opposed? Thank you.
13 (Motion passed unanimously.)
14 AGENDA ITEM NO. 4: BRIEFING - COMMERCIAL
15 NONGAME PERMITS.
16 CHAIRMAN BASS: Okay. Our last
17 item is a briefing on commercial nongame
18 permits.
19 MR. HERRON: Thank you. My name is
20 John Herron. I'm the program director for the
21 wildlife diversity program. And we will now
22 seamlessly transition from deer breeding into
23 nongame breeding and sale. I'm pleased to be
24 here to brief the Commission. And what we'll
25 be doing is giving you a follow-up on the
.
123
1 nongame permitting regulations that the
2 Commission passed last year. At that time
3 when we passed these regulations, the
4 Commission requested that staff provide y'all
5 with an update about one year after those
6 regulations became in effect, and that's why
7 we're here today.
8 Just to quickly review what the
9 requirements of those permitting regulations
10 are, when we created these regulations, we
11 made it applicable to a list of about 200
12 nongame species, species that we knew were
13 already in commercial trade. So this does not
14 apply to all species. But in short, basically
15 anybody who sells any one of those listed
16 species who possesses more than ten specimens
17 of a species or who possesses 25 or more in
18 aggregate must have this new permit, one of
19 two different permits, and must also file an
20 annual report with the department.
21 The regulation itself was approved by the
22 Commission in June and became effective
23 January 1st of this year which allowed staff
24 some time to get the brand new permitting
25 system implemented. At the same time, at the
.
124
1 Commission's request, we created a nongame
2 permit regulation advisory committee made up
3 of effected participants to help us implement
4 the procedures as well as reporting
5 requirements. With this regulation becoming
6 effective January 1st, permits have been
7 available from all TPWD offices since then and
8 since late February from all vendors in the
9 state. Those are collection permits. Dealer
10 permits can only be acquired by applying
11 directory to the department, but the
12 collection permits can be bought through any
13 he point-of-sale vendor.
14 When we presented this to the Commission,
15 these were the results we told you we were
16 expecting, and I'm pleased to say that in our
17 implementation here things seem to be
18 functioning quite well, and we believe we are
19 realizing these benefits. Most importantly
20 our concern was to get a database to get a
21 better understanding of what the extent of
22 commercial use was of these nongame species.
23 And I'll be covering some of those preliminary
24 results with you shortly.
25 Based on that, just as Jerry was talking
.
125
1 about with deer, and just as y'all have been
2 talking about with hunting, we want to make
3 sure that any use of these nongame species is
4 sustainable and that harvest and commercial
5 use is well within the limits that these wild
6 populations can withstand, as well as these
7 regulations that put us more in consistency
8 with other commercial regulations the
9 department has. And certainly as we said
10 then, we expect to be back to the Commission
11 sometime in the future to adjust these
12 regulations based on what results we learn
13 both through this reporting period and
14 subsequent ones.
15 To date, the department has issued 549
16 collection permits. 415 of these were issued
17 in the last license year. We've also issued
18 186 nongame dealer permits, and 128 of these
19 were issued in the FY '99 licensing year.
20 Annual reports, we just got in our first
21 set of annual reports. They were due
22 September 15th. And so far 49 percent of
23 those individuals with collector permits have
24 filled their annual reports, and 82 percent of
25 dealers have submitted their annual reports.
.
126
1 We've already followed up the reminder letter
2 in early October reminding those permittees
3 that their annual reports were due, and they
4 continue to trickle in. And actually, we're
5 not displeased with compliance at this point.
6 Considering this was the first year of a
7 permit cycle, we think the compliance rates we
8 have with annual reports is not bad, but we
9 are continuing to work with it, and we're
10 currently working with licensing to find a way
11 to flag those individuals who have not
12 submitted their annual reports so that they
13 cannot buy an additional permit until such
14 time as we have their report.
15 Just another quick look at the
16 preliminary results. This list of species up
17 here are those that have been most commonly
18 reported in trade. I thought you might be
19 interested in those results. Black-tailed
20 prairie dog right now is number one. We had
21 reports indicating -- of course, these are
22 preliminary results and not complete --
23 indicating that over 8000 prairie dogs were
24 sold in the state last year; sliders, about
25 4,000; rattlesnakes about 1900; spinney soft
.
127
1 shell turtles, about 9,000; and round-tailed
2 horned lizards, 237; the side-blotched lizard
3 which I skipped, about 5,000; and gray-banded
4 king snakes, a species a lot of people have
5 been asking us about, we had 675 reported in
6 possession, 370-some reported in trade that
7 were basically new species. But the
8 interesting thing is only about 19 of those
9 were taken from the wild. The vast majority
10 of these species -- this species appear to be
11 coming from captive bred individuals. So we
12 are gathering some data. We are learning
13 quite a bit about this.
14 One other item I'd mention, and this
15 concerns the round-tail horned lizard.
16 Interestingly enough, that's not on our list
17 of reportable species, and it's been reported
18 anyway. And we have had just within the past
19 couple of weeks several individuals contacting
20 the department expressing concern about the
21 round-tail horned lizard. I've had several
22 calls from California where apparently these
23 items are showing up in pet stores from Texas
24 dealers. And we've had several contacts from
25 Texas citizens now expressing concern and
.
128
1 asking us basically to prohibit the sale of
2 this species.
3 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: What is it
4 exactly?
5 MR. HERRON: It's very much like
6 the Texas horned lizard. I mean it's a horny
7 toad. It's just a western species found in
8 the western Panhandle, Trans Pecos area. We
9 have the Texas horned lizard listed as a
10 threatened species. You cannot sell it. You
11 cannot possess it. And I think everybody here
12 remembers it used to be a very common pet.
13 But the round-tailed horned lizard is more
14 abundant, is not considered to be in jeopardy,
15 and as a result, it can be bought and sold as
16 a pet.
17 And so just so you know, there is some
18 concern being expressed about that species.
19 We are now aware of it. It was very opportune
20 that we were just getting some data at the
21 same time these questions came in. And staff
22 is taking a look at the situation, and we'll
23 keep it in consideration. I don't think we're
24 necessarily ready to recommend a prohibition
25 on sale. The whole point was to get data, but
.
129
1 we may be back to the Commission when we
2 revise these regulations to make sure we
3 include that on the list of species being
4 affected.
5 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: How many
6 varieties in Texas are there of the prairie
7 dogs?
8 MR. HERRON: Prairie dogs, the only
9 prairie dog we have is the black-tailed
10 prairie dog.
11 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: So anybody
12 that's concerned about them being rare is not
13 thinking straight. Is that right?
14 MR. HERRON: Well, we have had some
15 disagreements with other people about their
16 relative rarity. Certainly it's clear that
17 we're probably down to 5 percent or so over
18 what we historically had. Nonetheless, it's a
19 fairly abundant species.
20 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Midland
21 County has got many, many times --
22 MR. HERRON: Y'all have quite a
23 bit. It's interesting, that 8,000 that we
24 have reported is more than we expected. With
25 some of the other species reported numbers,
.
130
1 like, rattlesnakes is actually quite a bit
2 less than we expected. But that's to be
3 expected through the reporting process, and
4 we'll see how data comes in in subsequent
5 years.
6 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: What is a
7 red-eared slider?
8 MR. HERRON: Red-eared slider, it's
9 a common aquatic turtle. It used to be very
10 common as a pet. They're about that big when
11 you buy them, but they grow to be about four
12 to eight inches in length. We're not too sure
13 if some of them are being sold as pets, but
14 it's also commonly sold as a food species in
15 Asian food markets.
16 COMMISSIONER AVILA: Oh, good.
17 COMMISSIONER WATSON: Right along
18 with rattlesnakes.
19 CHAIRMAN BASS: I guess we don't
20 have worry about that being part of the German
21 fare.
22 I saw an article recently talking about
23 the prairie dog and it's viewed by some to get
24 it listed as a threatened or endangered
25 species. It said the population is down to
.
131
1 only 10 million.
2 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: I can believe
3 it.
4 MR. HERRON: And we are working --
5 I mean, we do have a responsibility to make
6 sure the prairie dog is preserved, and we are
7 currently working with several states to make
8 sure that there are management provisions put
9 in. But I think as Andy will tell you, we do
10 not feel it warrants being listed, but it is
11 something we certainly need to make sure we
12 don't want to lose it, but we think there's
13 still a lot of latitude here still possible.
14 CHAIRMAN BASS: How many varieties
15 of horned lizard are there in Texas other than
16 the --
17 MR. HERRON: I'm not too sure how
18 many there are in Texas. Certainly the two
19 species, possibly a third. I think there's
20 maybe --
21 MR. GRAHAM: There's at least
22 three.
23 MR. HERRON: Yeah. I think there's
24 maybe five species total nationwide.
25 CHAIRMAN BASS: And only one of
.
132
1 which is on the state list.
2 MR. HERRON: Yes, sir. The Texas
3 horned lizard, the one that basically occurred
4 through the eastern two-thirds of the state.
5 MR. GRAHAM: The one that's on the
6 conservation license plate.
7 CHAIRMAN BASS: The TCU one.
8 MR. HERRON: Just to wrap up in
9 terms of future considerations, we are
10 continuing discussions on these regulations
11 reporting with our advisory committee. We've
12 had them meet about six times in the past
13 year. We are working to simplify reporting
14 forms. Users report had a few glitches, a
15 little bit of confusion about using the forms.
16 That's an administrative matter we will be
17 taking care of that on our own.
18 One comment we have had as we do come
19 forward and revise these regulations, we've
20 been asked -- we changed the names of these
21 permits. It seems to confuse people that a
22 collection permit isn't just for collection,
23 and a dealer's permit means something more
24 than just sale. And so that is something I
25 think we will be recommending to you to make
.
133
1 the terminology a little more understandable.
2 And as I reported in the take and
3 harvest, one thing we may be changing as well
4 is, for example, rattlesnakes, we had about --
5 I think I said about 8,000, 9,000 reported.
6 We expect -- have suspected previously maybe
7 20-some thousand are actually sold. And one
8 of our problems with rattlesnakes may be that
9 we do not require a dealer to buy from a
10 permitted individual. And so what may be
11 happening here is we're missing some of this
12 rattlesnake harvest because we don't require
13 that, and that's another thing we'll be
14 looking at and possibly coming back to you
15 with some recommendations on.
16 With that, I'd happy to answer any
17 questions you might have.
18 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: You had a
19 large number of people that were unhappy with
20 the idea, has that subsided or not?
21 MR. HERRON: Well, I think many of
22 the people that I worked with still wish this
23 regulation would go away. I think most of
24 them understand the need. And I think as we
25 get more complete annual reports come in and
.
134
1 release some of this information, I think
2 people will find it interesting and better
3 understand why we needed this information.
4 And as some people complained, for example,
5 what the gray-banded king snake, they said,
6 "We don't think you should regulate it. Most
7 of the ones we deal with are captive bred."
8 Well, preliminary indications would indicate
9 those people were right. Most of the ones
10 we're getting appear to be captive. But
11 although we haven't had a chance to verify the
12 validity of some of our data yet, but based on
13 what's being reported, it would certainly seem
14 that that was the right indication.
15 So I think it has quieted down. And I
16 think for the most part we will be probably
17 promoting this more next year. We really have
18 not done a lot in letting pet stores know they
19 have to have this permit, and that's something
20 we'll be working on this next 12 months is to
21 get the word out better. We're just happy
22 right now just to get the system in place and
23 kind of get the kinks out. And now we'll be
24 working in trying to get the word out better,
25 and I expect we'll see more permits next year
.
135
1 as more people begin to comply with the
2 regulation.
3 MR. SANSOM: Brief summary, the
4 response has been pretty good, and we have
5 some data now that we didn't have before we
6 put this program together. A few malcontents,
7 but basically everybody is complying and we
8 feel like these guys are doing a good job.
9 MR. HERRON: Yes, sir. Thank you.
10 CHAIRMAN BASS: Other business?
11 There being none, we stand adjourned. Thank
12 you.
13 * * * * *
14 REGULATIONS COMMITTEE ADJOURNED
15 * * * * *
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
.
136
1 REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE
2
3 COUNTY OF TRAVIS X
4 THE STATE OF TEXAS X
5 I, Rachelle Latino, certified shorthand
6 reporter for the State of Texas, do hereby
7 certify that the above and foregoing 135 pages
8 constitutes a full, true and correct
9 transcript of the minutes of the Texas Parks
10 and Wildlife Commission on November 17, 1999,
11 in the commission hearing room of the Texas
12 Parks and Wildlife Headquarters Complex,
13 Travis County, Texas.
14 I further certify that a stenographic
15 record was made by me at the time of the
16 public meeting and said stenographic notes
17 were thereafter reduced to computerized
18 transcription under my direction and control.
19 Witness my hand this, the 10th day of
20 January 2000.
21
22
23 Rachelle Latino
Certified Shorthand Reporter
24 State of Texas
Certificate No. 6771
25 Expires: 12-31-01
Top of Page