Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission
Conservation Committee
August 28, 2002
Commission Hearing RoomTexas Parks & Wildlife Department Headquarters Complex
4200 Smith School Road
Austin, TX 78744
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6 BE IT REMEMBERED, that heretofore on the 28th day of
7 August, 2002, there come to be heard matters under the
8 regulatory authority of the Parks and Wildlife
9 Commission of Texas, in the Commission Hearing Room of
10 the Texas Parks and Wildlife Headquarters Complex,
11 Austin, Texas, beginning at 9:00 a.m. to wit:
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13 APPEARANCES:
THE TEXAS PARKS AND WILDLIFE COMMISSION:
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CONSERVATION COMMITTEE:
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CHAIRMAN: Katharine Armstrong, Austin, Texas
16 Ernest Angelo, Jr., Vice Chairman, Midland,
Texas
17 John Avila, Jr., Fort Worth, Texas
Joseph B.C. Fitzsimons, San Antonio, Texas,
18 Committee Chair
Alvin L. Henry, Houston, Texas
19 Philip Montgomery, Dallas, Texas
Donato D. Ramos, Laredo, Texas
20 Kelly W. Rising, M.D., Beaumont, Texas
Mark E. Watson, Jr., San Antonio, Texas
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THE TEXAS PARKS AND WILDLIFE DEPARTMENT:
22 Robert L. Cook, Executive Director, and other personnel
of the Parks and Wildlife Department
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1 CHAIRMAN ARMSTRONG: Thank you. We will
2 now convene the conservation committe. The first order
3 of business is the approval of the minutes from the
4 previous meeting.
5 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Motion.
6 CHAIRMAN ARMSTRONG: Do I have a second?
7 Emeritus Bass, Barry Miller from the speaker's office,
8 Dealey Herndon, Al Henry, Phil Montgomery, Donato Ramos,
9 and, of course -- oh, and me. I was on that.
10 I also created a historical -- historical
11 sites advisory group to guide us in some of the charges
12 that were given to us by Sunset. On that advisory group
13 were members of the Texas Historical Commission,
14 citizens, and renowned experts in that field. They have
15 worked closely with staff on that portion of the land
16 and water conservation plan.
17 We have held many, many public meetings.
18 We have gotten counsel and guidance from other advisory
19 groups. And I also want to mention that before we got
20 underway in this significant task, we considered
21 contracting out for the inventory work. And after a lot
22 of consideration, we decided that this was a task that
23 our own staff was more than up to.
24 And I was -- we were correct. Our people
25 have done a fabulous job on what I think is a monumental
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1 effort, and one that will last for a long, long time and
2 will be utilized by many folks for a long time. And,
3 anyway, our confidence was not misplaced. You all have
4 done a terrific job. And I'm looking forward to your
5 presentation.
6 MR. BECKCOM: I'm Chris Beckcom. I'm the
7 head of the Master Planning Program in the
8 Infrastructure Division. And the actual task of doing
9 inventory for the statewide plan fell into my shop
10 roughly 14 months ago. So I'm very pleased to have an
11 opportunity to briefly present it to y'all and show you
12 what we've done with it to not only make it available to
13 the agency, but also briefly discuss what all is
14 included inside that inventory.
15 Of course, as you know, the inventory was
16 required as a support database for the Land and Water
17 Resource Conservation Recreation Plan. And also what
18 we've done, we've actually -- we have enabled this data
19 to make it available to our agency. We anticipate it
20 will be on the intranet shortly after this week. I
21 guess the theory is, what good is data if you can't get
22 to it.
23 This is probably one of the most
24 comprehensive park and public lands conservation lands
25 inventories that may have been undertaken in the state.
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1 I can confidently say that because the way we approached
2 it. We didn't just do a count of acres per county and
3 get a figure and throw it down. This is actually
4 spatial data. And when I say that, that means
5 everything we've counted and can account for in the
6 state is mapped where it belongs in the state.
7 So with that data, you can overlay any
8 data. You can connect to the ground in Texas, whether
9 it's demographics, planning regions, eco regions, you
10 name it, can then be correlated to all this data set
11 statewide, which is a huge tool for analysis from now
12 into the immediate and near future.
13 Through the inventory, since the task at
14 hand was to inventory every governmental entity, which,
15 again, is monumental, as Chairman Armstrong said. We
16 contacted virtually every Federal Agency, Council of
17 Governments, every River Authority, every city directly
18 with a population over 25,000 to get direct data. We
19 went to the source everywhere we could. We didn't want
20 second or third hand data. We contacted cities. I
21 think I personally contacted about 78 of them myself to
22 get that data and bring it into this data set.
23 What we've done -- this is the opening
24 page. I've got a series of screen captures here for the
25 data set itself just to present how we packaged it up.
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1 This is a built-in page, obviously, of how we link to
2 all the different data sets. This is the opening page
3 for the Parks and Wildlife -- I apologize for the
4 smallness of the images. It is quite difficult to see
5 here. On your own screen, it would be much more
6 legible.
7 We've enabled actually the map itself.
8 You can zoom into this. You can pan into it. It's
9 dynamic that you can actually click on a property and a
10 fact sheet will pop up. Something -- well, actually a
11 table of data will pop up to tell you all the
12 information about that site. We've compiled for Parks
13 and Wildlife properties roughly 150 attributes on each
14 property. We actually have mapped 222 properties TWD
15 properties in the system here for all the TWD
16 properties.
17 To ease use of this, data fact sheets
18 were created through a partnership with the natural
19 leaders program. Beau Hardegree and Cory Evans created
20 them. And in their project, they took the data that we
21 generated in the inventory and compiled it into fact
22 sheets. So these fact sheets will be on-line, as well.
23 This is a direct link to those, so you can get to them
24 quickly. You don't have to browse a map of Texas to get
25 to them. And these, of course, can be loaded right into
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1 your browser and then printed out.
2 We didn't stop with TPWD lands. We
3 actually have data on all the federal properties in the
4 state. We've mapped 80, I believe is the count on
5 federal properties for authorized or administrative
6 boundaries. But we took it a step further than that.
7 We realized the analysis was going to require more than
8 just administrative boundaries.
9 Often with federal properties, and the
10 national forests are a perfect case in point, that was
11 actually inside the boundary is not actually national
12 forest land. So we took it that next step forward, and
13 we actually -- I do not have it in this image, but it's
14 available. That we can actually show you properties
15 actually owned by the National Forest Service inside of
16 their boundaries.
17 So in the analysis we did, we actually
18 used -- owned and managed acres by those agencies, not
19 always to be seen as a National Forest in Texas in
20 which, you know, half the land inside that boundary may
21 not actually be managed strictly for conservation and/or
22 recreation uses. The same way with other conservation
23 recreation lands.
24 Part of our charge was to map all state
25 lands. So we actually have representative of data sets
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1 from the Texas Forest Service for their boundaries. GLO
2 shared their boundaries with us to the extent they
3 could. Of course counties, river authorities, and quite
4 a few non-profit organizations. TNC was very
5 cooperative. Audubon was very cooperative. Katy
6 Prairie shared their data, on and on. So we have quite
7 an extensive data set of non-governmental entities and
8 non-profits that allowed access to their properties or
9 have a keen interest in conservation preservation of
10 natural resources.
11 The one that ate up a lot of our time
12 here is city parks and preserves. Again, we directly
13 contacted every city of 25,000 or larger. Our maps and
14 database includes almost 6,000 individual parks in the
15 state of Texas now for the city layer alone. As you can
16 see on the screen, we do have attributes for those, for
17 who owns them, what city they're in, the size of it, and
18 its designation inside that city. So we know if it's a
19 Greenbelt, if it's a rec center, how they manage it.
20 That way, as well. So we can draw conclusions from
21 that. What's on that property, as far as the actual use
22 of it. Whether it's dedicated Greenbelt or anticipate a
23 high development recreation, you know, ball fields and
24 the like on that.
25 And last, but not least, the natural
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1 resources in Texas. Of course, everything gets measured
2 against this for us. Quite a bit of that, at least.
3 What we've done here, we've mapped the natural regions
4 and sub regions in the state. We actually have the eco
5 regions, as well. I did not have them in this demo
6 here, but they are available. All the stream segments
7 in Texas based national hydrogic data set. That data
8 sets from TNRCC and their stream segment definitions,
9 augmented by our resource protection water group for
10 their quality, as well.
11 Again, for all the rivers themselves, all
12 the lakes and bays of Texas, we have here, every new
13 data available to them. Cooperation from the inland
14 fisheries division on their data set -- has been
15 incorporated in. So any data they keep, say, on any
16 lake in Texas is represented in this database. If you
17 clicked on Lake Ray Roberts, you would get their entire
18 data set for that lake. It would appear before you, as
19 well, on this.
20 And in a very quick nutshell, that's the
21 data set and inventory that was used for compliance with
22 SB 305, and also the real meat behind any analysis
23 that's been done for the plan itself.
24 MR. FRANCELL: Thanks, Chris.
25 MR. BECKCOM: Thank you.
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1 MR. FRANCELL: Everything we did in this
2 plan kind of hinged on this information. And Chris
3 really wanted to go through it in an interactive way
4 that you could actually see when you click on the site
5 and what comes up. And we were afraid that that might
6 somehow not translate well in here. So if anybody's
7 interested, it will be on our intranet and we can show
8 that to you. It is good information. Chris has helped
9 a whole lot with this plan, but there were plenty of
10 other staff members, division directors that we worked
11 with over the last year and got lots of help.
12 So Emily and I have been the coordinators
13 and editors of this thing and have really gotten lots of
14 input. And thank the staff for their help. This is the
15 second to last step in the process. We're going to have
16 a red line draft to you tomorrow morning that you'll
17 actually adopt. There will be some minor changes, and
18 we'll have that to you in the morning.
19 I'm just going to go through very quickly
20 the bill. The Sunset Bill required that we do this
21 plan. It required that we inventory resources, that we
22 develop a ten-year strategic plan, that the Commission
23 adopt this plan prior to October 15th of this year, and
24 that we use this plan in guiding our decisions on all
25 kinds of issues, like land acquisition, partnerships
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1 with private land owners, et cetera.
2 As Chairman Armstrong said, she appointed
3 a committee that's been meeting over the last year.
4 There are many commissioners and others involved. They
5 helped us develop a plan that analyzed the state's
6 needs, identified threats, and established priorities.
7 The outcome of the land conservation side of this is
8 encompassed in this slide using data on threats to land
9 resources.
10 Using data on wildlife management plans
11 and conservation land and using information on
12 biodiversity, we cranked out this final map of where our
13 ecoregion priorities are. The areas in red were the
14 three ecoregions that sort of rose to the top, the Gulf
15 Coast, South Texas, and the Black Land Prairies. And
16 then there's a second tier and then a third tier. This
17 will help us in where we may hire, or efforts for a
18 technical guidance biologist in the future, and all
19 kinds of efforts.
20 We also looked at recreation in the
21 state. You've seen this map before. 75 percent of
22 Texas lives in this bubbled area that sort of follows
23 our major interstates. And only 25 percent of our park
24 land is in that area. The plan recommends that we have
25 an acquisition focus based around where the people are,
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1 because trends are showing that visitors to state parks
2 and wildlife management areas are spending less time.
3 They're getting up in the morning, getting there, coming
4 home. At most, spending one night.
5 As the chairman said, we looked also at
6 historic sites in Texas. We had experts evaluate the
7 importance of these sites. Tomorrow I'll go through
8 what the criteria was, but this is the results. The
9 sites that ended up on the bottom end of that list,
10 Acton, Confederate Reunion Grounds. The biggest gaps
11 are in historic sites in Texas and how we can fill
12 those. And another monumental effort of doubling lands
13 under wildlife management plans over the next ten years
14 to 28 million acres.
15 There's a large component in the plan on
16 water. Over the last 12 years, Parks and Wildlife has
17 been identifying the water needs of our bay and estuary
18 system. We actually have that information for our major
19 bay and estuary systems now. And this plan lays out a
20 strategy for completing these studies in the 15 major
21 river basins in Texas, sets a goal of completing that by
22 2012. Getting us the information that we'll need when
23 water planning decisions are made across the state.
24 We set some goals for water, completing
25 these studies, working with the regulatory agencies to
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1 get their recommendations implemented, including water
2 recommendations in all wildlife management plans. This
3 is going to benefit Texas in a number of ways. Not only
4 from a habitat perspective, but also the amount of water
5 and the quality of that water running off the land and
6 into our rivers, and ultimately bay and estuaries.
7 We set a goal for maintaining fishing
8 license sales and also hunting license sales at their
9 current levels by recruiting new anglers and new
10 hunters. From a fishing perspective, this is important
11 because they've been our best advocates on water issues
12 in this state. And we need to make sure that their
13 numbers are maintained, that they're strong, and that
14 there are people out there that are paying attention and
15 helping us and supporting us on resource issues.
16 And we talk about reducing and continuing
17 to work on the coastal fishing industry on overfishing
18 and bycatch. Emily is going to talk about the public
19 comment, and then we'll be done.
20 CHAIRMAN ARMITANO: One of the most
21 important things for the strategic land and water
22 planning committee was to get the public involved
23 throughout the whole process. And we started out by
24 printing our -- the draft outline on the web. And we
25 had two constituent meetings in April to get input prior
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1 to developing the first draft.
2 The first draft, we put on our web site
3 on June 20th. And then we went around the state and had
4 eight public meetings in Plano, Nacogdoches, Harlingen,
5 El Paso, Abilene, Amarillo, Houston, and Austin on the
6 7th. And nearly 400 people attended. There was a lot
7 of interest, a lot of good comments. And all in all,
8 throughout the whole process, we've received about 1200
9 e-mails, 200 letters, 688 petitions, as of today.
10 The -- specifically, the comments kind of
11 laid out into three themes. We had an overwhelming
12 amount of comments on making the draft plan bolder than
13 the original draft. Specifically, adopting a 55-acre
14 per 1,000 person standard for state parks; adopting a
15 25-acre per 1,000 standard for local parks; making
16 recommendations to acquire water rights; and making the
17 language on purchase of development rights stronger.
18 In addition, we got 179 e-mails, 41
19 letters, numerous phone calls, and a lot of public
20 comments at the meetings on opposition to the -- for
21 divestiture of historic sites and state parks. Mostly,
22 they were about Acton, McKinney Falls, Confederate
23 Reunion Grounds, Lockhart, Starr Mansion, Eagle Mountain
24 Lake, and Big Springs State Park.
25 We got about 50 comments from our
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1 technical -- I'm sorry -- technical comments about input
2 on the plan and how to make it better overall from our
3 constituent groups, experts in the field, and our
4 advisory committees, which we relied on a lot for this
5 process. And in response to the -- to the amount of
6 comments that we got, the Strategic Land and Water
7 Planning Committee met again to discuss all of the
8 comments and take all of them into account. We worked
9 with Commissioner Montgomery over the last few weeks to
10 -- who guided the response and the incorporation of
11 those comments into the final draft.
12 Some of the things that we included were,
13 we tried to make the plan bolder by including measurable
14 goals in the -- as a whole section. And we are going to
15 update the plan prior to every legislative -- every
16 other legislative session and review it yearly. And we
17 strengthen strategies from partnerships with private
18 organizations and others.
19 We posted as a final draft last Friday.
20 And we sent copies to all of you. I think you received
21 it. And we will have red line copy tomorrow. And
22 that's it.
23 CHAIRMAN ARMSTRONG: Thank you. Do we
24 have any comments, the Commission?
25 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: I think they
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1 did a great job.
2 CHAIRMAN ARMSTRONG: Mr. Henry?
3 COMMISSIONER HENRY: On the public
4 hearing in Houston, I just -- the staff from Jeff,
5 Emily, Bob did a tremendous job handling some very
6 sticky comments. They handled themselves extremely
7 well. And some of the comments were touchy, let's just
8 say. But I just want to commend them on a job well
9 done.
10 CHAIRMAN ARMSTRONG: Commissioner
11 Fitzsimons?
12 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: Ditto. It's --
13 I was at the Austin meeting. And you did an excellent
14 job. I don't know how you got all this done with all
15 the comments and all the revisions. And every time I'd
16 turn around, there would appear perfect work. And it
17 was very well done. And I want to congratulate you
18 because I know -- I know you've worked very hard. It's
19 obvious from the product. Thank you.
20 CHAIRMAN ARMSTRONG: Mr. Cook?
21 MR COOK: I just -- you know, the
22 accolades here are all appreciated. And the staff is --
23 the staff is most appreciative of constituents' input.
24 It was important to us because of the -- of the --
25 really, the significance and value of this plan would
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1 not have been as meaningful without it.
2 In addition, the input from this group
3 has been -- has been considerable and is appreciated
4 sincerely. There were decision points at times there.
5 You know, do we talk about this or do we not? And some
6 decisions -- we've made some decisions. And the
7 committee guided us through that process. And I think a
8 document that ends up being -- really speaking to
9 conservation and recreation, which is where we started
10 out. And I certainly appreciate Jeff and Emily's input.
11 And I want to call special attention to
12 Beckom, to Chris's and his group's deal. You know, when
13 we started this, I gave them an impossible assignment.
14 I'll just tell you. Guess what? They did it. We
15 wanted this set of information, this set of data to be
16 useful. Useful to a park manager, useful to the
17 maintenance manager for that region, useful to our WMA
18 people, where they could actually access that
19 information and utilize it in their day-to-day work.
20 Where you can access it.
21 As you have an opportunity to visit these
22 sites and know about these sites and know what's going
23 on, know about the number FTEs there, the repair
24 projects, and maintenance program, whatever it may be.
25 And that information is there. And I'm really proud of
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1 the group and the national leaders group that helped put
2 that together. It's pretty impressive.
3 CHAIRMAN ARMSTRONG: Commissioner
4 Montgomery?
5 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: Just a couple
6 of quick comments. I've had some experience in the
7 commercial mapping business. And I think the technical
8 side of this is fabulous and really impressive. And
9 I've seen how hard it could be and how difficult it is
10 to put it together, so I appreciate what you've done.
11 And Jeff and Emily, I think you all did a
12 great job pulling it together and being objective
13 arbitrators of the process, which is not simple. And it
14 was challenging and a great testament to your skill and
15 maturity. I do think for us there's -- a lot of
16 backbone that is going to be required over the next
17 couple of years to really implement and oversee the
18 implementation of what's in there.
19 There's a lot of very powerful and
20 profound ideas and reshaping and reorienting that's
21 going to come from this that I know I don't fully
22 appreciate yet, even having sat through the committee
23 process. So I think we all, in voting for it --
24 resolving to get behind it and stay behind it for a
25 sustained period of time.
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1 And in the last thought -- and I know I'm
2 -- if Jeff and them would put up with me in the
3 editorial side of this, it does present a real financial
4 challenge in that it's not funded. We've got a lot of
5 things we're saying we're going to do that aren't funded
6 and that are going to be very difficult to fund through
7 state funds, given the environment -- the fiscal
8 environment the state is in.
9 So that what I think it puts particularly
10 on the Commission is an obligation to really be -- I
11 hate to use the word creative because it sounds
12 superficial, but creative in the sense of creating
13 something new in our leadership and skill application to
14 help fund and find alternative sources of funding for
15 these things that are still consistent with our mission.
16 But the private sector, nonprofit sector,
17 collaborative, and other public entities can take all of
18 that. And we all need to be thinking about that very,
19 very actively, I think, in order to be successful at
20 accomplishing all this.
21 CHAIRMAN ARMSTRONG: Are there any other
22 comments?
23 I would like to make a comment here. I
24 won't say thank you again. I think everyone here has
25 done an excellent job in giving credit where credit is
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1 well due.
2 The -- there will be people who look at
3 this plan and will say that it is not ambitious enough.
4 And there will be people who look at this plan and say
5 that it is too ambitious. I think that the plan we laid
6 out here is achievable. I think it's defensible. I
7 think that there is only so much that the Commission can
8 do or that the staff can do.
9 In the end, Texans, if they find the
10 goals in this plan worthy, must express their desires
11 through the legislative process and through the ballot
12 box. We will do everything we can to be creative in the
13 partnerships that we nurture and encourage to realize
14 some of these goals. But in the end, there are not
15 enough tax dollars currently available to fund the goals
16 laid out in this plan.
17 I thank everybody for this very rewarding
18 process that we've been through. I think anybody that's
19 been involved has come away with a new found respect and
20 enthusiasm for this wonderful department and the
21 terrific staff and the admirable goals that I think not
22 only the department has, but indeed the citizens of this
23 state. Thank you, all.
24 The next item is -- where is my sheet,
25 Mr. Cook? On nomination item number three, nomination
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1 of oil and gas leases, Harris County, Ronnie Ray.
2 Accounts. Are there any questions?
3 COMMISSIONER HENRY: Yes. Question
4 concerning your last comment. We talked last year at
5 some point about restricting some of these revenues
6 specifically to the development of Sheldon State Park.
7 What happened on that have access to that account, but
8 not any further than that.
9 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: Can you do it
10 or not? Aside for the parks that they're near, but you
11 may want to think about the poor relatives with surface
12 --
13 COMMISSIONER HENRY: Well, we were
14 thinking somewhat about that. We weren't -- as you
15 recall during that discussion, that wasn't 100 percent
16 dedication. We had some discussion at that time that we
17 wouldn't want to do that. But given the desirability of
18 the development of Sheldon, this would be an ideal way
19 to at least start it.
20 CHAIRMAN ARMSTRONG: Commissioner Henry
21 -- how about this? Why don't we go and find out what
22 the minutes say and come back and take this issue up
23 after lunch? We will go ahead and break for executive
24 session and take up this matter after lunch, after we've
25 gotten our facts straight. Is that -- then we will
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1 adjourn. Is that correct? Recess. We will go -- we
2 will recess for executive session.
3 (RECESS.)
4 CHAIRMAN ARMSTRONG: Good afternoon. The
5 first order of business, I would like to -- reconvene
6 the conservation committee or correct staff having
7 checked the record, Commissioner Henry is correct that
8 he believed -- the meeting a year ago, that the proceeds
9 from the nomination oil and gas lease for Sheldon Lake
10 were to be detained by Sheldon. That's correct. And I
11 direct to staff to add that to the motion that we'll
12 bring back up tomorrow. With that, I adjourn the
13 conservation committee. And we will begin the public
14 hearing.
15 (HEARING ADJOURNED)
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1 REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE
2 STATE OF TEXAS )
3 COUNTY OF TRAVIS )
4
5 I, SHANA R. WISE, a Certified Court Reporter in and
6 for the State of Texas, do hereby certify that the
7 foregoing pages constitute a full, true, and correct
8 transcript of the minutes of the Texas Parks and
9 Wildlife Commission on August 28, 2002 in the Commission
10 Hearing Room of the Texas Parks and Wildlife
11 Headquarters Complex, Austin, Travis County, Texas.
12 I FURTHER CERTIFY that the proceedings of said
13 public meeting were reported by me and accurately
14 reduced to typewriting under my supervision and control.
15 WITNESS MY HAND this the 21st day of October, 2002.
16
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18 SHANA R. WISE, CSR NO. 6642
Expiration Date: 12-31-02
19 7800 IH 10 West
Suite 100
20 San Antonio, Texas 78230
(210) 377-3027
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22 EBS NO. 133345
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