Dear Stewards, Don't miss your chance to be entered to win a LIFETIME hunting and fishing license this month by renewing your membership or referring new members (more info below)! My favorite event of the year, our All-Stewards Dove Hunt on Sept. 5-6, is quickly approaching. We still have a few tickets remaining, so invite your friends and encourage them to get involved with SOTW. The dove report put together by our friend at TPWD, Owen Fitzsimmons, is looking pretty good...read it here. Owen will be joining us on the hunt, so bring your questions! You'll also have a phenomenal wild game dinner to look forward to from the one-and-only Jesse Griffiths! If you love food (who doesn't) and you want to learn more about food sourcing, wild game harvesting, butchering, cooking, and more, check out Jesse's new Pedernal Project. If you're looking for low-cost, non-consumptive opportunities, check out our upcoming Statewide Conservation Committee Events (SCC) below. Selah, Bamberger Ranch Preserve has been on my "to visit" list for years. If you're in North Texas, join us for an exclusive visit to Clymer Meadow Preserve. This preserve is one of the last remaining pieces of untouched prairie land in the state. Experts will be guiding us through these visits and they promise to be especially educational. If you're looking for more opportunities like this, I'd encourage you to check out the Texas Master Naturalists Program as well. In this issue:
- Check out upcoming events near you and across the state
- Reserve one of the few remaining tickets for the All-Stewards Dove Hunt
- Meet Austin Chapter Advisory Council Member Brittany Eck
- Read how you can visit Selah, Bamberger Ranch Preserve and the Kerr WMA
- Learn about TPWF's Oyster Buyback Initiative and the Bighorn Symposium in West Texas
- Order the Texas Wild - Deluxe Edition Album
- Visit the new TPWF Pollinators & Prairies website ("Wild Thumb" app coming soon!)
See you out there! Cheers, Katie |
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Upcoming Stewards of the Wild Events |
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Stewards of the Wild Highlights & News |
Limited Tickets Remaining for Annual All-Stewards Dove Hunt Presented by Garrison Brothers
You don't want to miss our annual signature outdoor experience and most popular event of the year! The event helps ensure TPWF can continue to deliver impactful, year-round conservation leadership programming to members across Texas. |
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Each ticket includes two dove hunts, lunch, a gourmet wild game dinner by James Beard-awarded Chef Jesse Griffiths, lodging, live music, beverages, sporting clays, and an incredible swag bag! Don’t miss your opportunity to learn from conservation professionals and connect with other outdoorsmen and women across the state.
Want to participate but don’t have dove hunting experience? No problem! We will connect you with a mentor who will provide guidance throughout the weekend.
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Thank you to our generous sponsors for making this event possible:
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Meet Austin Chapter Member Brittany Eck |
Brittany Eck will tell you herself—she’s not a hunter, not really an angler, and she has no desire to clean a deer or gut a trout. What she does have, however, is a boundless love for Texas’ open skies, rugged landscapes, and the thrill of finding herself on an unpaved road, halfway to nowhere, with adventure on the horizon. For the last decade, she has fed this passion through Stewards of the Wild, where she has not only connected with our Texas wild, but made lifelong friends she otherwise may have never met.
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Born and raised in Dallas, Brittany admits her first brushes with nature were a little on the "glampy" side, with Girl Scout troop campouts often taking place in a posh backyard instead of in the great outdoors. “I loved doing the activities and going to the campouts, but we weren’t exactly roughing it,” she laughs.
It wasn’t until she left home for Texas A&M in College Station that she pitched her first real tent. “College Station was the most rural area I've ever lived in,” Brittany recalls. “That was when I really got to experience true camping for the first time."
After earning her bachelor’s in political science in 2001, Brittany moved to the megalopolis of Houston, which she affectionately describes as “city on city on city, before moving to Washington, D.C. But even during her decade at Capitol Hill, Brittany’s work was rooted in Texas. “I mainly worked for Texas members, so I have been focused on Texas politics and government my whole career.”
One of her more memorable moments in her now-extensive career was when she worked for Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s office and joined the El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail Designation Tour. Here she traveled by bus from Natchitoches, Louisiana, down to Eagle Pass, a journey that retraced a centuries-old route once used to connect the American Southeast to Mexico. For Brittany, it unlocked whole swaths of Texas she’d never seen before. “It was eye-opening,” she recalls. “I realized how much of Texas I didn’t know, and how every corner of the state has its own story.”
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Austin Chapter Donates $5,000 to TPWF's Oyster Buyback Initiative |
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The Austin chapter dedicated $5,000 of its proceeds from its Annual Wild Night to the TPWF S. Reed Morian Oyster Buyback Program. The chapter presented the check on July 31 at their Fly-Tying event at Sportsman’s Finest. Thank you to the Austin chapter for supporting this and many other TPWF initiatives. Read more about the S. Reed Morian Oyster Buyback Program below, under Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation Updates. |
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Join SCC for Doubleheader Weekend September 12 & 13
The Statewide Conservation Committee's Private Lands Subcommittee will host a special visit to the incredible Selah, Bamberger Ranch Preserve near Johnson City on Friday, September 12 at 12:30 p.m. The 5,500-acre property in Blanco County has been restored to healthy habitat, with a mission to teach ethical land stewardship by example and outreach!
The following day, September 13, the Game Species Subcommittee will host a visit to the Kerr Wildlife Management Area. The Kerr WMA was selected as a land base for the Edwards Plateau ecological area to develop and manage wildlife habitats and populations of indigenous wildlife species, provide a site where research of wildlife populations and habitat can be conducted under controlled conditions, and provide public hunting and appreciative use of wildlife in a manner compatible with the resource.
Make a weekend out of it and join us for both events! Kerr WMA is about two hours West of Selah, Bamberger Ranch Preserve. Fredericksburg and Kerrville are between the two locations, with multiple lodging options. |
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Join or Renew by August 31 for Chance to Win Lifetime Hunting and Fishing License |
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Join or renew your SOTW membership between August 1 and August 31, 2025, and you will automatically be entered for a chance to win a Texas Lifetime Resident Combination Hunting and Fishing License.* And, for active SOTW members, you will receive 3 additional entries for every new member you refer who joins between August 1 and August 31, 2025. To be eligible for additional entries, your referral must include your first and last name in the referral section at the time of his/her new member registration. Membership renewal is not required to secure additional entries. |
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*License is subject to application approval. Non-resident Military, their dependents and non-resident individuals under 17 years of age are not eligible for lifetime licenses. See complete list of regulations.
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Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation Updates |
Introducing the S. Reed Morian Oyster License Buyback Program |
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Wild Texas oysters are so much more than just a prized delicacy to be devoured by the dozen. Did you know that oysters provide crucial ecosystem services for our entire gulf? Known as ecosystem engineers, oysters form low-lying, three-dimensional reefs that serve as habitat for fish, crabs, shrimp, and so many other marine species while also providing food for larger fish, shorebirds, and people. The benefits these mighty mollusks provide range from improving water quality and clarity (a single oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day), to encouraging the growth of vital seagrasses that stabilize the sea floor, protecting the shoreline from storm surges and erosion, and capturing carbon.
But oyster reefs are bearing the brunt of excessive harvesting, hurricanes, flooding, droughts, and pollution, and they are currently considered one of the most imperiled marine ecosystems on the planet. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) has worked for years to turn the tide on overharvesting, holding its inaugural buyback for oyster licenses in 2018. After several years of limited success in purchasing oyster licenses, TPWD called on Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation (TPWF) to help move the needle.
Through our newly launched S. Reed Morian Oyster Buyback Program, TPWF is leveraging the power of philanthropy with public funds to provide existing oyster license holders with a compelling offer to retire their licenses. Led by key funders Laurie and S. Reed Morian Foundation and the Coastal Conservation Association, a passionate group of conservation-minded individuals and foundations is galvanizing the effort, including the Brown Foundation, the Earl C. Sams Foundation, Jeffery and Mindy Hildebrand, Beaver and Joanie Aplin, John and Mary Eads, and Bobby and Sherri Patton.
“Oyster reefs are the pearls of our greater Gulf, but this lifeblood of countless marine species needs a lifeline,” said CCA Texas Executive Director Robby Byers. “As part of CCA’s ongoing multi-year, multi-million-dollar commitment to oyster reef restoration along the Texas Coast, we are honored to join forces with Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation and other key stakeholders to tackle this issue from an effective new angle."
The program has enabled TPWD to offer license holders a competitive fixed rate to retire their licenses instead of the traditional reverse bid process used in past buyback rounds. And the effort is paying off. Of 545 available oyster licenses, TPWD received 115 commercial oyster boat license offers in this latest round, which, if all applicants participate, would represent a reduction by 21 percent of total oyster licenses in the state. This reduction in commercial oyster activity will dramatically reduce harvest pressure on wild oyster reefs, allowing them to recover. |
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Symposium Engages Top Experts in Texas’ Bighorn Strategy |
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As part of the ongoing desert bighorn sheep initiative in West Texas, a full-day symposium on May 15 brought more than 100 stakeholders to Sul Ross State University in Alpine for urgent discussions about steep bighorn declines.
The event—Managing Desert Bighorn Sheep in Texas: Challenges of the 21st Century—was hosted by TPWD in partnership with TPWF, Borderlands Research Institute (BRI), Texas Bighorn Society, and Wild Sheep Foundation, with support from Dallas Safari Club, Houston Safari Club Foundation, and Mender. Attendees also included biologists, landowners, veterinarians, and wildlife experts from across the country.
At the heart of the crisis is Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae (M. ovi), a respiratory disease driving more than a 50 percent decline in Texas’ bighorn population. The pathogen is now widespread in exotic aoudads, non-native sheep that have proliferated across the region and act as carriers while showing little disease impact themselves. Together, attendees explored the disease threat, aoudad’s role in transmission, and the broader challenges of managing bighorns on rugged, privately owned lands.
“We’re in a tough spot,” said Froylan Hernandez, Bighorn Sheep Program Leader for TPWD. “Our most productive herds are surrounded by risk. This is our watch, and it’s on us to do something about it."
Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission Chairman Paul Foster called it a pivotal moment. “The threat is real and it’s urgent,” he said. “But so is the opportunity to work together again for the good of this species."
He pointed to a promising development: TPWD’s recent translocation of 77 disease-free bighorns from Elephant Mountain Wildlife Management Area to Franklin Mountains State Park in El Paso—a rare West Texas landscape without aoudads.
Dr. David Yoskowitz, Executive Director of TPWD, ended the day with a clear message. “We will use the best available science to inform our decisions, but we can’t wait for perfection. An action plan requires action, and we have the partners, the resources, and the commitment in this room to get it done." |
Now Available! Texas Wild – Deluxe Edition
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In a serenade worth sharing, we are thrilled to announce the release of Texas Wild – Deluxe Edition. Building on the success of the original Texas Wild, released in 2023 as part of the 100 Years of Texas State Parks Celebration, Texas Wild – Deluxe Edition features new bonus tracks and a limited edition vinyl release package you’ll want to add to your collection. You can order your copy of the Texas Wild – Deluxe Edition limited vinyl album today, which includes two powerful bonus cuts: “Pretty Woman” by Ruthie Foster and The Texas Gentlemen and “You’re Gonna Miss Me” by Zella Day. The vinyl package also comes with four interchangeable covers by influential Texas illustrator Mishka Westell, plus a 24-page companion book with stories behind the album’s songs and the wild things and wild places that inspired the album’s creation.
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Pollinators & Prairies Website Offers New Resources for Texans |
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Native bees and other essential pollinators are vanishing at alarming rates, yet these tiny pollinators play an outsized role in keeping our ecosystems and food chain thriving. That sobering reality is why TPWF launched its Pollinators & Prairies program in late 2024 to help more Texans protect and restore habitat for native bees, butterflies, and all of our many pollinators. Now, our expanded website makes it easier than ever to take action, no matter the size of your space.
Whether you have an area in your yard, a prairie-sized pasture, or a patio deck, the updated Pollinators & Prairies website offers new resources to help turn that space into vital pollinator-friendly habitat, including step-by-step guides to walk you through site prep, planting, and care.
For landowners and land managers, the expanded site has helpful information on tax incentives, cost-share programs, and upcoming workshops to support prairie restoration efforts on private ranches or public lands.
And there’s more to come — TPWF is actively developing Wild Thumb, an interactive mobile app to help novice and experienced gardeners design their own native plant garden bed or pocket prairie. TPWF’s Wild Thumb app will provide users with ecoregion-specific plant lists and other tools. As an e-newsletter subscriber, you’ll be the first to know when the app becomes available.
Pollinators & Prairies is made possible thanks in part to sponsors H‑E‑B’s Our Texas, Our Future and Phillips 66. |
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What else has TPWF been up to?
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Want more? Check out these interesting articles and resources: |
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Thank you to our statewide program sponsor! |
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The Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Kingsville is the leading wildlife research organization in Texas and one of the finest in the nation. Its mission is to provide science-based information for enhancing the conservation and management of wildlife in South Texas and related environments.
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Stewards of the Wild, Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation’s conservation leadership program, equips emerging leaders aged 21 to 45 with opportunities to actively participate in the stewardship of Texas’ wild things and wild places by providing education, networking, and outdoor experiences.
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Copyright © 2025 Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation, All rights reserved.
Our mailing address is: Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation 6220 Gaston Ave. #700 Dallas, Texas 75214 |
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