A Whooper of an Opportunity

Expanding Goose Island State Park by 52 acres sounds mighty nice.

Feb 19, 2024

Whooping Cranes and Sandhill Cranes foraging in a wetland on private property near Goose Island State Park, February 2024.

A week ago my family and I drove down to Goose Island State Park for a weekend of camping. I thought the last time I’d been down was October 2022 but after reviewing photos it turns out it was actually October 2021! Time flies by when you are busy doing other things.

We made the trip into a three day weekend due to a teacher in-service day with my kiddo’s school so we had plenty of opportunity to do all of the sightseeing we wanted to do while we were there. Saturday was grey and windy, not exactly enticing to be outside. At least we missed most of the rain that blew through as we were leaving from the Houston area.

The state park is one of our older state parks having been created between 1931 and 1935, with the CCC having a role in building some of the first facilities at the park. Goose Island itself is the island out where the pier and beach shelter campsites are located, at the confluence of Aransas Bay and St. Charles Bay. The rest of the state park is located on the Lamar Peninsula and includes the piece of land where the state park’s most famous denizen, The Big Tree, resides. I’ll have to write a separate essay on our friend The Big Tree at a later date because it certainly deserves a spot here at On Texas Nature.

After we settled into our campsite at the state park we drove over to go check on the whooping cranes and The Big Tree. Whooping cranes are federally endangered and are the tallest birds in North America. Once their numbers ranged into the 10s of thousands but their populations plummeted to just 15 in the early 1940s due to, quelle surprise, overzealous hunting. Plume and meat hunters nearly hunted these birds to extinction and even 80 years later their numbers aren’t recovered to historic levels. USFWS’s 2022-2023 winter counts for the population that winters on the Texas coast were 536 birds. Yep. That’s it after 80 years.

The whooping cranes that come to Texas migrate each year from their Gulf of Mexico warmed coastal habitats around Aransas National Wildlife Refuge and Goose Island State Park all the way to Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada, 2,500 miles away! There’s an eastern population of whooping cranes as well, a group that migrates from wintering grounds in central Florida up to the Upper Midwest each year. That population size is about 76. Of course, both of these groups have strays that deviate from these locations for whatever reason. In Texas you can sometimes find them on the Upper Texas coast occasionally around Anahauc National Wildlife Refuge as well as an experimental non-migratory population in southern Louisiana. My first foray with a whooping crane was with the eastern population at Paynes Prairies Preserve State Park in Florida back in 2009.

Whooping cranes use a lot of different kinds of habitats for all of their life-cycle activities, but all of them tend to be centrally focused on wetlands: marshes, estuaries, lakes, ponds, shallow bays, tidal flats, upland swales, riverine ecosystems, and even ag fields. Their diet is like many other birds, fairly diverse and range from insects to amphibians to fish and even fruits. Whoopers live both alone and in groups or in small families and will flock into larger groups during migration. You can read more about whooping cranes here at the USFWS website.

The whooping cranes near Goose Island State Park can easily be found along Lamar Beach Rd between 4th and 12th Streets, often roaming in the back and front yards of people’s coastal retreats or wading in St. Charles Bay. One of the areas they tend to congregate is on a property between 8th and 12th Street, behind the barbed wire fence where a wetland area slopes down towards the east side of the property. On our visit this time, I was dismayed to see the property was for sale.

Priced at $6,150,000 for 52-acres, this is what you’ll get according to the realtor’s website:

“This stunning waterfront acreage (52) in Lamar is a one-of-a-kind paradise and habitat to local wildlife galore, such as Whooping Cranes during winter migration, deer, alligators, pelicans, hummingbirds, fox and more. This property is located in the Northeast quadrant of Lamar across the street from the Big Tree and stretching to Eighth Street. Pristine coastal prairie characterizes the easternmost portion of the property, accentuated by a freshwater pond which hosts a large winter migration of birds and year-round habitat. Towering Coastal Oak trees cover the Western boundary of the property, there are multiple slabs and RV connections on the property and plenty of room for a stunning upscale 7 acre fenced homesite with impeccable waterfront views of Saint Charles Bay. Cattle roams and co-exists with the Cranes and wildlife on the remainder of the acreage. Just steps from world class hunting and fishing and adjacent to Goose Island State Park, this is truly a nature lover's dream.”

You can read the rest of the entry and see photos on the realtor’s website here. Since this is quite outside of my budget, I can only hope the person who purchases the property would continue to be a good steward for the property and advocate for protecting the whooping cranes and their wintering habitat.

But as we’ve seen this year, sometimes humans don’t have the best interest at heart for wildlife. Which is why I think this would be a good property to expand Goose Island State Park and a good use of the Centennial Parks Conservation Fund monies.

Above is a map of the current USFWS critical habitat for whooping cranes on the Texas coast. It encompasses Aransas National Wildlife Refuge as well as other public and private lands that are considered essential for the survival of this species. Now, this property is just outside of that boundary, literally across the street. But in 2012, TPWD was able to purchase additional land around the Big Tree with the help of The Nature Conservancy to create the Big Tree Unit of GISP, with the express purpose of whooping crane conservation. They care about this unit so much that beginning in 2017, right before Hurricane Harvey, the CCA and Tito’s Handmade Vodka partnered up with supplemental private and government funding to create oyster reefs in the bay to supplement a living shoreline initiative to protect the land from erosion. You can see these demarcated reefs with PVC poles from the 12th Street/Lamar Beach Road curve out into the bay.

“The site now boasts forty-four reef beds that supply many ecosystem services to the immediate and surrounding areas, and critical shoreline protection to the Big Tree Unit, which is a major wintering ground for whooping cranes.” - CCA Texas

So, it seems to me that this property, with a thriving winter whooping crane population, and a property that draws birders and tourists to the area to get a glimpse of the highly migratory, endangered birds, would be an optimal addition to Goose Island State Park. If you haven’t been to the Rockport area recently, it’s growing just like every other town in Texas. Oak mottes are being bulldozed for additional subdivisions and strip malls. Too many people want to live on the coast and there are always repercussions from those desires. As the realtor’s site says, there’s room for an upscale home on this property.

But I envision something different.

It would make an excellent opportunity for a nature center and wildlife viewing platform for the state park in the upland areas. It’s directly across the street from The Big Tree, too. Park Rangers already walk from the main park entrance to the south, guiding guests over to the whooping cranes for birding and nature walks, both to The Big Tree and to view the whoopers from the side of the road. While we were there at The Big Tree one of the days, a ranger was set up with a viewing scope on the edge of The Big Tree parking lot, aimed at the whoopers across the street, and talking to guests.

It doesn’t have to be this way. These 52 acres could be conserved forever for whooping cranes and Texans.

I know I’m spitting into the wind here. I spent last year doing much of the same. Good thing I like my own spit. Hah! I have no idea how TPWD is going to determine what properties to buy with the new funding. But there’s no reason to not wish this into existence. If we couldn’t get 5,000 acres, maybe we can get 52.

I already emailed TPWD last week who hasn’t replied back yet. I also put in an email to the Texas legislature reps for this area and plan on calling them this week. And I suppose I’ll have to write some letters to the TPWD Commissioners, too. I’d like y’all do to the same.

This region is represented by Representative Todd Hunter and Senator Lois Kolkhorst. Drop them an email or give them a phone call. It doesn’t hurt to keep Ted Cruz and John Cornyn on their toes either, though they are federal. I messaged them adding in that this could either be a state property or a USFWS property. Either one, I don’t care, but it should be protected. It also doesn’t hurt to call or email your own representatives or write to the TPWD Commission.

And I know there are some electeds and folks running for office who subscribe to this newsletter, so maybe talk to your fellow elected officials in the legislature or locally and make a call in favor of the whooping cranes.

Let’s save some whooping crane habitat!

Share this post with someone who also wants to save some whooping crane habitat!

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