Lone Star Nature News Vol. 1.0

Texas nature and environmental news roundup for January and early February 2023.

Clear running water at the Canadian River in the Texas Panhandle, 2011.

We get our news from many sources these days, not just the evening paper or the 5 o’clock local news station. Sometimes important environmental news doesn’t make headlines and so I thought it would be worth sharing some of that here in an easy, digestible format that can easily be shared! Here’s Volume 1!

• Big Thicket Needs Help Removing An Exotic Deer Species via Beaumont Enterprise: Axis are usually found in central and west Texas park lands, having escaped from private ranches where canned hunts take place. Unfortunately it looks like east Texas has a problem of their own now.

• “Who ever thought I would be chief?” Texas’ Alabama-Coushatta tribe elects first female chief via Texas Tribune: Some lovely news from the state’s only federally recognized tribe!

• Texas is losing a state park. Are there more to come? via Dallas Morning News: I’m still so irate about this entire situation. It should have never come to this and the fact there are 14 other state parks that are leased is ridiculous. This includes very popular parks in North Texas like Ray Roberts and Cedar Hill. I’ll have another update about this in a separate post next week.

• EPA moves away from Permian Basin air pollution crackdown via Texas Tribune: As per usual, “jobs” come before human and environmental health.

• Frozen sea turtles and wounded dolphins will receive help at new Texas State Aquarium facility via KXAN: Excellent news for a really great aquarium. With these increasing winter storms, another place for cold-stunned sea turtles is a must!

• Funding approved to study feasibility of storm-surge blocking islands in Galveston Bay via Houston Chronicle: The latest in everyone trying to engineer their way out of the devastation a Cat 5 hurricane barreling into Houston would cause. Effectively filling a chunk of Galveston Bay to create storm surge breaks seems…well, I could put in a lot of words to fill in what I think and they aren’t good words. Eventually I’ll tackle the “Ike Dike” and it’s components here.

• In East Texas, a town fights to keep an oilfield waste dump from opening near wetlands and water wells via Texas Tribune: “Texas has nothing more than the good ol’ boy system,” said Reeder, a certified geoscientist in both states. “You could send radioactive waste over there and nobody would know.” - that about sums it up!

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Misti Little writes On Texas Nature to share more about the environment and nature that is unique to Texas. She regularly writes at Oceanic Wilderness and can be found on Instagram at @oceanicwilderness.