- ANNOUNCER: The Texas Parks and Wildlife Television Series is supported in part by Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation -- conserving the wild things and wild places of Texas, thanks to members across the state.

Additional funding provided by the Toyota Tundra.

Your local Toyota dealers are proud to support outdoor recreation and conservation in Texas.

Adventure: it's what we share.

- NARRATOR: Coming up on Texas Parks and Wildlife... - We didn't create it.

It was here before we were here.

But we brought it back.

- This erosion is pretty substantial, we're looking at about 15, 20 feet.

It shouldn't be like that.

- We doze it, we clean it, you know, get some water going to that area.

And then sitting back and looking at it going, "Okay, we're better here."

[theme music] ♪ ♪ - NARRATOR: Texas Parks and Wildlife, a television series for all outdoors.

- JEFF: We didn't really know what we were doing.

The goal wasn't necessarily to create habitat.

[bright music] We bought the property because we wanted a place to ride our bikes.

As we started building, we started learning about the native species.

We didn't create it.

It was here before we were here, but we brought it back.

[bright music] - AMY: We're like in a looking glass of nature.

All we have to do is look out the window and it's nothing but butterflies and bees.

It's incredible.

- I'm Jeff Thompson.

- I'm Amy Thompson.

- We are west of Burton at Coyote Run.

[bright music] - This all started when we had our AgriLife agent come out.

We just wanted to do, like, plant identification to figure out what we had out here.

And he said these really foreign weird words to us, which was, "You have a post oak savannah."

I just said, "Wow.

What's a post oak savannah?

Never heard that before."

We thought, "This is so cool.

Why don't we, like, try to bring it back to some semblance of what a post oak savannah would be?"

- JEFF: When we tore all the trees out, and we smooth everything off, and almost instantly, the native seed bank came up and we were just amazed at all of the things that were here.

[bright music] - AMY: This is definitely my happy place.

- JEFF: Her line is, "I'm in heaven."

It's her line as she's walking through and seeing everything.

- AMY: Look at this one.

This is our yard.

Most everybody we know, even out in the country, they have St. Augustine grass yards.

Most people are taken aback by the house being surrounded by wildflowers.

- JEFF: Or tall grass.

- AMY: And tall grass.

- JEFF: Everybody feels like, manicure right around the house.

[bright music] - AMY: I have noticed that the more our friends come out here and they observe the insects, they observe the wild bees.

It starts gelling for them.

They start getting it, and they start to understand that you don't have to even have a short-mowed grass all around the perimeter of your house.

[birds chirping] - JEFF: You don't want everything to bloom at once and then go away or there's no food for the foragers.

The idea is to have some come on early and some come on late, and it just goes all the way through the season.

- AMY: We definitely leave sandy areas open.

There's always somewhere where the ground nesting bees can nest.

We have learned that, you know, you can put blocks of wood up and the mason bees, you know, you drill holes and we've got several snags around here that we have purposely left up for fireflies and for butterflies and for frogs, and, you know, for everybody.

[bright music] - JEFF: We do shred it once a year and it's usually January and February.

And that was always a battle.

As soon as the flowers were gone, I wanted to go ahead and mow it down.

And what I learned is that there are insects and then birds that will use that tall grass all the way until February, maybe even March.

[bright music] - AMY: We do go out and assess insect activity and make sure that we time it so that it's the most dormant time of the year.

- JEFF: It's incredible when we mow and everything's brown on top.

We shred it to about six inches tall and everything's green underneath.

And it just takes off as soon as we shred.

Problem is, when they have these mowers and they come from your neighbor's property, they pick up all the seed and deposit it on our place.

Amy has seen mowers in the neighborhood, and she'll go talk to the mowing crew and tell them, "Don't mow in front of my house.

Please don't mow in front of my house.

I'm putting signs up."

It's frustrating to do the restoration and then see them mow it.

And next thing you know, you have Johnson grass and Bahia coming up in your natives.

And those introduced species will choke out all of the natives in a heartbeat.

If you walk along that easement along the driveway, you'll see all the same insects that you see back here.

There's no need to cut it all down.

We eventually mow it and we don't let the trees grow out to the street.

We're maintaining it.

It just looks a little different than everybody else's.

[gentle music] - Something that I had never really even thought about before is the competition between European honeybees and native bees.

We started the process of regaining agricultural exemption on this property by being bee farmers.

So, we're apiarists.

We have several bee colonies.

We were up to 12 because that was what was required to get your agricultural exemption.

When we reached our agricultural exemption, we decided to transition to a wildlife exemption because we felt like having 12 bee boxes for European honeybees was too much pressure for the native bees on the land.

And we wanted to create more of a balance.

So, we're actually down to four.

It's not horrible to have European honeybees, but too many is a problem.

We'd like to see the stocking rates for bees less and be able to support the native vegetation more and support the native wildlife more and all of the native pollinators.

[bright music] - JEFF: There's not a playbook that says do this on this day and everything will be beautiful.

This has been a learning experience.

We plant all kinds of stuff.

Some stuff comes up, some doesn't.

Two years later, what we planted all of a sudden does come up.

- AMY: We've simply learned to assist Mother Nature in what Mother Nature does best, which is heal and regenerate and create wildlife habitat.

We're very passionate about it and we love doing this.

We find that it is our way of giving back to the world.

[bright music] - My name's Wade, and this is what it's like to do some sand surfing at the Monahans Sandhills State Park.

Ready?

[exhale] Let's give it a shot.

[playful groove music] [laughs] [playful groove music] [breathing heavy] Whoo!

Man, look at that view!

You can see some jackrabbit tracks.

And you can see the little beetles, the dune beetles.

[playful groove music] You get that wax all the way around there.

You can rent these at the Dunagan Visitor's Center.

They always say the purple ones are the fastest.

[laughing] [playful groove music] We need elevators.

Oh mercy.

I'm getting too old for this!

[sighs] [playful groove music] [shrieks] [playful groove music] - That was fun!

[playful groove music] - WADE: That's what it's like, sand-surfing at the Monahans Sandhills State Park.

[playful groove music] [laughing] [light wind blows] [piano music] - NARRATOR: It's an island by many names.

Bird Island by locals.

[waves crashing] Sundown Island by some.

- This is in the top three of biggest, bestest of the rookeries in Texas.

- CHESTER: I always liked birds.

It's fun to come out here and see what's going on.

- NARRATOR: But to those who ever met Chester Smith, who dedicated his life to watching over these birds, this is Chester Island.

- This island used to be 100 acres.

Right now it's sitting at 65 and we're losing, depending on which side of the island, we lose as much as 30 feet during a year because of storms, because of ship wake, and you can actually see a ship coming now.

[whirring] [water lapping] Over the last several years, Sundown Island continues to erode away, and that's bad news for these birds, the birds that use this island every year to nest.

[gentle piano music] - NARRATOR: Sundown came to be in 1962.

While building the Matagorda ship channel, all the extra sand and sediment called dredge spoil was molded into this island.

[birds squawk] It turned into one of the best rookeries, or bird nurseries, along the Texas coast.

- For miles around, miles and miles around, this is the only game in town.

All those birds that feed and live in that area come to this one island, and that's their nursery.

That's their home.

That's where they're making babies and raising families.

[birds squawking] - CHESTER: That's a pelican nest with only two eggs.

- NARRATOR: For 25 years, Chester Smith worked for the National Audubon Society as a watcher of sorts.

A caretaker for the birds.

- CHESTER: I have a lot of birds that are beautiful when they're in their mating colors, so one of my favorite is the reddish egret.

Reddish egret is on the threatened list.

[gentle music] - NARRATOR: Chester passed away back in 2011 and left behind a thriving rookery island.

But it's now in need of some attention.

- Yeah, we like to come out and make sure, kind of keep an eye on the erosion throughout the year.

We don't like to be out here during nesting season so we keep that to a minimum.

This erosion is pretty substantial.

We're looking at about 15, 20 feet, a cliff of about 15, 20 feet, and just above that you've got birds nesting.

Next year this area may not be here anymore to provide nesting habitat for those birds.

It shouldn't be like that.

[birds squawking] Sundown Island hosts 18 species of colonial water birds.

That's everything from brown pelicans to laughing gulls.

[water lapping on shoreline] More importantly, species of conservation concern like black skimmer, reddish egret.

It's got white ibis.

[chirping] It's impressive the diversity on this island and that's why it's important for us to also create diverse habitat on this island where we can.

[birds cawing] You can see that in this area there's still some bare ground spots which end up being great habitat for terns.

[birds cawing] Once it starts to get like these sunflowers on the perimeter, it's too vegetated for those birds to use.

They like bare ground ideally.

That only happens when we get dredge spoil.

[waves crashing] - NARRATOR: Who helps make sure Sundown gets that much needed sand?

It's still in the family.

Chester's daughter Peggy and her husband Tim now keep an eye on Sundown.

- Chester's footprints are pretty big.

It's really special to be able to come out and walk the same trails that he walked for 25 years.

- CHESTER: There's some beautiful great egret chick.

You can tell they're great egrets because they have a yellow beak and have green eyeshadow.

- TIM: I tell Peggy that you walk around the corner and you can just imagine still Chester coming around and meeting you there and getting you to work on a project.

[whirring] - NARRATOR: This latest project, a massive dredge is pumping tons and tons of sand out to Sundown.

- DAVID STUDER: It's about 16,000 feet all together, a discharge line from here to Sundown Island.

- NARRATOR: This is a win-win.

The dredge is here to maintain and deepen the ship channel, while Sundown gets the sand.

[loud whirring] - DAVID: The cutter's down on the bottom.

We're digging the material.

We're getting about 20,000 gallons a minute.

We pump water and sand mixed together.

[loud splashing] - ANDREW: This material is looking really, really good.

Even with it being as wet as it is, you can walk right out and stand on it which is an indication of just fantastic dredge material.

- NARRATOR: Andrew Smith from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been helping to replenish Sundown's shores for decades.

- Come on, Chester, let's look at this pipe.

We've been able to use maintenance material to come out and again start to renourish Sundown Island, and this particular job is one where we're going to put more material on Sundown than we have in the last 10 years at least.

- ILIANA: Everything looks great.

It's real easy to imagine here in a month or two a lot of terns and other ground nesting birds looking at all this and thinking that it looks really good.

- ANDREW: It's stacking.

We're building quite a bit of island.

The material is very firm, even all the way to the water line.

I think it looks fantastic.

- NARRATOR: In a way, it seems like Chester's still here.

- CHESTER: That is stacking up like I like it.

- Probably the bigger reason why we're standing out in this part of the bay and on this island is absolutely because of Chester and his dedication to the island.

[acoustic guitar music] There's no doubt that we want to do as much as we can to preserve and protect this and enhance it.

[acoustic guitar music] - CHESTER: Look at the plumes on that great egret.

Isn't that beautiful?

Those two there, look at there.

- NARRATOR: As for the birds that rely on Sundown, it looks like Chester's vision is alive and well.

- TIM: I feel like his spirit is still here in a way.

- CHESTER: See that spoonbill on his nest now?

[honking] - TIM: It is a special place to us beyond just the birds.

It's all that time that Chester invested to make this a special place.

- ILIANA: It warms my heart to see this kind of work because it's very easy to imagine him looking down on us and thinking, "Y'all are doing great.

You're doing a great job."

It's a beautiful thing.

[acoustic guitar music] [upbeat music] - NARRATOR: To celebrate 40 years of our television series, we are taking a trip back in time to look at some of our earliest episodes.

♪ ♪ [playful music] ♪ ♪ - Ahhh.

- NARRATOR: When is it okay to eat oysters?

- Only in the winter.

I mean there's no other time.

- Well, I think you're supposed to eat them in months with an "R".

- Contrary to the myth, I believe it is better to eat the oysters in months where there is no "R".

- Never.

Never would touch a nasty thing in the summer.

- Um, maybe it's an "S".

I'm not sure... - I guess the most common myth about oysters is that you should eat them only in months that contain R's and I believe this originated from the fact that oysters have been around for many, many years and of course refrigeration has not been around that many years.

So back in the old days, they spoiled in the hotter months of the year and the adage begun, do not eat them except in those months that contain R's, which is generally the fall and wintertime.

Since we have refrigeration now, that myth is a myth.

[gentle serene music] - We are about 26 miles northwest of Uvalde.

We're right where the Hill Country starts, that's the north end of our place.

We've got pinyon pines, and really tall hills, and kinda mountainous terrain.

Then you go to the south end of our place, and it's more like South Texas; mesquite trees, red dirt, so we got a little bit of both worlds.

Improving the land, seeing a pasture that was undeveloped, or full of brush, or cedar, or whatever, and then we doze it, we clean it, we take and get some water going to that area for wildlife, and livestock, and then sitting back and looking at it, and going, "Okay, we're better here."

- They're taking this property back to a natural state, something that we would see 100 years ago or 150 years ago.

[scraping] There's a lot of invasive species here.

We try to go back to a natural type habitat.

Basically on the cedar, what we're trying to do is get utilization out of the cedar.

[chainsaw buzzing] What these gentlemen are doing, they're taking the cedars and they're making cedar posts and cedar stays, so it's being repurposed essentially, and it's not just being thrown in the trash.

[turkey gurgles] [gentle music] - Everybody likes to hunt.

We have two daughters, two son-in-laws, six grandkids.

She even shot her first deer out there this year.

- Something we can do together.

We all, I've never done that, and I'm glad I did.

It was good, it was good.

Me and the girls both did.

- So the kids, they eat it up.

They love to hunt, they love that place.

And looking forward to the others as they get older to fall into that 'cause we have a blast.

This morning, we're taking the students out on a wildlife ID class.

Now, we're looking at the very top choice plant, and it's Southwest Bernardia.

You can look in books all day long, okay, but you can't get the real idea of what a plant looks like, until you see it in the various stages of growth in the wild.

What is this?

And Byler is one of the ones that allows us to come out here.

Got an open gate policy, and so the students get a lot of hands-on experiences.

Why aren't you guys speaking up?

Wildlife ID is just one of 'em.

We conduct prescribed fires basically on probably a thousand acres a year.

It's a prescribed fire, so they're gotta do it under ideal conditions to get their hands dirty in other words.

What do we got here?

So it's a learning experience every time outside the classroom, but in the outdoor classroom.

[gentle serene music] Oh, when my wife wants to go for a evening ride and see the sunset go down, that's the part.

That's the best.

[gentle serene music] - And you just feel kind of [exhales] like you just let go, but everybody loves to come, and there's just God there.

Just God is there, and He definitely has His presence, so it's good, it's great.

[wind blowing] [water flowing] [water flowing] [water gurgling] [water flowing] [water gurgling] [water gurgling] [water flowing] [water flowing] [water flowing] [wind blowing] - This is beautiful.

[footsteps] [birds chirping] [birds chirping] [wind blowing] This series is supported in part by Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation -- conserving the wild things and wild places of Texas, thanks to members across the state.

Additional funding provided by the Toyota Tundra.

Your local Toyota dealers are proud to support outdoor recreation and conservation in Texas.

Adventure: it's what we share.