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Wildlife management school offered in April
Landowners rely on extra income hunting provides
Texas
Although it exhausts him, Barney Benavides looks forward to deer hunting season in South Texas.
As owner and operator of Barney's Drive-In in San Isidro, about 35 miles northwest of McAllen in Starr County, he says hunting season means a 45 percent to 50 percent increase in sales at his convenience store and gas station.
"For us, deer hunting season starts in October with bow and arrow," said Benavides, who also serves as the town's fire chief. "We prepare for it, and the extra business stays steady through January. After that it dies off and then it's back to our regular customers."
Benavides caters to hunters who come from throughout the Rio Grande Valley, but is never surprised to see customers from other parts of the state who lease hunting land from nearby landowners.
For the handful of enterprises in the rural community of 1,500, the extra dollars that hunting brings are important. Owners rely on the income to help them survive, Benavides said.
Such wildlife-related expenditures are not unique to San Isidro. Nationwide, hunting generates $25 billion a year in retail sales and creates over half a million jobs, according to the International Association of Fish and Wildlife.
In Texas, the wildlife industry is booming; hunting alone generates almost $1 billion a year in sales and wages, creating some 32,000 jobs.
Besides hunting, wildlife-related activities include fishing, camping, hiking, star-gazing, bird-watching and a growing number of events that allow "nature tourists" to escape city life and enjoy the state's diverse wildlife habitats.
To help ensure the wildlife industry continues to thrive, Texas Cooperative Extension and Texas Parks and Wildlife have scheduled a three day course to help landowners enhance and properly manage wildlife and wildlife habitat.
"This South Texas Wildlife Management School is designed for landowners who want to develop their wildlife management skills," said Byron Wright, an Extension wildlife specialist in Uvalde.
"Participants will start the learning process at ground zero and at the end of the three-day school will be saturated with information on the proper management of wildlife and habitat on their properties," he said.
Wright said that for many landowners in South Texas, the importance of wildlife has grown tremendously in the last few years.
"Because hunting and nature tourism are such booming industries, the economic value of wildlife has taken a front seat in property management, especially for landowners who may be experiencing problems in traditional agriculture and who want to diversify and supplement their income," he said.
The South Texas Wildlife Management School will be held at the Chaparral Wildlife Management Area, located in La Salle and Dimmit Counties, between Laredo and San Antonio, west of George West.
The school is scheduled for April 2 to 4. The $250 per-person registration fee includes lodging, meals and printed materials. Application deadline is March 22; class size will be limited to 20.
"The course is intense and rigorous," said Wright. "Topics will include using management tools to manipulate wildlife, monitoring rangeland, using GIS technology to plan management activities, writing wildlife management plans, using fire as a management tool, using federal cost-sharing programs and other topics vitally important to landowners who want to enhance wildlife and habitat on their properties."
Instructors, Wright said, will include experts from private industry, Texas A&M-Kingsville, Texas Parks and Wildlife and Extension.
For more information, contact Heather Hunnicut in Uvalde at 830-278-9151, or visit http://uvalde.tamu.edu.
Date: 3/11/04
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