My favorite day of the entire Texas Field Ecology Trip was our second day at Independence Creek Preserve. After breakfast, a few classmates and I set out to fish in the springs of the preserve. While fishing, the preserves stewardship drove by. I had a short chat with him and his intern, and he recommended a few other fishing spots we might want to try. After our conversation, the stewardship drove off and not thirty seconds later my classmates and I heard about six gunshots. Come to find out they had killed an adult nutria.
They later told us about how much of a nuisance nutria are to the preserve and how detrimental they are to the flow of the creek. With Independence Creek being a huge contributor to the lower Pecos River, it is important that its flow remains uninterrupted, so the management of nutria is a necessity for the health of the preserve. This leads to the highlight of my entire trip.
At around 10:30 that day we were about to seine Independence Creek. On our way to the spot of the creek we wanted to seine, I spotted four juvenile nutrias alongside the water. We got out to look at the nutria and our professor, Casey, told one of the other students to go get the stewardship so they can exterminate the nutrias. The intern came over to where we spotted the nutrias, and in his possession was a short-barrel 12-gauge shotgun. As the intern walks toward the nutria, he asks if anyone would like to eradicate the nutrias. Without any hesitation, my hand shot up and I said, “I want to do it!” After the deed was done, I put on my waders, retrieved the nutrias, and took this photo.
I was very happy to be able to contribute to wildlife management and better understand what needs to be done for conservation efforts. If the nutrias were left unbothered, the health of the creek and surrounding wildlife would have been negatively affected.
This event helped me understand the purpose of why wildlife management and conservation are things that needs to be taken seriously. To an outsider, these actions could be thought of as unnecessary. However, to someone who understands conservation and wildlife management, they see the reason behind what had to be done.
Here is a picture of a sea trout I caught on my fly rod near Matagorda Island.
