Texas Fauna Project

TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEWEE: Lee Ann Johnson Linam

INTERVIEWER: David Todd

DATE: April 16, 2025

LOCATION: Wimberley, Texas

SOURCE MEDIA: M4A, MP3 audio files

TRANSCRIPTION: Trint, David Todd

REEL: 4216

FILE: AmericanAlligator_Linam_LeeAnn_WimberleyTX_16April2025_Reel4216.mp3

 

David Todd [00:00:02] Well, good morning. My name is David Todd, and I have the privilege of being here with Lee Ann Johnson Linam. And with her permission, we plan on recording this interview for research and educational work on behalf of a nonprofit group called the Conservation History Association of Texas, and for a book and a website for Texas A&M University Press, and for an archive at the Briscoe Center for American History, which is at the University of Texas at Austin.

 

David Todd [00:00:31] And I want to emphasize that she would have rights to to use the recording as she sees fit as well.

 

David Todd [00:00:39] And with that kind of plan in mind, I wanted to make sure that that’s OK with her. What do you think?

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:00:46] Yes, that is fine. I’m happy to talk with you. I admire your project and have enjoyed exploring the other recordings that are there or the other transcripts.

 

David Todd [00:00:57] Well, good, good. Well, you’ll be a great addition to the archive. Thank you so much.

 

David Todd [00:01:03] Well, let’s tell a little bit about when and where we are. It is Wednesday, April 16th, 2025. It’s about 9.50 a.m. in the morning, Central Time. As I said, my name is David Todd and I am representing the Conservation History Association of Texas. I am in Austin and we are conducting a remote interview with Ms Linam and she I understand is based in the Wimberly, Texas area. Is that correct?

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:01:38] That’s right.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:01:39] Five little acres here on the edges of Wimberley.

 

David Todd [00:01:41] A little bit of heaven.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:01:43] That’s what they say here.

 

David Todd [00:01:46] Good enough. Wow, you’re a lucky person.

 

David Todd [00:01:49] Well, Ms Linam is a wildlife biologist, and she has worn many hats over the years. She grew up, as I understand it, at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. And those are, of course, the wintering grounds for the whooping crane. And from 1983 to 1990, she worked at the J.D. Murphree Wildlife Management Area and was the alligator species leader while there. And then from 1990 through 1996, what was an especially contentious time in the wildlife field here in Texas, she was the program leader of the Texas Parks and Wildlife’s Endangered Species Program. Then from 1996 to 2013, she served as the coordinator of a citizen science program, something called Texas Nature Trackers. And then in subsequent years, she has led Linam Labs, which is a group supporting wildlife and science education for children, as well as working in community-based conservation efforts in Zimbabwe.

 

David Todd [00:02:55] So lots to talk about with that extensive background. I think what we’ll try to do is focus on Ms. Linam’s life and career to-date and really emphasize what she can tell us about whooping cranes, alligators, and then endangered species in general. And of course, we’ll touch on lots of other things, but that’s the general map of where I think we may go here.

 

David Todd [00:03:20] So, with that little introduction, I wanted to launch into this with a question about Ms Linam’s early years, and I was wondering if you might be able to point to any people or events in your childhood that might have gotten you interested in wildlife and nature and the outdoors.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:03:41] Well, as you already gave a glimpse, I probably never stood a chance. I was a National Wildlife Refuge brat. And so I simply grew up with the outdoors around me and very thankful for that in retrospect.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:03:57] It’s interesting when my son brought home the young lady who would become his fiance, she visited our little natural acreage here in Wimberley and she said, “I hope you know how lucky you were to grow up here.” And that’s how I feel about my childhood, is that I was lucky to grow up in places where I kind of saw diversity and the beauty of nature around me.

 

David Todd [00:04:25] Very nice. Well, sometimes these first impressions are hard to track down, especially if you’re just sort of in the midst of it. But do you recall a first exposure to animals, either in the wild or perhaps in captivity?

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:04:42] I really do actually have a very early memory. So I didn’t spend my entire childhood on National Wildlife Refuges. My dad had to spend some time in regional offices. But when I was a preschooler, we, he served as the manager on Cape Romaine National Wildlife refuge on the South Carolina coast. And that refuge is just a collection of marshes and coastal islands that have a variety of water birds and sea turtles.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:05:11] And I have very vivid memories of being out at night on a beach with these massive loggerhead sea turtles coming in to dig their nests and lay their eggs. And the eggs always struck me as pretty creepy. They were kind of goopy little ping pong balls. But I might’ve only been two or three years old, but I can remember really clearly being impressed by those turtles and just their slow, methodical way of coming on shore, how they didn’t even know we were there. And then they would dig that, slowly dig that nest, lay those eggs and head back to the water.

 

David Todd [00:05:54] Wow. That’s impressive, and do you recall any of the people around you who might have been bringing you there or talking to you about that experience?

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:06:04] Yeah, well, of course, my father was involved as being the refuge manager, but those would be the kind of family outings we would do. And so it was very often my mother and then my brother next to me in age was born when we lived at that area. So I don’t remember how old he was when he made his first trip to see sea turtles. But occasionally it would be with other biologists and researchers, but it was mostly family experience.

 

David Todd [00:06:32] That’s great, gosh, well, to have all that skill and interest, you know, encircling you, that must be really inspiring.

 

David Todd [00:06:42] So, you know, you were seeing and experiencing the real thing, but I was wondering if there were any sort of items in the general culture, and I’m thinking about books and movies and TV shows and, you know more recently, I guess web stuff that that might have been an introduction for you to wildlife and science and nature and so on.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:07:06] Well, when I headed off to college, I actually didn’t think I was going to be a wildlife biologist because I had read all of the James Herriot veterinarian books, the All Creatures Great and Small and his whole series of books. And he’s such an effective author and draws one into the romantic lifestyle of being a country veterinarian.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:07:29] So I worked for a veterinarian and I was involved with horses and animal activities as growing up and so I really thought that working with animals as a veterinarian would be something that I would want to do and so that was sort of I would say the thing that I ran into in popular culture that at least cemented my interest in going into the biological fields.

 

David Todd [00:07:52] Yeah, that seems just one step beyond wildlife. I mean you’re working with animals and I guess more intimately with the people that are their companions or owners or however you term it.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:08:05] That’s true, that was an important part.

 

David Todd [00:08:08] Well, you mentioned college there and I was wondering if there was any episode in school, whether it was preschool all the way through college and grad school that was a powerful sort of stimulus for you, either from your peers, your classmates, or maybe from your teachers.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:08:29] Yeah, well, I’ll tell you how I got off the veterinarian track. That is that I chose to take, once I started school majoring in animal science at A&M, I chose to take Wildlife Fisheries Science 201, the introductory course to wildlife as a degree at A& M, just as an elective. And it was taught by Dr. Ray Telfair, a bachelor wildlife professor who was wholly devoted to teaching students there at A&M and sharing all of his knowledge with them and the the course was fascinating.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:09:09] And I remember one evening reading my assignment out of Wildlife Biology, a little textbook by Raymond Dasmann and getting to the chapter on niches, on ecological niches, and I just thought this is so much more interesting than thinking about vaccinating animals. And I realized that my real love was kind of the messiness and the complexity of ecology.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:09:36] And so I told my dad, “I’m going to switch to a wildlife major”, and he kind of hesitated and thought that maybe there were more jobs in veterinary medicine. And I said, “Well, I could always become a veterinarian later”, but then eventually, I think he was quite proud and pleased that that I was drawn toward the same things that he was drawn to.

 

David Todd [00:09:57] Very interesting. Yeah, yeah, you didn’t fall far from the tree, I guess.

 

David Todd [00:10:02] Well, it’s wonderful that you can sort of pinpoint those early experiences and track back a lifetime of work on this kind of field.

 

David Todd [00:10:18] You know, this is just a random place to start, because I think it sounds like this has been a lifelong love and interest of yours, but I thought as an origin, we might start in 1983, where I believe you went to work at the J.D. Murphree Wildlife Management Area in southeast Texas as a wildlife biology specialist there, and I was wondering if you could just talk about the alligators. Because I understand that that was part of your responsibility, and of course, there are a number of alligators there.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:10:54] Yes.

 

David Todd [00:10:54] Maybe you can talk to us, just as an introduction for some of us who are kind of lay people, maybe tell us about Murphree and then also about the life cycle and ecological niche of these alligators that find their home there.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:11:08] Yeah, the Murphree Wildlife Management area was pretty magical. I always loved wetlands and probably some of that was the time I spent on Aransas National Wildlife Refuge growing up. So when I interviewed with Parks and Wildlife, there were actually a couple of biologist positions that were open and I said, “don’t send me to the Panhandle, send me down there in that mucky wet marsh.”.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:11:29] And so the Murphree Wildlife Management Area was about 15,000 acres of coastal marshes set in that broadest expanse of marshes that’s on the upper Texas coast as as you go up the upper Texas coast and start to hit the Cheniere Plain of Louisiana. You have miles and miles and miles of marshes that grade from freshwater down all the way through intermediate and brackish and salt marsh.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:11:54] And so the Murphree was up on Big Hill Bayou. It was more of a freshwater marsh that was highly managed for waterfowl. There were impoundments there and water levels could be managed. And so it was an amazing feeling to get in an airboat and just skim across the marsh for miles and miles and miles.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:12:14] You could have easily gotten lost except that Port Arthur is right there on the edge of Murphree Wildlife Management Area. And so if you were out at night doing an alligator survey, you could always see the lights of the refineries that surrounded Port Arthur, Texas there. So it kind of helped you to keep oriented, I would say.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:12:34] Um, but yeah, the Murphree area was a fascinating area to work. And we did a lot of work on, on waterfowl and on wetland vegetation as well. But at the time I arrived there, alligators were just coming off the endangered species list. And so that became a resource that we were interested in making sure that we entered into an era of wildlife management that made sure that alligators were a sustainable resource from that point on.

 

David Todd [00:13:02] Well, I guess a lot of us do not try to be very close to alligators, so maybe you can help us describe the niche that these alligators fill and maybe something about their life cycle as they go through their career of being an alligator.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:13:24] Yeah, well, when you study wildlife biology in school, you learn about R-selected species and K-selected species. So, R-selected species are supposed to be species that are limited by their reproductive potential. They have lots of young, they have short lives, but they can produce so many young that they sustain themselves. So rodents are a typical example of an R-selected species.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:13:46] And then K-selected species are limited by their carrying capacity. So whooping cranes that we talk about later on will be K-selected species that live for a long time. They produce very few young at a time.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:13:57] But then there are a bunch of reptiles that are actually sort of in between, and alligators are like that. So alligators, like many turtle species, live for long time and at the same time they produce a lot of young, but mortality rates are high for the young, and then once the animal reaches adulthood, then mortality rates are very low.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:14:24] And so that’s a type of life history in which it might be quite easy to overestimate the harvest levels that a species could take because you see a lot of young produced, and yet you have to have an appreciation that the design of their life history is that the adults are supposed to live for a long time and be able to reproduce young.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:14:48] I would describe alligators as being what we might call a keystone species actually. We think about a lot of other keystones like wolves and prairie dogs, but alligators fall into that category of what we call ecosystem engineers in that alligators tend to modify the habitat around them. They create these big deep holes that help them to have an area that’s a protected aquatic environment when conditions get dry. And so those alligator holes in some environments especially, not as much in deeper marshes, but in marshes that tend to fluctuate and get drier at different periods of time, they can be really important habitats for other species there.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:15:31] And then of course, alligators are an important predator in their environment, feeding on a large variety of things, and so they might feed on amphibians, but actually some research has shown that because alligators also are feeding on things that eat amphibians, you know, they kind of. Help to keep the whole balance in the ecosystem.

 

David Todd [00:15:51] Very interesting. Well, and maybe just to give us some some sort of quantitative idea here, you know, what is their reproductive span? Like, when are they first able to to create new life? And what would be a typical egg clutch? How long do they live, do you think?

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:16:15] Well, alligators tend to reproduce at the, or they tend to grow at a rate of about a foot a year for the first six, six or seven years. And once they reach that six to seven-foot length, then they are usually sexually mature. And so it takes, you know, about five to six to seven years before an alligator is going to reproduce.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:16:35] And so then being reptiles, they lay eggs. And for alligators they actually construct a nest made out of marsh vegetation. And it’s the decomposition of that nest that helps to incubate the eggs. And it actually affects the sex balance or the gender of the eggs as they develop with a warmer nest producing one gender and a cooler nest producing another.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:17:03] They will lay something about 30 eggs and it takes about a month for those eggs to go through that incubation process. And so usually alligator nests are starting to hatch out in midsummer, sort of. So 30 days to 60 days [correction, per LAL: 60-70 days] in incubation and then they’ll hatch out sort of mid-summer.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:17:26] And the female alligator stays near the nest. She will listen to the sound of the young as they start to want to peep out of the eggs using a little egg tooth that’s on their snout. And she will actually open up the nest mound, that decaying vegetation, and help the young to escape.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:17:45] And then a lot of times she and the young kind of stay in that general area for maybe even a year or so so that she’s providing a little bit of protection from predation for those young alligators, especially from other alligators.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:18:00] But then those adult alligator will live something like 30 to 50 years in the wild, and under more protected conditions they could even live maybe up to 70 years. So once they’ve started reproducing then sort of the natural cycle expects them to be able to reproduce for many years.

 

David Todd [00:18:17] Well, they sound like they, like you say, if they get to maturity and pass that sort of vulnerable age, they can be pretty hardy.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:18:29] Yes.

 

David Todd [00:18:29] But I understand that the alligator was on the endangered species list and went through a terrible decline. Can you sort of walk us through that timeline of the decline of the alligator, why that happened, and over what period of time, and then, you know, its protection and restoration?

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:18:50] Yeah, well, alligators are dependent on wetlands. So, you know, the wetland loss that the U.S. experienced, you know, we estimate that about half the wetlands nationwide and within Texas were lost to various conversions and draining.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:19:04] But probably what really drove the alligator numbers down was just over-harvest. It was harvest at a level that wasn’t sustainable. And so we know that the profession to wildlife management only began to emerge in about the 1930s. Up until that time, you know, there were just only a few very limited game harvest regulations. And only until about the 1940s did we begin to understand things like sustainable harvest and reproductive capability and be able to understand that we were limited in terms of the harvest that took place and that there was now a demand existing that meant that we needed harvest regulations in place.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:19:47] But by that time, alligators had been pretty heavily harvested.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:19:50] So they were on the original endangered species list created when the first Endangered Species Act of 1967 was created. And that Endangered Species Act sort of just created a list and then it was modified further in ’69 and then ’73 to be the modern endangered species list.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:20:09] Also in the 1960s, Texas Parks and Wildlife began to designate species as threatened or endangered under legislative authority that they were given to do so. And so alligators went on the federal endangered species list in ’67 and on the Texas list in ’69. And harvest was prohibited for them.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:20:31] And the species was able to respond. By 1975, alligators were downlisted in a few select parishes in Louisiana, where a lot of habitat was still available and there were enough alligators to begin to kind of make a comeback. And when I say downlisted, they went from being designated as federally endangered to what was called threatened due to similarity of appearance.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:20:57] So the US Fish and Wildlife Service felt like we would need to continue to take a look at harvest of American alligators and think about doing it carefully because the demand for alligators would have been for their hides and they would have similar in appearance to American crocodiles which are much more imperiled and so therefore Fish and Wildlife gave them that designation saying that states that wanted to engage in harvest would have to come up with a system that allowed legally harvested animals to be tracked.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:21:29] And so Texas went to pursue downlisting as well and in the early 1980s, alligators were downlisted in Texas, and in 1984, Texas, well, we were preparing then to institute our first alligator harvest in 1984, thinking about those requirements of the Endangered Species Act that we’d be able to track harvest.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:21:57] So me stepping into my first job at Parks and Wildlife in ’83, I worked a lot with the idea of how can we effectively track harvest so that we know we’re falling within those acceptable limits. And so we came up with systems of estimating alligator populations by conducting aerial censuses with helicopters looking for alligator nests in the marsh. And we had enough of an understanding of reproductive rates of alligators and the kind of life tables to where we could estimate populations based on the number of nests we could see from the air.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:22:33] And we also did spotlight surveys at night on waterways looking for alligators as another local index of abundance.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:22:41] And we used those estimates to come up with a harvest limit and then we issued tags for alligator hide harvest that was based upon the amount of acreage of suitable habitat that a landowner had. So we were really trying to tie harvest to the places where alligator would be occurring based upon the expected density of alligators in that habitat.

 

David Todd [00:23:07] You know, I imagine that that for many years, alligator hunting was kind of a cultural phenomenon, and I was wondering how Texas and other states managed to change the attitudes about, you know, what’s sustainable and you know what’s legal. You know, did you find that that was part of the recipe for trying to bring these alligators back?

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:23:38] Yeah, well, you know, there’s a lot of, you find with all wildlife species, there is a lot of local knowledge and cultural knowledge. And the tradition in Southeast Texas where I was working was it was kind of a Louisiana Cajun kind of culture that existed there. And so there were these Louisiana French fellows who’d spent their whole lives fur trapping and hunting alligators. And so they did have, you know, an interest in being out there and getting involved in harvest, but they also had enough knowledge of the habitat to know or the ecosystem to know that alligators really had become more rare. And so they were willing to work with Parks and Wildlife in terms of setting these harvests.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:24:16] Now, people have different opinions about how many alligators are too many. And so, Parks and Wildlife was driven by data that would let us say this harvest was going to be sustainable and then others might’ve had a goal to reduce alligators in the environment. But, but we were working with those sustainable limits. And so, yeah, it took a little bit of getting used to.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:24:38] We also had to come up with techniques that would be effective and would not be wasteful in harvesting alligators. And we actually did an experiment on the Murphree Wildlife Management Area where we looked at whether hunters, if we just allowed hunters to go out and shoot alligators, would they be able to retrieve those alligators because they actually sink.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:25:01] And so the results of that study prompted us to adopt a system that had already been used in many places, and that is to sort of a cross between fishing and hunting alligators. And so people who would be hunting alligators would hang a bait above the water on a very large hook. And that would help them to be targeting alligators rather than other things that would be swimming in the water. And then one would come out the next day and then kill the alligators using a gun once that they were caught on the hook.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:25:34] But the whole goal was, I mean, it might not have seemed quite as exciting as hunting them down with a gun to some people, but our goal was to not have a waste of the resource. And so that’s the system that’s still used today.

 

David Todd [00:25:47] That’s really interesting. Thanks for telling me that.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:25:50] So another question that comes to mind has to do with alligator farming. And, you know, was that a significant kind of method for bringing alligator populations back? I mean, albeit not wild populations, but at least to keep the genetic diversity intact.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:26:14] Well, perhaps not genetic diversity as much. It’s been an interesting dynamic with alligator farming in that there was interest in alligator farming very early on and it was kind of a tradition in Louisiana that emerged a little bit later in Texas. And so the demand for having an alligator farm led Parks and Wildlife to consider further what portion of alligators or eggs could be collected from the wild and allocated to alligator farms.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:26:45] And it ends up that most alligator farms are started with eggs collected from the wild before the incubation is completed in captivity. Although we occasionally have a few alligators such as nuisance alligators that just need a different place to live. And so some of them go to alligator farms.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:27:02] But when we first initiated alligator harvest in Texas in 1984, the price for the hides was pretty high. And so there was a mixture of hunters that were commercial in their intent versus hunters who were just more like sportsmen in their intent who wanted to harvest an alligator. They might tan the hide and use it themselves or they might tan hide as something that they saved. And then the alligator meat is edible too. And so most hunters would eat the meat and restaurants had a demand for the meat.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:27:35] And so the demand or the pricing for the hides was pretty high when we first started harvest, which led us to be further aware that we needed to be careful in our harvest rates. But as there became greater sources of alligators through alligator farms, the prices of the hides collected from the wild dropped somewhat. And so now there’s less of a pressure on the species in terms of poaching to get the valuable hides. And instead, I think probably wild harvest is now more of a true blend of some commercial harvest, but some sport harvest.

 

David Todd [00:28:16] I see, OK, well, thanks for playing that out.

 

David Todd [00:28:20] And it sounds like you mentioned earlier, at least, that there’s some difference about how many alligators is a good number to have. And some think that fewer may be better than more.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:28:35] You know, the old measures of how many alligators there are, up to your…

 

David Todd [00:28:40] Yeah.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:28:41] Alligators.

 

David Todd [00:28:43] Well, I saw that you helped prepare a report called, “Alligator Nuisance Control Program in Texas, Problems and Process.” And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about this sort of new problem where it’s not so much having too few alligators, but maybe having too many or too many close to people and the conflicts that arise there. Can you help us explore that?

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:29:13] Well, some of the best photos I’ll be able to pass down to my grandchildren someday are going to be of me catching alligators and sitting on top of them. And that emerged not so much because of science research, but because of nuisance alligators.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:29:27] So I mentioned already that the Murphree Wildlife Management Area just sits right on the boundary of the city of Port Arthur. And in fact, Port Arthur is surrounded by a levee system that has a pump system that runs constantly day and night in order to take water out of the city areas and dump it into the marsh. So essentially, Port Arthur was always kind of this marginal wetland.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:29:53] And so one of the first things I was assigned to do in starting work there was to help with dealing with nuisance alligators in the city of Port Arthur. Because very often, we’d get a call about somebody saying, “There’s an alligator in my backyard. There’s an alligator in my garage. There’s an alligator walking down the street.”

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:30:12] Um, and so at first Parks and Wildlife was dealing with most of those calls. So because we were biologists there nearby, we dealt with them. Game wardens dealt with them in other areas, especially around Houston. And so as the population came back, alligators naturally began to disperse. There would be territorial disputes, you know, perhaps between males, that would drive males out from one area and they would just be looking for habitat nearby and sometimes they’d end up in the wrong places.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:30:39] And so that was a very hands-on process of capturing those alligators, using some snares and things, and taking them back out to the marsh.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:30:49] And then in other places, you sort of get into conflicts between people that simply feel like that there are too many alligators.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:30:59] And then the third category would kind of be places where perhaps there is sort of a risk to human health because an alligator is showing some behavior that’s not acceptable in an area that’s very close to people. And this is the scenario that Florida deals with all the time, because they have alligators in close proximity to people, there’s probably some people who’ve made the mistake of feeding alligators and giving alligators further comfort in being around human environments.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:31:27] And so those would be sort of three different scenarios.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:31:30] Well, we were hoping that perhaps the harvest would deal with the fact that people felt like too many alligators were in some areas. And in cases where there’s an actual risk of an alligator, then we still had to deal with alligators in the wrong places, we had to deal with getting them away from that scenario.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:31:50] And so we recognized that it was probably something beyond the scope of Texas Parks and Wildlife being able to handle every alligator. So we developed what we call a nuisance alligator control program where we contracted with people to remove alligators. And so in some cases, in many of those cases, the nuisance alligator hunter would simply be paid a fee to put the alligator back in appropriate habitat. In other cases, they would be allowed to sell the alligator to an alligator farm. Occasionally, we would allow them to use lethal means to remove the alligator, and then they could take the income from harvesting the alligator.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:32:28] And so those always required Parks and Wildlife to interact with this group of permitted nuisance control hunters. And so that’s kind of the point we got to in that process and where Parks and Wildlife still is today.

 

David Todd [00:32:43] Well, I’m intrigued, because I think there are biologists that study everything from small salamanders to much bigger animals. And I think that you’ve been on the other, that extreme end. And I was wondering how you would snare a live alligator. I think you explained how one might hang bait and fish and then come in the next day and kill them with a weapon. But how do you handle them safely for you and safely for the alligator?

 

Speaker 2 [00:33:20] Yeah, it’s not like those reality shows in the Louisiana swamps or like Crocodile Hunter or even Crocodile Dundee. And by the way, I spent some time in Australia when I was already working on alligators and they were filming Crocodiles Dundee II in the Northern Territories there. And I was talking to some of the croc researchers and they said, “Oh, we’ve been asked to come out because Paul Hogan and the others are a little bit afraid of filming out here where real crocodiles live. And so we’re supposed to provide safety guidance.”

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:33:52] So I got to protect the crocodile hunter from crocodiles.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:33:58] But we didn’t take the kind of chances you see in the movies.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:34:03] What a pretty safe method of doing it is to put a metal snare on a rope like it and just have it strapped to the end of like a bamboo fishing pole. And so your goal is first to get a snare on the alligator’s neck. And then we have a second snare and we make sure we get the mouth snare closed second. And then once you’ve got those two parts snared, well, then you do have the ability to wrestle the alligator and tie up the legs. And what we would do is put something like a rubber inner tube that had been cut on the snout attached to a rope. So that when we got to the release point, you undo the legs and then you step away and you pull the rubber band off the snout and the alligator heads on.

 

David Todd [00:34:48] You make it sound like such a easy, safe thing, but I imagine that there’s some excitement there. Do you remember any sort of drama?

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:35:02] They’re still very strong. And so as you’re trying to kind of get those legs contained, you really have to watch out for that tail and have to move quickly so that they don’t roll around with you. So there’s still a little bit of excitement.

 

David Todd [00:35:16] Oh, great. What wonderful memories. And I can see how your kiddos would enjoy the pictures of you riding a gator. That’s wonderful.

 

David Todd [00:35:27] Well, this might be a time to shift focus a little bit and, in some sense, go backwards in time, because I really would love to get your insight and memories about whooping cranes, since you grew up with them, you know, from childhood and and if that would be OK, maybe we can talk about about them. Would that be all right?

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:35:54] Yeah, that sounds great.

 

David Todd [00:35:55] Okay, well, again, sort of like with the alligator, perhaps you can introduce us to the general life cycle and ecological niche that whooping crane inhabits.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:36:08] Yeah, so whooping cranes are, they’re fascinating to the public, you know. They’re revered around the world. There are, well actually there are 15 species of crane, so cranes in general are revered around the world. They are so large and so showy. They have elaborate courtship displays and it just draws people to them. The fact that a lot of times cranes will mate for life, so there are these strong pair bonds. And so it creates kind of this connection, I think, between people and cranes in many, many different cultures.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:36:43] And so North America has got two crane species. We have the most abundant crane species in the world, which is the sandhill crane, but we also have the rarest crane species in the word, which is the whooping crane.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:36:55] And so the whooping cranes is, it is the tallest bird in North America. It’s one of the longest lived. I already mentioned that they are one of those typical K-selected species that reproduces very slowly and has this long lifespan, so that they are supposed to very, very slowly kind of sustain and rebuild their numbers.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:37:19] So, for us in Texas, whooping cranes are what we call winter residents. That is, that they are migratory birds that spend their winters in Texas, which is an important time for them. They are supposed to be building up the nutritional reserves that they’re going to need for reproduction on their wintering grounds. And then they migrate north.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:37:38] And for many years, we didn’t know where they went. Whooping cranes once nested throughout much of the northern plains. We think maybe the original estimate of whoopers in the wild was something around 1,500 birds. So never really, really abundant, but they were once more widespread.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:37:54] But for many, years we knew whooping crane wintered in Texas, but we didn’t know where they went to nest. And it took a lot of years of searching and kind of an accidental flight by a Canadian firefighter over the northern part of Alberta in the Northwest Territories in order to find the nesting grounds of the whooping cranes in Wood Buffalo National Park.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:38:17] So up on those vast muskeg wetlands in the national park in Canada, whoopers divide themselves into nesting territories and they build a mounted nest and they usually lay two eggs, but often only raise one chick. And then like the alligators, it takes the whoopers about five years to reach sexual maturity. So there has to be a lot of investment into keeping that one chick alive for five years so that then it can enter the reproductive pool. And then they, you know, live about 25, sometimes 30 years in the wild. And so once again, you hope you can keep them around for that whole life cycle so that they can contribute more to the population.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:39:01] So in terms of their ecological niche, whooping cranes are omnivores. Many cranes are more herbivores, feeding on grains and plant material. But the size of the whooping cranes and their long migratory path, I think drives them toward the need for greater nutritional sources from a mixture of plants and animals.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:39:24] And of course, they’re wetland inhabitants. They require wetlands, especially for roosting protection from predators. And so they’re closely tied to wetlands.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:39:32] In terms of their significance in conservation, I think of them as an umbrella species. Well, I think them as a flagship species in terms of the recovery effort for them, but as an umbrellas species in that whooping cranes have big territories. And they need big territories of wetlands on the Texas coast. They need a lot of wetland along their migratory path and they big territories of wetlands in their nesting grounds.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:39:58] So if you can manage to conserve enough habitat for a viable population of whooping cranes, you’ve got habitat for a lot other species. And that’s what we mean by umbrella species. It’s just a species that by virtue of what they need, if you conserve them, you conserve a lot others species in those habitats.

 

David Todd [00:40:16] That’s great. So, you know, benefits for the whooping crane spill over to a variety of other animals, I guess.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:40:23] Yeah, that’s true.

 

David Todd [00:40:26] Well, so, you know, clearly you’ve learned a lot of this on your own, but I imagine that some of this was, this information about whooping cranes that you got through osmosis. I understand that your father, Frank Johnson, managed the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge from ’73, I think, through the 80s. And I was wondering if you can talk a little bit about your dad and his you know, role and interest in cranes and the refuge.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:40:57] Yeah, yeah, no, we actually lived on Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. So that was a really big backyard. And so it was really a great place to be. Well, at that time, I was kind of horse crazy. So it was a lot of room to ride a horse. You kind of had to create your own entertainment. My brothers and I created this game called Tree Tag, because we were there and with those windswept live oak moths that were kind of all twisted and curved, and we discovered you could play a game of tag without ever getting on the ground if you could swing from one tree to another. So that’s what you do when you live on a wildlife refuge.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:41:39] You have to watch out for dangers, too, though. Once I got chased up a tree by a herd of javelinas that had become especially bold and started hanging around the houses. And we always had to watch our dogs because there were plenty of alligators living on Aransas National Wildlife Refuge as well.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:42:01] So yeah, we spent a lot of time outdoors and during the winter months, it was always the hope of seeing a whooping crane and our favorite activities were just driving the refuge roads in the evenings. Sometimes we would be going out hunting for feral hogs, which the refuge always tried vainly, in vain to somewhat control through harvest methods and donate the meat to local communities. And then just being out in boats on the Intracoastal Canal and checking out colonial nesting bird habitats and hoping for a dolphin sighting were all just part of the beauty of being there.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:42:42] At the time, there were boats already running out of Rockport to do whooping crane tours. And those were the best ways to get a glimpse up close at whooping cranes because living on the refuge, you actually just tended to see them at a distance from the observation tower and and yet you knew that a lot of what was happening on the refuge was in preparation for them.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:43:04] My father was a big proponent of prescribed fire and really increased the acreage that was being burned on the refuge after he started management of the area there and so that proved to be beneficial for whooping cranes. We learned that they would come into uplands to to feed on acorns and on vertebrates and invertebrates that were killed in the fires.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:43:27] So yeah, we definitely were a whooping crane family. But the other thing that I think I learned in living there and watching my father at work is that it wasn’t just about the wildlife. My dad was always really a people person, too. And so there was always this parade of characters sometimes through our home, people from the local community or from around the world who were coming to learn about the refuge and its management. And so there were just a lot of relationships that were built there through his job as refuge manager. And that was always something that I thought was a pretty good characteristic to remember as a wildlife manager is that you’re also working with a lot different kinds of people.

 

David Todd [00:44:10] Well, that’s interesting. And I guess, especially with an animal like the whooping crane that has such a long migratory path and such a long life and probably has lots of interactions with places and people internationally. Can you give us some examples of the people that might have come to visit your family and your dad?

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:44:33] Yeah, so one of them was someone who was already, had already sort of built a name for himself. So you may know George Archibald by reputation. In fact, I think you do. And so George, you know, in those years had just sort of come into fame or notoriety through his work on whooping cranes in terms of understanding their behavior. And so, famously, George was the man who danced with cranes, who used his understanding of bird behavior to help preserve some of the crane gene pool that was in captivity. So when birds were imprinted on humans, George learned some techniques for helping those whoopers be willing to be ready for reproduction, even in a captive setting.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:45:26] And so it was, you know, George Archibald was one of those who came to the refuge. I didn’t know him well then. But in later years when I served on the Whooping Crane Recovery Team, it was such a blessing to know that we’d had this overlap and that he knew my father and that they had interacted together on some of these efforts.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:45:43] There were people from other countries who wanted to learn about conservation strategies in the U.S. And so I had an amazing tour of South India with a representative from the Indian Forest Service who had first met our family when he came to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. So later in life I just visited India as a tourist, but got a great glimpse of the conservation work there.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:46:08] But you know, there was a variety of people that I say my father embraced. He had really great connections in the community and he would support all kinds of things like the Lions Club and the Boy Scouts and trying to make sure the refuge was helping in any way they could to provide wild pig meat for some of the barbecues. And and he was quick to hire local people for some of the employment opportunities out there, recognizing what they could contribute and the knowledge they had of the area. Some of them had been around a long time and could tell some great stories.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:46:45] And I’ve tried to capture some of those stories actually in a little recollection of the people that my dad had jotted down as being the people he remembered most.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:46:55] And then there were people that were completely outside the norm of any of those descriptions. There was this one fellow called, “Spirit”, who was an adventurer, a wanderer, a philosopher, and orphan. And Spirit had this long hair and these hippie clothes. And somehow, he showed up at Aransas Refuge, which is like 14 miles from the nearest highway. And he kind of showed up and hung around for a while. But my parents invited him in and let him eat meals with us. And so there was just a lot of opportunity to meet people from all walks of life.

 

David Todd [00:47:31] Very nice. Well, you sort of plopped us down in the ’70s and ’80s in life with cranes. It would be good to know, since I understand that the effort to conserve them really goes back many, many decades, to get an idea of the overall trends of whooping cranes and why they suffered at the outset, you know, and then how their numbers have gradually been built up. I understand that when you arrived at Aransas, the numbers were in the low 40s in the early ’70s, and now they’re over 10 times as high. So it’d be nice to hear what put them at risk in the earlier days and how their numbers have grown, what sort of strategies were used.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:48:24] Well, you know, like there’s a famous ecological work that’s entitled, “Why Big Fierce Animals are Rare”. And so I already alluded to the fact that whooping cranes being a large species that uses large territory sizes tied to wetlands was never the most abundant bird in North America. And they first probably suffered as prairie wetlands disappeared and they disappeared from their nesting grounds in the northern prairie states in the U.S.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:48:51] But they were also widely hunted during those years before game laws were widely implemented. So they were a huge charismatic bird. It would have been considered a trophy as well as a good source of meat to have harvested a whooping crane.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:49:09] And so I think that between the loss of much of the nesting habitat and the fact that there were no regulations on harvest, the whooping-crane numbers just got almost below sustainable before we even realized it.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:49:23] Aransas National Wildlife Refuge was formed in 1937 and by that point whoopers were already down in the 20s in their numbers and they even dropped below that. By 1941, the winter of ’41-’42, there were only 16 that were wintering on Aransas. At the time there were still six that were in a non-migratory population in Louisiana, but by 1950 that Louisiana population had died out or the very last bird in that population was captured because every other whooper in that population had died out – kind of the impacts of again hunting and some hurricanes that had really devastated the population.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:50:07] But it was really even though by that point we realized we needed to protect whooping cranes from harvest we needed to try to conserve the habitats we knew about. The recovery was incredibly slow. They went on that first endangered species list. And yeah, when we got there in 1973, I think there were about 50, 49 or 50 was the estimate at that time. So we went from the 1940s to the 1970s and had only managed to crawl up by a couple dozen birds.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:50:39] But a lot of times with wildlife species, you kind of just need a dynamic where you can get enough interaction between species and sometimes you just have to very carefully guard what you’ve got until you get to that point. So the numbers just kind of kept creeping up a little bit more. And by the time my dad died, he was actually still working as Aransas Wildlife Refuge Manager, but in the winter of ’86-’87, whoopers reached 100. So we’d gone from the 50 that were sort of there when we got there to 100, but it took about 13, 14 years to do that.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:51:15] And then it took another 14, 15 years and whoopers got to 200. So we began to have a little bit more confidence in where they were going. And at that point, I think we started to see that we were getting that kind of dynamic interaction that you could see some growth in the population.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:51:33] The year I retired from Texas Parks and Wildlife in 2013, whoopers had passed 300. And then more rapid population growth began after that.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:51:42] In fact, so much so that they originally came up with these very specific wintering numbers by flying in a small aircraft and counting every single whooping crane that was there on Aransas and the nearby wetlands that the whoopers were using. So the population was small enough to allow that.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:51:59] It also allowed a real good understanding of where mortality was happening and perhaps some reasons why. And so keeping an eye on them that closely during those years was really valuable.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:52:10] But by the time you start to get 300 to 400 birds, it’s hard to go and find every one of them. So at that point, the Fish and Wildlife Service started doing more of a transect distance sampling survey, still from the air, but not trying to count every single whooping crane.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:52:24] So those estimates, we went to sort of an estimate by the 2010s. And so we estimate that whoopers passed 400 by about 2016, passed 500 a few years later, and that’s where the last couple of winter estimates have placed us, as sort of between 500 and 550 whooping cranes, between there and Texas.

 

David Todd [00:52:49] Well, it’s so encouraging to hear these stories of wildlife conservation that, you know, through a lot of dedication by your family and others, has borne fruit. What a wonderful result.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:53:03] No, and that’s what I was saying earlier is it’s a wonderful success story that I love to tell.

 

David Todd [00:53:10] Well, I guess, you know, we’ve traded some problems, you know, with wetland loss and overhunting to maybe some new challenges. And I was wondering if you could talk to us about some of these issues that remain as a challenge for whooping cranes. And, I guest, wetland, loss and conversion is still a problem. But could you talk about some of the other issues? I understand that power lines and turbines and mangroves, and I guess many more things that you know more about than I, you know, are continuing to be hurdles for the cranes.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:53:50] Yeah, you know, I think that I sort of see three eras during whooping crane recovery, at least from the Texas perspective, and you know that first was just to prevent overhunting and to protect wetlands. And then the recovery program kind of went into another period where they really were dwelling on the need to make sure we preserved genetic diversity. And that we try to increase the number of populations of whooping cranes so that there would be some insurance because we look at this one population concentrated on the Texas coast, an area subject to a lot of boat traffic and oil spills, perhaps even a late season hurricane or something like that to threaten that wintering population of whooping cranes.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:54:40] And so then there were several different efforts to reestablish additional populations of whooping cranes and really build up the captive breeding program. And so the captive breeding program developed a lot of success, learned a lot, and those different reintroduction efforts have faced various challenges, but we’re at a point now where there are two populations we’re hoping are going to hang on.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:55:04] One is a reintroduction of the non-migratory population into Louisiana. It took a long time of working with the local communities there to help them embrace the idea of whooping cranes coming into those very important hunting areas. But they have done so and a lot of Louisianans are embracing that effort. That population is now at somewhere around 70 or 80 birds.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:55:33] And then we’ve tried a couple of times to introduce migratory populations of whooping cranes. So the one that’s currently being supported is one that taught whoopers to migrate using ultralight aircraft, choosing to try to set up release sites and nesting areas in the northern tall grass prairie areas of like Indiana and Wisconsin, and then teaching whoopers to migrate down to the Gulf coast in the Florida area. And so now there are whoopers, again, about 70 birds kind of scattered throughout that whole path. They’re choosing a lot of alternative places to stop and spend time, but still hoping that that population can be successful.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:56:15] But thinking back on our Texas population, we didn’t want to lose sight of the things that could continue to ensure that this would be the bulwark of the recovery of the whooping crane. And so you mentioned a couple of issues that we have chosen to look at, especially in migration. And that has to do with things like power lines and wind turbines. And so there’ve been some collaborative efforts to try to get wind energy operations on board in terms of monitoring whooping cranes and adjusting their activities. First of all, the placement of those wind farms, but then adjusting their operation when whoopers are known to be migrating through an area.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:56:54] There’s been a big effort to try to get states throughout the migratory path to mark power lines because that seems to be a major source of whooper mortality both on the wintering grounds and the migratory path. It’s a  fact that whoopers are a large bird. It takes them a little while to get airborne and so they don’t always see something like a fence line or a power line that they might encounter.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:57:18] But then on the Texas coast recognizing how important that our population continues to be to the recovery of the species, we’re looking at really complex issues in terms of making sure there’s enough habitat. One is just projecting that there will be enough habitat, so we’re kind of looking up and down the coast to see where some more acquisition or conservation agreements could be put into place to try to protect wetlands for whooping cranes.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:57:43] But then we’re dealing with really big systemic issues that are really tricky to deal with. One of them is instream flow, making sure that enough freshwater is coming into bays and estuaries, enough freshwater inflows so that those bays and estuaries are very productive of the food sources that whoopers use such as blue crabs.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:58:06] And then you mentioned things such as mangroves and the whole effect of climate change being that we might see a different distribution of vegetation like mangroves that don’t tend to provide as good a foraging habitat for whoopie cranes. And also you might see inundation of some wetlands or at least increased erosion on wetlands as sea levels rise.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:58:28] So there’s been a strong effort to model where wetlands might disappear, but where wetland might be created and to understand whether some of those habitats will serve to replace others.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:58:40] And so we still know that the Texas coast is really vital to the recovery of the species and trying to look at forward planning in the face of these emerging challenges is where we are.

 

David Todd [00:58:52] I see. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Lee Ann.

 

David Todd [00:58:56] So, I saw that you helped prepare a 2008 article called “Hunter Education Strategies to Protect Whooping Cranes in Kansas and Texas”. And I know that sometimes there have been hunters who’ve killed them intentionally. And then I’m sure there’s some pretty tragic situations where they are shot by mistake. And, I how you handle each of those situations.

 

Lee Ann Linam [00:59:25] Yeah, this was emerging really as something that we realized we needed to do more just as I was sort of finishing up my years at Parks and Wildlife. We just had several rather unfortunate circumstances of whooping cranes being shot in Texas. And so, you know, first of all, our law enforcement staff do an amazing job in collaboration with federal law enforcement staff, the state and federal, do an amazing job about sort of tracking down those circumstances where someone has basically just maliciously as a vandal decided to shoot a whooping crane.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:00:03] And in those circumstances all we can do is create kind of public awareness of the significance of whooping cranes and their remarkable comeback story and try to build some public sympathy for the species in contrast to the type of behavior like that that’s very selfish and quite a setback to the recovery program.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:00:23] But we also knew we had a few circumstances where there were mistakes in whooping cranes being shot by hunters. And so this happened in Texas. Circumstance happened the same winter or the same fall that a mistake like that had happened in Kansas during migration. And so we started talking with the Kansas Department of Conservation as well as the International Crane Foundation saying, “What are some ideas we can come up with to try to make sure these kinds of mistakes don’t happen?”

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:00:55] And so what we did in Texas was we created a video for hunter education classes that showed a variety of large game birds and nongame birds in flight to try to help hunters recognize … well first of all recognize that there’s a lot of nongame species out there along with the game species and that they need to be cognizant of the circumstances that might make it hard to be accurate in their identification in the field. And so and then we just wanted them to get familiar with how to recognize whooping cranes. And so our hunter education instructors continue to use that video to date.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:01:34] We also developed some pocket ID guides that could be handed out really easily, and they’re not only popular with hunters but they’re popular with birders because it helps a birder recognize, you know, whether it’s a white ibis or a snow goose or or a whooping crane. And we made those be part of packets that we actually reached out to hunting lodges and hunting outfitters saying we can provide these kinds of resources to you if you’ll share them with the hunters that are coming through your program. So they were happy to do that.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:02:05] We put out, we even put up some identification signs at boat ramps that are in the wintering territories of the whooping crane so that hunters would be aware at the very last moment that they needed to be alert to the possible presence of an endangered species.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:02:22] And then to some extent, hunting regulations are modified to try to minimize harm to whooping cranes. So hunters can hunt snow geese within the wintering areas of the whooping crane. However, they have chosen, the Department, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has chosen not to expand the longer goose conservation hunting seasons in the whooping crane habitats because during that late season period, whoopers are moving around, getting ready for migration, so it just reduces the potential risk of take.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:02:59] And sandhill crane hunting is prohibited within a certain buffer zone around the wintering areas of whooping cranes because that might be the most likely kind of cross misidentification.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:03:13] And then when we find out that a whooper is hanging out in a non-traditional area or loitering or lingering during migration and hunting seasons are open, we try to just work with local publicity areas, or publicity sources, just to get the word out that whoopers are in the area, and for hunters to be aware.

 

David Todd [01:03:35] That’s great. Well, it seems like all these different strategies that you all have followed over so many years has given you kind of a new problem. And that’s that the existing protected habitat is not sufficient. And so these cranes are, as I understand it, moving out. And I saw some that were down southeast of Eagle Lake. I was just astounded and really excited. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about these issues of how to identify new habitat that will be sustainable and affordable and a good home for these wintering birds.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:04:18] Yeah, so it’s true that whoopers have been showing up in some novel places in the last couple of decades. And some of that probably is because of the growth of the whooping crane population. Because these, the pairs, when whooping cranes are paired male and female, they not only defend territories on their nesting grounds, but they defend territories on their wintering grounds. So they kind of force a lot of spacing between whooping cranes.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:04:48] And over time, this is probably a pretty good strategy just to make sure that food resources are abundant enough for a reproducing pair.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:04:57] But that means that you’re limited in terms of how many territories you can squeeze in at Aransas and surrounding areas.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:05:04] And so I think the growth or the expansion of whooper wintering areas up into places like Matagorda Bay has to do with that sort of growth of the population and that whoopers are exploring new, similar wetland areas in order to set up a new territory or not face intraspecific competition.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:05:28] In other cases, what seems to be happening is that in years where habitat conditions have not been very good on the Texas coast, have been some of the years in which we have seen the most use of these alternative habitats. So in drought years where perhaps blue crab populations are very low and wolfberry populations, another important food source, are very low, it seems to be more movement of whooping cranes during those years. And so I think that some of the use of the rice prairies, the years we have seen a number of whooping cranes at Granger Lake near Austin seem to kind of be associated with those lower resource availability years.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:06:10] And then the other things that can make whooping crane to end up in odd places is that whooping cranes learn a lot from their parents. And we found this out in kind of a failed experiment to reintroduce a migratory population west of the current population. At one time, whoopers occurred in the Western Great Plains, and they actually migrated down to the mountains of Mexico for the winter. And so an experiment was started whereby we thought, what if we gave a whooping crane to sandhill cranes that were kind of in a migratory path that went from Idaho down to New Mexico. Could they raise those whooping cranes and teach them a new migratory path?

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:06:53] Well, they did successfully raise whooping crane and they did successfully teach them the migratory path. And so that’s an important learning component for whooping cranes is to learn where the migration path goes.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:07:05] But unfortunately, those whooping cranes also seemed to learn that they might be sandhill cranes and so we never got successful reproduction in that population.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:07:15] So we constantly get humbled by what we learn from these creatures in the wild.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:07:20] But we recognize that whooping cranes, if they never successfully learn that first year’s migration with their parents as a chick, they might not ever make it to Aransas. And so there’ve been some years we’ve had whooping cranes in the Texas Panhandle or on the upper Texas coast that seemed like maybe those birds never got to learn that first migration.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:07:40] And so for all those reasons, we do see whoopers showing up in different areas.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:07:45] And I think the challenge for us is to identify where the really viable alternative habitats are going to be and to understand how whoopers do when they’re using those habitats, because we already mentioned the importance of the wintering grounds for building up those reserves for reproduction.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:08:02] And so if some of these agricultural landscapes don’t provide as good of nutritional resources for whooping cranes, then maybe we don’t get as good a reproduction on the nesting grounds. And so kind of understanding how whoopers are doing when they’re relying on those habitats would be an important question for us to ask in terms of setting some of those priorities.

 

David Todd [01:08:24] I see. So when they are shifting some of their wintering grounds, they may be also shifting their diets?

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:08:32] Yeah, yeah, probably so. You know, perhaps on the rice prairies, if they, you know, increasingly rice is less abundant, but if they’re using flooded rice fields, they may be getting things like crayfish and things like that for their diet. But if they are simply feeding on grains in dry fields, that may not be providing as much nutrition as whoopers on the Texas coast that are feeding on blue crabs and a variety of vegetation and animal matter.

 

David Todd [01:09:03] I see. Okay. This is so interesting. And I love the way the story just keeps on unfolding.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:09:09] It does, it does.

 

David Todd [01:09:10] It’s, as you were saying, it’s the different eras of efforts to help the bird.

 

David Todd [01:09:16] So one of the things that I guess the question for me is the role of ecotourism. You know, this interest, I think you mentioned earlier that one of the best ways to see the cranes is to go out in one of these boats from Rockport. And I’m curious if you think that that kind of education and outreach and public awareness of the bird has helped it or hurt it and you know what’s your attitude about ecotourism like that?

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:09:49] Now, one aspect of my career is that I’ve always thought it was important to tie together, and maybe this is something I learned at home, but to tie people together to wildlife, so that they appreciate wildlife and that in turn they see benefits that come to them from wildlife and then you build a really strong basis of support for conservation.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:10:14] And so, so yes, some of the things I’ve done, even as an undergraduate, I did an economics project where I looked at what people said they perceived as the value of whooping cranes. And we came up with an actual number that was about a billion dollars in terms of people’s existence value for whooping cranes. That they said they would be willing to contribute toward the conservation of whoop cranes whether or not they saw them.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:10:41] So we know that people do value species like this.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:10:44] And I think the more appealing the species is in terms of its story and perhaps even its appearance and behavior. You know, the easier it is to help people come to that point where they value it. And that’s why I’m glad the whooping crane is a great umbrella species for some other ones.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:11:01] But then actually right on the ground, there are some tangible benefits to having whooping cranes around. We know that the value of birding in general in Texas is something like 1.8 billion dollars per year. Well, the city of Rockport actually did their own study where they just looked at what people spent specifically on whooping crane tourism, and they came up with like six million dollars. And I think probably that doesn’t even consider all of the additive benefits that sometimes get calculated in those numbers.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:11:30] And so local communities like Rockport and Port Aransas hosting the Whooping Crane Festival, they’re recognizing that it’s valuable to have whooping cranes around.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:11:40] And I think that gets expressed most beautifully in something like some of the conservation planning projects that are going on on the Texas coast. There’s a project called the Aransas Project that brings together commercial fishermen and county officials and conservationists and birders and agencies. And it’s looking at the combined benefits of making sure that there are healthy freshwater inflows to bays and estuaries, specifically into San Antonio Bay.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:12:12] And so I think that a project like that just speaks to the fact that yes, the whooping cranes are beneficial and people can value them and come to appreciate them and express that in a monetary sense, but that we can also see that maintaining their habitats is economically beneficial to a wide variety of endeavors on the Texas coast. And so, I love those projects that kind of bring all those different players together.

 

David Todd [01:12:40] That’s great. It’s wonderful that these animals bring joy and I guess also dollars to these communities. That’s important.

 

David Todd [01:12:53] Well, maybe we should shift to just another topic if I still have some time with you.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:13:01] Sure.

 

David Todd [01:13:01] I understand that from 1990 through 1996, you were the program leader for the Endangered Species Program at Texas Parks and Wildlife. And as you well remember, that was an overly exciting time in the conservation field. I think some people call it the age of the Warbler Wars. And I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about, you know, your perception of those years and, you know, what you learned from that period at Parks and Wildlife.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:13:34] I think we learned a lot during that time. It was a very tense period. The golden-cheeked warbler had been listed. And then there was talk of designating critical habitat.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:13:47] And that’s the point at which everyone’s fears about the government came to the front. And a lot of people felt as, on every side, felt as if they weren’t being heard and their side might lose. And so I think conservationists feared that, but I also think private landowners thought, “What does this mean for us?”.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:14:10] And one of the most valuable things to come out of that period, I think, was that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recognized that they needed to rely on some tools in the Endangered Species Act, such as Habitat Conservation Plans, and specifically the creative approaches that developed Safe Harbor Habitat Conservation Plans that would give landowners and land managers some sense of security about what the future was going to hold for them. And so I’m glad that the Fish and Wildlife Service chose to pursue that.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:14:44] Now we see that several counties around the Texas Hill Country have Habitat Conservation Plans in place because they want to be able to plan for development in their counties. They recognize the really unique attributes of the Texas Hill Country and yet they know that there’s demands for development all around them, and so HCPs just given them a chance to plan ahead and create a more predictable playing field for some of those players.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:15:12] On the Parks and Wildlife side, we didn’t have the regulatory authority that the Fish and Wildlife Service did, but we recognized that we had a lot of established relationships with private landowners. And so we were, in our program, trying to develop tools and approaches that would help people just not have so many questions.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:15:33] So for example, we developed an endangered species management guide during that period. And we pressured the Fish and Wildlife Service to actually describe what golden-cheeked warbler habitat was and was not. And so we thought that landowners, the starting point needed to be for them to simply understand how to look at habitat and know whether they should be considering golden cheeks in their management plans or whether they really didn’t even have to think about them and they could do savanna habitat restoration or some other strategy.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:16:06] And we participated, we tried to put together as many collaborative groups as we could – something like the Aransas Project. We had one group called Plan It Texas that brought together private landowners, the Texas Cattlemen’s Association and Texas Wildlife Association, along with the Audubon Society, groups coming at it from very different perspectives. But our goal in this one particular project was to look at a small ranch here in Hays County and say, is there a way to come up with a management plan on this ranch that actually takes care of the environment and endangered species, but lets the landowner produce a living using some traditional means as well?

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:16:48] So I think that was really important in that time was that just people felt like they weren’t being heard and there were threats all around. And some of that still goes on in the endangered species world today, but I think it behooves us to always remember that kind of trying to alleviate fears and find ways in which there can be support for landowners doing the right thing is always worth considering.

 

David Todd [01:17:15] Yes. I thought it was interesting, and this is from a lay person looking in from the outside, is that you have these really idealistic people who come to work with wildlife and in the conservation field, and then they bump up against these really rude facts of the real world of politics and economics and I was wondering if you could talk at all about, you know, the morale at Parks and Wildlife during that time when, you know, you had these conflicts that must have been really upsetting for a lot of your staff and your colleagues.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:17:54] There was some of that. There were people who were getting open records requests all the time on their travel vouchers, and their names were specifically mentioned in newsletters floating around some of these groups that were concerned about the impacts of endangered species.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:18:13] And well, my eyes were opened, I went to a community meeting in Dripping Springs where we thought what we were there for was to just help people understand golden-cheeked warblers a little better, and there were people talking about bringing guns into the room and it was it was pretty scary for a while and and there was a constant level of stress.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:18:37] And you know I think that Parks and Wildlife has a good network of working in the field with landowners but the point we were at with federal regulations at that time was that they hadn’t realized the need to see what sort of flexibility and creativity there was in terms of approaching species conservation in the real world. And so that just kind of made people really rigid in the lines they were drawing.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:19:08] And so I think we’re at a better point now with golden-cheeked warblers in that people understand the habitat a little better and these Habitat Conservation Plans are dealing with some of the big picture issues like development.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:19:21] But yeah, no, I think we all learned a lot. We didn’t realize that fears or sense of threat were so real on the other side. And at the same time, we didn’t realize how threatening they could be to us as well.

 

David Todd [01:19:38] Yeah, I imagine a lot of this was a surprise.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:19:42] I am curious about the next phase in your career at Parks and Wildlife. As I understand it, from 1996 through 2013, you worked in Texas Parks and Wildlife’s Wildlife Diversity Program and coordinated the Texas Nature Trackers Program, which, as I read it, was a citizen science program that included Texas Horned Lizard Watch, Texas Whooper Watch, Texas Amphibian Watch. And I was hoping that you could give us an idea of the origin and the goals and some of the experiences that you saw during those citizen science efforts.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:20:24] Yeah. To me, this is one of the most encouraging trends in conservation in recent years is that increasingly we’re making it easier and more convenient for people to feel like they’re a part of wildlife conservation and gathering useful data.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:20:43] And at first it was kind of clunky for us because we didn’t have the internet and we were doing things like you know printing paper copies of data forms and sending them out to people and asking them to send them back in.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:20:59] And yet some really valuable data was gathered during that time. I was able to publish some of the data from our Texas Horned Lizard Watch because some people were just really, really persistent in the ways they were following the instructions and sending in data that was both negative and positive and letting us really look at some distribution trends.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:21:19] And some real valuable outcomes from those efforts came. The Master Naturalist program kind of emerged as an application of citizen science as well. And so that program has actually discovered species that are new to science, as well as just a lot of people being on the ground helping different refuges or facilities, do maintenance or gather data on the species that are there.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:21:48] And the move toward digitization of citizen science has really opened it up for more people to get involved. And so now people can easily enter data online with apps like iNaturalist, and then apps like Merlin for bird identification or iNaturalist offer the chance for kind of crowdsourcing identification of species. So people get reinforcement very early on and they are learning even as they’re submitting data. And data is getting cross-referenced and quality-checked because of that crowdsourcing aspect.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:22:24] And so I think that, yeah, I’m really excited about where we’ve been able to go. It started out for me, just that feeling like it was important to have people connected to conservation in a real meaningful way.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:22:36] And then we actually started Texas Nature Trackers because at the time there were about 200 species on the list as candidates for listing as threatened or endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And we knew nothing about so many of them. And at the same time, some candidates had gone extinct while they were on that waiting list, not particularly in Texas, but in other places.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:22:59] And so we just thought, wouldn’t it be great if we kind of had people focusing on species that we think they may be in trouble, and if we could build a database and at least we know a little bit more about where they are and how they’re doing.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:23:14] So there are of course some limits to citizen science data. We’re always aware of making sure that people engage in respectful behavior, whether that’s like not using bird calls to draw birds in or trespassing or impacting habitat or trying to chase down a whooping crane to get a closer look and take a better picture. And so it’s important to encourage that kind of ethical behavior in citizen scientists.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:23:41] And we still do need real science, because perhaps we find out that box turtles occur in all these counties, but we haven’t recognized whether anybody has looked in these other counties where they should be occurring. And so therefore, if there’s a trend emerging, and we would have, Texas horned lizards would have been an example of this. If we had had citizen science in place in the 1970s, maybe we would have almost year to year been tracking where are horned lizards disappearing and what’s going on in those habitats.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:24:18] But if it’s just a random assortment of where people still see things, then we don’t know kind of where those negative results are. So we still do need to do real science and sometimes volunteers can get involved in that.

 

David Todd [01:24:31] That’s great. It sounds like citizen science offers this good combination of getting a lot of crowdsourcing data, but also it’s a way to engage people. I know I run into people who feel like they’re concerned about wildlife in general, but they don’t know how to really be part of an effort to be useful and helpful.

 

David Todd [01:24:55] Yeah, and the way Texas Nature Trackers has gone now is that they no longer send out paper forms. All the data is entered into iNaturalist, but if one visits the Texas Nature Tracker’s website, then you find out about which species the department is concerned and therefore it helps a volunteer know, “Well, I’m in this part of the state and this is actually something I really ought to go try to look for”, you know. So it makes them seem very useful and purposeful, rather than just randomly uploading sightings.

 

David Todd [01:25:29] Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, maybe as a next topic, we could talk a little bit about another educational thing you’ve been involved with. And that is that since 2013, you’ve led Linam Labs, which I understand is offering science education for young people, including a book, “Texas Wildlife Science”. And I was curious if you could talk a little about your interest and your activities there.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:25:59] Yes. After retiring from Parks and Wildlife, I still wasn’t ready to be retired, so I ended up, I actually taught during some of those years teaching at a private school and then teaching for some homeschooled academies. And so the nice thing about teaching in some of those environments is that you have some flexibility to sort of design courses that might not fit exactly what’s on the TEA list.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:26:25] And one of those I really wanted to teach was a course on Wildlife Ecology for high school students. And all of us in environmental education wish that TEA would adopt a high school class that focuses on wildlife ecology. But for now, I was able to do it in these more flexible environments.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:26:42] But one of the things that I’ve always recognized is that so many entities, like Parks and Wildlife, or Audubon, or Ducks Unlimited, they create a lot of really cool resource materials for teachers. And so there’s just tons of bits and pieces out there. And even now there are some really great, HEB is sponsoring the development of these neat little wildlife shorts associated with lesson plans.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:27:12] But they’re all kind of piecemeal. And I thought if a teacher really wanted to weave together, what are the foundational aspects of ecology?, what are the physical characteristics of Texas that leads it to have these different ecoregions and these different vegetation communities?, what are animals associated with those vegetational communities?, and which ones are in trouble and how can we better conserve them and manage them?

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:27:37] There’s no one thing that sort of ties all those nice little learning units together to tell that kind of story that’s really important, I think, for high school students to understand how ecology is the study of the home, and it’s all woven together.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:27:53] And so I was trying to do that in this course I developed, and so I developed a lab manual and lesson plans and PowerPoints. And now I’ve written the book that kind of ties it all together. And my goal was to not recreate all these wonderful resources that are out there, but to just help the teacher know, here’s how I can plug in all these nice resources to make sure my student at the end has got this comprehensive view of ecology, and in this case, with a Texas focus.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:28:22] So I’m talking to publishers now and hoping to get that book into print. But I hope that, yes, it would be a really significant portion of environmental science classes that are taught currently in high schools. There’s also a vocational wildlife management class that’s taught in high school. So the things I’m developing I think could be used as-is.

 

[01:28:41] And as I said, a lot of us hope that eventually the Texas Education Agency will say, “Well, we ought to just offer something that, in addition to Texas aquatic science, looks like Texas wildlife science.”

 

David Todd [01:28:55] Yeah, I wish you the best with that. It seems like a really worthwhile thing and I love the way you’ve leveraged all these existing resources and tried to weave them together into something that’s legible and coherent for a student and a teacher. Great.

 

David Todd [01:29:12] Well, you’ve done so many things in your life and I was so intrigued to hear about your work abroad. I mean, currently I understand that you’re doing some agricultural and conservation work, and have been since I think 2016, in Zimbabwe and I was wondering if you could tell us how you got started with that and what some of the activities have been and you know what you encounter that’s the same and some that is different between Texas and Zimbabwe, very different places, but maybe with some overlaps.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:29:51] Yeah, it’s interesting. My focus since retirement is kind of very parochial in terms of I think we ought to have a Texas Wildlife Science curriculum, but I also am intrigued by conservation in other parts of the world.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:30:06] And so I just had the chance to come alongside a friend who was doing some church ministry work in Zimbabwe. He was drilling a lot of water wells and had sponsored some student education there and helping some churches do some buildings.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:30:19] And so I helped him develop some aspects of the educational projects there. The one I’m most excited about now is putting libraries in a box in rural communities. And so we’re able to use the function of the church as like a center for the community as a place to host these libraries that students can come to inform these rural reading clubs, we’re calling them, because reading is simply not cultural tradition in homes in Zimbabwe for the most part.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:30:51] One aspect of it is a lack of access to materials. There are not libraries in these local schools and the textbooks they don’t allow the students to take home because the textbooks are too precious. And so students outside of the schools simply don’t get any reinforcement of their learning.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:31:12] And so we’re trying to build this idea among these communities that reading will help their student be successful in school, but it’s also just enjoyable, and a way to explore a lot of different topics. And so that’s through the organization called Noah’s Farm that we’re doing some of this agricultural development and water development and literacy development.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:31:34] But not too many years after I started visiting Zimbabwe, I reached out to the International Crane Foundation and I said, “Where are the cranes in Zimbabwe?” So I got connected to a biologist with Bird Life Zimbabwe, who was working on crane conservation in a landscape called the Driefontein grasslands. So it’s this vast grassland area with all of these wetland seeps and marshes interspersed in it. And it’s home to populations of wattled cranes and gray-crowned cranes. It’s the only place you can really reliably find wattled cranes in Zimbabwe.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:32:10] But the remarkable part about getting introduced to that landscape was that bird life, and in particular, this one biologist, Toga Fakarayi, had developed these relationships with these local rural communities, engaging them in conservation of the landscape.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:32:30] See, these are lands that were once held in large white farms when this area was Rhodesia. And as Zimbabwe worked to redistribute land among its own local people a little bit more, they established a lot of these rural communities where they would help to kind of just establish a village, although the village doesn’t consist of much. Like a lot times there’s no water and there’s certainly no electricity and very few roads, but they gave them allocations of land so that they could run cattle and they could garden.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:33:09] But in this landscape, it wasn’t suitable for a lot of intensive agriculture because the most productive soils were in the wetlands.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:33:18] And so, Bird Life began to recognize that they needed to help these communities find alternative livelihoods if they were going to hope to be able to conserve the wetland for the cranes. And so they did it in a really collaborative process, helping them develop things like poultry operations or beekeeping. So that they could then establish water sources so that could pull out of the wetlands.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:33:39] And in return, the villagers have adopted local regulations that say that people cannot farm in the wetlands and they should not graze their cattle in the wetlands and the crane numbers have responded.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:33:53] And so it was just such a remarkable story of community collaboration. And when we visited this one village, the lady who was sort of the acknowledged community leader said to me well we’re building an education center so when the the visitors come we’ll have a place to have our education programs. And you look around and you go, “What visitors?”

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:34:14] But I kind of dreamed up this idea maybe I can bring visitors there. So we were able to put together an ecotourism visit to this wetland area as well as some bird conservation areas in the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe just with the idea that If people are doing local conservation, we want to support them in those endeavors and bring whatever knowledge and support we can from the U.S.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:34:39] And so that’s been a really rewarding endeavor in my retirement.

 

David Todd [01:34:45] Oh, your retirement sounds busier than most people’s careers. You know, I think as we start to close here, I think it’d be really interesting to hear about why you care about wildlife. You know what is it that you see in animals such as alligators or whooping cranes that is important to you, that’s meaningful? Is there anything that you can sort of put your finger on that resonates?

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:35:21] This is one of these challenging questions of, oh, “Why is it I really do this?” But, you know, I view wildlife and the species as part of this really beautiful, intricate overall plan. Like I was saying earlier, reading that chapter on niches is the one that made me think, “This is fascinating. Ecosystems are all designed to work together. They’ve all emerged in a way it works beautifully together.”

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:35:52] And so that is sort of where I see wildlife. My fascination is to conserve species that are a part of this kind of overall system.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:36:02] And I know, though, that many people relate to animals as individuals. And so I’m so thankful for people like wildlife rehabilitators who volunteer their time to actually try to save individual animals, because I know to many people that that is something that moves their emotions.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:36:27] But I tend to more see, you know, I have hunted in the past, my husband still hunts, and I don’t think a lot about animals with souls, but I kind of embrace the North American tradition of like respect and gratitude. You know, that there is respect for all living creatures. And there’s gratitude for what they give us in our lives, whether it’s tangible goods like meat or hides, or whether it is just the enjoyment of seeing them.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:36:58] And so I just, for individual animals, I see them as part of this beautiful picture.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:37:05] And, you know, just in terms of my other values, I was raised in a Christian tradition and still try to follow the teachings of Jesus, but I’ve been disappointed a lot in Christian institutions because I feel like we have abandoned that teaching that sees us as stewards for the environment.

 

[01:37:24] And so there are movements called some things like creation care and such that try to say, it is a value and a moral and an ethic to be caring about this world that we’ve been granted the opportunity to live in. And so, I hope that I can speak to people that I encounter in those circles in that way as well.

 

David Todd [01:37:48] Okay. So we talked about wildlife and then you mentioned the word “stewardship” and I’m curious, do you have a kind of insight and overall perspective on conservation and stewardship as it’s evolved through your lifetime, and maybe some sort of insight about what the prospects are for where this is going?

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:38:18] That’s a good question. I mean, so in my book, “Texas Wildlife Science”, I kind of look at different eras in the story of conservation, you know, and the one I call “The Beginnings” kind of looks at Native Americans and their relationship to the environment. And though I don’t, I try to not romanticize it because there is some thinking that Native Americans might’ve helped contribute to the extinction of the megafauna that was in North America. But we do know that there was at least a depth of understanding of the ecology of animals that those people relied upon. And so, you know, there was kind of that era of maybe understanding, we could call it.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:39:01] And then we had when Europeans arrived in North America, we had this fascinating era of exploration, where, you know, we had people like Audubon and Wilson and others who were just and even Lewis and Clark that were saying, look at all the amazing stuff that’s here. And we had numerous explorers and expeditions in Texas. Vernon and Florence Bailey are two of the ones that are really fascinating to think about. So that there was a fascination with this new place.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:39:32] But then we also had this era of exploitation when we had tens of thousands of beaver pelts that might be exported in a given year and the same kinds of level of harvest of white-tailed deer and other game animals and waterfowl. And we found out that that wasn’t sustainable.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:39:52] And then finally, I think maybe in the late 1800s, we started to toy with this era of conservation. And in that, we had this science of wildlife and management emerge in the 1930s.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:40:07] And so I hope that we’re still in that era of conversation in which we understand now that species and ecosystems are interconnected and that in a landscape where there’s a lot of conflicting use and human populations are much higher, we have to be very purposeful in the way in which we choose to set aside maybe some areas but do hands-on conservation in other areas.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:40:36] And so I just think our challenge is in times when a lot of public messaging may be that there are economic challenges out there and that we have to think more about jobs and we have think more making money that we also just continue to remind people that there are both economic values associated with wildlife and that there are other values such as ecosystem values and scientific values. And so I think messaging is really where we, we must put our efforts, especially in these current times.

 

David Todd [01:41:19] Well, and maybe as a closing question for you, this question of messaging … (you know, I’ve asked too many questions), is there something that you might like to mention, something that you’d like to add that would be your message in a bottle to pass on?

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:41:44] I need to get my elevator speech together, don’t I?

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:41:48] But yeah, I think it would just be… It’s interesting, I used a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. in opening the chapter on the basics of ecology in my book. Let me see if I could pull that out very quickly and quote it here.

 

David Todd [01:42:05] Yes! Do!

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:42:05] Because I think it’s kind of beautiful how a message that he delivered that was talking about interdependence of people on each other also applies to the way we have to think about the natural world around us. So let’s see if I can.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:42:32] I think about this as being my closing statement.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:42:35] Ah, so in his 1967 Christmas sermon, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “It really boils down to this, that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny affects all indirectly.”

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:42:59] So that’s a good message for people or environment, I think.

 

David Todd [01:43:04] That’s beautiful.

 

David Todd [01:43:06] Well, thank you, Lee Ann. You’re so kind to share time and all these good insights and memories. I don’t want to eat up any more of your day, but is there anything else you’d like to mention before we finish things up?

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:43:24] That I can think of. Thank you. You’ve been very, very thorough at helping me kind of explore where I’ve had the privileges of going in this career and the truths that still keep emerging in it. So some inspiration for the future, maybe.

 

David Todd [01:43:45] OK. Well, this is inspiring to hear somebody who’s spent a lifetime and continues to do really interesting, valuable stuff. So thank you.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:43:56] Thank you.

 

David Todd [01:43:56] All right, well I will end things and then I will provide you with all the recordings and transcripts and so on. And again, thank you for the opportunity to do this.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:44:10] You bet. I’ll have something more to make my grandchildren listen to, right?

 

David Todd [01:44:14] Good, good, along with the pictures of you riding the alligators.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:44:19] Yes.

 

David Todd [01:44:19] All right, take care.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:44:20] All right, oh good talking to you David. Hope we cross paths again soon.

 

David Todd [01:44:23] I’d enjoy that. Thank you.

 

Lee Ann Linam [01:44:25] All right, take care.

 

David Todd [01:44:26] Yes. Bye.