WhoopingCrane_ConcreteMats_Stehn_Tom_AransasPassTX_16October2020_Reel4036.mp3

Tom Stehn [00:00:00] Tried to, one day a week, always get out in a boat and just look at cranes all day, and I was doing studies on the color-banded cranes and kind of following the life history of individual cranes and who they'd mate with.

Tom Stehn [00:00:16] And anyway, in the process of that, is I realized that after a few years I realized that the banks of the Intracoastal were eroding and that we were starting to lose marsh ponds just from the wave action from the barges and from wind.

Tom Stehn [00:00:36] And so I, along with the biologists in Corpus Christi, I, I put stakes on the edge of the Intracoastal. And every year I'd go back and measure, measure the amount of bank that was lost to erosion during the, during the previous 12 months. And it was a very simple project. I mean, just pounding in stakes and measuring. And I think I had like no more than 8 or 10 sample points. It wasn't anything big or elaborate.

Tom Stehn [00:01:12] But I came up with a rate of loss. And I think it was between one and two acres a year of this whooping crane habitat was being lost to erosion. Well, because it's critical habitat, by law, it's illegal to do harm to critical habitat of an endangered species.

Tom Stehn [00:01:34] So I think it was the National Audubon Society that brought a, sent a letter to the Corps of Engineers, saying they would sue. They were going to sue. They gave them a 60-day notice, or whatever it was, over this loss of critical habitat.

Tom Stehn [00:01:50] And through the course of this threatened legal action, the Corps of Engineers finally decided and admitted that since they were maintaining and operating the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, which was the source of all the barges and traffic and wind action against the crane marshes, the Corps decided that they would do something about it. And they approached Congress and they got, I think it was fifteen million dollars appropriated, to put in erosion barriers along the Intracoastal to stop that erosion.

Tom Stehn [00:02:31] And previously, before all that happened, we had organized through private industry, and Conoco. Conoco had a big gas field on the refuge. And they put out, I think it was like 20,000 cement bags every year. They would, it would take a week to unload them along the banks where this erosion was going on. And then we'd go out there one day with a whole bunch of volunteers and the tour boats took them out there. And we would lay these cement bags in place and, you know, put up these structures to save these ponds.

Tom Stehn [00:03:09] Well, the, the, that worked fine, but it was, it needed to be done on a much bigger scale and much sturdier construction. So they, the Corps came up with these cement mats that they laid in place, lining the banks of the Intracoastal.

Tom Stehn [00:03:25] So every time I go out in a boat now, you know, I'm kind of, you know, kicking myself, for I am the biologist that played a big part in lining a beautiful national wildlife refuge with cement.

Tom Stehn [00:03:41] But we had no choice. It was just one of those things you had to do.

Tom Stehn [00:03:44] So now the 15-mile length of the refuge is all cement mats.

Tom Stehn [00:03:49] And, you know, but those ponds are protected. The, the, the mats are doing their job.