COLLEGE STATION – All across Texas, new housing developments have sprung up where farm fields once were, or where deer grazed or toads hopped near ponds, birds rested in branches and raccoons burrowed in dens.
Land fragmented by these neighborhoods sent wildlife packing, but the extended drought this year in many cases is leading to their return often without welcome by the new humans living there.
Feral hogs and white-tailed deer are among the more obvious wildlife problems due to drought on fragmented land, but the dry weather and severe heat also are impacting smaller creatures such as the endangered Houston toad and many species of birds, according to Dr. Neal Wilkins, Texas Agricultural Extension Service wildlife specialist.
“Drought is a natural part of the Texas climate and has been for thousands of years,” Wilkins said. “Wildlife is fairly well adapted to drought, but they are not well adapted to our reaction to drought.”
Feral hogs may be among the most unwelcome by humans, especially in the rice growing region where much of the land has been converted to new developments, meaning less land for the them to live on. Wilkins said the wild hogs now number more than 2 million statewide.
“Normally the wild hogs would spend their days back in the bottoms where there is water along the creek in the woods,”said L. G. Raun of El Campo, co-owner of rice-producing Lowell Farms. “But as that dries up in a drought, they come up to find water, and that’s in our fields.”
Raun said the worst feral hog problem is in the summer when the rice is growing. A typical rice farm, he said, may have lost 20 percent of the crop this year, or $8,000, on the average 80-acre field, due to feral hogs this drought year.
Wilkins said rice growers are trying a combination of methods to rid their land of the wild hogs including helicopter and dog hunting and even broadcasting recordings of barking dogs and squealing hogs.
“It will take a year-around system, not just sporadic during the summer growing months, to get control of the feral hogs,” Raun added.
Similar to the hogs but perhaps with more human appeal are white-tailed deer populations that have increased to bothersome levels in many residential areas.
“With urban sprawl, people have been moving into the areas where deer have always been,” Wilkins said. “Combine that with drought, and you have deer seeking out places where vegetation is growing and that happens to be irrigated landscapes.”
Wilkins said residents tend to look upon neighborhood deer as an asset until they begin to destroy shrubs and flowers.
Often, he said, people will begin to feed deer in drought thinking that will abate the situation. In reality, supplementing deers’ diets can be more harmful to the animals, he said.
“When a doe is stressed due to malnutrition, she tends not to go into estrus, not to conceive or not to have the usual twins, thus limiting the population naturally,” he explained.
“If a doe is fed during droughts, her body is artificially prepared to conceive and bear twins which leads to even higher populations on land that can’t support them.”
Wilkins said residents in high deer population areas often want to capture deer and move them to other locations. However, with most of the state suffering from drought, there is either no place to move deer, or landowners in those areas are wary of bringing drought stressed deer that might be sickly into more managed deer herds.
Even beyond the urban centers, deer are showing signs of stress.
“Basically we don’t see a die-off yet, but like everything wildlife is highly stressed,” said Bill Botard, Gillespie County Extension agent. “We are seeing some pretty thin deer, especially does that are nursing.
“Everything depends on the weather. If we go through a hard winter, there’s not much for them to consume out there and water availability is a problem,” he said. “In all honesty, we are in tough shape, but it can turn around in a hurry if we get some rain.”
In South Texas, the biggest impact may be seen in coming years as fewer animals are born during drought, according to several county Extension agents there.
“We are seeing a much smaller fawn crop this year, but the adult deer are still in good condition and the antler size seems to be about normal,” said LaSalle County agent David Wolfe.
In Zapata County, “numbers are good due to the large amount of brush and native plants, but the fawn crop this year should be way down,” said agent Edmundo Martinez.
Rayford Pullen, Montague County Extension agent, said, “I’ve seen some pictures of this year’s deer in certain parts of the county, and they do look a little lean though antler growth looks good. Water seems to be the biggest problem with deer having to drink out of windmills and wells.”
“Most notable of all is the effect the last eight years of drought has had on our pronghorn antelope. Very few fawns have survived to maturity, and the average age of the pronghorn herd is getting very old,” said Logan Boswell of Alpine, Brewster County Extension agent. “Many of these animals have died of old age, poor nutrition the last couple of years. Going years without raising very many young in a population that only lives to about 10 years is a serious problem that only rainfall and abundant nutrition can solve.”
West Texas is seeing progressively worse populations of deer, turkey and dove, said Glasscock County Extension agent Steve Sturtz, “but amazingly, I have seen an increase in the quail numbers this year, especially blue quail.
“There were multiple hatches and survival up to this point has been good,” he said.
Bobwhite populations there have not been as good but comparable to last year and better than in 1998, he added.
The huge grasshopper population in North Texas this year, Pullen added, was good for quail, and the crop of baby quail seem noticeably high though it may be because the grass is drought-shortened making them more visible.
Less thought of, though more susceptible, are animals already endangered such as the Houston toad. One of the last large populations of this animal is in the Lost Pines region near Bastrop. Their preferred breeding sites are in shallow ponds those without fish or snakes and they breed in late February. Depending on how the drought lingers, especially in an area that is being heavily developed as a bedroom community for Austin, these amphibians could be severely impacted, Wilkins noted.
“If the animals we can easily observe are being impacted by the drought, then obviously those we can’t as easily see are being impacted as well the migratory birds, the doves, waterfowl and wild turkeys,” Wilkins said.
“Waterfowl are concentrated in the larger lakes, because though there were some recent rains, there wasn’t any runoff, so no water accumulated in dried up watering holes,” said Dick McCarver of Mt. Pleasant, Titus County Extension agent.
Wilkins said that the state’s deer populations are often under well-managed hunting programs that conserve habitats through population control, even during drought periods. Deer permits available through Texas Parks and Wildlife’s private lands technical guidance program can help land managers through stressful times such as this.
“The mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians will continue to survive droughts,” Wilkins said, “but we would be foolish not to send out a life raft of concern about helping them survive. But our best life raft is often good management to ‘drought proof’ the habitat.”
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