Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission
Conservation Committee
November 8, 2000
Commission Hearing RoomTexas Parks & Wildlife Department Headquarters Complex
4200 Smith School Road
Austin, TX 78744
1
BE IT REMEMBERED...regulatory authority of the
7 Parks and Wildlife Commission of texas, in the
commission hearing room of the Texas Parks and Wildlife
8 Headquarters complex, to wit:
9
APPEARANCES:
10 THE PARKS AND WILDLIFE COMMISSION:
11 CONSERVATION COMMITTEE:
CHAIR: Carol E. Dinkins
12 Lee M. Bass
Nolan Ryan, (Absent)
13 Dick Heath, (Absent)
Ernest Angelo, Jr.
14 John Avila, Jr.,
Alvin L. Henry
15 Katharine Armstrong Idsal
Mark W. Watson, Jr., (Absent)
16
17
18
19
THE TEXAS PARKS AND WILDLIFE COMMISSION:
20 Andrew H. Sansom, Executive Director, and other
personnel of the Parks and Wildlife Department
21
22
23
24
25
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1 CHAIRMAN BASS: At this point, I'd pass
2 the gavel to the conservation chairman, Ms. Dinkins.
3 CHAIR DINKINS: I thank you, Mr.
4 Chairman.
5 Call the meeting of the conservation
6 committee to order.
7 I would like to announce that pursuant
8 to the requirements of Chapter 551 of the Government
9 Code, referred to as the Open Meetings Law, an
10 executive session will be held at this time for the
11 purpose of consideration of land transactions. Thank
12 you, Mr. Chairman.
13 CHAIR DINKINS: The agenda of the
14 Conservation Committee, and the first thing we need to
15 do is approve the minutes from the last -- or the
16 previous meeting. You have a copy of those.
17 Any corrections?
18 Hearing none, if there's no objection,
19 we'll let the minutes stand approved as distributed.
20 Hearing no objection, they will stand
21 approved.
22 AGENDA ITEM NO. 1: BRIEFING-CHAIRMAN'S CHARGES.
23 CHAIR DINKINS: The next item is a
24 briefing on the chairman's charges.
25 Andy?
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1 MR. SANSOM: Madam Chair, we're in the
2 final stages of the completion of a statewide study of
3 resources and recreation behaviors and preferences as
4 outlined in the Sunset Commission and the Governor's
5 Task Force report.
6 Today you will be receiving a briefing
7 on Phase I of that study, which is the demographic
8 research. We expect that the study will be completed
9 by your January meeting.
10 The other briefing today that I would
11 like to particularly have you take note of, with
12 respect to the charges, is Dr. McKinney will be giving
13 us a status report on Senate Bill 1 implementation.
14 CHAIR DINKINS: Good.
15 Are we ready to move forward with the
16 first briefing, or do we want to go on and ask Larry to
17 do SB1 for us?
18 DR. McKINNEY: It's your call, Madam
19 Chairman.
20 CHAIR DINKINS: Yes. If you would,
21 Larry.
22 AGENDA ITEM NO. 3: BRIEFING -- SB1.
23 DR. McKINNEY: Madam Chairman and
24 Members, I'm Larry McKinney, senior director for
25 aquatic resources.
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1 Joining me is Cindy Loeffler, who is
2 head of our water resources team. She and I are going
3 to tag team this thing. It's just too big for one to
4 handle. And Cindy -- I do want to recognize, and I
5 appreciate -- has really led the department's efforts
6 in this thing, from the very beginning, and has taken
7 on, as you'll see, a monumental job and done -- and
8 done wonderfully for us in bringing things together.
9 It's a big job, and I've appreciated her greatly.
10 With that introduction, I'm going to
11 let --
12 Cindy, you're going to take the first
13 part of this, I believe.
14 MS. LOEFFLER: Sure. Okay. Thank you,
15 Larry.
16 Good afternoon, commission members. I'm
17 going to give you a quick overview of where we are
18 right now with our Senate Bill 1 activities. Before we
19 talk about where we are, let's talk about where we've
20 been.
21 Back, during the 75th session of the
22 Legislature 1997, Senate Bill 1 was drafted and then
23 signed into law by Governor Bush June of 1997. Of
24 course, one of the biggest changes that SB1 brought to
25 water planning in Texas is the grassroots approach, or
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1 the regionalization, of water planning. So 16 water
2 regions were created, and each of those regions is made
3 up of, at least, 11 different interest groups. So it
4 took from June of '97 to November of '98 to actually go
5 through the moves of creating those regions and
6 appointing the members.
7 Also going on at that time were the
8 drafting of the regional planning rules. Of course,
9 Parks and Wildlife had input into those rules that were
10 adopted in November of '98.
11 So, since November of '98, up until just
12 this fall, the regional planning groups have been
13 working on putting together their regional water
14 plans. The public review of those initially-prepared
15 drafts, as they're called, happened during September of
16 this year, September of 2000. The draft plans, along
17 with the public comments, were submitted to the Water
18 Development Board early October and then copies
19 forwarded onto the department on October 9th. So you
20 see, in the bottom box there, that we're currently in
21 the middle of our department review of the 16 regional
22 water plans due to be completed later this month.
23 So this has really been a team effort.
24 Thank you for the recognition that it's something that
25 I've been working on, but, really, this is something
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1 that couldn't happen without all these folks that you
2 see.
3 So the names here are the members of the
4 water resources team, people from four different
5 divisions at Parks and Wildlife: Resource Protection,
6 Inland Fisheries, Coastal Fisheries, and Wildlife
7 Divisions.
8 But, really, on the front lines of the
9 SB1 planning are the primary non-voting members. The
10 SB1 Regional Planning Rules call for Parks and Wildlife
11 to have staff at the meetings and supporting the
12 different regions. So these people that you see,
13 again, from the four different divisions, are
14 non-voting members, primary contacts to the regions,
15 and they're located in the regions, the water planning
16 regions.
17 One statistic, to let you know how much
18 has really gone into this, 2,656 hours is our estimate
19 of how much time our staff has spent in meetings,
20 preparing for meetings, going to meetings, et cetera.
21 So it's been a lot of work.
22 Some of the significant activities that
23 we've worked on during the SB1 implementation phase --
24 our role, really, is to provide technical support,
25 provide information pertaining to natural resources,
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1 fish and wildlife resources, to the regions. So a lot
2 of what we've done to help support the water planning
3 effort is to either provide through the form of staff
4 at the meetings, or to provide written resources to the
5 groups to help them in their plans. So we prepared
6 seven reports for what is called the Priority
7 Groundwater Management Area, the PGMA process.
8 We also prepared reports that document
9 ecologically significant rivers and streams in the
10 regions. We were able to complete five of these
11 reports for five of the different regions, and we'll
12 talk about that a little bit more later on.
13 And then two other studies that are
14 similar in nature, documenting resources in the regions
15 that would be affected by different types of water
16 management strategies.
17 We've also been involved in several
18 long-term type baseline studies. You've heard about
19 the freshwater inflow studies for the bays and
20 estuaries. I'm happy to say that those are nearing
21 completion. We've also been involved in instream flow
22 studies. And then looking at water availability, both,
23 groundwater and surface water.
24 So for the bays and estuaries studies,
25 this effort really kicked off back in 1987, by the
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1 mandate in the Water Code to look at the freshwater
2 inflow needs for all the estuaries. We've gone through
3 and done those, performed those analyses, along with
4 the Texas Water Development Board, for our seven major
5 estuaries. And so the last one to be completed is
6 Sabine Lake, which will be done January of 2001. Of
7 course, that information is a key piece of the water
8 planning puzzle the regional water plans have to
9 consider.
10 Another major effort that the TNRCC is
11 taking the lead on is the water availability modeling
12 project. When I was here last year, I talked a little
13 bit about this. What you see with this map is kind of
14 the status of where we are with that modeling project.
15 Parks and Wildlife is a member of the Management
16 Advisory Team on this project, taking part in the
17 selection of the consultants that will be award -- or
18 have been awarded or will be awarded the contracts to
19 actually construct these models.
20 So the green basins are the basins that
21 are complete. Everything else will be done by December
22 31, 2001. And when these models are done, this will
23 give us the tool that we need to actually see what the
24 effect on instream flows, freshwater inflows will be,
25 due to water diversions, reservoir projects, water
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1 right permits.
2 Similar effort that the Texas Water
3 Development Board is spearheading, a newer effort, is
4 looking at groundwater availability. In Texas, about
5 half of the water that we use comes from groundwater,
6 and so we've had concerns for a while about the effects
7 of pumping on springs, streams, rivers, wetlands, playa
8 lakes, things of that nature. So having these new
9 groundwater models available to help the
10 decision-makers determine impacts to some of these
11 resources will be a very important tool for us to
12 have. So this project is due to be completed 2004, and
13 ultimately will link with surface water models.
14 DR. McKINNEY: One of the things we
15 wanted to do, in trying to look at these regional
16 plans, is to take a look at exactly what are the major
17 strategies that the groups are going to use. And so
18 we've taken all 16 of the regional plans, and,
19 basically, based on the Water Development Board's first
20 assessment of what are the major strategies being
21 suggested in each region, we've grouped them as -- in
22 a -- kind of categories that go from least impactful to
23 the environment, to most impactful, and there's two
24 pages of these things, to try to get an idea of what
25 major strategies are being looked at.
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1 So, as you can see here, water
2 conservation is a major strategy in 4 of the 16
3 regions, reuse in 3, desalinization, chloride control,
4 and so forth, down -- down the line.
5 When you look at the second page,
6 acquifer storage and recovery, brush management, cloud
7 seeding even, and new reservoir construction, it kind
8 of gives you a very first cut, and we're going to talk
9 a little bit more about these briefly, but this is one
10 way to -- as brief as possible, to kind of summarize
11 what we're talking about there.
12 Basically, what I would say, Members, is
13 that every ecological region in Texas, every ecosystem,
14 every species of wildlife in Texas, is going to be
15 affected by this plan. It's going to be a major
16 paradigm shift as we go forward and try to implement
17 what is recommended there.
18 Just to give you a better idea of the
19 scope, we've taken the -- taken the Senate Bill 1 plan
20 and compared it to the last water development plan, or
21 the water -- water plan which we participated in, which
22 we called the Consensus Water Plan, in 1997, just to
23 give you an idea of comparisons.
24 The 1997 Consensus Water Plan had 343
25 pages in it. Senate Bill 1 Regional Plans have at
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1 least 25,000 pages. It's a stack of papers about this
2 tall, that our staff is going through right now.
3 The 1997 Consensus Water Plan
4 contemplated eight reservoirs. Senate Bill 1 Regional
5 Plan -- and this is difficult to figure out right now.
6 We think there's about 22 reservoirs there. The Water
7 Development Board has counted 15, and they do a -- they
8 kind of sort it by reservoirs under 5,000-acre feet,
9 but even then, they're not for sure in the plans. So
10 we're still trying to figure out exactly what they are
11 because they're difficult to discern. But we tried to
12 identify every reservoir we thought would have an
13 impact on fish and wildlife, so we're going with 22
14 right now, but that -- that number may change, which, I
15 guess, seems to be the -- a common thing for today.
16 '97 Consensus Water Plan, to implement
17 the entire plan: 4.7 billion. If all of the SB1
18 Regional Plan was implemented, it would cost $17.7
19 billion. So we're talking about one of the largest
20 civil works proposal for water ever put forth in
21 Texas.
22 Just to give you an idea of the sorting
23 and how this sorts out a little bit is the -- where we
24 can best tell where the proposals for construction of
25 reservoirs are part of major river strategies -- that's
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1 identified on this -- this map here.
2 One of the -- one of the activities that
3 our staff participated in as part of this -- part of
4 SB1 was to help identify important streams and rivers,
5 ecologically important streams and rivers, and there's
6 a set of criteria that were adopted in the rules to
7 make that first cut. And so our staff went through and
8 looked at all the streams and rivers in Texas, under
9 those criteria, and developed a state map which really
10 identified 228 stream segments meeting those -- those
11 criteria.
12 One region, Region H, in Houston, chose
13 to identify, in their plan, some designation of six of
14 those streams for consideration by the legislature.
15 Another part of that -- of that SB1,
16 which allowed for the identification of unique --
17 ecologically unique stream segments, was also the
18 designation of unique reservoir sites to be identified,
19 where a reservoir might be built in the future. There
20 were a total of 46 sites identified, the most of which
21 were in that northeast part or corner of the state, as
22 potential reservoir sites. Basically, I guess, you
23 could build a dike around that part of the state and
24 fill it up with water, I think. They want -- they have
25 a lot of reservoir sites there. But these are sites in
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1 the process. We're going to talk a little more about
2 that in a moment, but that was -- that was, by far, the
3 record.
4 One thing I do want to recognize, as we
5 go through and spend just a few minutes talking with,
6 is -- is that participation in planning and so forth,
7 and it was a -- it was a difficult task in that we had
8 very clear and direct guidance from the legislators and
9 legislature that this did need to be grassroots effort,
10 that these planning regions need to be -- needed to be
11 from those regions, and that the national resource
12 agencies, Parks and Wildlife and TNRCC and the Water
13 Development Board, need to be very careful in
14 supporting that effort and not -- not, basically, try
15 to run it or oversee it; let those groups work on
16 their own and we be supportive. And so we had some
17 difficulty working there and trying to sort that out.
18 When we first started a few years ago, for example, we
19 put together workshops for all the -- all the
20 environmental members of the regions, and others as
21 well; got a little criticism for that, for doing that
22 kind of thing and not letting them go forward, so we
23 were a little sensitive there. And so we were -- our
24 ability to work with those regions was fairly uneven.
25 In some regions, our members had difficulty even
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1 knowing when the meeting was going to happen and
2 difficulty getting information that was there. In
3 other cases, they would sit right at the table with the
4 voting members and participated fully. So it was
5 not -- it was somewhat uneven.
6 We picked one region out, for example,
7 that we -- we had wished all the regions had been like
8 this, Region H, for example, where they were one of the
9 regions that looked at the ecologically significant
10 streams and identified some. They put together a
11 special group to look at freshwater inflows and how
12 that needed to fit into their water management scheme,
13 and several other things. And other regions, you know,
14 did this, to varying degrees, but this certainly was
15 one region that did well.
16 And part of the problem -- and I think
17 this goes to where we're going to go in the future --
18 is the fact that it's such a monumental job; it's a
19 huge task that they were assigned; they didn't have a
20 lot of funds and time to do it. And so what they were
21 able -- the regions were able to really get their hands
22 around were to identify what are the water resources in
23 their region; what are their demands; what are their
24 needs? And that, really, frankly, was about as far as
25 many of them could take it. And so their plans really
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1 have laid a lot of management strategies on the table,
2 I think, more than they really think that they can do,
3 but they laid them all out there. And, for the most
4 part, they weren't able to really do what -- I would
5 say, a screening. They weren't able to develop, like,
6 an environmental screen, to run these strategies
7 through, to see if there were fatal flaws or see
8 what -- which one would -- what strategy would meet
9 their needs but be the least impactful on fish and
10 wildlife. And that was unfortunate.
11 We -- for example, toward the end of the
12 process, over the last year, all the state agencies --
13 and we were able to get the federal agencies involved
14 in this as well -- put together several days of
15 meetings which we called "clearing houses," and
16 ordered -- we set them up so that the regions could
17 come and sit down, with all the agencies at one table,
18 lay out the various strategies they were considering,
19 so we could give them some input on what problems they
20 may or may not have in a regulatory process and those
21 types of things.
22 Well, basically, one region took us up
23 on it. No one else really did. There was just not
24 much interest in it and -- probably because there
25 wasn't much time and that type of the thing, but we
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1 were certainly disappointed.
2 And what that means is that these
3 issues -- there's two -- they'll be three avenues in
4 which these issues will be resolved. One is in that
5 regulatory process, when some or parts of all of these
6 plans are moved forward for real implementation.
7 They're going to have to go through state permitting
8 and federal permitting. And so one of the things that
9 we had hoped to do before that was to, at least,
10 eliminate some of those problems, but we weren't -- as
11 I was trying to explain, we really weren't able to, so
12 all that's going to be going through that regulatory
13 process, and, unfortunately, some of it is undoubtedly
14 going to go into the federal process, and we're going
15 to have much less of a role in that federal process
16 than we would have in resolving the issues. That's a
17 concern.
18 The other avenue -- which I hope that we
19 will be able to work along with the Water Board and
20 others in these regions -- is to try to make sure that,
21 in the next round of Senate Bill 1 planning -- and
22 there will be ongoing rounds, obviously, for some
23 time -- is that, in those rounds, now that we have
24 identified -- we've laid out the sideboards, we've
25 identified the needs and the strategies, that, in this
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1 next round of planning, we spend -- we put a lot of
2 effort into this environmental evaluation, start
3 sorting through those strategies, build these screens
4 to sort through these strategies, to see which ones
5 will work and which ones will create problems. And
6 there are other screens that need to be built, like can
7 you really afford these things, and cost things that
8 they weren't able to as well.
9 So one thing we'll be trying to
10 emphasize in these next rounds of planning is those
11 kinds of things now, to try to get at that and really
12 get at the answer.
13 Let me see where I am before I -- I got
14 off on a tangent there a little bit.
15 So I think that's back into kind of --
16 okay. If we've -- kind of where we've been and kind of
17 where we were -- and, believe me, this is a snapshot --
18 as I said, there's about 25,000 pages of these
19 documents. Our staff are looking at them right now,
20 and we'll be moving forward with it. But just to kind
21 of give you an idea from now -- from this point, where
22 we're going, we'll take a few minutes to kind of give
23 you that timeline.
24 MS. LOEFFLER: Okay. So, as I said
25 earlier, right now, we're in the middle of reviewing
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1 these plans. The deadline to get comments back to me
2 is November 15th. So that's next week.
3 We'll be preparing a letter that will go
4 to the Texas Water Development Board that will cover
5 all of our concerns and comments for the 16 regions.
6 We hope, in December, next month, to
7 prepare something, in writing, that we can submit to
8 you-all, to the commission, to give a little bit more
9 thorough background as to what some of our issues are,
10 some of the things showing up in these plans, so on.
11 And then, also happening next month, in
12 December, the Texas Water Development Board will be
13 working on the executive summary to the state plan. So
14 where we've been, focusing our efforts, to date, on
15 preparing these 16 regional plans -- the next big step
16 is to combine those regional plans into a state plan,
17 and we have made it clear that we'd like to provide
18 input and have a piece of that executive summary, if
19 you will.
20 That executive summary then is due to be
21 complete by February 2001 and then available for
22 legislatures -- legislators.
23 DR. McKINNEY: You'll be getting --
24 notice, on the timeline, that we'll be preparing for
25 y'all, in December, a written summary of where we are
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1 on those -- on those plans, and continue as best we
2 can, to give you a little more -- more information.
3 MS. LOEFFLER: Next summer, June 2001,
4 is when the Texas Water Development Board plans to
5 adopt all of the 16 regional plans. Whether they'll do
6 it in one meeting or phase it out over several is not
7 clear, but they would like to have that done by the
8 June 2001. And then, in September of 2001, the state
9 plan will be complete, and then printed and distributed
10 by January 2002, which is the legislative deadline for
11 having the state plan out.
12 So going on concurrently with trying to
13 keep up with the current regional planning process,
14 we're also looking down the road, as Larry has alluded
15 to, how to improve the next round of regional
16 planning. This is something that is envisioned to
17 happen on a five-year schedule, so this is just the
18 first time going through this. And the Water
19 Development Board, in October, was soliciting input
20 from interested parties, including the other agencies,
21 suggestions for how to improve this process, and so we
22 did submit several comments back to the Board, and as
23 Larry has mentioned, we really need to enhance our
24 staff's participation in these regional planning
25 groups. We really can help with preparation of these
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1 plans and help the groups to avoid some of the
2 permitting pitfalls that they're bound to face, either
3 state or federal. So enhancing our participation is
4 something we suggested doing.
5 The planning groups themselves have come
6 under fire from some because they tend to be loaded up
7 with water controllers, if you will, water suppliers,
8 water developers, some of the more traditional players
9 in some of the water issues in the state, and, really,
10 less so with folks that are actually affected by some
11 of these decisions. There's one representative for the
12 public; there's one representative for the
13 environment, and that's about it. So we've made some
14 suggestions that, at least, we need to have a
15 representative there, someone who would be affected,
16 their business might be affected, say, outfitters or
17 marina owners or folks like that, that, you know, their
18 bread and butter depends on some of these decisions
19 that are being made. So we'll see where we get with
20 that.
21 And then, as Larry has mentioned, the
22 next round of planning needs to do a more thorough job
23 of looking at environmental impacts associated with
24 these strategies.
25 DR. McKINNEY: One of the issues that
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1 all of the regions have identified as needing more
2 clarification on is the designation of unique rivers
3 and streams and reservoirs, just what that means and
4 what are the implications of it. And that's something
5 that will be coming up under Senate Bill 1, and that we
6 all -- we will be participating in and trying to
7 clarify as to what it means. Here's the language
8 itself. It's pretty simple, and I guess that's a
9 problem when you try to do something fairly simple like
10 that; it really -- it maybe leaves questions open
11 and -- of where you want to go.
12 And some of the concerns, I think, that
13 have been raised for the stream designation is that,
14 okay, what does this do to property owners adjacent to
15 these rivers and streams, and the private property
16 implications, and those types of things; what does it
17 do to me? Because I think there's been a concern from
18 federal designations of scenic rivers and those types
19 of things. Does it have anything like that? Well, as
20 you can see, the one thing that -- we tried to address
21 it in a couple of ways:
22 One, we set up a process such that a
23 recommendation comes out of that planning group which
24 should represent that region. The Water Development
25 Board has to pass on that. Then it has to go to the
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1 legislature before it can ever happen. So there's a
2 whole series of steps to get issues -- and it's
3 obviously very -- frankly, very difficult to do -- but
4 a series of steps to get those issues out in front and
5 looked at.
6 And then the designation itself.
7 Basically, the only thing that it does is a state
8 agency or political subdivision may not obtain a fee
9 title or easement that would destroy those values.
10 That's really what it means. And that's all that it
11 means.
12 And so it's been some interesting twists
13 on it. We've had some conversations with folks, and
14 some, for example, in the private property rights side,
15 where they've actually looked at the language, they
16 say, "Well, you know, if I get this done, it's probably
17 one of the more powerful pieces of protection for my
18 property that I can have. I mean, I don't even know if
19 condemnation can override this type of thing once it's
20 designated, and a state can't come in and buy it."
21 Frankly, you know, the same thing on the
22 reservoir side. Maybe even more so on the reservoir
23 side, because I -- as I showed -- as you remember that
24 little flip-out of the map, with the 17 or 18 reservoir
25 sites that are proposed for designation up in northeast
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1 Texas. I suppose if I were a private property owner up
2 there, on one of those dam sites, I'd be pretty
3 concerned that what's the value of my property now that
4 it's been designated as a reservoir site?
5 So there's all of those issues there
6 that will certainly come into play in the legislature,
7 and we're going to have to address, I mean, as how we
8 go forward. I don't know exactly where it's going to
9 come out, but it will be -- that will be a topic in
10 session.
11 The most important issue, and, I think,
12 certainly, of concern to us down the road, and that is
13 in our capacity as an agency to respond as these water
14 management strategies are implemented, through, both,
15 state and federal regulatory processes. A number of us
16 have, in the past, worked on reservoir proposals and
17 projects through those processes and know how intense
18 they can be. And, as I've showed you, the two-page
19 summary of the various water strategies that are there,
20 and the fact that everything we do will be impacted by
21 them, we're -- if we're not involved fully, fully
22 engaged in the process -- process of future planning,
23 the regulatory process, and development process -- that
24 goes forward, it's not going to stop. It's going to
25 be -- it's a moving train and rolling, and we're just
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1 going to be brushed aside. And those impacts on fish
2 and wildlife which are so important to us, you know,
3 will not be adequately considered.
4 So we're going to have to be working,
5 and our executive director, Mr. Sansom, and I and
6 others have already started and been discussing how
7 can -- how can we make sure that we -- that we put the
8 resources into play to meet that challenge, and it's
9 daunting. It really is. And so we -- that's -- as
10 high on our list as we can it is -- how do we do that?
11 How do we, frankly, stay as players in this process to
12 meet our responsibilities? So that's -- that's on our
13 minds, obviously.
14 One thing that has helped us and will
15 help us, and that is the work of the Governor's Task
16 Force in taking care of Texas. There is a section in
17 that report dealing with water that has been reviewed,
18 and I would say that that for us, provides the policy,
19 the background, and framework of which we're going to
20 -- we would propose and to address -- addressing --
21 making sure that fish and wildlife are part of these
22 water decisions, because I think that section, as I've
23 looked back over it in the last several days,
24 captures -- captures, for me and, I think -- for Cindy
25 and I and others that are working it day to day, that's
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1 what we should be doing. That's what we are doing, and
2 what we should do. I think it's going to be a really
3 important guide to us and others as "Here's how we're
4 coming at this." And just -- our job is to put the
5 tools to it and implement those policies and
6 recommendations. If we can do that, we'll be where we
7 need to be.
8 And I think, with that, Madam Chairman
9 and Members, we certainly are open to -- to questions
10 from you at this time.
11 CHAIR DINKINS: Well, thank you for that
12 very excellent briefing, and also for all your hard
13 work on this. Twenty-three thousand pages sounds like
14 a lot to read in six weeks.
15 DR. McKINNEY: Cindy has read them all,
16 I think.
17 CHAIR DINKINS: And you're prepared to
18 answer questions on any one?
19 DR. McKINNEY: On any one. I would tell
20 you she could probably do it as well as anyone can
21 right now.
22 CHAIR DINKINS: Well, good.
23 MR. SANSOM: What would you say are the
24 principal issues facing you now? I mean, summarize the
25 principal issues.
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1 DR. McKINNEY: I'm sorry --
2 MR. SANSOM: In terms of the process,
3 what are the most significant issues or problems facing
4 you right now in SB1 implementation?
5 DR. McKINNEY: You mean process-wise,
6 not resource-wise, but how -- participating in the
7 process?
8 Cindy, kick in at any time.
9 Our immediate one is: How we will work
10 with the Water Development Board in their coalition of
11 the regional plans and the state plan? What would be
12 our role there; what -- do we have the resources even
13 to be helpful to them, to identify issues or concerns?
14 And that would be over this next year -- that will be
15 an important one.
16 MR. SANSOM: So there's an issue of
17 capacity?
18 DR. McKINNEY: I see this strain coming
19 one or two years down the road -- when it gets to that
20 regulatory process, it's going to be overwhelming, but
21 immediately, in order to lessen that load, in order to
22 make it more realistic, we have to have influence and
23 be able to participate in this first pass-through of
24 taking these regional plans and putting them to state
25 plans. So if we can be effective there, then we
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1 eliminate some pressures for us down the road. So
2 that's there.
3 MS. LOEFFLER: On the issue of
4 transitioning from water right planning to permitting,
5 as Larry says, a year or two down the road, when these
6 plans are rolled up into a state plan, the spouses are
7 actually coming forward for permits, we're going to be
8 swamped, if you pardon the pun. But we're already
9 seeing some of that go on, I think, in anticipation of
10 the deadline. If projects are not in the state plan by
11 the time the state plan is due, then they're not
12 eligible for funding, and they're not eligible for
13 surface water right permits. So we're already seeing
14 that activity pick up substantially, and I think it
15 will pick up even more. So that will be a challenge.
16 DR. McKINNEY: We're finishing up our
17 technical studies in various areas, in rivers and
18 freshwater inflows, and we're on schedule for that, but
19 turning that -- those -- that technical information
20 into policies and actually putting them into play in
21 this will be a big challenge that we'll have to face as
22 well.
23 Legislatively, there will be -- the one
24 that's kind of rolling up behind us in -- or in front
25 of us, I should say, is a focus on groundwater and how
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1 groundwater fits into meeting our demands and those
2 types of things, and that will have an impact on
3 springs and rivers and the whole thing. And that will
4 rise as an important issue in trying to help there.
5 I can keep rolling here, but that's --
6 those are the ones I would say. Those concerns --
7 immediately.
8 CHAIR DINKINS: Any questions,
9 comments?
10 Well, thank you again. It's always good
11 to hear from you on what you're doing with water.
12 AGENDA ITEM NO. 2: BRIEFING-TEXAS TECH STUDY.
13 CHAIR DINKINS: All right. Let's move
14 to the agenda item that is the briefing on the Texas
15 Tech study.
16 And, Andy, did you want to introduce
17 this one? Lydia. Thanks.
18 Welcome, Lydia.
19 MS. SALDANA: Good afternoon, Chairman,
20 Commissioners. I'm Lydia Saldana, director of the
21 communications division, and I'm here to brief you on
22 the study "Texas Parks and Wildlife in the 21st
23 Century."
24 We've contracted with Texas Tech
25 University to conduct a comprehensive research effort.
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1 And Tech has put together a -- I guess we can call it a
2 far-flung team. And, in fact, it's so far flung that
3 we were taking advantage of being all together in the
4 building, so we were working over lunch, and we
5 apologize for being a little late today.
6 This study is being conducted in two
7 phases. There's a statewide needs assessment for
8 outdoor recreation and natural and cultural resource
9 conservation, and also a comprehensive public opinion
10 survey that will be the focus of today's presentation.
11 The work on this is wrapping up right
12 now. In fact, we were tying up loose ends over the
13 lunch hour, and we'll be expecting final reports on
14 this study in the next few weeks.
15 We will also be producing an executive
16 summary type document, a printed report, that will be
17 ready, certainly, in time for your next commission
18 meeting in January.
19 Most of the project team is here, and
20 I'm going to introduce a few of the folks that are
21 here, that would be available to answer questions if
22 you have any.
23 Dr. Nick Parker -- where is Nick?
24 Dr. Nick Parker, with Texas Tech. He's the head of the
25 COOP unit. Also, Dr. Bob Baker, a biologist from Texas
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1 Tech, is here with Nick.
2 Clif Ladd is the subcontractor from
3 Loomis Austin that is working on the outdoor recreation
4 and natural and cultural resource conservation piece.
5 And Mark Duda is who you'll be hearing
6 from today. Mark Duda -- if you'd come up and join me,
7 Mark -- is executive director of Responsive Management,
8 which is an organization developed to help fish,
9 wildlife, and natural resource organizations and
10 industry to better understand and work with their
11 constituents and customers. He has conducted more than
12 300 surveys and 200 focus groups on natural resource
13 and environmental issues. And I don't know if that
14 number includes this study or not.
15 Here's Mark.
16 MR. DUDA: Add a few hundred on that.
17 Good afternoon. How are y'all doing and
18 holding up? I know everybody got eight hours of sleep
19 last night, so -- I know that I didn't.
20 Chairman, Commissioners, Director
21 Sansom, thank you very much for letting me address
22 you. I have several power point slides, so I am going
23 to focus in on that.
24 Let's begin and see how this works.
25 What I'd like to do is sort of put this study in
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1 perspective of some other things that you've heard
2 today.
3 Generally, we think about fish and
4 wildlife management as containing sort of -- sort of
5 focusing on three different aspects: Focusing on fish
6 and wildlife populations, fish and wildlife habitats,
7 and people. And what's interesting, we specialize in
8 understanding people, but when it comes to fish and
9 wildlife populations, when it comes to habitats, we
10 deal with those very scientifically. We approach those
11 in a very scientific and deliberate manner.
12 In this project, on the public attitude
13 side of the "Texas Parks and Wildlife for the 21st
14 Century" study, we wanted to bring a very scientific
15 side to understanding the many different publics.
16 We're Phase I. It's called The Public
17 Opinion Study, but, in realty, it's public opinion on
18 public opinions study.
19 The study that we're in the process of
20 finishing up, really, is in two phases:
21 Focus groups. We conducted a series of
22 13 focus groups and seven telephone surveys. It's a
23 very major major study. It's one of the largest that
24 we've ever done and certainly one of the largest that's
25 ever been done for a state fish and wildlife agency
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1 such as Texas Parks and Wildlife.
2 We connected a series of focus groups,
3 to start off with, with what we call qualitative
4 research. Before we jumped into the telephone surveys,
5 the quantified surveys, we wanted to start from
6 scratch. And so we wanted to go out there and talk, in
7 a very open-ended manner, to a variety of constituent
8 groups, to see parks, wildlife, fisheries issues
9 through their eyes. And so we really went out to talk
10 about things from their perspective.
11 We talked to several key constituent
12 groups, including hunters, anglers, boaters, daytime
13 park users, overnight park users. We looked at some
14 major stakeholder groups, through these focus groups.
15 These were formal focus groups conducted in facilities
16 where we had mirrors, one-way mirrors, where several of
17 the people in here were behind the one-way mirror,
18 watching things, so as not to influence the group.
19 Rural landowners, outdoor
20 recreationists, several other focus groups. Some
21 different groups within the general population.
22 We talked to urban residents, suburban
23 residents, a group entirely with Hispanics, and another
24 group entirely with African Americans, looking at
25 issues of natural resources, parks, fisheries issues,
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1 from their standpoint.
2 We conducted seven surveys,
3 scientifically conducted surveys. One very large study
4 of the general population; one specifically of licensed
5 hunters; one of anglers -- and this included both
6 saltwater and freshwater anglers; of boaters; of park
7 users; of both day and overnight park users; of
8 landowners; that is, we went into the counties, we
9 looked at the county records, we selected people who
10 owned only 640 acres of land or more, and interviewed
11 those individuals, as well as outdoor recreationists,
12 to get a feel for not only what people are doing now in
13 terms of outdoor recreation, but things that, if
14 they're not doing them now, what they would be
15 interested in, and if they're interested in it, what
16 the constraints and the barriers were to them not
17 participating. So we not only looked at sort of
18 current demand, but latent demand as well.
19 Let's take a look at the few things that
20 we found in the general population study. This is only
21 the tip of the iceberg in what we did find.
22 The first is, we looked at outdoor
23 recreational activities, and that's Texans
24 participating in numerous outdoor activities. And
25 let's take a look here in terms of the percentage of
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1 Texans who are participating in a variety of these
2 issues.
3 You can see things like visiting a
4 historic site, wildlife viewing within a mile of their
5 home were very popular activities. Visiting a Texas
6 state park, bird-watching, and then sort of on down the
7 line, to the more specific activities, such as
8 saltwater fishing and hunting.
9 These numbers, by the way -- you've
10 done numerous studies, over the years, both, Texas A &
11 M, Texas Tech University, as well as the department
12 itself, and a lot of these numbers were almost right on
13 the mark with these other studies. Where they have
14 differed, we think there are very real differences in
15 either increasing or decreasing participation.
16 Now, not only is that important in terms
17 of just studying what these people are doing now, but
18 in terms of cross-tabulations, that if we say this
19 group wants this, and this group wants this, we're able
20 to pull out what hunters want, what anglers want, what
21 bird-watchers want, all of those different groups.
22 One of the most revealing issues, both
23 in the focus groups, as well as the telephone surveys,
24 is the incredible importance of water resources to
25 Texans. That's probably no surprise to you, but the
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1 surveys did show that in a very quantified manner, and
2 I will show you that.
3 When we talked to the biologists and the
4 people within the department, habitat loss was very
5 important -- this whole idea of fragmentation, looking
6 at Texas as a whole. Well, one of the things that we
7 found in the focus groups, as well as the surveys, is
8 that Texans really didn't understand this whole idea of
9 habitat loss and habitat fragmentation. They
10 understood habitat development on a very local issue,
11 but they didn't see it like we see it, as biologists
12 and others within the profession, in terms of the state
13 as a whole, and we're losing this wetlands -- these
14 wetlands here, these forests here. It was very
15 localized. And I think that's going to be pretty
16 important in terms of better educating and better
17 communicating with Texans.
18 But let me show you here. We started
19 out the general population survey with three very
20 general questions, what we call open-ended questions;
21 that is, we did not provide responses to them in terms
22 of answer sets. But open-endedly, we asked: What are
23 the most important outdoor recreation issues facing
24 Texas? And you can see that even though there was some
25 all over the board, the highest response was in this
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1 "don't know" category.
2 We saw a similar pattern when it came to
3 asking Texans about the most important historic
4 preservation issues. Again, "don't know" being almost
5 the number one response, by a long shot. Maintenance
6 of current historic sites, and a lot of other things.
7 But that contrasts rather dramatically
8 when we talk about the open-ended question: "What are
9 the most important natural resource or environmental
10 issues facing Texas?" And you can see, as the focus
11 group showed, in a qualitative way, that water
12 resources really did dominate the discussion, as well
13 as the survey, for that matter.
14 Take a look at some of those: Habitat
15 loss/fragmentation at four percent; endangered species
16 protection at three percent.
17 Now, this doesn't mean that these aren't
18 important to Texans, but these were the top of the mind
19 issues that came to mind. So you can see the relative
20 importance of water in the top of the mind issues as
21 they relate to water, as opposed to things that we
22 might think are important, such as habitat
23 loss/fragmentation and -- look at population growth.
24 Just numbers there that are important.
25 One of the other patterns that came out
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1 that we saw, is that resource values, natural resource
2 environmental values, certainly were more important
3 than recreational values. When we looked at those --
4 and I'm going to show you a chart. When we looked at
5 the importance of all of these, not only environmental
6 issues but different types of recreational issues, that
7 it was pretty clear that natural resource,
8 conservation, protection, and management were certainly
9 on a higher plane. Those ecological, those existence
10 values, were much more important than those
11 recreational values. A pattern that came out over and
12 over again. So that would be sort of our first tier.
13 The second tier that came out that was
14 pretty important was the sheer importance of what we
15 would call these passive outdoor recreational
16 activities: Having land out there for people to just
17 simply enjoy nature. A lot of times, when we talk
18 about recreation, we think of managing for hunting, or
19 managing for fishing. Those are certainly important.
20 But there's this other tier of the Texans just wanted
21 land out there to enjoy the quiet aspects, the
22 naturalistic aspects. And so that was sort of
23 almost -- really fell out as a second tier. And let me
24 show you what I mean here.
25 These were all individual questions that
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1 we asked. We asked, "Is water resources being safe and
2 well protected very important, somewhat important, or
3 not important to you?" And so we asked numerous
4 questions to Texans in this general population survey,
5 and this is how they fell out. What we did here is we
6 graphed only the "very importants," only the "very
7 importants." And, again, you can see that water
8 resource as being at the very top, with 93 percent of
9 the general population saying that was very important.
10 That wildlife exists -- and, again, some of these
11 other values almost in a second tier.
12 And then, moving down, into the third
13 tier of those recreational values, are things like
14 hunting, fishing, boating important to Texans? You
15 bet. But more important are these existence values.
16 And, certainly, at the top of the list, from an
17 environmental standpoint, is the water resource issue.
18 We asked several specific questions
19 during the focus groups. A number of people said,
20 "Well, Texas Parks and Wildlife does a great job, but
21 they're totally underfunded; they're trying to do a
22 whole lot with a few people; the people that we've seen
23 out there are working all the time."
24 And so we asked a question, in the
25 general population survey, about would they support or
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1 oppose more Texas Parks and Wildlife funding -- and we
2 asked numerous questions, and this one happened to be,
3 "to enhance efforts for managing and conserving fish
4 and wildlife populations?"
5 "Would you support or oppose more Texas
6 Parks and Wildlife funding to buy additional land?"
7 And, again, pretty amazing numbers there in terms of
8 support.
9 Now, if Texans are interested in
10 expanding programs for the department, those -- that
11 money is going to need to come from somewhere. And so,
12 from the focus groups, from a lot of the other
13 literature, including the Texas Parks -- excuse me --
14 the Texas A & M study of a couple of years ago where
15 they recommended additional funding activities, we
16 wanted to test those. And I'm going to show you a
17 graph that's got a lot on here, but I do want to make
18 the point that Texans support some of those funding
19 sources that were recommended not only from the Texas A
20 & M study, but from the focus groups themselves, but
21 they rejected others. They made it clear that they
22 wanted increased programs for the department, but they
23 certainly were picky in terms of what they supported
24 and what they opposed.
25 And so let's take a look. A lot of them
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1 here -- I'm not going to go through those
2 individually. But I want to show you how they fell
3 out.
4 This is the "strongly" and the
5 "moderately" support, in terms of each option as a
6 possible funding source. An incredible 82 percent
7 saying that they supported strongly or moderately
8 unclaimed boat fuel tax refunds; development-type
9 issues being very high; a larger portion of revenue
10 from the sporting goods sales tax, and then on down the
11 line.
12 And I'm going to show you another graph
13 here. I want you to know that this information is
14 available. We looked at a lot of those, on down to
15 some things that probably won't be a reality, such as,
16 maybe, things like a real estate transfer fee of
17 one-tenth of one percent, the one-eighth of one percent
18 sales tax that has, indeed, been successfully used by
19 states like Missouri Department of Conservation and,
20 more recently, Arkansas Game and Fish.
21 So we have that information now, not
22 only in terms of what programs and what values Texans
23 hold, but, as importantly, whether they would support
24 increase in funding, and, more specifically, getting
25 more specific in terms of those particular and specific
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1 funding mechanisms that they, indeed, would support.
2 Now, all of this, before we got into
3 Texas Park and Wildlife Department, was -- were issues
4 related to natural resource issues, outdoor recreation
5 issues, exclusive of the department. Exclusive of the
6 department. So then we started moving into department
7 issues. We asked several questions in terms of
8 department ratings, which were very, very high. I did
9 not include those today because they were very high,
10 and I -- it was pretty amazing.
11 In terms of ability to identify the
12 agency and agency awareness, about 36 percent of Texas
13 residents 18 years old and older were able to
14 specifically and correctly, accurately identify the
15 department as the agency responsible for parks, natural
16 resource management, and wildlife. About 36 percent.
17 We are cross-tabulating that information now and seeing
18 some major differences in terms of different groups.
19 Your hunters and anglers, certainly, being more likely
20 to identify the agency, while other groups have much
21 less. In fact, some of the groups we're looking at are
22 at eight and nine percent. So that awareness certainly
23 goes across the board.
24 But after that, after we started talking
25 about the department and if they were doing a good job,
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1 which they said, indeed, they were, we wanted to know
2 what the activities that were important to Texans
3 were. Law enforcement, and that was both law
4 enforcement in terms of recreation and habitat; upkeep
5 and maintenance of state parks being at the top of the
6 line. We presented about 22 different activities that
7 were spread over the range of all of the activities
8 that the department conducted and were involved with.
9 Education, all forms of education, being hunter
10 education, boater, wildlife and environmental
11 education, as well as endangered species management,
12 really being the top priority programs. And I'll show
13 you a graph on that.
14 The other thing -- I'm sort of following
15 up on what we talked about before, that managing and
16 preserving places to enjoy and experiencing nature was
17 really an important activity. And let me show you the
18 numbers on that. We asked Texas residents 18 years old
19 and over, "Do you think that managing and preserving
20 places to enjoy and experiencing nature is an important
21 or unimportant activity?" And look at that. Just an
22 incredible number.
23 Now, I know you-all haven't seen polls
24 or anything of the such in the past two weeks, being
25 the election and all, so it was -- the timing was
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1 uncanny. I was like, "I have to present a poll a day
2 after the election?"
3 These are all of the activities that we
4 presented. Each of these is an individual question.
5 Is this important or unimportant? And, again, this
6 sort of recapitulates what I was talking about before.
7 Look at the upkeep and maintenance of
8 state parks, very top of the line, where 84 percent of
9 Texans said that that was a very important activity.
10 And then, down the line, as I talked about -- hunting
11 and fishing laws and regulations, hunter safety;
12 whereas only a few percentage of Texans are actually
13 hunting, the majority thinks that hunter education is
14 very important. And so there was a lot of things that
15 we learned here. Threatened and endangered species,
16 and boating safety education, and then on down the
17 line, to all of these other activities. And it's
18 interesting to note that at -- sort of at the bottom,
19 where we've got hunting and boating opportunities, that
20 the education part of it was important. So what we see
21 here is that recreation, the value of recreation, such
22 as hunting, fishing, boating, are important to a
23 segment who are actually doing it, but the value
24 extends much higher than that. In fact, I'm going to
25 show you, in a few minutes, the percentage of Texans
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1 who do support hunting and fishing activities, which
2 was very high.
3 We also wanted to know what messages
4 resonated with Texans. A lot of times, we go out and
5 we give speeches to different groups, and we talk about
6 what we know, in our hearts and our minds, are
7 important to us, and the reasons that we're even here
8 today or the jobs that we do are important, but in the
9 focus groups, we heard a lot of things. Well, this is
10 why it's important. This is why it's important. And
11 so what we did is we took those -- we identified a lot
12 of those issues, and we actually tested them, and we
13 asked Texans, on a scale from one to ten, one being
14 extremely important, if that was a reason -- an
15 important reason to conserve natural and historic
16 resources. And a clear pattern emerged here, because
17 when you look at the variety of messages that are out
18 there, why we should conserve and manage Texas' fish,
19 wildlife, and parks, we saw that the positive messages
20 resonated much more so than the negative messages; the
21 top two being those top two, that it's important to
22 protect Texas' natural resources for future
23 generations. I Promise, across the board, of all the
24 different groups, that it's important to protect Texas'
25 natural resources for future generations, like our
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1 children and grandchildren. And then the second most
2 important reason, the reason that resonated the most
3 with Texans, was that a clean environment protects
4 Texans' health. And we had a lot of other ones in
5 there, but I'm going to flip now to the next one, and I
6 want to start out at the bottom.
7 The ones that did not resonate as much
8 were sort of more of those negative messages.
9 Things -- messages that we -- sometimes that I use,
10 certainly, when I'm talking to people of the general
11 public, that every two minutes another acre of Texas
12 farm and ranchland becomes a subdivision, a shopping
13 mall, or a road. Or that Texas, you've heard, ranks
14 48th in per-person spending. If money isn't spent now
15 to preserve Texas' natural resources, they may
16 disappear forever. And the pattern here was that those
17 positive messages, those -- the things that --
18 children, grandchildren, the positive values of natural
19 resource protection, resonated much more so than those
20 scare tactics or those negative types of messages.
21 Real interesting because we've never done that before,
22 and a -- and a pattern really did emerge.
23 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: May I ask a
24 question here?
25 MR. DUDA: Yes, ma'am.
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1 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: I don't see a huge
2 difference between the last two. I mean, I see a
3 difference, but I don't see anything falling below
4 eight.
5 MR. DUDA: Yeah. Great observation. I'm
6 going to try to get back, if I can --
7 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: And, I mean, it
8 seems to me like everything's important.
9 MR. DUDA: Yeah, they're --
10 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Well, one does. One
11 falls below eight, and that is -- well, every two
12 minutes another acre of Texas farm and ranchland
13 becomes a subdivision, shopping mall, or a road.
14 I'm trying to figure out, frankly,
15 what -- how do I utilize this information? Because
16 you'd have to be pretty discerning here, because the
17 differences are really not that great.
18 MR. DUDA: Yeah, I --
19 CHAIRMAN BASS: These are the least
20 important?
21 MR. DUDA: --- agree.
22 CHAIRMAN BASS: These are the least
23 important?
24 MR. DUDA: Yes, sir. Yeah, the bottom
25 ones were the least important. But they're averages.
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1 These are averages of over 2,000 people giving ranges
2 from 1 to 10. And so what we did is we averaged
3 those.
4 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: I'm puzzled by this
5 a little bit, I guess. It would seem to be more useful
6 if you had said, "Okay. You've got to order these in
7 priority, and you've only got five slots."
8 MR. DUDA: Yeah. We actually did do
9 that in the focus groups, in several of the focus
10 groups. People have a problem with that because --
11 especially over the telephone. It's almost impossible
12 to do it that way because they get confused; it takes
13 time. And this is the way we chose to do it. That may
14 be a better way to do that, but from a statistical
15 standpoint is that there are --
16 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Is this
17 significant?
18 MR. DUDA: Yes, ma'am, some of these --
19 yeah, from -- from the bottom to the top, they are.
20 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: So the bottom being
21 7.45, 9.25, out of a possible range of 10?
22 MR. DUDA: Yeah. With the number of
23 people -- Oops. I'm trying to go backwards here.
24 With the number of people that we talked
25 to, those --
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1 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Two thousand?
2 MR. DUDA: Yeah, 2,000 and -- I think
3 2,002 or something.
4 CHAIRMAN BASS: The average of these two
5 pages differs by about .5.
6 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Is that
7 significant?
8 MR. DUDA: Yeah. Yeah, I think --
9 Yeah, because they're -- because they're averages;
10 they're not percentages of people. And what you're
11 doing is you're averaging it because there was a very
12 wide range. Some of those people on this --
13 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: I'm still missing
14 it, but keep going.
15 MR. DUDA: On the bottom one here --
16 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Move along.
17 MR. DUDA: Well, no, but your point is a
18 good one. Your point is a good one because we had that
19 same thing, and even in the focus groups, it was the
20 same type of a thing, where people were saying, well,
21 that's important, and that's important, and that's
22 important. And so I think that the first conclusion --
23 I think it's important when you're saying that -- that,
24 overall, when the messages got out to people, that it
25 did increase their awareness and their concern about
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1 fish, wildlife, and parks issues. But we also noticed
2 that some of these resonated slightly more so. So that
3 even though more of those were up in that seven, eight,
4 nine, ten range, that we, at some point -- if we throw
5 too many messages at people --
6 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: I agree. I
7 think -- I guess that the differences, from my --
8 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: They'll think
9 everything is important.
10 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Well, one, yeah.
11 MR. DUDA: Which -- which is a -- sort
12 of a finding in and of itself. I mean, I think that
13 that -- that's important, too. I mean, I think that
14 what --
15 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Yeah, I think if
16 you ask your question a certain way, it would be
17 difficult for somebody to say it is not important.
18 MR. DUDA: Well, we had a lot of people
19 say that some of those were -- were, quote, stupid, and
20 they gave them 1's. I mean --
21 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Okay. These are
22 averages?
23 MR. DUDA: Yes.
24 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: You must have had a
25 lot of 10's.
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1 MR. DUDA: On some of them. On some of
2 them. And it did vary.
3 And another way that, maybe, would be a
4 better way to present that is to -- is to have each of
5 those -- have you see the range on each of those:
6 "It's important for Texas' natural resources for
7 future" -- that we could give you --
8 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Well, I think --
9 MR. DUDA: --- from a 1 --
10 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: --- I could
11 probably figure that out --
12 MR. DUDA: --- 1 to 10 --
13 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: --- kind of. I
14 mean, you know, in my own head.
15 MR. DUDA: Uh-huh.
16 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: But it -- it
17 just -- we'll just move on.
18 MR. DUDA: Okay.
19 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: And I'll think
20 about it.
21 MR. DUDA: Yeah. But -- but it's a
22 good -- but it's a good observation, the fact that a
23 lot of those did move up. But also remember that we
24 picked these because these fell out of the groups as
25 being important. If somebody had another reason in a
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1 focus group that what -- that didn't seem to resonate,
2 we didn't ask it, because we sort of culled these to
3 begin with.
4 The other point that I'd like to make
5 about these is that, with some of the different
6 demographic groups, it did vary as well.
7 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Is it more
8 startling?
9 MR. DUDA: Depends who you talk to.
10 Okay. Let's move back.
11 Are we going in the right direction
12 here?
13 MS. SALDANA: Yeah, I think you are.
14 MR. DUDA: Okay. Okay. And then
15 this one is --
16 MS. SALDANA: Go back one.
17 MR. DUDA: Yeah, let's go back one.
18 This is the percent -- who reported each
19 activity as very important, in terms of information on
20 the availability of outdoor recreational
21 opportunities. One of the things that we saw was that
22 Texans wanted information on a lot of different
23 issues.
24 Okay. Now, we've got this scale. We
25 did that.
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1 Okay. Now, not only do we have this
2 information on a statewide basis -- sometimes the
3 differences -- and I'm kind of nervous to -- to give
4 you this one, to see what the differences are. But one
5 of the things I wanted to show you here is that there
6 were differences, in terms of regional participation,
7 in terms of attitudes. This the just an example. This
8 is the percent who visited a state park in the past 12
9 months. This is going to be very important because I
10 think that -- that those are pretty big differences,
11 that 37 percent of Texans who live in the prairies and
12 lakes region have visited a state park, compared to,
13 maybe, the Hill County.
14 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Now, are prairies
15 and lakes being sort of east of Dallas and -- or around
16 the Dallas to --
17 MS. SALDANA: It's in the Dallas --
18 that covers the Metropolitan.
19 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: It's the
20 Metropolitan Dallas area?
21 MS. SALDANA: Uh-huh.
22 MR. DUDA: Yeah. And in the final
23 report, we will have a map for you on that.
24 But that's just an example, because
25 everything that we ask, we are doing this by -- by
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1 region as well.
2 Not only are we looking at that on a
3 regional basis, but also in terms of different Texas
4 groups. We know that the population of Hispanics is
5 growing rapidly, so we want to understand these
6 different groups, and the project is called
7 "Texas Parks and Wildlife for the 21st Century," so we
8 want this information not only now, but to project in
9 the future, in terms of what different groups think.
10 Now, that was the general population study.
11 We also conducted a study of Texas
12 licensed hunters. This is just an example of the
13 information and the depth of information that we're
14 collecting. This is whether or not your hunters were
15 either satisfied or dissatisfied with White-tailed deer
16 hunting in Texas. And, again, we have that not only
17 for White-tailed deer, but a lot of other species, as
18 well as on a regional basis. And, again, from a
19 planning prospective -- I can run through these fairly
20 quick, because it's more as an example here -- but that
21 you will have that information on a -- on a regional
22 basis as well. So it won't be just white-tailed deer
23 satisfaction with your hunters, but on a regional
24 basis.
25 One of the things that we asked was,
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1 "What's important to hunters in terms of Texas Parks
2 and Wildlife Department programs?" What's very
3 important, at the very top of the list -- which was
4 pretty surprising to me -- was educating non-hunters
5 about hunting, over and above a lot of other issues,
6 the second being acquiring more state-owned land, and
7 on down the line, improving habitat on public land,
8 encouraging landowners to open up access for hunting,
9 hunter education. And, again, what I've done here is
10 I've only plotted the "much more."
11 We have also people who want it to
12 remain the same, somewhat more, and much more. But
13 this is a little bit more discerning. And then on down
14 the line, in terms of improving access.
15 And then there's very specific things
16 like hunting with a crossbow, hunting exotic game,
17 waterfowl hunting, were -- were less important to these
18 Texas hunters, licensed hunters. These are resident
19 hunters, licensed hunters.
20 The survey on Texas hunters probably
21 took 10 to 15 minutes, a real long study, a lot of
22 information. That's just the tip of the iceberg.
23 Let's take a couple look -- minute look
24 at Texas anglers. This is of licensed Texas anglers.
25 Some absolutely incredible numbers here in terms of
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1 satisfaction. These evaluation studies, sometimes you
2 want to come back and say, well, you need to do this
3 and you need to do this, but sometimes it's a very fair
4 and it's a very real thing to come back and say, you
5 know, a lot of what -- what's going on is being done
6 right. And these satisfaction levels are just
7 incredible.
8 I want to look at that on a regional
9 basis, to see if there's any dissatisfaction on a
10 regional basis, or of who -- of whom, but, I mean, the
11 numbers are amazing. I mean, that, you know, 44
12 percent very satisfied. Just -- just incredible
13 numbers there.
14 There were some issues when it comes to
15 boat ramps and some specifics, and we are looking at
16 that on a regional basis as well. That 14 percent
17 poor, I want to look at that. Are there differences,
18 in regions, of where they're -- these freshwater
19 anglers are going fishing? We have information on what
20 they're doing. They're watching fishing shows on TV;
21 12 percent are going fly-fishing; 7 percent are going
22 to another country. And so we have all of this
23 information, again, that's going to help us put
24 together a final report in terms of not only anglers,
25 in terms of what they're doing now, but projecting what
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1 they're going to do in the future.
2 In the anglers study -- this is of
3 saltwater anglers -- probably the most amazing and, I
4 think, commendable finding that we found, to you, is
5 this question. We asked, "In the last five years, do
6 you think the quality of saltwater fishing in Texas has
7 declined, remained the same -- remained about the same,
8 improved, or do you not know?" And look at that 41
9 percent there. That is absolutely stunning. I've done
10 probably 30 studies. We've done work on this issue,
11 probably, for 40, 45 of the state fish and wildlife
12 agencies, departments of natural resources, and this
13 number is absolutely incredible. I mean, given the
14 development along the coast, to have almost half,
15 almost half of your randomly-selected saltwater
16 anglers, say that it's improved is absolutely
17 incredible.
18 Now, unfortunately, those people
19 probably don't come to your commission meetings. It's
20 probably this 19 percent up here that said it declined,
21 did -- but, again, that's the value of these surveys,
22 is that these are randomly-selected people out there.
23 Let's take a quick look at Texas
24 boaters. Just one study there. Looked at a lot of
25 different things: What they're doing, what they're
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1 interested in, but one of the questions that we asked
2 is, "As a boater, what types of safety issues concern
3 you the most?" Certainly, reckless and careless
4 operators, alcohol, drug use, was -- was at the -- at
5 the top of the list there. Again, we not only have
6 this big general population type of -- of issues that
7 are important to Texans, but very, very specific
8 information as well.
9 We've got Texas outdoor recreationists.
10 This is the latent demand. We measured not only what
11 people are doing now, but we went through a variety of
12 activities and said, "Are you not at all interested,
13 somewhat interested, or very interested in
14 participating in these activities?" And these are
15 people who have not participated in these activities in
16 the past two years. So if we're talking about planning
17 for the future, these types of numbers are going to be
18 very important.
19 You can see that about 37 percent,
20 almost 40 percent, said -- who have not visited Texas
21 state parks, said they would be very interested in
22 visiting Texas state parks in the next two years. And
23 then on down the line. And, again, keeping with that
24 passive type of thing, of visiting a natural area
25 within a mile of their home, of visiting historic
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1 sites, of picnicking, and then on down the line.
2 Canoeing and kayaking, 14 percent. And I've got a few
3 more of these because we asked a lot. Saltwater
4 fishing, sailing, going hiking, biking. Rock climbing
5 at six percent; hunting at nine percent.
6 So, again, we're going to apply these
7 numbers and try to project, in the future, in terms of
8 trying to meet those latent demand types of -- for
9 recreational activities.
10 And then, finally, what percent who
11 reported each priority from the recreation
12 standpoint -- that building park and recreational
13 facilities was considered a high priority to -- these
14 are general population Texans. Increasing access for
15 natural water-based recreation, purchasing natural
16 areas for outdoor recreation, open space, and then
17 wetlands down at the bottom. Again, this is for
18 recreational aspects.
19 And then these weren't supposed to be in
20 there, but one of my analysts put them in there. I
21 thought you'd be interested in. We asked Texans
22 whether or not they approved or disapproved of legal
23 recreational hunting: 45 percent strongly approving, 25
24 percent somewhat, 14 percent disapproving. That's a
25 little bit higher than what we've seen. If you showed
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1 me these numbers, if I didn't know they were Texas, I
2 would have said those are numbers from a large urban
3 state. We do work in New York; we do work in Florida;
4 we do work in California. I know you're a large urban
5 state, but I think -- that surprised me a little bit.
6 I didn't think it was that high. We just ran a
7 campaign, in Virginia, on a constitutional amendment
8 to -- for the right to hunt and fish, and we get
9 numbers, in Virginia -- a lot of other states -- right
10 around 15 percent disapproval. It's a little bit
11 higher but not -- not much. That's pretty normal for
12 an urban state. But it might be important information
13 if anybody ever comes to you and says, "Nobody approves
14 of hunting." Well, that's not -- that's not quite
15 true.
16 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: What would it be in
17 California, do you think?
18 MR. DUDA: I'd probably see 25 to 30
19 percent disapproval. And that would probably be the
20 highest. That would probably be as high as I saw.
21 Pennsylvania is about what I've seen as low.
22 Direct --
23 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: And what is
24 Pennsylvania?
25 MR. DUDA: About --
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1 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Disapprove?
2 MR. DUDA: About 10 or 12 percent. Good
3 question.
4 Legal recreational fishing. I don't
5 know if you know this, but the People for the Ethical
6 Treatment of Animals have started a Stop Fishing
7 campaign. Don't come to Texas. Although, we did ask
8 the question on trapping, on legal trapping, and you
9 can see some --
10 (Simultaneous conversation.)
11 MR. DUDA: That's right. Go back -- go
12 back to where you came from.
13 But legal trapping, a different -- a
14 different issue here. And as you may know, there were
15 two initiatives on the ballot yesterday in Oregon and
16 Washington, and I've been trying to figure those out,
17 but I've -- I'm trying to get on the Internet here
18 and -- so I'm -- I'm still interested because --
19 That's all I have. I -- it took some
20 time. They gave me 25 minutes. That's the absolutely
21 tip of the iceberg. We've got a lot of information on
22 a regional basis as well, and so, as this progresses, I
23 think that, literally, any question that you may have,
24 when it come to Texans and how they relate to what you
25 do, we probably have an answer for it. So, certainly,
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1 go through Andy or Lydia or anybody else, and if you
2 have questions, I bet we can answer them.
3 I appreciate -- I know, after a very
4 long night, your -- your ability to sit through that
5 so --
6 CHAIRMAN BASS: You didn't catch us at
7 our best in terms of doing quantitative.
8 COMMISSIONER HENRY: Right. We would
9 really like to sharp shoot you.
10 CHAIRMAN BASS: After lunch and after
11 election night.
12 One question. As you say, we've all
13 seen lots of polling data in the -- you know, recently,
14 and one thing that we have seen a lot of is
15 identification of margin of error in the sample size.
16 How do -- how does that relate to this data?
17 MR. DUDA: Yeah, what a great question.
18 On the -- the first one -- I showed you
19 several different studies. On the first study, the
20 sample size was a little bit over 2,000. Your sampling
21 error depends on two things: The number of people you
22 talk to, and the distribution of the opinion. If it's
23 90 percent think this, and 10 percent think that, it's
24 slightly smaller than if it goes 50/50. But, in
25 general, on the big general population study, it's
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1 about plus or minus two percent. Plus or minus two
2 percent. On the smaller studies, where we had a sample
3 size of 800, your sample -- your sampling error is -- I
4 don't remember exactly, but I want to say it's plus or
5 minus five percent or so.
6 Now, when we get down into the regional
7 stuff, it jumps up. When -- at a hundred, at an end
8 value of a hundred, it's plus or minus ten percent. So
9 as you go down the line, it does increase. The big
10 general population study, real nice numbers there. For
11 the regional stuff, on the smaller ones, like the
12 hunters and the boaters, which we have on a regional
13 basis, it's going to be at plus or minus, probably,
14 about eight, nine percent.
15 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Do you have a
16 demographic breakdown on how the different subgroups
17 reacted to you?
18 MR. DUDA: Yes, sir, absolutely.
19 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: (Inaudible) or
20 whatever?
21 MR. DUDA: Yeah. And what we did on
22 that is we've been going through that, from age, urban,
23 rural -- I mean, everything. It's -- it's an enormous
24 amount of data, but if you do have -- and we're going
25 to be presenting a lot of the things that I thought
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1 were important, but, certainly, if you have questions,
2 we can run, literally, anything by anything else. So
3 we --
4 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: I might be
5 interested, on some of these, to see how different
6 subgroups reacted to what.
7 MR. DUDA: Yes, sir, and that -- that
8 is -- that actually has been written, and we've looked
9 at Hispanics, we've looked at a lot of different
10 groups. And, as importantly, we're looking at that
11 information -- the quantitative information in relation
12 to the qualitative information, the focus groups, and
13 one of the things that we found that I think is very
14 important, in putting all of this together and my
15 recommendations to you, is this whole idea of diversity
16 with cultural and historic sites. In our focus group
17 with African Americans, historic sites were very
18 important, but it wasn't White historic sites; they
19 were very interested in African American historic
20 sites. And in the survey, historic sites, among
21 African Americans, was -- it was either one or two, but
22 that needs to be interpreted in light of this
23 qualitative data. And that's what we're doing now, is
24 putting all of this together. And I think you'll get a
25 much better final report as a result of putting that
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1 quantified, those hard numbers, together with those
2 soft but -- but very valid opinions from these
3 different groups, all of the different groups that we
4 talked to.
5 Good question, and we do have that
6 information.
7 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: I -- I've still got
8 a question.
9 MR. DUDA: Sure. That's good.
10 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: How do we get --
11 this would be so helpful. I mean, it's real easy to go
12 to somebody and say, "Do you think taking care of parks
13 is important?"
14 "Yeah, yeah, I think that's important."
15 "Do you want to take care of wildlife?"
16 "Yeah, I want to take -- I want to do
17 that, too."
18 But what would be helpful to us, or to
19 me, would be to figure out what -- if a person was
20 forced to divide up the pie, how would they do that?
21 MR. DUDA: Uh-huh.
22 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: And this doesn't
23 really tell me that.
24 MR. DUDA: Yeah. I could do that.
25 We -- it -- it's -- those are harder to do, because
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1 we've tried those before, and we divide the pie up for
2 a hundred percent, and when my analysts and my
3 statisticians add them up, they equal about 400
4 percent.
5 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Right. Right.
6 MR. DUDA: I might give that 50 percent
7 and that 70 percent and that 50 percent. And those
8 are -- those are harder to do, especially with -- you
9 know, we talked to --
10 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Is there a way --
11 MR. DUDA: --- 18-year-olds --
12 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: --- to force people
13 to prioritize?
14 MR. DUDA: There is, but -- but I --
15 but, from a qualitative standpoint, I'm going to do
16 that for you in the final report. I mean, I -- I --
17 things -- clear patterns fell out in this.
18 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Uh-huh.
19 MR. DUDA: And so I've -- over the
20 years, we found that -- that if you ask people certain
21 things, and they -- they moderately support this, but
22 they strongly support this, that those patterns are
23 what are important and -- and much more valid data.
24 And I can -- I -- I'm going to do that for you. And
25 even with the things in terms of dividing the pie, even
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1 from a standpoint -- as one of the original slides that
2 we had there, that ecological/environmental issues were
3 more important than the recreational issues, that fell
4 out as a result of this data, and people might not sort
5 of think about that in terms of the firsthand, "Well,
6 I'll give resource protection 80 percent and outdoor
7 recreation 20 percent," because it just -- people just
8 have a hard time doing that, but it fell out. The way
9 that we did that is it -- that -- it fell out that way,
10 and it's not surprising, because we've done these
11 before, in nationwide studies and others, and we even
12 saw it in the focus groups. So they do have a way
13 of -- of separating themselves out.
14 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Well, it would be
15 kind of nice to ask our citizens to make, at least,
16 some semblance of the same kind of choices we're forced
17 to make in their behalf. So that when we say, "Well,
18 yes, we want to take care of this thing, but you're
19 going to have to understand that it may be at the
20 expense of this over here, and now that you know that,
21 do you still feel the same way about this over here?"
22 MR. DUDA: Right. No, I understand.
23 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: And I know that's a
24 lot more complicated, but is there any way to kind of
25 move down that path a little bit when you're asking
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1 people?
2 MR. DUDA: Well, as a -- as a private
3 consultant, I'm always available for --
4 (Laughter.)
5 MR. DUDA: No, but I think I can give
6 you that information. I have done studies where we
7 force people, but it's usually in terms of -- of
8 quality versus quantity deer management. And,
9 absolutely, you can do that when it come -- becomes
10 very specific: "Would you not hunt on this land but
11 every three years, or have less of a chance of hunting,
12 if you knew that every four years you might take a
13 trophy buck," or something like that, so --
14 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Modified push
15 pulling, huh?
16 MR. DUDA: Well, not -- not push
17 pulling, but truly deciding, you know? Giving people
18 those choices. Giving people those choices. And that
19 can be done, but, generally, it will be done on
20 something really, really specific. And this was such a
21 broad-scale type of a thing that we really had no idea
22 about a lot of what we were getting into.
23 So, absolutely, it can be done. I
24 think, in the end, I can -- I can do that for you, and,
25 certainly, pass along a note to Andy and say, you know,
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1 "I want Mark's opinion on this, if people had to
2 choose on this." But we didn't do it here because it's
3 so tough to -- to do that. But it can be done. It's a
4 legitimate point. We've done it before but usually on
5 very, very specific policy issues: Would you want the
6 dates of your hunting regulations here or here types of
7 things.
8 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Thank you.
9 MR. DUDA: Thank you.
10 CHAIR BASS: Thank you.
11 MR. DUDA: Thanks.
12 CHAIR DINKINS: Anything else?
13 Thanks, Mark.
14 MR. DUDA: A lot more to come.
15 CHAIR DINKINS: Thanks, Lydia.
16 MR. DUDA: And if you don't have -- you
17 know, if you -- we've got the stuff there. We've got
18 mounds of data. If you have trouble sleeping tonight,
19 take a look at it --
20 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: I'm not having
21 trouble sleeping now.
22 CHAIR DINKINS: All right. We have only
23 a couple of other items on the agenda for this
24 committee, but we've already covered them in executive
25 session. I anticipate no objection to passing those
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1 since we've already covered them in executive session.
2 With that, then it concludes the meeting
3 of the conservation committee.
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1 THE STATE OF TEXAS )
COUNTY OF BEXAR )
2
3 I, STACI D. SLAYDEN, a Certified Court
4 Reporter in and for the State of Texas, do hereby
5 certify that the above and foregoing pages constitute a
6 full, true, and correct transcript of the minutes of
7 the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission on November 8,
8 2000, in the Commission hearing room of the Texas Parks
9 and Wildlife Headquarters Complex, Austin, Travis
10 County, Texas. I FURTHER CERTIFY that a stenographic
11 record was made by me at the time of the public meeting
12 and said stenographic notes were thereafter reduced to
13 computerized transcription under my supervision and
14 control. WITNESS MY HAND this ____ day of
15 ________________________, 2001.
16
17 ________________________________
18 STACI D. SLAYDEN, Texas CSR 7290
19 Expiration Date: 12/2001
20 7800 IH-10 West, Suite 100
21 San Antonio, Texas 78230
22 (210) 377-3017
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2 _______________________________________
CAROL E. DINKINS, CHAIR
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5 LEE M. BASS
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7 DICK W. HEATH
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9 NOLAN RYAN
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11 ERNEST ANGELO, JR.
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13 JOHN AVILA, JR.
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15 ALVIN L. HENRY
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17 KATHARINE ARMSTRONG IDSAL
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19 MARK E. WATSON, JR.
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