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Monday, December 29, 1997

Cranes, gators attract thousands to Texas coastal sanctuary

By JOHN MacCORMACK / San Antonio Express-News

ARANSAS NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Texas - Under a bright winter sky, American coots and ruddy ducks frolic among the water lilies and bullrushes on Jones Lake at the refuge.

But there is more to the idyllic scene than meets the eye.

With a few stomps on the pier, a park ranger summons one of the refuge's more venerable attractions. Within seconds, the armored head of a 15-foot alligator breaks the dark surface below.

"It's Nelda. That's what we call her," said Ranger Beverly Fletcher.

"People feed her, even though its against the law on the refuge, so she spends a lot of time around the pier," she said.

Best known for the stately whooping cranes that winter here each year after a 2,500-mile flight from Canada, the refuge on the South Texas Coast receives almost 80,000 visitors annually.

Many are drawn by the endangered cranes that can be viewed through binoculars from the refuge observation tower or, for a more intimate look, from tour boats that travel up from Rockport.

But many other visitors are drawn by the rich history and wide variety of wildlife here. Animal life at the refuge ranges from nearly 400 species of birds, many seasonal visitors, to the occasionally sighted mountain lion.

"We're not on the way to anything. You have to want to come here to get here, so we tend to attract an educated, interested visitor, but not an elitist visitor," said Brent Giezentanner, refuge manager.

"We get visitors from all 50 states, all the Canadian provinces, and another 30 to 40 foreign countries each year," he said.

On Dec. 28, the refuge will celebrate its 60th anniversary with a birthday party, open to the public, at the visitor's center.

"There will be walks and talks earlier in the day, and then at 2 p.m. we're going to have a formal presentation. There will be a Teddy Roosevelt re-enactor who will give a speech, and there will be an historical presentation by one of our staff members," Giezentanner said.

The Roosevelt clan played a large role in the refuge's creation.

"Teddy Roosevelt established the National Wildlife Refuge System in 1903, and his cousin Franklin signed the executive order that established Aransas in 1937," he said.

At that time, fewer than 20 whooping cranes were coming to South Texas each year. Over the decades, the number has steadily grown and has already reached its all-time high, another cause for celebration.

"We've counted 171 already in the flyovers and there may be more coming in. Sometimes they keep arriving until January," said Fletcher.

When it was created in 1937 out of the old St. Charles Ranch, the refuge encompassed approximately 46,000 mosquito-ridden acres on Blackjack Peninsula. At the time, there was no paved road or telephone connections with the outside world.

Over the ensuing decades, through gifts, purchases and easements with the state, the refuge has more than doubled in size and now includes 40,000 acres on neighboring Matagorda Island.

Only a small portion of the mainland refuge is open to the visiting public and only during daylight hours. Other areas are used seasonally by deer and hog hunters, and throughout the year by students, teachers and university researchers.

"Most of the programs we provide are for wildlife interpretation and environmental education," said Giezentanner.

"A lot of schools use the refuge as an outdoor classroom. We have four teacher education guides, from kindergarten through high school, that allow the teachers to come out here and present a class," he said.

On the Matagorda Island portion, accessible only by boat, the refuge maintains a bunkhouse that sleeps up to 16 people for classes given to high school and college teachers.

The refuge has a staff of 30 backed by about a dozen resident volunteers.

Always present but not always seen by the public are the operations of Conoco, the former Continental Oil Co., which has owned the underground mineral rights since 1934 and is still extracting natural gas.

Conoco, in fact, will be providing the refreshments for the 60th birthday party.

According to refuge officials, what could be an awkward relationship between industry and wildlife preservationists has been a model of cooperation.

"Continental has worked exceptionally well with us. If they do any exploring, they do it in a certain window of time before the cranes return, and by Oct. 15, they clear out," said Fletcher.

In a recent tour of the public part of the refuge, Fletcher shared some of the history that lends a romantic hue to its past.

"I've had a professor at one of the universities who thinks the Cabeza de Vaca possibly came ashore here on Dagger Point. Some of his diaries mention a tall dune shaped like a dagger," she remarked, pointing out the possible landing area.

If the Spanish explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca did put in fact put ashore here in 1528 among the resident Karankawa Indians, it marked the beginning of his eight year journey through the wilds of the New World.

Another, even more exciting figure is linked to the refuge: Jean Lafitte, the famous 19th-century buccaneer who plundered boats along the northern coast of New Spain.

"There is more legend about this place than any other place. We catch people here all the time with metal detectors," said Fletcher, as the tour led to a promontory known as Live Oak Point.

"The legend is that this was a favorite place of Lafitte, and when he was running from the English, Americans and Spanish he would come through the island here in his shallow boats and they couldn't follow him," she said.

And, according to a contemporary account, on one of Lafitte's stealthy visits, dead men and gold stayed behind.

"They say he came in here with some of his men and some treasure and stayed three days. And when he came back out, his men didn't," she said.

Fletcher said even if the legend is true, most of the treasure hunters waste their time wandering around at Live Oak Point.

"It was really at another point. I think the treasure is there if it is any place. Maybe one of these days, the bay will erode back far enough to where we can see the treasure," she said.

Among the long-term projects under way are the restoration of coastal grasslands, much of which have disappeared into thickets in recent decades, and protection of the Intracoastal Waterway, a heavily used shipping channel that cuts through the refuge.

"We've restored over 7,000 acres of native prairie using prescribed burns, with the idea of reintroducing the endangered Attwater's prairie chicken," Giezentanner said.

And, he said, with the cooperation of the Army Corps of Engineers, which maintains the commercial waterway, the loss of marsh has finally been reversed.

"It's kind of interesting that the corps is now working with us. Instead of covering up our marshes with dredging soil, they are creating marshes by filling in deeper areas and planting coastal grasses," he said.

For hardcore birdwatchers and casual sailors, the boat rides leaving daily from Rockport, 45 minutes to the south, offer a look at another inaccessible side of the refuge.

For the birder, the four-hour trips can add rare species to one's "life list." For others, the trips are an interlude of salt sea adventure.

On a recent weekday, the Pisces, a blue-and-white tub built for offshore fishing, chugged north from Rockport Harbor with 49 passengers aboard and owner John Howell providing the play-by-play narrative.

As the ship nosed its way past the shrimp boats and pleasure craft into the intracoastal for the 25-mile journey, Howell ticked off local landmarks and a bewildering assortment of birds.

Laughing gulls, common and forster's terns, olivaceous cormorants, buffleheads and oyster- catchers were spotted flying over the shallow water or perched on sand bars or buoys.

Each sighting was recorded by those on board clutching small blue bird checklists. Partway up, Howell gave his whooping crane presentation.

"Some of this may sound a little funny to you, but it's all fact," he said.

Among the factoids: Cranes are the tallest North American birds, they have a 42-inch trachea and they can kill a coyote "with one peck of their beak."

At one point, the Pisces passed three barges labeled "Dangerous Cargo," being pushed south by a tugboat. Refuge officials live in fear of a large-scale spill near the cranes.

The only other real threat, they say, is the continued reduction in fresh water flows into the bay because of overuse upstream.

On this trip, those aboard the Pisces were richly rewarded.

Several pairs of adult whooping cranes plus assorted gangs of juveniles were easily visible. One threesome lingered within 50 yards of the bank, hunting crabs in the marsh grass.

"It doesn't get any better than this, folks," announced Howell, proud as a new father.

For the birders, among the trip's other treats was the sighting of a rare Reddish Egret. The children were delighted by the brief appearance of wild dolphins in the ship's wake on the return trip.

"For us, the whooping cranes alone would have been worth it. But the golden-eyed duck and the hooded merganser were also firsts," said Valerie Rowe, 36, a birder from Dallas holding a well- worn copy of her "Birds of North America," field guide.

Even Howell, a petroleum engineer turned boatman, said he has succumbed to the birding bug.

"Thirteen years ago, if you'd told me, I'd be a birdwatcher, I'd have said you were crazy. But it's very addictive," he said.

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