Wildlife Teaching Kids about the Land

“If you’re going to live in Texas, you’d better know how to manage the land,” says Whitney Marion, of San Antonio, Texas. “This isn’t New York City. Texas is 95 percent private land so it’s up to the landowners to take care of the state.”

“And land management doesn’t just mean managing for one animal – like deer, or quail or cattle,” she continues. “Effective land management considers all the resources in the area. It’s not just about owning property and having big deer, but applying wildlife habitat techniques in a conservation plan.”

Whitney Marion is 18 years old. A freshman at Texas A&M, Marion has a stronger grasp of natural resources than most Texans.

At the age of 15, she attended a Texas Buckskin Brigade Camp. According to Marion, those were five life-changing days in her life.

“At that first camp,” Marion remembers, “I received more education than I expected. I came away realizing how important conservation is to the land.

“My family owns a ranch in south Texas,” Marion says, “but this experience totally changed the way I want to be involved with the land. After my first camp, I went home and developed a ranch management plan for our land. I was only 15 and I had the skills to do that based on my experience and the professional contacts I made through the Brigade.”

In fact, Marion is now on a mission to be recognized as a “leader in conservation” to help the public understand and appreciate natural resources and conservation. She is majoring in natural resources and is interested in becoming an attorney for natural resources.

In five days, the teenager went from shopping at the mall to an activist for natural resource conservation. Actually, Marion is only one of hundreds of similar examples. What is this Texas Brigade that is having such a powerful impact on youth?

The Brigades started in 1993 with a group of individuals that saw a need to education youth on natural resources, wildlife habitat and ecosystem management.

The Texas Brigades is a wildlife-focused leadership development program for high school youth (ages 13-17) interested in learning habitat management, communication skills, and developing a land ethic. There are four different camps from which to choose: Bobwhite Brigade, Buckskin Brigade, Feathered Forces and Bass Brigade.

Brigades are held on ranches and at environmental camps across Texas, with top wildlife and resource professionals from private industry, Texas Cooperative Extension, Texas Wildlife Association, USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service, Texas Parks & Wildlife Department, Texas Chapters of Quail Unlimited, the National Wild Turkey Federation, and the Lower Colorado River Authority serving as instructors and mentors.

Each year nearly 150 high school age Texans (13-17) attend the 4 ½ day camps for the opportunity to learn about wildlife and natural resource management. While some might get squeamish over dissecting animals and studying fecal matter, Brigadiers find it a valuable experience for learning about animal behavior, nutrition and habitat.

Land ethics are taught when the campers head outside for some rangeland and wildlife habitat studies. Leadership skills are also honed at the camp. The students are involved in media training, mock town council meetings and peer reviews, all of which help students gain confidence in their ability to talk about natural resources.

"The core curriculum for all the camps stresses leadership development and conservation of natural resources," says Garry Stephens, District Conservationist for the USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service in Pearsall, Texas. Stephens donates his time as an instructor at the camp.

"The outdoor learning environment really gets kids involved,” Stephens says. “They walk away from the Brigade camps with more knowledge about natural resources and wildlife than most adults have.

“And they don’t just understand it, they appreciate it,” Stephens adds. “And that deep level of appreciation will carry on to other aspects of their life, no matter what career they choose as adults.”

The camp motto is ““Tell me, I forget; Show me, I remember; Involve me, I understand.” Their curriculum of outdoor classes, late nights, hand-on projects and major presentations proves it.

So how does the camp experience affect Brigade cadet graduates? Based on past graduates, they become land managers and owners, teachers, politicians, doctors, lawyers, lobbyists and natural resource and wildlife enthusiasts. The hope is that no matter what profession they enter, they will be involved in their communities.

And many of them, like Marion, credit the Texas Brigades with awakening and fueling their desire to educate more people about wildlife and natural resource management.

“I think if more people really understood how resource management decisions affect each other, they would start managing their land differently,” Marion states. “So I want to be in a position that I have as many opportunities as possible to talk to people about conservation practices they can do on their land.

“It’s just something that I think is really important for the future of ranching, hunting and for Texas in general,” she says.

For more information on the Texas Brigades, go to www.texasbrigades.org or contact Helen Holdsworth, Executive Director, at 1-800-TEX-WILD.
 

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