Volume 15, Number 1

Spring 2012

OFFICIAL NEWSLETTER

OF FRIENDS OF

ANAHUAC REFUGE

PO BOX 1348

ANAHUAC, TX 77514

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Inside this issue:

Refuge Manager’s Report ................... 1 President’s Message .......................... 1 Calendar of Events .............................. 2 Volunteer for a Day .............................. 3 New Board Member ............................. 4 Volunteer Returns ................................ 5 Nature Store News .............................. 6 Star Party ............................................ 7

Our Mission The mission of the Friends of

Anahuac Refuge is to support,

preserve, promote, and enhance

Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge and its

use for recreational,

educational and

scientific research purposes.

Refuge Manager’s Report

By Jimmy Laurent, Refuge Manager

President’s Message By Travis Lovelace, FOAR President

F inally we are getting some relief from the drought conditions we have been

experiencing for quite some time. Impoundments on the refuge are no longer dry with large cracks running through them. Those impoundments are now slowly filling with rainwater and wildlife is returning to those areas. Our cisterns at the shop, which serve as the only sources of freshwater for cleaning equipment, are full and can be utilized once again for that purpose. These conditions are giving us some much needed relief as we continue to flush many parts of the marsh trying to get salinity levels down. We will soon begin pulling water off of the moist soil units and impoundments as we gear up for the summer and the planting of organic rice on the refuge. Last year we planted approximately 700 acres and anticipate those same numbers this

year.

The large scale paving project with the Federal Highway Administration (FHA) is nearly complete. There are only a few remaining areas other than Shoveler Pond. Once completed a fog shield and striping are all that will be needed to finally complete that project. Thanks for your patience and under-

standing as we complete this nearly finished and much needed project.

Regarding Shoveler Pond, we have intentionally left this 200-acre unit dry during the large scale paving project with the FHA. This would help in the event we have a dump truck or piece of equipment fall into the unit. There is only one entrance into the unit and this would allow easier removal and not postpone

the project any further. We anticipate the filling of Shoveler Pond by the beginning of March.

(Continued on page 7)

Living within 50 or so miles of the Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge is an outstanding advantage for those of us who live near the upper Texas coast. Thousands of visitors travel many miles from all over the world to see the wildlife and beauty of our refuge—birds, bobcats, otters, alligators, access to great fishing, and the most precious thing of all to experience the tranquility away from city noises. However, it is amazing how those of us who live close to our refuge don’t take advantage of this special place; spending a few minutes or hours to appreciate nature on our

Refuge.

We know that much restoration work has occurred since Hurricane Ike slammed into the Upper Texas Coast in 2008. We know that many projects have come and gone. Reminders of just

how much work has been accomplished some-times require a comment from a far-away place. For example, a Friends member, Anne Forster from Florida, wrote an article entitled “Tripping - A Hurricane Ike Survey” in an Audubon newsletter about the destruction done by Hurricane Ike in

Louisiana and the upper Texas coast.

She wrote “We spent the next morning at Anahuac NWR in Texas. The structures were all destroyed and the roads damaged, but it is a bee-hive of activity. New elevated structures, a visitor center, trails, raised observation platforms, restored butterfly gardens and songbird retreats are either done or under construction. Our hats

are off to Refuge management.”

(Continued on page 6)

Volume 15, Number 1 Page 2

Calendar of Events

Feather Fest April 12-15, 2012

Galveston, TX

Friends of Anahuac Refuge will have

a booth at Feather Fest, publicizing

our Refuge, recruiting members, and

selling items from our Nature Store.

We could use volunteers to take shifts

on whichever day works best for you.

If you are able to help for a few hours,

please contact Kay Lovelace at

(409) 252-3454 or via email at

kay3454@windstream.net

To learn more about Feather Fest, go

to galvestonfeatherfest.com

Tommy Harris and Kay Lovelace

at our booth, ready to greet

Friends!

For additional information on any of these events, contact Tami Schutter at

409-267-3337. If you want to receive updates and reminders of these events

and other Refuge activities, be sure you are on our Google e-mail list

(groups.google.com/group/foar-members - at the right side of the page, click

on “Join this group”). You can also check our Facebook page regularly to see

photos and learn about Refuge activities and sightings.

Yellow Rail Walks One of the most anticipated events on the Refuge each year, the yellow rail walks draw people from around the world. Join the search for the elusive Yellow Rail with Refuge volunteer David Sarkozi and others. Learn about Yellow Rail ecology and management while searching for Yellow Rails on

foot through salty prairie habitat.

Walking through marsh habitat can be challenging. Participants should wear waterproof boots (rubber boots are best). Come equipped with binoculars, insect repellant, and drinking water. All tours begin at the Visitor Information Station (VIS) on the

refuge.

Dates and Times

7 a.m. and 5 p.m. on the following dates:

March 31 April 1

April 14 April 15

Marsh Madness!

Saturday, March 31, 2012, 10:00 am to 2:00 pm

McFaddin National Wildlife Refuge

Activities and demonstrations designed for the entire family, and it’s all free!

birds of prey show

kayaking

marsh critters

bird classification

crabbing

water safety

retriever demonstrations

hands-on crafts and more!

International

Migratory Bird Day

May 12, 2012 10 am - 2 pm

Anahuac NWR 4017 FM 563

Tours

Guest speakers

Butterflies and dragonflies

Kids craft tent

Bring binoculars and camera

For these nature and family-oriented activities to be the best possible, many willing and cheerful volunteers are

needed. If you can spare a few hours to help, please contact Refuge Volunteer Coordinator Stephanie Martinez at 409-267-3337 or stephanie_martinez@fws.gov. You’ll see kids and families having fun outdoors, you’ll help them

learn about Nature, you’ll meet others with similar interests, you’ll breathe some fresh air, and you’ll feel

good about helping. Thanks!

Free Family Fishing Day Anahuac NWR

Saturday, June 2, 2012 9 am - 1 pm

Activities and demonstrations designed for beginners and experienced

anglers. Kid prizes, crabbing, knot tying, fish identification

No license required this day only

Enjoy some outdoor family time

Pack a lunch and spend the day!

Page 3 Gator Tales

Volunteer-for-a-Day

Thirty volunteers came out for our January workday to dig holes and plant 100 trees along Hackberry Trail. The weather was very cooperative. After the work was done, the volunteers enjoyed lunch together and got their FOAR tee-shirts.

Volunteer “FOAR” a Day tee-shirts for all

Volunteers put in a few

thousand hours last year on

habitat restoration. The

refuge and its critters say

“Thank You!”

Strategy!

Jerry and Matt making plans

Brought t

he whole

family

! Shovel W

ork

Three Father-Son Teams

Volume 15, Number 1 Page 4

Welcome, New Board Member

John Kemp

Our newest board member and active volunteer John Kemp was born and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas. At the age of 16, he began working for his father in the printing industry eventually paying his way through college by working at various universities' print shops and private printing companies. In 1967, John graduated from Texas A&M University with a degree in Animal Science. After graduation John served in the Naval Reserve for 2 years. When he returned to Houston John re-entered the printing industry for a lifetime career. With over 48 years of experience, he has a thorough knowledge of all phases of printing, advertising, and marketing. He and his wife Kay founded Kemp & Company in 1994 serving a wide range of

clients with printing needs. He continues to provide printing and marketing services today.

John's love of history led to the discovery that his great-great grandfather settled on Lawrence Island at Cove, Texas in 1824. Further research at Wallisville Heritage Park revealed deeper roots in this community and its early history. Fueled by his love of history and this unique area, he has since printed 14 local history books for long-time residents and historical associations of the Southeast Texas Coastal area. Local genealogy research is

constantly on his menu when he is in Anahuac and the surrounding area.

John and Kay live in the historic Houston Heights area. They have two sons and a daughter along with 4 grandkids. Their oldest son worked in the Galveston Bay cleanup for several months after Hurricane Ike. Kay is an artist and creativity coach guiding others in finding their own true voices for

creative expression.

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Editor’s Note: John’s expertise and contacts in the printing business have already benefited Friends of Anahuac Refuge. He immediately became part of the newsletter team, and as you can see from the photo, he is an active participant in our work days and other events. He is bringing a fresh

perspective and great ideas to the newsletter and to Friends of Anahuac Refuge.

John Kemp, businessman John Kemp, FOAR volunteer, helping Travis Lovelace deliver trees

Keep your eyes and ears open! Look and listen for possible places for us to publicize our refuge and the Anahuac area. As you read newsletters, newspapers, and magazines,

think about whether they might be good places for us to contact about printing our articles and photos. These might be small town newspapers, magazines of interest to hunters, fishermen, birders, travelers, conservationists, etc. Collect contact information for the publication (physical address, mailing address, e-mail address) and send it to John Kemp at jkkemp@gmail.com. We want to create awareness that our refuge is a wonderful place to know about and visit, a place to learn about wildlife, experience outdoor nature, and visit a historic area in Texas. And if you read something about the

Refuge or the Anahuac area, we’d like to know about that too. THANKS !

Page 5 Gator Tales

Annual Meeting The Annual Meeting of the Friends of Anahuac Refuge was held on January 28, 2012. After ENJOYING barbecue

and great side dishes and desserts, attendees got updates on projects from Refuge Manager Jimmy Laurent and FOAR

President Travis Lovelace. Special honorees were outgoing board member and long-time volunteer Jerry Millsaps and

his wife Ruth, who recently retired from the Army Corps of Engineers.

This January marked my 10 year anniversary of retirement. It also marks my seventh winter season volunteering at a National Wildlife Refuge. I had always planned on volunteering after retiring. Webster’s definition of volunteer is “to give of oneself freely, expecting nothing in return”. Little did he realize what a return volunteering gives a person.

Since starting my volunteer experience in 2003 I have learned to operate a cash register, a credit card machine and an ATV. I’ve participated in bird surveys, counting raptors and piping plovers. I’ve had the opportunity to write a scientific paper, read Annual Narratives and travel to Washington, DC to lobby for Refuge funding. I have proof read species lists and researched history for an exhibit. If anyone had told me that I would be doing all these things in retirement I would have replied “not a chance”.

This is my first season at Anahuac. I have learned so many things in the three months I have been here that it seems like I’ve been here more than one season. I’ve had the opportunity to learn about rice growing and cattle grazing since these are included in Anahuac’s habitat management plan. I never knew there was so much detail to duck hunting. I am going to have an opportunity to

assist in duck banding in the next two weeks, hopefully telling you more in the next issue of Gator Tales. Then there is the opportunity to share with children the wonders of nature during the field trips scheduled for the Refuge in late March and April.

So far the unexpected returns for me here at Anahuac have been many. I’ve met and gotten to know people in the local community. I

appreciate being able to experience the new headquarters building and visitor center. I have had the privilege of transporting an injured great horned owl and red tailed hawk to a wildlife rehabilitator. It has been wonderful to see how the staff here works together as a team to recover from the effects of Hurricane Ike. Today’s unexpected return was seeing a river otter in the wild for the first time! Perhaps Web-ster should have defined volunteer as so many returns in so little time!

Volunteer Returns By Cindi Barrett, RV Volunteer

Photo by Cathy Peterson, US Fish and Wildlife Service

Travis Lovelace presiding

Travis, John, and other attendees

watch presentation

Jerry and Ruth Millsaps were honored for their many years of service

Volume 15, Number 1 Page 6

This comment made us all feel proud and got our attention—we need to celebrate

our successes more. Anne’s few sentences woke us up to this fact. Thank you,

fellow member, for recognizing this and helping us to be more aware of the huge

efforts and accomplishments of repair, replacement, and new construction that have

occurred on the Refuge. Jimmy Laurent, Refuge Manager, recently stated at our

annual meeting that the Refuge is now close to where it was before Ike and even

better in many cases such as road paving, construction of new buildings like the

fantastic new Visitor Center, and new observation decks that didn’t exist before Ike.

In short, the Refuge is back! Come enjoy nature!

(President’s Message, continued from page 1)

Nature Store News By Kay Lovelace, Nature Store Manager

Our purple martins arrived on Valentine Day so that is a sure sign that spring will soon arrive. We love having our little chirpy friends here and

it’s always a quiet, sad day when they leave.

We have added a couple of new items since last I wrote. Added to our large selection of shirts in the process of being shipped are four new

designs, shown in the photos below. We also have many men’s and women’s caps and hats expected any day now.

Of course, we continue to carry all our regular nature related items for children and adults and a great variety of books about wildlife and nature. We are building up our selection of gardening books just in time for spring. Another new item is decals you can display on your window to show

your support of our refuge. Stop by to visit and shop for unique items in our two nature stores.

Have you tried our Birds and Beans Coffee yet? It is grown in the shade of the trees eliminating the need to clear cut the land in order to grow coffee plants. There are 4 different flavors from light roast to dark roast including decaffeinated and each comes in ground or whole bean. They

are produced and processed organically and sold following the Fair Trade Act. Try it, you’ll like it!!! And so will the environment.

In case you hadn’t heard, many of you are familiar with the Texas Birding Trail Maps by area—Upper, Central, and Lower Texas Coast, Piney

Woods East and West, etc. We now give them to you free of charge at both of our nature store locations.

We would be delighted to have YOU as a volunteer in one of the stores, on our Nature Store committee, or as an occasional helper as your schedule permits. Stephanie Martinez is the volunteer coordinator with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and can be reached at (409) 267-3337

or via email at Stephanie_Martinez@fws.gov . You may also contact me at (409) 252-3454 or via email at kay3454@windstream.net .

See you on the refuge!

Ruby throated hummingbird ladies shirt

light blue with a matching cap

Mottled duck shirt

Native Texan

Mama mottled ducks and babies

Paddlers’ shirt

Paddle a canoe?

Paddle a kayak?

Here’s your shirt!

New purple gallinule shirt

long and short sleeve

ash gray color

beautiful artwork is now a

bit smaller placed on the

upper left chest area

Page 7 Gator Tales

Star Party by Lucy Condon; Photos by Sarah Carter

After many emails back and forth and minute-by-minute weather forecast observations, the First Annual Anahuac Star Party occurred on the boardwalk on the Hackberry Trail in December. Astronomers from the Houston Astronomical Society and the Beaumont Astronomical Society wound their way toward Anahuac for some late afternoon birding prior to setting up their fine telescopes and binoculars along the boardwalk. Two months earlier, with an invitational letter from Lucy Condon, Debbie Moran, HAS, took charge of correspondence with local astronomical societies, keeping them well informed of the weather conditions, directions to Anahuac, and the final 'Go Ahead' on the Star Party. Steve Goldberg and Arnie Hauswald took advantage of the ever-clearing skies to check out the Snow Geese and myriad of ducks near Frozen Point. As 5:30pm drew nigh, more and more cars arrived with an assortment of telescopes and binoculars nestled inside. Where some telescopes needed only two hands for set-up, many others required several trips from the car to complete the stature of these majestic instruments. Sarah Carter lent her expertise in photography and her knowledge of the night sky to laser pinpoint constellations and Messier Objects. Debbie Moran, Steve Goldberg, Richard Nugent, Allen Wilkerson, Arnie Hauswald, and Alan Rossiter

pleasantly offered one-on-one assistance to the locals, FOAR, high school students, and home school teachers with their students in attendance. Venus and Jupiter rose high in the sky for easy viewing facing each other in the Eastern and Western skies. Outstanding sights easily visible with the 8-inch telescopes and binoculars on-site were: Orion with his sword and outstretched arms; Pleides or 7 Sisters in Taurus; ET, a vibrant nebula near Cassiopea and Andromeda; the big square in the sky indicating Pegasus, and many other massive groups of stars in nebulae that one could see shining so brightly through the telescopIc lens. With the awesome 360 degree bowl of the horizon and little light interference, there were very few astronomical objects that escaped the expertise of the astronomers on hand. Stephanie Martinez, on staff at Anahuac, initiated the date of the Star Party and kept the locals informed of dates, times, and location. Kay Lovelace, Stephanie Martinez, and Lucy Condon warmed up the occasion with a constant flow of hot chocolate and cookies. Almost 30 adventurers from 6 to 74 years of age filed past each telescope, bubbled with questions and wonderment to learn about the unknown beauty that exists nightly over their heads. We are looking forward

to our next Star Party and we hope to see you there too!

Heavy duty equipment used for observations

Arnie and Allen are ready for star gazing

All but one of the low re-lift pumps have been installed on the refuge. The only remaining work included in that National Fish and Wildlife Federation (NFWF) grant is to install one final pump into the Middleton Unit and pipe installation on the East Unit. This pump system will allow the refuge to move fresh water to places on the East Unit that have historically not had water due to drought conditions. This NFWF grant has helped the refuge make great strides in becoming “self-sufficient” (being able to move water at any given time) and we all thank you, the FOAR, for being able to take care of the business end

of that deal.

As I said at the Annual Meeting, a large seismic operation is beginning in April on the refuge and many parts of southeast Texas. This large scale operation was scheduled around events and other refuge functions in order to prevent further disruption. Samson will begin seismic operations on the west side of the refuge and work their way east also covering parts of the McFaddin NWR. The refuge will have a third part composed of consultants to ensure refuge policies, rules and

regulations are being met.

This summer we will continue to focus on treating invasive species. This includes the phragmites along Shoveler Pond which had grown to

the sides of the road along with the interior of that unit. The aerial

spraying and hand work that the staff did really set it back. Now you

can see across many parts of the unit.

The biological staff is preparing for another year of mottled duck banding and potentially several other banding opportunities. February 26 - March 12, the US Geological Survey, several University of Georgia folks, Refuge staff and volunteers will begin efforts to band blue-winged teal. The primary purpose will be to check for viruses coming up from South and Central America and is part of the work being done nationally to look at issues with bird flu transmission and other bird-spreading diseases. Locations will include rocket net sites

at Anahuac and Cattail Marsh in Beaumont for certain.

Hopefully by the next newsletter we will have Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) on the Refuge. The YCC program has been going strong for some time now and is a great way to get kids involved in

conservation.

So grab your bug spray, water bottle and binoculars and come out to see all the great things the Refuge has to offer.

(Refuge Manager’s Report, continued from page 1)

Membership Application/Renewal

□ New □ Renewal □ E-mail Newsletter

Name: ____________________________________

Address: __________________________________

City/State/Zip: _____________________________

Home Phone: ______________________________

Work or Cell Phone: _________________________

Email: ____________________________________

Date _____________________________________

□ $15.00 — Regular Membership

□ $22.50 — Family Membership

□ $50.00 — Sustaining Membership

□ $75.00 — Family Sustaining Membership

□ $100.00 — Corporate Membership

□ $300.00 — Lifetime Membership

□ $_______ Donation (any amount)

Complete and mail with membership fee to:

Friends of Anahuac Refuge

PO Box 1348

Anahuac, TX 77514

or join/renew online

F.O.A.R. Board of Directors

President —Travis Lovelace

Vice-President — Matt Jackson

Secretary— David Sarkozi

Treasurer— Tommy Harris

Carolyn Harris John Kemp Kay Lovelace

www.friendsofanahuacnwr.org

Friends of Anahuac Refuge

PO Box 1348

Anahuac, TX 77514

Non-Profit Organization

U.S. Postage PAID

Permit No. 25

Your Friends of Anahuac Refuge Board of

Directors meets the first Tuesday of each

month at 6:30 p.m. at the US Fish and Wildlife

headquarters at 4017 FM 563.

You are welcome to come and share your ideas.

Comments? Questions? Send us an e-mail at friendsofanahuacrefuge@gmail.com

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