1-1 Appendix 1 Responses to survey questions administered to ...

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• The agency is adequately positioned, but must improve its vision and internal coordination to properly utilize its scientific potentials. • I think we are positioned fairly well but I believe we need to work to get more legal muscle for requiring minimum in stream flows for wildlife. • Probably adequate if directed and working on what the greatest needs actually are. • Staff expertise and facilities are likely adequate (but could be better) to provide the scientific input needed regarding water. However, the position of TPWD’s leadership and our organizational structure will likely limit our ability to gather the scientific information necessary to manage water in Texas. TPWD’s mission and organizational structure disproportionately emphasize traditional users such as hunters and anglers while largely neglecting non-traditional users such as canoeists, birders, rock climbers, and cyclists. As a result our focus tends to be on specific species (e.g., whitetail deer and largemouth bass) rather than on the management and conservation of critical habitat, including water. For fisheries, our focus needs to shift from specific species of sport fish to the watersheds which they depend. Doing so will provide an opportunity to manage and conserve our aquatic resources for all users. However, such an approach will likely require the reorganization of our staff in such a way that staff expertise from all divisions is shared. • We have the expertise to address these issues; however, we will not be able to continue doing things “just because we did them before”. This will require that our leadership is willing to make difficult decisions regarding allocation of our budgetary and staff resources AND that the staff is willing to be flexible enough to change with the new direction. • I believe we will have to be flexible in our thinking over the next decade in terms of managing the waters of this state. No doubt the expertise is there right now to take on any challenge, but we may face further organizational changes down the road and we will continue to need to maintain and upgrade our facilities periodically in order to keep up with the demands that we face. • The agency’s (and division's) focus is outdoor recreation, and its paradigm is that if it can get people enjoying the outdoors, it can use that population to push its conservation mission. While pragmatic (since funding comes through license fees), this approach is specious, as it supposes that recreationalists want conservation. However, if the current population of recreationalists can be used as a guide, what recreationalists want is the best recreational opportunity, regardless of the ecological ramifications. This manifests itself in the importation of fish and game from outside their native range; and the promulgation of rules, and alteration of l and and water, to accommodate species of highest recreational interest. This is driven, not by a conservation ethic, but by a recreationalisteconomic ethic. All aspects of the agency reflect this paradigm, instead of reflecting the truly pressing resource issues. This paradigm further manifests itself in the organizational structure of TPWD. The most pressing needs exist across the artificial boundaries that the agency has established as its divisions and regions. Divisions have been created to direct effort into the core recreational avenues, although their names have been chosen to reflect ecological principals – parks, hunting/wildlife, freshwater fishing/inland fisheries, and marine 2-36
fishing/coastal fisheries. Notice how Resource Protection, a division without a recreational tie-in, has been dissolved. More integration is necessary, a conservation ethic needs more emphasis, and agency boundaries need to reflect true ecological boundaries. • Golden algae…very good. Habitat very poor. • TPWD seems to be putting a substantial effort into the golden alga problem. However, more cooperation within the agency and with outside institutions is needed to expand the scope of the work being done, and speed up the pathway to possible solutions. • I feel we were a little bit behind in this until just recently. The Legislature recently appropriated funds specifically to address this issue. Until now, there has been very little known about golden alga. We now have people conducting research on it and should make large strides in understanding it in the near future. As far as staff expertise, I think we are hiring qualified people with a diversity of skills and expertise from across the nation. As far as organizational structure, I can’t think of any gaps or holes that need filling or issues on the horizon that don’t have some group or person to address them. Most of our facilities are in fair to good shape and we are addressing the renovation of some of our fish hatcheries at the present. • I think we are in excellent shape. The Texas Legislature has allotted $1.2 million over the next two years to get a handle of golden alga and we are about doing that. We are conducting creel surveys on our fisheries obtaining not only fish harvest data, but economic data related to how much an angler-day of fishing is worth in Texas. We just need to press on in both areas. • The agency is poorly positioned in terms of allocation of resources, in that for example, there will be more resources (staff and funds) directed to hatchery production than to assessment of fishery needs for water (i.e., how much water, when, and for what purpose). Additionally, special projects and research within the Inland Fisheries Division will probably continue to focus on refining standardized sampling and assessing fishing regulations. 2-37
Page 1 and 2: Appendix 1 Responses to survey ques
Page 3 and 4: 10. Procedures for standardized sam
Page 5 and 6: 18. Data acquisition and analysis a
Page 7 and 8: 26. Employees are encouraged to adv
Page 9 and 10: Appendix 2 Responses to open-ended
Page 11 and 12: • Weakness is the random sample d
Page 13 and 14: • Personnel issues are my greates
Page 15 and 16: • Our greatest strength is having
Page 17 and 18: • Funding - money spent on non-es
Page 19 and 20: • The greatest strength of the st
Page 21 and 22: • Freshwater inflows. • The eve
Page 23 and 24: 2) The jury is still out on the eff
Page 25 and 26: to address critical issues in a pro
Page 27 and 28: INLAND ADMINISTRATION--QUESTION 2 R
Page 29 and 30: • Lack of water - since fisheries
Page 31 and 32: in our sampling approaches and to f
Page 33 and 34: the HOH has also resulted in very l
Page 35 and 36: answer the question at hand. Inappr
Page 37 and 38: • Weakness: TPWD has preferred to
Page 39 and 40: used for any specific purpose. The
Page 41 and 42: • Water allocation for sports fis
Page 43: • I believe we are in pretty good

1-1 Appendix 1 Responses to survey questions administered to ...

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