PARKS AND WILDLIFE FOUNDATION OF TEXAS

TPWFs Engage program strives to engage and inspire all Texans to take an active interest in the natural wonders of our state by offering a wide variety of opportunities to experience Texas great outdoors and to help ensure a thriving future for the wild things and wild places of our state. Through this program, TPWF supports transformational projects at Texas State Parks. Between 2019 and mid-2023, TPWF led a campaign to raise funds through a landmark public-private partnership to open Palo Pinto Mountains State Park. Located 75 miles west of the Dallas/Fort Worth area and sitting on almost 5,000 acres of rambling hills and stunning vistas, this will be the first new state park in North Texas in over 25 years. Palo Pinto is expected to attract 75,000 annual visitors and will support the critical need for more public-use recreational lands for the regions rapidly growing population of more than 8 million residents. TPWF successfully raised over $10 million in private dollars to pair with public funding and broke ground on the vertical construction of visitor facilities in late 2023. Construction is ongoing and Palo Pinto Mountains State Park is expected to open in early 2026. 2023 marked the centennial anniversary of Texas State Parks, and TPWF successfully mobilized a grassroots campaign that raised $1.9 million to deliver significant visitor experience enhancements and priority-need equipment to all 88 parks. TPWF and state park staff worked together throughout 2024 to bring these projects to fruition, many of which were aimed at making parks more accessible, including all-terrain wheelchairs, ADA-compliant wildlife/landscape viewing stations, as well as ADA-accessible trails, kayak launches, and courtesy docks. Other projects included dark sky viewing equipment, mountain bike repair and water-bottle filling stations, archery and kayak equipment, beach and playground shade structures, off-road search and rescue vehicles, and more. TPWF also encouraged Texans to get outside to witness a rare total solar eclipse in April 2024. Over a third of Texas State Parks were directly situated within the eclipses path, and TPWF provided a variety of specialty equipment to enhance eclipse viewing within the parks, including 20,000 eclipse safety glasses, tabletop sun-spotter telescopes, telescope tripods and solar filters, binocular filters, smartphone sun photography adapters, and eclipse-themed books. In addition, TPWFs conservation leadership program, Stewards of the Wild, continues to engage and encourage hundreds of annual members across Texas to take an active role in being good stewards and champions of our wild things and wild places. 2024 marked the programs 11th year, and it is now the largest conservation leadership program in Texas, with member-led chapters in most major metropolitan areas. In addition to educational events, conservation service projects, and statewide outdoor experiences, Stewards of the Wild offers mentored hunting and fishing opportunities that serve to connect novice and lapsed adult hunters with experienced hunters who can teach them practical, ethical and conservation elements of hunting in Texas. To date, Stewards of the Wild has engaged more than 400 participants in mentored hunting and fishing experiences. The program also provides select advisory council members with opportunities to further develop their leadership skills as fellows to the TPWF Board of Trustees. And new in 2024, to further bolster the programs conservation education focus, Stewards of the Wild created the Statewide Conservation Committee. The volunteer-driven committee is comprised of five subcommittees (legislative, game species, private lands, coastal, and native habitats), which meet regularly to learn from Texas conservation experts and channel this knowledge into action through events that create awareness and cultivate support. TPWF has also encouraged the pursuit of conservation careers by launching the Women in Conservation Science Scholarship in 2021. TPWF oversees the Brady and W.K. Boyd Conservation Scholarship, which helps ensure that the brightest and most dedicated individuals, regardless of their financial means, can pursue a career in conservation. And since 2016, TPWF has partnered with the Coastal Conservation Association to fund 44 Coastal Game Warden Internship Program interns.

TPWFs Conserve program works to ensure the future of Texas incredible fish and wildlife resources By investing in science-based efforts to restore and sustain healthy populations of native species and the habitats they need to thriveincluding pronghorn, desert bighorn sheep, black bears, quail and other grassland birds, monarch butterflies and other vital pollinators, freshwater sportfish, and saltwater species such as southern flounder, sea turtles, shrimp, and oysters. From restoring a sea of grasslands across West Texas to easing the strain of overharvested oyster reefs along our Texas Coast, TPWF is conserving the wild things and wild places of Texas acre-by acre, species-by-species. In partnership with the Oaks and Prairies Joint Venture, TPWD, and private landowners, TPWF continues its work to restore and enhance grassland habitat in Texas and Oklahoma through the Grassland Restoration Incentive Program by implementing on-the-ground habitat restoration projects that directly combat the issues involved in the decline of grassland species, with the restoration of over 9,000 acres completed since the beginning of 2022 and a total of over 110,000 acres restored since the program launched in 2013. A similar project in the Pecos River watershed has restored over 20,000 acres of grassland habitat since its launch in 2021. In 2022, TPWF partnered with Borderlands Research Institute at Sul Ross State University on a multi-year research and outreach program to investigate the natural recolonization of black bears in West Texas, including bear population numbers, habitat needs, behaviors, and movements. In 2024, TPWF launched the Texas Bighorn Sheep Coalition, a multi-year program to help reverse drastic declines of this species due to disease and resource competition via population assessment, stakeholder engagement (government agencies, private landowners, nonprofit organizations, and outdoor/hunting groups), conferences/workshops, and strategic action plan implementation. TPWF also launched Pollinators & Prairies, a novel science-based initiative dedicated to conserving and restoring Texas vital native pollinators and iconic grasslands through research, outreach, and on-the-ground conservation action. Because pollinators such as native bees are foundational for thriving ecosystems and food production, TPWF is working with partners TPWD, Native Prairies Association of Texas, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, and others to conduct cutting-edge research using bee-detecting dogs, educate the public about the importance of native bees, restore grassland habitat on public and private lands, and permanently protect tallgrass prairie, the most endangered ecosystem in North America. Additionally, in 2024, TPWF continued its $6 million fundraising campaign and began the capital renovation of the Edwin L. Cox, Jr., Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center (TFFC) in Athens, Texas. Opened in 1996, TFFC is a 106-acre educational facility and freshwater fish hatchery, including a laboratory, over 300,000 gallons of indoor and outdoor aquariums, and 45 ponds covering 37 acres. TFFC serves more than 35,000 visitors each year, many of whom visit with school and youth group field trips. Construction included refurbishing the popular Dive Theater and its dive tank, renovating four large outdoor aquaria exhibits, installing four new outdoor fisheries tanks, and enhancing the indoor exhibits and overall visitor experience. TFFCs fish hatcheries and its ShareLunker citizen-science trophy bass research and breeding program will remain operational during the renovation, and the facility is slated to reopen to the public in summer 2025.