The Casear Kleberg Wildlife Institute at Texas A&M University- Kingsville has been serving South Texas through extensive research in fields like quail, deer, and more since its founding in 1981.
Institute Director Dr. Dave Hewitt shared the goals of the wildlife research organization with KEDT.
"Our research programs are geared toward helping answer questions that will contribute to conservation, help landowners manage their land and their wildlife, give them the tools and the knowledge to do that right," he said.
After becoming the director of the institute around 9 years ago, Dr. Hewitt realized there was a need in the ranching community.
"We will often do kind of a ranch visit," he said. "We'll go out and help them, or maybe go out to understand their challenges, and then provide some kind of guidance or ideas on how they may work with those challenges. And increasingly, as I was talking to different landowners, they were always saying, 'Hey, you know, I need to know how to integrate my wildlife and livestock operations.' Because they're both such an important kind of cash part of the economics of a ranch, the cash flow of a ranch, and culturally, they're both important. And people want to be able to maintain that productivity and those two parts of their operation."
With help from Hewitt, the Sue and Radcliffe Killam chair for wildlife, livestock, and habitat interactions was created to fill this need. Dr. Fidel Hernandez was selected for the seat after serving as the endowed professor in quail research.
"Here, through the institute, I was able to somewhat mesh with that, you know, working on private land and studying quail or studying invasive grasses, and sometimes within the grazing context, sometimes another context, but now to be able to do it formally, within the position, and to integrate that personal interest that I had to that more agrarian livestock and ranching side of things. It's just, I'm in heaven. I mean, it's a dream come true."
The management of invasive grasses are just one part of what is planned to be studied.
"The amount of cattle that you have depends on how much vegetation you have," Hernandez said. "How much vegetation you have depends on how much rainfall you have, and predicting how much rainfall you're going to have is, you know, anybody's guesses. And so how do you not only predict how much productivity is going to be on the land, but then also what kind of candle you can carry into the future? It's almost like looking into a crystal ball and trying to make decisions now based on the future that you're not quite sure. And some of these conditions can change fairly rapidly. You can go into drought and a month or two later, you know, the range just looks really poor, but you can't really adjust cattle numbers that quickly. And so how can you help landowners be profitable, protect the range in an environment that's very unstable and unpredictable?"
Hernandez is ready to lead the way, guiding students and faculty answer and discover more questions in wildlife research.