Emily Myers at the FOR Booth
 

And the Beat Goes On…

 

Saturday, April 12 dawned bright and cool - a perfect day to spend outdoors at the 14 th annual Migration Celebration held at the San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge. The event was well attended by a record setting crowd of people who wanted to celebrate the rites of spring and learn more about Mother Nature and wildlife migrations.

 

The star of this year’s celebration was the Kemps Ridley Sea Turtle.  This turtle is an endangered species and has recently begun to nest along this section of the Texas shoreline in some exciting numbers. It was the discussion of Friday night’s talk. If you went to the clebration, you might have been lucky enough to actually see about a year old Kemp’s Ridley up close and personal. There were a couple of young turtles at the refuge which had hatched out in the rip rap against the seawall in Galveston. These turtles had been retrieved and taken to a safer location to grow up and eventually release into the wild.

 
 

The Migration Celebration was designed to appeal people of all ages, but was especially geared toward teaching our youth about the local plethora of wildlife. Wil Meyers enjoyed many activities - maybe all the celebration had to offer – but he stopped long enough to get to know a Corn Snake. If you did not register early, you did not get a chance to ride on the swamp buggy out through the marsh. There were also tours of the big oak tree and River’s End Volunteer Fire Department was on hand to give tours of their fire trucks and hand out fireman’s hats to the kids.

 

And Friends Of the River San Bernard had a booth at the Celebration. It was manned by Roy and Jan Edwards, Emily and Wil Meyers, Teresa Schlumpburger,  Fred and Nancy Kanter, and Darrell and Gloria Powell. F.O.R. displayed information on the scope of work for the upcoming re-opening of the mouth of the San Bernard, and we kicked off the youth program, F.O.R. Rangers. Informational flyers and brochures about the river and F.O.R. activities disappeared as people passed the booth. F.O.R. also signed up 13 new members!

 

All in all, it was a wonderful spring day teaching and learning about all things wild in this major migration highway. It was a stop in the web of life celebrating the heartbeat of life going on as it should – and the beat goes on.