Sue Bailey Interview, Part 1 of 2

DT: My name is David Todd, and I'm here for the Conservation History Association of Texas. Its October 13, 1999, and we are in an area outside of Bridge City, Texas.

And we are lucky to be visiting with Sue Bailey who's been an Audubon Sanctuary Warden, and has been a teacher about the natural world in the schools here in this area, and has been involved in, in other conservation issues here in southeast Texas.

And I wanted to take this chance to welcome you and thank you for spending some time with us.

SB: Well, thank you. Its very flattering to be invited to talk to you.

DT: Well thanks. Le- lets start with your childhood if you could, and, and perhaps you could tells us about some of the early influences that might have interested you in the outdoors and in conservation.

SB: My childhood was a very non-urban one for sure. We lived way out in the country. And one of the earliest influences, I'm sure, was my great grandmother who was half Indian, and who was dead long before I was born.

But, she influenced my grandmother and my mother, and the other members of the family enough that I think maybe that's why I was so interested in the butterflies, and the wildflowers, and the, the outdoors all together.

DT: What sort of things did your great grandmother pass down to your grandmother and mother?

SB: The love of the plants and of nature, and of the uses for the plants. The folk medicine type things, and the things you could eat, and the things that you better not eat.

And the things that had to be boiled three times, like Poke Salad, or it would kill you, and if you were that hungry. And the Sassafras roots to make the tea and the things that the, that the Indians used and that the early settlers used, like the Nelumbo(?).

DT: What is that, I don't know?

SB: I bet you do. That's a, a the yellow lotuses that, that you can use everything from the, from the root, which is like a potato, or, and then the little shoots, like asparagus,

and then, after they're grown, and, and the florists takes those pods to make, to put in the dried arrangement, you can eat the little seeds in them.

And, its, its a very useful plant. The Indians adored it, and so did our early ancestors. Not to mention what the French call Mamoo, which is Erythrina Herbacea, which was one of the best, and the doctor told me this himself.

That until Penicillin was invented, it was one of the very best antidotes for upper respiratory infections and for pneumonia and flu. The Indians used it, and so did our ancestors.

DT: And did she also, you say, teach you an interest in butterflies and other parts of the natural world?

SB: (talking over David) Well yes. Yeah. The out, the outdoors was my playpen. I, I love the butterflies, I guess, better than about anything. I still do for that matter. And I'm rewarded by having a migration of Monarchs come right here and spend the night.

But when I, one of my earliest memories is chasing the little Grape Purple Hairstreak around, and I never caught it. And/or chasing around any of the butterflies trying to catch them.

And now I know you're not supposed to do that, its not a good idea. And you may have noticed today quite a few butterflies floating around. That's my reward.

DT: Well can you tell us about the, the Monarch migrations that sometimes comes through here?

SB: Well, in the north, the northern tier of states and in Canada, as the days get a little bit shorter, nights get a little bit cooler, the Monarchs begin to gather together waiting for a, a nice norther to bring them down.

And after about the third one, they reach this far. And I think part of their attraction here is the Goldenrod, and part of it, when they hit the, the water they always spendstop anyway.

Because, and sometimes they're so tired when they get here, they have to have a north wind because they can't fly against the wind.

And they have to have a little bit of help coming down because they're on their way to Mexico, to spend the winter. And they spend the night here if, if conditions are good, they go on the next day.

But if it rains or if we have a norther went out into the Gulf and came back as a warm front, with rain or wind, they have to spend another day or two until we have enough wind for them to go south.

A man from National Marine Fisheries who was the, the leader at that time told me that he'd seen the Gulf waters just brown with them where they'd got caught in a storm out there, and dropped off into the water and drowned.

DT: You, you mentioned that you, you grew up in the woods around Bridge City and the prairies there. I think you called it the Harvey Estate.

SB: Yeah. DT: Can you tell us what the country was like then and, and what you would do to spend your time outdoors?

SB: I went walking around in the woods and chasing the armadillos, and the rabbits, and the, and the trying to catch the butterflies, and watching the birds, and there wasn't much else to do, for one thing. That was a long time ago.

And we had a lot, a lot more open prairies. Some of the time we, we did have things planted that we helped take care of. And then we had different trees then. We didn't have any Tallow Trees then. And, but that's, that's been a new import.

And, but we did have Oak Trees, and Hickory Nut Trees, and one Black Walnut Tree that my uncle came out when we were away, and cut it down to make furniture out of. And, so any how, we didn't have any more Black Walnut Trees after that.

But, it was more, it was more like a, a vacation. You know, we did have to go to school, but it was like a long summer camp. Or, you know, but Fall was my favorite time of year. And then when Spring came, that was my favorite time of year.

So we had different kinds of flowers in the Spring and different ones in the Fall. And my grandmother had taught me to really enjoy every one of them. Which I did, and I still do.

DT: Ms. Bailey, could you tell us how you learned about the, the flowers, and the butterflies, and the other parts of the estate where you ran around?

SB: Well, it was mostly just a hands on thing. You go out there and look at them, and I had, remember Little Black Sambo? I had his insatiable curiosity. And I had to know what everything was and I still do.

I, I can't rest until I find out. And one of the best books for this area is, is "The Wildflowers of, of Louisiana and Adjoining States", and then to "The Wildflowers of Texas", and "The Flowers of the Big Thicket." And you're going to find some of everything in every one of them.

And from one little plant that we found on Sydney Island, I was helping some boys from A and M with their studies, we found one little plant out there we couldn't find until we looked in the "Roadside Flowers of Texas."

And its Little Polk and the only place I've seen it is there, on Sydney Island (Sydnes?) and in the, the estate that's owned by a friend of mine at Fannett(?). Its a little pink flower.

DT: Was it mostly books then that taught you how to learn the names?

SB: (talking over David) To definitely identify them. Everywhere, including in my family and, and everywhere, wildflowers or, or even tame flowers have different names. Like the Gaillardia, it has three or four different names.

Its called Santa Fe Daisy, and its called Indian Blanket, and Fire Wheel and, and, you know, from each section of the country, you might not know what you're talking about, if you don't know what its real name is.

And its real name is Gaillardia, but other people know it by different names. And so a book is the best way to find out for sure.

And if you're going to go tell people about it, and I've been, been pushed into that, so I do have more than, you know, more than most people would like, I guess, and its better to know exactly what it is. You might come off with egg on your face, don't you know.

DT: Well I understand that, that with all this experience outdoors and your studying books, that you became considered a local authority. And you got nominated, while you were out of town, to be President of a young Nature Study Club. Can you tell about that?

SB: Well, that's when I was so young that I don't even know why they did that. I, I don't know why, why they thought, well I know the lady that organized the thing thought I knew more than I did. That's just like right now, they think I know more than I do.

But, you know, now I go to the schools and the clubs. And, and, now I'm surprised how many grown people don't know what we have around here.

Now, for instance, I'm supposed to go talk to a garden club in Silsbee in November and I'm supposed to bring out, to their attention, what's in the "Big Thicket."

Because the, she saw me do a program at a, at a convention, and I mentioned a lot of these flower pictures came from in the "Big Thicket," because there's some of everything there. And she said a lot of the people don't know that.

DT: Well, tell us about this first nature study effort that you had with this little club that you joined.

SB: I didn't join it. It joined me. It was a, you know, I was away and when I came back I was the president of a little nature study club. And all we did was look at the things and talk about them. And, you know, it gave us something to do when school was out.

DT: Did you take field trips and things?

SB: Well, we, we were a field trip. They were all around us when I was a kid, and it was three hundred acres around us. Some of it was marsh back there and we could see things in the marsh. And the wetlands were they were just considered a mud hole then.

And the thing, we know better, we know they have some of everything you can think of in them, flowers, and animals, and wild birds, and different kinds of snakes, beautiful big Mud Snake is famous, you know, for being such a pretty, docile snake.

DT: Well, I understand that in the early '40s you got married and you moved out to live in the marsh, where we are today.

SB: Right, three miles down in the marsh. But I like it here, and were on the, on the water. We're, we're in what a, in fact we're on the birding trail, the Texas Birding Trail. And this is one of the things they said what makes a fine birding trial.

You have a wetlands and you have the bay, so you have the water birds and you have the marsh birds. And then you have the other birds that are migratory. We have quite a few different kinds of birds.

DT: Can you tell us what, what took you to like the marsh so much and see the value in the marsh?

SB: I guess, observation. I don't know. My husband used to trap. He would catch Muskrats and Nutria after they became available, you know, because they were not natives here. And he would catch them, and skin them, and sell them.

And later we sold the Nutria meat to somebody that, that sold it to Purina, I believe, who was making dog food out of it. Dogs love Nutria meat.

And its one of the staples of the diet, it, its a South American Beaver; its one of the staples of the diet of the South Americans. And so, you can see why the dogs would love it.

DT: Well how did the muskrats and the nutria get introduced and come to this area, do you know?

SB: I guess the muskrats were here before we were. But the man, I guess it was McIlhenny, I'm not sure if it was him, but I think it was, imported the nutria into New Iberia. I don't know if it was just for, for his showplace, or if it was because he wanted to use them for some purpose.

But, in a storm that broke the levees and their fences and they escaped and they,they proliferated; they went, you know, that's one reason some of the places in the marsh are lakes instead of marshes now.

Its because they ate the roots of the marsh plant. They're vegetarians. And so they spread pretty widely. They're more in control now than they were then.

But not around New Orleans. They have a problem with them there. They're not in control at all. They are in control, but they control people I believe rather. They're the ones.

DT: Can you tell us about some other things that you think are unique about the marsh and valuable?

SB: Well, the marsh is where we get all our Mosquitoes. What would be do without the marsh? But what the marsh is a, is a good breeding place, in fact, its the breeding place. Not the breeding place, but the growing up place.

The nursery area for our salt-water fish, and for the shrimp, and the crab. They, they can't grow up in the Gulf because its too salty; it scalds their little bodies. So they, they come in and right now, this year has been a very bad year for shrimp.

Because its been dry, and they're all up in the marshes and bayous, and they haven't come down into the bays in, in on their way to the Gulf yet. Because we haven't had some, enough rain. They're seeking the salt, the fresh water, the brackish water rather than the, the so-strong salt.

DT: I understand that, that, that there used to be a number of alligators in the marsh and that you saw some changes there. Can you talk about that?

SB: Well yes. Ed Holder, who was a writer for the Port Arthur News and I first discussed that we were seeing fewer and fewer alligators. Because they'd been hunted near to extinction. And then we talked about it, and other people began to notice, and he wrote about it.

And it became public knowledge that the alligators, and they had hearings about it, that they were an endangered species. And they were put on the Endangered Species List.

And its one of the biggest success stories that we have because the alligators have come-back so much now that people wish we'd have stayed quiet, some of 'em. Just last week they had to come get one out of a lady's yard right up there in Bridge City just off of Lit(?) Street, about a five-footer.

DT: How did they manage to recover the, the alligator population?

SB: Well, they protected them from, from and they made it illegal to have anything made from alligator skin, even if it was imported. You couldn't have any shoes, or bags, or belts. You can't, couldn't have any part of an alligator.

It would be illegal to have that. And so the, the alli-, there was no market for them. That's the way you get rid of anything there's too much of, like the Nutria. You create a market for it and they're, they're don't last that long.

But when you take away the market there's not any demand for it, because they can't sell it, so they don't kill em.

And they made illegal to kill them. They made it illegal to, to disturb them. And so, it, that helped them to come-back. And then, of course, the cleaning up of the pollution in the area helped a lot too.

DT: What sort of pollution did they have in the area?

SB: Chemical. Petroleum. We had quite a bit of pollution for a while. But its pretty well cleaned up now.

And then, as a matter of fact, even this year one of the alligators killed, inside the Dupont Plant, they'd come up, they had moved into there, and had become quite a problem, was eleven and a half feet long. That was a pretty good size alligator.

DT: What kind of examples or evidence would you see that it was getting pretty polluted in the area?

SB: Water had bad smell and bad color. And the, and the fishing things became scarce, especially the crabs. They'd go crawling out on the banks trying to get away from it. And it was just obvious.

And then when it would be foggy, it would be so bad, it would burn your throat, and your nose, and your eyes because of the, you know, the, we were in kind of an air inversion, is what held it down and it would go, it, the air was obviously polluted.

And the moss couldn't grow very well. It, its an air plant, you know, an epiphyte. And so it was, it was just, you'd have to be a fool not to know everything was polluted.

And so, so they started cleaning up, and I'm, I'm, I'm convinced that petroleum industries and chemical industries can exist with nature, without all that. As you can see, we don't have too much of any kind of pollution right now, and I guess people are the worst polluters.

DT: What do you think turned the tide with the pollution problem? What made it better?

SB: I guess maybe a lot of publicity on it, and I think a lot of people realized that they were being sickened by the things. And the, and the fisherman couldn't catch any fish, and the shrimpers couldn't catch any shrimp.

And the, one of the things that one, when they spray the marshes to kill the mosquitoes they kill the larval shrimp and things in there too. So, that's, we don't spray in Orange County in the marshes anymore.

They do in Jefferson County. But that's, you know, there's just so many little things that build up, like, well, you know, what Rachel Carson was one of the forerunners in the fight against pollution. And from her "Silent Spring," remember? And so...

DT: Did you read that? Was it an influence on you?

SB: (talking over David) Well, that's been so long ago. I did, yeah. And my daughter worked for National Marine Fishery for a while when, and she was, she had been an early day employee of theirs.

And she died of cancer. And so we have a, not my daughter, Rachel Carson died from the, probably from some of that pollution, and some of the, some of the research that she did might have had some effect.

DT: You said that, that one of the helpful things in turning around the pollution problem was, was some helpful publicity. Could you talk about Ed Holder, and maybe some other sympatric reporters, and how they were able to help you?

SB: Well, Ed Holder was actually one of the, the forerunners in the, in protecting the wash and the alligators, and getting Sydney Island to clear the sanctuary,

and helping a law, helping get a law passed that would allow conservation clubs or organizations to lease these lands, these spoil islands from the state to make sanctuaries out of them.

And I was lucky enough to be appointed, I guess probably through him too. Audubon's first female Warden. And so that's, until the birds decided to move. The island eroded badly, that's another thing.

You know, we have zealously protected our, our Barrier Islands off shore, the natural Barrier Islands. And these islands that were built by soil weren't the same as the nature Barrier Island. But then they quit putting spoil on and so they eroded badly.

The I, the I think that the main reason the birds moved from Sydney Island because it had badly eroded. For, for that type of bird, the waders, you need privacy, which you get on an island.

You need a fresh water source, and when you pump that spoil in there in these ponds they have fresh water in them.

You need nesting sites and they had plenty of them. And nesting materials and they had plenty of that. And they need a food source. And they usually like to nest and raise their young at the confluence of the fresh and the salt water, so they have both kinds of, of organisms to feed on.

And, after the island eroded that much, they didn't have room to come in and take off. As a matter of fact, when in other sanctuaries the White Ibis was known, and still is known, as a canopy nester. They can fly over and count them from the air.

They nested right in the very top of the trees. But, on Sydney Island, when they decided to come live there, there wasn't any trees for them to nest in the top of, so they nested on the ground, poor little, little nest. They built them four in a little quadrangle there.

And one time I went out there in the Spring, they'd gotten the island had become heavily, heavily populated. And I went out there and I thought, well I wonder why anybody would be out here cutting their, the grass this time a year to make, a, somebody's been out here to make a blind.

And it, you don't need a blind this time of year. And so I, when I got to looking those Ibises had stripped it. It was a space as big as, oh, about fifty-by-fifty, that they had cut all the canes down,

pulled all the leaves off of it, and had made them a place where they could come in and land and take off.

And they'd built a nest out of that material. But those birds have like a 45-inch wing spread, and you have to have room to take off.

DT: What kind of birds were on Sydney Island?

SB: We had all the Herons. We had Little Blue Herons later. They were not there to begin with, but they came. We had the White Ibises, the White Faced Ibises; we had Black Crown Night Herons, which were terrible predators.

I wish they'd move without being told to, but they didn't. And, we had the Great Egret and we had the Snowy Egret, like that little one we just saw. And we had Louisiana Herons, or the Tri-color. And we had the Roseate Spoonbills was the main thing.

We, at one point we had the biggest nesting colony in the whole world. We had 600 nests out there two or three years in a row. And then, and then we started, they started having to wait to nest.

And somebody said, "Well, no they don't they can't just wait to nest. They have to be maturing a little bit later." But, whatever it was, they were using the same nest sites. They nests, they, you could tell they had taken an old nest and added material to it and built it up and used it again.

So this was, you know, kind of cooperative housing, I guess. But we had all these birds and a few Rails. And we had a few common Gallinules, which we should be calling Moor Hens now. But, you know...

DT: Did you have any rare birds there like the Pelicans?

SB: They didn't nest there. The Pelicans don't nest here. This is another thing that, that pollution had done to the Pelican, like the Golden Eagle, Brown Bald Eagle. That's DDT, and Dieldrin and Aldrin build up in the food chain into these things that feed on the fish, eat that.

And then it makes their eggs soft. And the Brown Pelicans that we used to have here are just now coming back from having, and it was the farmers that did that. And I guess they didn't know any better.

But, the poison to kill the insects out of the rice and, and out of the other crops, would get into the, a, water and it would get into the food chain. And then the Pelicans and the Golden Eagles, oh not the Goldens, but the Ba- Bald Eagles would eat that, and then it would make their eggs' shells soft.

And then they wouldn't hatch so they'd mash them in the nest. And so, after a while they, the birds became very scarce. That was just like before Audubon was formed, when the, those white birds became very scarce because ladies liked great big hats, with white feathers all over them.

And sometimes even whole little birds like the, the Lister(?). And, and, so the, the, all of the white birds became nearly extinct until the Audubon Society was formed, until Teddy Roosevelt had some environmental laws passed to protect these things.

So they've made a good come-back in Florida and on the Texas coast, primarily.

DT: It sounds like you had a whole variety of different kinds of birds on the islands. And I imagine that they're mostly raising their young, or were there some that just roosted there?

SB: No, they were raising their young there. We had a, I didn't mention the, the Cormorants, which are, are, some people think that's a bad word. They think they eat the fish up. But, but they nested, they kill their trees first.

Because they would nest these birds were colonizers, you know, birds of a feather flock together? And, so they flocked together there, and they would colonize. And one little tree had twenty Cormorant nests in it.

So, it didn't live very long. The bird droppings and they pulled the leaves off to use for nesting material, and then the droppings go through a heat and kill the trees. And so this is one of the reasons they move.

They became over-populated, and the islands became badly eroded, and so it just was no longer a good, a good housing development. They had to find them a better one.

DT: Maybe we can turn the clock back and talk about when it was first colonized. Which were the first species of birds to find that Sydney Island would suit them? Which were the most aggressive ones to settle in there?

SB: I believe it was the Spoonbills. They were the ones that, that we noticed the most first anyway. Because they were so flashy.

And what the reason they came there, I'm convinced, there were a few trees at that time, but then erosion washed them out too, but they were nesting up in the Black Bayou area, which is the Sabine Refuge now, in Louisiana.

And when they went in there and changed that ecology there, they changed the environment by building levies around, and making a lake in there to fish in, and all the machinery disturbed them, and they moved. It was different.

And, and, birds move anyhow, sometimes. But they move to Sydney Island, and the guy, whose name is Mr. Walters(?), I believe, was, he was the manager at Sabine Refuge and he said, "We'll get them back." So I guess, I don't think they ever did really move back there though.

They moved from there to Allied Chemical, from Allied they moved to Texaco, and from there they're nesting down in Fanette(?), at my friends estate. A beautiful Cypress swamp, and they nest there, a bunch of them.

DT: While the birds were on Sydney Island, what was your role as warden to protect, and what kinds of things would you do?

SB: I was supposed to go out there and count how many different kinds of birds there. And, approximately, I did the best I could, of how many of each species. And protect them from intrusion by people, or animals even, for that matter.

And, one time an alligator got among the, the White Ibises and, they were nesting on the ground there, because that's the only place there was for them, and tore them up pretty bad. And I tracked, tracked him across the island.

But I couldn't do anything about him, he was gone. And I didn't know if I had already picked me out a tree to climb in case he didn't like me. But, that was all I could do, you know, get away from him. But, then if people went on there, I had to go tell them to leave. And...

DT: Were there any run-ins with people?

SB: I was very tactful. When you're, when you're the runt of the family, you learn tact, fast. And, so I was, most of the people didn't know any better. They liked the birds, and they wanted to see them, but we had one group out there that were killing them one time.

And I went out, I had a gun in the boat, but I didn't want them to know it, because if, you know, killing a bird is one thing, but killing a sweet old lady is another. And so I, I talked to them.

I got what they said was their names and their, you know, their I.D.s, I looked at their I.D.s., and I put down their boat number, and it was a false number. And the Federal Warden never did find out why.

I recognized the address because my son had lived at that apartment house for a while, in Pasadena. And so, I recognized that address, but those, when you get your boat papers they come-back to where, but they never could find why this boat was falsely registered.

He thought it was something worse than just killing a few protected birds. But, we gathered up the dead birds and I don't have any arrest authority, I didnt have, I don't now either. And so, they left, but when I reported it, and we tried to file a charge, they never could find them.

DT: Did you ever have experience with folks coming out to collect eggs?

SB: I had a lot, yeah, people did that sometimes. But, when I was, whenever they were out there, for whatever reason they were not supposed to be there. So I would suggest to them that they leave, and most of them did, quickly.

And didn't take stuff with them. But, people would tell me later that before it was a sanctuary, and before I was after them out there, well they, they would go and collect tubs full of eggs to eat. I think they were exaggerating or just flat-out lying one, but, you know, I never did see any evidence of that.

And I was watching it. The main reason they made me warden was because I was already kind of watching it. And one time, and you wont believe this, a fellow was out there shooting the birds and he came in, he had launched his boat here and he came back in here with dead Spoonbills in the boat.

And I said, "I hope you realize that what you've done...", I wasn't the warden then, "is illegal and your killing a federally protected bird." He said, "Oh, I didn't know that."

"I just wanted to get some feathers for my scout troop." And, you know, I should have made him eat those birds, you know. If you're going to kill it, eat it.

DT: What kind of reaction do people have when you'd come up and try to explain what the role of the rookery was and what your job was and so on?

SB: They were very cooperative. Some of them even helped me watch it. They would say, "We were going by there and we saw people out there." I said, "Well, I'll go tell them to go home."

And then we did. And then some of them, they'd say, "Well, we didn't know. We were just wanting to look at the birds." They knew already, but they would say that. Some of them knew, some of them didn't.

Most of them read about them in something and decided they'd come look at them. Some people just went by and saw them.

Sometimes the towboats would go by, in fact the Coast Guard did it one time. They'd go by and blow their whistles to make the birds fly up so they could see 'em, because it was like a cloud of, you know, so many in such a small area.

DT: How many birds do you think would be on the island at a peak time?

SB: Well, Fish and Wildlife Service had some guys sent out from the Louisiana University to count them, and they estimated 50,000 White Egrets, that was, that was counting the, the young and the grown-ups of the Great Egrets and the Snowy Egrets.

And I guess the Little Blue Herons, because they're white when they're babies, when they're young. And they become blue as they get older. They molt their white feathers and get blue feathers.

DT: And these 50,000 plus birds were...

SB: (talking over David) Plus birds. We had, at one point, in fact, for two or three years in a row, we had 600 Spoonbill nests, by actual count. One, two, three, four, you know. And, but what we did, with Spoonbills it was easy, because they would nest together, and their nests were obvious.

You didn't have to say well, I wonder if that was an, an Egret nest or a Spoonbill nest. And they would, they would have like, like 400 here, and 200 there, and 200 there, so that we had, all we had to do was count each group and then add them up.

We usually had about 200 at one end, 200 in the middle, and 200 at the other end. And then, a couple of times we had a storm, like in July before they had fledged in, in the early month of July, it killed off a lot of the birds and wiped out their nests.

And so, after a while, the, the island got so eroded that they were, you know, they had to move.

DT: Before the island got eroded, how big was the island?

SB: Well, I didn't have the measurements, I can't tell you. But it was approximately a mile long and maybe a half a mile wide, mostly. About a mile long, and this was during the, the nest during the time it was a rookery.

Before that it was much bigger, you know, because they piled the spoil up all the way, almost all the way across there. And it was, they pumped out the channel and put the spoil there. And that was one of the things that was what they did with the spoil.

And it made a nice barrier island and a place for things like that, and it made a nice place for people to go and picnic. But, it also protected the land from the, from the storms and from the erosion from the wind.

You know, our prevailing south-easterlies would, the, they buffeted the winds from the, from the mainland. And since they don't put the spoil on there it, its not so much its eroded a whole bunch, a good bit back here.

But another thing, since they put the dams up there, not so much topsoil comes down. And so that's one of the reasons for the erosion along here.

DT: You mentioned dams. I imagine you're talking about the dams on the Sabine and the Neches. Sam Rayburn, is, would that be one of them?

SB: Sam Rayburn, but, but then there's one below Sam Rayburn that also, Dam B, Steinhagen Lake. But, Toledo Bend Dam, I think is the main one, because it was those hills are steeper over there and the erosion, you know, the,the erosions on that land.

And further more, the clear-cutting up there along where they clear-cut the forest caused more erosion of their hills. And, the hills are steeper, and water comes rushing down, and brings a lot of topsoil with it.

But the ones that are on the, the hills and things, on the other side of Toledo Bend settle out into the lakes there and don't come all the way down here.

DT: I guess some of those dams were built into the sixties. Did you see Sabine Bay and lakes change after those dams went in?

SB: Toledo Bend went on stream in 1971. And White and Perrette(?) was Louisiana Fish and Wildlife Commission, made a study of the Louisiana side of Lake Sabine, you know, its an interstate lake.

And they found that in one years time there were 80 fewer salt-water organisms in Lake Sabine, from the time they put that, that dam on.

Because before they put the dam on-stream, we were afraid, those of us who thought anything about it, that it would make the lake too saline, like it did down stream. Because, but everything is different here.

And what they did here, it wasn't withdrawn from municipal and industrial purposes, so much as it was built, and it was only built to generate electricity.

It was a consortium of Louisiana and Texas businessmen, built that dam with a, with the blessing of the Corps of Engineers, to generate electricity, to sell to us. And, as it went on-stream and they held the, the, the first water back the first year, the water was salty and the fishing was fantastic.

They caught one, one guy had three hundred and fifty Speckled Trout in his boat. And then, the next year their, they were generating electricity by that time. It filled up far faster than they thought it would do because it was, we had so much rain that year.

We had, you know, usually, usually we had a lot of rain. Fifty-eight inches is the annual average rainfall here. And, it filled up faster than they thought it would. And they started generating electricity.

And after that, White and Perrette made that study and the water was not salty as much at the time, at the time it should have been. See they let the, they generate the electricity when the demand is high, and that's in the hot summertime when you're using your air conditioners.

And so, they let the water down at the wrong time. There's two suits against them right now, because of them holding the water, and then letting it down all at once, like they did when it got too high last year, the year before.

DT: So the water is fresher during the summer and its saltier than it used to be during the winter?

SB: Well, I don't know if its any saltier than it used to be but it, it still, its still salty somewhat in the winter. But, the reason its fresher in the summer is because they let more fresh water down then because they're generating electricity.

But, then when they hold it back saving it so when they need to generate electricity, and they have a lot of rain up there, and they have to open the dam, sometimes you have to open a dam, and it flooded out the people downstream, around Deweyville and those places.

And they were not happy about it. At this point they're, they're suing that consortium. And then when there's a low rainfall year, like this year, I haven't heard so much about it this year we, we they had more rain upstream this year than we did downstream.

But a couple years, last year or the year before it was dry up there and the water in that lake was very low. Some peoples' boat docks were a hundred feet from the water. And they didn't like it.

And so they called up and complained and they said, "Hey, we didn't build this for you to have a fishing hole. We built this to generate electricity, and we're going to generate electricity." And they did. But, the complaining didn't do any good, that's what it was for.

But, they sold them the idea by telling them what a great place it would be to fish, and it is a great place to fish. The state stocks it. And so that, this is one of the things that, that they're being sued about. Because they held the water during rainfall season.

Then when they had a heavy rainfall season they had to open the dam, and it got down all at once and it drowned peoples cattle, and washed away their homes, and everything, up there on the Sabine River.

And they said in an ordinary year, they said, "Well, it floods sometimes anyhow?" And they said, "Yes, but we have a flood, and it lasts two or three weeks, and its gone. This way were flooded all at once.

And, you know, we'd just had a little flood before that." But this way they let all that water down and it really did a lot of damage. Before, like in 1954, we had a big flood.

Orange was flooding and they had to sand bag the, the river to keep Orange from flooding. And that's kind of unusual. But, they it, it was not a really damaging flood like having peoples' houses washed away and their cattle drowned.

DT: Did people anticipate the environmental problems from Toledo Bend and other dams?

SB: It, it was different from what they had anticipated. They didn't think about that down the coast - they have less rainfall and they have sandier land. And the, and the water that is withdrawn from those dams is used for agricultural purposes, and so it never reaches the bay.

And so the bay has become too saline. And, and they don't have as much rainfall as we have here. These two rivers carry more rainfall than any other two rivers in Texas. As a matter of fact, Sabine Lake carries one fourth of the fresh water in the whole state, according to their studies. But...

DT: Was there much citizen opposition or discussion about Toledo Bend at the time they were under construction, or before?

SB: (talking over David) There was some discussion, but there wasn't too much opposition that I remember. I think people thought well, well they kind of lead them to believe it would control the flooding.

And they said, "No, we never told you it was a flood control dam. We never told you it was a fishing lake dam. We told you it was a generating dam and that's what were doing." And they did.

DT: Do, do you know many of these, the proponents of the dam? What are they like?

SB: Well, they're just like everybody else that wants money. They wanted money. And they said, "Well, we need the electricity. We've got to have electricity."

And sure enough, this year they did some things, I don't know if they did it on purpose or, or if they really sold more electricity to the northeast than they, than they thought they could spare. And then, of course they had what they call like a rolling blackout here.

They would have a little blackout one place and then another, so that they could save some electricity. They said it was because they sold more electricity than they could spare, to the northeast.

DT: I heard that, that since the dams went in, and maybe its just coincidental, you can tell me, that the White Shrimp, a, pretty much disappeared from Sabine Lake. Is that right?

SB: This year almost all the shrimp disappeared from Sabine Lake, but they were having to go upstream to hunt fresher water, more, more, more fresh water, be brackish rather than too salty. But the shrimping population is very, very low now.

And I don't, I know that, that the White and Perrette study indicated what it did, that 80 organisms no longer came in to Sabine Lake.

Now Lowprice(?), and lets see, David Lowprice and David, there were two Davids, and another fellow from Parks and Wildlife, did a study that indicated the same thing on the Texas side. And I, I no longer have a copy of that.

And the last time I got copies from White and Perrettes, they told me that was the last one they had. I know they must have copies somewhere, but they didn't have any to spare.

We probably could get a copy of that one from, I only had one copy of it, and I don't have it anymore. That's been a good while ago too.

DT: One of the other big sort of construction projects I guess that's been going on, that I guess you have some experience with, is the dredging of the channels that helped build Sydney Island.

SB: Well, the funny thing about that, you asked me what I thought was the dumbest environmental thing I ever heard of. Well, this, this is one of them. Another one's over here right now, going on, trying to go on.

But now they use two dredges, that doubles the costs. They pump the dug, dig up the spoil, and they pump it four miles back that way, and they put it into a wetland. Because that was the agreement with a big, rich industrialist, who wanted high land on deep water.

And Parks and Wildlife men came by here and launched their boat and went up there when this was planning, to see if it that was wetlands, and it was. I knew, I knew it was and they knew it was, but they had to go make their own site inspection.

My husband had tracked that before, and I went around with him and took pictures. And--one time--and they went up there and said, "Yup, this is a wetland." But they still, they used two dredges and pump that spoil down there into that wetland.

And then, you know, the, that's not, I don't think that's exactly a very good thing to do when you're trying to preserve the wetlands.

But that, and right now they're talking about widening and deepening the channel up to Beaumont, when all the time they've been crying about the salt water getting upstream, and they had to put in a salt water barrier.

They're talking about putting in a permanent one rather than a, a temporary one like they have now.

DT: The salt-water barrier would be temporary?

SB: Yeah. On, on the Neches River. And, and if they deepen the channel and widen it, and they've been blaming the, the salt water intrusion on the ship canal all along, what is it going to do to it? Is it going to freshen it up, do you think?

But the other part of that is that part of the reason the salt water goes upstream now, like they say it never did before, is because they withdraw on the Neches River. They're, they're extending some of it that, that way.

But, they withdraw the water for industrial, for municipal and they were, and they still are, some, agriculture. So, it doesn't reach the estuary at all. But... (Misc.)

DT: While were talking about dredging, I was wondering if you could go back to the spoil island that you were Warden of, and, a, can you tell me just briefly how Sydney Island is different from some of the other Audubon sanctuary islands, such as Green, and Deer Island, and Sundown Island?

SB: I don't think its any different. Its a spoil island. And they put the spoil there and now it, its eroded badly. Some of the others don't erode that badly I believe. Like Deer Island I don't think does. But birds, you know, sometimes the birds just move for no reason, but they had plenty of reason to move there.

We have a prevailing southeasterly wind and wide-open space there. And then the towboat and the, and the traffic, and the ship traffic, there's not that much ship traffic, but there's some. Going up and down there washes it out, you know, pretty bad on one side.

And the other side washed out by the, by the wind and, and the water waves, but, it seems like to me that, that most of the erosion is caused by the, the towboats on this side, more of the erosion seems to be.

The other sideand one place, where there's white clay, its not eroded that badly. The fact that so much of it is sand, and its not stabilized, doesn't stabilize like the clay, is, is probably why it erodes badly.

DT: Did this island, when it was populated, support a different kind of bird, or different numbers of birds, than some of those other sanctuary islands?

SB: I don't think so. I think they were all pretty much wader birds, colonizers. I'm not too familiar with those other islands.

DT: Another thing that I wanted to ask you about, a, some of the wardens get very attached to their birds. They stared calling them my birds, our birds, and what is your feeling towards birds out there?

SB: My birds, in fact, we had this discussion many times, they belong to the state of Texas. Louisiana said they were their birds, but they couldn't get them back. But, they, they belong to the people.

And I was there to represent the people and take care of their property. And, so that's what I did. And that's one reason I felt like I was supposed to share these things with the school children and the, and the, and the nursing homes, and the clubs or whatever.

And I, I found that it seems like it has helped people to be more aware of the environment, and of the birds, and things.

DT: Could you talk a little bit about your efforts to share what you know about the birds and about other parts of nature? You've been involved in teaching school children, and senior citizens, and others.

SB: (talking over David) I was pushed into it.

DT: Well, how did you get started with it?

SB: I was pushed into it. My, my friend became a teacher. And, and I don't know why she, how she knew I had pictures even, but she's the one who wanted me to come to her school, and tell those kids about the birds.

And it was in Orange. So then, the, the a, whoever was in charge that, at that point of the VIPs, the volunteers in public schools, put me on their list. And so I went to, at that that point I was only taking pictures.

But then I started taking slides, and so I was able to show a whole classroom what I could before just show a kid at a time as they came by.

And I could project the pictures, and tell them about the particular bird, and what it was, and, and what its role was in conservation, or whatever, and why they were protected, and what they ate, and that kind of stuff. And so, you know, I didn't do it because I wanted to. I got pushed into it.

And so, the more of them, the more I did, the more I had to do. And that's the way it is right now. I go to nursing homes and, and to schools, and to conventions, and to clubs, and whatever. And I don't charge for it. And lately I had to pay thirty dollars for projector bulbs.

And that same week I already had promised to go to this little club in mid-county, and do that for them. And I did. And she asked what did I charge, because she had seen it before and she knew it was, you know, rightbound to charge for that. I didn't.

And so, when she gave me the thank you card, it had thirty-five dollars in it. And she didn't even know I had to pay that much for the projector light. And, who knows how much things cost when you deal with that stuff.

But, she had seen the program at a convention of homemakers, whatever you call them, now you don't call them dem, home demonstration anymore, but she had seen it at a convention that I had took the pictures to, about the butterflies.

And she wanted her group to see it. So, I went and showed it to them and, and they were impressed. And one of them wanted to know if I, if I went anywhere. And I said, "Yeah, within reason, I'll go." She said, "Just any place?" And I said, "Yeah."

She said, "Well, I, I wanted to ask you to go someplace." And I said, "Is it a bar? I'll go to a bar, I don't care." She said, "No. I, I'm the, I am a volunteer...", I believe she said volunteer. She works with a group of women on probation, and once a month they have a dinner forum.

And she thought they would enjoy that. I said, "I don't care. You know, you might take me on..." They might put me on probation, you know. You never know if they catch me. But, so anyway, I said I would. I don't know when its going to be. But I'll go do it. I don't care.

They don't have to have a reference, if they don't ask me for one. But, anyway that, that, then by, from what I can tell, I think I have influenced a number of people to be more aware of their environment, and to help take better care of it, things they might never have thought of.

You know, like throwing their stuff out the car window. And when they, they as you might have noticed on our road, that every place that people fished, they left their trash. My sister and I had been cleaning that up and, you know, poor mouthing about how sad it was.

And, and we cleaned it up and just stacked it up and burned it, or whatever we had to do, until she got where she couldn't help me much anymore. Her health/her knee's is bad. And then I was taking care of my husband and this place too, so I don't have a whole lot of time to do it.

But, we still try to kind of watch over it. And then my grandson lives at that place down there in he is, he turns plumb livid when somebody dumps something on the road. So he's, he's pretty helpful. But I think it would be better if he was more tactful.

Somebody might hit him some day, I don't know. But, he just gets so angry when he sees that trash. But, and I can understand that. I do too, but, I think its a waste of emotions to get all upset about it. Because that's what people do.

DT: Some people I imagine get annoyed and other people get, a, more diplomatic, and what do you think works best in Texas where sometimes people aren't terribly sympathetic about conservation?

SB: (talking over David) Well, it depends on what they do when they get all annoyed and upset. If they call the cops out, and have them pay a fine or something, that might help.

But if they go out there and, and start ranting at them, well it, it probably just makes them want to come-back in the night and really throw something down, or maybe throw a fist at him, or you know, whatever.

But, diplomacy doesn't work all that well either. But, it- sometimes you can whine about it and they'll feel sorry. They'll think, "Well, I never thought of that." But, they'll wait 'til nobody's looking and they still do it.

DT: And when you've gone to schools, and nursing homes, and probation centers, what are people's reactions? Are they sympathetic, or hostile, or are they understanding? Are they knowledgeable about what you're talking about? How do they react?

SB: They are absolutely wonderful. They tell me how great I am, and how smart I am, don't tell them any different. And, and they, and how nice I am to do that. And they, the kids all, you know, the little kids especially, say, "Well, we're, we're going to clean it up." And, some of them do.

Like that little group we had out here. Fortunately, the day we had all, we there was three classes of them, and then they had parents with them and teachers. And, and we could show them some spots where we, and we could tell them, "Don't throw that stuff down."

And the, the game wardens took them on airboat rides in the marsh, and showed them things. And my grandson skipped school that day. He was too sick to go to school. But he brought a turtle and a King Snake.

He caught that out there, and showed them, and showed them what the difference in the King Snake and the Water Snake, which will bite the fool out of you, but he's not poison. And, but, we didn't show them poison snakes.

We didn't, we didn't want to fool with that. And they got to see the Green Heron nest. And those kids, one little boy told his mama, he said, "I've had the best day I've ever had." He was just six at that time though. So maybe he had some better days, later. But he said, "That was the best fun I ever had."

DT: What do you think they get most excited about?

SB: Um, I think it was the snake. One little girl, her dad who had been a game warden was, is kind of, I wont say paranoid about snakes, but he's not real friendly about them. Like his partner said, he'd throw down on him. But, but he didn't. This little girl wanted to hold that King Snake, and she did.

And she went and had to show it to him, that she was holding it. She loved that snake. And they liked that. And then they liked, and then they liked, the, I think, what was the kind, they had some kind of little animal, I don't remember what we had. They liked the turtle because it was slow and, and docile.

And, they had something in a cage that, well I believe it was Bill's ferret that they had in the cage they showed, which we don't have, you know, they're not wild here. But, but, they liked him. And the, and the Par- Parks and Wildlife biologist girl brought a, brought a little alligator and they liked it.

But they, they like, you know, they just, some of these kids never had seen anything like that. A lot of them have parents who work, and they live in apartments, or they live in town there, and they don't...

This was at Bridge City School, and their school is right out there where I used to hang around the marsh edge and chase the turtles and things. And so, and there was a, a little sanctu-, it wasn't a sanctuary, but a little rookery on the little island right behind where Simms school is.

And one of the things that we've done, I say we, I didn't really do much about that, but one of the things that has been occurring since the pollution is not so bad, is the Osprey has come-back here. We used to have a lot of, quite a few of Ospreys here and there, and the, and the Swallow-Tailed Kite.

And both of them can be seen over Simms school lots of times, where these little kids go to school. And you can see them flying around up there, from feeding around the marsh.

Both of those things feed around marshes. And so that's, that's quite a come-back right there. In fact, Parks and Wildlife is studying the Swallow-Tailed Kite right now.

DT: And, a, the students, what do, do they ask about it? Are there things that they're curious about, or concerned about, or worried about from an environmental standpoint?

SB: They don't seem to be too worried about anything. But they're, they are very curious about things, like migration of the butterflies, and like the birds and where they went when they left and, and why they would leave. And, of course, birds just do that for one thing.

People do, you know, wear it out and move on. And, so it, its they ask good questions. And they, they, you know, sometimes I have good answers and sometimes I don't. But they, they know about they've, they've learn a little bit more about it.

And they're more impressed than I ever would have thought. Like the little girl there, she was twenty-five years old, and she still remembered that I came to the school when she was in the forth grade. And so, I've been doing this quite a while, come to think of it. So...

DT: What sort of impression did it make on her?

SB: Well, she wanted to know why the ma-, why the butterflies migrated. And she wanted, I told her because one of the mama butterflies said, "Charley, I need a vacation", and so they had to go to Mexico for the winter. And, but I told her because they would, that that's what they do.

They have an instinct, and they do it. And then, they would freeze if they stayed up there. In fact, last year, some of them did. And last year some of them even froze in Mexico down there on the, you know, we had a, they had a freak snow storm that killed some of them.

But, things have an instinct to migrate, so they do. Its like every year people come up with a story, the say, "Well, somebody told me I better take my hummingbird feeders down the first of September." And I say, "You better leave it up. That's when they need it.

They have to get fattened up to fly all the way across the Gulf." And they, they, you keep them up. When they're ready to go they go, they don't lea-, they don't stay around just 'cause you have a feeder out. They have an instinct. And they migrate. They need a tailwind though.

So when we have a norther, there they go. And, the butterflies the same way. They have to have a tailwind. I've been seeing a lot of them flying around.

I wonder if we had some come in. If we didn't have this time, we will have on Sunday, I believe. But, a, you know, they need a norther, and then they, they the come a third of the way, and then a third of the way, and finally they get here.

DT: Do you ever have, a, fallouts of neotropical migrants here?

SB: Once I did. This tree was plumb full of them. They, they missed their turn down there on the Gulf of Mexico. They took the wrong turn at that platform. Instead of going to High Island they came here.

DT: What did it look like?

SB: It looked like that tree was plumb full of bright little birds, orange colored and yellow. And I heard them before I saw them, I heard them out here. They settled in.

DT: What were they? Painted Buntings, what were they?

SB: (talking over David) Well the Painted Buntings nest around here. There are some of them around here. There were Painted Buntings and some Orioles even and, I, I was surprised. I hardly ever see an Oriole here.

But I have before. Usually, in the Spring and in the Fall we have a migration of Indigo Buntings. And, but there were just some, all kinds of little Warblers. And, you know, various kinds of, some were not very colorful, but they were the females, and then colorful males.

And, so it was, it was fantastic. I was hoping they'd decide to do that every year. But, so far, they haven't. They were coming back in the Spring. They, they also migrate in the Fall, but they didn't come by then. They, they got the road map, or something, I guess in the meantime.

But, they come in at Pecan Island in Louisiana where there's a bunch of big Oak trees. And they come in at High Island. And so they, you know, they just kind of, I thought, well maybe they always told them a straight line between two points is shortest and they tried that, instead of cutting across.

And it worked out all right but they, but they left before daylight, by daylight, the next morning, wherever they were going.