Ocelot_RoadTrackCanal_Tewes_Mike_KingsvilleTX_29June2023_Reel4159.mp3

Mike Tewes [00:00:00] So in the Rio Grande Valley, humans are the problem, and have been.

Mike Tewes [00:00:04] The Rio Grande Valley was the last stronghold for ocelots, I believe.

Mike Tewes [00:00:09] That delta system really was interesting - a mix of of tanglements and vines, although there were prairies, patches of prairies and stuff in the Rio Grande Valley. There's still a lot of potholes. If you look at an aerial photo, it's just full of potholes in northern parts of the Rio Grande Valley that had water in them, and surrounded by dense brush.

Mike Tewes [00:00:32] Mr. Frank Yturria's ranch had probably the last two vestiges of what was called the El Jardin, the garden, in Spanish. But he had two tracts of brush. Each was about 200, 250 acres that was this wall of extremely dense brush. And I don't know of any other place like that within 15 miles of that patch.

Mike Tewes [00:00:53] And so, when the Rio Grande Valley was recognized for its importance for agriculture, that was some of the first places to be cleared.

Mike Tewes [00:01:05] It's kind of interesting. You had the delta, so you have all the fertile soils that the dense brush thrives on. So you have this matrix of potholes, water, entangling brush that was impenetrable.

Mike Tewes [00:01:19] But the ocelots probably had a pretty large population in the delta there.

Mike Tewes [00:01:24] I guess about three factors that really opened that up. The railroad, 1904, went from southeast Texas down to the Valley. And that, for the first time, made a connection for people to go from the Valley back and forth. And that preceded the highway by at least, I think, 20 years.

Mike Tewes [00:01:44] I don't think, I think the highway, what is now Highway 77, wasn't developed until the 1920s or 1930s. So that was the second major human factor that allowed access to the crops, the potential crops, of the Rio Grande Valley, for potential markets.

Mike Tewes [00:02:04] So, you had the railroad train and you had, finally, a road, but maybe another third, maybe the most important, was the opening of the ship channel. And then I believe that was in the 1930s possibly. So, there you could export crops around the world, or especially around the United States.

Mike Tewes [00:02:25] So, finally the economic incentive was there to exploit the soils and the great climate of the Rio Grande Valley, and grow a huge variety of crops which have occurred since then.

Mike Tewes [00:02:41] And it rapidly changed - 1930s through the sixties. A lot of that brush was converted fairly rapidly for farm fields at that time.

Mike Tewes [00:02:52] And so, I like to eat like everybody else, so I don't mind the crops and the food that was produced, but it was at the expense of a rich diversity of life that occurred in the Rio Grande Valley, and ocelots and jaguarundis in particular.