BEAUMONT —  In today’s world of specialized news coverage and increasing threats to all of our natural resources, we tend to think about conservation efforts as having a singular aim. However, in most cases many species benefit and in the case of coastal habitat conservation what helps scaled creatures also benefits those with feathers and vice versa.

    The Lower Neches Wildlife Management Area (WMA) in Bridge City is a fine case in point.

    I grew up fishing this area before it was under control of the state and saw it go from a thriving marsh to a series of open lakes intersected by chunks of marsh, particularly on the western side of the unit. During that time, the fishing declined and so did the waterfowl hunting. What was once heaven for gadwalls with acres of widgeon grass became mud flats as saltwater intruded the area.

    Like many spots on the coast, channelization had allowed saltwater to intrude into these marshes and turn what was once brackish into an unproductive, dying salt marsh.

    Now, you are probably thinking “salt marsh” and saltwater fish go hand in hand. Well, not necessarily. In many areas, ideal estuary habitat for fish, crabs and shrimp is actually brackish leaning toward freshwater.

    “One of the things people have to realize is that good marsh is not always super salty, and species like redfish thrive in brackish marsh that can sustain good vegetation. When the Intracoastal Canal was put in and a lot of these areas had channels cut for various things it degraded the habitat for species like redfish and also for ducks,” said the late local outdoors writer Ed Holder.

    Holder was my mentor and when he first took me under his wing, he took me into the back of the Keith Lake chain where the McFaddin National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) and J.D. Murphree WMA intersect to drive home this point.

    On that day, we were able to sight cast to redfish in shallow water that were swimming next to largemouth bass.

    “People get the idea that redfish have to be in this super salty water but healthy marshes are just not that way. And this is really good duck country in here,” he said.

    A few years after Holder set me straight on the status of healthy marshes, the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department (TPWD) set up a series of saltwater barriers at the Lower Neches WMA. At first, the response from local anglers was not good.

    “TPWD just wants to coddle the ducks.”

   “They are going to ruin the fishing.”

    However, it did not take long for the anglers to realize the fishing did not decline, it got better. The marsh began to come alive with all kinds of vegetation good for fish and ducks and the very saltwater barrier that people complain about became the favorite fishing hole in the area.

   A few years later, Ducks Unlimited (DU) worked with TPWD on a program to create grass terraces in that marsh to halt erosion. That combined with the saltwater barriers turned the marsh into a haven for waterfowl. Last year just before the second split of the duck season opened I stopped along the side of Highway 87 to do a rough duck count. I stopped counting at around 300 and that was only in one section of the marsh.

    “The projects that we do along the coast are certainly designed to help ducks but there is a real benefit to everything from redfish to speckled trout and blue crabs in many of them. Good coastal waterfowl habitat in most cases is good coastal fishing habitat,” said David Schuessler with DU.

   Often times these habitat needs will meet in a single, politically charged issue and that was the case with interbasin water transfer.

    Officials with the Coastal Conservation Association (CCA) believed it would cause serious damage to estuaries by reducing crucial freshwater inflows and that is exactly what waterfowlers feared would happen. At times, there have been conflicts between waterfowlers and anglers even within state and federal bureaucracies but in most cases habitat conservation is mutually beneficial.

    A fine example is the seagrass conservation initiatives forwarded by TPWD recently for the Redfish Bay complex.

    “Seagrass meadow supplies everything that many marine organisms need. It provides food for grazing animals at the base of the food chain, surfaces to cling on for small crawling critters, shelter and hiding places for small invertebrates and fish, and ambush points for the larger predators and game fish. For them it’s the nursery, the roof over their heads and the grocery store all rolled into one,” TPWD officials said.

    Duck hunters know that seagrass is an important factor in the wintering of duck species on the Middle and Lower Texas coasts.

    For redheads, it is even more important than that as the Texas coast winters 80 percent of the continent’s population.

     “The Laguna Madre de Tamaulipas, just south of the delta of the Rio Grande, is an integral part of the winter life-support system of redheads. In most years, more redheads overwinter in Texas than Mexico; however, in years of drought in Texas, more ducks continue south into Mexico,” said Christopher P. Onuf of the National Biological Service in a paper on the importance of seagrass.

    Onuf wrote that Mexico is pushing for the extension of the Intracoastal Waterway into Mexican Laguna territory.

     “In all likelihood, this development will reduce the support capacity of the Laguna in Mexico for redheads, further increasing the reliance of the ducks on the laguna in Texas.”

    And that will make the projects being conducted by groups like DU and CCA even more important to not only redheads, but the fish they share their habitat with.

    Chester Moore, Jr. is The News Outdoors Editor. To contact Chester Moore, e-mail him at cmoore@fishgame.com. You can hear him on the radios Fridays from 6-7 p.m. on Newstalk AM 560 KLVI or online at www.klvi.com