Black Gap Wildlife Management Area

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about this place: straight from the inscription, the way the record reads. Now, out here in the Big Bend country, the land doesn't ease you in. It doesn't introduce itself gently.

It just presents itself, rocky, arid, mountainous, and completely on its own terms. And right there, northeast of the Sierra del Carmen, a natural cleft cuts through a basalt ridge. That cleft is called Black Gap.

And the name fits, because it frames the headquarters of something worth knowing about. The Black Gap Wildlife Management Area was established in 1948. About a hundred thousand acres of some of the most rugged terrain in Texas, representative, the marker says, of the typical arid, mountainous Southwest.

And it belongs, legally and truly, to the people of Texas. Operated by the Game and Fish Commission, it's not a trophy preserve for the few. It is a working landscape with a mission.

That mission is conservation. Restoration. Research.

The mule deer are here. The javelina. The pronghorned antelope.

Scaled quail. These are among the principal game species being managed on the Gap, studied, tended, and counted. But the story that carries the most weight is the bighorn sheep.

By the 1960s, those animals were all but eliminated from Texas. All but. And that phrase does a lot of heavy lifting.

It means there was still something left to fight for, and the work to bring the bighorn back was already in process. The Commission didn't just study the animals. They studied the land that feeds them.

Scientific land use practices, designed to increase the yield of natural foods for wildlife, were put into place. Water, always the central fact of life in this country, gets held and managed through impoundments, diversion dams, and what they call push-ups, seeded over with native vegetation. In a landscape where rain doesn't linger, that kind of work matters more than it sounds.

And the knowledge doesn't stay locked inside the Gap. Through demonstrations and educational extension programs, on a federal-state cooperative project, the research findings go out to surrounding landowners and anyone else with the interest to receive them. What's learned here is meant to spread.

Even the hunting is managed with purpose. Game surpluses, and that word surplus is doing real work too, are harvested periodically by hunters under a controlled public hunt program. Nothing wasted.

Nothing left to chance. A hundred thousand acres of hard country, a cleft in the basalt, and a quiet, determined effort to put back what was nearly lost. Out here, that's not a small thing.

That's the whole story.

What the marker says

Black Gap, a natural cleft in the basalt ridge northeast of the Sierra del Carmen, frames the headquarters site of the Black Gap Wildlife Management Area. Established in 1948, the "Gap" contains approximately 100,000 acres representative of the rugged Big Bend Country -- the typical arid, mountainous Southwest. Owned by the people of Texas and operated by the Game and Fish Commission, the area is the scene of research and developmental work dedicated to the conservation and restoration of wildlife species indigenous to the region. Mule deer, javelina, prong-horned antelope and scaled quail are among the principal game species managed. Work is in process to restore the bighorn sheep which, by the 1960's, were all but eliminated from Texas. Scientific land use practices, designed to increases the yield of natural foods for wildlife, have been instituted by the Commission. Water retention and utilization is accomplished by the construction of water impoundments, diversion dams and "push ups" seeded with native vegetation. Research findings, through demonstrations and educational extension programs conducted on this federal-state cooperative project, are available to the surrounding landowners and others who are interested. Game surpluses produced on the Black Gap are harvested periodically by hunters under a controlled public hunt program.