Tag: murphree wma

Hunter Shot While Duck Hunting

It’s being reported that a duck hunter near Port Arthur, Texas, has been killed in a duck hunting accident on the upper Texas coast. Jefferson County Justice of the Peace Bob Morgan says 30 year old Matthew Thomas Janson, of Houston, was hit by a shotgun blast as he and a friend were firing at ducks at J.D. Murphree Wildlife Management Area.

Morgan says the Sunday shooting is being investigated as an accident. He says the men launched a boat in Sabine Pass and that the shooting happened about an hour later in a marsh. The hunting partners were at compartment 17 of the South Bayou Unit of the J.D. Murphree Wildlife Management Area when they began shooting simultaneously at ducks. Continue reading Hunter Shot While Duck Hunting

Ducks Unlimited Donations Help Texas Wetlands, WMA

DU helps Texas wetlands and the Murphree WMA 

Ducks Unlimited announced last week it was awarded a federal North American Wetlands Conservation Act grant to enhance more than 5,728 acres of wetland habitat in Chambers and Jefferson counties along the Texas coast. Partners contributed more than $2 million to match the $1 million received from the federal grant. The project will restore high priority wintering habitat for ducks, geese, and other migratory birds within the Chenier Plain of Texas, including at TPWD sites such as the J.D. Murphree Wildlife Management Area. The project will replace degraded culverts and pipes with modern water control structures, improve existing levees, and construct new levees to provide efficiently managed wetland habitat.

“This partnership project will enhance management capabilities on approximately 1,100 acres of freshwater coastal marsh habitat,” said Jim Sutherlin, area manager at Murphree WMA for TPWD. “The aging water management infrastructure is in need of upgrades to enhance wetland habitat for wildlife and especially migratory waterfowl.”

The NAWCA grant project is made possible with financial support from partners BP America, Suemaur Exploration and Production, LLC, and Jefferson County Drainage District #6.

Murphree WMA Impacted by Hurricane Ike

Murphree Wildlife Management Area

At Murphree Wildlife Management Area (WMA) near Port Arthur, Texas, the Jefferson County storm levee held back the storm surge created by Hurricane Ike, protecting WMA buildings from flooding. The levee can resist a 14 foot crest and staff reported the area had 11 feet of seawater surge. One Murphree WMA shop building was severely damaged by high winds, but other facilities are reported in relatively good shape.In addition, eerial overflights are taking place today to assess ecological impacts and damage to various Texas Parks and Wildlife Department facilities. But longtime division staff member Jim Sutherlin had this to say from the Murphree WMA in Port Arthur:

“The Murphree area looks like the Gulf of Mexico. Wildlife impacts to every thing that doesn’t fly will be significant like it was back in the early 1960s with Hurricane Carla. I expect a great reduction in reptiles and amphibians, particularly alligators, but also snakes, frogs, all the things that move on the ground in the coastal plains.

We need to assess the full impacts, and that will take some time. It will set plant communities back to very early successional stages, and we’ll see big changes in the landscape when this water comes off, for a couple of decades. That’s something we’ll see as our careers mature, and the young people starting careers in wildlife ecology now will follow it as we followed Carla.”