Essays

Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado

Vernon Bailey and the biological survey of Texas 1889-1905
October 15, 2008

Vernon Bailey and his wife Florence Merriam Bailey are names almost unknown except by students of historical ecology, although there is a Vernon Bailey Mountain in Big Bend National Park. Bailey was born in Minnesota in 1864. At age 11, Bailey received a shotgrun and soon filled a room of his parents house with preserved specimens and taxonomic mounts. When he was 20 he contacted C.H. Merriam.

Merriam, at age sixteen, had accompanied Spencer Baird (the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution) on the Hayden Survey (the first scientific expedition to Yellowstone) in 1872. By 1883 Merriam formed the American Ornithological Union and became the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s economic ornithologist in 1885. By 1896 his office became the Division of Biological Survey, and in 1906 it became a bureau. By 1910 the Biological Survey was forced to devote its time controlling noxious weeds and predatory animals and Merriam retired, realizing that his dream of a national biological survey would never come to pass.

In 1887 Merriam hired Bailey to research the fauna from Minnesota to Montana. In 1889 Merriam sent Bailey to Texas. He returned in 1892, 1899, 1900-1902, and 1904, publishing his results in 1905. In 1899 Bailey married Merriam’s sister Florence Merriam, who had already become one of the most prominent ornithologists of the nation (and who later would publish the Birds of New Mexico in 1928.) She led the fight to declaring the killing of birds for feathers to be used in millinery and private egg collection, which led to the development of the Audubon Society. Bailey also was a major contributor to the Biological Survey’s work in New Mexico.

While in Texas, Bailey hired a number of naturalists to help him, most notably the renown artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes and H. P. Attwater who played an important role in developing wildlife laws in Texas in the 1920s. Another naturalist to accompany Bailey was Harry Church Oberholser, whose Bird Life of Texas, was posthumously published in 1974 by his longtime editor Edgar B. Kincaid. My mother was involved in Oberholser and Kincaid’s work, so I grew up hearing stories of the Biological Survey and the Baileys. Florence Merriam Bailey was my mother’s hero and a major influence in her development as an ornithologist. Florence Merriam Bailey was one of the first women biologists ever accepted by her peers.

I found one record that indicates the Baileys were near Midland in late 1902, when mention is made of Monahans and “Warfield,” a watering station on the railroad west of Midland. Over the 16 years of the survey, the biologists of the Survey traversed almost every county of the state. When the Sibley Nature Center gives programs that include information about prairie dogs we always tell of the prairie dog colony that stretched from San Angelo to Clarendon, an area 250 miles by 100 miles that was estimated to contain almost a half-billion prairie dogs. “We traveled by wagon for weeks through their range. They were comparatively tame, standing at the entrance to their hole, flipping their tails, and steadily barking” Bailey wrote. “When properly prepared and cooked, they are a delicacy,” he noted. Less than ten million now survive in Texas.

Bailey’s work gives an excellent baseline for understanding the changing distribution of animals in Texas. For example, he commented that opossums were not found west of San Angelo (and now they are found in New Mexico). He also noted that javelina were found along the Pecos River into New Mexico and into the sanddunes near Monahans (“the center of their abundance”), and also along the Concho River as far north as San Angelo. Now they are found at least as far as Borden County and on the Llano Estacado as far north as Andrews. Bailey found none on top of the Llano Estacado. During Bailey’s time, mountain lions were hunted almost to extinction, and during his time were still found in the Big Thicket of east Texas and in the mountains of West Texas, and along the western edge of the Llano Estacado around the sanddune country. Now they are found in almost every county of the state.

The former president of Texas Tech David Schmidly (and a native of Levelland) reprinted Bailey’s report in 2002, along with comments about the changes over the intervening years in Texas Natural History, A century of change. In 1996, the New Mexico Journal of Science published Biological Diversity in the Land of Enchantment, which also reviews the changes in animal populations in the last 100 years. Despite several species of animals being extirpated from their native ranges (like bison) the biological diversity of both states is in a reasonably good stage.

Diversity in the two states has actually increased (because of the changing landscape through brushification and the emigration of species like those mentioned above) and because modern genetic studies have “discovered” new species. New Mexico, with 151 mammalian species is second to California (162 mammals) and Texas is third (139.) Texas has the most species of bats (a third of which are on “watch lists”) and carnivores. 71 species of “exotic” (mostly African) species of mammals have been introduced for hunting (mostly in the Hill Country and south Texas Plains.) Axis deer, fallow deer, sika deer, the nilgai, auodadad, and the black buck are now free-ranging beyond their original homes behind high-game fencing. Feral hogs have also increased, and may be blamed for a decrease in armadillos, a relatively late newcomer to Texas in the 1850s. All but one of the five species of skunks appear to be declining.

The arid southwestern third of Texas (west of the 100th meridian) is in the best shape. The exploding human population in the eastern half of the state, along with the exponential spread of imported fire ants, has diminished the diversity in the eatern half of the state. The extensive farming in the Panhandle has left much of that region almost devoid of native habitats except in a few areas.

The Baileys and the other biologists of the Texas Biological Survey would be impressed by the sophistication of modern wildlife conservation in the state. They would be impressed with the thousands of amateur naturalists observing birds, butterflies, dragonflies, and pursuing the hobby of wildlife photography. And… they would be amazed by the vast changes since their time.