Episode 19 - Big Bend National Park

Well, hello and welcome to the Learn Every Day English Podcast, your roadway to English proficiency. Hey, you've come to the right place to improve your listening comprehension skills and mastery of the English language. My name is Gary and I will be your host today. I'm a native English speaker born and raised in the United States, living in a small Texas town about one hour north of Houston. I'm also a language learner like you so I know what it is like to learn a new and different language as I am studying Spanish. So now let's jump right in to today's episode. Hey, well howdy everybody. How's it going out there in Radio Land as we say in English? Welcome to episode 19 of the Learn Every Day English Podcast. Glad to have you with me. Today we're going to be talking about something a little bit different. I'm going to be talking about Big Bend National Park, which is a very popular and very big park located here in the state of Texas. Hey, but before we get started I want to remind you that you can follow me at my webpage. Just go to www.learneverydayenglish.com. There you can find links to the podcast if you want to listen to them directly from there. Also there's a link to the Learn Every Day English YouTube channel where you can find very interesting and engaging videos that will help you improve and master the English language. Well I think that's enough for now. Let's jump right in to today's episode. Well today in episode 19 we're going to be doing something a little bit different. I'm going to be talking about a subject which is Big Bend National Park. And this can help you practice your listening comprehension skills. We're not going to be going over grammar or anything like that. So just sit back, listen and enjoy and hopefully you'll learn something new about a very popular park located in the state of Texas. So Big Bend National Park is an American National Park located in West Texas on the border with Mexico. It has national significance as the largest protected area of Chihuahua Desert topography and ecology in the United States. So included in Big Bend National Park is the part of the Chihuahua Desert and Chihuahua is a state in Mexico. So it's kind of a desert environment. The park was named after a large bend in the Rio Grande River which forms the border between US and Mexico. That's kind of how it got its name because there is a river called the Rio Grande which forms a border between US and Mexico and runs through the park on the southern border. The park protects more than 1,200 species of plants, more than 450 species of birds, 56 species of reptiles, and 75 species of mammals. So there's a lot of wildlife and plants located in the park. The Chisos Mountains are located in the park as well. This is a mountain range in the United States and it's interesting as it is the only mountain range in the United States to be fully contained within the boundary of a national park. And in the park you can find features like sea fossils and dinosaur bones. Interesting, wouldn't you say? The park is huge or very large and it compasses an area of over 800,000 acres or 1,252 square miles. And for more than 1,000 miles the Rio Grande River just forms a boundary between Mexico and the United States so it runs from more than just along the Texas border. But along the Texas border the Rio Grande runs through Big Bend National Park for about 118 miles or 190 kilometers. It's interesting too that the climate in Big Bend National Park is hot and semi-arid and arid is just another word for like dry. And the park has a dramatic contrast or extreme in climate and can be dry and hot in the late spring and summer with temperatures often exceeding or more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And that equates to 38 degrees Celsius in the lower elevations. And in the winter time the weather is normally mild but sub-freezing temperatures can occur. So this park is interesting also and that you can see mountain ranges, you can see desert areas and you can also see river areas. And the highest point in the park is called Emery Peak in the Chisos Mountains and has an elevation of 7,832 feet or 2,387 meters. And the lowest point in the park with an altitude of 1,800 feet occurs in the desert area. So maybe one question you're asking is how was the park established? Well in the 1930s many people who loved the Big Bend country saw that it was a land of unique contrast and beauty and they wanted to preserve it for future generations for their children and their grandchildren. So in 1933 the Texas legislature, which is like the government of Texas, passed legislation or like laws or rules to establish what is called the Texas Canyon State Park so it was originally or initially a state park. And later that year the park was renamed and called Big Bend State Park but in 1935 the U.S. State Congress, kind of the national government, passed legislation that would enable the acquisition of the land, acquisition means to acquire something so they purchased or received the land for a national park. So the state of Texas gave the land that it had acquired to the federal government and on June 12, 1944 Big Bend National Park became a reality. And the first visitors visited the park on July 1, 1944 so the park has been around for quite a while, we say in English, quite a while means for a long time or a fairly long time. It's interesting too what you can see and find in the park so there are a lot of plants. If you've ever been in the desert you know what a cactus is, it's a plant that has a lot of thorns we call it in English and the plural of cactus is cacti so they are a lot of cacti and different species of cacti in the desert. There's a prickly pear cactus and in the spring wildflowers are in full bloom or the flowers are open and the yucka flowers display bright colors. Also it's interesting that blue bonnets are prevalent in the park and prevalent is another word which means like in abundance or there's just a lot of something. In the blue bonnets are the national flowers of the state of Texas so there are a lot of blue bonnets that you can find in Big Bend National Park. And other flowering plants include marigolds, desert willow, aquatillo, rock nettle and agave. Also besides plants there are a lot of animals that you can see or find in the desert but most of the animals are not visible in the day or they do not come out in the daytime particularly in the desert areas but at night the park comes alive with many of the animals we say foraging for food or kind of looking around to find food that's what foraging means. About 150 cougars sightings are reported every year despite the fact that only two dozen cougars live in the park. In another word for cougar or you might have this same type of animal in other parts of the world it might be known as a puma or a jaguar but in the US we call them cougars. So they don't have very many cougars only about two dozen. There are other species of animals in the park that include coyotes, kangaroo rats, greater roadrunners which is a type of bird, golden eagles, gray foxes, collared peckery which is a type of you could say a pig and black tailed jack rabbits. So black bears are also present in certain areas of the park and interestingly enough there was a plan to reintroduce the Mexican wolf to big bin national park but that was rejected in the late 1980s by the state of Texas because they didn't want the Mexican wolf to be placed or introduced into the park. And the reason for this was they were worried that there was not enough, we say prey animals, PREY, prey animals such as deer and havelinas and havelinas type of pig that would sustain the wolf population or that means there was not enough animals that the wolves could hunt and eat and sustain their life or lifestyle or sustain the wolf population. So they decided against introducing or placing the Mexican wolf in big bin national park. Also there are a lot of birds in the park and it is a place that a lot of birders go to see birds and we say birders are people that travel around or like to watch and take pictures of birds use binoculars to look at birds because there are more than 450 species of birds that have been recorded at big bin national park. There are eight basic land covers and land covers is like plants that cover the land we call those types of things land cover and in order of predominance or how dominant they are or common they are they are desert shrubs say they're grasslands and limestone grasslands. There's other types of vegetation there's wooded land woodlands we call it bear ground or open ground developed areas and also surface water so this provides a habitat for birds to live and to thrive to thrive means like to live very well to produce very well. Birds flock to the park and again birders are just people that like to look at and watch birds to flock to somewhere means to go in large groups and also a flock is another word for a group of birds so we can say look at that flock of birds. So birders or which are people that like to watch birds they flock to the park or they go to the park in large numbers as it is home to the only area in the United States where the breeding of the Kolyma warbler happens and the Kolyma warbler that's the name of the bird it's a type of bird called a warbler and it's specifically called the Kolyma warbler arrives in the Chisos Mountains in mid-April to summer in the high canyons of the mountains. Well by mid September or middle of September the Kolyma warbler returns to its wintering grounds that means wintering grounds is a place where it spins its time in the winter which is in Southwestern Mexico or Mexico as we may say here in South Texas. In this species the Kolyma warbler is a ground nester and a nest is the place where the bird lives it builds a nest. A ground nester means that it builds its nest on the ground and it prefers the oak maple habitat found in boot canyon and similar high cool areas in the park. And oak and maple are different types of trees that are found in Big Bend National Park. The first U.S. record of the northern tufted fly catcher which is another type of bird. A central American species was from this site in November 1991 so you can see a lot of birds migrate which means they move from one area to another one part of the world to another. So in the spring a lot of birds from South America, Central America, Mexico fly in and move north into North America and into Big Bend National Park. The next thing I'm going to talk about is tourism and this is a very common and big thing for Big Bend National Park. As Big Bend is one of the largest but also one of the most remote and one of the least visited national parks in the United States. So although it is very big we say it is remote that means it is far away from populated areas. It may be a little bit more difficult to get to, you have to drive a little further. And it is one of the least visited national parks that means not as many people travel to go to and visit this park. So for example in the 10 year period from 2009 to 2019 an average of about 380,000 visitors entered the park every year. So 380,000 people visited the park annually and just for comparison purposes you might have heard of two very well known national parks here in the United States. One is called Yellowstone National Park and the other is Grand Canyon National Park and Yellowstone gets about 4 million visitors a year and the Grand Canyon gets about 6 million visitors a year. So you can see that Big Bend National Park receives much less people or visitors per year than these other popular parks. But Big Bend's primary attraction is actually its hiking and backpacking trails so people go there to walk around to hike and to backpack and also to camp because it is kind of very rural and very rugged we say mountainous. Other notable locations in the park include Santa Elena Canyon. There is another attraction called Great Fine Hills and Meal Ears which are two rock towers in the middle of the desert. And you can also have professional backpacking guides take you around on tours in the park. And as I said before the park administers or has control over 118 miles of the Rio Grande River which runs through the park which can be used for recreational use or recreational purposes and professional guides provide tours of the river. You can take a personal boat which means a boat of your own down the river and float down the river like move with the water with the current current but you need to have a float permit which is required. So in June 2009 the US Department of Homeland Security began treating all float trips or if you take your boat down the river and they said hey well you're actually leaving the country because the river is a dividing point between the United States and Mexico. So you're actually leaving the United States and maybe at times entering into the country of Mexico so you needed to have a special type of identification such as a passport to actually reenter the park. And it's interesting as well visitors often cross the Rio Grande at a certain point in the park and they take a rowboat across the river into the Mexican village of Boquies. The Department of Homeland Security closed this specific border crossing in 2002 due to increased security threats or problems following the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. But in April 2013 the Boquies crossing reopened as an official class B port of entry between the US and Mexico but right now during the pandemic this crossing into Boquies is closed at the moment. And the last thing I want to mention is very kind of interesting about Big Bend National Park. It is considered an international dark sky park. That means the skies at night are very very dark. There is very little what we call light pollution. So in 2012 the park was designated an international dark sky park by the international dark sky association. And this association also recognized the park with the with its gold tear or tears another word for level designation as free from all but the most minor impacts of light pollution. So measurements made by the National Park Service which oversees all of the National Park show that Big Bend has the darkest skies in the contiguous US. That means like we call it the lower 48 the continental US which doesn't include Hawaii or Alaska. But it's interesting that Big Bend has the darkest skies in all of the United States and you can see thousands of stars bright planets and the Milky Way and these are visible on clear nights. So a lot of astronomers or astrophotographers go to look at the stars and take pictures of the stars. And I'll close by saying this my wife and I recently made a trip to Big Bend National Park. We had to take my mother and law back to El Paso, Texas. And on the way back home here we stopped and spent two nights in a small town called Marathon, Texas which is really the closest small town to get to Big Bend. We spent the night Wednesday night, got up Thursday morning and we drove roughly about one hour from Marathon to get to the entrance of Big Bend National Park. We spent the whole day Thursday just driving around and walking around the west side of the park. So we didn't even get to see the whole park at all so we plan on going back. And I do have some pictures, I took a lot of pictures of the park. And I'll leave a link of that in the description on the podcast if you'd like to see what Big Bend looks like. Or you can do that yourself, go to Google, Google it and type in Big Bend National Park. Well, that's it for now. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Learn Everyday English Podcast. It's a little bit different format from what you're used to. But this is a good way to practice your listening comprehension skills. And if you go to the website, look up under podcast resources and you can download a transcript and the notes of the program. So you can follow along with me, look up words that you didn't know. That's a good way to practice your English to listen and also follow along with the transcript or program notes. Well, again, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Learn Everyday English Podcast. I'd love to hear from you in what you thought of this episode. Hey, if you have any questions for me or if you have any suggestions for specific topics, you would like me to discuss on this program. Just go to the Learn Everyday English homepage and at the bottom there will be a contact form. Just fill that out, send me a message, drop me a line. And I can read your comments and get back to you. Well, that's it for now listeners. Hope you have a good week and be sure to check out our upcoming episodes. Hey, thanks for listening and goodbye.