Bike the Bahia Grande, a Fantastic Reclamation Project

Friends of Laguna Atascosa NWR organized a bicycle ride from a gate on Highway 48 to the gate at Highway 100 and back, about a 14.5-mile round-trip. Fifteen people registered for the ride plus a few on a waiting list. The ride was to begin at 8:00 am on Saturday, September 30, 2023.

The 10,000-acre Bahia Grande Unit of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge is situated just west of Port Isabel and includes land and water from Highway 48 to Highway 100. Friends of Laguna Atascosa NWR organize bike rides at Bahia Grande. Bahia Grande is closed to the public except for events such as Bike the Bahia and for hunts.

Bahia Grande is the largest wetlands restoration project in Texas. The tidal basin known as Bahia Grande had dried up when the natural tidal flow stopped because of the construction of the Brownsville Ship Channel in the 1930s. When the tidal flow was cut off, the area dried. The prevailing winds blew sand and dust from the dry, barren land. The blowing sand and dust created a nuisance and changed the topography of Bahia Grande.

In 2005, a channel was cut from the Ship Channel to Bahia Grande, and in 2007 a second channel was cut. With the tidal flow restored, the wetlands began to recover. Many agencies collaborated to restore Bahia Grande. Today the area is habitat for many birds (including the aplomado falcon), fish and other water-borne organisms, and mammals such as white-tailed deer, coyotes, bobcats, and the invasive species, Nilgai Antelope.

I arrived at 6:15 and let myself in. I rode my Surly bike in the dark until sunrise and then returned to the gate where one of the participants waited. I opened the gate and soon a few others arrived. At 8:00, only four had arrived. I suggested we ride a one-mile-long trail west to the shore of Bahia Grande. We would see if any others arrived when we returned from the short ride.

Of the four riders, three had ebikes. The other and I rode regular bikes. We bounced along the sandy dirt road between thornscrub and mesquite to a point overlooking the water.

I had already been there a half hour earlier when, as I looked at the full moon over the water, the rising sun to my back, at least 100 brown pelicans in a wavering line flew overhead. The tip of the line was a slight V, and it looked more like a check mark than a V-shaped formation.

We took a group photo and returned to the parking area near the gate. There another person waited to get in. The group rode north along a good caliche road two miles to a bridge. We stopped to watch three white-tailed deer in the water beside the road.

At the bridge we stopped to enjoy the area  beside a lake, Vadia Ancha, and the birds and the red fish churning up the water chasing mullets near the bridge.

We rode another mile with water on one side and rolling land dotted with yucca on the other. We went to the second bridge where we watched long snook feeding turning near the surface of the water, showing their side stripes before they dropped to deeper water. We watched many birds there: herons and egrets, stilts, plovers, avocets, white pelicans and more.

The second bridge is almost halfway to the northern boundary of Bahia Grande at State Highway 100. We rode the winding caliche beside Laguna Larga and  across brushy coastal prairie, where nilgai antelopes distanced themselves from us.

At Highway 100 we turned and rode back south, the same way we had come. The total round-trip from gate to gate is about 14.5 miles.

To be continued…