THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE • Winter 2018-19 23 TheCoastalBend.com fight against the Port of Corpus Christi’s plan to build a petrochemical ter- minal on Harbor Island. In what is called the most divided time in modern American history, consensus on numerous, very specific, environmental issues has been found among leaders on all points of the political spectrum—the preservation of Padre and Mustang Islands being the most notable, as well as the most significant to the long-term success of the Texas Coastal Bend. The power of good public relations should not be underestimated. Luckily for the Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle, highly committed and ef- fective propo- nents have worked thanklessly on its behalf for almost three decades, and p l e n t i f u l , positive media coverage has resulted in widespread sympathy for the plight of the species. Leaders like Dr. Donna Shaver at the Padre Island National Seashore, and the late Tony Amos at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas, were instrumental in bringing back a species on the brink of extinction. Their extraordinary efforts fos- tered a culture of protection for sea turtles so powerful that the sighting of a nesting female Kemp’s Ridley on Tony Amos Beach in Port Aransas sparks a coor- dinated response that includes fire and police units, citizen volunteers who stand on-call for such events, and of course biolo- gists and trained scientific profes- sionals dispatched from nearby marine institutes. This one, unique, seaside community, seemingly unlike those surrounding it, has rallied to the cause of protecting and preserving this one family of sea life in a way that is part of the town’s fabric. Despite political differences, tree huggers and Trump huggers work side-by-side in a shared effort to help save the future of sea turtles on the beaches of the Texas Coastal Bend. Once the threat of extinction was accepted as real, the effort to combat it was unified. It just took a snap to reality. Unacceptable Loss Before the highly publicized 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, or the explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon off the Louisiana coast, or the world’s big- gest crude oil disaster at the hands of Saddam Hus- sein in the first Iraq War—there was Ixtoc I. The ex- perimental offshore well owned by Pemex, the state oil company of Mexico, blew out in June of 1979 and spewed over three million barrels (130 million gal- The Plight of the Whooping Crane—One of only two crane species in North America, the other being the Sandhill Crane, the Whooping Crane came within 21 birds of extinction in 1941, the low point in its known population. Wood Buffalo National Park in Alberta prov- ince, Canada, was the birds’last remaining summer habitat and nesting range for a hun- dred years, until 2001, when pairs of Whoopers began nesting naturally at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin. The Texas Gulf Coast is the only known, consistent winter migration destination for Whooping Cranes, particularly at the Aran- sas National Wildlife Refuge north of Rockport, Sunset Lake in Portland, San Jose and Matagorda Islands, and Lamar Point.