About Texas Brigades

Texas Brigades provides a combination of educational programs, including its popular 5-day summer camps, its advanced Wildlife Intensive Leadership Development (W.I.L.D.) program and single-day programs, Texas Brigades Experiences.

Summer Camps

Texas Brigades hosts 8 leadership camps, founded on a variety of wildlife and natural resource principles. Camps offer 5 days of concentrated curriculum, ranging from the various breakdowns of wildlife habitat & land management principles, to leadership, public speaking, and team-building. All camps provide various participant resources and materials, all field & classroom curriculum needs, as well as lodging, meals, and safety needs. Target age range is 13-17 years. In 2020, Texas Brigades awarded over 35 college scholarships totaling over $40,000. Click to apply for a summer camp!

Wildlife Intensive Leadership Development (W.I.L.D.)

W.I.L.D. was created to further develop participants’ knowledge of wildlife and natural resource conservation. W.I.L.D. is an advanced program, engaging and exposing participants to natural resource policies and procedures, hands-on field research and data, career-building, and professionalism. Target age range is 18-23.

Experiences

These single-day programs allow Texas Brigades to engage more youth across the state, while opening up the target age range from 9-17, dependent on the curriculum. By partnering with volunteers and like-minded organizations, Experiences provide hands-on learning environments, which place youth outdoors, working to inspire their passion for Texas’ natural resources and the outdoors.

Dr. Dale Rollins, retired Extension Wildlife Specialist with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, developed the idea as a way to expand educational efforts by developing wildlife ambassadors.

Bobwhite Brigade, dba Texas Brigades started in 1993 as a single youth camp focused on the ecology of bobwhite quail.  In 28 years, it has expanded to include additional programming in pursuit of furthering wildlife and natural resource conservation education, strengthening leadership development, and reaching a more diverse background of Texas’ youth.

As the saying goes, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” To that end, the Texas Brigades Summer Camps model has been used to develop programs in five other states through collaborations with Quail Unlimited. Buckskin Brigade was used as the base model for Pennsylvania Bucktails. The Texas Chapter of The Wildlife Society models its own summer camp (initiated in 1996) after Texas Brigades.

Texas has lost 2.2 million acres of native landscapes due to population growth and urbanization. Home to seven of the 15 fastest growing cities in the U.S., Texas’ population has increased over 48% in the last decade alone. With this mass urbanization, less than 1% of Texans are landowners and there’s a diminished connection to nature for urban youth. The majority of landowners are aging, and over the next 20 years, Texas will undergo the largest intergenerational transfer of land in its history.

This profound demographic shift along with the diminished nature connection requires engaging and educating a new generation of conservation leaders to ensure the natural resources and native landscapes our economy depends on are protected. With a vision to create “conservation leaders in every community,” Texas Brigades provides a solution to ensure that land stewardship and conservation are a long-term priority, for urban and rural backgrounds alike.

Texas Brigades provides educational programming and leadership development for adolescents through three conservation-driven, statewide programs: Summer Camps, Experiences, and Wildlife Intensive Leadership Development (W.I.L.D). Through these programs, Texas Brigades molds over 300 youth leaders each year, with participants coming from over 1,000 communities across Texas. Participants leave with a connection to the land, informed and ready to make conservation a life-long passion.

Impacts