Home

Long an exceptional fresh water fishery and a haven for ducks, wading birds and other wildlife, Lake Livingston is nearly 60 years old. It has lost much of its aquatic habitat and the water quality has declined. Once a destination for bass anglers, there has seen a precipitous decline in angling activity. Recreation on Lake Livingston is a major economic engine for numerous surrounding communities and the decline in the fishery has negatively affected local revenues.
Since 2013 and with start-up and continuing assistance from Friends of Reservoirs, Texas Parks & Wildlife the Trinity River Authority, the Hookers Fishing Club (Livingston, TX), and 5 local high school Ag programs, Friends of Lake Livingston is restoring habitat for fish and wildlife populations by adding aquatic and riparian plants to create feeding and breeding grounds and reducing erosion! Working with the local community to achieve these objectives is considered fundamental to the FoLL project. Additionally, the FoLL project has recently partnered with the Livingston, TX Hookers club who will be working with the FoLL project team to begin introducing hybrid bass into Lake Livingston.

The long-term goal of the project is to increase the abundance and diversity of native aquatic plant species and riparian habitat in and around Lake Livingston, TX, thereby improving littoral habitat conditions for the fish community and other aquatic life. Texas Parks & Wildlife has proposed that a successful restoration will need to cover 5% - (4,250 acres) of the lake and/or shoreline habitat. Additionally, through work with our volunteer high schools, we have discovered that a significant number of volunteering students do not know how to fish or if they do, rarely go. As such, we have started a new program called Angler Education, in collaboration with the Livingston “Hookers” fishing club and with "Fishing Futures" - Texas – Angler Education program. At our recent high school plantings, fishing instruction and actual Fishing has now been incorporated into the volunteer effort.

Beginning in 2014, a single plant species (American water willow) was introduced at numerous sites around Lake Livingston. Beginning in 2017, multi-species aquatic plant propagation was added providing expansion of establishing more aquatic habitat. Plants introduced included American Water Willow, Bulrush, American Pondweed , Hyssop, and Lilies. These have been underway now for over 6 years.

Since 2017, we have been applying RFHP principles including creating founder colonies that have been established in several locations. Founder colonies are now part of our planting process to provide initial protection against herbivory actions for all new sites. They have been wildly successful.

Volunteer propagation and plant introduction by the local community has been in place since the project started in 2013 and continues today. Our process at the 5 local high schools includes yearly ecology education, propagation of aquatic plant species on each high school campus and later introduction of their own plants at selected sites in Lake Livingston. Part of the instruction also includes Macro-Invertebrate monitoring at their planting sites as an indicator of water quality.

Additionally, we work with the Texas Dept. of Corrections (TDCJ) Ellis Unit-Lee College horticulture class which also includes ecology education outreach as well as plant propagation which supplements high school volunteer plant propagation. This prison unit is used as an initial plant propagation site after which plants are transferred to the high school groups for further growth. We continue to work with several other community groups including Master Gardeners (San Jacinto County), Texas Master Naturalists (Livingston, TX & Conroe, TX chapters), the Livingston, TX Hookers Club, Rotary Clubs, and the Livingston, TX Chamber of Commerce.

Over the course of spring 2024, we have hosted two “high school” plantings where participating high schools came to selected sites and constructed founder colonies with water willows and additional new aquatic plants. These sites have already shown positive expansion over the last few summer months. Unfortunately, due to significant flooding (lake up 9' above normal), planting was not possible so the kids "propagated existing water willow plants and took the new cuttings back to their respective high schools for futher growth in their propagation tanks.

Additionally, one of our participating community sponsors, Carolina Creek Christian Camp, called us again in early 2024 and requested we sponsor a conservation project for a visiting group, Camp Hope America – Ft. Worth. This Camp Hope Chapter works with kids exposed to domestic and sexual abuse over the course of 12 months. In early June 2023, we planted over 1,000 American Water Willows in the Carolina Creek area of Lake Livingston with the help of 90 middle school and high school kids from Camp Hope America. A very rewarding addition to our program this year. For 2024 all of the Camp Hope kids were hosted with fishing instruction and fishing via the Fishings Future - Texas program.

Site monitoring of all of our planted sites occurs every other year in collaboration with our TPWD (Texas Parks & Wildlife) sponsor. Our last survey of planted sites occurred in 2022 and showed some sites that were no longer present and some that were very successful in expansion. Additionally, all sites that used fencing and founder colony concepts (started in 2017) continue to be highly successful and are expanding dramatically despite several flooding events. ALL of our fenced founder colony sites have doubled in size and a few are scheduled for fencing removal later this summer.

Georgia Cube construction for artificial reef habitat began in 2019 (after viewing this at the FOR conference in Athens, Tx) as an additional effort by the high schools.

After last attendance at the Shelbyville FOR conference, we have now changed all artificial reef construction efforts to the Shelbyville Cube design and have set up production similar to the Corps of Engineers model.

In early 2024, Leggett High School built 3 Shelbyville cubes with materials supplied by Friends of Reservoir. With assistance from the Trinity River Authority, all 3 were placed into Lake Livingston by the students and had their GPS locations marked (later supplied to TPWD for thier Lake Livingston website).

As noted earlier, we have come to discover that a significant number of our high school students do not know how to fish or rarely fish. As such, we have partnered with the Livingston “Hookers” fishing club to provide fishing training at our high school plantings, which they executed at our two spring plantings for several high schools.

We have also partnered with the Fishings Futures (Texas) – Angler Education program to expand this effort further. Several of our volunteer leadership team have now been certified as “Angler Educators”. We have now organized a Angler Education course led by Fishings Futures for the whole Friends of Lake Livingston leadership team. Certification allows us to have access to fishing instruction materials, a trailer full of rods and reels with tackle, and a wealth of support material from how to tie fishing knots, to how to fish, to identifying fish types. This will now be a permanent addition to our high school plantings where each kid will get a chance to learn how to fish and then actually fish as part of the morning activities. At all 3 spring plantings in 2024, part of our student rotation involved "Fishing" and fishing instruction as led by our volunteer team.

Finally, we have formally formed a partnership with the Livingston, TX Hookers fishing club whereby they will lead an effort to privately fund and stock hybrid striped bass into Lake Livingston once permission is granted from TPWD. The Hookers Club has already aligned this project under the Friends of Lake Livingston 501c3 structure. As of June 2024, our partner, the Hookers Fishing Club - Livingston, has released 2,000,000 fry and 275,000 fingerling with an additional 50,000 fingerings about one week later.

Expected outcomes continue to include significant gains in establishing and accelerating aquatic habitat in both calm and more wave prone areas, improvement of water quality in near shore planted environments, improvement of macro-invertebrate activity in planted sites (water quality indicator), provide more cover for sport fishing habitat, better capture of sediments and reduction of shoreline erosion and subsequent lake sedimentation by riparian habitat restoration.

Addition of Shelbyville Cube artificial reef construction along with the newly acquired Mossback nearshore reef structures adds immediate habitat structure. This effort started in 2019 at our high school planting (construction by students) and was well received by Texas Parks & Wildlife, the Trinity River Authority and the local fishing community. GPS coordinates of ALL introduced reef habitats were placed on the TPWD website for Lake Livingston.
Over the course of the last several years, we have worked to strengthen our leadership team. We have brought in several new adult volunteers who have taken on new roles for organizing upcoming high school instruction, a new team lead for communication to take over our website and facebook updates for the project, and a new team lead for macro-invertebrate instruction. Currently, our leadership team consists 12 adult volunteers from various communities and counties around Lake Livingston. Through this leadership team, we continue to retain and improve institutional knowledge that can be carried forward.

Additionally, we continue to have a healthy and ongoing partnership with 5 participating high schools residing around Lake Livingston, the Lee College TDCJ Ellis Unit horticulture program, and numerous community groups including Master Naturalists, Master Gardeners, and local fishing groups. All this is supported by our professional sponsors; Texas Parks & Wildlife and the Trinity River Authority.

Finally, we are very excited about the addition of fishing instruction and actual fishing through thes Anglers Education – Fishings Future program to promote getting kids outdoors more and enjoying the benefits of the conservation projects they helped initiate.

Lake Livingston Management Plan -https://tpwd.texas.gov/publications/pwdpubs/media/lake_survey/pwd_rp_t3200_1326_2020.pdf

Crappie, White Bass, Black Bass, Stripers, Catfish, Alligator Gar

FoLL has built a broad outreach plan that includes:
• Updated website – friendsoflakelivington.com
• Active Facebook site updates
• Bi-annual community newsletter
• Posting of activity in local community newspapers
• Presentations on the FoLL project to the local “Hookers” fishing club and several community organizations including the Livingston Lions Club, 2 master naturalist chapters and The Woodlands Seniors club
• Yearly Ecology outreach to our 6 participating local high school agriculture programs
o Education on lake ecology, littoral habitat, lake conservation, horticulture, active plant propagation in supplied propagation tanks, invertebrate monitoring, riparian habitat restoration and water quality testing
o These programs were re-started in fall 2021, post pandemic, with permission from the high schools
• Yearly instruction of Texas Master Naturalist concepts at the Texas Dept. of Corrections Lee College horticulture program including lake ecology, plant propagation, and supplied propagation tanks