This article is featured in the Spring 2025 issue of Texas LAND magazine. Click here to find out more.
In Texas, landowners comprise just one percent of the state’s population, yet their hands-on stewardship provides ecological benefits including wildlife habitat, clean air and water that benefit everyone who lives here. With so few people caring for wild and working lands, there is a growing disconnect between the natural world and most of the 30 million people who call Texas home.
For more than 30 years, Texas Brigades has been helping to bridge that gap by striving to “develop conservation leaders in every community.” The non-profit organization accomplishes this through several programs. Its most popular offerings are 10 intensive conservation leadership summer camps—nine in Texas and one in North Dakota. The camps are held in June and July.
The camps use the habitat needs of different focus species, ranging from white-tailed deer, bobwhite quail and waterfowl to cattle and saltwater fish, to instill the principles of natural resources management and stewardship in youth ages 13-17. The five-day immersive, hands-on experiences are taught by leading conservation professionals from agencies and universities as well as respected private practitioners.
The camps host between 24 and 30 students, and the ratio of adult instructors to students is almost 2:1. The experience is intimate by design, so real connections and networks are built easily.
The curriculum, designed so each activity prepares students for the next, is a balanced mix of classroom lecture, hands-on field work, communications training, friendly competition, team building and leadership exercises. Planned activities start before daylight and generally end around 11 p.m.
When students return home, they are challenged to keep learning and spreading the conservation message in their hometowns by speaking, putting up scientific posters and conducting media interviews as well completing hands-on land-based activities. To incentivize them, the students can complete activity books and submit them the following spring to earn a chance to be a peer mentor and scholarships for college or trade schools.
Knowing that applications for this year’s summer camps are open through March 15, I sat down with Texas Brigades Board President Jeff Petter and Texas Brigades Program Manager Elizabeth Palarski to discuss the life-changing program. Both Petter, 44, and Palarski, 25, participated in the program when they were teens.
1. What is the essence of Texas Brigades?
EP: Texas Brigades was founded in 1993 by Dr. Dale Rollins with the launch of a single summer camp, the Bobwhite Brigade. The summer camp program, targeted to students 13-17, is our most popular, but we also have W.I.L.D., a one-year conservation leadership program for college-age students and Brigades Experiences, which are one-day programs for students aged 9-17.
At their core, all these programs exist to create conservation leaders in every community. To do that we give students knowledge in land, wildlife, fisheries and livestock and pair that with leadership and communication skills to empower them to go back into their communities and spread the conservation message.
We are an intensive leadership program that uses animals to deliver important information in a fun and engaging way. We host 10 total camps: two Buckskin Brigades focusing on white-tailed deer, two Bobwhite Brigades focusing on bobwhite quail, two Waterfowl Brigades (one of which is debuting this year in North Dakota) focusing on waterfowl, one Bass Brigade focusing on freshwater fisheries, one Coastal Brigade focused on saltwater fisheries and two Ranch Brigades focusing on cattle and land stewardship.
2. What sets Texas Brigades apart from all the other camp and leadership experiences out there?
EP: From my perspective, it’s the connections. To this day, one of my best friends is a person who was in my covey (small group) at Bobwhite Brigade when I was 13.
And you make so many amazing mentor connections as well. When it came time for me to go to college and I needed letters of recommendation and introductions, my Brigades adult network was ready to do whatever I needed done. The same thing happened as I started looking for jobs. The community that exists around Brigades is incredible.
On top of that, Brigades pushes students to go beyond their comfort zones and grow. As a 13-year-old girl, I didn’t recognize how valuable that was—and is. These experiences are intense and rigorous, but it inspires and allows to students to do things they might never try and accomplish in their everyday lives. A lot of growth and confidence happens when we discover that we can survive being uncomfortable—and if we do it enough, meeting challenges gets to be normal and comfortable.
JP: Plus, we have high expectations at Brigades. Unlike a lot of the rest of the world currently, we don’t lower the bar. Our experience has taught us that people rise—or fall—to expectations. We help young people rise by equipping them with the skills they need to achieve goals at camp and in life.
Of course, it’s one thing to have high expectations. It’s a completely different thing to have high expectations and then create a safe space filled with experienced, enthusiastic adult volunteers who donate a lot of time and energy just to see young people soar. We specialize in helping young people find their wings—and use them.
3. Knowing that each camp is unique within the shared program model, describe a typical day at a Texas Brigades camp.
EP: Each camp is different, but they all operate under a shared program model where every minute is accounted for, and the students are busy. Generally, everyone is up at sunrise or before and most days start with the small groups marching to cadences. While marching may sound like a strange choice, it builds teamwork in a way that not many things can.
To understand the model and the experience, it helps to know our motto: “Tell me, and I forget. Show me, and I remember. Involve me, and I understand.”
The days are built around hands-on activities that reinforce everything the students are learning in the classroom. For instance, if there’s a session on plant phenology or plant identification, it’ll be followed up with field work such as making a plant collection. As another example, we teach students to understand the animal species inside and out by having experts do necropsies, which are essentially dissections. Students put their hands on things all day long.
In between, there are competitions, leadership activities, journaling, photography, public speaking and projects like creating scientific posters or PowerPoints.
I tell parents and students that there is something for everyone, and if you don’t like one activity just wait 30 minutes because you’ll be up to your elbows in something different.
JP: Frankly, camp is a misnomer for what Brigades offers, it’s more like a college mini-mester rolled into a fun internship. I prefer to call them life experiences.
Every day is pretty much the same. It’s a lot of pulses of high energy throughout the day that are followed by lower the energy pulses for classroom sessions or workshops, and then it’s another pulse of high energy.
There’s a method to the madness. First, these energy pulses keep everyone engaged. At South Texas Ranch Brigade, where I volunteer, we have ranch competitions. We’ll go out and practice roping, fence building, goat sorting and ranch chores which gets the students’ blood pumping, works up a sweat, releases the fidgets and clears everyone’s brains. When we come back into the classroom for a lecture, they’re ready to be still, focus and listen.
Plus, keeping teenagers busy and tired means they don’t get into trouble. When it’s time for lights out at midnight, they’re ready to be in bed sleeping.
4. How do people apply?
Texasbrigades.org/applications and fill out an application. Select your top three choices for camps. Camps are open to students ages 13–17. While most of our participants are from Texas, students do not have to be a Texas resident—or in the case of our new North Dakota camp North Dakotans.
The cost is $500 per cadet. Tuition assistance is available, so don’t let the fee deter anyone from applying.
Applications are due March 15, 2025. People will be notified of camp placement by April 15, 2025, for the camps which are held in June and July.
Adults, preferably over 21 years old, who are interested in volunteering to help with camp—and we need a lot of them—can find out more information and apply on the same website.
5. Why should parents and students invest five days in a Texas Brigades camp?
JP: If you lean into the experience, Texas Brigades will give you skills you never knew you needed and confidence like you can’t always imagine. Parents time after time have told me, “My kid is a different kid after camp.” Texas Brigades is a life experience that changes you for the better—for a lifetime.
For more information, check out the following online resource: