Welcome to Fermata Inc.

Replenished by the holiday respite, Fermata is about to hit the traces. Check our new travel calendar to learn where we will be next!

The Conservation Crossroads: The Eleven Percent Solution

For over 50 years the recreations of hunting and fishing have funded wildlife conservation efforts in this country. There is no question that this is true, and whether or not sportsmen have voluntarily contributed or have been forced through license sales and excise taxes is for practical purposes moot. MORE>

At Year's Beginning

Each of us is born with a discrete psychological space allocated to "the world." In our lifetime we will fill this space with whatever information and experiences we have at our disposal. If a person never leaves their home county, then that county becomes the world. The same is true for a person who never leaves their city, state, or country. Never leave the Texas Panhandle? Then the Texas Panhandle becomes your world. Whatever the physical or geographical limits of your personal exposure, those experiences will comprise your world reference. MORE>

The Closer Look

For over one hundred years birders throughout the U.S. (and now the New World) have celebrated Christmas by counting birds. The Christmas Bird Count (CBC), sponsored by the National Audubon Society, is the granddad of birding events. In 2003 (the 104^th consecutive year of CBCs), over 2000 counts were expected involving around 55,000 volunteers. And for the first time, birders organized a CBC in the northeastern corner of the Texas Panhandle. MORE>

Turkey Day in Trindad

Each of us celebrates a holiday in a different fashion. Rather than being enveloped by the traditional Thanksgiving turkey and trimmings, my family goes birding. When Thanksgiving approaches my parents, wife, and I evacuate Austin and wander off in search of birds. This past year Trinidad caught our eye. MORE>

News from our Friends

Bob Behrstock, resilient friend and intermittent Fermata field biologist, recently published a paper on the odonata of the Texas Panhandle. With coauthors John Abbott and Robert Larsen, our understanding of the dragonflies and damselflies of this little-studied region has been advanced by orders of magnitude. Congratulations to Bob and associates for this fantastic effort. Download the PDF

British Airways Tourism for Tomorrow Award

The Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail – conceived and developed by Fermata’s President, Ted Eubanks, and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Madge Lindsay (along with help from Linda Campbell and John Herron) – earned the British Airways Tourism for Tomorrow Award for 2001. The Trail was the only United States project selected among 28 recipients of the Highly Commended Awards.

Considered the most prestigious environmental tourism award in the world, the British Airways Tourism for Tomorrow Award recognizes only the best sustainable tourism initiatives. The Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail shone among 115 entries from countries ranging from Australia to India, Turkey, Poland and Nepal. Specifically, the Trail earned recognition under the category of "Protected Areas." more-->

Fermata and Great American Trails are founding sponsors of the Conservation Through Birding initiative. CTB is an affiliation devoted to promoting the recreation of birding as a tool to effect wildlife conservation. Please join us in supporting this important effort.

Our Approach

The disneyesque view of tourism, an industry circumscribed by a fabricated, fictitious set of enticements, is without a doubt an important economic component in the travel and tourism market as a whole. Yet experiential tourists are searching for the natural, historical, and cultural heart of a region, and their defining principle is authenticity. To this expanding segment of the travel and tourism market, what is real is what earns their time and investment. Their ambition is to be immersed in a rich natural, cultural, and historical experience.

Fermata Inc. has been established to assist governments, agencies, states, communities, organizations, and individuals in advantaging themselves of the natural, cultural, and historical resources that surround them. Experiential tourism is a marriage of economic development and conservation, where both, often seen as competing interests, are in fact inextricably linked. Every day Fermata assists clients and communities identify, understand, and use their natural, cultural, and historical resources while protecting them for future generations of people and businesses.

 Services

 About Fermata Inc.

Fermata Inc. offers over 30 years of business and personal expertise in the business of wildlife watching, conservation programming, and nature tourism development. For a detailed description of the services of the firm, and the philosophy that guides its efforts, click here. Fermata Inc. is owned and managed by founder Ted Lee Eubanks.

 Who YOU are!

As Fermata’s mailing list continues to expand, we thought that you might be interested is seeing just where our U.S. subscriber’s live. We now have over 1000 people who subscribe to our newsletter and gain access to the reports and presentations in our subscriber’s section. We sincerely thank all of you who support our efforts in this fashion, and we invite those of you who have yet to join our ranks to do so. To subscribe to Fermata, click here.

Newly formatted newsletters now available to all online

Our newly formatted newsletters are now being archived in a publicly accessible directory at Fermata. The newsletter is sent regularly to subscribers. Becoming a subscriber is free, and gives you access to our subscribers only area where previous newsletters are archived as well as reports and presentations that may not be available elsewhere. To become a subscriber, click here!

Become a Subscriber

Do you need more detailed information related to workshops and presentations that we have recently given? Would you like to read the entire reports related to a selection of our wildlife-viewing and nature-tourism surveys? Would you care to receive our quarterly newsletter that covers the most recent news in our field? Are you looking for a few of our slides that you viewed in a recent program? Then subscribe here to access these materials. Don't worry; we do not charge for the subscription, we do not solicit, and we do not reveal the names of our subscribers.

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	Fermata Inc. 3303 Louisiana St., Ste 260 Houston, Texas 77006 Phone: 713-523-3302 Fax: 713-523-3322 E-mail: info@fermatainc.com
Please report any problems with the site to webmaster@fermatainc.com Site design by Ghostwriters Communications Last Updated: June 20, 2004 All content ©1999 - 2004 Fermata Inc. All photos ©Ted Eubanks