Two Val Verde County residents graduate as Texas game wardens

Two Val Verde County residents are now part of Texas’ next wave of wildlife and park law enforcement, a state staffing boost that reaches far beyond the Texas Capitol ceremony where they were commissioned. Noelly Mejia of Comstock and Michael Muniz of Del Rio graduated Friday as members of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s 68th game warden and state park police cadet class.

The class was sworn in after eight months of intensive training at the Texas Game Warden Training Center in Hamilton County. It included 24 new Texas Game Wardens and four Texas State Park Police officers, all now fully commissioned peace officers. Mejia will serve in Maverick County, while Muniz has been assigned to Denton County.

Governor Greg Abbott delivered the keynote address at the Capitol ceremony and called the graduates “guardians” of places that cannot speak for themselves. That role matters in Texas because game wardens and state park police enforce all state criminal laws and are responsible for the Penal Code, Transportation Code and Health and Safety Code, along with emergency response, partner-agency support and public education on conservation and safety.

For Val Verde County, the significance is less about immediate staffing at home than about the pipeline of local people entering a statewide force that patrols places like Lake Amistad and the Devils River corridor. Lake Amistad sits on the Rio Grande, about 12 miles northwest of Del Rio, while the Devils River State Natural Area covers more than 37,000 acres in the county. Those are the kinds of high-use recreation and conservation areas where enforcement, visitor management and rapid response often overlap, especially as lake traffic, hunting pressure and tourism pick up.

The graduation also shows how Texas continues to invest in a specialized public-safety workforce. TPWD says nearly 10 million visitors explore Texas State Parks each year, and the agency has been training officers in Hamilton County since the first cadet class there graduated in 2009. The academy’s roots go back to 1946 in College Station, when 14 students completed a four-month class before the program later moved to Austin and eventually to Hamilton County.

Compared with last year’s 67th class, which graduated 28 game wardens and five park police officers, the 68th class was slightly smaller overall. Even so, it adds new commissioned officers to a system that already includes more than 500 game wardens and 150 park police officers across Texas, a steady reinforcement for rural counties, border communities and state park lands alike.