Mr. Smith is a freshwater ecologist, and works as the Director of Water and Science for the Nature Conservancy in Texas. He serves as the Conservancy’s Texas lead on the Sustainable Rivers Program, a partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers modifying dam operations to improve downstream ecosystems. He also represents the Conservancy in the Texas Living Waters project, a collaboration with other conservation groups, including the National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club, Hill Country Alliance, and the Galveston Bay Foundation, to ensure that the state has the water needed for thriving communities and healthy fish and wildlife.
Region: Piney Woods
Robert McCurdy
Mr. McCurdy is a landowner, angler, hunter, and friend of the Nature Conservancy in Texas. He has been involved in a number of conservation efforts over the years, including donation of land on Caddo Lake in Northeast Texas, and helping protect the Canon and Oasis Ranches, near Independence Creek in the Trans Pecos. A staunch supporter of clean waters, he opened the Austin Angler, the first fly-fishing shop in Texas, and also headed the Clear Clean Colorado River Association, an NGO fighting to improve Austin’s wastewater discharges.
David Bezanson
Mr. Bezanson is the Land Protection Strategy Director at the Nature Conservancy in Texas. He previously served as Executive Director of the Texas Land Conservancy (earlier known as the Natural Area Preservation Association), and worked at the Texas General Land Office.
Karen Hadden
Ms Hadden has served as the executive director of the SEED [Sustainable Energy and Economic Development] Coalition since 2000. Her work has focused on the intersection of energy and environmental concerns, and has included efforts to block coal plants, to reduce mercury emissions from power facilities, to warn the public about mercury-laden fish consumption, to organize opposition to the re-licensing of the Comanche Peak and South Texas nuclear power plants, to support construction of solar panel arrays, to improve energy efficiency and conservation in affordable housing, and to fight misguided proposals to transport and dispose radioactive waste. From 1980 to 1999, before beginning her work as an advocate at the SEED Coalition, she taught science to middle and high school students, leading courses in physics, biology, astronomy, anatomy, physiology and chemistry, sponsoring science clubs and fairs, and organizing field trips.
Shannon Davies
Dr. Davies holds a PhD in American Civilization from the University of Texas at Austin, and has had a career in editing and publishing books and journals, many of them about natural resource and conservation topics. She served as the Director of Texas A&M University Press, where she earlier worked as Editor-in-Chief and as the Merrick Editor for the Natural Environment. Prior to working at Texas A&M, she served as Founding Editor and Publisher of Texas Birds, a publication of the Texas Ornithological Society, as well as the Science Editor and Editorial Fellow for the University of Texas Press. In those capacities, she has worked with a number of funders and dozens of authors to bring scores of books and articles about the natural world to the public. The works have touched on a variety of conservation subjects, including water, wildlife, energy, public lands, forests, agriculture, and environmental history. She has also helped support writers through her service on the boards of two residencies for artists: the Madrono Ranch: A Center for Writing, Art, and the Environment, and the Thinking like a Mountain Foundation.
Bill Carr
Mr. Carr is a noted field botanist who has worked on plant inventories, surveys and protection efforts for Texas Parks and Wildlife (Natural Heritage Program), the Nature Conservancy of Texas, and his own firm, Acme Botanical Services. He has collected more than 37,000 plant specimens, with more than 15,000 catalogued at the herbarium at the University of Texas at Austin, to improve the understanding of plant distributions across the Southwest. As well, he was a co-author, with Jackie Poole, Jason Singhurst, and Dana Price on the reference volume, Rare Plants of Texas (Texas A&M University Press 2007), and has made contributions to a number of journals, including Lundelia, Sida, and the Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas.
Lynn Lowrey
Mr. Lowrey was a noted plantsman long based in Houston, credited with introducing native plants to commercial horticulture, and to the landscapes surrounding Texas homes, institutional and business buildings. At this point, we do not have any direct recordings or writings of Mr. Lowrey. The history of Mr. Lowrey draws heavily on the reminiscences of his fellow plant collectors, propagators, gardeners, and many friends and admirers. Please see the video below for a compilation of their thoughts.
David Creech
David Creech is a plant explorer and collector, a professor of horticulture at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, and director of its Mast Arboretum, which has diverse collections of forest, bog, and desert plants.
Here he discusses his memories of the life, career and influence of the Houston-based nurseryman and plant explorer, Lynn Lowrey.
John Henry Faulk
Well known as a folklorist, as a radio and TV personality of great wit, and as a courageous fighter against the blackmailing and blackballing of the Red Scare, John Henry Faulk also had a strong interest in environmental protection. In his hometown of Austin, he spoke out against the construction and channelizing in and along Barton Creek, and other sensitive areas. He also was a noted opponent of the efforts in the 1960s and 1970s to overpump the Ogallala Aquifer of the Panhandle, to move water from east Texas to west Texas in a system of canals and pipelines, and particularly, to dredge the Trinity River as a barge canal to Dallas. He cited similarities to the Red Scare, in the hyperbole and name-calling that was thrown against environmentalists who questioned these projects.
Dan Lay
Mr. Lay was a wildlife biologist who lived in Nacogdoches. One of the first graduates of the Wildlife Management School at Texas A&M, and among the first professional biologists hired by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, he saw remarkable changes in the understanding and protection of wildlife in the state. While his career was mostly spent at the Parks and Wildlife Department (including stints as Wildlife Restoration director, statewide coordinator for mitigation, and regional director of TPWD offices in Beaumont and Lufkin), he also worked for the General Land Office in developing a Coastal Management program. In more recent years, he also worked as a wildlife biology consultant, private forestland manager, and author (he wrote over 50 journal articles, and co-wrote the award-winning book, the Land of Bears and Honey, with Dr. Joe Truett).