Mr. LeTourneau is a machinist and metal fabricator in Longview, but has also been active in hunting, fishing, camping, and protecting forestlands and free-flowing streams in east Texas. He has worked particularly hard on opposition to the Little Cypress Reservoir and the Waters Bluff / Belzora Landing Reservoirs, and in seeking more environmentally sensitive and financially prudent alternatives to reservoir construction through participation in the Senate Bill 1 Northeast Texas Regional Water Planning Group, by serving on the board of the Texas Conservation Alliance, (formerly, the Texas Comittee for Natural Resources and via founding and leading a new non-profit group, Friends of the Sabine.
Region: Piney Woods
John Bryant
The Honorable John Bryant has served in both the Texas and the United States House of Representatives, as a Democrat representing constituents in Dallas. Throughout, he was known as a staunch environmentalist, with consistently high ratings from the League of Conservation Voters and particular strength in forest protection efforts, as in his sponsorship of the Forest Biodiversity Act and his leadership in getting more than 34,000 acres in East Texas designated as wilderness. Mr. Bryant is now retired from Congress and works as an attorney on toxic tort claims and other cases.
Fred Dahmer
Mr. Dahmer worked in electronics for many years, selling, building, and repairing equipment, particularly sound gear. However, throughout his life he also had a strong interest in Lake Caddo, the 36,000-acre lake and bald cypress swamp in northeast Texas formed by the Big Cypress River. Formed by a 100-mile log raft that sometimes reached 25 feet high, Lake Caddo is unique as the only natural lake in Texas (all the others have been formed in recent years by man-made dams). It is also noted for its many fish species (71 at last count), and diverse bird population (over 300 endemic or migrant species are known). As well, the Lake is known for its colorful history of steamboat traffic, fishing, pearling, offshore oil drilling, and hunting history. For all these aspects, Mr. Dahmer was an authority for collecting and recounting these facts and tales (many of which are in his book, Caddo Was..). Further, he had been active for many years in trying to show the value and need to protect the Lake from dubious proposals to channelize, dam and otherwise develop Caddo. Mr. Dahmer and his wife, Loucille, are remembered in the Nature Conservancy’s gift and dedication of the 1000-acre Fred and Loucille Dahmer Caddo Lake Preserve.
Richard Donovan
Mr. Donovan worked in the timber and real estate industry, and, as time has passed, volunteered more and more of his time to preserve the habitat and way of life that he knew growing up in Zavalla and other parts of east Texas. He became concerned about the damming of rivers, conversion of forests to plantations, and fragmentation of habitat in east Texas. In later years, his chief focus was on securing protection for the free-flowing reaches of the Neches River, which are threatened by impoundment at Fastrill and Rockland Reservoirs. Towards that goal, he twice boated extended lengths of the Neches, writing about the effort in “Paddling the Wild Neches”, and promoting his concerns through work with the non-profits, Friends of the Neches and the Texas Conservation Alliance, and in visits with print and electronic media. In 2006, these efforts paid off in creation of the 25,000-acre Neches River National Wildlife Refuge by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, with supporting land acquisition work by the Conservation Fund.
Col. John Echols
Colonel Echols grew up in Marshall and returned after retirement from the Air Force to live in Uncertain, Texas, on the shores of Caddo Lake. There he worked for Parks and Wildlife at Caddo Lake State Park as a ranger, ran the Longs Camp Fishing Camp, and grew active in efforts to protect Caddo Lake through a group that he and friends formed, called the Greater Caddo Lake Association. Mr. Echols and the Association were involved in controlling damaging flood releases from the Lake O’ the Pines dam, in blocking permits for effluent from a paper mill and sewage treatment plant, opposing construction of the Little Cypress Reservoir, challenging proposals by Shreveport to pump water from Caddo Lake, stopping efforts by the Corps of Engineers to dredge a channel through the Lake, and in spearheading other efforts to protect Caddo.
Carl Frentress
Mr. Frentress grew up in an old Texas family with farming traditions, earned a BS in Wildlife Science from Texas A&M University, and worked as a wildlife biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife beginning in 1972, serving as one of the first nongame staff in the department. He is noted for his pioneering work on aerial photo interpretation and use, his expertise in bottomland hardwoods systems, his knowledge about waterfowl, and his contributions to developing the wildlife management valuation as an option under the agricultural tax exemption. This last effort, often known as the “wildlife exemption”, allows landowners to use rural lands based on financial returns rather than tax consequences; the hope is that marginal ranching and farming operations will be discontinued, and those lands returned to wildlife use.
Phyllis Glazer
Ms. Glazer ran a ranch in Winona, located some 2 hours east of Dallas. She became concerned about public health dangers from a hazardous waste recycling, blending and injection facility that had been constructed in 1981 near this low-income, African-American community, and decided to start MOSES, Mothers Organized to Stop Environmental Sins, in 1992. Following many complaints against the waste operation regarding releases, spills, upsets, fires and strong odors by the Winona community and MOSES, the facility was successfully shut down in the late 1990s.However, the experience left Ms. Glazer with a strong sense of the injustice and indifference that often mark government and industry in their dealings with poor and minority communities. She has carried on MOSES’ efforts to educate other disadvantaged communities, and to seek reforms in the state environmental agency, TCEQ, to make it more responsive and accountable.
Buddy Hollis
Mr. Hollis retired from operating a chemical plant to return to Newton County, a part of the historic Big Thicket of east Texas, home to river bottoms, swamps, baygalls, sandylands, pines and mixed forests. There, he worked as a nature guide in the backcountry and interpreted the local flora and fauna to visitors at Village Creek and Martin Dies State Parks. He was also active in promoting ecotourism, through volunteering with the Newton Chamber of Commerce’s Wild Azalea days, sponsorship of the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail’s Upper Texas Coast Map, publication of the “Birds of Newton County Checklist”, organization of the Deep East Texas Nature Club, and proposal of an Eco-Tourism Strategic Plan for the region.
Jim Neal
Mr. Neal is a biologist based in Nacogdoches who has worked on Texas bottomland hardwood protection and acquisition for the Texas Nature Conservancy, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Texas Parks and Wildlife. While these bottomland hardwoods are critical as a refuge for neotropical songbirds, waterfowl, and larger animals, such as deer and black bear, less than 30% of the original stock of these hardwoods remains in Texas, a victim of logging, reservoir inundation, rangeland and farmland conversion, and housing development.
Ned Fritz
For many years, Mr. Fritz carried on a full private practice as a consumer credit attorney, while also managing to participate in a variety of Texas conservation efforts. For example, he helped build several of the key environmental groups in the Texas, from local groups such as the Dallas Audubon Society, to statewide organizations such as the Texas Land Conservancy (formerly the Natural Area Preservation Association), the Texas Conservation Alliance (once called the Texas Committee on Natural Resources), and the Texas chapter of the Nature Conservancy, in addition to national groups like the Forest Reform Network. Throughout, Mr. Fritz was also active as an environmental attorney: he filed the first lawsuit under the National Environmental Policy Act, and was diligent in using the Endangered Species Act and National Forest Management Reform Act as tools to protect the Texas National Forests from clearcutting. Finally, he was one of the key citizen activists who have been responsible for the acquisition of the Big Thicket National Preserve.