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: Rio Grande Valley
Carter Smith
Carter Smith is a biologist who has had leadership roles in several conservation organizations in Texas, serving as Executive Director of Texas Parks and Wildlife, and prior to that Director of the Nature Conservancy in Texas and head of the Katy Prairie Conservancy. While at the Nature Conservancy, he was involved in work to protect portions of South Padre Island, the Lower Rio Grande Valley, Devils River, Mad Island, Barton Creek, Clymer Meadow, and the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone.
Jim Marston
Mr. Marston is an environmental attorney. He began his career in 1979 as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Texas, working in the Environmental Protection Division. Then, from 1980 through 1988, he was a partner in the private law firm of Doggett, Jacks, Marston and Perlmutter. In 1988, he opened the Environmental Defense Fund office in Texas, where he worked through 2020, focusing on climate, energy, air pollution, and a wide variety of other conservation efforts. At EDF, he was especially active in designing and arguing for the Texas Renewable Portfolio Standard, which helped drive a boom in wind and solar energy in the state. He also was a key player in the fight to stop the utility TXU from building a dozen coal plants in Texas. Outside of EDF, he has been an active volunteer with Pecan Street, a partnership among Austin Energy, UT, the Austin Chamber, and a number of high-tech companies to reform the U.S. electrical grid. Some of his other board roles include serving as the president of the Texas League of Conservation Voters, vice chair of the Texas Ethics Commission, chair of the board of the Texas Observer, and a trustee for Texas Watch, Texas Rural Legal Aid, Texas Citizens Action, and other groups. He has also been engaged outside of Texas, especially with promoting climate-related car legislation in California, and in improving greenhouse emission regulations nationwide.
David Lake
David Lake is a Texas native and registered architect whose career began in 1979 at the noted San Antonio firm of Ford Powell & Carson. It was there that he met Ted Flato, and they went on to co-found the design partnership Lake/Flato in 1984. In the years since, Lake/Flato has garnered national recognition for their sustainable building practices, earning more AIA Committee on the Environment Top Ten Green Projects than any firm in the world. Their designs are known for their close integration with the surrounding landscape, prevailing breeze and solar exposure, their use of local materials and craft, and their respect for vernacular designs.
Some of their structures, such as the Prow Residence in the Davis Mountains, are entirely off-grid, providing their own water and energy. The Dixon Water Foundation Josey Pavilion, an education center designed to teach visitors about resource conservation and watershed protection, was the first Living Building Challenge certified project in Texas. Other designs have explored the savings available through prefabrication, such as the firm’s modular Porch House series.
Mr. Lake’s recent focus has been on district making and revitalizing the urban core. An example is the redevelopment of the historic Pearl Brewery in San Antonio, a project that reused salvaged materials and create a new vibrant destination in San Antonio. Another is the LEED Platinum Austin Central Library, where 85% of regularly occupied space is daylit, and 99% feature views to the outdoors. The library’s rooftop butterfly garden overlooking the neighboring Shoal Creek and Lady Bird Lake and the screened reading porches have helped made it a popular destination and important resource for the local community.
Bob King
Bob King has worked in the sustainable energy field for many years, with 1970s-era stints in Texas at the Governor’s Energy Advisory Council, the Railroad Commission, the Texas Energy Development Fund, and with a volunteer effort to help start the Texas Solar Energy Society. He later held paid positions out-of-state, including ones in Tennessee with the TVA’s Residential Solar Applications Branch, and in California with the Solar Energy Assurance Labeling Program, Local Government Commission, and the Public Utilities Commission Advisory Committee. He returned to Texas in 1983 to lead the Office of Natural Resources during Jim Hightower’s term as Agriculture Commissioner, and meanwhile helped start the Texas Renewable Energy Industry Association. After leaving TDA, from 1991 through 1993, Mr. King coordinated the LOAN STAR revolving loan fund in Texas, which supported energy audits and efficiency retrofits for governmental clients. During the 1993-96 period, he worked for Kenetech, helping build and connect the first commercial-scale wind farm in Texas, and in 1996-97, helped design the ERCOT wholesale electricity market for efficiency and renewable energy customers. In recent years, he has operated out of the Good Company Associates consulting firm, and has been focusing on a smart meter program to allow customers to share energy data.
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.
James Matz
Mr. Matz served in the US Foreign Service in Mexico, Bolivia and Indonesia, and worked for a consulting engineering firm in South Africa, before returning to Harlingen. In Harlingen, he promoted a range of conservation efforts in his position as Cameron County commissioner, as member on Harlingen’s Metropolitan Planning Commission, through service within the US Government Advisory Committee for the NAFTA Commission on Environmental Cooperation, via membership on the Rio Grande Water Board, and by his leadership of the Valley Proud Environmental Council. He was particularly noted for his ability in the Council to organize and inspire large numbers of citizens to get involved in community improvement, through recycling, beach clean-ups, tree planting, and other projects.
Merriwood Ferguson
Ms. Ferguson, a builder and resident of Brownsville, has been an active volunteer with the Gladys Porter Zoo, Sea Turtles Inc., Lower Laguna Madre Foundation, and Frontera Audubon Society. She has been a critical part of efforts to stop the Vulcanus ocean incineration project, to bar the Boca Chica land development proposal, and to halt or improve the dredging of the Lower Laguna Madre. She has also been instrumental in work to create and protect the wildlife corridor along the lower Rio Grande River and to educate the public about the plight of many sea turtles, particularly the Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle.