Ms. Campbell lived for many years on South Padre Island, where she worked in public relations and fine arts businesses, as well as giving volunteer time to several conservation groups. Active with the Sierra Club’s Lower Rio Grande Valley Group, the Lower Laguna Madre Foundation, and with Frontera Audubon Society, she worked on water supply, canal dredging, wetland filling, sewage disposal, and development issues on the Island and throughout South Texas. Her special interest and expertise in the Valley’s water issues also led her to work with the Cameron County Fresh Water District and the Rio Grande Regional Water Planning Group. She was also involved on statewide environmental efforts, serving on the Executive Committee of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, as well as on the founding board of Texas Audubon. On the international front, Ms. Campbell served as a member of the International Committee for the Sierra Club and of the Public Advisory Committee for the EPA U.S./Mexico Border Environmental Plan.
Region: Rio Grande Valley
Carol Cullar
Since moving to Eagle Pass in 1979, Ms. Cullar has been involved in a number of ways in educating and conserving the Rio Grande Corridor and Trans-Pecos area. She has written and edited poetry and prose, made prints of wildlife and natural landscapes, served on the Historical Commission of the City of Eagle Pass, and taught children about the natural world through her work at the Lehman Research Foundation, Rio Bravo Nature Center, and Rio Grande / Rio Bravo Basin Coalition.
Jim Earhart
Dr. Earhart was a professor of biology who taught at the Laredo Community College. He also worked as a co-founder and executive director of the Rio Grande International Study Center, as a father of the Lamar Bruni Vergara Environmental Science Center, and a board member of Laredo’s Citizens Environmental Advisory Committee. In each of these posts, Dr. Earhart worked to protect the Rio Grande and the contributing creeks, wetlands and watersheds in the Laredo area from its booming growth and development. With the development of the maquiladora and warehousing industry, the increase in trade across the international border, and the tripling of population in the Nuevo Laredo / Laredo metropolitan area from 1960 to 2000, pressures on the area’s water supply and quality, solid waste, traffic and air quality have intensified.
Ygnacio “Nacho” Garza
Mr. Garza carries on a practice as a CPA, but has also served as a former mayor of Brownsville, where he became familiar with the many municipal responsibilities that have environmental aspects, from drinking water supply to sewage treatment, flood control, transportation, and other infrastructure problems related to the Valley’s burgeoning population. He has also served as chair of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission, during a particularly contentious time, when he had a critical role in trying to resolve backlogs in infrastructure improvements and needs for land acquisitions with limited public funding available, and strong political crosscurrents among private property advocates, hunting proponents, recreational users and wildlife experts. In more recent years, he has served on the board of the NAD Bank, helping direct millions of dollars to binational sewage and drinking water improvements in the Rio Grande basin.
Meg Guerra
Ms. Guerra was editor and publisher of the independent monthly newspaper, LareDOS, which covered a variety of issues throughout the Texas/Mexico borderlands. The newspaper has been a traditional chronicle of local cultural, business, and day-to-day lifecycle events. As well, the newspaper has been a thorough investigator of and witness to political corruption, social inequity and environmental negligence along the border. Ms. Guerra’s interest in the long-term vitality and sustainability of the area is also shown in her deep local roots, which date back to 1750, and her stake in a family ranch near Zapata.
Dennis Holbrook
Mr. Holbrook is a commercial-scale organic citrus grower based in Mission, within the Rio Grande Valley. He also acts as chairman of the board of the Texas Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, and has served on the Organic Standards Advisory Board for the Texas Department of Agriculture. He has found that organic methods have drastically lowered his off-farm chemical costs, reduced his water use, restored soil tilth, produced a safer, more nutritious products for his customers, and created a better price niche for his business.
Father Tom Pincelli
Rev. Pincelli is pastor of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Harlingen and a skilled birder who has worked in many ways to promote birdwatching and conservation in the Rio Grande Valley. For instance, he has chaired the Frontera Audubon Society, written a birdwatching column for newspapers in Harlingen, McAllen, and Brownsville, hosted a local PBS TV show, “On The Birding Trail”, and led birding tours to Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, Bentsen Rio Grande State Park, and other sites in South Texas.
Billy Platt, Sr.
Beginning in the early 1960s, Mr. Platt served as a game warden for Texas Parks and Wildlife in east Texas. Especially during his early years, game law enforcement was an unpopular and dangerous effort, as stock laws, bag limits, hunting seasons, and restrictions on hunting with dogs were still new to the area. Mr. Platt worked on numerous cases, ranging from fishing violations, such as gill nets, wire nets, trammels, hoop nets, and shocking, to night-hunting, poaching rings, meat hunting, trespass and other illegal practices. Following his service as a warden, Mr. Platt worked as a pasture rider, overseeing hunting clubs within more than 500,000 acres of privately-owned east Texas timberlands.
Tom Vaughan
Dr. Vaughan holds a Ph.D. in zoology and served as a professor of biology at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, with a research focus on benthic macroinvertebrates, such as insects, shrimp, crabs, crayfish, snails, clams and aquatic worms, found in the Rio Grande and area creeks and wetlands. He was also president of the board, and a co-founder, of the Rio Grande International Study Center. The Center was organized in 1994 over concern for degradation of the Rio Grande from untreated sewage, industrial maquiladora discharges, waste dumping, wetland filling, mining effects, and water impoundments and diversions. Dr. Vaughan and the Center have sought to improve the Rio Grande through research, public education, cooperation with its Mexican sister organization, el Centro Internacional del Estado del Rio Bravo, and capital projects, such as the construction of trails along the river corridor and creation of the Lamar Bruni Vergara Environmental Science Center.
Benito Trevino
Mr. Trevino lives on a ranch in Starr County, north of Rio Grande City, a part of a land grant that can be traced back in his family to Spanish times. There he manages the Rancho Lomitas Native Plant Nursery, which has provided close to 200,000 native plant seedlings for for habitat restoration at the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, various Texas Nature Conservancy sanctuaries, and on private lands throughout south Texas. In addition, Mr. Trevino is well known as an expert in the biochemical makeup of native plants, and in their traditional uses, which he has shared with high school students, gardening groups, birders, and others through lectures and in tours of his ranch.