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.
Region: South Texas Brush
Ben Figueroa
Mr. Figueroa lives in Kingsville, where he has been involved in education about and opposition to a nearby uranium mine in Kleberg County. He and others in the community, including the organization, South Texans Opposing Pollution, have been concerned about the effect of the mining activity and subsequent tailings emissions on the purity and safety of the Goliad Aquifer, which is Kingsville’s source of drinking water.