Mrs. McKinney is a field biologist who has worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Texas Parks and Wildlife throughout west Texas, focusing on monitoring and protecting cacti, bats, elf owls, peregrine falcons and other raptors, and black bear, as well as on maintaining good relations with private landowners and conducting classroom programs for children. In more recent years, since our interview, Mrs. McKinney has been wildlife coordinator for the 136,000-acre CEMEX conservation area in the Sierra El Carmen, to the south of Big Bend National Park, in Mexico. She focuses on black bear research and conservation, among other tasks.
Region: Trans Pecos
Jim Lynch
Mr. Lynch is a farmer who grew up in California and came to Dell City in the early 1950s as one of the first to exploit the alluvial aquifer to develop agriculture in the high desert to the west of the Guadalupe Peaks National Park. In recent years, he and neighboring farmers have become concerned about El Paso’s interest in pumping and exporting local groundwater, which could exceed the recharge rate for the Dell Valley aquifer, and eliminate the agricultural community and lifestyle that has grown up there.
Mary Lynch
Mrs. Lynch was the publisher and editor of the Hudspeth County Herald, a weekly newspaper produced in Dell City and serving much of far west Texas. For over 15 years, she devoted prominent coverage in the Herald to a series of proposals to dispose of radioactive waste in west Texas. She and her family were also active in organizing environmental interests in the community through the Hudspeth Directive for Conservation, and in securing protection for the unique sand dunes and flats to the east of Dell City.
John Mac Carpenter
John Mac Carpenter lived in Fort Stockton, and worked in farming and oilfield development. In the conservation field, he was best known for his botanical expertise, especially in Trans Pecos and west Texas plants, particularly wildflowers. He used his knowledge in guiding groups through the Big Bend, and in leading the Native Plant Society of Texas. In later years, his environmental work also included efforts to publicize the air quality problems in the Big Bend, to rally against disposal of nuclear waste in west Texas, to challenge exports of groundwater to El Paso and San Antonio, and to organize a Green Party presence in Texas politics.
Scooter Cheatham
Mr. Cheatham is an architect and botanist who has managed multi-disciplinary land use studies of the Texas coast for the General Land Office, taught architecture at the University of Texas – Austin, rebuilt Native American Caddoan and Pamunkey sites, and provided drawings and photographs for various botanical field guides. His major effort over the past 30 years has been to direct, illustrate, write, edit and lay out the Encyclopedia of the Useful Wild Plants of Texas, a 12-volume, 6000-page work produced by the Useful Wild Plants Project and designed to find and publicize textile, food, construction, and pharmaceutical uses for native plants, ensuring the plants’ survival and the continued viability of farming and ranching families and communities.
Below, please see two Vimeo excerpts. The first is about the Encyclopedia of the Useful Wild Plants, and its effort to educate people about sustainable markets for plants, the marvel of plants as extraordinary chemical factories, and the need to protect and restore native vegetation. The second clip includes Mr. Cheatham’s remarks about the veteran horticulturalist and plant explorer, Lynn Lowrey.
Sue Curry
Susan Curry is a graphic manager and editor who lives in Alpine, and has been involved in various conservation efforts in that area, ranging from managing the Chinati Hot Springs to challenging various questionable projects proposed for west Texas, including the Entrada Al Pacifico road and the Sierra Blanca radioactive waste disposal site.
Tom Curry
Tom Curry is a graphic artist in Alpine, where he has been involved in efforts to protect the local area from proposed roads (particularly the Entrada del Pacifico, a trucking route that would lead from Mexico deep into the U.S. Midwest), a planned low-level nuclear waste site, and air pollution from distant utility plants. He has been active in preparing political cartoons, joining protests, and trying to build a base for the Green Party to help advance these and other issues.
Midge Erskine
Mrs. Erskine lives in Midland, where she operated a well-known and respected wildlife rehabilitation facility for over 25 years.Through that work, she became aware in the mid-1970s of the damage to migratory birds from open oil and gas waste pits in the Trans Pecos and elsewhere. From a decade’s investigation with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, it has been estimated that 2 million birds are killed annually by oilfield wastewater, and the threat has been found in 16 states, and involving over 30 companies. While these losses are easily and cheaply avoided, with nets and frames across waste pits, by storing the waste in sealed tanks, or by using the waste to reinject and recover more petroleum, she found that there was great resistance by the regulated industry. Frustrated with the lack of openness and cooperation, Mrs. Erskine has gone on to track and publicize municipal government’s work in her hometown of Midland, to make sure that permits and payments in environmental and other programs are issued in a responsible, accountable way.
Tootsie Herndon
Mrs. Herndon was the mayor pro-tem of Spofford, a community south of Brackettville in the Trans-Pecos of west Texas. She was involved in a number of efforts to protect this part of the state, particularly the precious groundwater that underlies these arid lands. In the early 1990s, she and Citizens Against a Radioactive Environment successfully built an alliance with the government of Mexico to stop a proposal by Texcor to construct a low-level radioactive waste site near Spofford that would have been within the 62-mile border strip protected under the La Paz Agreement. In the mid-1990s, Adobe Eco-Systems proposed a 213-acre, 100′-tall landfill to take up to 5000 tons per day in municipal and industrial waste from border maquilla factories. This landfill was proposed for the same site as the Texcor low-level radioactive waste facility. It too was defeated by Mrs. Herndon and local grassroots opponents. She also served on the board of the Kinney County Groundwater Conservation District. Landowners and water marketers filed applications to pump 100,000 acre-feet of groundwater from the Edwards, Edwards-Trinity, and Austin Chalk aquifers for sale to San Antonio and other growing municipalities. Mrs. Hudson and others on the District board sought to limit these applications because they appear to exceed historic uses on which the permits are calculated (seven times current use), and could drain local aquifers, threatening the life and economy of Trans-Pecos towns.
Bill Neiman
Mr. Neiman is the founder and operator of Native American Seed, a business based in Junction, Texas that finds, propagates, harvests and sells seed for a variety of native grasses, forbs, and other plants, as a tool for restoring ecosystems. In running his business, he has developed a number of essential reaping, planting and cultivating tools and methods for working with native plants.