Conservation History Association of Texas
Texas Legacy Project
Oral History Interview
Nature Conservancy in Texas

Interviewee: Lisa Williams
Date: June 8, 2022
Site: San Antonio, Texas
Reels: 3727-3728
Executive Producer: Lydia Saldana
Producer: Jeff Weigel
Field Producer / Chief Interviewer: Lee Smith
Videographer: Curtis Craven
Writer / Editor: Ron Kabele
Transcriber: David Todd / Trint
Item: Williams_Lisa_NCItem32_SanAntonioTX_20220608_Reel3727-3728_Audio.mp3

[The bracketed numbers refer to the time code of the interview recording.]

Lee Smith [00:00:15] So where did you grow up?

Lisa Williams [00:00:17] I grew up in a rural area east of Brownsville, Texas, down in the Rio Grande Valley. And we had, my family had almost an acre of land and they had a pasture and a lot of trees. And we had a horse. And it was just an idyllic place to grow up, for a kid who loved the outdoors.

Lee Smith [00:00:41] Tell me about that. Cast your mind back. And what was your like first memory of the outdoors and making a connection with the outdoors?

Lisa Williams [00:00:53] We had what we called the woods across the road from us. We didn’t own the land, but it was unfenced. And of course, as kids we wandered over there and enjoyed wandering around. It was, now I know it was typical Tamaulipan thornscrub and it was just a magical place. So a lot of cactus. There were cottontail rabbits, there were snakes, everything you could imagine. And we just absolutely loved that place as well as the land that we had and the the brush that we had on our own land to.

Lisa Williams [00:01:28] What kind of stuff did you do over there?

Lisa Williams [00:01:30] It was just watch gopher turtles. And there were fiddler crabs – it was kind of a clay soil. And there were fiddler crabs that would make these little towers around the holes. And we liked to watch them and watch birds and just enjoy nature.

Lee Smith [00:01:50] Was there any member of your family that was of particular influence on on you and nature?

Lisa Williams [00:01:59] Well, both my parents were very respectful of nature, and they raised us to appreciate and respect nature. And we took vacations and camping vacations. And we would learn about the the wildlife where we were visiting. And it was just a lot of fun to do that. It was wonderful having parents who encouraged us to be outdoors and to appreciate nature and enjoy nature.

Lee Smith [00:02:31] Where where would you go on these camping trips?

Lisa Williams [00:02:33] We went mostly to New Mexico and West Texas. We, when my dad only had a week of vacation, we could only get as far as Big Bend. But then when he finally got two weeks of vacation, we would go to New Mexico and camp in the national forest campsites there. And we just had a lot of fun doing that.

Lee Smith [00:02:54] Tents and all that whole thing.

Lisa Williams [00:02:57] Yeah, we started out with a little pop tent, Coleman pop tent, and then later on we had a little tent camper. And we had the dogs and the grandparents and all of us went camping and it was a lot of fun.

Lee Smith [00:03:14] What about during your education? Was there was there a teacher or a classmate that you kind of bonded with about conservation or inspired you with conservation?

Lisa Williams [00:03:25] I took plant taxonomy in college at Pan American University in Edinburg with Dr. Robert Lonard, and I just so thoroughly enjoyed that class and also marine botany. And that really sort of made me realize that that was probably something I wanted to to pursue further. It was basically, you know, plants and animals too. But the plants were my real my real love at that time.

Lee Smith [00:03:57] And was there any book or author or movie or anything in like culture and popular culture that inspired you?

Lisa Williams [00:04:12] Actually, I’m a big Tolkien fan. And The Lord of the Rings is, or actually most of Tolkien’s works are are pervaded by the concept of the value of nature and the importance of nature and respect for nature and the the evils that arise from destroying nature or ignoring nature.

Lisa Williams [00:04:46] And that really made an impression on me. I read it when I was 13 years old, and it made a big impression on me. And even though I wasn’t consciously thinking about that theme that runs through The Lord of the Rings, it still has, it spoke to me very much. The characters and the descriptions of the place. And there was a lot of the descriptions are about the nature of the of the place where the characters were moving through.

Lee Smith [00:05:16] Well, and that’s what struck me about the shire, you know, the places where the hobbits lived obviously they were so integral to the habitat.

Lisa Williams [00:05:27] Exactly. And then the talk about the, the old forest and the Ents that they were caretakers of the forests. And so that, that really appealed to me. And maybe that’s what influenced some of my work.

Lee Smith [00:05:47] So how did you first, what was your first break, as it were, into the conservation field?

Lisa Williams [00:05:55] Well, actually, before I came to the Nature Conservancy, I was working as a bookkeeper for a construction company, even though I had a biology degree, because in the Rio Grande Valley in the in the 1980s, there just weren’t that many opportunities for women to get into a science job or a conservation job or something like that. And I didn’t really know about that. I knew I wanted a job in science.

Lisa Williams [00:06:23] But I just, it was, it happened in a very fortuitous way that the Nature Conservancy had a position available for a private land specialist in the Rio Grande Valley. And my sister worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at that time in the realty division. And a colleague of hers said that it came over the fax. In those days we had fax machines. This position announcement came over the fax and she told my sister, “Maybe your sister would like to apply for that.”

Lisa Williams [00:06:58] And so my sister brought it home and I looked at it and, “No, I don’t qualify for that. There’s no way. I have a biology degree, but I haven’t any experience of working in that field.” And my father told me, “Just go ahead and apply for it anyway, because it’ll be good experience.” And so I thought, “Okay, that’s that’s something I can do, but I won’t get it. But, you know, it would be a good experience.”

Lisa Williams [00:07:21] So I basically I went into it with no expectation at all. I just was confident that I would never get that job. And I, I there first were a list of questions to answer, of essay questions, basically. And I answered the questions and it came back and was told, “Oh, well, you made the first cut. We’re going to give you an interview.” And I thought, “That’s nice. That’ll be a good experience for me to have an interview. I don’t have to worry about anything because I know I’m not going to get the job.”

Lisa Williams [00:07:55] So I interviewed and Jeff Weigel was one of the panelists. And so I was completely not nervous. Not nervous at all, because I just was, “No, you know, I’m never going to get this job. It’s a good experience.”

Lisa Williams [00:08:10] And so they liked what they heard and they hired me.

Lisa Williams [00:08:15] So there was a guy named Carter Smith, I believe, that was down there. Tell me about working with Carter.

Lisa Williams [00:08:22] Oh yes. I enjoyed very much working with Carter. And he started out as a, what do we call those, field representative. He started out, Carter started out as a field representative and he was basically doing land acquisition in the Rio Grande Valley. And so I didn’t have a whole lot of interaction with him, just some, at that time because I didn’t do land acquisition. I was doing habitat restoration. And then later on, he became director of conservation programs, and he was my supervisor for a while. And it was it was quite a joy to work for him.

Lee Smith [00:09:12] So tell us about the landowner contract program you started in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

Lisa Williams [00:09:19] What happened was I I was hired as a private land specialist. And what that meant was that I would make contact with landowners to find out if they would be willing to have us do habitat restoration on their on their property. And the the program was called South Texas Private Lands Initiative. And the idea was that the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the US Fish and Wildlife Service for many years have been doing habitat restoration on public lands. And they would, occasionally private landowners would ask them, “Well, how can I get this done on my land?” But they didn’t have a means to do it for them.

Lisa Williams [00:10:06] And so they basically put Parks and Wildlife, and that was Gary Wagonner was a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologist at that time. And so he talked to the Nature Conservancy and said, “Is there anything, you know, is this something y’all would be willing to help us with because we just can’t do it. We would need your help to do this.”.

Lisa Williams [00:10:30] And so my supervisor at that time was named Wendy Biegler, and she and others in the Nature Conservancy developed this program and got support from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and private donors, several private donors, to fund the program for three years.

Lisa Williams [00:10:57] And what we did was they basically, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department gave me a list of landowners who had contacted them in the past. And so I got in touch with those landowners and said, “You know, is this something you’d be willing to do, to let us plant native tongue and scrub vegetation on your lands?”

Lisa Williams [00:11:18] And I had a nursery. I started a nursery basically at my house because we didn’t have an office. And so I was officing from my house and had the nursery established on on at my house. And grew, we grew the native tree and shrub seedlings because you can’t just go out and buy those seedlings somewhere. They’re just, you know, now there are some places in the Rio Grande Valley and other places in Texas that grow and sell native plants. But it’s not very often that you can find Texas ebony or tepeguaje or granjeno plants to buy and plant.

Lisa Williams [00:12:06] And so we had to grow our own. We had to go collect the seeds in the field by hand and process them, for example, seeds that had husks on them like Texas ebony or in pods, tepeguaje seeds are in pods. We had to process all of that by hand and plant the seeds in what’s called plant bands. And they’re basically a square cardboard tube about, about 12 inches or so, 12 or 14 inches tall. And about 1.5 inches square. And we filled those with with soil, specific soil mix, and planted the seeds in them and grew the seedlings that way.

Lisa Williams [00:12:54] And then we planted them, by hand again, on the private lands. And I had been advised that a auger the kind of auger that you would use to dig fence post holes with that that might be an efficient way. And so we got a bunch of augers and drilled holes and planted these seedlings on private lands.

Lisa Williams [00:13:22] And it was it was it was so rewarding to grow those plants and then to work with the private landowners because they were wonderful people. And it’s just so rewarding to be planting trees.

Lee Smith [00:13:37] My first, I used to work for Parks and Wildlife, and my first shoot was with Gary.

Lisa Williams [00:13:42] Really?

Lee Smith [00:13:42] Down there doing that. And if I remember, he sat on the back of a tractor. And I think you may have had some of your tubes, but that, I remember those too.

Lisa Williams [00:13:53] Well, yeah, they did. They grew their own. Parks and Wildlife grew their own. They had their own nursery, too. And we learned, we learned the techniques from, from them. And then we adapted those techniques to what worked for us. Yeah, we didn’t have a tree planter like like Parks and Wildlife did until much, much later. But when I was doing it, we just did it by hand, totally.

Lee Smith [00:14:21] That’s so cool.

Lee Smith [00:14:23] So being, forgive the term, a Valley girl, how did that help you in this program?

Lisa Williams [00:14:32] Well, being a resident of the Lower Rio Grande Valley and number one, I already knew a lot of the trees and shrubs, and I knew the the terrain. And I was accustomed to the climate. And so I think that that all helped me and I knew my way around. So I think that was a that was a benefit there.

Lee Smith [00:14:57] Did you know any of the landowners that were on that list that?

Lisa Williams [00:15:01] No, I didn’t I didn’t know the landowners until I contacted them about the program.

Lee Smith [00:15:06] And how did youm how did that, well, I guess the initial list was people that had already expressed interest. After that list was exhausted, did you search out other folks?

Lisa Williams [00:15:21] Well, by word of mouth, people heard about it and they would contact me. And I gave presentations at like the Rotary Club and places like that. And so people would hear about the program and they would contact me to see if we could do revegetation on their property, too. So yeah, it was a lot, a lot word of mouth.

Lisa Williams [00:15:46] Landowners just liked the idea. I mean the reason that motivated them to do this was that they wanted to have habitat put back on their land. Their land might have been either a former pasture that had been cleared for cattle or it might have been former farmland, or it just had cleared, been cleared for some other reason. And maybe they, maybe it was their original family land or maybe it was a piece of property that they had purchased and they just wanted trees back on it. They wanted wildlife back on it. And so that was the main motivation for them to do this.

Lee Smith [00:16:30] And the results? They were they were happy with with what happened?

Lisa Williams [00:16:35] Yes, as far as I know, they were all happy. I talked to them. I kept up relationships with several of them for quite a few years. And they would let me know, you know, how the plants, how much the plants had grown. And they were really pleased about that.

Lee Smith [00:16:51] Yeah, trees take a long time to grow.

Lisa Williams [00:16:53] Well, but in the Valley, at least thornscrub species that we were planting, a lot of them could grow very fast if they had adequate rainfall. And a Texas ebony seedling, we’d plant them when they were only about maybe eight inches tall. And in a couple of years they could be 3 or 4 feet tall. So so yeah, you could see results pretty quick and have wildlife start using those revegetated tracts pretty soon.

Lee Smith [00:17:22] So how did you feel about that driving around areas that used to be flat and through your work, it’s starting to come back to life. How did you feel about that?

Lisa Williams [00:17:33] Yeah, it’s a very gratifying feeling to to know that that I helped bring back a little bit of habitat to the Valley.

Lee Smith [00:17:43] And we think it’s a couple of dozen feet taller now.

Lisa Williams [00:17:49] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had heard from one landowner, so quite a few years later that that the trees that we had planted were tall trees and how much she enjoyed it.

Lee Smith [00:18:03] So what were some of the results of of that program?

Lisa Williams [00:18:07] Well, the results were that we over from 1993 to 1996, we planted over 100,000 seedling trees on over 1000 acres of land, spanning about 12 tracts or 12 ownerships in the Rio Grande Valley. So for that, that and that was just during that period of time. So we did we did have a little bit of an impact.

Lee Smith [00:18:40] So is that still going on?

Lisa Williams [00:18:42] Well, we actually in 2000, the nursery that I had was moved to our our Lennox Foundation, Southmost Preserve, east of Brownsville. And they, the staff there, have continued to use the nursery and grow seedlings and contract with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to provide seedlings for their revegetation programs.

Lee Smith [00:19:10] Wow. So your little backyard card table top is now, you know, is is standard operating procedure.

Lisa Williams [00:19:21] Right.

Lee Smith [00:19:21] How does that make you feel?

Lisa Williams [00:19:22] Well, it did make me feel good, because I feel good, because I felt like I had contributed to the knowledge of revegetation techniques in the Valley and that I had I had created something that has lasted has lasted, and we’re continuing to do. And so that does feel good.

Lee Smith [00:19:45] Tell me about the Southmost preserve. What is the Southmost Preserve?

Lisa Williams [00:19:48] Yeah, the the Southmost Preserve is about 1000, I think it’s 1066 acres. And it’s at literally the very southern tip of Texas. It’s, the Rio Grande makes a bend to the south and then curves back up to the north. And that little section is included in the preserve. And it’s literally the southernmost point of Texas.

Lisa Williams [00:20:16] And it includes several resacas which are old oxbows from past meanderings of the river. And it was a working land when we acquired it, and it still is. And the owner, Julia Jitkoff, had been farming and had a non-native palm nursery and citrus groves on the property.

Lisa Williams [00:20:43] And she but she tried to protect the most unique feature of that property, which was a remnant palm grove, which is sabal palms, and it’s one of the, the one of only two remaining palm groves in and in the Rio Grande Valley. The sabal palms used to, at one time, well, when the when the Spaniards came exploring, they, the palm groves extended for miles up the Rio Grande. And it was a pretty large area that was covered with palms.

Lisa Williams [00:21:24] And these two, this remnant grove at Southmost and one other, are the only remains of that that that extensive palm forest.

Lisa Williams [00:21:38] And because it is a unique habitat, there are a number of species that occur that are within that habitat that you don’t really find in other parts of Texas. And so it’s a refuge for a number of species. It’s it’s really magical, the palms, when you’re standing in that grove and the wind is blowing in the palm fronds high above your head, maybe 50 feet up, it sounds like the ocean. It sounds like you’re hearing the roar of the ocean faintly. And it’s just a very magical experience. It’s almost like being in a cathedral.

Lee Smith [00:22:25] And this remnant, combined with a nursery, are they propagating from from that seed source or.

Speaker 2 [00:22:36] Yes. One of the great things is that having those palms on the property, we’re able to collect seeds and plant them and grow more sabal palms so we can we can increase the the the species.

Lee Smith [00:22:52] And how long has that been going on?

Lisa Williams [00:22:54] Well, it started basically in 2000 when we required the reserve in 1999. And then, like I said, we moved the the nursery there in the year 2000 and have been growing seedlings and and using those seedlings for revegetation projects all across the Valley, ever since then.

Lee Smith [00:23:16] Why is protection of land in the Lower Rio Grande Valley important.

Lisa Williams [00:23:20] Land protection in the Lower Rio Grande Valley is important because we have lost over 95% of the habitat in that area. And by protecting the remaining habitat, not only are we helping to mitigate for climate change, but we’re also providing seed sources for additional revegetation. And revegetation is another way to combat climate change.

Lee Smith [00:23:52] And provide habitat for species?

Lisa Williams [00:23:56] And yes, the habitat in the Rio Grande Valley is is really very unique. It’s not quite like in the the the upper part of South Texas, and it’s not quite like the habitat in Northern Mexico. So it’s very unique. It’s important to protect.

Lisa Williams [00:24:19] There are some communities, some plant communities in the Lower Rio Grande Valley that are very unique and we need to protect those because biodiversity is extremely important and the Lower Rio Grande Valley is one of the, at least the remnant of the habitat there, is some of the most diverse, biodiverse, habitat that that we have in the state of Texas. And so it’s important to protect that both for future generations, and for the the intrinsic value of nature, and for the the way that that having vegetation helps reduce heat and it also helps mitigate climate change.

Lee Smith [00:25:08] Is there any difference in the challenges of protecting land in the Rio Grande Valley, different from other parts of Texas, or is there something unique about that? Whether it’s, I don’t know, the prevalence of agriculture.

Lisa Williams [00:25:21] Well, the the since I, you know, I said earlier that over 95% of the habitat in the Valley has been lost and some of that was due to development for agriculture and some for housing and commercial development.

Lisa Williams [00:25:37] But the good thing is that the the farmland can be revegetated. So we can buy a piece of farmland and plant trees back on it and have habitat there again.

Lisa Williams [00:25:53] But one of the challenges that we face in the Valley is that land ownership was originally established in the 1700s with the Spanish royal land grants, and those land grants were handed down through generations as undivided interest. And that means that they didn’t go out and survey or plat for the land. It was basically, well, I own from this fencepost to that tree, over to that arroyo, or something like that. And the family members knew which piece of land they owned.

Lisa Williams [00:26:42] But when you start trying to sell that off to someone else, you can’t get clear title that way.

Lisa Williams [00:26:48] So what happens is like when either the Nature Conservancy or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to buy a particular tract, then the owner has to go and get all of the descendants, all of the family members to agree that, “Yes, this is where this tract is found, this is where the boundaries are.” And it’s, it can be, you know, with with most families, it can kind of be a challenge to get maybe 30 descendants to agree to to do something like that. So that makes it a little bit more problematic. But it’s also part of our history and it’s really fascinating to see how one family has retained ownership of the land for so long. It’s it’s really something to be proud of, too.

Lee Smith [00:27:49] There we go. So now we’re, we’re kind of out of the Valley and just talking about conservation planning. What what are the challenges, big picture, of conservation planning?

Lisa Williams [00:28:04] Well, with conservation planning, first we need to know what’s there in the area for which we’re doing the plan, we need to know, understand the ecology and the biology of the area and also its health and what challenges it faces. What are the threats to the species that occur in that area? And then we need to know what is driving those threats.

Lisa Williams [00:28:32] So what that requires is, in a lot of cases, we need to talk to people who live in that area. We need to get their knowledge and understanding of the land and and the ecology of it. And so that can take time, because in order to do that, we need to build relationships with people and talk to them. And so it can take a while before we can get a plan in place, because we want to make sure that we are basing our development of strategies in that conservation area on the best available science and the best knowledge about the area. So it takes, it takes a lot of people, it takes talking to people and working with people and building relationships in order to do that.

Lee Smith [00:29:33] Have you noticed over time that folks are more receptive or more cooperative as the Nature Conservancy has grown and as their projects have been successful?

Lisa Williams [00:29:48] I think so, yes. And we we always had a good cooperation in the Rio Grande Valley. People were, they may not have known the Nature Conservancy, but when we started talking about what we do, they were very enthusiastic and wanted to participate.

Lisa Williams [00:30:06] In fact, one of the things that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service encountered when they were acquiring land was they had people walking in their door asking them to buy their land. So they had no lack of opportunistic types of ways to to buy land because people wanted to sell their land and they wanted to contribute to the wildlife corridor, the Lower Valley National Wildlife Refuge. So, yes, we, certainly in the Valley, which is where my experience is, it was a very, people had a very favorable attitude towards conservation.

Lee Smith [00:30:56] So how do you build partnerships to achieve this, to achieve conservation planning?

Lisa Williams [00:31:03] To build partnerships, it’s important to develop good relationships with people, to ask what how as to their opinions, to find out where the intersection lies between what they need and want and what we are able to do and and need to do.

Lisa Williams [00:31:28] And one of the things that we try to do when we start developing a conservation action plan in a particular area is to hold workshops for landowners and interested parties so that we can get their opinions and find out what their concerns are and make sure that when we do work in that area that we’re not going to be causing any harm to anyone.

Lisa Williams [00:31:57] And those workshops, I have led a couple of those workshops, and they’re very rewarding because even when people and one in particular that I led several years ago, there was a couple of people who were very skeptical of what we were, what we’re going to do. And they started out in the meeting, you know, asking some really hard questions. And then at the end of the meeting, one of them came up and told me, “You know, I was very doubtful about this in the beginning, but I think you all are pretty good people and I am feeling a lot better about this.” So it was very rewarding to to be able to to address their concerns and help them feel more comfortable with conservation.

Lee Smith [00:32:50] Well, a lot of people are uncomfortable with something they don’t really know much about. And if they find out about it in a in a respectful way, you know, you’re they’re going to be more susceptible, not acceptable, but responsive.

Lisa Williams [00:33:12] Yes. I mean, that’s the point that that to listen to people, to take their concerns into consideration and to work with them and find out what they need and what they what they hope to get out of, what they hope to see as a result of conservation action in their area.

Lee Smith [00:33:39] So if you can be a help rather than a hindrance…

Lisa Williams [00:33:44] Exactly.

Lee Smith [00:33:44] For them to achieve their their goals, then that’s a win-win.

Lisa Williams [00:33:49] Right. And I think most people see it that way. They see it as a win-win because we are the, the land that we protect, it benefits them in so many ways, even if it’s not open to the public, it’s still beneficial to them to have that that habitat protected and improve the quality of life in that area. And in many cases, as we work with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the US Fish and Wildlife Service to acquire public lands, that becomes land that they can visit and enjoy.

Lee Smith [00:34:31] Well, and all the different assets that the Nature Conservancy can can offer them in terms of expertise and these other partners you’ve mentioned, it might not be something that TNC does, but NRCS does, and you can be that liaison with these folks.

Lisa Williams [00:34:54] Yes. Actually, the Nature Conservancy, our our land stewards, work closely with other agencies, but we also provide wildlife, provide advice on habitat. You know, as I said, habitat revegetation, on how to provide what wildlife needs so they can increase the the wildlife on their property.

Lisa Williams [00:35:25] One of the things that I did in South Texas was biological surveys on private lands, and we were looking for rare plants, but we also were providing the landowner with an inventory basically of what they had on their land. And they were thrilled. I mean, at that time we didn’t have iNaturalist and things like that. So it was, it can be kind of difficult and daunting to try to identify plants and animals on your land.

Lisa Williams [00:35:57] But what we would do is go in with a team, with a botanist and sometimes with a zoologist, and just do field surveys and observations, just like people do now with iNaturalist. But we did it, you know, with a pen and paper and binoculars, and we didn’t collect, but we identified with photographs.

Lisa Williams [00:36:21] And, most of the time I was bringing our botanist at that time, Bill Carr, out to do these surveys on private lands. And I wasn’t an expert in plants and I wasn’t an expert in birds or insects. But what I could do was take pictures of them and then go back and ask our zoologist to help me identify them. And then I would have pictures to provide to the landowners to produce a report for them afterwards with everything that we saw and a little bit of information about those species. And then if we did find rare plants, then we would invite the landowner to participate in a program to protect those those those populations of rare plants by signing an agreement with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to protect those populations.

Lee Smith [00:37:22] Were they generally receptive to that?

Lisa Williams [00:37:24] It was it was kind of scary for landowners because they’re thinking, especially if they had a population of plants that was listed as endangered. But most of them were were pleased to know that they had something rare on their land and they were happy to contribute to not only to the knowledge of that plant, because one of the one of the reasons we were doing those surveys was that for some of the rare species of plants in South Texas, we we couldn’t get an idea of the abundance of them, because if you only see what’s on the side of the road, then that may not be the proper habitat for a particular species. So need to get on to the land.

Lisa Williams [00:38:13] And so the the knowledge of where these plants occur occur helped to inform the science about those plants and how to protect them and how to manage them. And landowners really enjoyed being a part of that.

Lee Smith [00:38:32] So what is the Conservation Coaches network and what’s been your involvement with it?

Lisa Williams [00:38:38] The Conservation Coaches Network is basically a, you could call it a sort of a professional organization for conservation planners, and it is global. And it started, it came out of, I believe it was in the 1990s. The Nature Conservancy received funding for what we called Efroymson workshops to help staff learn how to do conservation planning. In the 1990s, Dan Efroymson provided funding to the Nature Conservancy to hold a series of workshops to help staff learn how to do conservation planning.

Lisa Williams [00:39:28] And from that was spawned a an organization called the Conservation Coaches Network. And that that organization or group, basically professional group was spearheaded by Brad Northrup. And the Conservation Coaches Network is, it provides training to prospective conservation planners and it provides also standards of excellence by which coaches can be certified. And it’s global in scope and people.

Lisa Williams [00:40:20] The Nature Conservancy originated a framework for planning. It was originally called the Framework for Conservation Planning. And then it evolved into Conservation Action Planning. And from that, it evolved into what we now call Conservation by Design. And that framework has has evolved over time, but it has continued to be robust.

Lisa Williams [00:40:48] And the Conservation Coaches Network was spun off from the Nature Conservancy’s planners. And they have adopted, they adopted an early version of conservation planning, and they call it conservation standards. And that is available to anyone in the world. And the the coaches who, we call them coaches, because it’s more than a facilitator, more than a meeting facilitator, it’s more than a planner. It’s a professional who has the training to help guide a team through a conservation plan from the very beginning.

Lisa Williams [00:41:35] And I took coaches training many years ago and I continue to brush up on my skills for that. And they’re basically the planning framework that the Nature Conservancy designed many years ago is, is with improvements and evolutions, it’s still going strong and a lot of conservation non-governmental organizations across the world still use that framework. And a lot of government entities such as Texas Parks and Wildlife actually use that framework to develop the conservation plan, the Conservation Action Plan for Texas and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff often use that framework.

Lisa Williams [00:42:32] So it’s something that the Nature Conservancy can be proud of having contributed to the conservation planning community.

Lee Smith [00:42:40] What advice would you give to somebody seeking a career in conservation?

Lisa Williams [00:42:50] Advice I would give someone seeking a career in conservation is that you don’t have to be a scientist to work in conservation. You don’t have to have a biology degree, because, for example, the Nature Conservancy, we employ a lot of people in other disciplines and such as finance, such as marketing, such as fundraising, information technology, all those kinds of things. They’re, they’re important, they’re vital. Those roles are vital to us being able to do the on-the-ground conservation work that we do.

Lisa Williams [00:43:30] And so you don’t have to live in the United States to work for the Nature Conservancy. You don’t have to have a science degree. You don’t have to be a scientist, and you can still contribute to conservation.

Lisa Williams [00:43:46] And I think that’s important for everyone to understand because it takes everybody. It takes all of us working together in order to save what we have and to fight climate change.

Lee Smith [00:44:02] So you don’t have to have a biology degree, but what do you have to have?

Lisa Williams [00:44:07] What you have to have is passion. You have to have a desire to to help to help people and nature. You have to have a love of nature and people. And all of that is so, so needed nowadays. We need it because we have a lot of challenges. Climate change and biodiversity loss are probably the biggest challenges that humans have ever faced. And we, in order to fight that, we all have to work together. We all have to have that passion and we all have to have that hope that what we’re going to be what we are doing is going to make a difference. And it will. It will make a difference.

Lee Smith [00:45:03] So what is your outlook about the future of conservation?

Lisa Williams [00:45:08] I think conservation is going to be even more important in the future. It’s going to continue to be important. It’s important for us because it’s one of the one of the major ways that we can combat climate change by protecting the forests and the vegetation, the habitats, the plant communities and the animals that are here now. And also habitat restoration.

Lisa Williams [00:45:40] That’s that’s really important because where we have cleared forests, we need to put them back because forests help, go a long way to helping remove the carbon that we put in the atmosphere. So it’s it’s it’s going to be more important than ever. And we all need to feel that we are conservationists and do our part.

Lisa Williams [00:46:07] How has, how how is, how have things changed for women in conservation?

Lisa Williams [00:46:16] Things have changed much for the better for women in conservation because there’s more opportunities not only to get education in the sciences, but also to get jobs. Because a lot of in the past, a lot of these jobs, so as land steward, for example, the preserve manager were not really open to women. No one thought, you know, that a woman could go out and drive a tractor or build fences. But, I did both. I built fences. I did carpentry work. I did some minor work on our auger engines and things like that.

Lisa Williams [00:47:01] So I think it’s becoming a, society is recognizing more that women can do these things and do them well. And it’s exciting to see women firefighters, women in our our fire crew working right alongside the men to manage prescribed fire on our preserves and other lands and fighting wildfires. So, yeah, it’s, things have improved and I’m glad of that.

Lisa Williams [00:47:39] Communication’s important and being able to develop these relationships. And I think that women definitely are able to do that very well and be trusted. It’s important that the people that we work with, the landowners and others that we work with, be able to trust us. And we the having a friendly face to talk to and, you know, being respectful and being able to relate to the challenges that the landowners face is important. And so, yeah, we can we can do that.