Who Will Shape the Next Decade of Conservation in Texas?

For the past three years, I’ve helped lead Audubon’s Texas Women in Conservation program, working with colleagues and honorees to recognize women who have made significant contributions to conservation in Texas.

This year marks the program’s 11th year which bestows the Terry Hershey Award. We have now completed a full decade of recognizing extraordinary conservation leadership, and we are looking ahead to what the next decade can become.

When the award was established, George Bristol served as Chair of the Audubon Texas Advisory Board, while longtime Texas conservation leader Dr. Andrew Sansom was a former Advisory Board member and emeritus member for Audubon Texas and former Chairman of the National Audubon Society Board of Directors. Together, they played a key role in approaching Terry Hershey about lending her name to an award recognizing women advancing conservation across the state.

It is difficult to imagine a more fitting inspiration. Terry Hershey was a remarkable conservation leader whose influence reached across Texas and beyond. She served on the National Audubon Society Board of Directors and helped found the state’s largest local chapter organization now known as Birds Houston. Over decades of advocacy and leadership, she worked to protect rivers and bayous, floodplains, open spaces, wildlife habitats, and the natural places that make Texas special. The Terry Hershey Award carries that legacy forward by recognizing women whose leadership is changing conservation in Texas.

Each year, Audubon produces short films celebrating award honorees and their contributions. During filming, I’ve watched a pattern emerge repeatedly. These are extraordinarily accomplished women, yet their instinct is rarely to begin by talking about themselves. They talk about the colleagues who worked alongside them, the places they love, the organizations they helped build, and the communities they serve. Sometimes it takes a little encouragement to get them to acknowledge the full impact of their own contributions and leadership.

There is something powerful in that humility. It also reinforces why recognition matters. Texas Women in Conservation gives us an opportunity to stop and say: this work matters, their leadership changed Texas, and this is a story worth telling.

That became especially tangible last year, when Audubon celebrated the program’s 10th anniversary. More than two-thirds of the program’s past honorees returned for the Austin celebration, bringing together an extraordinary group of women whose collective impact stretches across decades and nearly every corner of conservation in Texas.

That evening, Audubon also presented a special 10th Anniversary Legacy Award honoring former First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson, accepted on her behalf by her daughter, Luci Baines Johnson.