Executive Overview

For over ten years, the landscape of Texan environmental stewardship has been profoundly shaped, elevated, and sustained by the visionary initiatives of the Audubon Texas Women in Conservation program. As the organization transitions past its momentous first decade into a dynamic new era, it continues to serve as the premier state platform for acknowledging female conservation leadership. The program centers its prestigious highest accolade, the Terry Hershey Award, on women whose relentless dedication, fierce advocacy, and structural innovations have safeguarded Texas’s irreplaceable natural heritage.

From protecting fragile river basins and expansive floodplains to shaping public environmental policy, fostering philanthropic networks, and educating upcoming generations, the honorees of this esteemed award represent the vanguard of American ecological preservation. The program’s longevity and cultural footprint highlight a vital truth: while environmental degradation remains an omnipresent threat, the resilience of Texas’s ecosystems has been steadily fortified by grassroots organizers, scientists, policy architects, and institutional founders whose stories demand national amplification.

Entering its eleventh year—and looking boldly toward the 2026 and 2027 award cycles—Audubon Texas continues to honor luminaries while casting a wide net across the state to identify the next generation of eco-stewards. This retrospective and forward-looking report examines the historical origins of the Terry Hershey Award, profiles the collective impact of its honorees, details the newly announced 2026 class, and issues a nationwide call to action for the 2027 nomination cycle.

Detailed Chronology: The Evolution of Texas Women in Conservation

The lineage of the Texas Women in Conservation program is deeply intertwined with the institutional maturation of Audubon in the Lone Star State. To understand the gravity of the award, one must trace its roots back to its conceptualization by prominent conservation architects.

The Genesis: Establishing the Standard (2015–2016)

When the award was first conceived over a decade ago, its foundational architecture was shaped by titanic figures within regional and national environmental governance. George Bristol, serving at the time as Chair of the Audubon Texas Advisory Board, joined forces with Dr. Andrew Sansom—a legendary Texas conservation leader, former Audubon Texas Advisory Board emeritus member, and former Chairman of the National Audubon Society Board of Directors.

Recognizing a distinct historical gap in the public acknowledgment of female environmental leaders across Texas, Bristol and Sansom approached Terry Hershey, a towering icon of American conservation. They requested and received her blessing to attach her name to an award designed to honor women advancing the conservation ethos throughout the state.

Honoring the Namesake: The Legacy of Terry Hershey

Terry Hershey was not merely a namesake; she was a force of nature whose sphere of influence fundamentally altered the environmental trajectory of Houston, Texas, and the broader American landscape. Serving on the National Audubon Society Board of Directors, Hershey was instrumental in founding the state’s largest local chapter organization, today known as Birds Houston.

Over decades of tireless advocacy, Hershey fought for the literal and figurative life of Texas waterways. She successfully championed the protection of rivers, bayous, floodplains, open spaces, and delicate wildlife habitats. Her efforts preserved the natural sanctuaries that define the ecological identity of Texas today. By anchoring the award to her name, Audubon ensured that her relentless, no-nonsense approach to grassroots defense would live on through subsequent generations of women leaders.

The First Decade Milestone (2025)

Last year marked a watershed moment for the program: the celebration of its official 10th anniversary. To commemorate a decade of recognizing extraordinary leadership, Audubon hosted a landmark gala in Austin, Texas. The event served as a family reunion for the environmental movement, drawing an astonishing turnout: more than two-thirds of the program’s past honorees returned.

This gathering represented an unprecedented concentration of ecological expertise. Collectively, these women embodied decades of progress across every conceivable domain of conservation, from avian tracking and coastal marsh restoration to legislative lobbying and urban wildlife management.

Capping off the milestone evening was the presentation of a special 10th Anniversary Legacy Award honoring former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson, a lifelong champion of environmental beautification and native plant conservation. The award was gracefully accepted on her behalf by her daughter, Luci Baines Johnson, cementing the unbreakable bond between Texas political history and environmental preservation.

Supporting Context & Metrics: The Architecture of Humility and Impact

The Documentary Tradition

Each year, Audubon produces an intimate series of short cinematic profiles celebrating the award honorees and their monumental contributions. These films do more than market an event; they capture the human element of ecological defense.

Directors and interviewers associated with the production note a striking, recurring psychological pattern among the honorees. Despite their monumental achievements—often spanning decades of institutional building, legislative battles, and scientific breakthroughs—these women rarely pivot the conversation toward themselves. Instead, their narratives center on:

• The Colleagues: The unsung co-workers who labored alongside them in the trenches.
• The Landscapes: The specific bays, prairies, forests, and rivers they fell in love with and fought to protect.
• The Institutions: The non-profits, academic departments, and advocacy groups they helped build from the ground up.
• The Communities: The local populations whose health, safety, and quality of life were secured by their environmental interventions.

This profound humility underscores a core philosophy of the Texas Women in Conservation program: systemic ecological work is inherently collaborative. Yet, it also highlights the urgent necessity of external validation. Environmental leadership in Texas is frequently arduous, underfunded, and met with political resistance. Programs like this provide a vital public platform to declare unequivocally that this labor matters, that these women permanently changed the state for the better, and that their stories are foundational to the cultural identity of Texas.

Diversity of Approach: No Single Path to Leadership

A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the first decade of honorees reveals a distinct absence of a monolithic leadership archetype. The women celebrated through this initiative have proven that conservation stewardship requires a diversified ecosystem of skills. Past and present honorees have excelled across various distinct pillars:

1. Habitat & Wildlife Protection: Direct safeguarding of endangered species, coastal wetlands, and migratory bird flyways.
2. Land & Water Acquisition: Spearheading major philanthropic efforts and public-private partnerships to secure conservation easements.
3. Institutional Founding: Establishing long-standing local chapters, advocacy groups, and research centers.
4. Next-Generation Education: Designing curricula and mentorship pipelines to groom young environmentalists.
5. Community Empowerment: Strengthening vulnerable neighborhoods against industrial pollution and environmental injustice.
6. Public Policy & Legislative Shaping: Drafting, lobbying, and defending state and federal environmental regulations.

Official Statements & 2026 Honoree Announcements

Advancing into its second decade, the program continues its tradition of excellence by announcing the official class of 2026 honorees.

The 2026 Terry Hershey Award Recipients

Audubon Texas proudly announced that Pamela Reese, Lydia Saldaña, and Shelly Plante have been selected as the 2026 Terry Hershey Award honorees. These three extraordinary women join a pantheon of legendary conservationists, adding their unique chapters to the ongoing legacy of the award.

• Pamela Reese: Recognized for her steadfast dedication to protecting Texan habitats, Reese exemplifies the quiet tenacity that defines the program’s finest leaders, blending grassroots organizing with structural community engagement.
• Lydia Saldaña: A veteran communications and conservation strategist, Saldaña has spent decades shaping public perception, elevating environmental awareness, and bridging the gap between scientific data and public policy in Texas.
• Shelly Plante: A powerhouse in natural resource management, Plante has dedicated her career to connecting Texans with the outdoors, fostering wildlife stewardship, and championing science-based conservation initiatives across the state.

Leadership Reflections

Reflecting on her three-year tenure helping lead the Audubon Texas Women in Conservation program, leadership representatives emphasize the transformative nature of the initiative:

"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."

Reflecting on the psychological posture of the honorees during the documentary filming process, program directors note:

"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."

Future Outlook: The Next Decade and the 2027 Nomination Cycle

As the Texas Women in Conservation program steps across the threshold of its second decade, its mandate has expanded. The environmental challenges facing Texas—ranging from unprecedented urban sprawl and water scarcity to industrial pressures and climate destabilization—demand an ever-widening circle of visionary leadership.

Audubon Texas is actively looking ahead to the women who will define the next chapter of environmental stewardship in the state. However, the organization does not operate in an insular vacuum; it depends entirely on the eyes, ears, and lived experiences of communities across Texas to surface these hidden figures.

The Call for Nominations: 2027 Award Series

To sustain this momentum, Audubon Texas has officially opened the Nominations for the 2027 Texas Women in Conservation Award Series.

The organization is calling upon everyday citizens, environmental professionals, community organizers, and civic leaders across the state to pose critical questions about their local networks:

• Who is building something enduring and vital in your local community?
• Who has spent decades quietly protecting a tract of land, a river, or a neighborhood that matters?
• Who is successfully bringing new, marginalized, or youthful voices into the conservation conversation?
• Who is engineering innovative technical or social solutions to regional environmental crises?
• Who is mentoring the next generation of eco-leaders and providing the foundational stability that makes long-term progress possible?

If an extraordinary woman in your personal or professional network matches this description, Audubon urges community members to step forward.

Action Item: Nominations for the 2027 award cycle are officially live. Submissions can be completed and reviewed directly via the official Audubon Texas Terry Hershey Award Nominations Portal.

Conclusion

For more than ten years, the Texas Women in Conservation program has functioned as an indispensable corrective to historical blind spots, ensuring that the women driving environmental progress receive the profound public recognition they have always deserved. As the program embarks upon its second decade—bolstered by the inclusion of trailblazers like Pamela Reese, Lydia Saldaña, and Shelly Plante—it offers a clear blueprint for the future. By honoring humility, celebrating collaborative triumph, and actively hunting for the next generation of quiet heroes, Audubon Texas ensures that the legacy of Terry Hershey is not merely remembered, but continuously built, one powerful story at a time.