From Big Bend to Caddo Lake, Padre Island to Palo Duro, Texas has no shortage of public lands. Even in a state that's about 95% privately owned, the options to get outside are rather diverse, offering ecosystems of all sorts for those who are interested.
But the path to conserving that land has not been straightforward or simple.
In her new book, "Wild Women for Good: Stories of Conservation in Texas," author Jennifer Bristol documents a role seldom discussed — specifically the role female Texans played in shaping the state's conservation and public preservation efforts.
Bristol joined the Standard to discuss more. Listen to the interview in the player above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: What inspired you to tell this story through this overlooked lens?
Jennifer Bristol: Well, I have to be honest, the genesis for the story came from my mom who really wanted a book like this, didn't think I would write it, but she had the idea all the way back in 2009.
And then finally in 2019, we kept kicking the idea around and said, "let's do this." We really kind of had put together enough information about some women, some foundational women as well as contemporary women. And we just decided to go for it.
Was she involved in conservation efforts or something?
Very much so. My mother is Valarie Bristol, and she was a former county commissioner here in Austin and Travis County, and helped set aside the Balcones Canyonlands for eight different endangered species, but specifically the Golden-cheeked warbler.
Well, you write about how, when you were working on this book, you would stumble across signs and parks and that sort of thing that would denote the impact of some of the people that you write about — and also how little documentation there was at times for some of these women.
Say a little bit more about those challenges that you found in writing this.
Sure, it was a challenge, definitely to find some on a lot of these women who were really in the background. Thankfully, there's all kinds of archives around the state of Texas and those archive librarians are amazing at digging in and helping us find different letters and documents.
And then I reached out to some of the family members, too, who were wonderful to share some of those really expressive letters about what they were doing and really the point in time that they were doing it in.
And then some of the bigger women — Lady Bird Johnson, former First Lady Laura Bush — there's plenty written about them.
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But I think this might speak to a larger issue about how we're documenting what's being done. And I'm wondering, perhaps you can share a story that might've been lost were it not for your work. Do you have an example?
Sure, so there was a woman who lived here in Austin, her name was Mamie Powell, and she was the secret weapon for getting the first state parks board solidified, but also the passage of the legislation that was needed to accept those first 23 parks into the system.
Why do you say "secret weapon"?
Because she was the one that showed up. And she would be down at the Capitol meeting with people.
She hosted parties. She brought people together. And she really pushed for it. And she understood the politics and the nuances that needed to happen to get people more favorable towards the idea, because they weren't at first.
I think that a lot of people feel like, well, they're passionate about something like conservation or preservation, but they feel like they don't have the connections, they don't have the money, they don't have the background that would empower them to make a difference.
But what this sort of seems to be suggesting is that the willingness to show up, the willingness to be there, to do it where others haven't, it's all about just basically taking that initiative.
And that was something that really came across in either the interviews or even the research that we were doing, was it's all about what's right for you, what's scalable for you.
I hope that as people read these stories, they see themselves in them and say, "gosh, she stepped forward and she had kids and aging parents and work and everything else. Why can't I?" And so hopefully they'll feel inspired to step up and do something, again, that's available for them.
What about your passions? Like mother, like daughter? Is that what happened?
Like mother, like daughter, and like father.
Oh, is that right?
Yes. Yeah, I worked for Texas Parks & Wildlife for 10 years, and I currently serve for the City of Austin as the chair of the environmental commission. And my passion is bird-friendly design, designing buildings that prevent bird strikes and bird collisions.
That's really interesting. I think about where the spark comes for young people to get engaged, get involved. And Texas has changed a lot.
I have a sense that as much as people really enjoy Texas' park system and getting out there, that fewer of us are actually doing it. And I'm wondering how concerned you are about the future of conservation here.
You know, I'm concerned but also excited at the same time.
Oh, say more about that.
Yeah, I think there's an awareness that we really have to do something, that we have to step forward and that it takes all of us to be involved if we want to have more parks, if we wanna conserve the land that we all share. I think, there's a lack of awareness of what to do and how to do it.
And so I think, hopefully, that will be something — that as young people step forward that they can learn more about and figure out how to organize. I think there's an amazing opportunity in the nonprofit world right now, especially for women.
Especially for women.
Especially for women, to step forward and have those leadership roles in the conservation world. That is something where as soon as a lot of these nonprofits sort of came about, they immediately started funneling into and have been great leaders in that, instead of the traditional ways of working for Texas Parks & Wildlife or U.S. Fish & Wildlife, the Forest Service, you know, those sort of traditional tracks.
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When you step back and you think about, you know, you have a comprehensive account of women's role in Texas conservation… What does it tell you about the future of environmentalism more broadly in Texas?
So, you know, I would love to see more being done. Texas is a tough state. I'm a proud Texan, but sometimes it's hard to be a Texan at the same time, especially when we're talking about our environment.
I think we have a lot of threats to us right now. We have, you know, data centers coming left and right…
Let me ask you to pause for just a moment because sometimes I wonder whether there is something about, historically speaking… Thinking of nature from an adversarial perspective, in a way we're sort of trying to overcome these forces of nature that sometimes can seem insurmountable and that being part of the mythology of Texas baked into, in a ways, the story of Texas, right?
I wonder if, in a way, that adversarial posture has affected the way that we think about conservation.
Absolutely. I mean, we've always had, first off, we have always had so much land in abundance. We haven't really had to stop and think about it quite as, you know, maybe intensely as some of the other states have. So that has given us a sort of right, if you will, the feeling that we can do as we want when we want.
And then, of course, as we're settling Texas or anywhere, any human settling anything, there's this need to have dominion over it in order to put order into that. So I think that all plays in there. Certainly our own Texas history of, you know, we are a land-rich state and we are going to build on it whatever we want to build.
But you're optimistic, nonetheless.
Yeah, our laws really give us that right as well. But I am optimistic. I think there's more awareness than ever that, especially when it comes to water, that we have to really start looking very carefully about how we're using our resources.
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