Bristol joined the Standard to discuss more. Listen to the interview in the player above or read the transcript below.<\/p>\n
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:<\/p>\n
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Texas Standard: What inspired you to tell this story through this overlooked lens?<\/p>\n
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\u2019t think I would write it, but she had the idea all the way back in 2009.<\/p>\n
And then finally in 2019, we kept kicking the idea around and said, \u201clet\u2019s do this.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Was she involved in conservation efforts or something?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 and also how little documentation there was at times for some of these women.<\/p>\n
Say a little bit more about those challenges that you found in writing this.<\/p>\n
Sure, it was a challenge, definitely to find some on a lot of these women who were really in the background. Thankfully, there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
And then some of the bigger women \u2014 Lady Bird Johnson, former First Lady Laura Bush \u2014 there\u2019s plenty written about them.<\/p>\n
\u00bb RELATED:\u00a0New PBS \u2018Daytripper\u2019 series takes Texans on tour of the state\u2019s protected landscapes<\/a><\/p>\n But I think this might speak to a larger issue about how we\u2019re documenting what\u2019s being done. And I\u2019m wondering, perhaps you can share a story that might\u2019ve been lost were it not for your work. Do you have an example?<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Why do you say \u201csecret weapon\u201d?<\/p>\n Because she was the one that showed up. And she would be down at the Capitol meeting with people.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t at first.<\/p>\n I think that a lot of people feel like, well, they\u2019re passionate about something like conservation or preservation, but they feel like they don\u2019t have the connections, they don\u2019t have the money, they don\u2019t have the background that would empower them to make a difference.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t, it\u2019s all about just basically taking that initiative.<\/p>\n And that was something that really came across in either the interviews or even the research that we were doing, was it\u2019s all about what\u2019s right for you, what\u2019s scalable for you.<\/p>\n I hope that as people read these stories, they see themselves in them and say, \u201cgosh, she stepped forward and she had kids and aging parents and work and everything else. Why can\u2019t I?\u201d And so hopefully they\u2019ll feel inspired to step up and do something, again, that\u2019s available for them.<\/p>\n Michael Minasi \/ Texas Standard<\/p>\n “Wild Women for Good” author Jennifer Bristol.<\/p>\n What about your passions? Like mother, like daughter? Is that what happened?<\/p>\n Like mother, like daughter, and like father.<\/p>\n Oh, is that right?<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n That\u2019s really interesting. I think about where the spark comes for young people to get engaged, get involved. And Texas has changed a lot.<\/p>\n I have a sense that as much as people really enjoy Texas\u2019 park system and getting out there, that fewer of us are actually doing it. And I\u2019m wondering how concerned you are about the future of conservation here.<\/p>\n You know, I\u2019m concerned but also excited at the same time.<\/p>\n Oh, say more about that.<\/p>\n Yeah, I think there\u2019s 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\u2019s a lack of awareness of what to do and how to do it.<\/p>\n And so I think, hopefully, that will be something \u2014 that as young people step forward that they can learn more about and figure out how to organize. I think there\u2019s an amazing opportunity in the nonprofit world right now, especially for women.<\/p>\n Especially for women.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u00bb GET MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE STATE:\u00a0Sign up for Texas Standard\u2019s weekly newsletters<\/a><\/p>\n When you step back and you think about, you know, you have a comprehensive account of women\u2019s role in Texas conservation\u2026 What does it tell you about the future of environmentalism more broadly in Texas?<\/p>\n So, you know, I would love to see more being done. Texas is a tough state. I\u2019m a proud Texan, but sometimes it\u2019s hard to be a Texan at the same time, especially when we\u2019re talking about our environment.<\/p>\n I think we have a lot of threats to us right now. We have, you know, data centers coming left and right<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n Let me ask you to pause for just a moment because sometimes I wonder whether there is something about, historically speaking\u2026 Thinking of nature from an adversarial perspective, in a way we\u2019re 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?<\/p>\n I wonder if, in a way, that adversarial posture has affected the way that we think about conservation.<\/p>\n Absolutely. I mean, we\u2019ve always had, first off, we have always had so much land in abundance. We haven\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n And then, of course, as we\u2019re settling Texas or anywhere, any human settling anything, there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n But you\u2019re optimistic, nonetheless.<\/p>\n Yeah, our laws really give us that right as well. But I am optimistic. I think there\u2019s more awareness than ever that, especially when it comes to water, that we have to really start looking very carefully about how we\u2019re using our resources.<\/p>\n If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it\u00a0here<\/a>. Your gift helps pay for everything you find on\u00a0texasstandard.org<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0KUT.org<\/a>. Thanks for donating today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Big Bend to Caddo Lake, Padre Island to Palo Duro, Texas has no shortage of public lands.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-250244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\""Wild](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776219795_574_.jpeg\"\/)
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