Nature Book Guide

Executive Director, Partnership for the National Trails System. She previously served as Executive Director of the Big Bend Conservancy in Texas, Mission Heritage Partners, and the Public Lands Foundation. Courtney is also serving as the Parks and Trail specialist for the Great Springs Project, a network of spring-to-spring trails and protected natural areas over the Edwards Aquifer between San Antonio and Austin. Courtney teaches one Mass Communications class per semester at Texas State University. Courtney has more than twenty-five years of experience in public lands and public-private partnerships.

Executive Director of Bluff Lake Nature Center, a nonprofit agency that owns and manages a 123-acre urban wildlife refuge and outdoor classroom in Denver. Bluff Lake educates individuals to be engaged, resilient, and curious; conserves a natural area in the city; furthers equity in outdoor access; and nurtures the health and well-being of communities and ecosystems.

Tiara Chapman is the Social Media and Marketing Manager for Texan by Nature, and a passionate advocate for connecting people with nature through innovative digital spaces. Based in the Hill Country of the great state of Texas, Tiara's journey as a science communicator and parks enthusiast has taken her from the sleeping volcanoes of Alaska's Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve to the serene shores of the Lewisville Lake Environmental Learning Area.

At the heart of Tiara's mission is the core truth that nature is for everyone, regardless of where they live or how they want to explore it. She leverages her expertise in building thriving online communities to break down barriers to outdoor recreation. She is dedicated to fostering inclusive partnerships at local, state, and federal levels to ensure everyone has access to their public lands. As a volunteer board member of organizations like the Informal Science Educators Association of Texas, ActivEnviro, and Friends of San Antonio Natural Areas, Tiara's impact extends beyond her professional work. She champions the healing and transformative power of nature, emphasizing its role in personal wellness and community building.

Susan Futrell is a freelance writer, essayist, and consultant, and the author of Good Apples: Behind Every Bite (University of Iowa, 2017). She has worked for many years as an educator, marketer and program developer in the sustainable agriculture and local food world. For the past 15 years she has worked with a network of orchards in the northeastern US to develop the Eco Apple® program, a nonprofit collaboration among fruit growers, marketers, and scientists to support ecological orchard practices and local fruit production in the US. She’s carried a notebook since she was ten years old, writing ‘nature notes’ about her Iowa backyard, orchards across the US, and apples in Indian-occupied Kashmir. She holds a B.S. in Geography and an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. She lives in Iowa City and mid-coast Maine.

Laura Mills is a writer and nature enthusiast from Houston, Texas. Previously, she was the Marketing and Communications Coordinator for Buffalo Bayou Partnership, the nonprofit organization creating and stewarding welcoming green space along Houston’s most significant natural waterway. She also could be found slinging books at Brazos Bookstore. In her spare time, she enjoys painting, exploring urban nature, and photographing clouds. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in English and Creative Writing from Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Shelly Plante is the Nature Tourism Manager for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, working in the Outreach and Education Program. She believes community-based conservation, education and partnerships are critical to the future of our natural resources and has worked throughout Texas to connect people to conservation through birding, paddling, and other forms of outdoor recreation. Shelly manages the Great Texas Wildlife Trail program and has been a coordinator for the annual Great Texas Birding Classic for more than 20 years. Plante also coordinates and helped develop the Texas Paddling Trails Program. She markets and promotes state parks and works with private landowners and communities on nature tourism development. In 2013 she became an adjunct professor and lecturer at Texas State University, teaching Planning and Development of Nature and Heritage Tourism. She holds a Master’s of Applied Geography with a focus on Nature and Heritage Tourism from Texas State University and a B.A. in Plan II/Geography from the University of Texas-Austin.

James is an educator and volunteer exposing new audiences to nature, conservation, ecology, and the joy and healing power of all things outdoors. He uses books as a critical tool and has formed a nonprofit organization promoting media literacy, digital citizenship, and the joy of reading in the Houston community and beyond. His Nature by the Book program recently hosted a book talk with Suzanne Simpson, author of Wild Houston, at the Houston Arboretum

Executive Director of the Sand Creek Regional Greenway Partnership, a nonprofit organization supporting an urban trail and riparian habitat in metro Denver, Colorado.

The mission of Chicago-based nonprofit Urban Rivers is to transform urban waterways into urban wildlife sanctuaries. They are bringing back habitat for native wildlife by building artificial floating gardens in historically industrialized sections of the Chicago River. These gardens are full of native wetland plants that grow hydroponically down through the garden modules into the water – providing high-quality, diverse habitat both above and below the water’s surface. The floating wetlands provide shelter and food for a diverse range of mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians. The root network of the plants, hanging below the gardens, provides critical habitat for fish as well as smaller members of the aquatic ecosystem, such as macroinvertebrates.

The staff of the Chicago-based nonprofit Urban Rivers. Front row-Research Director, Phil Nicodemus, Executive Director and Co-Founder Nick Wesley. Back row-Programs Manager Sage Rossman, Bubba Tucker (dog and Head of Goose Relations), and Business Operations Manager Maya Kelly.

The Ecology Action Center (EAC) is the environmental sustainability agency for Bloomington, Normal, and McLean County, Illinois, providing a wide range of programs and services relative to waste reduction, energy efficiency, clean water protection, air quality improvements, and more.

What started out as successful one-time recycling drive in 1971, Operation Recycle grew over 50 years into what is now the Ecology Action Center. One unique role of the EAC is acting as the Solid Waste Agency for McLean County which includes solid waste planning and management, coordination of household hazardous waste collection events, and technical services such as the annual calculation of the community wide waste generation and recycling rate. The EAC’s Education Coordinator visits almost every 3rd and 4th grade classroom in the county to teach students about clean water, waste reduction, and recycling and visits nearly every library over the summer to take part in their summer library program. BN Energy Bright helps residents achieve energy efficiency goals, provides home and business energy audits, and information on solar options in Illinois. The EAC’s newest program, Tree Corps, aims to plant 10,000 trees every year in the county and connects income qualifying residents with free trees and tree care education. Among other projects and programs, the EAC plays a big role in their community in Central Illinois.

Left to right: Michael Brown, Executive Director, Katie Vogler (kneeling), Education Coordinator, Melissa Adams-McCarthy, Program Assistant, Deb Pitcher, Development Coordinator, Peg Mercer, Admin Assistant, Kelsey Bremner, Program Technician, Tess Wallace, Tree Coordinator.

Don Baumgardt is a volunteer open space advocate and retired small business owner now happily residing in Denver, Colorado.  He spent thirty years living in El Paso, Texas cultivating passions for bike riding and being outdoors, where he became something of an expert on places to see in west Texas and southern New Mexico.  Along that path, Don became active in open space advocacy issues including involvement in a successful movement to save over a thousand acres of beloved open space from development in El Paso.  He and his wife moved to Denver four years ago to be closer to family and to have new places to explore.  Not long after arriving he began volunteering for Save Bear Creek Lake Park, a not-for-profit with an ongoing mission to educate and mobilize the public to oppose a reservoir expansion that would destroy significant riparian areas and reduce access to open space in Lakewood, Colorado.

Founder/Editor of the Nature Book Guide

As a high school student in the Youth Conservation Corps Beth built trails and trail bridges in two Illinois state parks. Mid-career, she led the Texas Mountain Trail as Executive Director for a decade, where she promoted the desert/mountain region's natural and historical assets, including state and national parks. Through a partnership with Texas Parks and Wildlife, Beth developed the Far West Texas Wildlife Trail and map. Before she retired in 2021, she led the Sand Creek Regional Greenway Partnership, an organization supporting an urban trail along a riparian corridor in the Denver metro area.

Beth has organized countless volunteer efforts, from habitat cleanup days to beaver mitigation to trail interpretation projects. As a volunteer with the Colorado Butterfly Monitoring Project and Texas Master Naturalists, she’s supported scientific research. She’s also led the local Tierra Grande Chapter of Texas Master Naturalists in the Big Bend Region as chapter president.

Beth began the Nature Book Guide as a retirement project, inviting friends, colleagues and friends of friends—all naturalists, scientists, and stewards of our natural resources representing a variety of perspectives—to recommend great books for adult readers.

Vice President of Science and Conservation at Butterfly Pavilion. Rich has a long record of wildlife research around the world; in 2020, he was recognized by the country of Mongolia with the highest award bestowed upon a non-citizen for his contribution to wildlife conservation. His current work includes research on the ecology and population dynamics of threatened species of native Mongolian Parnassius butterflies.

Noha Shawki, who grew up in Cairo, Egypt, is currently a Professor in the Department of Politics and Government at Illinois State University (ISU). Her areas of teaching and research include international relations, global governance, transnational activism and transnational social movements, with a substantive focus on global justice, human rights and sustainability. She has a special interest in transnational social movements that seek to bring about sustainability transitions. At ISU, she worked with colleagues from across campus to create the Center for a Sustainable Water Future and the Water Sustainability minor. In her free time, Noha enjoys traveling, cycling with her husband on their tandem bike, and reading fiction. She has read some classics of American literature in recent years, including several of Willa Cather’s novels.

Judith Westveer, Ph.D. is the Assistant Director and Conservation Ecologist, Southern Plains Land Trust (SPLT) in Colorado, which has protected over 60,000 acres of prairie. Judith was born and raised in Amsterdam and holds a Ph.D. at the University of Amsterdam’s Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics as a Wetland Restoration Ecologist. She has worked for various environmental non-profit organizations in the Peruvian Amazon including Science Director at Conservación Amazónica, Wildlife Monitor at Fauna Forever, and Affiliated Researcher at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. She co-authored the World Wildlife Fund Living Planet Index Report. She’s also illustrated children’s books about nature conservation.

Natural Resource Specialist, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). Previously, Adrianna served as Fire Prevention Technician with the US Forest Service in the Cascade Mountains of central Oregon. Worked 10 years in outdoor education/interpretation and natural resource management in State and National Parks. Her Masters studies examined the social factors that shape a fire adapted community and those that impact the development of effective community wildfire protection plans.

Lisa Fargason Gordon is the Executive Director at the Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute (CDRI), also known as the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Center and Botanical Gardens, located 4 miles SE of Fort Davis, Texas. Sharing her background as an educator, Lisa has helped to create CDRI’s acclaimed educational programs, free for youth in the TEA Region 18 service area.

Mallory Sanchez is a librarian at Odessa College and Texas Master Naturalist in training. She loves helping readers discover new books and teaching college students how to do academic research. She has also spent some years as a youth librarian and early childhood teacher. Her popular Instagram account, @starlight_readingtx frequently features nature-related book reviews and recommendations.

Natalie is a registered landscape architect and owner of Ross Land Studio, a landscape architecture firm that creates resilient and sustainable landscapes for residents, businesses and institutions. After gaining a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Minnesota, Natalie got her start designing landscapes in Seattle, working on large scale resort design, campus planning and green roofs. In 2020, she moved back to her hometown of Cedar Rapids Iowa to raise her family and bring more naturalistic and localized design into her practice. She finds inspiration from the remnant prairies and woodlands in her area and tries to bring elements of those ecosystems into her client’s homes and businesses.

Since 2021, Natalie has served on the Cedar Rapids Stormwater Commission. She’s a board member for the Cedar Valley Montessori School and is currently serving as Tree Captain for Trees Forever. She's also been a volunteer with her local Shakespeare Garden.

Will Jennings is a writer, photo-documentarian, musician, and community organizer advocating for equitable and accessible public commons. He is an Associate Professor of Instruction Emeritus in Writing, Reading, and Multi-Modal forms of the Essay, Creative Nonfiction, and Civic Advocacy. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa where he was named a Creative Institute Fellow and a certified Civic Reflection and Mediation Facilitator. He developed and taught a Strategic Sustainability Advocacy course as part of one Major and two Minor programs. His multidisciplinary approach to human-centered geography, design, and critical mapping/cartography has been central to his academic, narrative, and creative writing interests. His sequenced essay memoir, “How I Know Orion” is forthcoming on Ice Cube Press, mapping the indirect and intergenerational language of violent trauma and recovery.

Before teaching, he helped start and grow a cooperative natural food wholesale, helping underserved communities organize and sustain access to affordable and healthy foods. He has been a typesetter, designer, carpenter, farm worker, landscaper, line cook, labor organizer, heavy machinery operator, professional touring musician/songwriter, and certified Wilderness First Responder/Search and Rescue Volunteer. He lives in Iowa and mid-coast Maine with his partner, author Susan Futrell, and their stalwart, indefatigable rescue cat, Ned.

Leader of the ‘Living with Big Cats’ Initiative at World Wildlife Fund, focusing specifically on human - big cat conflict and enabling coexistence between people and lions, jaguars and snow leopards. Based in Arusha, Tanzania. Age 32, she/her.

An accomplished artist, Kate offers her work to benefit the conservation work at World Wildlife Fund. Click below for more information/links.

Bilingual, multicultural immigrant scientist/artist from Durango, Mexico. He is an interdisciplinary photographer, activist, entomologist, visual storyteller and educator living in the Denver metro area.

Value Chain Development Manager for the Savanna Institute, where he’s conducted research on chestnut trees and berries. Bill grew up in Amish country in northern Ohio, where he worked on dairy farms through high school. He served in the Army and used the G.I. Bill to pay for college, graduating with a B.S. in Wildlife Biology from the University of Montana and an M.S. in Biology from Eastern Illinois University. Following graduate school, he worked for The Nature Conservancy as a Land Steward and then spent seven years as an organic vegetable farmer in central Illinois. He transitioned from farming to working as a Local Food System Educator with University of Illinois Extension where he developed programs to support staple crops and agroforestry.

In addition to working with the Savanna Institute, Bill is an accomplished birder, and board member of the John Wesley Powell Audubon Society. In January 2023, Bill launched his gardening and re-wilding newsletter, Easy by Nature at billdavison.substack.com. Margaret Atwood listed Bill’s substack essay on owls as one of her favorites of 2023.

Associate Teaching Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado at Boulder. Dr. Sconiers teaches introductory biology and education courses and researches curriculum development and educational approaches for large classroom settings. During the summers, he researches how changes in plant communities in response to climate change impact arthropod communities in alpine systems.

Opto-mechanical Technician, who helps to maintain large telescope mirrors, instrument optics, and laser beams. She's working just south of the Atacama Desert in Chile for an organization that manages telescopes all over the world, particularly Arizona, Hawai'i, and Chile.

Kristin is a scientist who loves to talk to people. She works hard to create opportunities for communities to positively connect with natural places and the species that share those spaces.

Kristin serves as a Natural Resources Specialist for the City of Aurora, Colorado and sits on the city council advisory committee for Parks and Open Spaces in the City of Arvada. She is passionate about human-wildlife conflict resolution, conserving habitat for wildlife species in densely populated areas, and creating accessible nature play spaces. She is currently focusing her interest and research on the American Beaver.

M.S. Animals and Public Policy from Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine

B.S. Biology from University of Oregon

Deputy Director of the City of Albuquerque’s Parks and Recreation Department. Dennis had a long and distinguished career in the National Park Service. His roles included park ranger in some of the country’s most outstanding national parks, including Yosemite, Joshua Tree, Big Bend, and Grand Canyon; and as Park Superintendent at White Sands National Park, Bandelier National Monument, Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and Petroglyph National Monument. Dennis has also served as Chief of Field Operations for the New Mexico State Parks Division.

Susan Shullaw is a retired nonprofit executive who spent most of her career in higher education, providing strategic communications and marketing support for major fundraising campaigns. She grew up in Burlington, Iowa, a Mississippi River town known as the birthplace of Aldo Leopold, and she enjoyed summer vacations in northern Minnesota. These experiences instilled a passion for the outdoors and a deep love of nature and its wild places. Since 2011 she has served on the board of the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, enabling her to play an active role in protecting and restoring the natural resources of Iowa, the most biologically altered landscape in the U.S.

Umilaela Arifin, Ph.D, is an Indonesian herpetologist researching amphibians and reptile diversity of the Southeast Asian region. Umi grew up in Cirebon before moving to Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, and later to Germany. For her contributions, the IUCN SSC Amphibian Specialist Group honored her as #ChampionsOfTheEndangered 2022 - a campaign by Synchronicity Earth and the Ellen Fund. She is currently a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Researcher at the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change, Hamburg, Germany, and the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley. She is also co-editor of the book, Women in Herpetology: 50 Stories from Around the World, a collaborative project meant to increase the visibility of women in herpetology across all disciplines.

Joyce, a 17-year-old high school student in California, is a member of the Indigenous Batwa tribe of Uganda. We asked Joyce to comment on Vanessa Nakate's A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis.

Last year, Joyce was one of 13 winners (of more than 12,000 entries) in the New York Times' 100 Words Personal Narrative Contest with her essay, "A River Runs Through Me." She wrote about her experience as an orphan and the impact of the removal of the Batwa tribe from their ancestral home in the 1990s to create Bwindi Impenetrable National Park as a refuge for mountain gorillas. The Batwa tribe now lives in settlements at the edge of the National Park.

The Redemption Song Foundation has been working with Batwa in Kalehe Village in Uganda, creating a more sustainable community with clean water, improved livelihoods through an artisan coop, and education for children. Joyce benefitted from this support and was adopted by the Foundation's founder, Wendee Nicole. The Foundation continues its work in Uganda, and this year Joyce is starting the Discover the Lost Tribe, an ambassador program connecting Batwa and American youth. For more information about

Redemption Song Foundation, visit redemptionsongfoundation.org.