Shelly Plante is the statewide Nature Tourism Manager in the Outreach and Education Program of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. She has been with TPWD for more than 25 years and her work is all about making life better outside! 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 (a series of nine driving trails throughout the state guiding visitors to more than 920 local wildlife viewing attractions) and has been a coordinator for the annual Great Texas Birding Classic for more than 20 years, including overseeing the latest evolution of this program to a statewide event. She also coordinates and helped develop the Texas Paddling Trails Program that builds partnerships between local communities, other agencies, river authorities and Texas Parks and Wildlife sites while creating sustainable paddling tourism opportunities statewide. Shelly works with private landowners on income diversification options through nature tourism and with communities on developing nature tourism programs within their region. In 2013 she added adjunct professor and lecturer at Texas State University to her professional life, teaching Planning and Development of Nature and Heritage Tourism every fall semester, a prerequisite for the university’s Nature and Heritage Tourism cross-departmental minor.

 Shelly holds a Master’s of Applied Geography with a focus on Nature and Heritage Tourism from Texas State University, which included her directed research on the economic and interpretive value of bat-viewing to rural Texas. Her B.A. in Plan II/Geography from the University of Texas-Austin included an undergraduate honors thesis on Kemp’s ridley sea turtle conservation. She currently resides in Austin, Texas with her husband and two children, and whenever she can find spare time, she enjoys traveling with friends and family, hiking, viewing wildlife, exploring, learning, and gardening.

For the Autumn 2024 issue, Shelly recommended The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires that Run the World, Oliver Milman, W.W Norton & Company, 2022, 272 pages.

For the Summer 2024 issue, Shelly recommended Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World, Christian Cooper, Random House, 2023, 304 pages.

For the Spring 2024 issue, Shelly recommended Birding Under the Influence: Cycling Across America in Search of Birds and Recovery, Dorian Anderson, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2023, 272 pages.

For the Winter 2023-2024 issue, Shelly recommended Inside/Outside: A Nature-Themed Resource Book for Embedding Emotional Literacy, Joe Harkness, Routledge, 2023, 132 pages.

For the Autumn 2023 issue, Shelly recommended The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, Jacqueline Kelly, Henry Holt and Company (hardcover), 368 pages; and Sparrow Envy: Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts, J. Drew Lanham Hub City Press, 2021, 104 pages; and Find More Birds: 111 Surprising Ways to Spot Birds Wherever You Are, Heather Wolf, The Experiment, 2023, 273 pages.