Last month, Audubon Texas announced the 2023 honorees of the Terry Hershey Award, as part of the Texas Women in Conservation Program, which debuted in 2015 to honor the role women play in the conservation field. The honorees this year included Virginia Rose, Travis Audubon Board Member and Founder of Birdability. “Virginia [has] a passion for expanding accessibility and bringing down barriers to enjoying the outdoors. [Her] work and [her] leadership are more important than ever in the movement to protect birds,” said Lisa Gonzalez, Vice President and Executive Director of Audubon Texas.
The Birdability initiative works to ensure the birding community and the outdoors are welcoming, inclusive, safe and accessible for everybody. The group’s education, outreach and advocacy efforts focus on people with mobility challenges, blindness or low vision, chronic illness, intellectual or developmental disabilities, mental illness, and those who are neurodivergent, deaf or hard of hearing or who have other health concerns. In addition to current birders, this movement strives to introduce birding to people with disabilities and other health concerns who are not yet birders so they too can experience the joys of birding.
In honor of receiving this esteemed award, Virginia Rose prepared some remarks reflecting on her experiences starting as a birder with Travis Audubon and growing into a leader of an international movement. Read her speech below.
“Thank you, Texas Women in Conservation, for nominating me for the Terry Hershey Award. I am truly honored to join this amazing group of women in 2023. It is incredibly humbling to be nominated, especially when I look back at the women preceding me. Wow. Now I have to live up to it! I am so grateful for the work that TWIC has done. I have these women to thank for providing my birding opportunities and my ability to help others understand and practice conservation. I somehow did not realize I was the next generation of female conservation leaders helping to steward the next generation of female conservation leaders. Thank you for bringing it to my attention!
Thank you, Travis Audubon, for accepting me on every level 20 years ago. Teachers, field trip leaders and field trip participants encouraged me. No one ever said no. Cliff Shackleford picked me up and carried me up the wooden stairs at Smith Oaks to see the rookery and burdened the poor guy behind me with carrying the wheelchair. Laurie Foss and Sheila Hargis hauled me up mountains and over fallen logs to see Swainson’s Warbler. Byron Stone with the help of other walking field trippers brought the LeConte’s Sparrow TO me. Jeff and Stan and George and Dennis and so many others have helped hoist me and my chair up and down hills, curbs, roots, mud, in and out of cars, trucks, boats and golf carts to see the Golden Crown Sparrow and through snow and ice in New Mexico to see purple finches. In short, it was through Travis Audubon that I found what I call my best self and my greatest happiness in birding.
Two Travis Audubon members had more to do with setting Birdability in motion: Frances Cerbins and Karen Bartoletti. Thank you, Frances, for insisting I call the Austin American Statesman to announce my Birdathon in 2018. All kinds of amazing opportunities found me thereafter. Frances continues to be one of my loyal champions. Thank you, Frances. Karen Bartoletti agreed to be one of the first board members. Her expertise and experience has been and continues to be the main rudder. She has worked tirelessly for years helping Birdability become a successful nonprofit. Thank you, Karen, again. Without these two women, Birdability would not be what it is today with 15 countries represented on the Birdability Map, 35 captains representing 25 states, 4 new board members, and a brand new Executive Director chosen after eliminating 69 other candidates!! Now can the two of you please take over Birdability?
I must thank people all over the country who were just waiting for Birdability. They picked me up, put me on their shoulders and sent me forward, providing the groundswell for the movement.
I obviously need to thank my family for instilling in me the love of nature, the early experience of backpacking and lessons in curiosity, exploration, independence and leaving things better than how I found them. Both parents taught me to change things that “weren’t right.” My sisters have been my guiding stars throughout.
It means so much to me that my passion resonates with others. It seems still so obvious and rectifiable to help people with disabilities get outside birding, the gateway to conservation. Did you know one in four people have a disability in this country? That’s a lot of people waiting to find their best selves and their greatest happiness! That’s also a lot of potential conservationists!
This award affirms my past, present, and future work, and I couldn’t be more proud. Thank you, everyone.“
Congratulations on your well-deserved honor, Virginia!
