2024 Award Recipient
CatarinaGalindo
Project Friends of Salineño
Project Friends of Salineño
Catarina always felt that environmentalism was a crucial part of her Mexican Sephardic Jewish identity. On the holiday of Shemini Atzeret, her family would always say Tikkun Ha’Geshem, a prayer for rain and dew. Her backyard, an orchard of fruit trees, was the gathering place for many happy Tu BiShvat celebrations.
Catarina brought this passion for nature with her when she visited the Salineño Wildlife Refuge, a renowned birding location in Texas. There she discovered invasive grass had overtaken the park, damaging the native habitat.
She quickly returned with some friends and shovels, and began working to remove the invasive plants. As more people learned of Catarina’s undertaking, they wanted to help. She saw an opportunity to create an inclusive conservation group called Friends of Salineño, dedicated to preserving the current environment and raising a new generation of conservationists. To date, the group has protected habitats for more than 773 species, planted 115 native plants, and most significantly, organized the local Hispanic and birding communities to stop the construction of a border wall from destroying habitats.
Friends of Salineño is a project that preserves and nurtures one of the country’s most biodiverse habitats, the Salineño Wildlife Refuge, while engaging and protecting Hispanic communities that face environmental injustice in South Texas. The group has worked to restore native habitats, create multiple gardens for wildlife, protect the community by engaging in political activism, and help at-risk residents combat rising temperatures due to climate change. Friends of Salineño works at the intersection of environmental injustice and racial injustice, educating, engaging, and inspiring young Hispanic naturalists who will preserve this project and pass on their knowledge to future generations.
