On November 12, 2020, Conserve Wildlife
Foundation proudly celebrated the 44 Women & Wildlife honorees who have
taken a valuable role in protecting wildlife in New Jersey and now serve as
role models and mentors for countless young wildlife leaders, male and female
alike.
The Women & Wildlife
Awards event always
brings together a great group of people who care deeply about wildlife
conservation in New Jersey. They join us to honor women – biologists and land
stewards, policy advocates and conservation officers, rehabilitators and
educators – whose exemplary work has meant irreplaceable strides in so many
fields of conservation. Unwilling to let Covid-19 stand in the way of our
revelry, we decided to make this year’s celebration virtual. While we missed
seeing everyone in person, the shift to an online celebration allowed us to
open the event to everyone free of charge and eschew our usual awards for a
celebration of our past Women & Wildlife honorees and their remarkable
accomplishments.
Past honoree and CWF founder Linda Tesauro narrated a film exploring Women & Wildlife and the unique role of New Jersey in setting a pioneering model for other states to follow which premiered during the event. From inaugural honorees, Dr. Joanna Burger and Hannah Bonsey Suthers, to the five honorees celebrated at last year’s event at Duke Farms, the video details the struggles faced by women early on and how their leadership and legacies continue to inspire us all. This six-minute video can be found below and on the Conserve Wildlife YouTube page.
We thank Linda Tesauro, Amy Greene,
and Diane Nickerson for sharing their heartfelt reflections on receiving their
awards, and current CWF biologists Larissa Smith, Allegra Mitchell, and Nicole
Porter for speaking about the great women who have influenced them.
We owe a special thank you to our lead sponsor PSE&G, as well as Weeks Marine and Hudson Farm Foundation, and Amy Greene, whose sponsorship honored her late husband John Belle. These along with our other generous sponsors and auction contributors made this year’s virtual Women & Wildlife Celebration a tremendous success!
The New Jersey conservation community lost a great champion with the passing of Diane Soucy of The Raptor Trust this month. Diane was a tireless advocate for New Jersey’s wildlife, and a co-founder and driving force behind the Trust’s amazing success in caring for over 150,000 songbirds, wading birds, waterfowl, hummingbirds, and – of course – raptors.
Diane Soucy feeding a songbird at The Raptor Trust using a formula she perfected over the years. Photo courtesy of The Raptor Trust.
New Jersey’s conservation community came together on November 13, 2019 to celebrate five extraordinary women and their accomplishments in wildlife conservation.
The 14th annual Women & Wildlife Awards were held on November 13, 2019 at Duke Farms. Photo by Bryan Duggan Photography.
Dorothy ‘Dede’ Manera, Senior Special Agent, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Congratulations to the 2019 CWF Women & Wildlife Service Award honoree Dorothy ‘Dede’ Manera, Senior Special Agent at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Join us to celebrate Dede, and the four other 2019 Women & Wildlife Award honorees, on Wednesday, November 13 at 6 PM. Purchase events tickets and find more information.
Over the course of Dede’s 27 years as a Senior Special Agent, she has used her investigative talents to protect and preserve New Jersey native species as well as exotic wildlife trafficked in our state. She has been part of an elite team of wildlife agents, conducted and participated in many successful joint investigations and enforcement efforts with NJ Division of Fish & Wildlife conservation officers and selflessly dedicated her time to mentoring young conservation officers.
Women & Wildlife 2019 Leadership Honoree Nellie Tsipoura, PhD
Congratulations to the 2019 CWF Women & Wildlife Leadership Award honoree Nellie Tsipoura, PhD, Senior Research Scientist and Director of Citizen Science at the New Jersey Audubon Society
Gretchen has been a biologist/GIS Specialist with NJ’s Endangered & Nongame Species Program (ENSP) for the past 15 years. She grew up in western Massachusetts, received a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Carleton College in Minnesota, and spent her summers while in college as a wilderness ranger in Wyoming and assisting with black bear research in North Carolina. After living in Oregon and Vermont for a few years, working as a vet tech and volunteering for conservation organizations among other things, she then went on to earn a Master’s degree in Wildlife Ecology from Idaho State University studying bighorn sheep.
A life-long interest in nature led Giselle Chazotte Smisko to pursue a B.S. in biology at Bucknell University with a focus on ecology and botany. Upon graduating in 1979 she started working as a part-time naturalist for the Morris County Park Commission and realized she needed to learn more about fauna the public would want to see on the walks. That brought her to Len and Diane Soucy who were rehabilitating wild birds.
Wilma Frey with her well-worn copy of the Highlands Regional Master Plan, completed in 2006. Photo by: Sandy Perry.
Wilma Frey is the Senior Policy Manager at the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. She has more than five decades of environmental and planning advocacy experience and masters’ degrees from Harvard Graduate School of Design and Harvard Kennedy School of Government, fifteen years apart. Wilma has fought to stop oil and gas development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, battled the PennEast Pipeline here in New Jersey, enjoys dancing and has learned the secret to giving frogs and toads head scratches.
Several past winners of CWF’s Women & Wildlife Awards celebrate at the 2018 ceremony
Women in science have come a long way since a National Geographic editor once called Jane Goodall “The blond girl studying apes.” That ‘girl’, of course, went on to become a world renowned researcher famous not only for her meticulous field studies of chimpanzees, but also as a tireless advocate for the natural world.
While much progress has been made, girls considering a career in science still struggle to find role models. For 14 years Conserve Wildlife Foundation has been celebrating women who protect New Jersey’s imperiled wildlife and inspire the next generation of women leaders.
There is a hole in my heart this week after hearing about the passing of my friend Pete Bacinski. I met Pete many years ago when he used to lead NJ Audubon Sussex County weekends jointly with the Weis Ecology Center.
