Stories Sustain Us #23 – Encore of Episode #10, An Ecosystem Restoration Success Story: Freshwater Mussels in River Restoration

As the holiday season is upon us, I’m taking this time to revisit some of the most impactful episodes from Season 1. Today, we’re bringing back Season 1, Episode 10, featuring aquatic biologist, Shaun Donovan. 

In this conversation, Shaun Donovan shares his journey from growing up in San Antonio to becoming an aquatic biologist and eventually joining the San Antonio River Authority. He discusses his passion for marine biology and the experiences that shaped his career path. The conversation also touches on the importance of sharing positive environmental stories and the significance of the San Antonio River Improvements Project, particularly the Mission Reach section. The conversation discusses the restoration of the San Antonio River and the success of the Mission Reach project. The project transformed a trapezoidal flood conveyance channel into a natural river system, creating recreational opportunities, economic development, and environmental benefits. The conversation also highlights the importance of freshwater mussels as indicators of river health and the efforts to reintroduce them into the river. The vision for a better future is for people to value and protect natural spaces as much as material possessions. The call to action is for individuals to take small steps to protect local water bodies and support organizations that share their environmental values.

🎙️ Stories Sustain Us is more than a podcast—it's a powerful platform that shares inspiring stories from people working to make the world a better place. Through honest, heartfelt conversations, host Steven Schauer explores the connections between people, planet, and purpose. From climate change and environmental justice to cultural preservation and human resilience, each episode aims to ignite meaningful action toward a more sustainable future.

🌍 Learn more about the podcast, explore past episodes, and discover how storytelling drives change at storiessustainus.com.

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Transcript

Steven 
Hello and welcome to this special episode of Stories Sustain Us, the podcast where we explore inspiring stories of sustainability. I'm your host, Steven Schauer, and I'm delighted to have you join me today. As the holiday season is upon us, I'm revisiting some of the standout episodes from season one. Today's replay is of an episode that resonated with many of you. In fact, it received the largest audience numbers of the entire first season.

Originally aired on August 20th, 2024, this is episode 10 featuring the incredible Shaun Donovan. Shaun's work with the San Antonio River Authority has been transformational, particularly through the mission reach section of the San Antonio River Improvements Project. This remarkable restoration has returned a river, which in the 20th century was engineered into a drainage ditch. Well, this project has returned that river back to a vibrant

native river system. This ecosystem restoration maintained critically important flood mitigation and brought with it additional economic, recreational, and environmental benefits. One of the highlights of Shaun's work is the reintroduction of freshwater mussels, a critical step in improving river health and ecological integrity. In fact, this week, Shaun and his team at the San Antonio River Authority are continuing this groundbreaking effort

by releasing over 1500 additional mussels into the Mission Reach section of the San Antonio River. This brings the total number of mussels reintroduced in 2024 to over 3560, representing four native mussel species, the yellow sand shell, pistol grip, pimpleback, and three ridge. Gotta love those names of those native mussels down there in Texas. So.

This incredible milestone, the work that Shaun and his team are doing right now, truly underscores the project's long-term commitment to sustaining the river's ecosystem while also maintaining flood mitigation benefits. Let me remind you a little bit about Shaun Donovan before we dive back into his inspiring story. Shaun is the manager of the Environmental Sciences Department at the San Antonio River Authority.

where he oversees everything from water quality data to aquatic species surveys. He's a certified fisheries professional, a project management professional, and a proud alumnus of Texas A University, Corpus Christi. Shaun's passion for connecting people to environmental projects through storytelling and collaboration shines through in this episode. Having worked on the San Antonio River Improvements Project myself for over 15 years,

I can tell you this conversation is near and dear to my heart. So, without further ado, let's revisit the incredible story of Shaun Donovan here on Stories Sustain Us, where we inspire action through the power of storytelling.

Steven Schauer 
Welcome, Shaun. How are you doing? Welcome to Stories Sustain Us. Thanks for joining me today.

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah, my pleasure again. Really good seeing you again, Steven. Glad we could catch up and in a different form than I probably expected to catch up with you again. So, but yeah, it's good to chat.

Steven Schauer 
Yeah. It's great to see you. As just introduced you, we have a history together working at the San Antonio River Authority together. it's thanks for taking time out of your work day to join me and tell the story of, you know, some really good success story, what's going down there on the river and, you know, in a world where there's so many, you know, hard or, you know, disappointing or sad environmental stories, sustainable stories. There's some real.

incredible success stories going down there. We'll get to that in a minute, but let's jump into your story, Shaun. What's your story? Tell me about where you grew up, what life was like for you as a kid, how you became the professional that you are.

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah, absolutely. And I do want to start off by, I think you make a really cool point about the positive stories because I think it's really cool to have a platform like this to be able to share positive things because you're right there. Unfortunately, a lot of the environmental things you hear about are the doom and gloom and the negative sides of the current world we're living in and the environmental ecological issues that are there as opposed to the success stories and accomplishments. So it's a really cool work that you're doing with the podcast. So I can appreciate you having me on.

Steven Schauer 
Yeah, right on, thanks.

Shaun Donovan 
so I'm originally from San Antonio. I was actually born in Japan. My parents came over to San Antonio and I was, four or five months old, no recollection over there. Air Force, Air Force family. And, but we were, I was very lucky. My parents both decided to kind of do different tours. my dad was in the Middle East, my mom was in Korea off and on, so we could stay here. So I've been in San Antonio my whole life. And, you know, it's kind of funny that looking

Steven Schauer 
military

Shaun Donovan 
A lot of my formative kind of environmental experiences or things grown up was not San Antonio. San Antonio, my brother and I were both soccer players. So that was our lives here. We're sports soccer, doing things like that, playing basketball when you're younger, but older soccer every weekend. And so whenever we were free in the summertime, we'd go to the Northeast. My dad's from Massachusetts, mom's from New York. And so my earliest environmental outdoor memories were all, you know, streams and creeks and lakes

forests in the Northeast, none of them really in San Antonio. I were fishing for brook trout and rainbow trout, but I never really did any fishing for catfish or channel catfish or bass or anything. So it's kind of funny that a lot of my, where my professional life is in Texas, my kind of connection to that started in the Northeast. the only things that really helped, I'll say the only thing, one of the big things that helped me really connect was the opportunities.

you know, the amusement kind of opportunities that were nature related. So the Whitty Museum here in San Antonio, Sea World, my brother and I did like the Sea World camps when we were younger and you do the four or five day camp at Sea World for the summertime and Thursday night you get to do a sleepover inside the, you know, the Penguin exhibit viewing area or the aquarium viewing area. So those are very indelible memories for me growing up as a kid. And that was the...

Steven Schauer 
Yeah, great museum.

Shaun Donovan 
That was like the big spark I remember being a kid and saying forever I'm going be a marine biologist, going to be a marine biologist. And that's kind of where my passion started. And so whenever I was looking for colleges, I had two requirements. was, can I play soccer somewhere? Which not really, no, wasn't very good. So I wasn't going to go play college soccer. And then can I go somewhere where they have marine biology?

I ended up kind of narrowing it down to two places. There was a place called Spring Hill College in Alabama that had some soccer that I could play over there. But a buddy of mine was going to Corpus Christi and that was, we decided to go together. And so I to Corpus for college and that's whenever the connection to the actual industry and really getting my feet wet in a lot of different places literally and figuratively started down in Corpus.

You know, love that place. It's a campus is an actual island where we were the islanders, but it's, you know, surrounded by base. There's also base system right behind it. There's Corpus Christi Bay right in front of it. So you were literally surrounded by the other thing I went there to study. I just, I loved that. And I got really fortunate. I volunteered in an environmental microbiology lab when I was a junior or sophomore, maybe a

And then I got my first job in the field. was making 525 an hour, working in an environmental microbiology lab. And the funny thing is I would look back and that's probably one of the biggest, one of the biggest resume points for me that ended up getting me a job at the Ruth already was volunteering or working for $5 an hour in an environmental microbiology lab. And I just, you know, I never thought that that would be the thing that would help me land a job that I've now been here for 12 years,

Steven Schauer 
Yeah.

Shaun Donovan 
I did that for a little bit. Then at the end of my junior year, going into my senior year, I got an opportunity to do what's called an REU, a research experience for undergraduates. And really, really lucked out on that. Cause it's funny, there's always these turns in life where it's like, you think you have this big downside of, was applying for a Parks and Wildlife, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department internship. And I was down to the final two.

And was like a young professional's internship and I ended up not getting it. And I was like, I was super bitter because the person who got it was a decade older than me. was like, wait a minute, they're not a young professional, you know, being this snotty 21 year old kid, not getting 20 year old kid, you're not getting an internship. but then a few weeks later, I got this RU, this research research experience for other graduates to work in a fish assemblage lab. So, you know, fish assemblages

Steven Schauer 
Crushed,

Shaun Donovan 
what species of fish make up this group of organisms in a river or in a creek or in a bay or in the ocean. That's the assemblage of fish. And I got to do that work in Micronesia over the Pacific. And so I got to go to Micronesia the summer. So I guess it was earlier, because I got to go the summer after my senior year. And then the first summer of graduate school, I got to go to Micronesia to do this work. And that's when I was over there, I fell into this project. That was my professor at the time.

Steven Schauer
wow.

Shaun Donovan 
thesis advisor was talking to one of his former students who was a professor at a college in Micronesia and they were talking one night at this hotel that we were staying at, this little house we were staying at about freshwater eels in Micronesia. Yeah, we think there may be a project there for it and I overheard them talking that night and I said, hey, I'd be happy to do a project on freshwater eels and that's how I got into the project that I had. again, just like a series of very fortunate events for me.

Steven Schauer 
Yeah, right on.

Shaun Donovan 
to lead to doing some genetic work on freshwater eels over from Micronesia for a couple of years. And that was such a cool experience being able to do work like that in a different culture, being immersed in that. stayed up for a month both times in two different Micronesian islands and just super, super cool experience. Still look back on that today as a really cool formative opportunity as a young individual, maybe 20.

21, 22 years old were my two trips. So really, really cool experience. After that, getting out of college, yeah, for sure.

Steven Schauer 
Let me back you up just a little bit and definitely want to pick up where you left off. Let me back you up a little bit because I think I heard you say a little earlier that you kind of knew at a young age you wanted to get into this field. How old were you when you were doing these SeaWorld camp overs and things like that? Because not many folks that I've encountered anyway kind of hit

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah.

Steven Schauer 
they know what they want to do at such a young age. what, tell me, tell me a little bit about that. Cause that sounds fascinating to me. Cause that's not my story. I didn't hit on what I wanted to do when I was young, other than play soccer. I also grew up playing soccer and I just knew I wanted to play soccer forever. And that was not likely for a, you know, in the United States in the eighties when soccer wasn't really a thing yet.

Shaun Donovan 
Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And it's also not a thing when you're in the 90s and not very good at soccer. So, you know, you're a little shared experience there for us. Yeah.

Steven Schauer 
Fair enough. Yeah. So how old were you when you kind of hit on this? This is what I want to do when I grow up kind of

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah. And, you know, I think it's a, it is a really interesting, you know, point because I, there obviously you don't hear a lot of times you hear, I was, I changed majors three times in college and I did this and I, I went back and forth and it's funny because I mean, is, is, I can't tell you, you know, I was doing those zero one camps and I was like 10, 11, 12 years old. My brother's two years older than me. So he was, he was always a couple of years ahead. So, you know, he was gonna be 12 maybe, so maybe a little bit younger because he was probably like 10, 11, 12, whoever he was doing them. So I was probably eight, nine, 10 kind of thing.

Steven Schauer
Right, to wander around, yeah.

Shaun Donovan
And it's just, it was always fascinating to me. was always, I was a huge fan of water too. So just like being in water, you know, going, you know, going to pools are a couple that my parents had a really good relationship with Terry and Grady. Kind of like our second parents, they had a pool in their backyard and we were just my brother and I would be there and we'd be in the pool for as long as they would possibly let us. And so like the water always fascinated me and then going to those camps, it just, it was so cool. And again, going back to Massachusetts and going fishing with my dad.

those creeks and Brooks and, I would, I would fish for a bit and I would just like go walk in the creek and I would go pick things up. And I remember my brother was playing a game, a soccer game in Austin. He was probably 11, 12 years old, maybe. so I was nine or 10 and I remember going to a little, you know, he's playing that. You don't want to watch your older brother play soccer. You know, you don't, you don't want it. That's boring. So I'm going and walking off and it was by Zilker in Zilker park and there's it's a Zilker park near Austin or in Austin.

Steven Schauer 
Sure, yeah.

Stoker Park area, Yep.

Shaun Donovan 
Texas and there's all, you know, it's a really cool little Creek system and there's Springs there. And so I'm over in this little pool and I pick up a tadpole and I like bring the tadpole home with me. And I'm like, I raised this tadpole into a frog and it's like, you know, those were things I was nine, 10, 11, 12 years old. And it was just always a fascinating thing for me. and then as I got a little bit older, you know, we, lot of times TV for us at home was if you weren't watching sports, we were watching a lot of. Not geo or discovery programs. And, know, as I got older,

Steven Schauer 
Yeah, Barton Springs.

Shaun Donovan 
the Planet Earth stuff started coming out and I think was probably towards the beginning of college or end of high school, those programs started coming out. And I still have the DVDs for Blue Planet or Planet Earth. I don't have a DVD player, but I the DVDs for those shows. know, so ever since I can remember it was, that was my goal. And I went into school with the, I wanted to be a marine biologist and I got to, you my degrees are in marine biology, general biology.

So I consider myself very fortunate to be able to have found and connected with that passion when I was a little kid. my parents were really great about providing us opportunities to explore those types of things. Again, going to a SeaWorld camp, obviously the fortunate part of living in San Antonio and my mom and dad really stretching themselves. And I think if you talk to people in the Air Force, know, to...

two young individuals in the Air Force aren't making a ton of money. So, I my parents were able to stretch and do things for my brother and I like that. And so, I mean, hugely beneficial to have parents that were really committed to the passions that we had. And again, our passions were sports. And then for me, was the natural world and more particularly the aquatic and marine worlds that were just always a fascination point for

Steven Schauer
Yeah, right on. Thanks for letting us back up in time a little bit, because I think that that's an important get to know you kind of moment that this is something that you have had a passion for for the majority of your life. And that's wonderful. So tell them hi, whoever that is.

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah.

Right. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, the other part that's interesting too is that we have a Hutton scholar. Hutton scholars through the American Fisher Society program. And yeah, the high school, they're high school students. So we get a high school student for eight weeks at a time. And we have Angela Costas, current Hutton scholar.

Steven Schauer 
Yeah, they're at the River Authority.

Shaun Donovan
And so it's really cool talking to him and he's come into my office yesterday. He's like, Hey, I want to go to school and think about going to Indian Corpus Christi. And I want to know, you know, how do you connect to this? like, you were having a conversation. I'm telling them, you don't realize like how far ahead of the game you are where you have an internship when you're 17 years old. You you're talking to professionals, you're getting feedback and things. And I told them, like, when I was 17 years old, like I was interested in these things, but I wasn't like actively pursuing.

this passion, you know, getting ready to go to school, but you know, he's doing an internship and he's doing all these kinds of things. So I told him, you know, try as many things as you can. You know, if you have the narrow, if you have the window of what you're interested in, you know, you don't want to be an accountant, you don't want to be a banker. don't want to be a lawyer. You're interested in this environmental world, but then try to expose yourself to as many of those different things as you can. Cause you never know what's going to really trigger as a true passion or a true interest. And so it's really cool seeing now like that generation. I mean, I talk like I'm the old

38 years old, but he's 17. And so we were like, my goodness. I was graduating my bachelor's degree when he was born. So, and I'm sure that's like, you that's a cyclical thing for the, you know, the generation of people, you know, in their thirties and forties and fifties in the workforce that are looking at the young people like, my goodness. but it's super cool seeing people like that at that age have that passion. And even then is like the, you know, the, how values driven that generation is, is really cool. You know, having, I want to work for a company

supports the things that I support and has sustainability measures. like, I think that's a super cool thing to see. And so talking to that generations fund, especially as you reflect back to what was I doing when I was 17? What was I doing when I was 20? What was I doing when I was 25? And yeah, very fortunate that I was able to connect with the passion young and then again, be able to find the opportunities to continue to, you know, again, do what I'm passionate about today and have some really cool opportunities to accomplish them.

really cool things that are advancing the environmental health of the community that is my home and also my workplace. And so that's a lot of really cool confluences in my life for sure.

Steven Schauer 
Yeah, right on. I appreciate that kind of Gen Z, you know, how they approach life as well. had a guest on a couple episodes ago that we talked about that too. That's how impressed we are with young folks. had a, even earlier, had a guest on who was a 20 year old youth activist in the UK and, you know, she's doing more at 20.

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah.

Steven Schauer 
You know, she rattled off this list of everything she's doing and she's like, I'm sure this is, you know, not that much compared to other people you talk to. I'm like, no, you just did more in 18 months and most people have done in, you know, many, many decades. yeah.

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it's like your resume is longer than mine still is. So it's like, it's pretty impressive.

Steven Schauer 
Yeah, yeah. So it is impressive to see the younger generation just jumping in and getting involved. So back to you, I guess, as a younger person, you were finishing up in Micronesia. Thanks for that little diversion back in time a little bit. I appreciate it. But you were finishing up your work in Micronesia, I think, is where we left the story. So pick us up again. Where are we going next?

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep. Yeah.

For sure. so at that point in time, I graduated with my master's degree in 2010. The semester I was finishing in my thesis, I did some work here back in San Antonio at Camp Bullis. It's a military installation that is for army training. it's a very natural space in the middle of, you know, it's a natural space very much in the middle of not natural spaces in Northern San Antonio, where you have these huge developments around it. And endangered species called a golden sheep warbler there. So I was doing bird surveys on Camp Bullis.

Steven Schauer 
Sure.

Shaun Donovan 
The next part was like, this was another just like pivotal moment of where I could have gone. So I was looking for jobs in the summer of 2010. And I can always remember where I was when this happened is I was like, I probably applied for like 75 jobs over the course of a few months. I was like, man, what's going to happen? What's going to happen? And I was applying for jobs literally all over the world, trying to find something in the career field. So I get to this point where I was

down to my last few bucks. And I was like, I don't want to, I don't want to keep, you know, rely on my parents to keep me afloat. And, you know, so I was like, what am I, what am going to do? I'm going to do. So I was applying for these jobs and I was getting an occasional interview. I had an interview with a group called the Gulf and South Atlantic Fisheries Foundation. And then I also had an interview for a local pest control company. And I was like, I really don't want to do with all due respect to the pest controllers. It's a necessary profession.

I just didn't want to do it. wasn't, it wasn't my thing. It's not marine biology related. was like, went on a, I wanted to practice like basically like a shadow day. And I'm like crawling through at, I'm not a small person for people who haven't met me before. I'm not, I'm not short and I'm not narrow. And it was like, I was like going in crawl spaces to like set, it's

Steven Schauer 
Yeah. Was it marine biology related?

Shaun Donovan 
traps for mice and I was just, it was like summer in Texas and I was miserable. I was like, I don't want to do this because I can like my, my only option for the time being it's like tangentially related to my, you know, to wildlife and fisheries kinds of field. If you want to be generous with the word tangentially. and they offered me the job like on a Friday and I was like, I don't mean I really want to do this, but I need a job. And so I'm

I'm going to take a couple of days. I'm going to go. So I had a lot of friends still in Corpus Christi. So I went down and hung out with my friends for a couple of days. And it was Monday morning and I'm like, I'm going to have to call these people later today and accept this position. got a call that morning on a Monday back from the Gulf and South Atlantic Fisheries Foundation offering me a job as a Marine Fisheries Observer. And I was just like, the weight of the world lifted off my shoulders. Like, yes, please, like how fast can I sign the dotted line for that work? And so I, again,

Steven Schauer 
Sure.

Shaun Donovan 
you know, how, how different things would have been if, you know, that call would have come later. If I didn't get that call at all from them, I still look back and think like, man, what would my career have been? would I, where would I end up at if that little inflection point hadn't gone the way that it had. And, so I did that for a couple of years and that was a really cool job. I was able to, work on commercial shrimping boats. I would go offshore with them

Steven Schauer 
Sure.

Shaun Donovan 
My longest ship, think, in one go was 28 days offshore. I did a trip where we back and forth for about 42 days offshore, back and forth. were offshore for maybe 40 of those 42 days. We were doing work with what are called bycatch reduction devices, internal excluder devices. And then we were doing a lot called electronic logbook program where we would see, you know, anything that isn't shrimp and on a shrimp boat is considered bycatch. So how much of that bycatch were sport fish like red snapper?

fish or speckled sea trout. And how many, what percentage of that bycatch were sharks. And so some of those were endangered species or threatened species. And so you would kind of keep track of that bycatch on those boats. I did that for a couple of years. It was a super cool job. I have a lot of really cool kind of stories and cool pictures and just experiences with that. So I love that job, but it was definitely

Steven Schauer 
Where were you kind of ported at? Where were you kind of going getting in and out of port?

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah, we were. I did, I did a few trips out of Freeport, Texas, which is kind of, kind of Galveston Houston area. So Northeast Texas coast. And then I would do some other ones. Bonsoor, Alabama, home of Louisiana. so just all Gulf coast stuff for that, for that job. but it was really cool. You know, you get, you get a call and you, Hey, you're going to go meet a boat in Alabama and you're getting a leave. And so it was a really cool kind of unknown thing. got to meet

Steven Schauer 
GovCoast. Yeah. Okay.

Shaun Donovan 
Very cool, very interesting people. It was a fun job for a young single individual. It was a good two -year experience.

Steven Schauer 
Were the shrimp boat folks eager to have you on board or were they just like, who's this guy that's messing with our business?

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah, right. The guy who was my supervisor as a contract employee with the guy who I coordinated with the Gulf and South Atlantic Fisheries Foundation was named Daniel, And he said, the good thing is there's observers and there's damn observers. And so he said, we're observers because we actually paid the captains and the boats for us to be on their

Steven Schauer 
yeah,

Shaun Donovan 
So we would pay them $150 a day. no matter what, no matter how the fishing was, they made 150 bucks a day from us. Now that's not a lot of money, but it's better than a dam. Yeah, exactly. The dam observers were like NOAA and the National Marine Fisheries Service. If like, yeah, if I was an observer and you were a captain, I'd say, Captain Shower, hi, my name's Shaun. I know you're leaving this afternoon. I'm going on your boat. And you wouldn't have a choice. was something you had to do. And it was like, you sucked it up and you took this observer out

Steven Schauer 
Sure, you're a paying passenger.

the regulators.

Shaun Donovan 
on the water with you. So the captains that we worked with knew we coming. They knew we were going to pay them every day to be out there to collect this data. So they liked us because of those reasons, whereas other captains hated observers. have whole, mean, we would go and do like trainings with the NOAA and the NIMS observers and they would tell us these absolute horror stories of these captains that were just treating them like garbage because they were these unexpected people and the boats that

boats that are going to agree to be part of our program are the ones who are not going to have any violations of, you know, they're not going to have expired tags, they're not going be keeping illegal species, so it was relatively easy to explore it. Yes. Yeah. Right. Yeah, I got to change a couple things up now that you're joining me on this boat, so yeah, so that was a nice difference than some of the other folks that did that job.

Steven Schauer 
Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Right, yeah, there's a reason probably why some of the captains didn't like the regulatory observers because maybe they weren't always doing things the way they're supposed to.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's

Yeah, regulators get a hard time, they have an important role to play in at least my view of the world. Overregulation is a thing, but regulation is important regardless.

Shaun Donovan 
Yes. Yeah.

Yes, yeah, there is a line to walk and know, is some of that is needed. I mean, I was stunned by the number of, know, really it wasn't a lot, but there's a couple of captains that would still just like, you're not allowed to keep Red Snapper on these boats. He would keep Red Snapper. And I'm like, hey, kind of my job to go back and say what you're doing, you shouldn't do this. it'll be fine. I was like, all right, well, I'm going to do my job and get back to shore. So, and

Steven Schauer 
Yeah. Yeah.

Shaun Donovan 
I got back to shore and that's one of those longer stories where there was a lot of things going on with that particular captain that weren't the greatest. So, yeah.

Steven Schauer 
Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, that's an interesting part of your story. I don't think I ever knew that part of your history. So that's a fascinating job that you had for a few years. Yeah, it sounds like it was interesting, so.

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah. It was, it was fun. Yeah. Right. And then the, the, kind of the, the last bit of my journey before the authority was, was another kind of just like really good happenstance. so, whenever I was kind of finishing up my time, I, again, I kind of, I kind of knew it was like, this is not a long -term career thing. I don't want to, I don't want to be offshore for a month at a time for the rest of my life.

towards the end of my job, started dating the woman who's not my wife. So Chrissy and I met in 2012. And so as you're developing that relationship, relationships are hard to develop when you're gone for a month without a cell phone reception or ways to contact anybody. And so we started kind of dating. So that's kind of where my thoughts started going. In addition to us starting to date, it was also just like, I was ready to stop doing that. And I was looking for some jobs, but not terribly active, kind of starting to look. And so I

Steven Schauer 
Sure, Yeah.

Shaun Donovan 
Cause I was gone about nine months out of the year with that for those two years. would stay with my parents still when I was back. And so I was, I was at my parents' house after a trip and my parents were both at work, but they got the San Antonio express news at the time or local newspaper. And they knew I was looking for a job. if they came across them, they would kind of pass it my way. So I came downstairs one morning, they were both at work and on the kitchen table was a newspaper

of an aquatic biologist posting for a job at the San Antonio River Authority. So that was how I first heard of the River Authority and first found out there was a job there where my mom cut out a newspaper clipping and put it on the kitchen table. yeah, that was how I found out about it, applied for that job. And I got that position in October of 2012 here at the River Authority and I've been here since then. So started as an aquatic biologist and I'm managing the environmental sciences department now. And it's been a really, really fun.

Steven Schauer 
That's awesome.

Shaun Donovan 
12 years of my life and I think we do a lot of really interesting, fun, unique things here. But I also never knew about the River Authority until I started working at the River Authority until I saw that newspaper clip. And I know that you as the director of our communications and our governmental stuff before know that getting people to know who we are is a constant

I still have friends going, you know, saying, my buddy, Shaun, he works for saws and San Antonio water system. Like, no, I don't, but, you know, water is good enough. That's a good enough thing. I don't know who you work for. Yeah. Exactly. So.

Steven Schauer 
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or you work for the city. Yeah. People it's, it's confusing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the, the river authority is a, it's, I I, my, my, you know, big piece of my heart's there after spending 15 years working there. And, I couldn't agree with you more though. The agency does some really impressive work and I would say progressive work, in all the years that I was there and had

opportunity to travel around the world and talk about the, you know, the river improvements project that we were working on, Mission Reach project, which we're going to roll into here, I imagine with your story. Even now when I'm here in Seattle and still in the water world and what I do here and tell people about what I used to do, you know, the reaction was like, you did that in Texas? Because, you know, Texas obviously has this, you know,

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah.

Steven Schauer 
reputation of being right of center politically and when you tell the story that you're getting ready to tell about this really amazing environmental work that has benefits for economics and has benefits for recreation. mean, it's really this wonderful example of the triple bottom line kind of coming together, this amazing project that benefits people, planet and economically the city.

Yeah, people just don't think that kind of stuff happens in Texas, which I think adds emphasis to the significance of the story that, yeah, no, there's just some really amazing environmental restoration work happening in the middle of Texas, the heart of Texas. So why don't we move into that? tell us a little bit about the San Antonio River Improvements Project, particularly the Mission Reach Project, which is the ecosystem restoration section of that big, you know,

$384 million project. I won't talk about it because I spent most of my life talking about it, but I will let you tell everybody about it now that I don't work there anymore and it's your job to promote it. So what is the San Antonio River Improvements Project and the Mission Reach section? is that? the floor is yours. I'll stop talking.

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Yeah, no, you're good. And obviously, because you obviously have more, you had a longer background while that project was active than I certainly did. And so, you you can, I think you can definitely add more context and nuance than I can. And obviously, we can collaborate to tell that part of the story and then, you know, pick up some things with, you know, more recent last few years. But yeah, I mean, you know, I think your point

Steven Schauer 
Sure. Sure.

Shaun Donovan 
is really well taken too is you hear a lot of these things that, know, there's from a distance, everything, you know, unfortunately, everything seems blue and red, black and white, if you will. And there are, as you get closer to things, there are like with anything in life, there's, there's nuance that people lose when you're looking at it from a distance. And there are a lot of really cool environmental success stories in Texas. And, you know, we're very fortunate to be a part of a number of those.

but yeah, I mean the, you know, the, big one, big feather in the cap of, of the San Antonio community. And I say San Antonio, but I really expand that to San Antonio and Southeast Bear, Wilson, Carnes and Goliad are the four counties of our political jurisdiction. And so it's a really, it's a regional success story. but at the same time, it's a federal success story because it is largely a federally funded project with Bear County dollars and city of San Antonio dollars and river authority dollars. And so, you know, these collaborations

are there in a lot of states, not just the ones that are, the blue states aren't the only ones that are doing these environmental positive things. And it's also, it's a valuing of nature. think one thing that, I know this is maybe a little bit of a tangent upfront prior to the full Mission Reach story, but we've been doing some of these things recently about telling the story

telling the story of what you do as scientists. I think that's something that I learned, started learning a year from you and your team at the authority is like, we have to tell the story of what we're doing to help people understand, because here in Texas, people value wildlife, whether that's, know, consumptive purposes like hunting or fishing, or that's bird watching or going boating, whatever, people do value the environmental components of a place like Texas. And so how do you tell the story to connect with people? And that's a huge part of it.

Steven Schauer 
Right.

Shaun Donovan 
You guys were telling the story for years and years about how big this improvement project would be. And that's what led to federal funding and local funding was because you were telling the story. so, you know, more recently than a lot of science communication things, but that's a huge part of it. A huge part of the original getting to the success was telling the story of what this could do for a community and getting people locally to buy in. Cause it was not a small investment from the city and not a small investment from the county. These are large ticket items here locally as well. So.

a really good point to make is, you these are, there's value in the environment throughout the country. It's just how do you connect to those people and tell the story and ways to touch them as well. end of tangent, but to the Mission Reach part. Yeah, the Mission Reach is just south of downtown San Antonio. So everybody knows, I imagine a lot of people know of the San Antonio River

Steven Schauer 
Great tangent, important tangent.

Shaun Donovan 
that is the main part of downtown San Antonio. is an actual river system. always get people going out there and realize the river extended beyond downtown. It is a man -altered structure, but it's not a man -made water body. It is natural system. Where the River Walk ends, just south of downtown, is the start of the San Antonio River Recruitment Project and a small one -mile stretch called Eagle Land. That's a transition from this

You know that the pictures you see online of the river walk that are channelized with restaurants and bars and hotels and. Just downstream of that is kind of a transition zone for about a mile and then it goes into what's called the mission reach and the mission which is really the heart and the core of the San Antonio improvements project. And it's a in total, if you include the Eagle land stretch it's about nine miles of river the San Antonio river is 240 miles in total, so if you look at it that perspective it's a.

pretty significant chunk of the entire river, a little less than 5 % of the entire river, is, that's a big restoration project. And I believe it's still the largest urban, because, largest urban stream restoration project in the country at that nine miles. And so, we are really proud of that, but it really turned what was this trapezoidal, know, mode channel that was there strictly for flood conveyance, you know,

Starting in the thirties, there was all sorts of flood conveyance work done in San Antonio that really just the focus was get water out of downtown as fast as you possibly can. There was really devastating financial floods and loss of life floods in downtown. And so that's what the river was, was a flood conveyance channel, get things out, protect downtown San Antonio as much as you can. And the Michigan improvement project changed that to make that, that trapezoidal channel into a more of a natural river system.

put in some, some meanders and some bins and put in riffle structures and have a, know, riffle runs, pools and glide kind of a natural function of the ecosystem, you know, that you pointed out earlier. And I know, know, Steve Graham, a former interim general manager and assistant general manager, deputy general manager, all the titles at the river authority, you know, a huge, huge proponent of triple bottom line, but that is a really a perfect example of the way you can truly mesh those things.

It is a, it's a recreational opportunity with the hike and bike trails and there's paddling trail throughout that eight, nine mile stretch. Like you said, the economic development impact is huge for the Southern basin or the Southern part of San Antonio, excuse me. And obviously the, you know, the environmental components were, you know, we'll talk about that obviously in a lot of detail here in a minute, but you know, the, the, able to combine all three of those things is truly what makes that project.

so successful because people might not ever step foot or care about the river, but they want to go for a jog or they want to go for a long bike ride or people might never go on the trail, but they want to go kayaking or they want to go fishing. And so it really does. It hits a lot of people and it also brings a lot of environmental opportunities to places that have been historically underserved. And, know, Southern San Antonio, South of downtown is, you know, definitely a historically,

overlooked part of town. And so this restoration has really connected people to the environment. It also hasn't had a lot of the negative effects of, know, gentrification is always seen as a big negative side effect of some of these projects. And we're fighting that right now with our current next restoration project, the West Side Creeks. But in south of town, there's been

Steven Schauer 
Yeah.

Shaun Donovan 
apartment complexes that have come up, but there really hasn't been that huge economic shift where it's become unaffordable for folks that have lived there for generations, but it really has brought them closer to nature. I mean, obviously, I'm sure you know, Steven, there's countless studies that show how much, how much people's lives are improved when they have a connection to a natural space, just mental health wise, economic wise, know, outcomes for children, those kinds of things.

bringing people to connection to a closer connection with the river and a healthy ecosystem. I mean, there's all sorts of, you know, you could, you could have an economics podcast that talks about how successful the project is. You can have a human health podcast talk to help how successful it is. And obviously this one, you know, kind of more of the conservation sustainability side that you can talk about how successful it is. So it's been a really, really cool project. It's a really cool success story for San Antonio and for Texas and for the, I for the country, you know,

Steven Schauer 
Yep.

Shaun Donovan 
You were over there in Australia when they won the Feast River Prize for the Mission Reach effort. And that's a huge success story, again, for the city, the state, the country. And again, it's really cool to have in our backyard. And we always kind of talk about it as a little bit of a living laboratory for us as an organization, too, to be able to do some of the things we've done in this huge stream restoration project to see how successful has this been and really trying to measure that.

Yeah, what can we measure to show that success over

Steven Schauer 
Yeah. Well, let's, let's talk a little bit about that. That's a great transition point. And I think, we could go a number of different ways, you know, from fish to water quality and to riparian habitat. There's all kinds of amazing, measurements of success, but I really wanted to focus you in on, the time that we have left on the freshwater mussels. Cause that is one, think something that people don't think of top of mind.

When you think of a river, you think of, know, maybe the fish and the birds and the, you know, the plant life and aquatic life, but, know, freshwater mussels, that's not something that somebody thinks about first maybe. But it's such an important indicator of success of this project. you know, next 10 minutes or so, let's dive into that story because you led that effort or still leading that effort. And it's really a fascinating

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah. Right.

Steven Schauer 
incredibly important part of the success of this project. So tell us about freshwater mussels in the the San Antonio

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah. I, I want to, I want to flip it for a second and ask you a question because I've, I'm very curious too, is like, you know, you were part of the leadership team at the river of authority. And then we started floating this idea around and I'm curious what your, you know, what your initial thoughts were when we started talking about, you know, freshwater mussels and freshwater mussel projects. And kind of like, you know, I'm curious as to the perspective you had, you know, that back then five, eight, 10 years ago.

Steven Schauer 
Sure.

Sure, my initial reaction was this is amazing. Because it wasn't top of mind. I wouldn't have thought about it. I just thought it was such a well thought out concept that you guys brought to the leadership of, we think we can do this. And all the different components of it from the scuba diving, all the testing you had to do, all the different sites you had to monitor for control sites, and just the

depth and the detail that you and your team put together on that proposal that was approved and moved forward was just so enthralling. from the fact, again, that the of the freshwater mussels perspective and what I learned from you, it's kind of like the canary in the coal mine. If mussels can't survive there, there's water quality problems, there's habitat problems, there's all kinds of things. But if we can show that mussels...

can survive there, then we can show the environmental lift that this project has helped come along. from my perspective, from the moment you pitched it and following you in the years of doing it, was just an exciting thing to see you and your team doing and to know that I worked at a place that did that. It was really, I loved

I loved every minute of it, which is why I'm really grateful you agreed to come on the show and tell that story, because I think it's such an important story that most people wouldn't have thought of.

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah. And I really appreciate hearing that. you know, we always, I was joked with Chris Maughan as a former aquatic biologist here at River Authority. And again, up there kind of close to you now. And we are, you know, we were always, honestly, like always waiting for the other shooter job. Like, we get to do this super cool. We're to do this project. We're getting all the support. We were always like waiting, like how far can we take this thing? Let's see what we can do. you know, this, I mean, obviously like, like all the projects that do at the River Authority.

Steven Schauer 
Yeah.

Shaun Donovan 
without the support of the leadership team, without the support of the board, you don't get those things done because the funding isn't there. So, I mean, the support that we have is fantastic. And admittedly there, you know, whenever this, whenever this stuff started in Texas, because there's, know, freshwater mussels are one of the most endangered group of organisms in the entire world. think it's like freshwater mussels and freshwater snails are like the two most endangered groups of species. And there was a lot of stuff started happening here in Texas, a lot of like research looking into these species

You know, other entities in the state were basically like, we don't really care that they're imperiled, that they're endangered. We don't really care. We're going to keep doing what we have to do to maintain our day -to -day operations. the San Antonio Authority wasn't like that. was support from you and our group of Steve's, our Steve Robbie and you and Steve Graham were huge supporters. And obviously Suzanne Scott, our former GM. It was awesome to have that support from people because, you know, whatever

Steven Schauer 
Suzanne, yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Shaun Donovan 
Chris and I kind of started thinking about these projects. was, we think we can do this really cool, maybe even unique to Texas project. What support are we gonna get? so whenever we got that support, obviously that was hugely meaningful for us. so it's really cool to kind of circle back on some of the origins from your perspective.

Steven Schauer 
Yeah. I'm glad you guys took the chance and threw the idea out there because it was, yeah, we loved it at the leadership team and so glad you guys did the

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah, absolutely. And again, it's been, it's been a, definitely one of the coolest things I've been able to do in my career. And so, you know, kind of going back to that, that start of things, we know to fast forward some of the parts is, you know, we did, there was all these pending listings of, of, threatened or potentially listed, listed candidate species for the endangered species act. And so we started doing some research and we started finding them. These species in the Southern parts of our basin, but we didn't start, you're really weren't seeing them at all near San Antonio.

And with the Mission Reach restoration project, we started kind of thinking this, there's this huge restored area. And then there's these old, called remnant channels. the, because of the channelization over the years, we talked about a lot of these, these bends and curves, were used to be part of the main stem were cut off for that trapezoidal channelization to get water out of town. we didn't see any mussels in the Mission Reach. Makes sense. It was completely dewatered for the construction, but we were seeing these mussels in these little remnant

Steven Schauer 
Yeah, for the flight control. Yeah.

Shaun Donovan 
And so we kind of started thinking like, maybe there's a chance that because of this restoration project, that maybe the water quality is good enough. Maybe the habitat's good enough. Maybe the sediment quality is good enough. so that's when we kind of came up with this idea of what's called the Missionary Muscle Surroundability Study, where we put some of the foremost common species in our basin, our southern basin. We put

in these devices in the mission reach in two or three different locations. And then we had a controlled site down in Goliad and we know the population is healthy. Goliad is maybe 150 river miles south of San Antonio. And to your point earlier, the why mussels are so important is they're filter feeders. are carrying in coal mines, a great phrase for that. If the dissolved oxygen drops somewhere, a fish can go swim somewhere else that can go find better habitat. A turtle can get out of

All the other organisms have kind of defense mechanisms. Well, mussel can move, but not much. It may move, you know, the size of a, you know, an office in a day. Some mussels move more than others, but they're pretty stable organisms. So if something happens, they're not going to survive. And so there are that, that kind of like, this is the true measure of if this project was successful and these, if these mussels can live here, this project was, this is the kind of the pinnacle of success. And so we did this survivability study.

We started seeing results in like one of our sites was growing about the same as our Goliath site, which was really encouraging because that's a healthy population. This is growing the same. So that means this is a healthy population. And our other site was just like taking off. was growing so much faster than the control site, which was like, this is amazing. And then even one day we went out there and we saw, we were doing a weight check. We would measure the length and the weight of our mussels every quarter. So three, four times a year.

We went out there, we were measuring one of our mussels, they call the yellow sand shell. And we looked at it, it was kind of weird with some of the tissue inside the mussel. We kind of looked up, opened it up a little bit and saw it it was actually gravid. So gravid is basically pregnant. So as a gravid female, and we saw like, we never, we never thought we'd see that in the study. It was just about growth. Can they survive it? Can they grow? And then sure enough, they're actually reproducing in the river. It was like this mind blowing thing. And we were being out there with some of the guys and

Steven Schauer 
Yeah. They're reproducing that, yeah.

Shaun Donovan 
These guys, Larry, Chris, Austin and myself were out there, we're like looking at this, like just floored by this. And so super excited about it. After we had success with that, I mean, there's, did toxicology work. Like I said, we have a robust water quality program at the river authority. We do fish surveys because to not get into detail too much, mussels are what are called obligate parasitic reproducers. So they have to parasitize a fish.

at some point in their life cycle so they can take nutrients off of the fish to transform from a larval mussel to a juvenile mussel where they drop off. so fish are important. So we're doing fish surveys and all these things were happening while we were doing the sustainability study. then we were already partnering with US Fish and Wildlife Service to start developing some of these grow out techniques because this happens a lot in like the Midwest. There's a great hatchery.

for this in Wisconsin. There's a great one in Virginia. Those are kind of like the pinnacle of these Fish and Wildlife Service locations that do this propagation work for threatened endangered species. There's a ton of this work in Alabama and Tennessee and these states that have these super diverse mussel populations, but it really hadn't been done much here in Texas. So we're working with Fish and Wildlife Service to develop some of these methodologies for... The other part too is we were working with common species

country. We weren't working, we don't have a threatened or endangered species in our basin, but we know that there's a this woman Rosalie Barrow Edge is this like this 1920s, 1930s conservationist and suffragist and she has this quote says, the time to conserve a species is wild while it is still common. You know if you wait until there's a hundred left of a species it's going to be much harder to conserve it than when there's a hundred thousand of them left and you just protect their habitat or protect that group.

Steven Schauer 
Right.

Right, right.

Shaun Donovan 
So we wanted to work with these common organisms. So because they were common, there wasn't a lot of work for reproduction done on them. we've worked with Fish and Wildlife Service now for seven years, six or seven years to develop those techniques. And this year, we're finally, we did a of a media event in May for the mussel release. And our staff is actually going out the third week of July this year to go and release the first cohort of mussels into the river.

It's yellow sand shells. It's the first mussel reintroduction in the state of Texas. And so we're super proud of that. We couldn't be happier. And then just yesterday, so, you know, July 11th, time, Austin Davis, who's now our project manager, came over and told me for the first time ever, we have all four species in these things called grow -out baskets. So we've always had these bottlenecks with these species and some are harder to propagate and reproduce than others. And for the first time ever now, as of yesterday, we

each one of those species in grow out baskets and grow out baskets are kind of the point where they're like past that main bottleneck. So we haven't, had another milestone just yesterday in it. So it's very actively happening. We're super, super excited. we're to have about 4 ,000 mussels go on the river next week. And we expect to have some more cohorts later this year, maybe September, October, November this year, we'll be putting other species in more than the first species yellow sand shot in the river. So really, really cool time for the project.

Steven Schauer 
That's awesome.

Yeah, that is so amazing. I disconnected from it obviously for a few years since I left the River Authority, but I still follow you all on social media and friends there and everything. And I saw the media a few months ago, which is what triggered it. was like, it's happening. It's there. They made it. They got to, getting, know, I got to get Shaun on to talk about this because I, you

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah. Yeah.

Steven Schauer 
few thousand miles away here in Seattle, I was still celebrating that, that win that you guys are experiencing right now. Cause it was such a, you know, that project's a big part of my life. And, and, you know, to see, this particular aspect of that project become successful in, and not only for the mussels, which is amazing, but for the larger story of how healthy that, ecosystem restoration project is becoming.

really in the heart of the seventh largest city in the United States, tells that story of success that, you know, look everybody, you can restore a riverine system in an urban environment to the quality that these, you know, really sensitive species can not just survive, but they can thrive, they can reproduce. mean, what an amazing success story. I'm

So happy for you and the team and grateful to you and the team for coming up with the idea in the first place. And I'm kind of silently celebrating with you from a distance because it's such a big important win. And I'm just happy for you guys. So.

Shaun Donovan 
And it's really cool you reaching out and because, know, there was a there's a moment where we were doing that that media event. So we're down by the river and there's we had like a, you know, a river authority podium. We were having the original director from US Fish and Wildlife Service, Amy Luters there and our GM now Derek Bays and our chairman of our board, Campbell. you know, I'm not part of like the press conference part at all. We're there. We're going to do some some photo ops afterwards. And I had an opportunity to kind of like step back and just see. And we

Steven Schauer 
Yeah.

Shaun Donovan 
Parks and Wildlife and we had Fish and Wildlife Service there and some of our river authority partners and the media. It was a bit of an emotional moment for me, like sitting back and stepping back because a lot of the people who made the project happen are not here anymore. again, essentially our entire executive team has turned over with a couple of exceptions, but that's not to say that our current executive team does not support the project. We're very proud of it, but it's cool thinking back to yourself and the executive team we had and again, talking

Steven Schauer 
No, of course not. Yeah,

Shaun Donovan 
Chris Vaughn was a project manager and a biologist that him and I kind of came up with these ideas at the beginning. Our biologists who helped us with the work throughout and then the people who are here now who are carrying this and it's not like it's been one or two people who have done the lion's share of this work. really has been our utilities operation who does our wastewater treatment facilities welded the instruments that we put the mussels in for the survivability study.

Our watershed and park operation team was involved in helping us with site access and getting instruments and getting gear into the water. It was an organizational success story. was, again, a community success story. Like you said, shows seventh largest city in the country. the San Antonio River does not have the greatest reputation even amongst the citizens of San Antonio. You have this muddy water, dirty river, and it's such a cool...

Steven Schauer 
Absolutely.

Right. Charles Barkley always commented on it. Yeah.

Shaun Donovan 
Charles Barfield, Mark Cuban taking shots at us. But it is such a cool thing and it was an opportunity to like sit back literally and figuratively at that media event and like look at the group and think of things and Steve Graham is still here local and him and I catch up and we were able to talk about the success of this project and the support that we've had. And again, it was really cool having you reaching out because again, you were part of the project and part of the support of the project.

the early days of advertising for this and talking about what we were doing and really getting that community message out there. So it's really cool to sit back and reflect on the number of people and the amount of hours, the amount of resources that go into this that ultimately is a really cool conservation success story that had, know, it takes a village term obviously applies very, very aptly here. And so it's a really cool thing to reflect back on.

Steven Schauer 
Yeah.

You're making me tear up, dude. It is. I'm so proud of that project.

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah, it's awesome. I'm telling you, it's a, it's a looking at that from that perspective. We've been doing this for, from the surveys part themselves. We've been doing this stuff for a decade. It's been from surveys starting in 2014 was our first approved project. Been in 2017 of Surroundability in the last few years, this reintroduction effort. So it really is the culmination of a decade of work. know, the unfortunate part, we are, we're such an instant gratification society.

Steven Schauer 
Yeah, these projects take time.

Shaun Donovan 
that these things don't, that's one of the biggest parts is that we've had the rope to do this, where a lot of people could have said five years ago, we're going to pull a plug. We don't have any tangible results. There's not mussels in the river. We're going to pull a plug. And we didn't, we never did. Our board didn't, our executive team didn't, our staff didn't. We kept moving forward and kept moving forward. And now we're like, we're finally bearing the fruits of our labor over the years. that's such a cool thing to reflect.

you know, Chris and I joke is, you know, part of the part of this project was our first draft of the project was on a, on a cocktail napkin on a plane coming back from a conference in Kansas city was, or from a conference in maybe Portland, coming back from a conference together. That was where we started kind of brainstorming this whole thing. And here we are. And it's such a cool community success story.

Steven Schauer 
Yeah, well, it is an amazing story and thank you for your leadership from day one to present day. You know, it takes somebody to have the idea and the know -how and the ability to do it, you know, and yes, you had a whole lot of support around you, but there needs to be someone with the vision and the know -how to get it done and you and your team of incredibly talented, knowledgeable scientists.

Shaun Donovan 
Appreciate that.

Steven Schauer 
Got it done. And there's clearly more work to be done everywhere around the world, certainly on the San Antonio rivers, no exception, but it's good to every once in a while pause and celebrate the victories. as we talked about at the beginning, victories are hard to come by sometimes in the environmental world. So when you have one like you've experienced with the mussels and the whole mission reach ecosystem restoration project, you need to celebrate those.

Shaun Donovan 
there.

Steven Schauer 
you know, let the world know that it's possible, you know, as we're trying to figure out how to move forward sustainably, you know, into the future. This is an ongoing example for people to follow, which is why the project won that global award, because it was recognized as something that globally people should be looking at on what to do in cities. So thank you for all your

Shaun Donovan 
Yep.

there.

Steven Schauer 
dedication and passion and effort to be such an important part of that.

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah, I appreciate all that Steven for sure.

Steven Schauer 
Yeah. So, in time we have left since, we want to celebrate wins, but we also want to, you know, hopefully people will listen to this or watching to this, you know, or tearing up like I am and feel inspired. They want to go, they want to go attack something and do something to help. What can I do to help? So what, what can, what can people do either to support you at the St. Tony River Authority or support their, their local freshwater system or just what, what's your call to action for people to, to do here?

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

Steven Schauer 
now that they've heard this story.

Shaun Donovan 
Yeah, I think there's two levels of calls to action. talk about environmental things. Obviously, there's the what can I do? That's the, I say easier because the second one is, we'll talk about the second, is a much bigger lift. think about where you are. Think about the system you interact with and what are the little things you can do to ensure that you individually or your family or friends or your community

taking those little steps to protect a local water body or a local, whether your thing is a water body or a forest or a meadow, something, I think we all have a, to some level of visceral connection to some part of nature. And there's nothing too small. We always talk about, plants, put plants, flowers on your back porch if you have an apartment, put it, go and try to be involved in a community garden.

If you have the means and the ability to do larger things like put a, do something in your yard that collects stormwater so it's not running off and decreasing water quality. Those are all building up to larger things you can do. if you have a chance, connect with your local organizations. know in Texas, have river authorities that there are a lot of those groups have outreach opportunities, but whether that's a watershed conservancy in a different part of the country

or whatever your local group is, if it's a trash pickup day, if it's just learning about what's around you, there are steps you can take. There are groups across the country, people would love to have you help out with preserving and protecting natural spaces and enjoy those natural spaces. Go out there and go to a park, go kayaking, go appreciate those kinds of things. think that one thing we always talk about, to kind of bring it back to the mussels for a second is we always talk about like,

the connection you get when you've experienced these things. The first, I never worked with mussels to work with the river authority and the first time I picked up a mussel out of the sand or out of the gravel, it's like you have this lifelong connection to that experience. And so if you have those experiences, you connect to those things better. I just advocate if you have the opportunity, if you have the time, go to those natural spaces, engage in those. And the second part is the bigger part is it's

It's the making choices with things and, you know, hopefully, hopefully you have a connection to this where you do want to, you know, use your voice and your vote to vote for things that you believe in from an environmental perspective. And I'm not going to, not even to get into, you know, the national or local politics of it all, but that is a way you can use your voice and, know, yeah, yes. Yeah. Be active in voting, you know, obviously, you know, whether that's a federal election, a local election, a state election. I mean, there's all sorts of ways

Steven Schauer 
Sure.

Just be active in voting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Shaun Donovan 
you know, ask, ask your local community leaders, ask your city council representative, ask your, you know, if in our case, you know, county commissioners asking those people, like, what do you value? Do you value environmental things? And it doesn't have to be who you're voting for president. It could be who's, who your local constituent, you know, the, local leaders you have in your community and what do they believe in? are they going to support this park? want to, you want to, you want to, you know, block off for environmental sustainability purposes.

Are they going to advocate for nature -based solutions or low impact development things to help with water quality? Are they going to not make a decision that compromise environment for the sake of profit? We talk about triple bottom line. Nobody's saying stop developing anything in the entire world, but there's ways you can do those things in an intelligent, thoughtful manner, advocate for those things. And that's harder because it takes a lot of people to get there.

can spend your dollars conscientiously and try to work with organizations that share your value. You talk about value -driven generations that are coming up behind us who think a whole heck of a lot more about that stuff than we did when we were kids. And that's such a cool thing to see that people are understanding. If I'm going to spend my dollars at your organization or with your company, you have to have the same beliefs. think that's great. We talked earlier about, we were in Colorado, my wife and

Steven Schauer 
Yeah,

Shaun Donovan
There's banks that talk about how they're 100 % sustainable. Those kinds of things are options you can possibly have if you have the availability to choose those types of things. so that's a huge part of it. And it may not seem like you're moving the needle right then and there by yourself, but trust me, are. You're making a difference with those things. And it adds up over time. It's not just your actions. It's the actions of the community.

Steven Schauer 
Yeah, every little bit helps.

Shaun Donovan 
take pride in these things and celebrate these things when you get an opportunity to do so. you know, I always, it always felt so counter to what we do as scientists to go out and like, you know, talk about the things you're doing. Like that's, you know, that's very not scientific. You do your research and you make your papers, but it's like, but the community connects to those kinds of things. So for people that are in the industry, like, don't be shy to tell your story. Don't be shy to say yes to your public affairs representative and go do a media event or a blog.

Steven Schauer 
Right.

Shaun Donovan 
social media posts and those things move the needle a lot and it helps get that community connected and excited about things. And we fight that in San Antonio, again, to talk about the perception of this dirty muddy river. It's like the river is such a cool resource we have in our backyard and people in the community don't necessarily think that. So if we can change their thoughts, they're gonna be more prone to protecting it. So whether you're in the industry or not, there are a lot of things that we can do to help with local advocacy

Steven Schauer 
Yeah.

Shaun Donovan 
statewide advocacy or federal advocacy.

Steven Schauer 
That's wonderful advice. Thank you, Shaun. The last set of questions, and I know we're, you know, appreciate your time today. So I like ending every episode talking about hope. you know, hope is not, you know, where the work gets done. got to, you know, but hope is what gives you the reason to go do the work, you know, and hope is this idea that you can envision a better future, but have

Shaun Donovan 
Absolutely.

Right.

Steven Schauer 
personal agency to make that better future a reality. I'm gonna ask you three questions. Kind of rapid fire, just give me the first kind of gut reaction to these questions. The first question is, what is your vision for a better future? Could be for you personally, professionally, or for the world. What's your vision for a better future?

Shaun Donovan 
My vision for better future is people valuing the space and the world around them as much or more than they value the material things. You can buy a new phone, can buy a new video game, you can buy a new whatever your thing is, but that forest, that river, that creek is the only one that's going to be

And you can have your phone, can have your video game, but you can also have that. So people valuing those spaces as much as maybe we do the things that are within our direct grasp all the

Steven Schauer 
Right on. Why is that your vision for a better future?

Shaun Donovan 
because I think it's a, I think it's a realistic thing. I think that, I think it's an attainable, you know, it may sound very lofty, but I think it's very attainable. we are, we all have a connection to that in some form or fashion. We may lose it. We may have a connection whenever we were an eight year old kid, you know, my, my wife talked about, she's an eight year old kid picking,

picking blackberries down on the coast of Texas when she was younger, and she wasn't a big outdoors person, but she kind of found that connection again. We can all find that and we can all have that. And as we have these opportunities to expand these spaces that are available to people, I think it's a realistic thing. So that's why I'd say like a vision for the future, because I don't think it's an unattainable thing.

Steven Schauer 
on. So the last question then, imagine your future vision is reality, that we do live in a world where people value that space as much or more than they might value the material things within their immediate grasp. So it's real, it's happened, we're there. How do

Shaun Donovan 
No.

Yep.

calm, you know, the, the, able to sit back and enjoy and not, you know, we have a lot of positive stories, but again, there are a lot of negative ones and I feel like maybe we'd be out of, or at least on the back end of that, of that constant churning of the wheel of trying to not take those two steps back after that one step forward. So, calm, relaxed.

enjoying a creek or river somewhere probably.

Steven Schauer 
Right on. Right on. Well, thank you, Shaun, so much for your time today. Thank you for all the amazing things you're doing for the San Antonio and South Central Texas community and frankly, the nation and the world. Your work is really kind of leading the way in many areas. So thank you for all that you're doing. And thank you for taking time to join me today and share your story with us. And I really appreciate it.

I'm going to continue to follow you from afar and cheer you on and look forward to celebrating your next victory down there. So thanks for being here with me today.

Shaun Donovan 
Awesome. Yeah, we really appreciate Steven. This is an awesome opportunity to chat with you again and appreciate the very kind words and always excited to talk about it again.

Steven Schauer 
All right, take care. Bye.

Shaun Donovan 
Yes,

Steven 
Thank you for tuning in to this encore presentation of Stories Sustain Us. Shaun Donovan's work with the San Antonio River Authority is a testament to the power of collaboration, innovation, and storytelling in driving meaningful environmental change. As we celebrate the reintroduction of over 3,500 native mussels into the mission reach of the San Antonio River this year, let's take inspiration from Shaun's commitment

to sustainability and ecological restoration. It's stories like these that remind us of the positive impact that we can all have on our world. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone who might be inspired by Shaun's work. And don't forget to rate and review Stories Sustain Us on your favorite podcast platform. And please be sure to follow Stories Sustain Us so you don't miss any episodes. As always, I really thank you for your support.

So as we continue to celebrate the stories that sustain us this holiday season, the next episode will be the final season one show. If you're a follower of Stories Sustain Us, you know every interview ends with me asking each guest the same three questions about hope. In this final season one episode of Stories Sustain Us, I am replaying all the responses I received to the questions about hope.

You can check out this uplifting episode on December 17th. It will be available at storiessustainus.com, wherever you listen to podcasts and on YouTube. And don't forget to mark your new 2025 calendar, season two of Stories Sustain Us launches on January 14th with brand new stories that will inspire you into action. Until next time, I'm Steven Schauer. Please take care of yourself and each other.

Take care.