Dr. Richard Gibbons is the Director of Conservation for Audubon Texas. In his current role, Richard is working with an incredible team to continue more than a century of coastal stewardship of nesting islands along the Texas coast, growing the Audubon Conservation Ranching program, collaborating on several bird risk mitigation campaigns, and develops tools and practices to advance bird conservation. 
Richard has worked as an ornithologist for three decades on the Texas Gulf Coast and throughout the Americas. After a few years of seasonal biology jobs chasing tiger beatles, banding birds, and counting migrating hawks, Richard landed his first full-time job in Corpus Christi managing colonial waterbirds with Audubon. He then worked for the local estuary program while earning his master's degree at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi studying wintering waterbirds. Richard went on to Louisiana State University's ornithology program and where he developed community science programs in the early days of eBird, coauthored an ABA Birdfinding Guide to Louisiana, and earned his PhD investigating wetland and grassland bird communities and the effects of climate change in the high Andes of Peru. 
Richard moved back to Texas and served as Director of Conservation for Houston Audubon for nearly a decade where he enjoyed working with an incredible team of committed conservationists developing land protection projects, engaging media content, and nature-based tourism projects for the famed High Island sanctuaries. 
Before his current role at Audubon, Richard served as the Gulf Program Director for the American Bird Conservancy where their team worked to reduce marine debris harmful to humans and wildlife, advocated for safe beach-nesting practices along the Gulf, and advised on coastal development projects.