William Levi Bray

William Bray was an early Texas naturalist, botanist and plant ecologist known for his contributions to the study and conservation of Texas forests. He worked as a botanist at the University of Texas beginning in 1897, and was hired in about 1900 by Gifford Pinchot, head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Division of Forestry, to assess forests in the Piney Woods and Edwards Plateau. His reports, including his 1903 paper, A Forest Working Plan for the Long Leaf Pine Lands of Texas, and a 1904 work, The Timber of the Edwards Plateau: Its Relation to Water Supply, Climate, and Soil, warned of the threats of deforestation, overgrazing and fire suppression. Interestingly, Bray was one of a handful of founders of the Ecological Society of America in 1915, a group whose “activist” faction became the Nature Conservancy in 1950.