Nancy H. DeStefanis is an American environmental educator, field ornithologist and lecturer. She is credited for discovering and documenting the first colony of

great blue heron The great blue heron (''Ardea herodias'') is a large wading bird in the heron family Ardeidae, common near the shores of open water and in wetlands over most of North America and Central America, as well as the Caribbean and the Galápagos ...

s to nest in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

in 1993, and for monitoring them for the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory every year since then—an activity that earned her the nickname of "Heron Lady of Golden Gate Park". She features in ''Heron Island'' (1998), a short documentary directed by

Judy Irving Judy Irving is an American filmmaker. She directed the documentary ''The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill'', about writer Mark Bittner's relationship with a flock of wild parrots. The film won the Genesis Award for "Outstanding Documentary Film" ...

about the heronry of Stow Lake in San Francisco's

Golden Gate Park Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, United States, is a large urban park consisting of of public grounds. It is administered by the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department, which began in 1871 to oversee the development ...

. In 2005 she received the

Jefferson Award for Public Service The Jefferson Awards Foundation was created in 1972 by the American Institute for Public Service. The Jefferson Awards are given at both national and local levels. Local winners are ordinary people who do extraordinary things without expectation ...

. DeStefanis is the founder and executive director of San Francisco Nature Education, a nonprofit introducing children in underserved schools to urban nature conservation and science. Prior to working as an environmental educator, DeStefanis was an attorney who served as a community organizer for the

United Farm Workers Union The United Farm Workers of America, or more commonly just United Farm Workers (UFW), is a labor union for farmworkers in the United States. It originated from the merger of two workers' rights organizations, the Agricultural Workers Organizing ...

and as executive director of California Women Lawyers.

References

Year of birth missing (living people) American ornithologists American naturalists American women educators Living people 21st-century American women {{US-edu-bio-stub