In 1980, Cornell University student Donna Shaver arrived at Padre Island National Seashore, a volunteer with the Student Conservation Corps assigned to work on a groundbreaking project to help the fast-disappearing Kemp’s ridley sea turtles. Shaver joined the National Parks Service as a park technician after graduating and by 1986, she was named the park’s acting chief of resources management, leading the recovery program for the most endangered sea turtle in the world.

The work includes everything from leading teams patrolling nearly 40 miles of seashore to locate nesting turtles, sleeping on a cot in the project headquarters to waiting for the turtle hatchlings to emerge from their incubated eggs to educating the public about sea turtles during crack-of-dawn turtle releases.

Shaver, who earned her doctorate in zoology from Texas A&M University, is now the chief of the Division of Sea Turtle Science and Recovery at the national seashore. Her indefatigable research and commitment to the program has helped bring the species back from the brink of extinction. In 1985 only 702 nests were found in the entire world. Nearly three decades later in 2009, a record-high of nearly 20,000 nests were counted worldwide.