CONTINUING A LEGACY

In 2023, the Will and Pam Harte family and the Harte Charitable Foundation funded a new endowment honoring Dr. Larry McKinney, HRI’s former Senior Executive Director. The $1.5 million endowment, named the Larry D. McKinney Endowed Chair for Coastal Conservation and Restoration, commemorates McKinney’s 15 years of leadership at HRI.

“We are delighted to contribute to this endowment to commemorate Dr. McKinney’s legacy and deepen HRI’s leadership capacity,” said Julia Harte Widdowson, Chair of the Harte Charitable Foundation. “We look forward to seeing HRI expand its conservation and restoration impact along the Texas Coast and around the Gulf of Mexico.”

The endowment supports the activities of Dr. Jennifer Pollack, a distinguished scholar and Chair who leads the Coastal Conservation and Restoration program.

The program focuses on understanding, protecting, and restoring coastal marine ecosystems, while working on a variety of projects and research areas aimed at preserving the health and sustainability of coastal environments.

Among those projects is the pioneering Sink Your Shucks™ oyster shell recycling program, which has helped to restore more than 45 acres of oyster reef along the Texas coast and recycled more than three million pounds of oyster shell.

Pollack’s group examines how estuarine habitats, such as oyster reefs, are affected by changing conditions, along with how to efficiently restore habitats to replace lost ecological functions such as water filtration, nursery habitats, shoreline stabilization, and biodiversity enhancement.

The program’s researchers are currently working on measurements of oyster reef carbon sequestration, which will help inform future conservation, restoration, and management decisions seeking to maximize carbon storage by reefs.