2015 Outstanding PLT Educator – Roberta Salazar

Roberta Salazar

Roberta Salazar, NM PLT’s 2015 Outstanding Educator

Roberta Salazar, Executive Director of Rivers and Birds, has been selected to receive the fourth annual New Mexico Project Learning Tree Outstanding Educator award for 2015.

This award acknowledges her commitment to using Project Learning Tree (PLT) to build awareness and understanding of the environment, as well as motivation to take action to address issues. PLT is a program of the American Forest Foundation’s Center for Environmental Learning. The program includes teacher training with curriculum guides and the Green Schools program.

Roberta has established Rivers & Birds’ nine-day Watershed Learning Project, which takes fifth graders into nature for hands-on learning incorporating Project Learning Tree’s activities; the Rivala Tree Fund, which annually raises money for tree plantings with students and volunteers; the Heartwood Coalition that offered tree workshops and planted an orchard with 25 fruit trees; partnership with USFWS to establish schoolyard habitats with pollinator gardens at four schools in Taos.

She was the local community organizer for the Columbine Hondo Wilderness Campaign to permanently protect 45,000 acres of forested watershed. The Act passed in 2014, forever protecting these headwater forests. In 2011, she hosted a Project Learning Tree – Project WILD workshop in Taos. She is an exemplary environmental educator and we are proud to honor her!

The New Mexico PLT team will be presenting her award at a location of her choice (TBD).


This article was originally published in EE Connections for April 2015.