Ellen Buchanan worked for over 30 years at Texas Parks and Wildlife, and has also served on the boards of the Big Thicket Natural Heritage Trust, the Golden Triangle Sierra Club, the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, the Water Development Board’s Neches River Planning Group, the Big Thicket Biosphere Reserve, and the Big Thicket Association. In recent years, she has been the chair of the Texas Black Bear Alliance, and has focused a good part of her efforts on education and conservation related to the black bear in East Texas.