2012 Lifetime Achievement Award
2012 Lifetime Achievement Award: Ann Taylor Schwing
The impact of Ann Taylor Schwing’s conservation work is many-fold and can be felt locally in Napa County as well as nationally.
To begin, Ann and her family donated the 380-acre Archer Taylor Preserve (ATP) to the Land Trust of Napa County in 1989. The unique preserve includes a century-old redwood forest in the Redwood Creek watershed west of Napa. In 1989, Ann founded ATP’s volunteer-led preserve management committee and continues to volunteer today. In fact, she and her husband, Charlie Schwing, travel from Sacramento to Napa every Saturday to help maintain the preserve’s extensive trail system and help the Land Trust manage the property (i.e. evasive plant removal).
Ann’s conservation leadership has had an organization-wide impact as well. From 1997 to 2001, she served on the Land Trust’s Board of Trustees, with three years as a Board President. She has served on the protection committee, which ensures all conservation agreements are properly honored, since its inception and chaired the committee from 2002-2008. And for the past 15 years she has served on the Project Committee, which analyzes all lands projects for the organization.
She did substantial pro bono work on two lawsuits resolved successfully for the LT. In addition she has done pro bono work for the California Council of Land Trusts.
On a national level Ann sits on the Land Trust Alliance’s (LTA) Accreditation Commission and serves as Secretary. The 13-member appointed commission is charged with operating the LTA’s accreditation program for land trusts nation-wide.
She was selected by the Land Trust Alliance to be a charter member of the Accreditation Commission and to be its secretary. She has since been nominated to a second term.
Ann has published extensively on conservation easement law and most recently in the Harvard Environmental Law Review.