Angeles Chapter Receives National Recognition

Congratulations to all Angeles Chapter members who have received national Sierra Club awards this year. Recipients were honored September 26, 2009 at the Sierra Club's Honor and Awards Banquet in San Francisco.

Tejon Ranch Task Force
The Tejon Ranch Task Force has won the Sierra Club 2009 Environmental Alliance Award. The award honors Sierra Club entities who have helped further environmental goals through collaboration with other, non-Sierra Club constituencies. The Tejon Ranch Task Force included representatives from the Angeles and Kern-Kaweah Chapters of the Sierra Club, as well as the Club's regional Desert Committee. It joined with Audubon California, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Planning and Conservation League, and the Endangered Habitats League for two years of negotiations with the Tejon Ranch Corporation and its financial partner, DMB. Assisting the negotiating groups were attorneys from Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger and the Resources Law Group, and scientists from the Conservation Biology Institute and the South Coast Wildlands Project. At various times there was outreach to the U.S. military and the State of California. Together, they developed an historic agreement that will protect 90 percent of the Tejon Ranch from development. The ranch lies at the biogeographic crossroads of five geomorphic provinces and four floristic regions-circumstances unmatched anywhere in California. Located south of Bakersfield, the 270,000 acres of Tejon Ranch land connects the southern Sierra Nevada, the Mojave Desert, the Transverse and Coastal Ranges, and the Central Valley. With 23 different vegetation communities and over one-third of the oak species in California, including some of the largest individual oaks in the state, it is seen as vital piece of key habitat corridors. Operated as a working ranch for 150 years, Tejon Ranch is large enough and pristine enough to support such wide-ranging species as mountain lions and California condors, and sufficiently vast to accommodate large-scale ecological processes such as natural fire cycles. The ranch had already begun development on some of its parcels and was planning additional developments when negotiations began.

Donna Specht
Donna Specht of Huntington Beach, Calif., has been selected to receive the Sierra Club's 2009 Susan Miller Award. This award honors a Sierra Club member for administrative contributions to groups and chapters. Specht has been active in the management of the Sierra Club's Angeles Chapter for 20 years. She is an elected member of the Executive Committee and is a member of the Fundraising Outings Committee, the Outings Management Committee and the Safety Committee, in addition to serving as the Outings Chair for Orange County Sierra Singles. Specht also is an avid leader of fundraising trips for the Angeles Chapter, both national and international. She organizes eight to nine ski trips every year, and leads trips to the Havasupai Indian Reservation in Arizona, Alaska, the Mediterranean and Costa Rica. She leads day hikes for little hikers and conditioning hikes. She also organizes about six membership fairs a year, spread throughout the Los Angeles area, that give local residents the opportunity to find out about and join the Sierra Club. Donna carries membership applications on outings, at meetings, and everywhere she thinks she can get just one extra person converted to the environmental message of the Sierra Club, said Silvia Darie, a member of the Angeles Chapter.

Susan Heitman
Susan Heitman has won the Sierra Club 2009 Special Service Award. Heitman has been active in the Sierra Club at the national level for 14 years. She has served on the Outdoor Activities Governance Committee and Board of Directors Nominating Committee as a member and chair, the Election Reform Task Force as its chair, and the Communication and Education Governance Committee as a member and co-chair. In addition, she has served on the Organizational Change Steering Committee, the Business Partnerships Task Force, and currently on the Visibility and Outreach Advisory Committee. Susan's leadership is a major asset for the Sierra Club, said Sanjay Ranchod, a member of the Club's Board of Directors who nominated Heitman for the award.