This year, your Conservation Land Bank welcomes three new volunteer commissioners, Marilyn O’Connor, Amy Trainer, and Peggy Bill.
The Land Bank is fortunate to have a volunteer commission strengthened by members with a diversity of backgrounds, viewpoints, and skills. We look forward to their guidance and input over the next four years.
Marilyn O’Connor
Marilyn has lived near Friday Harbor since 1979, when what was to be a summer sailing trip, grew into a deeply rooted passion for the waters, lands and community of the San Juan Islands. Raised near the Northern California coastline, Marilyn headed even further north after graduating the University of California at Santa Cruz. Marilyn joins the Land Bank Commission after 31 years with the Port of Friday Harbor – in the roles of auditor, deputy director and for ten years, as executive director, before retiring in 2016.
Marilyn is excited to contribute her energy and experience to the Conservation Land Bank’s mandate of preserving the diverse landscapes of this place we humans share with other life. One of her favorite memories is the gathering of signatures on a petition to “save Deadman Bay” when the Land Bank was first created. Hiking and camping, boating and gardening remain her primary interests. She believes that preservation, restoration and stewardship of the land is critical work to be done in this place and time.
Amy Trainer
Amy Trainer brings nearly twenty years of conservation success as a strategic advocate, coalition builder and environmental policy expert. Amy currently serves as the Environmental Policy Director for the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community where she provides strategic policy advice to the Tribe’s elected Senate, and leads intergovernmental affairs for a variety of local, state, federal, tribal and international natural resources matters. A former practicing environmental and land use attorney in Kansas, Missouri and Washington, she moved to San Juan Island in 2005. As a staff attorney in Friday Harbor, she championed a new vessel regulation to protect the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales. As a land trust executive director in south-central Colorado, she permanently protected over eleven hundred acres of mountain valley and senior water rights. As executive director of a California coastal advocacy organization, Amy led the national campaign that secured permanent protection of the West Coast’s only marine wilderness area, Drakes Estero in Point Reyes National Seashore. She is an appointed member of the Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission, and also serves on the boards of the Washington Water Trust and the Center for Rural Livelihoods. Amy moved back to San Juan Island at the beginning of the pandemic, and she is grateful to hike and trail run, eat local organic foods, and enjoy the wonders of the Salish Sea with her husband Fred.
Peggy Bill
Peggy started coming to the islands with her family as a young girl, camping in a run down shack on their land on Hunter Bay – previously a Holy Rollers encampment – running wild through the woods, sailing and paddling in the Salish Sea. Those early times on Lopez shaped her values and choices, including choices to work to protect and conserve our natural heritage, and her appreciation for our islands’ history and communities. Her professional work has included land conservation in the Puget Sound region, wetlands protection, and more recently as an advocate for farmers in the San Juan Islands, including efforts to increase success for new farmers starting to farm in the islands. When SJC voters first approved the Land Bank in 1990, she was thankful to be able to serve as a Land Bank Commissioner at that time. She continues to be a firm believer in the important work of the Land Bank, and looks forward to stepping forward again to support a lasting legacy of success that will sustain our ecosystems, habitat, cultural and ecological heritage.