The PA Land Trust Association honored Peter Hausmann of Chester County, with the Lifetime Conservation Leadership Award at an awards dinner in State College on April 5th.

Hausann has served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the regional, non-profit land conservancy Natural Lands Trust for the past 13 years. During his tenure as Chairman, the organization has preserved more than 35,000 acres of open space, the single most productive period in the organization’s sixty-year history.

He was also a founding Trustee of the Willistown Conservation Trust, Chester County, and of a non-profit organization that leveraged his real estate expertise to purchase and resell over $80 million of land to conservation buyers in the Willistown area.

In 1989, Hausmann helped to found and chaired Save Open Space, a citizens’ group that successfully shepherded Chester County’s pioneering open space bond issue. He then helped to establish the open space program that became the model for other county initiatives around the region.

In 1990, President George H. W. Bush awarded Hausmann the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Award in recognition of his work on the county program.

His contributions to land conservation extend well beyond his own Chester County backyard to the Philadelphia region and all of Pennsylvania. He is a former board member and real estate committee chair for The Nature Conservancy’s Pennsylvania Chapter and former board member of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, the Green Space Alliance, and 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania.

"Peter Hausmann isn't a household name. But it should be for those in metropolitan Philadelphia," asserted Andy Loza, executive director of PALTA. He cited Chester County in particular: "In the coming decades, when residents and visitors enjoy the county's parks and protected open spaces, there's a big chance that they owe their joy in part to the work of Peter Hausmann."

“Peter’s unique vision of land preservation, not just for aesthetic and scientific and cultural reasons, but equally for economic development reasons, has helped to invigorate the land trust movement, both regionally in Southeastern Pennsylvania and nationally,” said Jack Terrill, Vice-Chair of Natural Lands Trust. “We have been blessed with Peter’s energy and drive and are so pleased that he is receiving the Lifetime Conservation Leadership Award.”

Hausmann received the award, an honor given to only nine other individuals, for his decades of leadership and dedication in conserving our special places and landscapes. The award was presented in conjunction with the 11th Annual Pennsylvania Land Conservation Conference held in State College.

4/15/2013