By: Georgean and Paul Kyle, Travis Audubon
Travis Audubon honors devoted volunteer Anne Donovan with a BookSpring Flying Book Society membership.
Today we celebrate Anne Donovan as a consummate educator and conservationist. We are thrilled to celebrate her legacy of service and education with a gift to BookSpring in her honor. We know her work will inspire future conservationists for years to come!
Anne Donovan was a science teacher at Saint Andrew’s Elementary for 17 years. She took the students out of the classroom to experience the natural world whenever and wherever possible. We first met Anne on one of her spring outings with her students to observe bird banding at the Driftwood Bird Banding Station in Hays County in the 1980s, where we assisted with the research. Her students experienced various types of habitats and came eye-to-eye with the myriad avian species in Central Texas.
Anne becomes incredibly supportive of conservation work with Chimney Swifts.
Later Anne’s family foundation helped fund numerous Chimney Swift Towers in the Austin area, and Anne even assisted in the construction. While attending the dedication of a Chimney Swift Tower at Drippings Springs Elementary school as a workshop project by Travis Audubon, she was dismayed by the lack of factual knowledge the students had about the birds. She determined that day that there was a need for a children’s book about Chimney Swifts. Enlisting the aid of two friends, an English teacher and an illustrator, that book became a reality in 2015. The proceeds for the sale of The Adventures of a Chimney Swift Family benefit Travis Audubon’s maintenance of the Chaetura Canyon Sanctuary.
During her time on the Travis Audubon Board of Directors, Anne served on the committee that accepted the donation of property that eventually became the Chaetura Canyon Bird Sanctuary in 2006 – Travis Audubon’s third conservation property. Anne is retiring from the Chaetura Canyon Management Committee after 12 years. “We owe Anne a great debt of gratitude for her friendship and support over these many years,” said Georgean and Paul Kyle, Sanctuary Stewards.