People We Love: Abana Jacobs

This February, Leave No Trace is reflecting on people, places and stories we love. This past year was a difficult year for all of us and in so many different ways. One of those difficulties came in the great loss of a true Leave No Trace champion. On November 23, 2020 we said goodbye to Abana Marie Jacobs.

Abana worked at Leave No Trace’s long time partner organization, Subaru of America, for 28 years and for the past several years she worked with me directly to manage our partnership and the Subaru/Leave No Trace Teams. She brought together programs for Subaru such as Subaru Loves the Earth, The Yosemite Facelift, The Philadelphia Flower Show and the Cherry Blossom Festival.  Abana was a powerful advocate for Leave No Trace and was always coming up with new ways to promote our education and expand our reach into our national parks and public lands.

It was Abana’s activism and initiative that helped to take Subaru’s zero waste manufacturing plant expertise and use it to implement a zero-waste program in our national parks, which ultimately became the Subaru Zero-Landfill Initiative—a program she ensured Leave No Trace played a major role in through research and on the ground training via our Zero-Landfill Team.

Abana always started our meetings talking about how she just went paddling, hiking, or some other adventure outdoors with her son and grandkids the weekend before and how she taught them Leave No Trace Ethics, and made sure to remind me that she used her Klean Kanteen reusable water bottle.

Abana lived and breathed Outdoor Ethics and implemented her passion into her work and everyday life and she is truly missed by all of us at Leave No Trace.