Bill and Jean Lane donate $1 million to POST Bill and Jean Lane donate $1 million to POST (September 14, 2005)

Bill and Jean Lane of Portola Valley, longtime supporters of environmental causes, have donated $1 million to the Peninsula Open Space Trust to support its land-saving efforts on the San Mateo County Coast.

The Lanes' gift benefits POST's $200 million Saving the Endangered Coast campaign. With their contribution, the campaign has exceeded the $190 million mark.

In recognition of the Lanes' contributions, a scenic meadow of POST's Portola Lookout property off Skyline Ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains will now be known as the Bill and Jean Lane Meadow at the Portola Lookout.

Mr. Lane is the former publisher of Sunset magazine and retired co-chairman of the board of Lane Publishing Co., now the Sunset Publishing Corp. owned by Time Warner. He is a former U.S. ambassador to Australia and ambassador-at-large to Japan.

Ms. Lane, a docent at Stanford University's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, has served on the boards of the National Tropical Botanical Garden, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and the Filoli Center in Woodside.

The Lanes were among POST's founding donors. For the past 13 years, they have underwritten POST's Wallace Stegner Lecture Series, named for the late Pulitzer Prize-winning author and environmentalist.

The Bill and Jean Lane Meadow is part of Portola Lookout, a 50-acre property located west of Skyline Boulevard between Page Mill Road and Highway 9. It is adjacent to the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District's Long Ridge Open Space Preserve.

POST, a private nonprofit land trust, was founded in 1977 and is headquartered in Menlo Park. Its president is Audrey Rust.

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