BETHESDA, Md (WDVM)– Friday evening Conservation Montgomery hosted their annual 2019 meeting at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda. Local officials throughout the county came out to celebrate and raise awareness for conservation Montgomery.

Caroline Taylor, Executive Director for the Montgomery countryside alliance, was honored with the 2019 Joe Howard Environmental Award for her environmental work throughout the community. According to Taylor a third of Montgomery County is set aside for open space and farmland preservation and is also a national model for farmland preservation.

“The number of people that are so talented and give so freely of their time to protect our water quality to protect our open space and our forest it’s just mind-boggling to me that we have this much talent here. So knowing that, and receiving this award makes it even more humbling because there are so many more people out there that are worthy of this acknowledgment of the work that they do,” said Taylor.

The award is named after Joe Howard the founder of the Montgomery county champion tree program which helped shape the county’s groundbreaking forest conservation legislation.