ANN E. PREZYNA

Ann is an environmental attorney with over 40 years of governmental, corporate and nonprofit experience. Throughout her career, Ann’s practice has focused on environmental protection and preservation of wildlife and their habitat. 

Ann was born at a military base in Beaufort, South Carolina, and raised in Buffalo, New York. Early in childhood, she developed a keen interest in animals and the natural world, raising a menagerie of pets including salamanders, snakes, and frogs in addition to rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, mice and hamsters. Growing up on the Great Lakes at a time when there were large fish die offs due to pollution and her neighborhood was sprayed with DDT while Ann and her friends played outside, she determined early on to fight for Mother Earth and its wild creatures. 

Ann received a degree in environmental conservation at Cornell University. Graduating at a time when the Clean Water Act and other environmental laws were being put into place at the federal level, she opted to go to law school. She attended George Washington University, attracted there by Professor Arnold Reitze, who initiated one of the first environmental law programs in the country. After she received her J.D., she moved to Madison, Wisconsin, and obtained a degree in Water Resources Management based on her interest in water law and the need to preserve instream flows for wildlife.

Her first job opportunity was in Anchorage, Alaska, where she was able to put her skills to work at the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, working to update the state’s water use regulations, including provisions affecting instream flows. Not long after she started work at DNR, she was offered a position at the Alaska Department of Law. As an Assistant Attorney General, she worked on a variety of environmental issues for nearly a decade, including enforcement of the state’s limited entry system to regulate offshore commercial fisheries, enforcement of state clean water and other environmental requirements, legal oversight of state timber sales, and counselling state agencies on oil, gas and mining matters. During her time in Alaska, Ann also worked as in-house environmental counsel for BP/Sohio, advising corporate environmental and lands departments on North Slope oil and gas operations.

After working in Alaska, Ann and her partner Gordon Lewis took to the road for a year, exploring the natural areas in Alaska and the lower 48, in large part by bike and on foot. At the end of that year, Ann got a job offer to work at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Seattle, Washington. She began her EPA career as an attorney handling Clean Water Act enforcement and permitting matters. She soon became a supervisory attorney overseeing Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, tribal and other matters. She later became both Deputy and Acting Regional Counsel in the Office of Regional Counsel, a role she had for nearly two decades, where she was responsible for overseeing regional EPA legal matters for Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska. 

Ann left EPA in 2014 to become the general counsel for Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to marine conservation, and served as secretary/treasurer on the Board of Directors. She inherited defensive litigation intended to sink Sea Shepherd organizationally, including a lawsuit filed by Japanese whalers in federal court in Seattle. She teamed up with Claire to mount an aggressive legal defense that helped assure Sea Shepherd’s continued existence. She also oversaw creation of the agreement with the Mexican government that enabled Sea Shepherd to partner with the Mexican navy in a continued effort to save the vaquita from extinction due to poaching in the Sea of Cortez. Ann later joined Claire at Lane Powell, a mid-sized law firm in Seattle, to start a new Animal & Earth Advocacy Practice Group. This move helped launch their current practice as an independent law firm focused on animal and environmental issues on behalf of Mother Earth.

Ann is actively involved in environmental advocacy, serving as President of the Coastal Watershed Institute, which is engaged in shoreline restoration efforts in Washington State; as a co-founder and Board Secretary for Washington Wildlife First, which advocates for regulatory reform to protect wolves, cougars, bears and other wildlife; and as partner in a two person law firm, Animal & Earth Advocacy, which specializes in federal and state litigation to preserve old-growth forests and protect threatened species such as native salmon and southern resident killer whales.

Ann currently lives in a floating home on Lake Union and is well known for her floating dinner excursions on the M/V Chip, many to raise funds for charitable causes. She also spends time on her 120-acre ranch in Southeast Arizona with her husband, Gordon Lewis. The ranch is under a conservation easement and actively managed to restore riparian and grassland habitat on the San Pedro River.

Ann will continue to fight on behalf of wildlife and a healthy planet so long as there is a need to help safeguard them for future generations.