The 2010 recipient of the San Francisco Botanical Garden Society's Green Champion Award is U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein.

Since her election to the Senate in 1992, Senator Feinstein has worked in a bipartisan way to build a significant record of legislative accomplishments helping to protect natural resources in California and across the country. She has received the William Penn Mott Jr. Park Leadership Award for singular outstanding achievement for protecting national parks, in 2006. And this year the League of Conservation Voters awarded Senator Feinstein the highest rating in its National Environmental Scorecard.

During her 18-year Senate career, Senator Feinstein has engaged every major environmental issue facing California, including:

• Convening the discussions that resulted in the 1994 Bay-Delta Accord, which established three goals: developing water quality standards to protect the estuary; coordinating operations of state and federal water projects, and developing a long-term solution for the Delta.
 
• Authoring the 1994 California Desert Protection Act, to protect more than 7 million acres of pristine California desert. It was the largest such designation in the history of the continental United States, and established the Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Parks and the Mojave Natural Preserve.
• Brokering the 1999 deal to save the Headwaters Forest, a 7500-acre grove of ancient redwoods in Humboldt County.
 
• Authoring the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act of 2000, a major effort to keep Lake Tahoe blue. The legislation led to major investments in the environmental health of the Tahoe Basin, including $424 million by the federal government, $612 million by the state of California, $87 million by the state of Nevada, $59 million by local governments, and $249 million in in-kind contributions from the private sector.
• Leading the 2003 effort to transform 17,000 acres of salt ponds into wetlands in the San Francisco Bay in the largest wetland restoration project on the West Coast.
• Voting last year to stop an amendment that would have waived the Endangered Species Act in the Sacramento Delta.
• Co-authoring the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act of 2009, which would authorize $415 million over eight years to combat invasive species, improve water clarity, reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire, and restore the environment. The legislation is designed to continue the work begun under the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act of 2000.

The San Francisco Botanical Garden Society's Green Champion Award, given annually, was established to acknowledge leadership, innovation and achievement in sustainability, environmentalism, and conservation of the planet's biodiversity.