Esther Van Der Wart Yanai (May 15, 1928 – October 15, 2003)[1] worked for more than thirty years to preserve open space in Moorestown, New Jersey.
She was working in Minneapolis as a social worker when she met her future husband, Hideyasu Steve Yanai, a chemist and native of Japan.
This led, in 1972, to her helping to found, and then later becoming the president of, the citizens' group Save the Environment of Moorestown (STEM).
[2] Yanai drove the creation of a natural resource inventory (NRI) for the Township, a process that took ten years.
She campaigned for the Green Acres bond issues and worked on many public education events.