Conservancy funding getting healthier

Each year the fund-raiser has a theme. This year it's the Gulf of Mexico.

And the group is basing the call for members and money this time on a 15-part series on the Gulf by the Daily News that highlighted its plight.

The Conservancy used public awareness that the series generated as a springboard to showcase its own programs, said Carole Fenstermacher, manager of major and planned gifts for the Conservancy.

"Here is a group that is able to do something that has been a success in continuing to protect (our) quality of life," Fenstermacher said of the Conservancy. "It was good timing for us."

The articles that detail the myriad environmental problems facing the Gulf came out in late September and October.

Gary Davis, director of environmental policy for the Conservancy, said the approach is nothing new.

"We typically focus on an issue that we work heavily on," he said. "Last year we started our estuaries and coastal watershed program."

That program was off to a healthy start from a stout donation from a man and woman who live on Naples Bay and are avid sport fishermen.

Davis wouldn't disclose the amount of the grant, but so far the group committed $200,000 to the initiative that includes a comprehensive assessment, or report card, of the region's estuaries, a public information campaign to share those results and the creation of a volunteer water monitoring program.

Davis said any money raised from the 17,000 mailers to Collier and Lee counties that alluded to the newspaper's series would go toward the group's general fund and support a variety of efforts by the organization.

Finances are looking up, but things haven't been as rosy for the group in the recent past.

The Conservancy's investment fund balance peaked in 1998-99 at almost $9.5 million, but by September 2002, the fund balance was more than halved to $4.5 million.

Conservancy officials have attributed the decline to pre-9-11 troubles that included almost $1 million in investment losses followed by another $650,000 loss the next year.

At about the same time, contributions to the Conservancy started to slide. Donors gave $814,121 less to the Conservancy in 2001-02 than in 2000-01.

The 2001-02 total was $2.1 million. It was the first drop in contributions since 1997, according to tax returns.

Also down was revenue from admissions at the Conservancy's nature centers. They fell from almost $135,000 in 2000-01 to almost $94,000 in 2001-02, according to tax returns.

Other revenue streams fared better. Revenues from Conservancy programs went up -- from almost $231,000 in 2000-01 to almost $310,000 in 2001-02, according to tax returns.

The Conservancy of Southwest Florida was founded in 1964 by a group of people bent on protecting a stretch of mangroves from road building that would put asphalt through near-pristine rookeries and barrier islands.

The 110,000-acre Rookery Bay is now protected because of those efforts.

In more recent times, the Conservancy has monitored endangered loggerhead sea turtles and protected 3,600 nests and nearly 185,000 hatchlings.

It has called for growth that is sustainable in the face of a waterside population boom that threatens coastal and marine ecosystems. In Lee County, the Conservancy has fought the proposed extension of Collier Boulevard from what it says are poorly planned developments adjacent to the Six-Mile Cypress Slough Preserve.

And the group took part in protecting 300,000 acres of rural lands in Collier County and is monitoring the 4,500-acre Ave Maria University that is planned near Immokalee.

To find out more about The Conservancy of Southwest Florida, visit its Web site at www.conservancy.org or call 262-0304.