ES: Andrew McElwaine

Andrew McElwaine

President and CEO, Conservancy of Southwest Florida

Executive Session by Jean Gruss | Lee-Collier Editor

Andrew McElwaine joined the Naples-based Conservancy of Southwest Florida as president and CEO in December. He has a history of public service. From 1985 to 1990, he was the environmental policy manager for Sen. John Heinz, (R-Pa.) and after that he served on the Council on Environmental Quality for the Bush I Administration for two years.

The Conservancy is an environmental advocacy group with about 50 employees and a $5 million annual budget.

Among other endeavors, the Conservancy says it successfully lobbied the Army Corps of Engineers to deny a permit for Mirasol, an 800-home subdivision in northern Collier County that it says posed a threat to nearby Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary.

In addition, the organization advocated for the preservation of Babcock Ranch in Charlotte and Lee counties and supported a referendum to save the Naples Zoo and surrounding lands for preservation.

The Conservancy also launched the first estuaries report card last year, which grades 10 estuaries and their watersheds from Venice in Sarasota County to Ten Thousand Islands in Collier County.

PERSONAL

Age: 45

Family: Married, wife Barbara, sons Robert, 14, and Mark, 11

Hometown: Washington, D.C.

Education: M.S. Carnegie Mellon University, M.A. George Mason University, B.A. Duke University.

Who you bet on to reach the Final Four: "I didn't have a bet on the Final Four. As a George Mason alum, I didn't think they'd get as far as they did. I didn't have any bets going."

Hobbies: "I do some boating, although most of my boating experience is fresh water, and a little fishing, and I go to my kids' baseball and soccer games and that tends to keep me pretty busy."

Favorite movie: Lawrence of Arabia.

Favorite music: Traditional Irish and Scottish music.

Do you play the bagpipes? "No. I don't wear a kilt either."

What was your first paying job? "I was an usher at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington D.C."

PROFESSIONAL

How did you get started in environmental conservation? "From earliest childhood, growing up in Washington D.C. and going to school in Northern Virginia, I watched the Virginia countryside become condo canyon and the horrendous unplanned development and sprawl that took place throughout Maryland and Virginia and has now spread all the way into Pennsylvania and West Virginia. That really was something that motivated me to become more of a conservationist, to support planned development. Sitting in that traffic as a young adult gave me some sense of importance of planning and infrastructure. All of those were big motivators for me to get into this field.

POSITION

Tell us about this position and what it entails: "The Conservancy is a 42-year-old organization. It's a large non-profit and we have four areas of programming. Wildlife rehabilitation is one. We were set up in the 1980s to treat about 400 injured animals a year. We now treat 2,400 a year, most of them automobile accidents as sprawl in this area takes off. We've treated everything from raccoons to bobcats to shorebirds. We are the only hospital of its kind between here and Sanibel. It's really the only one that's close to the Everglades. We provide environmental education to about 28,000 Collier County students a year, plus some in Lee County. We also are engaged in environmental policy, which covers a whole range of activities from zoning to planning and permitting issues. And then environmental science. We have an outstanding team of environmental scientists, the best in Florida, and they provide us with a baseline and an understanding of what's here and what we need to be focused on. We tee off of their findings, in terms of our policy."

How big is your budget for legal expenses? "That's on an as needed basis. We have some donors who are very concerned again about the West Broward-style development. It's for permitting."

What is your most immediate challenge? "My most immediate challenge is the transformation of Naples and south Fort Myers and the coast along this area. The transformation that's not so slowly taking place, in which communities with very unique features and attractions, is gradually becoming Broward West. The significance of this region and this community, and its separateness from the Atlantic coast, is disappearing, along with rare and endangered wildlife, unique ecosystems, to say nothing of the drinking water that we depend on and come down to us through flow ways that are being developed and paved over. This area is supposed to double in population between now and 2020 and if that happens, accommodating those people and having much of a natural resource base here is going to be a huge challenge.

In the recent history of Florida, developers and environmentalists have usually been at loggerheads. What is your relationship with developers? "It runs the whole gamut. We keep in good touch with, say, the Bonita Bay Group. We know what they're doing. They know what we're doing. We work as best we can. I wouldn't say we would give them carte blanche, not at all, quite the opposite, but they've worked hard to try to meet our objectives. They're not the only one.

There's a development called Cypress Shadows, which is going in Lee County off Corkscrew Road. They came to us first and showed us what they wanted to do. We criticized it and they made some changes and tried to accommodate us. They didn't do everything we wanted, but they came a long way and we said, fine, we're not going to fight you on this. We didn't say we endorse it. I don't think we ever would come out a say we endorse another development in this area, but we didn't fight them on it. They came a long way to meet our objectives. They put almost half the property in a preserve. Then there are the others. I think everyone is aware of Mirasol. We did oppose the permitting and the permit's been denied and it's being appealed. That's the other side. Hamilton Harbour [a Collier Enterprises waterfront project in south Naples Bay] went to the Florida Supreme Court and they lost. We eventually came to an agreement with the developers and we dropped our case."

Which developer does the best job protecting the environment? "I don't want to give out prizes. You've got a lot of people who do good work. The other side of it is some people who do good work in one area don't do it the same way next time. There are lots of good ideas from the development community and there are some real bad ones. Our style is to be as protective of the environment as we can be. We don't fight permits just for the sake of fighting permits."

How accommodating are you? "We're science based and we rely on the scientists to tell us what's needed. For Ave Maria, for example, the scientists really looked at where the wildlife crossings were and Barron Collier set aside those areas. So we didn't fight the permits on that. The other thing they did was inaugurate the rural fringe program, so that there is a plan in place for the eastern half of Collier County in terms of how it will develop. The concern you have is that it's going to just be cul-de-sacs for acres. Vigilance is going to be the key."