In a region where organizations and individuals joust for supremacy as the most environmentally sensitive stewards, it's sometimes hard to tell sincerity from sales. But when the accolades come from the Conservancy of Southwest Florida-our region's largest nonprofit environmental organization-they ring true. The Conservancy's Environmental Achievement Awards program is sponsored by local companies-Gulfshore Media, the parent of Gulfshore Life, among them-that share a commitment to the region's environmental health. The most recent group of winners, selected by the Conservancy and honored at a luncheon ceremony, neatly typifies the range and scope of environmental activism in our region. The winners-a realtor, a bureaucrat, a nurseryman and a sixth-grader-might not cross paths in their day-to-day lives. But a passion for preservation unites them.

A Premier Place

If Tom Campbell had never come to Naples, it would be a very different place indeed. But thanks to a visit to his grandfather more than 50 years ago, Campbell fell in love with the area. He's been ardent about protecting it ever since.

Friends and associates who've watched the man work-often quietly, often behind the scenes, but always with fierce intensity-say that if he were to be granted a George Bailey experience, as in It's a Wonderful Life, he'd likely see a potter's field of heedless development and depleted resources. "A not-so-special place" is how Pamela Williams describes it.

For the last few decades, she's worked with Campbell, a lawyer and realtor with Premier Properties, on numerous environmental projects.

Williams observes that when Campbell's passionate about a cause, he "dives into it at about 500 miles an hour with his energy, enthusiasm and usually his wallet to do whatever it takes to get the job done." That's included getting Conservancy headquarters built, working to pass restrictions on boat speeds to protect manatees and other wildlife, and opposing out-of-hand housing development. His 18-year-old son, Charles Campbell, sums it up: "He just cares so much about this area where we live."

Sea Cow Catcher

What started as an elementary school science fair project one day could make Morgan Finerty one of the most important allies the endangered West Indian manatee has ever had.

Two years ago, 13-year-old Finerty was watching a television news segment about boat-injured manatees. Upset by the images of the propeller-scarred animals, she started pondering the problem and came up with a device that would push manatees away from a propeller without greatly affecting the boat's handling.

Finerty entered her invention in the Seagate Elementary School science fair, where it caught the eye of a retired U.S. Patent Office examiner who walked her through the complicated process of applying for a patent, which she received last year. She's now looking for a buyer who can manufacture and market the device. In the meantime, she's turned her attention to singing (another of her talents) and hasn't worked on any new inventions. But who knows what the future holds?

"I'll always love nature and the environment," she says, "and I'll always want to help."

Lawn Gone Lover

A nurseryman who eschews lawns might seem a strange paradox, but John Sibley is quite comfortable as an anomaly.

A Connecticut Yankee transplanted to Southwest Florida in 1979, Sibley runs the All-Native Garden Center in Fort Myers and hosts the television show Florida Landscape, broadcast on WGCU-TV, the local PBS affiliate. With straight talk and wry humor, he uses his show and his business to introduce people to little-known native plants like possum haw, cinnecord and Hercules club. "They're just so much more interesting than grass," he says-much healthier for the region's natural systems because they require less water, fertilizer and pesticide, and much more hospitable for its creatures, like the ones that frequent his nursery. There's Screechy, the little screech owl, and Foxy, a pretty little gray fox. Both animals appear on Sibley's Web site, www.nolawn.com.

Since receiving the Conservancy award, he's been busier than ever. He took over the National Wildlife Federation's Backyard Wildlife Habitat Stewards program and served as president of the Coccoloba chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society.

Tortoise Talent

Collier County's gopher tortoises will never know just how much they owe to Barbara Burgeson, but that's just fine with her.

As far as Burgeson is concerned, her work is all about preserving the region's most valuable assets, which include protected species like the tortoises and the habitats that support them. And perhaps it's fitting that a stockbroker-turned-environmental specialist should recognize the environment's value and work to maximize it. After earning a degree in geology, Burgeson did a four-year stint at Dean Witter and Shearson-Lehman Brothers, and then signed on as an environmental scientist at the Fort Myers consulting firm Missimer and Associates in 1988. She's now principal environmental specialist with Collier County's environmental services department.

Burgeson supervises a staff of four that conducts environmental reviews of all new development. "We review for native preservation requirements and listed species protection," she says. Close as she is to the rules and regulations, she gets to see their weaknesses. When Burgeson realized that gopher tortoise protection was slipshod, she helped draft new measures to protect them. That meant plenty of meetings and interagency wrangling for the soft-spoken Burgeson. She would rather have been out in the field, she admits, but believes that the time she spends in her office will further protect the threatened tortoise.

The next set of winners of the Environmental Achievement Awards will be recognized by the Conservancy of Southwest Florida at a luncheon for family, friends and environmental community leaders on Thursday, April 22 (Earth Day), at the Hilton Naples & Towers.