Helping out (Excerpt)

...William Conway learned to love wild places and birds while growing up near Jamaica Pond in Boston.

Moving to Fort Lauderdale to practice law in the 1960s, he helped start the Audubon Society's Broward chapter. After years of watching Broward's wilderness disappear, Conway decided to do something about it.

In 1986, he donated 1.67 acres in Coconut Creek to the Audubon Society. The society turned the land over to the City of Coconut Creek, which will make it part of a conservation area in the Winston Park Preserve. The society received $80,000 in county park bond money for the land, says Lisa Baumbach-Reardon, the Broward Audubon president.

The organization honored Conway, 79, last month.

He is ecstatic. Not only will the land he treasures be preserved, the organization he helped form will get money.

"That land has a stream running through it and wonderful cypress trees," Conway says. "The last time I was there I saw nesting woodpeckers. Now it will be saved for all time."