AS the new executive director of the Bermuda National Trust, Steve Conway's great hope is to increase public appreciation of all that is unique to the island.

Once that has been achieved, he believes, other things on his wish list will fall into place.

"We just have to keep plugging away and hopefully, we'll eventually get through to the maximum number of people so that they appreciate where they live, so they realise it is a special place," he said.

"That's why the Trust exists. If you look at the big picture, the Trust has as its mission statement to preserve land, buildings and artefacts and to promote their appreciation. I think that is an area I would like to see some focus on."

Mr. Conway took over as executive director from Amanda Outerbridge earlier this month. A chartered surveryor, he worked for the Bermuda Housing Corporation until 1992 and with the firm Ted Gauntlett, Chartered Surveyor, until 1994 when he joined the Trust as its properties manager.

"In that position I was involved deeply with the daily property works - the leasing and the preservation of buildings, the open spaces, archaeology and some of the special events," he explained.

"I see this role more as the skipper of the ship; a sort of director and co-ordinator of everybody else. It's going to be impossible to get involved to the nitty-gritty stage where I've been involved previously."

Land preservation, necessary on an island only 21 square miles in size, had its challenges, the executive director said - one of the great ones being that the desire to develop could sway as properties changed hands, and development approval fell to the discretion of the Minister of the day.

"We're here to preserve Bermuda because it is a unique place and whatever we do here, every bit of building means a piece of land gets smaller. If your backyard is smaller, you go to the beach, you go somewhere you can take a walk.

"They're not always National Trust properties, but it does mean that Trust preserves become more and more important as development crouches in around them.

"Recent actions by court decisions have questioned the validity of Section 34 as a permanent protection for preserving open space. At the moment, it's not what it was once understood to be. Many people are of the opinion that (land) is not truly safe unless it's in the hands of the National Trust.

"We've got a secret top ten list of the lands we'd like to buy. Most of them aren't for sale and the others probably don't know we might be interested. One or two property owners have approached us. We can't afford them. This is where we need an Open Space Fund. So we can go in with the ammunition and say, 'Yes. We can talk to you about it'."

Education programmes had long been in place as a means of instilling an appreciation of preservation in younger members of the community, he added.

"The role of the Trust is incredibly diverse - essentially we are charged with preserving our natural and built heritage. To this end, it is essential that we continue to raise awareness in the community about what we do here.

"How do we do this? Primarily through education. I would like to build on the success of our education programmes by developing resources for teachers to teach our young people about Bermuda's rich history and unique environment; and continue to work with other organisations and Government to address and inform the public about environment issues.

"We have two programmes coming up. One is at Warwick Pond where, as part of our aim to promote appreciation, we'll be putting up interpretive signs through the woodland around the pond edge to explain why it's a pond.

"As a nature reserve, as a bird sanctuary it's part of the remaining wetland that once went through Warwick Valley. Just past the Warwick Bowl, there's another piece of land next to PHC where we plan to dig a pond out. Both of these are preserving two chunks of the old Warwick Valley which was a sort of marshland which has since been filled in with a school, a post office and PHC."

At present, the Trust cares for some 250 acres of land and 76 sites, on which there are 55 buildings, of which 47 are historic.

"The properties fared pretty badly during (Hurricane) Fabian. We're in the middle of the recovery. We had 15 buildings damaged in some form or another - some worse than others - and we still have three roofs to do.

"(However) we've done the crisis work needed to get people into the buildings and we've just started the second stage of tidying up and taking trees out. We were hit particularly badly at places like Tivoli and Spittal Pond - any place where there were casuarinas, non-native, endemic trees.

"We're hoping to do something in conjunction with the Parks Department at Spittal Pond and other places. We're about to set up a programme to encourage not just our crew, but other contractors to help cut and clean the spaces we need (in order to replant).

"Working with other organisations definitely eases the load," he said. "We've recently done things in partnership with the Government and other similar organisations. It's something I'd like to see developed further.

"We seem to be working more in sync than being the lone voice of 'We are the preservationists. We've got to lie in front of the bulldozers.' However, I'm conscious that we can't survive without funds coming in as a non-profit organisation, and we can't survive without volunteers driving 50 to 80 per cent of the work we do.

"I have a staff here of 22 that deal with a lot of the work but volunteers are essential and we're always looking for them."