Michele Lenhard settles onto a barstool in the sunny kitchen of her home, one of the few 1950s residences remaining in her waterfront Naples enclave. She’s in her Audubon Western Everglades “Owl Watch” volunteer shirt, laptop open, her papillon, Rudy, curled on her lap. Michele pulls up a map and gestures to Wilson Boulevard in rural Golden Gate Estates. The road is slated for expansion, paving the way for development to push east, deeper into Collier County’s interior.
Michele is not anti-growth—a transplant from New Jersey, she understands The Sunshine State’s appeal. Her focus is on ensuring that growth does not erase the natural systems the community depends on. Preserved land stores stormwater and reduces flooding risk, creates habitat corridors for wildlife, and offers the open space and recreation access that make density tolerable. Nature, she adds, defines Southwest Florida’s way of life.
Her tool of choice for protecting it? The methodical bureaucracy of government boardrooms. “You have to know how to use the process to affect change,” she says, then grins. “I’m a process person.” For the past six years, Michele has chaired the Conservation Collier Land Acquisition Advisory Committee, a voter-approved, independently operated program that has preserved roughly 5,000 acres since 2003. The volunteer board stewards the program’s multimillion-dollar land purchases and management plans, reviewing proposed acquisitions and recommending which parcels move forward to the County Commission.
More recently, she was appointed by the governor to the South Florida Water Management District’s Big Cypress Basin Board. The group oversees water infrastructure spanning Collier and Monroe counties, from setting budgets to directing canal and pump operations to making policies for stormwater treatment and Everglades restoration. The role expands her focus from the purchase of individual land parcels to managing how water flows, cohesively, throughout the region.
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Photography by Christina Bankson
michele lenhard naples protecting the land holding sea shells
Michele works with local and state government committees to guide responsible land usage. As a certified Florida Master Naturalist, she’s also led ecological walks at Barefoot Beach Preserve, educating visitors on coastal ecosystems.
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Photography by Christina Bankson
michele lenhard naples protecting the land seashell display
Michele initially set out to become an environmental scientist, drawn to the newer field that blended biology, geology and social sciences to solve real-world problems. “I was fascinated with how our world works—and why it is the way it is,” she says. “When you drive by mountains, you don’t realize they’re the terminal moraine of a glacier. That just intrigued me.” A class on algae taught her to pay attention to the smallest systems—lessons she carries into boardrooms where the subject is thousands of acres.
But career paths in the 1980s were limited for graduates of the fledgling discipline. After an internship with the National Parks Conservation Association in Washington, D.C., and a stint in laboratory equipment sales, Michele and her husband, Michael, moved to New Jersey, raised two children, and built a data and document management firm.
While Michael oversaw daily operations, she focused on their family. Eventually, she entered public service, serving for eight years on the Ridgewood Public Schools Board of Education, where she felt the schools were top-notch thanks to well-crafted policies and community input. Codes, ordinances, management plans and zoning rules, she learned, are what ultimately shape a community.
When the Lenhards moved full-time to Florida in 2015, Michele sought a deeper connection to place. She found it outdoors, returning to her environmental roots, now armed with institutional savvy from years of governance experience. After completing the Florida Master Naturalist certification, she began leading ecological walks at Barefoot Beach Preserve in Bonita Springs, guiding visitors through coastal habitats and explaining how dunes blunt storm surge and native plants anchor shifting sand. “People came for a nice walk on the beach, but they usually went away with some connection to the environment that they didn’t have,” she says. “That was my goal.”
Photography by Christina Bankson
michele lenhard naples protecting the land michele backyard
The New Jersey transplant is less interested in visibility than in the prosaic work of policymaking. She uses social media as a listening tool, gauging concerns that might influence a vote or prompt her to seek more information.
By her own account, Michele, who grew up in a Manhattan suburb and spent summers outdoors on New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee, has two personas. “There’s the girl that you’re going to see at some fundraiser, and then there’s the girl who loves trekking in the muck,” she says. In practice, the two inform each other. Time in the field sharpens what she advocates for in the boardroom.
Back in her kitchen, we return to the map of eastern Collier County. Michele points to a 900-acre property that the county had purchased east of Collier Boulevard, adjacent to land Conservation Collier already owns. Commissioners offered the group a 300-acre parcel; Michele and the board would like to see the entire tract preserved.
At the time of our conversation, no formal request had been submitted, and Michele won’t speculate on how commissioners might respond. The County Commission’s record on conservation funding has been mixed. In recent years, commissioners have set the conservation tax rate below the voter-approved maximum and, in 2023, redirected approximately $61 million from Conservation Collier’s reserves to other county needs, a move that sparked debate.
Michele advocates for the program during budget hearings but avoids grandstanding. “We have to respect our public officials,” she says. “They have other pressures on them as they make those decisions.” A measured tone, she believes, keeps doors open.
Photography by Christina Bankson
michele lenhard naples protecting the land conch shell
Photography by Christina Bankson
michele lenhard naples protecting the land pool view
Photography by Christina Bankson
michele lenhard naples protecting the land starfish mirror
Photography by Christina Bankson
michele lenhard naples protecting the land turtle figurine
The biggest challenge, she says, is persuading landowners to sell to Conservation Collier instead of developers. When property owners choose to preserve land, often sacrificing profit, she considers it a long-term investment in the region. “Even small parcels, purchased along the way, help with all these goals,” she says.
For all the time Michele spends navigating large systems, she also believes in individual action. The Lenhards could have torn down their 1957 home and rebuilt to meet modern hurricane codes and the square footage of the large estates surrounding them. But Michele loved the home’s Old Florida charm and its big backyard. The couple chose to work within its existing footprint, raising the backyard’s grade to deter flooding, strengthening the landscape and accepting a measure of risk.
They engaged Naples landscape architect Ellin Goetz, a fellow environmental advocate and former chair of the initial Conservation Collier voter campaign, to reimagine the property as a showcase for regional species, with muhly grass, beach creeper and sabal palms—a favorite of Michele’s for their lattice-like trunks. The Lenhards’ home flooded during Hurricane Ian, but the native plants rebounded quickly, and Michele suspects the damage would have been worse without the changes. Lessons like that stay with her.
“It’s about the owls,” she says, her voice growing wistful when I ask about the many unpaid hours spent in boardrooms or poring over paperwork. Earlier that morning, she’d checked on a pair of burrowing owls nesting in an open-air garage along Gulf Shore Boulevard with fellow Owl Watch volunteers. She worries they might choose the easy-to-dig sand of a nearby construction lot over the burrow an Audubon specialist prepared for them. Time in the field reminds her what’s at stake. “You can’t forget how important all these little pieces are to the puzzle.”
Photography by Christina Bankson
michele lenhard naples protecting the land dining room
She believes in the power of individual action. At home, the Lenhards reuse glass jars and save plastic packaging for dog-waste bags. “I live like the rest of us, but I try to reduce my impact,” Michele says.