Belville | The huge live oaks ringed the old house that sat on the bluff overlooking the Cape Fear River, the hulking cranes of the state port visible in the distance.

"This is a big enough tract that it features a mosaic of environmental opportunities," said Camilla Herlevich, executive director of the N.C. Coastal Land Trust, as she talked about the newest property along N.C. 133 in Brunswick County that her organization had been able to protect. "This land has it all."

Features of the 750-acre Clarendon Plantation tract include longleaf pine forests, old rice canals, lime-sink ponds, bountiful wildlife habitat and nearly two miles of creek and river frontage that could have offered a very enticing development opportunity.

"These are the types of places we need to protect," Herlevich said as she surveyed the expansive views of the river and adjoining wetlands.

But the economic slowdown has created a double-edged sword for conservation groups.

With the economy diving, land prices are well off the stratospheric levels they reached during the property boom.

That's creating great deals on environmentally important properties conservationists have been lusting after for years.

But the global financial meltdown is also sapping personal wealth, meaning fewer donations and less tax revenue for governments to help fund grant programs - the two primary sources the nonprofit groups rely on to fund acquisition efforts.

"We're getting hit from all sides," said Debbie Crane, spokeswoman for the N.C. chapter of The Nature Conservancy.

In a letter to Gov. Beverly Perdue this week, leading conservation groups pushed for full funding of North Carolina's trust funds to help maintain the state's quality of life and protect its two largest industries - tourism and agriculture.

"You're not going to attract people to your beautiful places if you don't protect your beautiful places," said Reid Wilson, head of the Conservation Trust for North Carolina.

Two of the state trust funds, the Clean Water and the Agricultural Development and Farmland Preservation, rely on direct appropriations from the General Assembly.

Two other trust funds, the Natural Heritage and Parks and Recreation, receive large chunks of their funding from real estate transactions.

Both of those funds, not surprisingly, have seen their revenues tank with the real estate market.

But it is the fate of Clean Water, by far the largest fund, that has conservation groups most concerned.

The fund is forecast to receive $100 million in the 2009-10 budget year, which starts July 1. But the last time the state needed to tighten its budget, in 2002, then-Gov. Mike Easley slashed Clean Water's funding by nearly 50 percent.

The threat of funding cutbacks comes as more and more groups and towns are looking to Clean Water for financial help because their other funding sources are drying up.

Fund spokeswoman Lisa Schell said that for this year's funding cycle, Clean Water received a record 248 applications seeking $262.3 million in grants. Nearly $130 million of that was for land acquisitions.

In Southeastern North Carolina, Clean Water has helped protect Airlie Gardens in New Hanover and large tracts of former International Paper lands in Brunswick and Pender counties.

Clean Water also has helped the Coastal Land Trust purchase conservation easements - which effectively strip development rights off the land while allowing it to remain in private hands - over several properties, including Clarendon Plantation.

Herlevich added that even as grant opportunities shrink, the conservation groups are struggling to pay their own bills.

And even if funds are available, she said, no group can move as quickly as some financially starved property owners might want - noting that talks over Clarendon started more than a decade ago and didn't wrap up until the end of last year.

"We need motivated landowners that are patient and conservation-minded," Herlevich said. "We need them to understand that we want to work with them, but that we're getting pinched by the same economic forces that they are."

Gareth McGrath: 343-2384

gareth.mcgrath@starnewsonline.com