She's also pretty funny.

     "We bill our exotic removal program as a stress-buster and
weight loss program," Kellie says about the volunteer-dependent
Cape Florida restoration program she oversees. "We get them out
there pulling and tugging exotics..." Her eyes grow wide in mock
frenzy of an environmental zealot. "If it's from Madagascar, kill
it!"

     She laughs and settles down.

     "If you don't laugh out loud at least once a day, you're
doing something wrong," she says. "And you need humor on this job
because there are so many setbacks."

     Kellie's job is as the American Littoral Society project
manager and ecologist for the Cape Florida restoration, one of
the most complicated and expansive programs of its kind in state
park history. She works out of a temporary trailer in the park
with a staff of one, Peter Brisbane.

     "After Hurricane Andrew, the park contracted the American
Littoral Society to help rebuild it," Kellie says. "It was a
great opportunity to do a coastal habitat restoration because
this was ground zero. I came here and said 'Yahoo!' because all
of the Australian pines were gone. Before the summer ended, we
were out here doing exotic control. Six years later, I finally
got a chance to hire a staff person."

     She chuckles again, as though the daunting task of
replanting hundreds of acres of wilderness has either given her
the ability to laugh in the face of adversity or has made her a
bit punch drunk. The project was like starting from scratch with
the goal being to reforest the park with native species.

     "We want to mimic what nature did and we're successful if
the restorations perform their ecological function," she
explains. "If they don't, then it's just landscaping."

     Kellie takes time to explain what that means. Each
ecological coastal community has a job to do. The dunes protect
the beach from erosion. Coastal strand is an aquifer and habitat
for small animals. Mangroves are fish nurseries. Hardwood
hammocks attract migrating birds. All of these communities
interact together and are dependent on one another, a world in
perpetual balance until humans come along to build roads, condos
shopping centers, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

     "The coastal strand community used to stretch from Cape
Florida to Georgia, but now it's rare," she explains. "We need to
preserve the little that's left by doing an accurate restoration.
One of my goals is to raise the standards of restoration, which
you do by paying attention to baseline data, methodology and
historical accuracy of what existed here before."

     Kellie pulls out a study cataloguing the multitude of plant
species indigenous to Cape Florida. It not only lists the types
of plants, but also their incidence in the various coastal
communities and instructions on how to plant them. Mimicking
Mother Nature appears to be an overwhelming task, and typically
funding is limited.

     "A project of this magnitude can't rest on one person,"
Kellie says. "That's why we spend so much time recruiting and
training volunteers."

     Apparently, Cape Florida is in a great area to find mass
"We had woods to play in where there were tadpoles, frogs
and other critters and trees and we always imagined buried
treasure being there," she reminisces. "There was a swimming hole
and these beautiful cranberry bogs."

     When asked if she ate the cranberries like a good little
future naturalist, she shakes her head and says: "No, because I
had a near©death experience eating berries when I was younger. My
friend and I ate some inkberries one day because we thought they
were blueberries. We ended up in the hospital where she had to
have her stomach pumped. I never ate anything off the vine after
that."

     The youngest of four kids, Kellie says that she is the only
nature child in the family .

     "No one else is so inclined," she explains. "My mother came
to the park one day and when I showed her what we were doing, she
said, 'That's great. Where are we going to eat lunch?"
She admits to collecting ants when she was young, but it's hard
to tell whether or not she's joking.

     "I went to a Catholic school, so I wasn't exposed to
environmental issues there," she adds. "The thing that
radicalized me about the environment was the TV ad with the
Indian©©I think his name was Cloudy©Eyed Cody©©who you see
canoeing by factories with smoking smokestacks and walking along
a trashy highway and in the end you see a lone tear run down his
cheek. That worked for me."

     As a high school student, she wound up on the Hamilton
township historical commission, which was an arm of the local
planning board.

     "They were trying to create an artificial growth corridor (a
development) using a lot of criteria that didn't consider the
environment," she says. "I tried to convince them to consider
environmental, cultural and historical factors as well as their
lone criteria of expanding the tax base. I remember we'd run down
to a parcel of land they wanted to develop to look for some
endangered species, saying 'C'mon tree frog, be there.'"

     She wound up at Stockton State College in Pomono, New
Jersey, where she studied liberal arts.

     "They had a good environmental science program," she says.
"For field work all you had to do was step outside."

     She graduated in 1989 and headed down to Florida to visit
friends.

park manager in Key Largo and I drove this old, beat©up Datsun
pick©up from Pensacola to the Keys, interviewed and amazingly got
the job. So I ditched the Alaska idea and moved to Key Largo."

     Her job was as a grant writer for the parks program, a skill
she still utilizes these days, holed up in front of the computer
in her Fort Lauderdale abode.

     "Actually, I like grant writing because it helps me to get
my thoughts together," she says. "I enjoy sitting around coming
up with ideas for programs and then making them happen."
Her involvement and capabilities have earned her recent honors as
the Environmental Fund of Florida Federation volunteer of the
year.

     "They gave me the award and then said, 'You're it, our new
president,'" she relates with a laugh. "Next time I'll know
better. I'm not going to accept any more awards."
Perhaps her best reward is watching Cape Florida grow back the
way nature intended. It seems to overwhelm most of her other
interests, which include kayaking, sailing, SCUBA diving and
listening to blues music.

     "I like my work, so it's a hobby to me," she says.
"Restoration is my mantra."