In 1540, Spanish explorers became the first Europeans to discover a great natural vista called the Grand Canyon. On a more modest scale, I made a discovery of my own in 2005, when I walked into a downtown hotel room and beheld one of the most influential groups in our region, the Cascade Land Conservancy (CLC).

I've seen the Grand Canyon, and it's good. But this sight was also breathtaking: more than 1,000 people in a room festooned with the banners of banks, law firms and developers, and peopled with the likes of Dan Evans, Mike Lowry, Greg Nickels and Ron Sims. It wasn't just the size and the prominence of the crowd celebrating CLC, but also the double-take tableau of tree huggers and tree cutters applauding the same speeches.

After a video on our region's natural beauty and the need to protect it, a thin man with a mustache that looked stolen from Groucho Marx walked briskly to the stage: Gene Duvernoy, president of CLC and the chief impresario of this love-in.

A cynic might have doubted at least some of this display, but it was hard to argue with what Duvernoy had achieved.

Since taking over the organization in 1991, Duvernoy has transformed CLC into Washington's largest independent conservation and stewardship organization with allies in Seattle City Hall, the Washington Legislature and Congress. Working in King, Kittitas, Pierce, Mason and Snohomish counties, CLC has participated in transactions protecting more than 130,000 acres. CLC helped lead the effort to convert a rail corridor to a recreation trail on the east shore of Lake Sammamish. It quietly launched the discussions, now public, for King County to buy a 47-mile Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail line, a proposal that's since morphed into a complex plan involving the sale of Boeing Field to the Port of Seattle. Duvernoy is "very creative at finding solutions," says Rod Brandon, King County's director of environmental sustainability. CLC is also building support for its Cascade Agenda, a $7 billion, 100-year plan to protect 1.3 million acres of forest, streams and farms.

CLC's future is not burdened by modesty. "We will lead a movement to connect conservation to the fabric of our community and thereby change conservation as we know it," says the group's mission statement.

The man at the center of this work was not born to be an environmental leader. He was born to bake bread, or at least that was a job for those born into Duvernoy & Sons, the New York bakery started by his grandfather and run by his father and uncle. Gene Duvernoy worked there as a helper and delivery driver, but eventually studied engineering at Carnegie-Mellon University and law and business at Cornell. Quitting a lawyer job, he moved to Seattle in 1980 to help his brother finish building a sailboat. He would join CLC after working with a farmlands-preservation group and for King County.

As one would expect, Duvernoy, 54, brings a passion for the environment to his job, but he also brings a business mindset learned in part from the old bakery. Duvernoy insists that CLC, with 35 employees and an annual budget of $5.7 million, should operate like a business. "We are a nonprofit, but people shouldn't treat us as a charity case - if they did, why would landowners treat us seriously?" he asked during a recent interview.

Credibility and trust are critical to what he wants in every negotiation. And by all accounts, Duvernoy is a master at understanding the needs of environmentalists, businesses and politicians and relentlessly pushing his ideas. If you can forgive the pun, he is a force of nature. "His inspiration is my perspiration," jokes Bob Drewel, executive director of the Puget Sound Regional Council and former Snohomish County Executive. When focused on a goal, Duvernoy skips the chitchat. Former Seattle Mayor Charles Royer says friends have tried unsuccessfully to teach Duvernoy the phrase "How about them Mariners?"