MOUNTAINS GROUP TO DISBAND; CONSERVANCY FOUNDATION STRUGGLED TO GET REGULAR FUNDS.

Byline: Sonia Giordani Daily News Staff Writer

The Mountains Conservancy Foundation - a nonprofit group that put millions of dollars in grants and donations, and thousands of volunteer hours into preserving the Santa Monica Mountains - will dissolve next week.

Based in Malibu, the group has created parks, renovated buildings for recreational uses and stewarded more than 3,500 acres in the local mountains. In its 15 years, it also has sponsored educational tours, and programs to bring at-risk youth and urban dwellers back to nature.

Officials said Thursday that the group could not find a permanent source of funding. But the Backbone Trail - one of the foundation's top fund-raising priorities - is moving closer to completion with more than $6 million in federal money committed to the project.

``With a great deal of pride and a sense of loss, we will dissolve the foundation,'' said Ernest Messner, chair of the Mountains Conservancy Foundation, said in a letter mailed to members.

The organization is trying to transfer its programs to other agencies by the time it dissolves Tuesday.

The group was founded in 1983, the brainchild of Malibu resident Ruth Taylor Kilday. The Peter Strauss Ranch had just been sold to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy but the agency did not have the money to keep the ranch going.

``They would have had to let the site sit idle. A group of local residents, including Ruth Kilday, had the concept of keeping it open,'' said Glen Peterson, the first president of the Friends of Peter Strauss Ranch which helped keep the ranch open for five years until the National Park Service took it over.

But by 1984, the group's experience with the ranch had given birth to a mission: to preserve and protect land, and promote the uses of open space and parks in the Los Angeles region. With that, the group changed its name to the Mountains Conservancy Foundation, and Kilday became its executive director.

``We had a very talented staff and I think in the end, Ms. Kilday has done more for the mountains than nearly anyone I know,'' said Peterson, who has sat on the foundation's board of directors.

Kilday did not return phone calls, but residents throughout the region credited her for a vision that will last beyond the foundation.

``All of the park facilities - at Temescal Gateway Park, Peter Strauss Ranch, Solstice Canyon Park - they all have that foundation look to them. The foundation was instrumental in designing them and helping to maintain them, and those facilities will be there forever,'' said Belinda Faustinos, deputy director for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

For years, the conservancy and foundation worked together to build and maintain trails. But for the past several years, the conservancy cut its contributions to the foundation as it increasingly relied on the ranger services of the Mountains Recreation Conservation Authority, another agency serving the Santa Monicas.

The foundation also began a wildlife-observation program for at-risk youth, helped organize garden tours at the Streisand Center for Conservancy Studies to promote conservation and education of the local ecosystems, and raised millions of dollars for the Santa Monicas.

The foundation also helped give birth to the Allied Artists, a unique and important art community with a Malibu gallery committed to artworks depicting the area mountains and coastlines that has sponsored regular ``paint-outs'' and exhibits.

``The foundation has done so much. It has given us such a wonderful start and we intend to continue,'' said Russell, vice president of the 8-year-old group, who helps run the Mountains to the Sea Gallery.

``There were still other programs and campaigns (the foundation) could have continued to work on but at this point it just wasn't financially feasible for them,'' she said.