PROVIDENCE — For years, groups buying and saving Rhode Island’s forests and pastures have shared a nagging concern: where would they get the money to manage all that property? Yesterday, the Sharpe family stepped forward with a donation that could generate millions of dollars and support an historic collaboration to manage the state’s open lands.

Henry D. and Peggy Sharpe and their daughter-in-law, Julie Sharpe, announced a family donation of $1 million to create an endowment at The Rhode Island Foundation to pay for land stewardship work around the state. Henry Sharpe, the former chairman of the Brown & Sharpe company, and his wife are donors to several causes, including many that benefit the environment.

Rhode Island Foundation officials announced that another anonymous donor has offered to contribute up to an additional $1 million to the same fund. The anonymous donation will be made as one-for-one matches to each donation of $1,000 or more for land stewardship work at any environmental organization in Rhode Island.

So $3 million could soon be set aside as an endowment or for direct payments to help manage the 100,000 or so acres in Rhode Island that have been protected from development.

Also, a new partnership of the seven top land conservation groups in Rhode Island was announced yesterday. Named the Conservation Stewardship Collaborative, the group will work together to solve problems such as littering, vandalism, invasive species and lack of monitoring data on preserved lands. The collaborative’s Web site is www.ricsc.org.

The collaborative will serve as an adviser to the foundation on spending the stewardship endowment funds.

The foundation generally disperses 4 to 5 percent of each endowment it manages, so if the fund reaches $2 million, the foundation could be spending $80,000 to $100,000 annually within a few years, and the amount would grow as the endowment grows.

The land stewardship initiative was announced at a joyful news conference yesterday at the foundation in Providence. Some noted it stood in stark contrast to all the bad news about the state budget and the national economy.

Peter August, a professor and director of the University of Rhode Island’s Coastal Institute, pointed out that Rhode Islanders obviously care about land conservation. They have supported every state bond issue for open space lands, often giving those bond issues the highest vote count in each election.

Rhode Islanders have created 49 land trusts, August said. And they make great use of the preserved lands for hiking, camping, birding and protection of water resources.

While more land needs to be purchased and preserved, August said, more also needs to be done to protect and manage land already set aside.

The new collaborative provides the expertise and manpower that will do a better job if its people coordinate their efforts, August said.

Joining August on the collaborative were Larry Taft, executive director of the Audubon Society of Rhode Island; Janet Coit, state director of the Rhode Island Chapter of The Nature Conservancy; Rupert Friday, executive director of the Rhode Island Land Trust Council; David Gregg, executive director of the Rhode Island Natural History Survey; Cathy Sparks, chief of the forest environmental division at the Department of Environmental Management; and Charles Vandemoer, refuge manager of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“Collectively, we have a lot of horsepower,” said August. But he said, looking around the country, they couldn’t find any models for such groups working together. “So hopefully, this will be the good idea.”

Julie Sharpe, who has worked with several land trusts in South County, said the seven groups began meeting and discussing how they could do better stewardship and “how to create funding in a world of shrinking budgets.”

She said the Sharpe family has had a long tradition of land conservation. She still recalls Henry Sharpe writing a poem for his grandson about trimming a trail on an island in Maine where the family vacationed.

Peggy Sharpe credited Julie with providing the vision for the stewardship effort.

Henry Sharpe offered this observation: “We’re trying to provide a pair of ice tongs to pick up the jelly fish of how land is protected in Rhode Island.”

The collaborative was welcomed and applauded by representatives of other conservation groups who attended the meeting.

Clarkson A. Collins, land management director for the South Kingstown Land Trust, said his group has 2,500 acres in 122 properties and one of its biggest problems is taking care of all that land.

One example of how the groups should work together was offered by Taft of the Audubon Society, which he said has long operated a nature preserve in Charlestown. The preserve is abutted by Burlingame State Park and by federal wildlife refuge land.

“It doesn’t make sense to manage all these separately,” Taft said. “They are all assets that need care and nurturing.”

Gregg, of the natural history survey, thanked August and the Coastal Institute “for working so hard and skillfully to make this collaborative come together, as well as Julie Sharpe, who has been a close adviser of the natural history survey for a number of years and has lent us the wisdom of her experience in land conservation and her vision of how statewide stewardship could be done.”

Coit, of The Nature Conservancy, said the Sharpes have shown through their efforts in a variety of environmental campaigns over the years that individuals really can make a difference.

plord@projo.com