By GREGORY ZELLER //
The preservationist armada blockading Plum Island is enlisting some big guns.
Just two months after the Long Island Regional Planning Council announced its support of public and private efforts to permanently preserve the mixed-legacy islet – and supporters directly requested Gov. Kathy Hochul’s help in efforts to have it named a national monument – New York State’s U.S. Senate delegation has dispatched a letter to the U.S. Department of the Interior, seeking the “permanent protection” of Plum Island.
The island has already been spared the rod of commercial development, at least temporarily: In 2020, relentless pressure applied by New York- and Connecticut-based environmentalists forced the U.S. Congress to cancel a planned auction of Plum Island properties.
Conservationists applauded that victory and immediately set to having the 822-acre island – home to long-ago army barracks and historic lighthouses and, since 1954, the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, founded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and now a U.S. Department of Homeland Security agency – declared a national monument.
Deb Halaand: Recruiting process.
With the Animal Disease Center in the midst of a long-planned, carefully executed relocation to Kansas, regional conservationists want to ensure largely undeveloped Plum Island – where recorded history dates back to 1659, replete with the adventures of European settlers and native Indian tribes – remains pristine.
And so do U.S. Sens. Charles Schumer (D-New York) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York), who joined Connecticut’s U.S. Senate delegation – Democrats Richard Blumenthal and Christopher Murphy – in an April 25 letter to U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Halaand, requesting the department’s assistance “in securing the preservation of the federally owned land off the eastern tip of Long Island’s North Fork.”
Specifically, the senators urged the secretary to “utilize all available executive and administrative tools at your disposal to ensure the permanent protection of Plum Island and its management for conservation by the Department of the Interior.”
The full-page letter goes on to list the island’s “remarkable natural, cultural and historic resources,” including two sites already on the National Register of Historic Places and nesting grounds for 111 “species of conservation concern.”
Connecticut-based Save the Sound, which coordinates the flag-bearing Preserve Plum Island Coalition, was “thrilled to learn that Senators Schumer, Gillibrand, Blumenthal and Murphy have reached out to Secretary Haaland,” noted Save the Sound Land Campaigns Manager David Anderson.
“The Preserve Plum Island Coalition has been working hard to generate support at the federal level,” Anderson told Innovate Long Island. “[The senators’] push for permanent protection of Plum Island is great news.”
But even with the heavy hitters on board, the PPIC’s work is just getting started, according to the land campaigns manager.
“The Preserve Plum Island Coalition looks forward to working with the senators and the Department of Interior to implement a solution that would protect Plum Island as an ecological and cultural resource,” Anderson added.
