Founded in 2003, North Shore Land Alliance is an accredited Land Trust that has been instrumental in working together with land owners, municipalities and government agencies to protect over 1,500 acres of conservation-worthy lands in our community.
Through education, outreach and volunteerism, we connect people to nature and inspire a community conservation ethic.
In this issue you will learn more about the Youngs Farm Family, recipients of the 2024 Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Award. We will highlight several grassroots efforts to protect local communities and the recently documented threat to our drinking water. Protecting land is critical to protecting water on Long Island. We also will reveal our 2025 Walks in the Woods calendar, feature recent projects, celebrate the changing of the seasons and highlight the wonderful people who help us achieve our land conservation mission every day.
Land conservation can take several forms. They range from an outright gift of land to the purchase of land to the donation of a permanent, voluntary deed restriction on land called a conservation easement. The parties can include individual landowners, estates (in the case of a post-mortem conservation easement), corporations and partnerships.
Earlier this year, the Land Alliance was given the opportunity to acquire an additional 4.52 acres of land from the Pulling family to increase the size of the Nassau County-owned Red Cote Preserve located on Yellow Cote Road in Oyster Bay Cove. We are pleased to announce that the Land Alliance has now successfully signed a one-year option agreement to purchase this land for approximately $1.5 million.
The U.S. is facing a groundwater crisis and Long Island, where our sole source aquifer stores all our water needs in underground reserves, is no exception. In an investigation last year, The New York Times examined data for tens of thousands of wells around the country. In almost half those sites, the amount of groundwater had declined significantly over the past 40 years.
The Land Alliance and its community partners have protected over 1,400 acres of land since 2003. But the noble act of conserving and stewarding land for future generations began long before us. Our community is the beautiful place it is today because of the vision of forward-thinking people who both valued land and understood its important role in a healthy future for us all.
There are so many ways you can get involved to protect the environment for today and generations to come.