North Shore Land Alliance, Henry L. Ferguson Museum using state funds for conservation projects

Two Long Island organizations were awarded state grants designed to support conservation efforts, including a nonprofit that plans to restore a glass greenhouse in Cold Spring Harbor’s Wawapek Preserve.

North Shore Land Alliance is restoring the structure built in the early 1900s as a hub for growing native wildflowers and grasses using part of a $93,380 state grant.

A hundred miles east, on Fishers Island, The Henry L. Ferguson Museum, received $45,000, which the group will use to protect the remote island’s unique biodiversity. These are two of 64 projects statewide that Gov. Kathy Hochul on May 7 said will receive $3 million to “improve public health, increase tourism, foster sustainable economic development, and empower communities.”

Lisa Ott, president of North Shore Land Alliance, said $73,680 will be used to restore the greenhouse, garden and a caretaker’s cottage once part of the de Forest family’s sprawling estate.

It will build on ongoing efforts by volunteers to restore native plants at the 32-acre preserve.

Ott said the plants grown in the greenhouse will be used throughout the organization’s 16 preserves and could one day be sold to encourage others to plant native species, which can help pollinators and the ecosystem.

The remaining $19,700 will be used to build a composting center and demonstration gardens at the MacDonald Preserve in Matinecock. Garden debris will be turned into compost for the alliance, but the facility also will host public programs and classes.

“Education is key,” Ott said. “If you can connect with people through plants or help keep carbon in the ground by recycling leaf matter, it all relates to saving land, saving water and creating a better, healthier future.”

On Fishers Island, the Henry L. Ferguson Museum will use the grant to develop strategic and conservation plans key to achieving accreditation through the national Land Trust Alliance, said president Elizabeth McCance.

The museum’s land trust has preserved about 375 acres, or 14% of the island which is part of Southold Town, McCance said. Accreditation shows the land trust meets national standards for conservation.

A fifth-generation summer resident, McCance said the island’s natural beauty is varied.

There are flat grasslands with birds swooping over; marshy areas home to turtles and rare dragon and damselflies; coyote and river otter sightings in recent years.

“I’ve been walking along and a mink will just dart across a trail,” McCance said.

The island’s biodiversity was studied in a 2023 report by the New York Natural Heritage Program, which found Fishers Island has the greatest concentration of rare plants of any single site in New York State.

That report will be used as a basis for land trust management plans.

“You might manage specifically for ground nesting birds or some of the rare plants that we now know we have,” McCance said.

Officials at both organizations said the grants are leveraged by private matching funds. Both North Shore Land Alliance projects are expected to be completed this year, while strategic planning for the Fishers Island museum could stretch into summer 2025.