East Meadow preserves its Bird Sanctuary on Earth Day

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East Meadow residents representing a wide array of community organizations united under one common goal on Earth Day: cleaning and preserving the East Meadow Bird Sanctuary.

On April 22, members of the Kiwanis, Council of East Meadow Community Organizations and Boy Scout troops 469 and 362 expunged waste and removed bags of foreign objects from the sanctuary behind Speno Park.

“It’s our very own Walden Pond,” said Kevin Kamper of the 20-acre pond.

The boy scouts of Troop 469 have dedicated their time to documenting the history and activity of the bird sanctuary and, on April 17, shared their findings. The sanctuary, which is not open to the public, began as a sand mine in 1927 before miners struck the water table below, filling it with water.

As East Meadow grew into a suburb after World War II, the operations at the sand mine declined until the Town of Hempstead purchased it in 1967. It was soon made into a storm water discharge basin and, in 1999, it was designated a bird sanctuary.

The sanctuary is home to a variety of species of bird, turtles, frogs and snakes, many of whom rely on it as a home because it is isolated from any other body of water.