By Scott Brinton
Nassau County Legislator Norma Gonsalves treaded lightly last Saturday as she made her way down a path behind the tennis courts at the county's Cow Meadow Park in Freeport. North Bellmore environmental activists Richard and Lisa Schary and a group of high school Key Clubbers accompanied her.
The midafternoon sun shone brightly on this 85-degree day. The group passed a patch of fallen trees and emerged by a murky green pond. There they discovered more than a dozen great egrets perched like giant white candles high up in the trees. It was a serendipitous find and, Lisa Schary said, a "fantastic" sight.
"The students were excited when they saw the birds," she said. "They couldn't believe it."
Immediately, the young people logged the number of egrets on a data sheet. They were taking part in Nassau County's first-ever BioBlitz, a 24-hour treasure hunt to catalog the flora and fauna along the Meadowbrook Parkway corridor, the swath of woodlands and fields that surrounds the highway from Nassau Community College to the north to Reynolds Channel to the south.
For decades, vandals have wreaked havoc in the woodlands, racing ATVs through the forests, tearing up vegetation, uprooting trees, and frightening and even killing wildlife. Teenagers partying in the woods have set fire to the forests when they have left their campfires unattended. And contractors, seeking to avoid fees at town dumps, often deposit their waste in the woods, leaving the forests a trash-strewn mess.
Since 2002, Merrick-Bellmore environmentalists and elected officials like Gonsalves, a Republican from East Meadow, and Legislator David Denenberg, a Democrat from Merrick, have fought to permanently preserve the woodlands as a passive recreation area. Currently, no one is allowed in the forests without special permission. Because they are unprotected and unattended, though, vandals get in all the time.
Gonsalves and Denenberg want the public to be given access to the woodlands to hike and bike so average citizens can help keep an eye on them. The only trouble is, the county owns only bits and pieces of them. The New York State Department of Parks owns most of the forests. Since 2004, the department has balked at signing an agreement with the county and the Town of Hempstead to manage the woodlands, which developer Robert Moses originally saw as a "linear park" leading to his masterpiece, Jones Beach, when he laid out the Meadowbrook Parkway in 1932.
The BioBlitz, which Gonsalves and Denenberg organized with help from scientists and environmentalists, was intended to show the state parks department that the woodlands have significant ecological value. The event took place at four sites: the Hempstead Plains at Nassau Community College, the county's Rev. Arthur Mackey Park in Roosevelt, the county's Roosevelt Preserve and Cow Meadow Park in Freeport.
The BioBlitz began at 6:30 p.m. on Friday with an orientation at Hofstra University, the event's academic sponsor. More than 250 BioBlitzers, many of them college students, attended the meeting. From there, a number of participants headed with flashlights to the Hempstead Plains, a 19-acre nature preserve. There they worked through the night, cataloging nocturnal creatures. Work began at the other three sites at 7 a.m. on Saturday.
At 7:30, Merrick environmentalist Robert Young and Brian Schneider, a county hydrogeologist from Merrick, stood under a canopy at the entrance to the Roosevelt Preserve, organizing a group of BioBlitzers from Merrick and North Merrick. They were eager to get started. "It's great," Schneider said of the BioBlitz. "People are showing up. They're excited ... and they're exploring."
Dr. Ray Ann Havasy, a biologist from the Center for Science Teaching and Learning in Rockville Centre, who served as chairwoman of the county's BioBlitz Committee, was unloading binoculars and cases of water from her SUV. "We have an ideal collection of experts and enthusiastic amateurs" doing the data collection, she said. "I couldn't ask for anything more. We're going to get some interesting stuff."
Young said that 600 people had signed up for the BioBlitz. More were expected that day.
Schneider drove to Mackey Park to check on things there. He pointed out the turtle traps that Hofstra University biology professor Dr. Russell Burke of Bellmore had set the previous day in the park's recently dredged pond. Schneider noted that osprey often hover above the pond and nose-dive into the water like missiles while hunting for fish. He said that ospreys, which are large raptors, "fly up and down the [Meadowbrook] corridor," stopping at each pond to search for food. They nest in the wetlands that hug Reynolds Channel.
An hour later, at the Hempstead Plains, early-morning sunlight slanted across New York state's only prairie, setting the amber grassland ablaze in fiery orange hues. Betsy Gulotta, a Nassau Community College biology professor from Merrick, was giving a lesson in invasive species to Advanced Placement biology and environmental science students from the Wheatley School in Old Westbury before they set off to catalog plants and animals.
A short time later, a group of volunteers from the South Shore Audubon Society was finishing their morning cataloging at Cow Meadow Park, accompanied by Denenberg. Joe Grupp, one of the county's top ornithologists, said the volunteers had identified 30 bird species at the park's 17-acre nature sanctuary, including a harrier, which is a raptor, song sparrows, humming birds and black-bellied plovers.
Burke will enter the data into computers at Hofstra and develop a species inventory of the Meadowbrook corridor. The professor said he was happiest to see young people involved in the BioBlitz. "It's really impressive to see kids out at 7:30 in the morning," he said.
When the data is compiled, the Center for Science Teaching and Learning will develop lesson plans for distribution to Nassau County schools. The information will also be used to lobby the state to preserve the woodlands for good.
"It's phenomenal," Denenberg said of the project. "It's been a total success."
Comments about this story? SBrinton@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 203.
