By Scott Brinton
The Discovery Channel is considering filming segments on "citizen science," said Havasy, who works for the Center for Science Teaching and Learning at Tanglewood Preserve. "They're doing this whole thing about the public's response to learning about the environment," she said.
A BioBlitz is a 24-hour treasure hunt led by biologists and environmentalists to catalog the flora and fauna found in a designated swath of nature. Volunteers -- from scouts to students to amateur naturalists -- do much of the searching, aided by the scientists.
Nassau County is spearheading the BioBlitz in the woodlands along the Meadowbrook on Sept. 19 and 20 to showcase the area's ecological value. Nassau County legislators David Denenberg, a Democrat from Merrick, and Norma Gonsalves, a Republican from East Meadow, formed the Meadowbrook BioBlitz Committee.
Richard Schary of North Bellmore, who is with the Long Island Greenbelt Trail Conference, said he was happy to hear that the event has attracted the attention of a national media outlet like the Discovery Channel. A segment on the channel would "give us a national profile to our cause," Schary said. "We've been fighting in the woods for seven years."
A Discovery Channel representative could not be reached at press time.
Schary noted that the BioBlitz will be the latest event staged by local environmentalists to draw attention to the plight of the woodlands, which the New York state Parks Department owns and the state Department of Public Works is supposed to maintain. For decades, however, woodlands have fallen prey to vandals, who have set fire to them and ripped through forested areas on ATVs. Since 2002, local environmental activists like Schary and Bob Young of Merrick have conducted cleanups and staged protests in the woodlands to bring attention to them.
Denenberg said the BioBlitz is intended, in large part, to convince the state parks and public works departments that the woodlands should be perpetually preserved and better protected.
Hofstra University is the lead academic institution for the event, contributing scientists, offices, computers and an auditorium. Hofstra officials said the BioBlitz would fit in well with the university's new undergraduate and graduate degree programs in urban ecology, the study of animals and plants in urban environments. Dr. Russell Burke, a Hofstra biology professor from Bellmore and a member of the BioBlitz Committee, said, "Fifty percent of the world's population lives in cities, and there are huge numbers of rare and endangered species that live in cities, so we have to include urban habitats in our studies."
The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University is lending computer software to the effort. Nassau Community College, Adelphi University and Dowling College are on board as well. Students from local high schools like Kennedy in Bellmore and Mepham in North Bellmore have also signed up to help. And Gonsalves said that the south-central division of the Key Club has pledged 150 student volunteers. In all, that brings the total number of volunteers to more than 450. Havasy hopes to eventually have 700.
She said that sponsors continue to join in the effort. Eastern Mountain Sports recently contributed $5,000, she said. Dick's Sporting Goods and Poland Spring will help as well.
Other institutions and groups that are supporting the effort include Coleman Country Day Camp in Merrick, the Science Museum of Long Island, the Friends of the Norman J. Levy Preserve and the Friends of the Massapequa Preserve.
The BioBlitz will take place at three sites along the Meadowbrook: the Hempstead Plains, the swath of fields that abut Nassau Community College; Nassau County's Rev. Arthur Mackey Park at the Roosevelt Preserve; and the woods and wetlands in and around the Town of Hempstead's Levy Preserve in Merrick.
"We're doing really well," Havasy said. "It's all about volunteers now."
The BioBlitz will take place rain or shine, and volunteers will work in two-hour shifts. There will be a short orientation at Hofstra at 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 19. Sign up to volunteer online at meadowbrookbioblitz.org.
Comments about this story? SBrinton@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 203.
