Press Releases

October 19, 1999
College Donates $10,000 for Endangered Birds

Partnership with Southampton Town Preserves Habitat

Contact:
(516) 287 8313
Fax: (516) 283 4081

Southampton, NY -- With money from its most popular concert ever, Southampton College of Long Island University officials presented Southampton Town Trustees with a check for $10,000 to aid the area's most endangered birds on Tuesday.

Least Terns and federally-protected Piping Plovers are the Hamptons' most popular beachgoers. Southampton Town has set up several fenced nesting sites to help protect them from natural predators, like raccoons and foxes, and especially humans.

Southampton College students have interned with the town for years, so the College's $10,000 commitment to Southampton is appropriate. "Our marine science students really do think globally and act locally," said Provost Tim Bishop. "Strengthening our partnership with the town makes sense -- for our college, for the citizens of Southampton Town who want to preserve the area's fragile landscape and especially for the endangered marine life here."

At a ceremony near a rocky nesting site at the end of Long Pond Road in Shinnecock Hills, Bishop handed a check to town trustees, town environmental analyst Marty Shea and town marine technician Shawn Kiernan. Councilman Patrick "Skip" Heaney was also in attendance.

Kiernan, a May 1999 graduate of Southampton College, had previously in the day taught a classroom of fourth graders at Southampton Elementary School about the value of protecting local habitat. "It's important to teach children about the rain forest," said Shea, "but it's also important to teach them about what's in their backyard."

"Here in Shinnecock Hills, we have three nests that recently produced seven Piping Plover fledges. This is a residential area and because of that many of the homeowners at first didn't know there were animals here to protect."

"It was hard at first," added Kiernan, "but once we told them what we were doing, and what we were saving, residents warmed up." Kiernan's educational outreach work in the elementary school is funded with a grant to the town from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Shea welcomes a partnership with Southampton College. "It's great having the college here," he said. "They really provide us with a lot of assistance and a lot of knowledgeable and eager interns."

Also helping the town are 1998 graduate Gina Hand and student Jessica Lutz, who both, like Kiernan, are products of Southampton College's esteemed Marine Science Program. The $10,000 came from this past summer's annual All for the Sea marine-science benefit concert. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers helped raise over $1 million for the College.

Southampton Town's Piping Plover and Least Tern program stretches from the Shinnecock Canal east as far as Bridgehampton and north to Long Beach in Sag Harbor. The Nature Conservancy handles the program in the western part of town.