Sound Update: The Islands

Organizational newsletters are rarely interesting but one exception is the Sound Update newsletter that’s available now.

It’s a production of the Long Island Sound Study and is edited by Larissa Graham of New York Sea Grant. The issue -- the summer 2011 issue -- is about the Sound’s islands, or some of them: Great Gull and Plum, which are part of the same glacial moraine that forms the north shore of Long Island, and Hart Island, the Thimble Islands, the islands of the McKinney National Wildlife Refuge (including Falkner, Chimon and Cockenoe), and Davids Island, all of which are along the Bronx-Westchester-Connecticut shore.

I wrote the Davids Island piece and it’s not bad but there are others that are better, in particular the piece about Great Gull and its truly awesome tern rookery. I visited Great Gull for an unforgettable weekend in 1987 and wrote a chapter about it for my book but then decided it didn’t really fit so I left it out. I was glad to learn what’s been going on lately (namely, more of the same, which is good).

Here’s a link to the issue.

No Decision Last Night on Long Beach West Sale

More than 150 people showed up at Stratford Town Hall last night for a council meeting about the sale of Long Beach West to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Town Council made the wise decision to not do anything until at least the public gets a chance to speak at a hearing on Thursday.

On the Beach the Stratford Wants to Sell, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Two young men were out walking yesterday afternoon on the beach that Stratford wants to sell to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The beach has an old colony of cottages, abandoned now and vandalized but still standing and owned by Stratford. The two men noticed that some of the cottages were on fire, so they called 911. Eventually three of the cottages were destroyed. To thank the two young men, police charged them with trespassing.

Protecting Stratford's Beach for the Rats and the Drunken Boat Parties

Some folks in Stratford don’t want the town to sell a strip of beach on Long Island Sound to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (background here) because they’re afraid it will lead to less public access. But if one visitor's observations are accurate, less access might be a good thing:

"I walk that peninsula four or five times a week and it's being destroyed by an infestation of rats, people driving ATVS and drunken boat parties. It's out of control and the best solution would be to sell the property to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service."

Stratford and Bridgeport Want to Sell Beach to the Feds

Bridgeport and Stratford are negotiating to sell a fantastic strip of beach to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which will incorporate it into the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge. Much of the beach, which has nesting piping plovers, has been inaccessible since a bridge was destroyed in the mid-1990s, and part of the beach has abandoned cottages on it. The feds will restore public access to a level appropriate for a national wildlife refuge and remove the cottages. Stratford seems close to a deal and Bridgeport is still negotiating. Seems like good news on a dank winter morning. The Connecticut Post reports, here.