Plum Island: You’ve Come a Long Way Baby

By Guy Jacob
Plum IslandPlum Island’s history is an intriguing mix of fact and fiction, as well as a bit of genuine mystery. And in the last two decades, its fate has been in peril. NHOC is one 118 Connecticut,New York, and national groups dedicated to the preservation of this national treasure through our membership in the Preserve Plum Island Coalition.

Plum Island is an 840-acre isle between Orient Point and Fishers Island. Part of the island has long been the home of a federal research facility, which is being relocated to Kansas; the rest has remained a sanctuary for wildlife and native plants. When federal and state governments identified 33 stewardship sites around Long Island Sound, they called Plum Island and the surrounding Gull Islands an "exemplary" habitat area deserving of special protection. Plum Island is largely pristine, a rarity in the New York Metropolitan area; about three-quarters of the island has been intact since Fort Terry was deactivated in 1949 after World War II.

Plum Island’s biodiversity includes more than 250 species of birds (60+ endangered or threatened), and about 1000 seals. The coalition’s advocacy in rescuing the island’s biodiversity has also protected Long Island Sound water quality as well as the island’s value as a carbon sink.

In 2008 Congress ordered the sale of this environmentally sensitive land in Southold Town, about 1½ miles off Orient Point, to the highest bidder. A dozen years and much effort later, a provision in a 2020 bill took it off the auction block, and it will now be offered to other federal agencies. If none are interested, it would then be offered to the state, then local municipalities.

A 2020 Plum Island Coalition report recommended conserving this unique landmass as a sanctuary for wildlife, as well as preservation of the Army fort, with guided tours added, an educational facility on the island’s east side and a research facility on the west side.

The coalition now seeks to convince Governor Hochul to ask the President to dedicate the island as a National Monument.The Town of Southold supports the proposal as does the Long Island Regional Planning Board.

Conservation of natural resources often takes time and patience. Plum Island’s advocates have demonstrated much of both.