One battle already has been won. Plum Island had been put up for auction in 2009. The Preserve Plum Island Coalition, composed of 120 organizations, was formed in 2011 to fight it.

“Both the Senate and the House were able to get Plum Island off the auction block in December of 2020. So that was a major milestone,” Harrison said.

“So it’s a long-time effort and it’s bipartisan,” she said. “And we don’t know anybody who isn’t in favor of trying to protect Plum Island. It’s just a matter of the federal government moving very slowly. And the concentrating right now appears on decommissioning the laboratory on Plum Island.”

The island is held by the Department of Homeland Security, Harrison said, but if it’s not named a national monument, at some point the General Services Administration will try to find a new owner. That could put Plum Island back in danger of private ownership.

“They’re in charge of real estate for the federal government and they then start polling the other agencies in the federal government and ask them, are you interested, would you like to have Plum Island?” Harrison said.

“And if no agency speaks up, then they offer it to the state that the property is in. And if New York doesn’t want it, they would offer it to the county of Suffolk, which is the county here, or the town of Southold or a not-for-profit. And if nobody wants it, it goes back on the auction block,” she said.

Harrison said monument status is the best future for Plum Island “because it gives you flexibility.”

“If you had a national monument it would follow the proclamation of the national monument or the congressional bill for that,” she said. “So if you’re going for ecological conservation, you’d have that. If you’re going for historical preservation, you could have that, and the cultural heritage. … It’s not just aimed at one thing.”

“What’s happened is that the island has regenerated itself to the point where it is essentially a de facto wildlife preserve,” said Greg Jacob, senior policy adviser for The Nature Conservancy of New York.

“It is the way that coastal New York looked like back when the Pilgrims landed, the untouched, unspoiled natural environment of the Northeast, and we want to keep it that way,” he said.

Jacob said the problem now is invasive animals are starting to appear on the island, such as raccoons, which are raiding bird nests, as well as deer, which are eating rare plants.

“It’s a very fragile ecosystem, and there’s literally hundreds of species of animals and plants that are either at risk and are listed as endangered or are in need of special preservation and special attention,” Jacob said.

Rather than see the island decline as invasive species take over, Jacob said, “we want to see the island preserved now. We want to see a management plan now. And we want to see the federal government take responsibility for that island now. And the quickest way to get that done we found is through a national monument declaration.

“You’re not talking about preserving a big chunk of land, but because Plum Island is special, and because of the ecological, historical and cultural value of the island, it’s literally a gem,” Jacob said.

“This could actually be the crown jewel in the Biden administration’s land-preservation efforts,” he said. “And support of their 30 by 30 America the Beautiful plan, where they’d like to see 30% of America preserved by 2030. So it fits in with their agenda.”

______________

©2024 Hartford Courant. Visit courant.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.