North Fork birders won’t have to travel far to visit aNew York State Birding Trail, as Broad Cove Preserve in Aquebogue was recently added to the state trail.
Nature enthusiasts can enjoy the new trail and grass plantings, installed in part through Department of Environmental Conservation Invasive Species Grant funding, from dusk to dawn. The trail begins at the mouth of Overlook Drive near Lighthouse Market and Deli in Aquebogue.
On a walk through the preserve, visitors can spot bluebirds, ospreys, great horned owls, bald eagles, hummingbirds and monarch butterflies.
“We are so grateful to be able to work together to provide an important home for birds and wildlife as they are so quickly vanishing across the North Fork and elsewhere,” Peggy Lauber of the North Fork Audubon Society said Thursday.
The Peconic Land Trust purchased the nearly 100-acre waterfront parcel on Flanders Bay for $11.5 million in December 2021. The property includes 25 acres of tidal wetlands and 8,000 feet of shoreline along Terry Creek and Broad Cove.
It was previously zoned for a high-impact, mixed-use resort when owner Walo LLC accepted a developer’s offer in late 2020, according toPeconic Land Trust’s website. While the contract was under review, managing partner Andreas Weisz, learned Peconic Land Trust was prepared to make an offer and agreed to delay the resort deal so the property could instead be preserved.
The preserve also includes land deeply connected to Indigenous and African American history.
Peconic Land Trust president John Halsey noted the site’s significance as ancestral land of the Corchaug people and recognized thousands of years of Indigenous presence there.
in the 1930s, 16 acres in Aquebogue were purchased by the four Bell brothers — Mansfield, Condry, Ezekiel and Melkiah — sons of a self-taught black farmer and grandsons of slaves from Virginia. The Bell Town Cultural Heritage Area wasformally recognizedby Riverhead Town Board in 2021.
Marilyn Banks-Winter, a descendant of the Bells and Bell Town historian, helped lead efforts to preserve and recognize the area’s history. Her daughter, Orlesha Banks — a descendant of the Corchaug, Unkechaug, Narragansett and Cherokee people — spoke about the importance of protecting land “with deep indigenous and African-American roots.”
Source: The Suffolk Times
