To promote, protect and preserve the environment and the Birds that inhabit it through education, advocacy and leadership

December 2, 2003

Port Washington Union Free School District Board of Education

The Board of the North Shore Audubon Society recommends and supports the preservation by conservation of the Guggenheim Fields for environmental education.

The Guggenheim Fields represent a valuable and rapidly dwindling resource on the Port Washington peninsula. Grassland habitat is the rarest environmental niche on Long Island. The meadow and woodland support nesting Orchard Orioles and Goldfinches. Swallows hunt for insects over the meadow. Catbirds and Robins nest in the woods. There are year round populations of Cardinals, three types of woodpeckers; Red-bellied, Hairy and Downy and Yellow-shafted Flickers along with Mourning Doves, Chickadees, Mocking Birds, Blue Jays and Carolina Wrens. In the winter they are joined by Juncos, Nuthatches, Song and White-throated Sparrows. The area is an important stop for migrating warblers, with a bounty of seeds, berries and insects to replenish them on their arduous journeys. Sharp-shinned, Coopers and Red- tailed Hawks patrol above. Great Horned Owls silently soar at night. The list of observed birds runs over 70 species.

The meadow is host to the only stands of Asclepias syriaca ( common milkweed), and Asclepias tuberosa (butterfly weed), in the area. Milkweed is the sole source of food for Monarch Butterfly caterpillars. Dozens of other species of wildflowers bloom among the native grasses. The site provides a hunting ground for the few fox left in the region. Rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, opossums, and field mice all make a homes here. Bats hunt out insects at night. The six-acre woodland, with a wide variety ofmature trees, creates a buffer from the existing school fields, nesting and roosting sites, food resources and protective cover. The meadow cannot exist in its diversity and richness without the woodland.

The Fields demonstrate a classic example of woodland succession, grasslands to thicket to mature wood. They are an education in environmental interdependence that can never be experienced in a classroom. It should be preserved inviolate as an educational resource for the schools and as passive recreation trails for the community. This precious island of nature, once destroyed, will be gone forever. No child in Port

Washington would ever again experience the pleasure of watching a Monarch float on a warm summer breeze. Or stay up late to hear the bark of a hunting vixen or call of an owl. They too would be gone forever, with a barren stretch of compacted non-native grasses where there once was wonder and life.

To preserve this place in all its rich, messy, intricate, fascinating abundance will be a priceless gift to the children and generations of children to come. A future Audubon could identify her first bird there. A future Roosevelt could learn his first lesson in preservation. To destroy the Fields for the "crisis de jour" would be shortsighted in the extreme. To lose the Fields would leave the community poorer in spirit and diminished in quality of life.

Jennifer Wilson-Pines President

North Shore Audubon Society PO Box 763

Port Washington, NY 11050

PO Box 763, Port Washington, NY 11050