On Saturday, April 23rd, the day after Earth Day (and a week before Arbor Day), Sayville Goes Native!
The Long Island Conservancy, in conjunction with The Greater Sayville Chamber of Commerce, The Greater Sayville Civic Association, The Sayville Rotary Club, and County Legislator Anthony Piccirillo, will be on hand to help promote a greener, cleaner, and more natural Sayville.
We will be selling native plants, and offering free samples, as well as speaking with local residents about their importance for our local wildlife, and for Sayville as a place to live and to visit.
The Long Island Conservancy will be seeking volunteers and interns. We are taking on Foster Marina Park and Meadow Croft (The Roosevelt Estate), removing invasive plants like English Ivy, Wisteria, Oriental Bittersweet, Multiflora Rose, and Japanese Honeysuckle, and planting in what belongs there instead, restoring habitat.
There are dozens of public spaces in Sayville that are just overrun with invasive plants. Just before the drive through where Capital One was is a stand of Japanese Knotweed. There is a stand of bamboo back behind the Rite Aid on Main. Callery Pears — notoriously invasive and not very durable as street trees — line our Main Street on the south side of the street, and are pervasive otherwise. The birds eat the seeds and spread these trees (along with the English Ivy, the porcelainberry, the oriental bittersweet, etc, until there is very little public land (or private) that isn’t overrun by these invasive plants.
At the same time, as the invasive plants have taken over on Long Island, our populations of birds, amphibians, and reptiles have plummeted. If it’s not from here, it’s not food for our local critters. We in Sayville can and must change that. Every community has to step up and become local stewards, protectors of our local nature.
Let’s work together revitalizing our local public spaces — our parks and squares. But let’s too seek to create local nature in our own yards. So come by, buy some plants. Tell us what you would like in your yard. Once people start to realize that 95% of what they are looking at in people’s yards or in our public spaces are plants brought here from every continent over hundreds of years, and that our local ecosystems are collapsing as they are now rapidly taking over, they will understand that this is not merely about making things pretty, or even building habitat. This is an existential crisis on LI. Where are we without our nature? Isn’t that why we are here in the first place.
We have been losing a battle we didn’t even know we were fighting. Well, now we are coming to know. Things that can’t be unseen. We must fight for Nature, lot by lot, as we fight for a livable future here in Sayville, on LI, and otherwise. A million+ animals it is estimated, are now in the process of going extinct. The 6th Great Extinction on our planet’s 5 billion year history. What can we do? Create habitat for our local critters. Restore what was there. Plant what would be there if we weren’t. It is the only thing we can do. It will also bring us great joy as we reconnect with Nature.
We will see you on the 23rd.