The Nature Conservancy Receives $75,000 for Environmental Education from Keyspan Foundation

Funds to Support High School Education, Shellfish Restoration, Water Quality Enhancement

Cold Spring Harbor, NY — July 16, 2007 — The Nature Conservancy announced today that it has been awarded a $75,000 grant for environmental education from the KeySpan Foundation, a long-term supporter of the Conservancy’s work on Long Island. KeySpan additionally supports The Nature Conservancy through its corporate giving program.

The $75,000 grant will aid The Nature Conservancy in its environmental education efforts and will ultimately result in shellfish restoration and water quality improvement in Long Island’s harbors, bays and estuaries. Specifically, the funds will help underwrite the costs of an education and hard clam nursery project with Western Suffolk Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) working with local high school students. The program aims to increase students’ appreciation and understanding of the importance of shellfish and to help restock Long Island coastal waters with hard-shelled clams.

“This generous contribution and the on-going support from the KeySpan Foundation will help expand the Conservancy’s innovative shellfish restoration efforts in Great South Bay, where we have re-stocked the water with over three million clams,” said Nancy Kelley, executive director of The Nature Conservancy on Long Island. “Support from such funders like the KeySpan Foundation help make possible the restoration of important marine habitat in bays and harbors across Long Island. We are thankful for their support.”

Raising hatchery-reared hard clams to a size that is large enough to protect them from most predators and then stocking them in harvest-free areas has been identified as an important component of The Nature Conservancy’s large-scale efforts to restore self-sustaining natural populations of hard clams in the Great South Bay.

In this program, 20-25 tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade students will have the opportunity to construct a clam nursery raft (7ft x 12ft) to grow seed clams under controlled conditions while being exposed to a new and exciting field. Through field trip excursions and classroom lectures, students will develop an understanding of marine ecology, the anatomy and physiology of hard-shelled clams, scientific procedures used in mariculture re¬search, data collection and evaluation, and the socio-political issues involved in the shellfish industry. The project culminates with students releasing approximately 100,000 immature clams onto the bay bottom.

During the 1970s, there were enough hard clams to filter 40 percent of the Great South Bay every day. Today, only 1 percent of the Great South Bay is filtered daily. Restored and properly managed shellfish populations can renew once-thriving fisheries and recreational opportunities that are part of Long Island’s rich maritime heritage.

The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. On Long Island, The Nature Conservancy has helped to preserve more than 100,000 acres. Visit us on the web at nature.org/longisland.