• Our Long Island Water Education Program Surpasses 10,000 Students Served

    After a pandemic year+ of postponement and a second year of remote learning (with supplies packed and delivered to schools) educator Karen Mossey finally returned to the classroom (with some interruptions!) during the 2021/2022 school year. And an exciting year this was with the total number of students served since the program’s inception surpassing 10,000. Enterprising as always and like educators everywhere faced with dramatic changes the pandemic required, Karen managed to add new school partners (Hewlett and Ogden in the Hewlett-Woodmere school district and St. James in the Smithtown school district). She nimbly adapted to remote learning. She did this by creating a video of the “build an aquifer” session and distributing a set of supplies for EACH student to the schools. Her efforts were carried out while getting her own school-age children through remote learning at home. Cheers to you, Karen, and educators all over.


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  • Reflections from a Long Island Water Education Teacher

    Since 2014, the North Shore Land Alliance has been visiting my West Side School sixth-grade science classes in Laurel Hollow to teach about the effects of pollution on Long Island’s aquifer. I have been teaching for over 30 years, and this workshop/field trip is by far my favorite! Two classroom workshops are held by Karen Mossey from the Long Island Water Education Program, in preparation for the field trip to the Shore Road Sanctuary. Through hands-on inquiry, Ms. Mossey engages the students to think about the amount of drinking water that is on Earth, which leads them to question about our drinking water here on Long Island. Ms. Mossey brings in supplies so the students can build their own aquifers, which allows them to visualize the different layers of Long Island’s Magothy aquifer. The kids are always amazed to discover that we rely on water that comes from an aquifer and how important it is to keep it clean. The hands-on field trip to the Land Alliance’s preserve in Cold Spring Harbor connects what the kids learned during Ms. Mossey’s classroom visits and their own world. My students are always delighted to discover the grassland, shoreline and life buried in the sand and under the rocks, while testing water quality and soil permeability. Every year one of the highlights is discovering the abundance of the Asian Shore Crab species, first found on the North American Atlantic coast in 1988, and the impact invasive species have on our ecosystems. The students love to find mussels, (especially after learning that just one consumes four gallons of water every day), and blue-blooded horseshoe crabs that have been inhabiting our shorelines for over 450 million years. Volunteer educators explain that each day, litter finds its way to our shores. This program has truly impacted my students over the years – they leave the experience always wanting to educate others. Since its inception, the LIWEP has reached 7,708 students in 25 schools in 14 school districts from north to south. This impact would not have been possible without dedicated funding from the Scotts Miracle-Gro Foundation, the Merrilyn Foundation, the Rauch Foundation and the Weyerhaeuser Family Foundation.


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  • Food and Climate Change: The Way Forward

    Thank you to everyone who attended the Food and Climate: The Way Forward lecture and panel discussion at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Monday, October 28th co-hosted…


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  • North Shore Land Alliance Long Island Water Education Program

    $30,500 to continue our Water Education Program

    As of the close of the 2015/2016 school year, The North Shore Land Alliance Long Island Water Education Program in local schools has, in its two short years, reached…


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  • Wawapek Preserve Expanded

    The North Shore Land Alliance, in partnership with Suffolk County, the Town of Huntington, New York State, The Conservation Fund and the local community, acquired the 32-acre…


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