In spring 2026, Quinn Burkhart, LIS Partnership’s science communicator, spent a day on Great Gull Island in Long Island Sound following a group of dedicated volunteers engaged in helping to protect the island’s roseate and common tern populations.
It’s a bright, early morning at the boat launch in New London, CT, but the atmosphere is anything but quiet. Twenty-five student volunteers, mostly undergraduates, wait for their ride to Great Gull Island, an impressive roster for a late April weekend just before finals. By 8 a.m., the Aubrey Joy, a commercial fishing boat owned by Captain Seth’s Sportfishing and sometimes used for transport to the island, is cruising across Long Island Sound. A box of donuts makes its way around. Every so often, someone calls out when birds come into view, and binoculars rise. Some students close their eyes and tilt their heads back, grateful for the early spring sun.
The ride feels light, but the mission is urgent. This boat ride is more than just fun; these volunteers are going to help prepare a fragile island refuge for common and roseate terns, the latter one of the most endangered seabirds in the United States. Despite exams looming, even the University of Connecticut’s birding club, a crew of more than 12, has come to help. Volunteers wear clothes that have not had contact with livestock, an effort to minimize the chance of transmitting bird flu.
The ghostly Great Gull Island comes into view under a moody sky. The boat eases toward a dock extending more than 30 feet out to sea, a landing that requires calm water to avoid a hard crash against the structure. Between weather conditions and scheduling constraints, many of these graduate student volunteers have waited years for the chance to get here.
Humans have heavily influenced Great Gull Island’s natural habitat. Throughout the 19th century, Great Gull was a thriving roseate tern colony of more than 7,000 breeding pairs. The US government took control of the island in 1896, transforming it into a military base known as Fort Michie. Completed with an underground tunnel system, human activity escalated until terns were forced to abandon their home.
The American Museum of Natural History later bought the island for a dollar in 1949, promising to restore the seabird colonies.
Since that restoration began, thousands of roseate as well as common terns have returned to the island. Despite this success, concern remains that the island’s ecosystem could collapse under bigger threats. In 2022, partners at the University of Connecticut and University of Rhode Island applied for a Long Island Sound Partnership Futures Fund grant to create the island’s first conservation plan. Priorities include protection against erosion, predation, disease, and the island’s failing infrastructure from humans.
Achieving this plan requires as many hands as possible.
An Evolving Landscape
The island staff greets the volunteers as they land. The island is quiet during the pre-season. Soon, that quiet will be overwhelmed by tern squawks, eggs hatching, and chicks feeding.
Approximately 4,000 breeding pairs of roseate terns survive in northeastern North America, and roughly 2,800 of those pairs nest on Great Gull Island. These terns like to nest in boulder fields along the shore, threatened by rising seas. If this island’s ecosystem fails, the species loses one of its most important remaining strongholds. The species is listed as endangered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Joan Walsh, a researcher at the American Museum of Natural History, and Margaret Rubega, a biologist at the University of Connecticut, coordinators of the island’s research, warned the students before departure that there was no guarantee they would see birds. It is early in the season, before the full nesting colony has arrived. But the absence of birds today is a good thing. A window of time, barely a month, between snow and spring migration provides the only time to restore the island. And there is a lot of restoring to be done.
As one volunteer put it, the Army “didn’t do a good job of cleaning up after themselves.”
That evidence is everywhere. Great Gull overflows not with marine debris, but with shingles, bricks, utensils, glass bottles, and chunks of old piping. The structures slowly disintegrate year after year, leaving fresh rubble after every winter.
One University of Connecticut volunteer, Sydney Horan, is almost impressed by the long shadow of human influence far under her feet. The volunteers occasionally hit the military’s old tarmac while digging for debris. “And yet, the terns are still here,” she marvels.
For a bird, or any wildlife, to live safely here, the island must be cleaned up and restored before every summer.
“The island would strongly benefit from several weekends where 30 people come out here to work, and stay overnight, but the island is too poor in resources for that,” said Rubega. “It’s a frustrating situation.”
All in a Day’s Work
There’s little time for island appreciation before the first task begins. Another boat has arrived with 250 new wooden nesting boxes, funded by the Long Island Sound Partnership’s Futures Fund. Managing the production of the boxes is a joint effort from Margaret, Joan, and their colleague, Peter Paton, from the University of Rhode Island.
Volunteers and island crew form a human chain down the dock, passing the boxes hand to hand toward shore. It takes 25 to tango.
The boxes are a small intervention to solve a much bigger issue. Like razorbills and puffins, roseate terns raise their families under boulder berms. Great Gull’s shores have plenty of cliff-side boulder fields but rising sea levels threaten to wash eggs and chicks out from under them. Island scientists recognized that risk years ago and began testing manmade alternatives. One design, called a “pup tent,” resembled an A-frame cabin with no front or back walls. The terns nested in some pup tents, but not as many as square boxes.
The new boxes are about the size of a shoebox. With four walls and a small access point, they provide more warmth and protection for the terns.
Once the boxes, affectionately dubbed “terniture,” are unloaded, the volunteers cart them to the eastern side of the island. Each pup tent is retired and broken down for reuse. Sturdier boxes take their place overlooking the water, side by side. Volunteers record this data in an online app that tracks the island’s progress.
Andrew, a senior from the University of Rhode Island, laughs as he records the box placements.
“It looks like a trailer park for terns.”
It is a trailer park the crew hopes will stand the test of a changing climate.
On the other side of the island, volunteers pull invasive plants from the ground, replacing them with native goldenrods. Dead vegetation is cleared away.
Any volunteer whose back is beginning to hurt can opt to help install bird blind covers. On Great Gull, blinds are six-foot tall platforms used for seeing birds closely but obscurely. Ocean wind blows the cover in the wind as volunteers crouch on ladders to get it rigged securely.
Meanwhile, laughter erupts between groups. Volunteers stand up to stretch, covered in dirt from their boots to their fingernails. The morning blurs to early afternoon.
There is no denying the work is strenuous. But out here, a sore back is the best sign of progress.
“The Island is Trying So Hard to Fall Apart.”
Margaret sits with the student volunteers outside of the research shack. The building used to be a place where the Army developed designs for bombs. Now, it has a propane kitchen and workspace areas with laptops scattered about. There is a real refrigerator, and Starlink Wi-Fi. It’s not the first time Margaret has enjoyed lunch watching a new group of young people grow attached to Great Gull. The same thing happened to her as a teenager, under the guidance of Helen Hays, an ornithologist and Great Gull legend who oversaw the museum’s Great Gull Island Project for decades and died in 2025 at 94.
Over the course of more than 50 years, many of them under Hays’ tutelage, dozens of crews spent months, and years, of their lives living on the island to work on restoring bird habitat and bird populations. Margaret tells stories of life on the island before there was internet. She mentions an island lunch tradition, the Culver Williams Sandwich, started by a student crew member from Yale in 1945: peanut butter, jelly, and sardines. A more modern tradition—double Oreos with peanut butter on the sides—is quickly thought to be a more appetizing idea by volunteers.
Students finish a lunch of cheeseburgers, cookies, and grapes before returning to chores and mingling.
Joan hangs back a moment to chat. It’s difficult for her to know how much work there is to do on the island that will never truly be done. But it’s a labor of love.
“The island is trying so hard to fall apart, and we are doing what we can to push it back together. Sometimes it feels like it might collapse. But at the end of the day, we’re doing this for the birds. That love is the driving force for this island’s success. We all have that.”
A Bright Future
The boat arrives back at the island to collect the volunteers, who are now a little sweaty, tired, and ready for a snack. But the group’s renewed energy is impossible to miss.
One volunteer expresses that in a world of such intense change and conflict, it is hard to find ways to feel like one has been effective. But by taking part in a day of work to support a beloved seabird species, she remembers that even her smallest actions have effects.
Birds will start returning to the island in a matter of days. Within two weeks, the spectacles of returning birds and new chicks will be prevalent.
The island staff is momentarily unsure how the nesting boxes will do. There’s a lot about the season of which to be unsure. That’s island life.
As Horan puts it, a day of improving the island helps both humans and wildlife. Especially for humans who are enthusiastic about birds.
“Everything in an ecosystem connects, and birding can help you appreciate that bigger picture. I do feel strongly that everyone should have at least one hobby that brings them out into the natural world. It will surprise you how much it enriches the rest of your life, even if the connection doesn’t seem obvious at first.”
If volunteers cleared just one patch of land and increased their island appreciation, then it was a laborious day well spent.
To be continued.
Researchers from the University of Connecticut, Clark University, and the University of Maryland released the Lawn Fertilizer Outreach Targeting Tool this winter.
The interdisciplinary tool uses data both from a homeowner survey on lawn fertilizer behavior and the University of Connecticut’s “N-Sink” tool. “N-Sink” shows hotspots in the regional landscape that are at the highest risk of sending nitrogen pollution to the Sound. This helps landowners connect the lawn fertilizer usage on their land to pollution in coastal waters, as pollution varies by landscape type. The survey was supported by the Long Island Sound Research Grant program.
Click the photo below to explore the tool.
The Long Island Sound Clearinghouse is a hub that brings environmental data from across the watershed into a single, interactive tool. Funded by the Long Island Sound Partnership, the tool is less like a database and more like a guided map to help people discover new data and bridge it to their own work.
Launched this winter by Save the Sound, Seatuck Environmental Association, and The Nature Conservancy, the Long Island Sound Road-Stream Crossing Prioritization Tool helps communities find undersized culverts in their area. This saves time and money when making repairs. It also helps prioritize which repairs should happen first when building climate-friendly structures.
Click the photo below to learn more about culverts near you.
Held at Eco Park in West Haven, the programs will be led by experts on wildlife, native plants, and community resilience.
West Haven, CT—Three Long Island Sound Partnership staff members are featured speakers in a new program, Coastal Conversations, at Eco Park in West Haven. The series, hosted by Land Trust of West Haven, invites the local community to learn more about protecting coastal Connecticut’s natural shoreline.
Partnership staff DeAva Lambert, Deb Abibou, and Maggie Cozens are all guest experts for the series, giving community members a chance to connect directly with the Partnership.
Free and open to the public, the series begins Sunday, July 26, at 10 a.m. at Eco Park’s Old Grove Park Building, 1 Palace Street, West Haven.
The inaugural six-part series is intended to “bring together leading scientists, conservationists, educators, and environmental professionals who will share their expertise on some of the most important issues affecting Long Island Sound and Connecticut’s coast,” according to the Land Trust.
Presentations will also include experts from the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT DEEP), Connecticut Sea Grant, and Save the Sound, among others.
Eco Park, which opened earlier this summer, was created by the Land Trust of West Haven in partnership with the City of West Haven and numerous environmental organizations. The park features native coastal plants, educational interpretive signs, pollinator habitat, and demonstrations of shoreline resilience and ecological restoration.
“We created Coastal Conversations to help people better understand the incredible natural resources that exist right here in our own community,” said Marilyn Wilkes, President of the Land Trust of West Haven. “Eco Park was designed as a living outdoor classroom, and this speaker series is a natural extension of that vision.”
See the schedule below. No registration required.
For more information, contact: Marilyn Wilkes, President, Land Trust of West Haven; (203) 415-4712; marilynwilkes@icloud.com.
Flooding, disappearing wetlands, and polluted water are familiar issues to communities across Long Island Sound—but they’re upstream, too.
The same challenges exist throughout the Long Island Sound watershed, which extends between stream and river networks from the Connecticut River in Quebec to the Sound’s groundwater area by New York City. Research throughout the region already tackles environmental hazards but is scattered across various sources, making it hard to find and connect data. US Geological Survey’s digital tool, the Long Island Sound Clearinghouse, is combating this challenge.
The Clearinghouse has two components: a map and a search page. If a user wants to find wetlands in Massachusetts where students can remove invasive plant species, they can toggle the map’s various layers. Each layer links back to the original data source.
For a user who wants specific data, they can use the search page to browse data by state and category. In this case, the user can use that data to build new educational programming, among other resources.
“We’re not hosting the data. We’re pointing out the right direction for the data you need and providing the context for you to spatially walk through it,” said Chris Schubert, a hydrologist with the US Geological Survey. Schubert, along with USGS supervisory hydrologist Denise Argue, is a USGS coordinator for Long Island Sound.
Like science, the Internet is always changing. Broken links and new studies mean regular website maintenance. That ongoing work is the project’s main challenge. But this is where user collaboration is handy, working with data sources themselves rather than keeping all information stored in one place. While researchers have obvious stakes in the Clearinghouse, it’s really a tool designed for anyone to learn more about the watershed, including the public.
“We view this as being a long-term tool that’s going to require long-term support, but also a tool that is as efficient and sustainable as possible for everyone’s benefit,” Schubert added.
The goal is not just to make research easier to find, but to illustrate a better picture of the watershed that the research describes.
The US Geological Survey anticipates providing trainings for the clearinghouse this summer. To learn about research in the watershed near you, find the clearinghouse here.
Mystic, CT—Just like the waters of the Long Island Sound, the science which supports the Sound is always evolving. That sentiment shone brightly during the convening of researchers and stakeholders at the 2026 Long Island Sound Research Conference, held in Mystic, Connecticut on June 4th and 5th. The biannual conference was spearheaded by Connecticut Sea Grant with support from New York Sea Grant and the Long Island Sound Partnership.
During six parallel presentation sessions, attendees shared scientific solutions and connected through their interdisciplinary work. A session of more than 50 posters spilled from one meeting room all the way down the hall and around the corner, a testament to the broad spectrum of science in the Sound.
Talks and presentations of the conference focused on themes reflecting the 2025 Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP):
Day one included an initial plenary address, What is Actionable Science Anyway? Perspectives on Long Island Sound Restoration, from Mark Tedesco, retired director of the EPA Long Island Sound Office. Tedesco’s speech covered several decades of innovative science and restoration across the Sound. Among the most notable recent moment in this history, occurring since the last conference, was the Sound’s year of low hypoxia, or low-dissolved oxygen, in 2025. This marked a positive sign for wildlife and the ecosystem overall health.
Other presentations touched on the effects of warming waters on an ecosystem and new ways to educate audiences on how they can support their environment.
Like several newly released interactive tools funded by the Long Island Sound Partnership, artificial intelligence has recently emerged to help researchers push their science to the next level. That was the main takeaway from day two’s plenary address, Why AI Matters?, given by Dr. Hendrik Hamann, professor of atmospheric science at Stony Brook University and AI Chief Scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Dr. Hamann provided examples of how artificial intelligence can boost pre-existing research with its prediction abilities.
Later presentations touched on the state of shellfish in the Sound and innovative efforts to keep coastal communities healthy.
While researchers continue to find new and effective ways to address changes in the Long Island Sound, the conference underscored the importance of preserving the Sound for future generations.
Partners will gather for the next chapter of the Sound’s progress in 2028.
Many people fertilize their lawn to keep it lush and green. Excessive fertilizer use, however, causes environmental harm that goes beyond one’s backyard. Nitrogen, a chemical found in fertilizer, helps plants grow. But if plants can’t absorb it all, the chemical leaks from the ground to the Sound.
This leaves educators, resource managers, municipalities, and environmental groups wondering how to encourage community residents to care for their yards in ways that reduce impacts on the environment.
A new interactive tool can help. Researchers from the University of Connecticut, Clark University, and the University of Maryland released the Lawn Fertilizer Outreach Targeting Tool this winter.
Together, these datasets combine with high resolution geospatial property boundary data to to outreach targeting that shows both where predicted nitrogen pollution due to lawn fertilizer is highest and where households are more likely to change their fertilizer habits. The tool aims to help educators target and focus on effective programs to encourage fertilizer reduction while maintaining healthy lawn care. Looking providing information for achieving pollution reduction goals, the map focuses on coastal Connecticut and New York.
The outreach map shows by color where pollution would likely be reduced under targeted community program. For example, households residing in newer and larger homes are more likely to fertilize and apply more frequently. Exurban areas also tend to contribute to more nitrogen due to lawn fertilizer, because large-lot parcels in these areas tend to have larger lawns.Specific to single family homes, the map shows neighborhood-level trends in fertilizer use.
Interested groups can use the tool as a guide to develop materials, target areas, and develop behavior-change campaigns with the greatest capacity to reduce excess nitrogen loads to Long Island Sound.
Nitrogen is an essential element for life on Earth, but only in the right balance. When lawns get too much fertilizer, the extra nitrogen ends up in waterways that lead to the Sound, like streams and storm drains.
Once in the Sound, large quantities of the chemical may help stimulate the growth of harmful algal blooms along the Sound’s surface. These blooms block sunlight from deeper water and harm the ecosystem, and some can produce toxins that can be harmful to people and animals, including kids and pets who may live by the water.
The project partners view the tool as a unique and innovative way to restructure how we care for the Sound.
“You never know what conversation will come from a tool like this, which is part of the beauty of it,” said David Dickson, a senior extension educator at the University of Connecticut (UConn) Extension program and director of the UConn Center for Land Use and Education Research (CLEAR). “Tools like this bring people together who end up making new initiatives out of them. That’s the whole goal, to get conversation started.”
Check out the tool’s interactive story map here to see how your neighborhood contributes to the Sound’s health.
If you live near a stream or creek, chances are high that you live near a road-stream crossing called a culvert. These short tunnels, often pipe or box-shaped surrounded by soil, exist underneath roadways to help water move from one point to another. That movement brings other benefits, like wildlife passage and reduced flooding. When culverts are too small or damaged, they can cause problems. Fully connected streams provide cooler water for migratory and resident fish species to freely access habitat for spawning, foraging, and travel. Problem culverts not only cut off habitat access for fish and wildlife, but they can also degrade water quality, creating ideal conditions for invasive species. They also increase flood risk and disrupt other vital ecosystem services such as sediment and nutrient transportation.
A new interactive map addresses these issues. Launched this winter by Save the Sound, Seatuck Environmental Association, and The Nature Conservancy, the Long Island Sound Road-Stream Crossing Prioritization Tool helps communities find undersized culverts in their area. This saves time and money when making repairs. It also helps prioritize which repairs should happen first when building climate-friendly structures.
The tool scores culverts on a 1-20 scale based on four metrics: ecological impact, transportation functionality, resilience to climate, and physical condition. Users can filter factors such as location, waterbody name, and road type. Dots on a color scale from light blue to red highlight crossings in need. Darker dots show where culvert replacement or repair would bring the biggest benefit.
The project team, led by Save the Sound’s Megan Lung, studied on-site more than 300 crossings in Westchester County and incorporated hundreds of additional crossings in Nassau and Suffolk counties. The work is not glamorous, trudging through water under sometimes dense vegetation. But it paints a strong picture of undersized culverts’ effects on the ecosystem.
Undersized culverts are common, often built decades ago with small budgets. As a result, they were not designed to handle the current era of rising sea levels. This especially concerns coastal watersheds, like the Long Island Sound.
At its core, the tool aims to give municipalities a starting point.
“When anyone who wants to address aquatic connectivity with human infrastructure in the watershed—dams, bridges culverts—we want this tool to be the place to go, to start,” said Lung. “Everybody has different priorities, but we want to help get people out there and provide resources for improvement.”
The tool developed from a previous study of crossing restoration efforts from The Nature Conservancy, who also conducted on-site studies. Funding was provided in part by a Futures Fund grant from the Long Island Sound Partnership and seeding funding from the Alexander Center for Ecological Action at Save the Sound.
It is up to communities to decide if they want to repair the crossings. Still, the tool offers a foundation for stronger decision-making. Save the Sound has already hosted trainings for users and plans to continue expanding those efforts. Anyone who finds a barrier or undersized culvert can also report it to Save the Sound, who will add it to the map.
The map may expand to the rest of the watershed later but is not expected in the immediate future.
In the face of rising sea levels, Lung sees an opportunity.
“Where land development is happening, we treat our stream as things to be conquered, not as a partner [with whom to work]. This tool provides us a better outlook for the future.”
Find here an informational webinar to learn more.
Find the tool here to see if there are barrier or undersized crossings near you.
The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), in cooperation with the Long Island Sound Partnership, has opened the LIS Futures Fund 2026 request for proposals. Full proposals are due May 19th, 2026 at 11:59 PM, EDT. The review period runs through the fall, with award announcements anticipated for November, subject to change. Proposal Labs, for those interested in seeking guidance from NFWF experts on their projects, are ongoing through April 30th. Links to the proposal request and to register for a lab are below.
The Future Fund grant program, launched in 2005 by NFWF, the LIS Partnership, and EPA, supports efforts to test innovative approaches to conservation, as well as supporting people and communities who value the Long Island Sound Watershed and take a direct role in its future.
Project types range broadly, from habitat restoration planning or implementation in the Long Island Sound coastal zone, resilience, education, water quality and fish passage projects in the Long Island Sound boundary in Connecticut and New York, and nitrogen prevention or reduction planning and implementation projects in the Long Island Sound watershed boundary in Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont. There is a potential total funding of $12 million for projects with individual grants ranging between $50,000 to $2 million.
Funding priorities support the goals of the LIS Partnership’s Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan:
For more information and to submit a proposal, click here. Register here to book an LISFF 2026 Proposal Lab appointment.
Note: this article, originally published on March 4th, 2026, has been updated to include information on the LSFF 2026 Request for Proposals. All information is accurate as of March 11th, 2026.
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