The landscape of Long Island's East End - beach, marsh, grassland, forest, farmland - is the result of 10,000 years of interactions between nature and humankind. The cultivation and development of the East End of Long Island began in earnest nearly 350 years ago when the area was colonized by England. Rather than looking westward for its cultural identity, the five East End towns looked north to New England and the other English-speaking cultures of the maritimes.

Today, its quiet beauty draws people from all walks of life and from all over the world. The coastal ecosystem found on Long Island's East End is one of the most beautiful and most threatened natural systems in the world. The Nature Conservancy has designated this as one of the world's 70 "Last Great Places" because of its unique landscape and wildlife.

This report documents the urgency for land protection on the East End of Long Island and explains how a Land Bank can address this need. Recent forecasts paint an alarming picture for the future of this special place. We now know:

1. Explosive growth threatens much of our farmland and open space. What remains is quickly being lost to increasing population and development pressures.
2. We have had success saving open space, but we need to do more.
3. We can save our rural character by protecting an additional 24,000 acres of threatened farmland and 9,000 acres of open space.

Development Pressures

Even into the 1960's, a visitor to this region saw a landscape dominated by agricultural fields, wide forested expanses and villages composed largely of historic buildings. Since then, with post-war prosperity and the expansion of the road system across Long Island, the East End experienced population growth of more than 200%. In the last 30 years, this region has lost more than 10,000 acres of farmland and a comparable amount of open space. The region's attractive landscape, coupled with world-class beaches and proximity to the world's largest metropolitan area, adds to the intense pressure for development. Even as local residents and elected officials watch and struggle, the East End is being loved to death.

Planning for the Future

While few predicted the end of the rural East End during the 1960s, many were already calling for limits on growth at that time. Several East End communities prepared their first master plans as a way of directing and managing the increasing development pressures. During the 1970s, the special threat that development represented to the East End's rural character prompted various government officials to update zoning codes. The loss of agricultural property inspired an initiative new to the nation - the first Farmland Preservation Program. The purchase of agricultural development rights by Suffolk County was instituted under the leadership of County Executive John Klein in the mid-1970s.

Building Boom

The 1980s, a time of unusual excesses, brought massive numbers of subdivisions and buildings to the region. Local officials responded with major upzonings, new land-use concepts (such as clustering houses in proposed subdivisions away from sensitive natural resources and creating open space set-asides in the process) and town and county-funded open space and farmland preservation. The isolated changes in the 1960's were now moving rapidly across the increasingly fragmented landscape of the East End.

The recently completed Suffolk County Farmland Protection Plan states that "Suffolk County has had a large decline in the amount of farmland over the last several decades and continues to see a rapid decline in farmland today in spite of conservation efforts." The plan downgrades the initial goal of farmland protection in Suffolk from 35,000 acres to 20,000 acres. The report further states that "at their present rate there will be only 10,000 acres [of farmland] left in Suffolk in 2012." (Emphasis added.)