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The Nature Conservancy Launches Public Awareness Campaign Featuring Isabella Rossellini

Funding from Lowe’s and Suffolk County Help Make Campaign Possible

Cold Spring Harbor, NY — August 2, 2007 — The Nature Conservancy on Long Island today launched its new public awareness advertising campaign highlighting the importance of the organization’s work to restore declining shellfish populations in Long Island’s bays and harbors. The campaign, funded by private and public partners including Suffolk County and the Lowe’s Charitable and Educational Foundation, features actress Isabella Rossellini, who has donated her time for the project.

Rossellini has been a longtime summer resident near Great South Bay. The “Let’s put the great back into the Great South Bay” campaign encourages the public to visit The Nature Conservancy’s website (www.nature.org/longisland) to learn more about the local environment and how to help.

“We hope this campaign encourages the public to learn more about the local environment and to become good stewards of Long Island’s lands and waters,” said Nancy Kelley, executive director of The Nature Conservancy on Long Island. “We are thankful to our many supporters, including Suffolk County, the Lowe’s Charitable and Educational Foundation, the KeySpan Foundation and New York State for their ongoing support of our shellfish restoration efforts and our work to restore the Great South Bay.”

Restoring native shellfish populations is an important pillar of The Nature Conservancy’s marine conservation efforts on Long Island, which include work to restore wetlands, seagrasses and endangered bird populations. Hard clams and other shellfish are vital to Long Island’s bays – filtering water and serving as a critical link in the food web.

But in recent years, they have experienced sharp declines. Without shellfish, water quality suffers and the entire ecosystem is negatively affected. 

For the past three years, The Nature Conservancy has worked to restock its thirteen 400-acre underwater holdings in the Great South Bay with adult clams in the hopes that they will reproduce, and ultimately restore this depleted water body to its former glory. To date, The Nature Conservancy and Brookhaven township have returned more than 2.5 million adult clams into the Conservancy’s property in the central Bay.

Suffolk County is a proud partner of The Nature Conservancy in this effort.  In addition to awarding the Conservancy with a one million dollar grant for the Great South Bay shellfish restoration program, Suffolk has embarked on what is believed to be the largest scallop reseeding program in the U.S., a four-year collaborative effort with Cornell Cooperative Extension and Southampton College in the Peconic Bay. The county has also established a Shellfish Aquaculture Leasing Program, which will provide entities access to portions of 110,000 underwater acres in the Peconic and Gardiners Bays for raising large populations of scallops, oysters and hard clams.

 “Many of us can remember a time when shellfishing was not just a way to make a living, it was a way of life,” said County Executive Steve Levy.   “The Great South Bay once supplied over half of the nation’s hard clams. The loss of over 90 percent of this population has had ecological and economical impacts, which we hope to reverse through the efforts of The Nature Conservancy and this program.”

Lowe’s Charitable and Educational Foundation awarded The Nature Conservancy on Long Island a grant of $250,000 to aid in the restoration of the shellfish population in the Great South Bay area.

“Our partnership with The Nature Conservancy highlights Lowe’s commitment to improving communities and protecting natural resources,” said Larry D. Stone, chairman of Lowe’s Charitable and Educational Foundation. “By working with The Nature Conservancy, we hope to make a lasting impact in the preservation of wildlife habitats that provide essential services to the local Long Island community.” 

Creative services for the advertisements were donated to The Nature Conservancy by Crown Advertising and Marketing.  Crown Vice President and Creative Director Kerry Young said the integrated campaign includes television and radio spots, print advertising and Long Island Rail Road platform posters. 

“We were delighted to have the opportunity to work with Ms. Rossellini and The Nature Conservancy on this important project,” said Young. “Her passion for the clam restoration project and for the beauty of her adopted Long Island home waters was inspirational. That, and the extraordinary work being done by The Nature Conservancy and other organizations, made everyone involved feel personally committed to the campaign’s success.”

The campaign will start running in August in media across Long Island.

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. Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at www.nature.org.