About Us

Seatuck Staff

2009-09-23T07:26:01Z

Seatuck Staff

Above: From left to right, Nancy Sorkow, Enrico Nardone, Jane Lewis (volunteer), Brian Kelder, Peter Walsh, and Ruth Touhy (volunteer) enjoying the sun on Oak Island in 2009

Enrico G. Nardone, Esq.
Executive Director

Enrico has been the director at Seatuck since 2001. Prior to joining the organization he practiced environmental and land use law for a private law firm and worked as a staff attorney at the National Audubon Society. In his career, he has also spent time at the Georgetown Environmental Law Institute and The Wilderness Society. Enrico is the author of South Bay Nature Notes, a regular column on nature and the environment published in the monthly Great South Bay Magazine. He lives in Baldwin with his wife and two young daughters.

Peter Walsh
Education Director

Peter joined Seatuck as the Education Coordinator in the Spring of 2007. Prior to coming on board he worked for Western Suffolk BOCES, where he ran the Outdoor Learning Lab at Sunken Meadow State Park for the past seven years. Peter also spent many years working as a naturalist for Nassau BOCES outdoor education department. He serves on the Board of Directors for Trips For Kids Metro New York, a not-for-profit organization that exposes children to the outdoors by taking them on mountain bike trips. Peter lives in Islip with his wife and two young daughters.

Brian Kelder
Fisheries Scientist / Environmental Defense Fund Puleston Fellow

Brian is the first-ever EDF Puleston Fellow at Seatuck, a position created through a partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund. Brian, who hails from the Catskills region, holds degrees from Cornell University and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. He has worked on and studied a broad range of fisheries issues, including salmon recovery in the Pacific Northwest, walleye spawning habitats in the Great Lakes region, and sturgeon populations in the Hudson River. His title is the EDF Puleston Fellow at Seatuck in honor of legendary Long Island naturalist and EDF founder, Dennis Puleston. He and his wife live in Islip.

Stephanie DerGarabedian

Development Director

Stephanie joined Seatuck as the Development Director in the fall of 2009. Prior to coming on board she worked in development and major gift fundraising for CARE, the Environmental Defense Fund and Save the Children. Stephanie, a native of Long Island, holds degrees from Colgate University and George Washington University. She lives in Island Park with her husband and three young children.

Nancy Sorkow
Operations Manager

Board of Directors

2009-09-23T07:23:26Z

Board of Directors

Officers
Richard Dahab
President

Steve Terr
Vice-President

Elizabeth Cochrane
Treasurer

Christine Costigan, Esq.
Secretary

Board Members
Zintis Buzermanis
Merry Camhi, Ph.D.
Anthony Graves
Ellen Hanzl
Kathy Krause
Robert MacKay, Ph.D.
Betsy Mayo
Annie McIntyre
Dick Milligan
Cindy Mullin
Kathleen O'Connor
Jeff Rettaliata
Mark Velapoldi

Advisors
Frederic L. Atwood, Esq.
Russell Burke, Ph.D.
William Kraft, M.D.
Linda Leuzzi
Shaibal Mitra, Ph.D.
Michelle Pittman
John Potente, D.M.D.
Preston Raynor

History of the Seatuck

2009-09-23T06:44:48Z

History of the Seatuck Environmental Association

The Seatuck Environmental Association is a not-for-profit, member-supported, 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to promoting the conservation of Long Island's wildlife and environment, through education, research and advocacy. Charles D. Webster and a host of prominent New York conservationists incorporated the organization in 1989. It was founded to continue work of the Seatuck Research Program (SRP), an un-incorporated partnership that had been formed in 1980 to conduct research on and around the Seatuck National Wildlife Refuge in Islip, New York.

The history of Seatuck and the SRP date back to 1968 when Mr. Webster's wife, Natalie Peters Webster donated her 200-acre family estate in Islip to the federal government for the creation of an "inviolate sanctuary" for birds and other wildlife. The property, which contained extensive salt marsh and grassland habitat, was eventually established as a National Wildlife Refuge under the management of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). The Websters, who retained life estates over portions of, and continued to live at the refuge, immediately began funding scientific research on the property, particularly on the conservation and management of suburban wildlife.

The research program was formalized in 1979, after Mrs. Webster's death, with the creation of the SRP, a partnership between the Peters' family trusts, FWS and the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology. The SRP went on to conduct PhD-level research on a host of subjects, including colonial nesting birds, salt marsh management, deer and raccoon populations and Lyme Disease. The group eventually came to be regarded as "Long Island's natural resources think tank."

When the the Cornell Lab of Ornithology announced in 1989 that it could no longer participate in the partnership, Mr. Webster and others founded the Seatuck Environmental Association to establish a new administrative framework for continued research. The new organization also branched into environmental education and policy work. Soon after losing its office space at the national wildlife refuge in 2002, Seatuck began working with Suffolk County to establish a nature center at the neighboring Scully Sanctuary. (See "History of the Scully Estate.") The organization moved to Scully in the Spring of 2007 and opened the Suffolk County Environmental Center on the property in April 2010.