“Public-private partnerships” usually refer to some kind of development project. But they can also be the opposite, a form of nature preservation. That’s been a frequent occurrence in recent decades on the East End of Long Island, N.Y.
One form this has taken is a willingness of civic groups to look after properties that a government body has acquired for environmental purposes. The Southampton Trails Preservation Society (STPS), now observing its 40th year of existence, does just that on parcels that were purchased by either Suffolk County or the expansive town of Southampton.
An example is the Laurel Valley county park in the hamlet of Noyac, where the STPS has fashioned a few miles of trails (as depicted above) through a 148-acre preserve. Other than a small parking lot, the area has no public facilities, not even a trash bin. There as elsewhere in the town, STPS volunteers maintain the cleared and blazed paths, supplemented only modestly by a town contractor. (As the STPS treasurer, I can attest that the donated hours constitute the lion’s share of work.)
Laurel Valley was bought by Suffolk County in the early 1990s after a 28-estate subdivision for the property was headed off. Preservation (for species or waters protection) was happening in several other “Hamptons” locales as the 1980s second-home boom took off–a response that also entailed the birth of the STPS and other trails groups. A synergy of sorts thus permitted the saved nature also to be open to public use.
Few large properties remain eligible for prospective development on Long Island, so there won’t be many sizable new synergies of this kind. But the Paumanok Path, a 125-mile walking trail from Brookhaven town to Montauk on the eastern-most tip of the South Fork, is still a work in progress, as sections that follow roads are taken instead into woodlands as small lots are acquired. (The Paumanok trail coincides with part of the Laurel Valley circuit.) Similarly, new neighborhood trails of maybe a mile in length are being created from incremental public acquisitions. So the work of the STPS and its fellow hiking groups only grows. –May 25, 2026
Tim W. Ferguson 