Box turtles, black ducks, and bumblebees are a few of the animals expected to suffer catastrophic declines in New York within 10 years unless drastic measures are taken, according to a state report that was just released.

In all, 186 mammals, birds, fish, shellfish, and amphibians were described as likely to drop to critical levels unless urgent conservation action is taken. In addition, an equal number of species was listed as expected to see significant declines by 2025.

The report, released Dec. 23, was prepared by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation and the Cornell University Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. It contains many species already considered endangered or threatened in the state, but others, such as the American eel, that are of newer concern.

“Ten years is not enough time,” Frank Quevedo, the director of the South Fork Natural History Museum in Bridgehampton, said. Steps should have been taken to protect the listed species 10 to 15 years ago, he said. “They are now in crisis mode. The damage is done.”

On the list as having the highest priority for immediate protection lest they become extinct in New York are such birds as the barn owl, piping plover, eastern meadowlark, black skimmer, and whippoorwill. Among land mammals are the New England cottontail rabbit and two bat species. Amphibians and reptiles included are the blue-spotted salamander, Atlantic leopard frog, and the eastern hog-nosed snake.

Freshwater and marine life also appeared to be deeply in trouble, with such South Fork-familiar species as bay scallop, horseshoe crab, lobster, winter flounder, pipefish, sea horse, and shad among them.

“The vast majority of these animals are in trouble because of habitat loss,” Bob DeLuca, the president of the Group for the East End, said. “The chilling part is that it is a very big list.”

Oceangoing animals, including white, thresher, dusky, and porbeagle sharks; blue, fin, right, sei, and sperm whales, and harbor porpoise are on the urgent-action list as well.

Mr. DeLuca said that the inclusion of the black duck among the 186 species of urgent concern was a bellwether. “The black duck was ubiquitous.” Like the passenger pigeon, “it used to blackout the sky,” he said. It has experienced declines since the 1970s, he said, due to the draining of upstate freshwater wetlands and loss of wintering grounds on Long Island. Another reason could be its increasing hybridization with mallards.

There were other species on the list that Mr. DeLuca said might also come as a surprise, such as the brown thrasher, a songbird dependent on a thick woodland understory to lay its eggs, and the bob white quail, which has seen an approximately 85-percent decline from its peak.

In a press statement, Joe Martens, the D.E.C. commissioner, said the department was “working to identify and eliminate threats such as habitat loss and fragmentation, pollution, and invasive species to maintain healthy and balanced ecosystems, which are critical in maintaining our state’s fish and wildlife resources.”

In all, 594 species were looked at by the researchers, with 372 in need of some kind of human intervention. The report identified 111 animals for which more research is necessary or that may be highly vulnerable to population losses as a result of environmental changes. Link to the report.

For Mr. DeLuca, the question was whether the D.E.C. had the funding and staff to meet the challenge. The agency has been “substantially hammered,” he said, by budget cuts in recent years. “In this region in particular it cannot function as a true regulatory agency.”  

“The operational piece is what’s missing, and that piece is dependent on money,” he said. It is widely believed by conservationists like himself that the D.E.C. is not even moderately up to the challenge, he said.

A report from Thomas DiNaopli, the state comptroller, states that on an inflation-adjusted basis, the department’s funding fell by 22 percent between 2004 and 2014. Its work force dropped by more than 10 percent during the same period.

The D.E.C.’s Division of Fish, Wildlife, and Marine Resources is most directly responsible for New York’s animals and natural places. Its staff fell about 5 percent in the last decade. In addition, Mr. DiNapoli reported that more than $500 million from the state’s Environmental Protection Fund has been diverted by lawmakers for other purposes since it was established in 1993. None of the money has been repaid.

 Mr. DeLuca said that the potential value of the species list that was just released was twofold. It could help local officials make decisions about land purchases and development proposals. And it could perhaps lead to greater funding in the state budget. “Reports like this shake the tree,” he said.

Among the 186 animals in the report expected to drop in numbers but that do not  risk elimination in the state are a veritable who’s who of the remaining natural world, including many upland bird, waterfowl, and lake and marine species. These include the bald eagle, loon, laughing gull, and scarlet tanager, as well as the Atlantic silverside, basking shark, blue mussel, and blue-claw crab.

Mr. Quevedo said that every animal considered of greatest concern in the report should be listed as endangered now. That way, he said, they and their habitats would be protected.

Both Mr. DeLuca and Mr. Quevedo said the list should be looked at in terms of habitats, not simply as isolated species. Preserving and increasing native grasslands could help save perhaps 20 of the listed birds on Long Island, for example, Mr. Deluca said.

Another key is marine eelgrass. “A lot of the fish and shellfish on the list depend on that for nursery habitat,” Mr. Quevedo said. Other issues came from invasive species. The snapping turtle, for example, has been displaced in some South Fork ponds by territorial red-eared slider turtles let go by pet owners.

There were 18 species that had been considered at risk in a similar 2005 state report that showed improvement. These included the American brant, osprey, and river otter.

Some 55 species considered for the new report, from the Canada lynx and eastern cougar to a number of moths and some insects with no common names, were found to have no population in the state.

“We need to educate people about the connection we have to the natural world,” Mr. Quevedo said. “This list is a reflection of how fragile it is and how sensitive it is. There is an imbalance,” he said.

 

 

It’s the new year and the East End is looking good. The days get longer by a minute or two every 24 hours. As Shelley wrote, when winter comes, spring can’t be far behind.

In my mind, Montauk is the biggest jewel in the South Fork’s tiara. It has more open space per capita than any other hamlet or village on Long Island. It has a variety of habitats and floral associations, including both southern and northern elements. It has more waterfowl than you can shake a stick at, and they all preoccupy locals and tourists who observe and study them.

Environmentalism and nature lovers are rampant. Montauk has always been a place of wonder, even before the first colonists settled there. There is hardly a soul among the populace who doesn’t love the Atlantic Ocean and its miles of bluffs, doesn’t love the dunes, doesn’t love the Point, with its historic Lighthouse, doesn’t love Hither Woods, Block Island Sound, the Montauk Moorlands, doesn’t love Block Island Sound, Fort Pond Bay, and all of the ponds and streams.

One of the reasons Montauk’s natural riches are so well cared for are the many governmental workers and volunteer groups and their members who diligently look after it. Chief among them is one of the oldest groups, the Concerned Citizens of Montauk, but that group is not alone. The state and county park managers and personnel take very good care of their domain; East Hampton Town does likewise. The Nature Conservancy, the Group of the East End, the Peconic Baykeeper organization, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and Brownies, as well as fishermen groups all look out for the birds and the bees, the seals, the whales, and the porpoises. When something goes wrong, a silent alarm rings and someone or some group is out to right the ship.

One of the newest groups, and perhaps the least known outside of Montauk, is one of the of the most active. Its focus is Montauk’s lands and waters, its flora and fauna. It goes by the name Third House Nature Center, owing to its original focus on the Suffolk County parklands where the historic Third House still stands. It was started by a longstanding member of C.C.O.M., the late Carol Morrison, with help from Jay Schneiderman, our county legislator, and Stephanie Krusa, in 1992. Carol was president until she died halfway through the first decade of the new millennium. Stephanie has been active throughout, and for the last several years has been the group’s secretary.

The group’s mission from the very beginning has been environmental education practiced in the field and in meeting rooms, much of it hands-on and constructive, such as putting up birdhouses, keeping an eye on water quality, and studying and elucidating the progression of the seasons from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31 each year.

In 2003 the group moved into the Fort Pond House, purchased by the town, and began offering workshops, classes, and lectures from a fixed base. Since 2001, it has maintained a busy spring and fall schedule of field trips and outdoor classes for Montauk School students in grade three and up. After Carol passed on, Ed Johann, one of the many young naturalists to spring from Art Cooley’s Bellport High School classroom, who had settled in Montauk, joined the group and eventually became its president. Vicki Bustamante is the board’s vice president.

Third House Nature Center was firmly ensconced in the Fort Pond House, sailing along and carrying out its mandate in a very professional way, when all of a sudden it was hit with a major stumbling block. In 2010, shortly after the new town supervisor, Bill Wilkinson, was sworn in, he had the house inspected and it was declared unsafe, the center was asked to vacate, i.e., was kicked out, and shortly afterward the house and parcel were put up for sale along with several other town properties.

The group’s board members and several Montauk citizens, as well as C.C.O.M., were dumbfounded! But they did exactly the right thing; rather than give in and disband, the group, together with C.C.O.M., hired an attorney and sued the supervisor. The suit carried on for Mr. Wilkinson’s four years in office and before he left, in 2013, the suit was dropped. The town kept the Fort Pond House and began fixing it up. Soon the Third House Nature Center and other groups will be able to use it in the interest of Montauk.

They could have folded, but while fighting the town, those at the nature center kept going, and not only that, they expanded their outdoor programs. In 2012 they took on supervising the internships for East Hampton High School seniors, which had been sponsored for the past 15 years by the East Hampton Garden Club. The interns at first were under the aegis of East Hampton’s Natural Resources Department, but upon the termination of its director were shuttled over to the Third House group. In 2012 there were two interns in the Montauk program, in 2013 three, and this past year the number had climbed to four. The interns keep to regular schedules and, if they finish successfully, are given a hefty grant by the Garden Club toward the cost of their college education.

Each year the interns focus on a particular aspect of Montauk’s environment. Throughout the fall of 2014, the interns and their Third House teachers have been working collaboratively on understanding the ecology of Big Reed Pond, situated east of Lake Montauk in the county park. They have been studying the water quality and pond height, its bottom, the flora in and around the pond, and its fish and invertebrates, as well as following changes in populations over the course of September, October, November, and December, based on information gathered in the spring by the previous year’s interns.

One of those, Serena Mattiauda, began to study the plants used by the Montauketts when they occupied the land — plants that were used not only for food, but also for healing and treating other life functions. She became so interested in Native American plants and their uses that she is considering changing her major in college to focus on that area, which often goes by the name “ethnobotany.”

Larry Penny can be reached at [email protected].

Update, Jan. 2, 8 p.m.: Police have released the name of the man who was found dead in his driveway in Springs on New Year's Day. 

Alfred C. Hines, who was 93, was found in his driveway at 111 Isle of Wight Road on Thursday at about 3:40 p.m., East Hampton Town Police Detective Sgt. Greg Schaefer said on Friday night. A passer-by discovered the man's body. 

"Preliminary investigation indicates that Hines may have experienced a medical event in his driveway earlier in the day," Detective Schaefer said. No foul play is suspected, he added. 

Originally, Jan. 1, 7:11 p.m.: East Hampton Town police are investigating the death of an elderly man who was found dead in his driveway on Isle of Wight Road in Springs on Thursday afternoon.

The man, whose name and age have not yet been released by police, likely died of natural causes, Lt. A.J. McGuire said. However, because his death was not witnessed by anyone, detectives are investigating. 

Police received a call from someone who was doing work in the area and noticed the man's body around 3:30 p.m. It was unclear how long the man had been dead, but an ambulance was never summoned. 

Check back for more information as it becomes available.

A hydrogeologist who reviewed the results of recent tests of soil and groundwater around several of the utility poles installed by PSEG Long Island in East Hampton says that there is indeed cause for concern about toxic chemicals in the groundwater.

Commissioned by East Hampton Town and Village, the FPM Group, an engineering and environmental science firm, tested the soil and groundwater around three of the newly installed poles, which carry high-voltage electric lines from East Hampton Village to Amagansett.

Long Island Businesses for Responsible Energy, or LIBFRE, a citizens group, had pressed the municipalities to conduct the tests based on concerns about pentachlorophenol, or penta, a chemical used to treat the utility poles.

 While the FPM analysis reported penta in the soil around the poles but no penta in the groundwater, Peter Dermody of Dermody Consulting, hired by LIBFRE to review the test results, said that the samples do show the presence of semi-volatile organic compounds, some of which are suspected to be cancer-causing, in the water and in the soil.

“It appears that these chemicals are components of the penta formulation used to treat the poles,” Mr. Dermody wrote in his own recent report. Five of them, he said, appeared at concentrations up to 48 times higher than the standards set by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation for groundwater.

“Therefore, the present information indicates that the groundwater has been contaminated by carcinogenic chemicals and that contamination is expected to continue as more S.V.O.C.s migrate downward in the soil column and reach the water table. Unless the penta-treated poles are removed, this contamination will continue,” he said. “If the poles remain, they will continue to leach toxic chemicals to the soil and groundwater for many years, and toxic vapors will continue to off-gas from the poles’ surfaces.”

The FPM Group’s report on the results of the sampling concluded that pentachlorophenol’s “strong tendency to absorb to soil significantly reduces” the amount of the chemical that might dissolve into stormwater in the soil and enter the water table, but acknowledged that over time that could occur.

The semi-volatile organic chemicals found in the water, that report said, could have resulted from the water’s turbidity and might not represent actual levels of the chemicals dissolved in the groundwater.

Mr. Dermody said that while the FPM consultants reported that penta in soil may photodegrade over time, that will not occur in the deeper levels of soil where “the penta will persist for very long periods of time.” Levels of the chemical in the soil were “extremely high,” he said. “The penta in the soil has, from the day the poles were installed to present, presented a significant potential health hazard to any person or pet that comes in contact with the contaminated soil or has touched any of these new poles, or has inhaled the penta odors which still remain in the vicinity of many poles.”

He recommended removal of the contaminated soil around the poles, and fencing and warning signs to prevent casual contact with the poles or soil. Penta has been “banned for all uses in 26 countries and has been banned for nearly all uses in the United States,” Mr. Dermody said in his report.

Members of LIBFRE have called for warning signs on each of the poles, and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle have proposed a law banning penta-coated utility poles and a requirement for warning signs on those that exist.

LIBFRE has filed a class-action lawsuit against PSEG and the Long Island Power Authority, citing adverse effects of the 267 new poles carrying high-voltage wires on the health, safety, environment, and property values of East Hampton residents.

In a press release, LIBFRE said that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s recently articulated stance against fracking rested on a need for further investigation as to its effect on human health and the environment. In the case of penta, the group said, the science review committee of the United Nations recently passed a resolution that called for ending its use.

“Even if there is cleanup of the soil around the poles, the penta will continue to leach from the poles. Therefore, there is only one permanent solution: removal of the penta-treated poles,” the release said.

The Springs Fire Department kicked off its 50th anniversary year with a ceremony on New Year’s Day.

Chief David King, who was sworn in as the leader of the department that day, taking over from Ben Miller, said each of the 89 members received commemorative anniversary badges — though 10 of them ran out in their Class A uniforms to fight fires in East Hampton.

Steven Scholl moved up to first assistant chief, and Peter Grimes was made second assistant chief.

The four charter members still serving were honored with proclamations from the town, county, and state. Joe Fitzgerald, Bruce Baldwin, Mike Collins, and East Hampton Town Councilman Fred Overton helped form the department in 1965 with 54 members. Mr. Fitzgerald, the department’s oldest member at 87 and a former fire chief, remains active in the fire police, Chief King said.

The charter members decided they wanted their own department for an area that was once covered by the East Hampton Fire Department as a fire protection district.

An anniversary parade is being planned for Sept. 19. The department is also in the process of putting a commemorative rock with a plaque at the site of its first firehouse, an old dairy barn on Hog Creek Road that belonged to George Sid Miller. It is still standing. Without a meeting space at first, firefighters would gather at Ashawagh Hall. They didn’t move to the current firehouse until 1967, the same year of the department’s first working structure fire at the Quackenbush house on Woodbine Drive.

Chief King, himself a 41-year member, said it felt special to be the chief during this milestone year. “I have a unique perspective because I can remember the night of the first fire,” he said, recalling his late father, Clarence (Kelly) King Jr., who joined a month after the department was founded and served for 34 years, and his brother, Kelly King, now going on his 49th year, running out the door. “It means a lot.”

The East Hampton Town Board began a new year on Tuesday, authorizing several new appointments.

Kathleen Cunningham, by unanimous vote, will join the town planning board for a seven-year term through 2021. Ms. Cunningham, director of the Village Preservation Society of East Hampton, is a member of the town’s airport advisory committee and also serves on a town business committee. A founder of the Quiet Skies Coalition, which advocates for the reduction of noise from the East Hampton Airport, she has also been key to other community efforts such as the Five Town Rural Transit initiative to promote public transportation on the East End.

Nancy Keeshan, who was named to the planning board in 2010 to fill John Lycke’s unexpired term, which ran through 2014, was appointed to fill out the rest of Patrick Schutte’s term, which expires at the end of 2018. Mr. Schutte has stepped down from the board.

John Whelan, who served out the remainder of Alex Walter’s term on the Zoning Board of Appeals through 2014, was appointed to a five-year term of his own on that board, and was designated its chairman. Mr. Walter withdrew from the Z.B.A. in April to become executive assistant to East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell.

Two new members will sit on the town’s architectural review board. Edward Krug will serve the remainder of Rossetti Perchik’s term, through 2017, and Peter Michael Gumpel will serve a five-year term through 2019.

In a State of the Town address on Tuesday, Mr. Cantwell provided a look back at 2014 and outlined some goals for this year, among them the adoption of “meaningful controls” at the airport to limit noise, local laws to increase penalties for zoning and town code violations and to strengthen the enforcement of housing laws, and a water quality protection program to replace failing septic systems in harbor protection areas.

Other items on the list for 2015, the supervisor said, are plans for a new community center to replace the aging senior citizen center building in East Hampton; updating the town comprehensive plan to include hamlet studies of Springs, Amagansett, Montauk, and Wainscott; a business needs study, and a coastal resiliency plan. The town board also intends to adopt better zoning rules regarding property setbacks in business zones along the Montauk Highway “to preclude another planning mistake like the Wainscott Home Goods store,” he said.

Also, the board will try to regulate the growing number of nightclubs in the town and resolve the thorny issue of zoning regulations governing the parking of commercial trucks, “in order to “limit commercialization in residential areas,” said Mr. Cantwell, “in a fair and reasonable way.”

Also this year, he said, town officials should “continue to press every level of government” to get PSEG Long Island to bury its new power transmission lines, and should consider creating a town manager’s office to improve government “efficiency and effectiveness.”

“East Hampton must be a full participant in the long-term plan of Southampton Hospital,” said Mr. Cantwell, a tenet asserted in a senior citizens needs study presented recently to the board. The need of residents for health care services within the town must be recognized, he said.

The supervisor thanked his fellow board members for working together cooperatively and establishing “civil discourse at town board meetings.”

“Civility is the glue that holds us together as a democracy and as a community, and it allows all of us to participate in a reasonable dialogue,” he said.

In 2014, Mr. Cantwell said, the board made “major efforts” in environmental protection, including the purchase with the community preservation fund of 66 properties totaling 133 acres, more such transactions “than ever before in a single year.”

In addition, he reported, the town secured almost $10 million in federal funding to buy and “sterilize” properties within the Lazy Point floodplain; received $270,000 in state grants to promote energy conservation and green technology; established an “ambitious goal to make East Hampton energy-independent;” sought out solar energy production here through private sector companies and a Long Island Power Authority program, and adopted a ban on single-use plastic bags.

A $250,000 grant will underwrite development of a plan to address coastal erosion and storms, Mr. Cantwell said, and the town has been working with the Army Corps of Engineers on its downtown Montauk beach-protection project, securing an agreement with the county as a partner in the maintenance costs of the project while “appealing the need for a full beach-stabilization project to be completed under the Fire Island to Montauk Point plan.”

Mr. Cantwell also cited improvements on the financial front, including an upgraded credit rating, better procedures and controls, a decline in total indebtedness, increasing surpluses, and taxes held below the state property tax cap. He also mentioned the closure of the town’s waste treatment plant, resulting in an annual savings of $800,000; progress on data collection regarding the airport and potential noise mitigation measures; increased coordination among town departments, resulting in better code enforcement with seven full-time ordinance officers now on staff, and improvements and repairs to town infrastructure and buildings.

“New affordable housing projects are in the works,” Mr. Cantwell said, as is funding to provide mental health services for those in need. In the last year, he said, the town board has adopted regulations governing taxis and formula chain stores, approved a new lighting law to protect dark skies “while making it simpler for businesses to comply,” and revised the law addressing permits for large gatherings “to cut out abuses by commercial interests using public property.”

The supervisor concluded his New Year remarks by thanking the people of the town for providing him and the other town board members with “encouragement and support.”

“You give us energy and reinforce our commitment to serve, and I sincerely thank you for this,” he said.

Quick thinking saved an East Hampton Village house from major damage Monday afternoon when a fire broke out in its garage after ashes were improperly disposed of there, fire officials said. 

The blaze was believed to have been caused by fireplace ashes that had been left inside a garbage container at 29 Pondview Lane, East Hampton Fire Chief Richard Osterberg Jr. said. "Somebody in the residence hit it with a fire extinguisher," he said, adding that a village police officer, who was the first to arrive after the 12:15 p.m. call, also used a fire extinguisher to fully douse the fire, which had spread to a wall.

The East Hampton Fire Department wet down the area and checked for pockets of fire behind the wall, but there was none, Chief Osterberg said. The East Hampton Village fire marshal was called to investigate. 

"Had the garage not been finished or if this was at 1 in the morning, this would have been a very different story," the chief said. A smoke detector alerted those in the house to the fire. 

He said a cleaning crew had recently put the ashes in the garbage. "You should always put them in a metal bucket. Have a can designated for fireplace ashes," Chief Osterberg said. He also recommended soaking them with water as a precaution. "Never, ever put them in the garbage until you are sure they are out."

Chief Osterberg also said this fire shows why all homeowners should have fire extinguishers on hand. "A little two-and-a-half-pound extinguisher can save your house." 

A Sagaponack man accused of trying to burn down a $34 million Bridgehampton house in April is facing more charges. A grand jury indicted David Osiecki on Dec. 15 for allegedly committing the same act at a Patchogue bar five months earlier, Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas J. Spota’s office announced Monday.

Mr. Osiecki, 65, set fire to Off Key Tiki Bar on Baker Place in Patchogue late last year, the D.A.’s office said. “An investigation found that Osiecki, after an argument with the owner of the establishment, used his cigar to start a decorative bale of hay afire after the bar closed on Nov. 3, 2013. No one was injured and the fire caused major damage to the building,” Robert Clifford, a spokesman for Mr. Spota, said in an email Monday.

Indicted on a third-degree arson charge, Mr. Osiecki pleaded not guilty. Acting State Supreme Court Justice Fernando Camacho, seated in Central Islip, ordered Mr. Osiecki held without the possibility of bail.

Mr. Osiecki is already being held at the county jail in lieu of $250,000 cash bail since his arrest on felony arson just hours after the fire in Bridgehampton on April 19.

He allegedly confessed to setting the blaze, which caused severe damage to a Dune Road house owned by Ziel Feldman, an acquaintance. Southampton Town Justice Andrea H. Schiavoni, whom he had initially appeared before, was concerned that Mr. Osiecki did not understand what was going on during his arraignment and ordered a psychiatric evaluation. Doctors found him mentally unfit to stand trial.

Such a determination, according to his then-attorney, Edward Burke Jr., meant that once Mr. Osiecki was indicted by a grand jury he would be turned over to the state for treatment. If at any point he was found competent, the legal process would resume.

He was not indicted until Oct. 2, and the case was transferred to county court. Justice Camacho ordered a new psychiatric examination. On Nov. 13, Justice Camacho was told that Mr. Osiecki was now competent to understand the proceedings, and the legal process once again moved forward.

All along, Suffolk County police had held in abeyance their investigation of the Patchogue fire. Once Mr. Osiecki’s compentency was clarified, the matter was brought before a grand jury.

Mr. Clifford’s statement made clear that while he has been found competent to stand trial, that would not prevent a defense of insanity at the time of the fires. “The finding does not preclude further examination of the defendant to determine whether he was suffering from mental disease or defect at the time of the commission of the crimes,” he said. Mr. Osiecki will be back before Justice Camacho on Feb. 6.

You've heard the one about firefighters rescuing a cat from a tree, but how about a bird? Well, here's something different.

Southampton Fire Department volunteers helped wildlife rescuers free a hawk from 35 feet up in a tree in Water Mill on Monday night. Bette Lou Fletcher of Sag Harbor, a volunteer with the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center in Hampton Bays, said the Cooper's hawk, a medium-sized hawk often seen in the area, was found hanging upside down.

Bob Rossetti, an employee at a beverage distributor on Montauk Highway, was closing up for the night and heard an animal in distress, Ms. Fletcher said. "He spent some time trying to find the source," she said. He spotted the upside-down bird in the branches of a tree on private property next to the shopping complex and called Southampton Town police.

Officer Steve Frankenbach responded and saw that the hawk was "very much alive." He called the wildlife center for assistance and was put in touch with Ms. Fletcher, a retired Suffolk County police detective who has been a wildlife volunteer for three years. "I told him, 'There's no way I have the equipment to get 35 feet up the tree,' " she said. The officer called the Fire Department, and Chris Brenner, the second assistant fire chief, brought in a ladder truck that has a bucket at the end.

"We rendezvoused in the parking lot behind the post office" about how to get access to the tree on the neighboring property, Ms. Fletcher said. No one was home at the time.

"When I got there, the hawk wasn't moving, but we proceeded because it was recently alive and it could have been unconscious and in shock," she said.

The ladder was extended not only up 35 feet, but laterally about 35 to 40 feet over a fence and into the yard in order to get to the hawk. A few branches had to be cut down. "It was quite the maneuver," Ms. Fletcher said. As the firefighters got close to the bird, they found that it had already died, but they cut the branch it was caught on and brought the bird down.

Though wildlife rescuers occasionally see birds, particularly waterfowl, wrapped up in discarded fishing line, they found none attached to the hawk. It looked as if it had gotten its foot tangled in the branch and broken its leg, she said. Even if they had been able to get to the bird while it was still alive, it would have had to be euthanized because of the injury, she added.

While the outcome was unfortunate, Ms. Fletcher said it was heartwarming to see so many people come together for the rescue. While the animal rescue center has had other instances of tangled birds getting stuck in trees, as strange as that sounds, "I've never seen the Fire Department come out and help get it down."

When Ken Dodge graduated from the physician assistant program at Stony Brook University — a member of the program’s first graduating class in 1973 —the job title was a new one and the concept was relatively unknown. “Nobody knew what we were, what we could do. Every hospital we went to for training was a training for them as well as us,” he said. Forty-one and a half years later, as he retires from the field, not only has the concept been embraced, but people are often more familiar with the physician assistants at their doctors’ offices than they are with the physicians.

While many among his legions of patients call him Dr. Dodge, he comes instead from a profession borne of a desire to utilize the skills of hospital corpsmen like himself, people who had returned from Vietnam with considerable on-the-job experience. He and other early entrants into the profession were a solution to a problem in American health care at the time — a shortage of physicians. “A good triage officer is what a physician assistant is,” he said.

The first physician assistant program started at Duke University in 1965. Stony Brook’s, at what was then called the School of Allied Health Professionals, began six years later with a class of 17, including Mr. Dodge and half a dozen others with military experience.

“I got into the field by accident,” he said two weeks ago at the Montauk office of Meeting House Lane Medical Associates, as he prepared for his Dec. 31 retirement. “In 1964 I tried to get into the Air Force. I wanted to get into firematics and the crash crew.” He went to New York City to get all his physicals, but “the doctor flunked me,” he said.

Not long after that, he got his draft notice. Not wanting to go into the Army, he volunteered for the Navy and became a corpsman with the Fleet Marine Force, serving two tours in Vietnam. Back home in Bay Shore after his discharge, he was working for Sears, married, and about to become a father when he saw an article on the Stony Brook program. “It was one of those things they call life-changing moments. The first life-changing moment was when that doc turned me down and kicked me out from the Air Force.”

He wasn’t interested in becoming a nurse, and medical school was too much of a commitment. “To get into medical school, you had to have a four-year degree. I would have had two and a half more years of schooling before I could even apply, and with a kid on the way, this seemed to be a good alternative.”

His first job out of the program was with the East Hampton Medical Group under Dr. Robert Sucsy. “I believe I was the first physician assistant working in a private practice on Long Island,” he said. Two months before he was hired, two of the three family practitioners in the East Hampton Medical Group retired.

“We did emergency medicine,” he said. “Back then, there weren’t even emergency room doctors at the hospital. An ambulance brought patients to the medical center and some of us in the medical group would just go out to the ambulance and take a look at the patient. Sometimes they would be wheeled into the office.” When the group broke up around 1980, he moved on to work with Dr. Raymond Medler doing internal medicine.

After that he worked for 20 years with Dr. Michael Israel in East Hampton, and finally with Dr. Kristy Chen in Noyac, before joining Dr. Anthony Knott in Montauk. (Dr. Knott left the practice last month.) Many patients have followed him from East Hampton to Sag Harbor to Montauk.

“I love my patient population. It’s been a pleasure seeing people and being able to do it. I’ll miss them. . . . A big part of why my patients like me, I like to think that almost all of the time I can sit there and talk to them a bit. . . . The business part of medicine is sort of interfering with that. The push is to see more, move more patients in less time. It cuts into the time to empathize, explain . . . console them. . . . It’s not the era of managed care, it’s the era of mismanaged care.”

Mr. Dodge did house calls until just a few years ago, but they were “time-intensive” and hard to continue with a full schedule of patients.

When he wasn’t working, he seemed never to be idle. He volunteered for almost 30 years with the East Hampton Ambulance Association, five of them as its chief. He served on the East Hampton School Board for nine years, six of them as president, coached summer soccer for 25 years, and was a scoutmaster for the Boy Scouts in the late 1980s. He also worked briefly for the Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s office in the early 1980s, handling “basic stuff” on the South Fork.

At home, he raised four children, divorced, then remarried, adding five stepchildren to the family. “Now I’ve got nine kids, plus nine grandchildren, eight of them within two miles of us.” His wife, Ruth Dodge, is deputy chief dispatcher for the East Hampton Town Police Department, and he proudly pointed out that she was “the first woman to get a supervisor position ever in the department.”

While he’s ready to retire — “They say when you start to think about retirement, it’s time to retire” — at an energetic 70, he hardly looks or seems ready to slow down. “In retirement I will do more fishing, clamming, stuff like that.”

“I won’t miss the business of medicine,” he said, “but the practice of medicine, it’s going to be hard to give that up.”

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Correction: The original version of this story online and in print gave Mr. Dodge's retirement date as Jan. 31. In fact, it was Dec. 31.