[1] For many years, activists and locals have struggled to ensure that these marshlands and wetlands were properly preserved in their natural state by preventing development in the region.
[3] The Great Neck Estates Village Board paid $400,000 for 53 acres of marshland in Nassau County, bordering Udalls Cove in March 1967.
[3] On May 12, 1970, the first meeting of the newly formed Mayor's Committee on the Environment was held in the Blue Room of City Hall: Aurora Gareiss was a charter member.
[3] An ecological evaluation of Udalls Cove was conducted on August 21, 1970, after the City Commissioner of Parks made a request to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).
[5] In the Daily News article entitled Planners Expected to Approve a Wetland Park, around 50% of these productive marshlands have already been destroyed by man's encroachments or interference into these natural resources.
[2] The writer of the article From Here to Eternity (also a part of the Aurora Gareiss Collection at the Queens Borough Public Library) has noted how "Fifteen dump trucks stood ready to 'improve' the landscape.
[7] In 1970, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall, in response to environmental damages and dumping, stated "All too often this is simply because public conscience hasn't been given the basic ecological understanding so necessary to selection of the right alternative.
[8] In the article/ letter, "Notes About Udalls Cove," the writer (Ralph Kumhi) explains how development is a dangerous and destructive element that ignores the benefits of nature.
"[10] According to John W. Kominski in his Letter - Audubon Magazine, found at the Queens Borough Public Library's collection, the wetlands of Udalls Cove were described as "not only the natural habitat of muskrats, egrets, and the Great Blue Heron; They are also part of the complex biological system which insures human survival.
"[2] He further explains that the unique elements found within salt marshes like those in Udalls Cove/Little Neck Bay provide astonishing amounts of nutrients, which sustain a diversity of marine plants and animals that populate such this area.
[2] In John Toscano's article Planners Expected to Approve a Wetland Park, Aurora Gareiss stated that Udalls Cove was "still full of fish and wild life which must be preserved and defended against further development and thus from further destruction.
[11] Another resource, a newspaper entitled Revolutions Stand Up for Swamp, states how William Brooks, a teacher at Elmont High School, denotes that the marsh feeds 20,000 ducks of Little Neck Bay, and that a person can witness the movements of egrets, herons, Canada geese, marsh wrens, pheasants, possums and other such animals on a quiet afternoon.
[13] In Charlotte Ames' 1970 article, Queens youths have made it their responsibility to understand the beauty and usefulness of Udalls Cove and alerted residents within Douglaston and Great Neck Estates to the urgency of saving this natural marshland.
These flyers emphasized and detailed that 500 million pounds of the nation's food fish are sustained by the food resources of tidal marshes like those of Udalls Cove; 2) Kevin Wolfe, a 16-year-old, persuaded an unidentified adult to buy $900 worth of Great Neck Estates by the Great Neck Estates Marshland Preservation Committee.
[15] One such success was how a Douglaston area citizens' group marched with hundreds of supporters in February 1971 to the marshes of Udalls Cove in Little Neck Bay.
[15] Back in 1972, Queens Borough President Manes asked the City Planning Commission to approve the creation of a 30-acre "wetland park" in the Douglaston-Little Neck area: this project included Udalls Cove.
[20] According to environmental groups, the land is an essential component in the preservation of the Udalls Cove ravine, which is under the protection of the 1973 Tidal Wetlands Act.
[20] Aurora Gareiss wrote a letter to friends and members of her committee informing them that the Udalls Cove Wildlife Sanctuary acquisitions were finally continuing again.