No one has contributed more to the wellbeing of this and surrounding communities than Bonnie June Mellon who for decades preached conservation to all who would listen.

A guardian of our water supply, our beach and our bay, Bonnie worked tirelessly to convince us and our political leaders that we must be vigilant stewards of our environment.

Her extraordinary devotion is memorialized in the local preserve bearing her name:

Weisenberg said it was Mrs. Mellon's dedication to the environmental movement that impelled the Town of Hempstead to designate 16,000 acres of wetlands for conservation purposes. Her untiring efforts were successful despite the efforts by well-connected developers to build on the wetlands and thus destroy breeding grounds for fish and plant life.

According to Rosemary Dowling, president of the Point Lookout Civic Assoc., Mrs. Mellon was also a fighter for clean water and was responsible for saving the Lloyd aquifer for Long Beach barrier island.

At the prompting of Mrs. Mellon, former Congressman Herbert Tenzer of Lawrence led a successful campaign in Congress to pass the first bill to give federal financial support to the preservation of wetlands areas."