EDITORIAL: Keep Plum Island wild, but with jobs

There are bigger and much more friendly critters on Plum Island than the nasty microbes under the microscopes. So the island's much-debated future should save some habitat for them and for the humans who love nature.

But the way things have been going for the 843-acre island off Orient, it may be tougher to come up with a plan for the 80-plus acres serving the Plum Island Animal Disease Center than to find a way to turn the rest of the island into a refuge.

For years, the center has been studying threats to animals, such as foot-and-mouth disease. But the federal government decided to build a new facility in Kansas to do that work, plus the much more dangerous research on pathogens that can jump from animals to humans.

Then the GAO found that an escape of foot-and-mouth in livestock-rich Kansas could have a $1-billion impact on the economy. Now that project is stuck in neutral. But the sale of Plum Island, mandated by Congress to help defray the cost of the Kansas lab, is roaring ahead. A hearing on an environmental study of sale or no-sale is set for May 20 in Greenport.

Meanwhile, environmental groups want to make most of the island a refuge for everything from the piping plover to seals. That refuge, to be open to the public - perhaps combined with a more job-producing use of the part of the island where the labs are located - makes more sense than selling it outright for development. hN