Richard “Dick” Amper, a fierce advocate for the Long Island pine barrens, and widely regarded as the driving force behind the passage of the Pine Barrens Protection Act, died Monday at age 81.
Amper, a cofounder of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, was a familiar face in Riverhead, where the society’s offices were located. His appearance in Riverhead Town Hall filled many town officials with dread for decades.
Amper was known for his passionate, fearless and outspoken advocacy for protecting Long Island’s drinking water aquifer beneath the pine barrens.
“Mention the Pine Barrens to anyone who lives on Long Island and they’ll give you a pretty good explanation of what the Pine Barrens are and why they’re important. You’ll get a pretty thoughtful answer. That’s all about Dick Amper,” said Anthony Coates, a former Riverhead resident and longtime Amper associate and friend.
“Nobody thought much about where we got our drinking water from, until he came and educated people as to what was so important about the Pine Barrens and why we had to worry about our drinking water,” Coates said. “He had a single-minded devotion to that issue. If the Lorax spoke for the trees in Dr Seuss, Dick spoke for our most vital resource and the thing that sustained us all. He was just dogged about it— 24/7/365.”
The State Legislature approved and Governor Mario Cuomo signed the Long Island Pine Barrens Protection Act into law in 1993. The law created a state commission to implement, manage and oversee land use within the Central Pine Barrens Area. The supervisors of the towns of Riverhead, Southampton and Brookhaven — where the pine barrens are located — were three of the five commissioners that governed the commission, with representatives of the county executive and the governor seated as the other two commissioners. The commission was tasked by law with developing and adopting a land use plan, which required approval by all three towns to become effective. The legislation and the plan were controversial, especially in the Town of Riverhead, since the massive Navy property where Northrop Grumman was located, fell within the Pine Barrens region. Individual property owners opposed the plan.
Amper, in spite of his often abrasive advocacy, was highly skilled at forging unlikely alliances and creating coalitions, Coates said. He did that with the Pine Barrens, convincing Southampton business leader Buzz Schwenk to join a coalition of environmental advocates for protection of the Pine Barrens. That helped move members of the Riverhead Town Board to support the land use plan.
“I am really honored to be here today on behalf of the thousands of Long Islanders represented by what has become known as the Pine Barrens Consensus Group,” Amper told the Riverhead Town Board during a June 19, 1995 public hearing on the land use plan, according to Town Board minutes of the hearing. “In fact, we may well represent 84% of Suffolk citizens who twice voted to preserve Long Island’s pine barrens,” he said. He went on to make the case for adoption of the land use plan, arguing that it would benefit property owners and facilitate the redevelopment of the Navy property in Calverton — the site that would become known as the Enterprise Park at Calverton, or EPCAL.
At a special board meeting on June 28, 1995, the Town Board voted unanimously to approve the land use plan.
As of 2025, the Long Island Pine Barrens Protection Act has facilitated the protection of over 106,000 acres of pine barrens, including over 56,000 acres and a compatible growth area of nearly 50,000 acres, according to the Long Island Pine Barrens Society.
Amper, the son of a journalist, went to college for journalism but wound up working in public relations instead. He was skilled at attracting — and keeping — media attention. After he became a civic activist as a homeowner in Lake Panamoka in Ridge, successfully opposing a housing subdivision along the last remaining undeveloped shoreline of the lake, Amper joined his PR skills to his activism skills. Amper set his sights on preserving the Pine Barrens.
Though he was a master strategist, Amper was not one to back down from a fight and he was not shy about getting into public disputes with anyone who opposed his positions on preservation and conservation — no matter who it was or what office the person held.
As chairman of the Central Pine Barrens Commission, Peter Scully, who was then the Region One director of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, served as the governor’s representative on the commission. He often found himself in Amper’s crosshairs. Looking back, he said today, “I think we were more often aligned than not.”
Scully was employed by the Town of Brookhaven years before being tapped to head the regional DEC office. “We collaborated to advance five-acre zoning in the Central Pine Barrens. It was clearly historic at the time, and set the stage for the Pine Barrens Protection Act, which came three years later,” Scully recalled. “We were able to work cooperatively and to still disagree when it was the right time for us to disagree,” he said.
“There’s no question he kind of changed the environmental landscape in Suffolk County permanently through his advocacy for the pine barrens,” Scully said. “It’s an open question as to what the Pine Barrens would look like right now. They could be fully developed.”
Amper’s role as an environmental advocate often took on issues outside the pine barrens. He got involved in several land use battles in Riverhead Town, including a fight over development in the Route 25A corridor in Wading River. Along the way, he crossed swords with various developers and town officials.
“I would say I had a love-hate relationship with Dick Amper,” former Riverhead supervisor Sean Walter said. “And I don’t mean we loved to hate each other.”
Walter and Amper belonged to the same church, St. John the Baptist in Wading River. “He and I are both devout Roman Catholics,” Walter said. “He was very active in my church. So from a Catholic Christian standpoint, he and I were very similar, but from a private property rights standpoint, he and I disagreed.” Walter said they both knew their disagreements were “not personal.”
In addition to pushing for an update to the Wading River hamlet study during Walter’s tenure as supervisor, Amper had previously been a very active participant on the town’s citizen advisory committee for the 2003 comprehensive plan.
Coates said Amper was funny and fun to be around. There were two sides to him, “the activist Dick and the personality Dick,” he said. “What a character — you don’t come across people like him too often.”
Predeceasd by his wife Robin in 2019, Amper is survived by a brother, Tom Amper of Bellerose, and two sisters, Julie Amper of Mattituck, and Emily Amper Murphy of Texas.
A funeral Mass will take place on Wednesday, April 1 at 9:30 a.m. at St. John the Baptist Church, 1488 North Country Road, Wading River. Arrangements are in the care of Alexander-Rothwell Funeral Home in Wading River.
