The Wild Center hosted a presentation by Dr. Christina Grozinger, distinguished professor of entomology and director of the Center for Pollinator Research at Penn State University in late July. The research center is home to the largest group of pollinator researchers in the world.
Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation Opens New Location
The Adirondack Loon Center opens in Saranac Lake with more space and plans to grow. The group’s work focuses on mercury research and education of fishermen and the general public about loon protection.
DEC Working On Drone Regs For Forest Preserve
The state Department of Environmental Conservation is working on new regulations to address drone use on the Forest Preserve. Some fear the airborne devices will diminish the wild character of the Forest Preserve
Controlling Crowds In The High Peaks
DEC is relying on education and the efforts of partner groups to deal with the increasing number of hikers who have been coming to the High Peaks region.
Alewives pose challenge to Champlain salmon restoration
Scientists are trying to understand how salmon are impacted by alewives, an invasive species that has become a main source of food for salmon, a keystone predator that eats smaller fish.
Boreas dam drives debate
The Adirondack Park Agency held public hearings on Boreas Ponds at eight different locations around the state in November and December. Hundreds of people spoke, offering a potpourri of opinions. But one constant was a sea of green T-shirts bearing the slogan “I Want Wilderness.”
Bad News For Bears
Bear encounters in the backcountry and in residential areas were much more common than usual during the summer of 2016 in the Adirondack Park.
On the law’s cutting edge
Protect the Adirondacks lawsuit could clarify state constitution’s mandate against destroying trees in the Forest Preserve. By PHIL BROWN A rose is a rose is a rose, Gertrude Stein said. Defining a tree is not so simple. That question—what is a tree?—has emerged as a central issue in a long-running dispute over the construction of “community-connector” snowmobile trails in the Forest Preserve. These trails, which link hamlets, are nine feet wide (twelve feet on curves) and graded to make them smooth. Peter Bauer, executive director of Protect the Adirondacks, contends they resemble roads more than trails. Since 2013, Protect has >>More
Trails showing their age
Observers say more money is needed to repair and maintain an antiquated network of hiking routes. By MIKE LYNCH When many of the High Peaks’ trails were cut more than a century ago, the work was done by guides and hired hands. Keene Valley’s Orson “Old Mountain” Phelps created the first trail up Mount Marcy in 1861; Verplanck Colvin’s survey workers cut routes up Algonquin and Dix in the late 1800s; and Henry Van Hoevenberg developed a trail system for the Adirondack Lodge (as it was then spelled). The early trails opened up the High Peaks to more people and laid the groundwork for today’s trail system, but some of the original trails continue to >>More
The tale of a cougar
By PHILIP TERRIE On a snowy winter night in Lake George, in 2010, Cindy Eggleston’s motion-detecting light came on in her back yard. She looked out her kitchen window and saw a big cat. A really big cat. Her husband, a retired conservation officer, guessed that it must have been a bobcat. No, she said, “it had a long tail.” So he went out to look around. In the snow he found huge tracks and, eventually, a hair sample. DNA analysis subsequently showed that these hairs came from a cougar, an animal whose last proven presence in the Adirondacks had occurred over a century before. The life and death of this wandering >>More