The only independent, nonprofit news organization solely dedicated to reporting on the Adirondack Park.
This winter, when the National Weather Service reported that Champlain finally froze all the way across to Vermont on March 8, it was like hearing that a steamboat had crossed the lake: typical in the 19th century, improbable in the 21st. The lake ice officially “closed” in almost every year of the 1800s and the first half of the 1900s, but has done so only 11 times since 1990.
Loss of ice is one factor in the water temperatures in the lake, where the surface on average has warmed by 6.8 degrees Fahrenheit in August since 1964, according to the Lake Champlain Basin Program.
Among larger state grant approvals were $2.5 million for the Town of Moriah along the southwestern shore of Lake Champlain to reduce overflows at its sanitary sewer system by constructing some five miles of water collection systems, manholes, siphons and pump stations.
By Tim Rowland
The double-crested cormorant made a miraculous recovery after the ban on DDT, a pesticide that had once imperiled the bird’s existence. But while conservationists hailed the return of birds such as the bald eagle, they became increasingly wary of the collateral success represented by the cormorant.
Some parts of the world, including much of North America, outpace the global average in large part because much of the planet is covered by water and it takes more energy to warm oceans than land. That explains how the Adirondacks can be so far ahead of global change.
Lake Champlain’s Port Henry Beach in the eastern Adirondacks has reopened to swimming after it was closed for a week because of harmful algae blooms.
By Michael Virtanen Federal authorities have granted the utility operating a power dam on the Ausable River near Lake Champlain another year’s postponement on its requirement to install a fish passage system. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s decision on June 7 gives New York State Electric and Gas its sixth one-year extension. According to FERC,…
By Phil Brown
The lake sturgeon is an odd fish. It grows fast but reaches sexual maturity late. The female matures between ages 13 and 33; the male, between 12 and 20. And the females may spawn as infrequently as every nine years. Lake sturgeon exist in the Great Lakes, St. Lawrence River, and Lake Champlain. They are…
By Phil Brown
The Open Space Institute has purchased a 618-acre parcel along Lake Champlain, including 4,000 feet of shoreline, and plans to sell it to the state to be added to the forever-wild Forest Preserve. The property lies across from Schuyler Island, an undeveloped island already in the Forest Preserve. OSI bought the land, which includes Trembleau…
By Mike Lynch
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.