The only independent, nonprofit news organization solely dedicated to reporting on the Adirondack Park.
By Phil Brown
An advocate of reintroducing the cougar to the Adirondacks will speak at the Whallonsburg Grange at 7 p.m. Thursday. Christopher Spatz, president of the Cougar Rewilding Foundation, has argued in the pages of the Explorer and elsewhere that reintroducing the cats would restore the Adirondack Park’s ecological balance. Spatz will discuss cougar biology and behavior,…
By Phil Brown
A study published in the journal Nature confirms that the disease decimating bat colonies in New York and many other states is caused by a fungus known as Geomyces destructans. Known as white-nose syndrome, the disease causes lesions on the bats’ skin and a white growth on their muzzles. Since its discovery in a cave…
A recent Viewpoint [July/August 2011] alleged that cougars could not survive today in the Adirondack Park primarily because of the road density here. Yet cougars today have a permanent presence in the suburbs of Los Angeles, San Diego, and Denver, seemingly oblivious to road-density factors many times that in the Adirondacks. My position and that…
Two recent letters to the editor, one from a writer in Rosendale and the second from a writer in California, urge the reintroduction of cougars into the Adirondacks, one claiming that it would “help forests” and the second apparently positing that it’s a good idea simply because “cougars and people can coexist” and that “conflicts…
By Phil Brown
The wild cougar that journeyed some 1,800 miles from South Dakota to Connecticut passed through the Adirondacks in 2010, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Cindy Eggleston spotted a cougar in her backyard in the town of Lake George on December 16. The next day, her husband, David Eggleston, who is a retired…
By Phil Brown
You may have read about the cougar that was killed when struck by a car in Milford, Connecticut, in June. There was a lot of speculation about where it came from. Was it a wild cougar? Was it an escaped or released pet? The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection announced today that a…
Mountain lions have permanent populations in a majority of the land area of California—pretty much anywhere there are scrub or trees and deer. The Santa Monica Mountains, which are in large part in Los Angeles, have a population of twenty-plus lions and growing. Conflicts with humans are very rare. These lions are not transients. They live…
By Phil Brown Several years ago, the Defenders of Wildlife abandoned a campaign to reintroduce gray wolves to the Adirondacks after a study suggested that the region’s original canid was the red wolf, not the gray. Now a new study of canid genetics—billed as the most thorough of its kind—suggests that…
By Phil Brown
Every spring, the state Department of Environmental Conservation closes routes on popular rock-climbing cliffs where peregrine falcons are known to nest. Once it’s determined exactly where the falcons are nesting, some routes are reopened. Recently, DEC biologist Joe Racette said it has been confirmed that falcons are nesting on the Nose on Poke-o-Moonshine Mountain. As…
Scientists see wild corridors as essential for the long-term health of wildlife and plants. By Erika Schielke Once extirpated from the region, moose began trickling back to the Adirondacks in the 1980s and now number around eight hundred. It’s thought that they migrated here from Vermont or Ontario. “They did come in from somewhere. Where…