Keene town officials and volunteers working on ways to better handle the expected overload of hikers this summer and fall are looking to learn from other popular destinations around the country.
On Monday, St. Lawrence University Professor Pete Pettingill, an expert on the subject, will present some case studies from National Parks in Keene. » Continue Reading.
DEC manages 4.6 million acres of public lands, including three million acres in the Adirondack and Catskill Forest Preserves, more than 5,000 miles of formal trails, campgrounds, day use areas, and hundreds of trailheads, boat launches, and fishing piers. » Continue Reading.
The Lake Champlain Basin Program is set to kick off their Love the Lake series by hosting Helen Nerska, Director of the Clinton County Historical Association as she presents Clinton County’s Battle for Woman Suffrage on Thursday, February 20, 2020. Nerska collaborated with several SUNY Plattsburgh students to write and publish the Clinton County Suffrage Story. » Continue Reading.
How has the Adirondack Park Agency fared under Governor Andrew Cuomo’s 2020 executive budget proposals? The question hasn’t received any media attention for obvious reasons. It’s a mini state agency, budget-wise.
With a proposed operating budget of $5 million – just .004 percent of the proposed state budget of $137 billion – APA hardly raises fiscal eyebrows. Budgeted for 54 full time staff, APA employs .03 percent of all state employees.
Yet, the Adirondack Park comprises one-fifth the acreage of New York State. It’s constitutionally protected wild lands are honored as a National Landmark and International Biosphere Reserve. It’s subject to one of the country’s earliest and largest regional land use planning laws. But the Park has just one legislatively authorized planning agency, the APA, congruent with all six-million acres. » Continue Reading.
A new book about Stillwater Fire Tower will soon be available in local stores. Stillwater Fire Tower, A Centennial History … and Earlier (2019, Self-Published) by James Fox, recounts how it came to life as a shiny steel tower in 1919 when fire observers and forest rangers helped protect our forests from the summit. The tower closed and was partially dismantled in 1988.
Rehab of the tower began in 2009. Friends of Stillwater Fire Tower completed an authentic restoration in 2016. The location offers views of the Adirondack High Peaks and the wind turbines on Tug Hill. » Continue Reading.
In the 19th century the state of New York built many dams, reservoirs, and even feeder canals in the Black River watershed of the Western Adirondacks as the Erie Canal’s dry periods became more and more costly.
Many of these spots became important recreational attractions, and helped to shape how the Adirondack Park is used today. » Continue Reading.
A recent opinion piece in the New York Times targeted historic preservation as an out-of-touch field that negatively impacts communities, as well as a movement that does not support building a more sustainable, environmentally-friendly planet. Alongside the responses of my historic preservation colleagues, I’d like to respectfully disagree with the Times piece, too.
Of the dozens of ways that historic preservation makes communities more vibrant, humane, and sustainable, I’d like to highlight a little understood and little appreciated virtue and value of existing buildings – their embodied energy.
At Adirondack Architectural Heritage we’ve invented a word for this value – Embedawatt. » Continue Reading.
The Warren County Soil and Water Conservation District (Soil & Water) has announced it has been awarded an urban agriculture conservation grant through a partnership with the National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to boost technical capacity nationwide. » Continue Reading.
New York State bear hunters took 1,505 black bears during the 2019 hunting seasons, the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation is reporting.
Hunters took a record 1,179 bears in the Southern Zone, while hunters in the Northern Zone took only 326 bears, the fewest since 2011.
On a walk one winter afternoon, I spotted two white objects darting across a snow-covered field. White on white, they were difficult to identify at first. It was a short-tailed weasel chasing a snowshoe hare!
Apart from the snowshoe hare, short- and long-tailed weasels are the only animals in the Northeast whose coats turn white in preparation for winter. The smaller short-tailed weasel, also known as an ermine, is more common than the long-tailed weasel. It lives in a variety of habitats, is an adept hunter, and has a reputation for being curious and bold. » Continue Reading.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has announced that the statewide Trees for Tribs “Buffer in a Bag” application period is now open.
The Buffer in a Bag initiative is designed to increase riparian buffers statewide by engaging landowners in small-scale plantings. Qualifying private and public landowners may apply for a free bag of 25 tree and shrub seedlings for planting near streams, rivers, or lakes to help stabilize banks, protect water quality, and improve wildlife habitat. » Continue Reading.
The Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts has announced that Forever Snocade, a variety show all about life in the Adirondacks, has been set for Saturday, February 22nd at 7 pm. Skits are written, produced, and performed by local actors who know first-hand how to survive winter in the Adirondacks. » Continue Reading.
I have always admired nature’s mutineers: animals and plants that thwart the recognized system and do their own thing. As a child I was the sole member of my own duck-billed platypus club, endeared to this creature with the bird-like bill, beaver-style tail, and shocking ability to lay eggs.
Other charming eccentrics: the tamarack, a conifer that loses its needles every winter; male seahorses that give birth to thousands of live babies; and the short-tailed shrew, a tiny mammal that uses a lizard-like venom to paralyze its prey. » Continue Reading.
Deer Sleep
My three-year-old son
wondered where deer sleep,
so I walked him there. Stepping
into a realm that is not reserved
for fathers and sons, we found
a ritual that has nothing to do
with us. That lost part of the brain
where the Moon barely creeps in.
Chazy Lake is approximately 1,800 acres in size, runs 3.5 miles in length, and has a maximum depth of 72 feet. Chazy Lake is managed under the Chazy Highlands Wild Forest and is set in the valley between Lyon and Ellenburg Mountain providing excellent mountain views and great fishing opportunities.
Ice fishing is permitted on Chazy Lake which holds lake trout and landlocked salmon. The best fishing is said to be concentrated in the center of the lake over the deepest water. » Continue Reading.
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