Local outfitter The Mountaineer recently partnered with Patagonia to support educational and research efforts this summer atop the highest peaks through a grant to the Adirondack High Peaks Summit Stewardship Program.
According to an announcement sent to the press, the grant will enable the program to educate hikers about the fragile nature of the alpine vegetation and conduct research on the populations of rare, threatened and endangered plant species. » Continue Reading.
The Adirondack Park Agency (APA) is accepting public comment on Volume 1 of the Generic Travel Corridor Unit Management Plan (TCUMP) for State Highway Travel Corridors in the Adirondack Park.
The generic plan outlines park-wide goals, strategies, objectives, policies, guidelines and best management practices to enable the development of route-specific corridor plans. In addition, the TCUMP coordinates and integrates the planning responsibilities of the state agencies statutorily responsible for state highway travel corridors within the Adirondack Park.
The APA will accept public comments until August 10, 2018 regarding Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan conformance. » Continue Reading.
A Monitoring and Managing Ash (MaMa) workshop has been set for Thursday, August 2, from 1 to 4 pm at the Nicandri Nature Center, 19 Robinson Bay Rd, Massena, NY.
The emerald ash borer (EAB), an invasive beetle which is lethal to native ash trees, has been confirmed in Franklin and St. Lawrence Counties, as well as very near the southern border of Jefferson County.
Developed by the Poughkeepsie-based Ecological Research Institute in cooperation with the US Forest Service, MaMA offers tools to help citizens identify ash that may show some natural resistance to EAB. It is believed that these so-called “lingering ash” may hold a genetic key to finding resistant strains of ash, thus saving them from extinction. » Continue Reading.
Protect the Adirondacks is set to hold its annual membership meeting at The Grange in Whallonsburg on Saturday July 21st. The annual meeting includes the Conservation and Advocacy report, financial report, membership report, and election to the Board of Directors. » Continue Reading.
Given ongoing evidence of recreational crowding, overuse and resource damage of the eastern High Peaks Wilderness, Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve has called on our DEC to institute permit systems, sometimes called Limited Entry systems, to assure and restore Wilderness preservation, character and opportunity in the most heavily used portions of the High Peaks. Such systems are widely used around the country.
The internal debate at DEC over whether to institute permit systems for the High Peaks has gone on for more than 40 years. Meanwhile, the U.S. Forest Service is considering the expansion of such a system within 500,000 acres of federal Wilderness in Oregon’s Cascade Range. » Continue Reading.
At their recent 2018 Annual Meeting, The FUND for Lake George announced $443,000 in grant awards across each of The FUND’s “four portals to protection” — Science of Solutions, Invasive Species Prevention and Treatment, Salt Reduction, and Water Quality and Clarity Protection. » Continue Reading.
The State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), St. Lawrence County, and the Development Authority of the North Country (DANC) have announced a public meeting has been set for Friday, July 20, 2018, to provide the public with a comprehensive presentation of cleanup efforts at the former Jones and Laughlin (J&L) Steel Company site (Benson Mines) at Star Lake.
The Magnetic Iron Company began developing the area on top of what they believed would be a valuable ore body in the late 1880s. The Benson Mines Company started open pit mining operations at the site and produced magnetite and non-magnetite ore intermittently until the mine closed from 1919 to 1941.
At the July 2018 Agency meeting, Chair Sherman Craig announced his retirement from the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) Board.
Craig led the APA through the 2016/17 Classification Package involving the Boreas Ponds Tract, numerous unit management plans, the redesign of the APA’s large-scale subdivision and variance applications, and passage of the Health and Safety Land Account Amendment in November 2017. » Continue Reading.
It’s a rare blessing to have a job I absolutely love, but it’s not all roses. Although some of it is, literally, roses. All too often it is my dubious honor to bring to public awareness a new invasive pest or disease, and history has not always been kind to the bearers of bad news.
There is an old saying that knowledge is power, but there is another one that ignorance is bliss, and some days I’d be happy to trade some alleged power for a little bliss. » Continue Reading.
We appreciate Dave Gibson taking an interest in the future of Camp Santanoni (“Bill Would Wrest Away Santanoni Success”) and there’s much about his piece we agree with.
There are also a few significant errors that should be addressed and, most importantly, we’d like to try to answer the question posed by the recent, proposed Santanoni legislation – why might OPRHP be a better state steward than DEC? » Continue Reading.
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has adopted a rulemaking package that will make the first major update to State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) regulations in more than two decades.
The updates to SEQR will take effect on January 1, 2019. According to DEC, the new rules will “expand the number of actions not subject to further review, known as Type II actions, modify thresholds for actions deemed more likely to require the preparation of an environmental impact statement (EIS), and require scoping of an EIS. Additional highlights regarding content of a draft EIS, are the consideration of measures to avoid or reduce an action’s impacts on climate change-induced conditions such as sea level rise and flooding, as well as enhancements to make acceptance procedures for EIS more consistent. ” » Continue Reading.
I don’t actually remember the first time I saw single-serving bottles of water for sale. But I do remember thinking that it was crazy! Who would pay for water?
Was I ever wrong! According to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, which provides management consulting, research, and advisory services to the global beverage, food, and consumer packaged goods industries, worldwide bottled water volume in 2016 was 12.8 billion gallons. That’s more than 246,000,000 gallons a week and an increase of nearly 9% over 2015 volume. Around the world, we now drink as much bottled water as we do packaged milk. Or beer. And bottled water now surpasses carbonated soft drinks as the largest beverage category in the United States; a major milestone; with all but 1% of it sourced domestically. » Continue Reading.
Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve is calling on the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and NYS Adirondack Park Agency (APA) to institute wilderness permit systems for the Eastern High Peaks and the new Boreas Ponds gateway to the Wilderness “in order to reduce and prevent human recreational overuse of a highly vulnerable and limited Wilderness resource.”
A press release issued by Adirondack Wild follows: » Continue Reading.
The Lake Champlain Basin Program has released the 2018 State of the Lake and Ecosystem Indicators Report. The report, produced every three years, provides an assessment of the condition of Lake Champlain. The report also serves to provide the public and resource managers with a better understanding of threats to the lake’s health, as well as opportunities to meet the challenges ahead.
The 2018 report emphasizes the importance of community engagement and recreation opportunities to help stakeholders connect with the Lake, and understand the importance of protecting this resource. The report highlights the success of the LCBP Boat Launch Steward program, in which over ten thousand boaters at public launches each year are informed about the importance of properly decontaminating their gear before entering the Lake, and when leaving. The report also highlights a lack of change in phosphorus conditions across the Lake, and describes changes in the amount of phosphorus delivered to the lake each year. » Continue Reading.
The Adirondack Park Agency (APA) has announced they are now accepting public comment for the Saranac Lakes Wild Forest (SLWF) Unit Management Plan.
The APA will accept public comments until July 13, 2018 regarding Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan conformance for the proposed management. » Continue Reading.
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