A 55-year-old Troy man and his dog suffered bite, scratch and puncture wounds after a run-in with a black bear in the southern Adirondacks Tuesday evening.
The bear incident took place at about 5 p.m. when the bear encountered the Troy’s man unleashed small dog in the Stewart’s Landing area of the Ferris Lake Wild Forest in the town of Stratford, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. » Continue Reading.
The distinctively feline tracks through the snow in our woods last winter intrigued me. They would follow the narrow ski trail a ways, then meander into the trees or, sometimes, seem to disappear altogether.
There was no way, I thought, a house kitty was so far from home in the deep of winter, and besides, these tracks were a bit large for your average cat.
Then it hit me: these were bobcat tracks! » Continue Reading.
What do you call a dairy farmer who spends decades improving the genetics of a herd, then abruptly sells all the best animals to start a new herd from scraggly, unproven stock? Crazy, perhaps, or foolish at the very least.
Under normal circumstances, no livestock farmer culls their best animals to start over with random ones. Yet it’s common for woodlot owners to sell all the large, well-formed trees during a timber sale and leave nothing but small and defective trees to regenerate the next forest. » Continue Reading.
![Julie Larsen Maher_8520_Puma_WTR_QZ_11 20 09_hr[1]](http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Julie-Larsen-Maher_8520_Puma_WTR_QZ_11-20-09_hr1.jpg)
A new paper from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) looks at the social aspects and public attitudes with regard to a potential mountain lion re-colonization in the Adirondack Park.
The paper finds that more than three-quarters of residents and visitors would support the idea should the animals return on their own. Fifteen percent of Adirondackers polled said they had personally seen a mountain lion, despite the fact they were extirpated from New York State by around 1885. Some 80% said mountain lions still live in the Adirondacks, despite the paucity of evidence for an established population. » Continue Reading.
Legal Adirondack weed is one step closer to reality today after New York State announced that a new Town of Chester company is one of five to receive licenses to grow and distribute medical marijuana.
Etain LLC, and offshoot of Peckham Industries involving Amy Peckham and her daughters Kelley and Hillary Peckham, is expected to build a growing facility on Route 9 South of Chestertown across from the Peckham mine. The company was one of 48 that applied for the licenses. » Continue Reading.
By definition, a weed is any plant growing where you don’t want it. To clarify, this holds true only in the garden beds or acreage under your cultivation. “Weeding” flowers in a park planter because they offend your sense of aesthetics is frowned upon.
To a plant, having “weed” embedded right in its name is probably akin to having a “Kick Me” sign on your back. Right out of the box there is bound to be a bit of prejudice against you, fair or unfair. Spotted knapweed, goutweed and Japanese knotweed are all pernicious invasive species, and deserve all the bad press they get. But occasionally an innocent bystander suffers from this name game. » Continue Reading.
There is an all-natural material, produced at room temperature, that can be used to build homes, to make protective coverings, to hunt and trap, and even to swing through the air. It’s hypoallergenic, antimicrobial, and waterproof. On a per-weight basis it’s stronger than steel and more elastic than nylon or kevlar.
What is this remarkable material? Spider silk.
If it sounds impossible that a single material can be used for so many purposes, well, in a way it is. Depending on how you want to count them, there are seven or eight kinds of spider silk in the world, and any given spider species may make as many as six different kinds. » Continue Reading.
When you think about it, trees in our landscape have it pretty rough. They don’t get to choose their neighborhood; good, bad or indifferent. Depending where they’re planted they may have to contend with “visits” from territorial dogs, “materials testing” by late-night fraternity mobs, entanglements with errant kites, and other issues. » Continue Reading.
On a recent afternoon, I saw a baby ruffed grouse about the size of a pin cushion scurry into the bushes. I had the same impulse I did as a 10-year-old when I scooped up a baby blue jay hopping around on a neighbor’s lawn: I wanted to “rescue” it. Instead, I kept driving, leaving the tiny bird to its fate.
Fledging is perilous for all birds – most won’t survive their first year – but what exactly is that process? Do nestlings know when to leave or do the parents signal when it’s time? Do they all go at once? Will the parents continue to protect and feed them after they have fledged? And what should I have done, if anything, to help that baby ruffed grouse? » Continue Reading.
An Adirondack environmental group has asked the state Department of Environmental Conservation to consider reintroducing wolves and cougars in its State Wildlife Action Plan, which is currently in draft form and expected to be finished later this year.
“We cannot rely on natural recolonization for cougars from the west,” Peter Bauer, director of Protect the Adirondacks, wrote in a July 14 letter to the DEC. “Aggressive hunting seasons are starting to reduce the overall populations and it’s unrealistic to think that enough males and females will reach the Adirondacks to establish a viable population. New York leaders should take a hard look at reintroduction of cougars to the Adirondack Park. » Continue Reading.
There is really nothing common about the Adirondack Common Loon. The large aquatic birds can be found on many Adirondack lakes and ponds. We watch them dive at one end of a lake and appear at the other end in a matter of moments. This ability to quickly dive without a splash allows them to catch their fishy meals with ease. It is not often that we’ve been on a lake and heard the loon’s mournful cry.
The loons’ eerie call range from its high-pitched tremolo, yodel, hoot and yell. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times my family spies a majestic loon’s familiar black and white patterned back; we are still in awe of its beauty. » Continue Reading.
The recent annual Nathan’s Hot-Dog Eating Contest (really, it’s a sport?) reminded me of a few gluttons from my past – of the wildlife variety. The term is used loosely here to include some ambitious and/or instinctive eaters encountered during a lifetime of hiking and a lot of fishing in my younger days. Had cameras been pocket gadgets back then like they are today, some great illustrations would be accompanying this piece. At least a few would be of bullfrogs. » Continue Reading.
The Wildlife Conservation Society’s Adirondack Program is looking for volunteers to help with its annual Adirondack Loon Census, which takes place on Saturday, July 18.
Volunteers are asked to visit ponds and lakes on that Saturday from 8 to 9 am and count the number of adult and immature loons they see.
Loons generally arrive for the summer breeding season in May. Their young birds hatch from eggs in late June and early July during the first round of breeding. Loons can also lay eggs later in the summer during a second round. » Continue Reading.
On a recent damp May morning I walked around Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, with arborist Brian Beaty. While he is responsible for all of the trees in the center of the campus, our visit focused on a small number of trees that require an inordinate amount of his attention. These were the college’s mature American elms – tall, elegant, and, most importantly, healthy.
Beaty wants to keep them that way, which is why he checks on the elms almost daily from early spring to late summer, and has his crew look them over every time they drive by one. “We don’t have a lot big elms left,” he explained. Of the hundreds of mature elms that once adorned the college, only twenty remain. » Continue Reading.
The Adirondack moose population appears to be healthy and growing, according to early indications from a moose study currently taking place.
“We don’t know how many moose we have yet. We don’t know how frequent the moose are on the landscape. We don’t know their densities,” said Ben Tabor, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Environmental Conservation. “What we do know is that our moose seem to be bigger and healthier than New Hampshire’s and Maine’s.” » Continue Reading.
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