Wednesday, September 28, 2022

Paul Smith’s VIC to host fall lecture series in October

The fall lecture series will be held at the Paul Smith’s College VIC again this October.

The series was designed to initiate important discussions relevant to the Adirondacks, allowing students at Paul Smith’s College and North Country Community College to interact with leaders in environmental science, policy and social issues. Lectures are open to all and the diversity in the audience has been important to the discussion and success of the series. Lectures were well attended last year and generated significant campus and community involvement and support. Lectures are archived for viewing on the Paul Smith’s College VIC YouTube channel.

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Tuesday, September 27, 2022

Hair ice on Humphrey Mountain

hair ice

By Kent Stanton

I have to credit my brother for bringing “hair ice” into my vocabulary. We had hiked up to the long-abandoned garnet mine site on Humphrey Mountain and were on our way down when he pointed out some odd looking white stuff on a log near the trail. 

A first guess was that this was some kind of fungus but a closer look revealed what appeared to be tiny filaments of ice clumped together forming silky, swirling patterns. Neither of us had seen or heard of anything like this and ice didn’t really make sense. It was November, but the prior week had been unusually mild and we had not seen snow or ice anywhere on the mountain. It was a cool day, with the temperature hovering right at freezing, but the only unusual thing about the weather was that it was noticeably humid. 

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Tuesday, September 27, 2022

DEC: New fall foliage shuttle begins this weekend, October 1 & 2

fall foliage courtesy roostOctober Shuttle Promotes Public Safety by Providing Free, Convenient Access from North Hudson to Popular Adirondack High Peaks Trailheads

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) reminds visitors to the Adirondacks of the new fall foliage shuttle program starting in October from Frontier Town Gateway in North Hudson to popular trailheads in the High Peaks region. To accommodate visitors seeking fall foliage hikes and views, no-cost shuttles will run the first two weekends in October from the Frontier Town Gateway to the Giant Mountain, Roaring Brook Falls, and Rooster Comb trailheads, as well as the Marcy Field Parking Area.

First announced in July, the new program is a partnership between DEC, Essex County, the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism (ROOST), the towns of Keene and North Hudson, and the private owner of Frontier Town Gateway. The shuttle offers hikers the opportunity to experience fall foliage from its best vantage point – on the trail – without the hassle of driving to and parking at busy trailheads.

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Monday, September 26, 2022

Adirondack Council urges state to drop plan to remove wolf from NYS endangered species list

 

ALBANY, N.Y. — Adirondack Council today called upon the NYS Dept. Environmental Conservation to drop a previously announced plan to remove the gray wolf from New York’s endangered species list.

Species listed as endangered are granted special protections from hunting and habitat loss.  The state had announced a plan to remove the wolf from the endangered list because the state considered the animal extinct in New York (a.k.a. extirpated).

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Sunday, September 25, 2022

Tree Slime – Who You Gonna Call?

Cast members of the new Ghostbusters film aren’t the only ones getting slimed – trees sometimes get slathered in slime flux as well. Many kinds of trees are subject to sludge assaults, with elms, apples, oaks, maples, and walnuts being among the more vulnerable species. Tree-goo, unlike the Psychomagnotheric Slime in Ghostbusters, is basically harmless. In fact, it can be beneficial. Also known as bacterial wetwood, slime flux is pretty much what it sounds like: wet nastiness that oozes from a bark crack, V-shaped trunk union, or pruning wound like an eternal fountain of fetid foam.

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Saturday, September 24, 2022

Time has come for the protection of Monarch Butterflies

Another year has passed for me, and only one more for the “Big 80,” but things are looking good on this end. For others on this side of the globe, things aren’t looking so good this morning [Sept. 20]. Hurricane Fiona has clobbered Puerto Rico with over thirty inches of rain and strong winds that have again devastated their power grid five years to the day when they were hit by Hurricane Maria. They had just about recovered from that one and everything got laid flat again. The hurricane heading north hit the Dominican Republic and will end up in the Canada Maritimes. This will also push high tides all along the east coast while going north.

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Wednesday, September 21, 2022

Dr. Curt Stager to present at Ausable River Association Dinner, Sept. 28

WILMINGTON, NY — The Ausable River Association will host their first ever “September Shindig” on September 28 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. All are welcome for an evening of fine dining and camaraderie at The Hungry Trout Resort in Wilmington, NY. The night will feature Dr. Curt Stager, author and professor of natural sciences at Paul Smith’s College, as guest speaker. Dr. Stager will present an update on climate change in the Adirondacks based on a long-term study he is preparing to publish.

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Tuesday, September 20, 2022

38 Groups Call On NYSDEC To Protect Wolves in New York

wolves

The plot thickens around the killing of an 85-pound wolf near Cooperstown in December of 2021 and the response by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). Under state and federal law, a wolf that wanders into New York State is protected under the Endangered Species Act. The wolf shot near Cooperstown by a coyote hunter clearly enjoyed no such protections.

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Monday, September 19, 2022

DEC announces its Annual Arbor Day Poster Contest

NYS DEC is pleased to announce the start of its annual Arbor Day Poster Contest. Each year, DEC’s Urban and Community Forestry program coordinates the contest to promote the immeasurable value of trees in the environment and New Yorkers’ lives. The winner of the contest will have their photo or artwork reproduced as the 2023 Arbor Day Poster, to commemorate the holiday.

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Sunday, September 18, 2022

DEC: Fall bird migration underway, all regions of NYS Birding Trail completed

Fall Bird Migration is Underway:

Fall migration is an exciting time for birding. With migrants on the move your favorite birding site can change within a few days, with different species traveling in and out. Every spring and fall, thousands of raptors migrate, and birders may see or hear eagles, kestrels, Sharp-shinned Hawks, Ospreys, Broad-winged Hawks, and Peregrine Falcons among others. The NYS Birding Trail highlights several hawk watches including Bear Mountain Hawk Watch at Bear Mountain State Park, Hook Mountain Hawk Watch, and Mount Peter Hawkwatch Trailway, all within the Hudson Valley segment.

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Saturday, September 17, 2022

Witnessing 90-Miler start, crossing paths with a toad after Woodhull Fire Tower lighting

No hummer seen today [Monday, September 12] but there may be some stragglers coming through, so we leave the feeders up for several days and if we don’t see them for about five days, we call them gone. They sure have been a treat this summer, as they have buzzed around the front porch doing touch and go practice out on our five feeders. Going back to last weekend, my grandson Jake and I went up to the Woodhull Fire Tower on Saturday night to light up the tower. I was glad to have the company, and the sunset was beautiful. As the night sky crept in, we could see that looking east was going to be a problem as haze moved in with the darkness.

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Thursday, September 15, 2022

Secret Language of Mushrooms

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland was chock-a-block full of whimsical characters such as a hookah-smoking caterpillar and a bloodthirsty Queen of Hearts playing-card. Although animals and some objects in the story are able to speak, somehow the idea of a talking mushroom was too far-out even for Carroll’s rich imagination. The book depicts a colorful hallucinogenic Amanita muscaria mushroom on which Alice dines (without so much as a parental warning) to become large or small. But while the Cheshire cat is chatty, the mushroom remains mum.

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Tuesday, September 13, 2022

Protecting Monarchs in the Adirondacks

by Lisa Salamon, Adirondack Pollinator Project

 

The iconic Monarch butterfly was added to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species in July. The List, known as the IUCN Red List, founded in 1964, is the world’s most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biological species. It uses a set of precise criteria to evaluate the extinction risk of thousands of species and is recognized as the most authoritative guide to the status of biological diversity.

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Monday, September 12, 2022

Free Webinar “Forest Pest Hunters: Surveying for Beech Leaf Disease” Scheduled for Sept. 15

ADIRONDACKS—Beech leaf disease is in the Adirondacks, and scientists need help gathering data on the newly emerging forest pest. To teach community scientists how to identify and report beech leaf disease, the Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program will host a free webinar from 10 to 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 15, called “Forest Pest Hunters: Surveying for Beech Leaf Disease.”

 

Beech leaf disease was first detected in Ohio in 2012 and in New York state in 2018. In 2022, the state Department of Environmental Conservation confirmed the presence of beech leaf disease in over 30 counties in New York including Herkimer County, the first documented infestation in the Adirondack region.  Beech leaf disease can kill mature beech trees in six to 10 years, while young trees can be killed in as little as two to three years.

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Saturday, September 10, 2022

Reminiscing about Loon stories, serving on the NY firefighting team in ’89

We got plenty of rain in the last week and it is still falling. One storm brought us over an inch and a half overnight, and the next one gave us nearly two inches in a couple hours. This wet down the woods in good shape, as not much of it ran off. My pond drain is flowing again, and that made the trout happy enough to start feeding again. For a few days they didn’t want to surface into the warmer water for food. Some folks as close as Forestport never got a drop out of the bigger storm. There was very little wind (just rain) so the power didn’t go out, but some folks lost their telephone service. The big storm shut off our dish signal for over half an hour one time, and then on-and-off for the next hour.

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