Brittany Christenson, former AdkAction Executive Director
The Board of Directors of AdkAction announces that, after nearly six successful years of expanding the membership and leading high impact projects in the Adirondack region, AdkAction’s Executive Director, Brittany Christenson, is leaving to take on a challenging new position with a social impact start-up company. The Board has launched a nation-wide search to fill the Executive Director position.
This summer, AdkAction’s Mobile Pollinator Garden Trailer, or “Pollinator-Mobile,” will travel around the Adirondacks, helping plant eleven community pollinator gardens as part of their hands-on pollinator conservation efforts – and Mountain Lake PBS is bee-yond excited to get in on the action!
Join us on Friday, June 25th anytime from 2 to 4 PM! Kids can lend a hand and plant pollinator-friendly wildflowers in the garden, and then take home a seed packet to start their very own! Everyone leaves with a PBS KIDS activity bag and book to keep the fun and learning going at home.
AdkAction’s Adirondack Pollinator Project is pleased to announce the annual celebration of Pollinator Week, June 21-27, recognizing the invaluable role pollinators play in supporting biodiversity, food availability, and the economy.
An estimated one third of all foods and beverages is dependent on pollinators. In New York State alone, $350 million per year is accrued in services provided by bees and other pollinators. The work of pollinators ensures full harvests of crops and contributes to healthy plants everywhere. Vital pollinator populations are declining due to pesticide use, disease and parasite problems, and loss of food and nesting habitat.
This summer, AdkAction’s Mobile Pollinator Garden Trailer (also affectionately known as the Pollinator-Mobile) will rove the Adirondacks, planting community pollinator gardens and leaving blooms, bees, and butterflies in its wake. Eleven new garden sites in and around the Adirondacks have been chosen to receive gardens as part of our hands-on pollinator conservation efforts.
A pollinator garden is one planted mostly with flowers that provide nectar or pollen for a broad range of pollinating insects. Native flowering plants are best, and pesticides and other chemicals are avoided. These habitats can be beautiful and they attract birds and other wildlife in addition to pollinators. This year’s pollinator gardens will include bee balm, milkweed, white turtlehead, mountain mint, phlox, and other pollinator-friendly pesticide-free native plants.
International Compost Awareness Week is May 2-8
AdkAction’s Compost for Good project is joining environmental and recycling businesses, organizations, community groups and individuals around the globe in celebrating International Compost Awareness Week (ICAW) during the first week of May. The theme of this year’s Compost Awareness Week is “Grow, Eat… COMPOST… Repeat.”
AdkAction’s Adirondack Pollinator Project, in partnership with Lake Placid Land Conservancy, The Wild Center, and Paul Smith’s College is delighted to announce the start of its fourth annual Pollinator-Friendly Native Plant Sale, and the opening of applications for this year’s Community Pollinator Garden Assistance Program.
Pollinators sustain our ecosystems and produce our natural resources by helping plants reproduce, but are facing many threats, including habitat loss, pesticides, climate change, and disease. The Adirondack Pollinator Project envisions a future where pollinators thrive, native habitat abounds, and residents and visitors are engaged pollinator advocates. Both the plant sale and garden assistance program work to increase native habitat that will help rebuild the monarch butterfly population, attract hummingbirds, and strengthen native bee and moth populations.
Recently, I wrote about the Adirondack Council asking the state to fund a wide-ranging study of water quality across the Adirondacks. (Speaking of the Council, it just hired someone away from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office to be its new vice president for conservation.)
I’ve been thinking about how much the public conversation is influenced by money — not just advertising and p.r., but money or lack of money for research.
AdkAction is pleased to announce the winning video of its statewide COVID-19 Public Service Announcement (PSA) Contest: “A Vintage COVID-19 PSA,” created by Emily Kucharczyk of New Paltz High School.
“When I heard about the project from my teacher, I had a vision of the shot where I held up a bottle of cleaning spray, I just saw the vintage theme in my head and went with it,” Emily said. “I love the creative freedom that comes with making movies — it’s one of the best ways to express your art.”
Watch it here:
AdkAction’s Compost for Good Project is hosting a series of Compost Café chats this winter. Join John Culpepper and Katie Culpepper, co-founders of Compost for Good, to discuss any questions or ideas that you have about composting. We’ll be focusing on different topics each session, but all composting questions are welcome and anyone can attend.
AdkAction is currently accepting submissions to their “Spread the Word, Not the Virus” COVID-19 Public Service Announcement (PSA) contest, open to all New York State middle and high school students. The winner will receive a prize of $1,000 and have their PSA broadcast on television, as well as at the Beyond the Peaks Student Film Festival on Friday, June 4, 2021.
Each PSA Submitted should be between 30 and 45 seconds in length, and should include the slogan “Spread the word, not the Virus.” The PSA must also contain logos, as specified within the directions, and address a broad range of audiences. Deadline for submission is midnight on Friday, January 15, 2021. Participation in the contest is free.
Students must upload video submissions online through the digital film contest platform “Launchpad”, which was donated by Skills21 at EdAdvance, and Educational Nonprofit based out of Connecticut. The submissions will then be evaluated by teachers, nonprofit leaders and health department staff. The judges will be searching for originality, inventiveness, and the invocation of emotion within the PSA. The scoring rubric, as well as more information and a detailed video tutorial on how to submit your PSA are located here on AdkAction website.
Editor’s note: This article is reprinted with permission and first appeared hereSoon, large-scale producers of food waste in NYS will be required to either compost or donate their food waste to food pantries. Like many other states, my guess is that it’s just a matter of time before all landfilling of food wastes will be banned in New York State. Vermont banned residential food waste from landfills this year.
Is it possible to compost everything that comes out of commercial and residential kitchens? Absolutely. Some of you in the Adirondacks have been doing this successfully for decades. However, incorporating meat and dairy into compost systems can be tricky. Until recently.
Saranac Lake Community Solar has partnered up with AdkAction to complete a local community solar project which will create 10 acres of pollinator habitat.
These 10 acres will provide a local source of clean energy for the village of Saranac Lake, as well as its surrounding communities. The solar farm will provide homeowners, renters, and businesses solar energy without the cost of equipment, installation and maintenance, and thanks to the support of AdkAction’s pollinator project, this will be the first pollinator-friendly solar farm in the Adirondacks.
If global food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, according to the United Nation Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Currently, community-level composting options are limited in the Adirondack region, but a new project is aimed at changing that.
AdkAction is delighted to announce its newest project: “Adirondack Compost for Good.” This new project builds on the work that has been done by three local residents with a passion for turning waste into “black gold.” The project will promote food waste composting within the Adirondacks, and help communities meet the upcoming 2022 NYS ban on landfilling food wastes of a certain volume throughout New York State. The goal of the project is to help Adirondack communities turn food and other organic “wastes” into a soil amendment, which is the material added to soil to improve its physical or chemical properties. This composting process builds local resilience, heals soils, and helps reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
AdkAction’s Adirondack Pollinator Project will be offering its annual “Pollinator Plant” sale again to help the hummingbirds, butterflies and bee population.
They have teamed up with Cook & Gardener Nursery and chose plants that can thrive in the Adirondacks. The plants offered have been sourced or grown from seeds to ensure no contact with neonicotinoids (a class of insecticides harmful to pollinators) and will help efforts to rebuild the monarch butterfly population, attract hummingbirds, and reinforce the native bee and moth population.
Plant orders are available online until June 15, or while supplies last.
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Spirit of Generosity: Investing in Our Food Systems
Steven Googin and Ashlee Kleinhammer of North Country Creamery in Keeseville. Erika Bailey photo, provided by Adirondack Foundation
It started with Emergency Food Packages spearheaded by AdkAction. These packages, filled with local food – including organic yogurt, apples, granola, carrots, greens, eggs, and more – were assembled at Hub on the Hill in Essex and delivered to the doorsteps of people who were experiencing economic hardship as far away as Tupper Lake and Malone. The packages came at a time when local farmers were losing wholesale business revenue as schools and restaurants paused for health and safety reasons.The quantities needed for the packages compensated for these losses and helped to keep farmers in business.
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