The Adirondack Research Consortium is set to hold a day-long social sciences workshop on Friday, October 4, 2019 from 10 am to 3 pm in the Sterling Tomkins Pine Room of the Joan Weill Student Center at Paul Smith’s College.
The day will include a keynote talk by author and Yale professor Dr. Bill Weber, lunch, and a panel discussion on ongoing and emerging social issues impacting the Adirondacks. » Continue Reading.
Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve is set to hold its 2019 Annual Meeting of Members and Friends on Saturday, October 12 at the Keene Valley Congregational Church in Keene Valley. The meeting begins with program news, elections and announcements at 11 am. » Continue Reading.
In the Adirondacks, alpine ecosystems are areas above the treeline that are home to rare and endangered alpine plants more commonly found in arctic regions of North America.
Alpine ecosystems cover approximately 173 acres on top of more than a dozen High Peaks, including Marcy, Algonquin and Wright. Alpine vegetation is highly susceptible to human impacts such as trampling and climate change.
Ten years ago, the Adirondacks hosted the Northeastern Alpine Stewardship Gathering for the first time. Since then visitor usage has increased in the High Peaks region, where all of the Park’s alpine ecosystems can be found.
Longtime grassroots Adirondack Park environmental activist Joe Mahay died in early August at home with his family. Joe and his wife Naomi Tannen had been living in Florence, Massachusetts, where for the past year and a half Joe had dealt with metastatic cancer and chemotherapy.
Joe was one of the founders of the Residents’ Committee to Protect the Adirondacks and twice served as its Chair, tactfully leading the organization through its formative years and a raucous debate over the future of the Adirondack Park in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Joe had a long career as an administrator at a non-profit agency working with people with developmental disabilities in Essex County and poured his volunteer time for many years into the protection of the Forest Preserve and Adirondack Park.
Protect the Adirondacks recently won a major victory in its lawsuit to enforce Article 14, Section 1 of the state Constitution, the well-known forever wild clause. The case challenged the excessive tree cutting undertaken by state agencies to build a vast network of Class II Community Connector snowmobile trails in the Adirondack Forest Preserve.
The case began in 2013 and this result has been six years in the making. Previously, the Appellate Division, Third Department, of the state Supreme Court had issued a preliminary injunction against this tree cutting in 2016 after the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and Adirondack Park Agency (APA) had constructed or roughed out over 20 miles of new trails.
The Adirondack Park Agency is weaker today than at any time in its 48-year history. That the fault rests with the office of Governor Andrew Cuomo is both unfortunate and surprising: unfortunate because the APA was created to protect the Adirondack Park from damaging use and development but is now falling down on the job; surprising because, at the national level, the Governor has become a leader in combating climate change, the greatest environmental threat to our planet in human history. Yet in a critically important way the Governor has neglected the world-class park in his own backyard. » Continue Reading.
The Lake George Land Conservancy’s (LGLC) 20th annual gala raised more than $240,000, thanks to its guests and business supporters. Over its 20-year run, the annual gala has raised nearly $2 million for land conservation and water quality protection. » Continue Reading.
The Lake George Land Conservancy (LGLC) has announced the recent protection of two properties at Huletts Landing, in Dresden, NY, a total of 137 acres. The properties both contain significant lengths of tributaries that flow into Lake George, and other water-protecting features.
The two properties consist of a 112-acre forested parcel off of County Road 6, and the other a 25-acre upland parcel adjacent to Elephant Mountain. Combined, the properties include more than 7,800 feet of stream corridors that lead to Lake George. The 112-acre parcel also contains two acres of wetlands and beaver ponds, which are the headwaters of one of these now protected tributaries. » Continue Reading.
The Lake George Land Conservancy (LGLC) is set to hold its public Annual Meeting and Block Party at Up Yonda Farm Environmental Education Center in Bolton Landing on Saturday, August 17, from 11 am to 2 pm.
The event will begin with a its public Annual Meeting in the auditorium from 11 am to noon, with keynote speaker Meme Hanley, Project Manager for the Land Trust Alliance New York Program. » Continue Reading.
Maybe Denver was first, in 2008, but soon Los Angeles, Phoenix, Palm Beach, Cincinnati followed with a novel approach to combat a persistent urban problem: repurposing parking meters to collect spare change to help the homeless.
And now, Steamboat Springs, Colorado, has applied the idea to a nagging recreational headache – funding trail maintenance. Is this an idea that’s ready for the Adirondacks’ High Peaks, where foot and automobile traffic are running ahead of the means to cope? » Continue Reading.
Champlain Area Trails (CATS) has announced plans to preserve 35 acres in the Town of Essex, NY, on land that features 400 million-year-old fossils — part of an ancient coral reef — as well as a type of forest considered globally rare and an historic stone quarry.
The Essex Quarry Nature Park will be located on the southern edge of the hamlet, a short distance from the Essex – Charlotte, Vt. ferry landing. » Continue Reading.
Doug Tallamy, noted conservationist and author of Bringing Nature Home is set to present a lecture and slide show on Monday, July 22nd from 6 to 8 pm at Lake Placid Center for the Arts, 17 Algonquin Drive in Lake Placid.
Tallamy’s talk “Restoring Nature’s Relationships” focuses on how growing native plants in our yards, gardens, and local green spaces provides an opportunity — and a responsibility — to play a role in sustaining biodiversity. » Continue Reading.
Legislation advanced in each house of the New York State Legislature this year that, if approved, would have amended the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) Act to require conservation development standards, clustering, and open space protections for the largest proposed subdivisions in the Adirondack Park.
The proposed bill would be the most significant amendment to the Land Use and Development Plan since enactment in 1973. The legislation gained some bi-partisan support but failed to advance in final days of the session when North Country representatives Senator Betty Little and Assemblymember Dan Stec lobbied to keep the bill from coming up for a vote. » Continue Reading.
One of the mantras for waste reduction and energy efficiency is the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” slogan, which indicates the order of preference for resource conservation: It’s best to use fewer things in the first place, but once you got ‘em you may as well reuse them. In the end, though, it’s better they get recycled than chucked in a landfill. » Continue Reading.
An expanse of 2,434 acres of Adirondack foothills at the headwaters of the Boquet River, including streams, ponds, and mature forest, has been protected.
The new Eagle Mountain Wilderness Preserve part of a large, intact forest that connects the High Peaks to lower elevation lands near Lake Champlain. Surrounding protected areas include New York State’s Jay Mountain Wilderness and Taylor Pond Wild Forest (home to the local landmark, Poke-O-Moonshine Mountain), as well as other privately conserved lands.
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