The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has announced the start of a new moose research project in the Adirondack region. This winter, 14 moose were fitted with GPS collars as part of a multi-year project assessing moose health and population. [Read more…] about Adirondack Moose Research Project Launched
A History of Snowmobile Racing in New York State
In the motor toboggan era – the time before the advent of the modern snowmobiles we know today – motor sleds had been too slow for racing excitement. As a result they remained strictly utilitarian vehicles racing only occasionally for promotional purposes. Motor toboggan and later snowmobile maker Polaris traveled each year at the end of the 1950s to trapper festivals at The Pas, Manitoba where they helped organize ad hoc races.
“We tried to rig them a little bit so we had a zig-zag effect,” David Johnson said, remembering one of the first informal races, “one guy ahead, and then the other, and so on, at a terrific speed of about 20 miles per hour.” In February 1959, Johnson won the first organized men’s race on an oval at The Pas and in 1960, the first cross-country race was held there. [Read more…] about A History of Snowmobile Racing in New York State
A Wild Idea: The Adirondack Park (Virtual Program)
New York’s Adirondack Park is bigger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, Grand Canyon, and Great Smokies National Parks combined. It also might be the world’s best protected wilderness, even though 85 million people live within a day’s drive.
Author Brad Edmonson will share his recent book, A Wild Idea: How the Environmental Movement Tamed the Adirondacks, on the development the Adirondack Park, and excerpts of the recent movie virtually on Saturday, January 22nd. [Read more…] about A Wild Idea: The Adirondack Park (Virtual Program)
Adirondack Experience ‘Artists & Inspiration in the Wild’ Exhibit Gets Boost
The Adirondack Experience, The Museum on Blue Mountain Lake, (ADKX, formerly known as the Adirondack Museum) has received a $500,000 grant from the Challenge Grants program of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), a federal agency. The funds will help support the $2.25M construction cost of a new Artists & Inspiration in the Wild exhibition effort. [Read more…] about Adirondack Experience ‘Artists & Inspiration in the Wild’ Exhibit Gets Boost
Moose, Winter Ticks and Fungi
Legend says a stake through the heart will kill a vampire. But it’s a bit more complicated if you’re plagued – as moose can be – by tens of thousands of tiny blood-suckers. In the case of moose, the vampires are winter ticks (Dermacentor albipictus), and finding a way to stake them has been tricky. However, recent research has found a potential – and microscopic – vampire hunter. [Read more…] about Moose, Winter Ticks and Fungi
Round Whitefish Egg Collection Completed in the Adirondacks
In December, Bureau of Fisheries staff from DEC’s Adirondack Fish Hatchery completed its annual egg collection for round whitefish. Based on the time of year they spawn, collecting them can be a bit of a challenge if ice starts to form.
That wasn’t the case this year, but staff braved the chilly waters to net 119 fish and collect a total of 77,000 eggs from Little Green and Cascade Ponds. [Read more…] about Round Whitefish Egg Collection Completed in the Adirondacks
Adirondack ‘Generous Acts’ Grant Applications Due
Nonprofits, schools and municipalities are encouraged to apply for support from Generous Acts at Adirondack Foundation. [Read more…] about Adirondack ‘Generous Acts’ Grant Applications Due
The First Major Test at APA for Governor Hochul & Chairman Ernst
Will the new boss be the same as the old boss?
We’ll know the answer to this question when the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) meets on January 13-14th. On its agenda is a draft permit for a new granite quarry in White Lake in the town of Forestport in the Western Adirondacks.
This project is widely opposed by neighboring landowners, residents, and property owners in the general area. There have been very few private land development projects in the last two decades that have engendered such a high level of public involvement and concern. [Read more…] about The First Major Test at APA for Governor Hochul & Chairman Ernst
Ed Zahniser On Wilderness & New York State
New York State’s Forest Preserve lands of the Adirondacks and Catskills are living fossils of the broad 19th-century movement to protect wild forests of the federal public lands in the West as forest reserves and not as national forest sources of fiber, forage, and minerals.
New York State’s Forest Preserve lands therefore are living proof that the wilderness preservation movement is not an upstart 20th-century offshoot of the mainstream American conservation movement. [Read more…] about Ed Zahniser On Wilderness & New York State
A Potpourri of Historians Podcasts
This week on The Historians Podcast, a highlights episode with excerpts from programs on the Lincoln assassination; reviving New York City’s Broadway theaters; an Adirondack lumber baron; a woman bandit from the Wild West; the disappearance of Judge Crater; and Transcendentalism in Concord Massachusetts in the 1800s. [Read more…] about A Potpourri of Historians Podcasts