History, Natural History & the Arts
Within the past several years, at least three terrestrial pests have invaded the forests of the Lake George watershed. Among them: emerald ash borer, which was first detected in Warren County in 2020, along the Schroon River near Chestertown.
That discovery was the first indication that the invasive species might have established itself in the southern Adirondacks. [Read more…] about Emerald Ash Borer: A Threat to Trees, Mohawk Traditions
Fifty years ago, on June 23, 1976, a National Electric Power Company (NEPCO) oil tanker ran aground, spilling hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil into the St. Lawrence River.
The so-called “Slick of ‘76” has become a thing of folklore and a warning of environmental devastation in the Thousand Islands and beyond. It even spawned a musical. [Read more…] about The St. Lawrence River’s ‘Slick of 76’ Oil Spill
Crayfish fill my childhood memories. I spent summers playing in streams, flipping over rocks, and, if I was lucky, catching glimpses of these mysterious little creatures. Most crayfish are nocturnal and dart backwards to escape danger.
An early summer morning last year at Crystal Lake State Park, near Barton, Vermont, brought me back to these moments when I saw a crayfish along the shore in the gently lapping waves. As I knelt for a closer look, I realized I knew so little about crayfish in my backyard. [Read more…] about Northeastern Crayfish: Tiny Predators, Big Impact
MyCoast NY is a public web tool which offers an opportunity to contribute and access photos of flooding, shoreline change, and storm damage from anywhere in the state.
When you submit a photo, it is automatically linked to real-time weather, river, and tidal gauge data to help provide context for the photo. [Read more…] about Help Document New York Weather Impacts
Between 1840 and 1860, a great wave of Irish immigrants washed up on the shores of Lake Champlain. So many, in fact, that the inland sea was nicknamed “the Irish lake.”
The reason, of course, was poverty and job opportunities. Although Irish Catholics had started arriving in New York and Vermont in numbers by 1820, Champlain truly became the Irish lake in the mid-1840s during the Great Famine. [Read more…] about Lake Champlain: The Irish Lake
On December 10, 1813, two New Yorkers raged at each other in the entryway of Joseph McCarthy’s store on Queen Street in the Upper Canada village of Newark, known today as Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.
Soldiers held back a crowd as the ranking officer in charge of the American troops occupying nearby Fort George, Brigadier-General George McClure (1771-1851) cursed a Buffalo physician and militia captain, the forty-four-year-old Dr. Cyrenius Chapin (1769-1838). Both were part of the New York State militia assigned by the United States regular army to occupy Canada’s Fort George. [Read more…] about The Burning of Buffalo during the War of 1812
New York’s canal building boom and the urban explosion that it triggered dramatically accelerated the dispossession and disruption of traditional life ways of the region’s Native American inhabitants that had been initiated by the introduction of European trade, diseases, colonial wars, the American Revolution, and encroaching settlement by non-natives. [Read more…] about The Erie Canal’s Impacts on Indigenous People
Michael Leroy Oberg’s new book Professional Indian: The American Odyseey of Eleazer Williams (2015, Univ. of Pennsylvania Press) follows Eleazer Williams on his odyssey across the early American republic and through the shifting spheres of the Iroquois – Haudenosaunee in an era of dispossession.
Oberg describes Williams as a “professional Indian,” who cultivated many political interests and personas in order to survive during a time of shrinking options for native peoples. [Read more…] about Eleazer Williams: Professional Indian
On September 30, 1970, in a simple ceremony, a monument was unveiled at Sandy Bay Beach Reserve in Hobart, Tasmania, by the Honorable Douglas Harkness, the former Canadian defense minister. It was in honor to the ninety-two Patriot exiles, transported to what was then called Van Diemen’s Land who had been captured in the 1837-38 Patriot War insurrection in Upper Canada against British domination.
Listed as Canadian rebels, a majority were in fact from the state of New York. Although imprisoned US citizens captured in the various conflicts with England – from the American Revolution to the War of 1812– was not a novelty, it was to be the first time that American prisoners were shipped to a penal colony in Australia due to a confrontation with the Empire. [Read more…] about New Yorkers Exiled to Tasmania for the 1837-38 Canadian Patriot Rebellion
The year was 1901 when the steel barque Moshulu sailed into New York Harbor carrying many Sicilian immigrants for inspection at Ellis Island.
This is the gripping fictional opening scene of The Godfather II, although considerable artistic license was taken by its producer and director Francis Ford Coppola. [Read more…] about Vito Corleone, Alonzo Blauvelt & Smallpox in Italian Harlem
Two record-size New York fish have recently been caught: A channel catfish, and a fallfish, both caught in the Northern New York State.
On May 3, while shorefishing with his son, Dylan Kampnich of Dexter reeled in a 37-pound 9-ounce channel catfish from Black River Bay in Jefferson County, the first state record fish of the year. Kampnich’s record-breaking catch surpassed the previous state record catfish caught in 2022, also from the Black River, by 13 ounces. [Read more…] about Two State Record Fish Caught Within 10 Days
One of the most exciting rites of spring is the alewife run, an annual event where throngs of fish race upstream from the ocean to inland water bodies on a reproductive journey. These “river herring,” as they are categorized, actually spend most of their lives at sea.
Come spring, when the water warms to at least 5 degrees Celsius (41 degrees Fahrenheit), schools of alewives gather near river and stream mouths. [Read more…] about Against the Flow: Spring Alewife Runs Were Once Immense
Is President Donald Trump angling to take over the Great Lakes? Can the water be diverted to the United States?
Daniel Macfarlane, an expert in environmental water history and US-Canada relations, discusses these questions on the latest Unsalted Great Lakes podcast. [Read more…] about Who Owns the Great Lakes?
We recently passed the 50th anniversary of the release of Robert Caro’s Pulitzer-prize-winning book about Robert Moses: The Power Broker. Exhaustively comprehensive, Caro’s monumental tome nonetheless virtually ignores one of the most fascinating chapters of Moses’s career: his time as Chairman of the Power Authority of the State of New York (PASNY) from 1954 to 1962.
While heading PASNY, known today as the New York Power Authority, the legendary New York City builder oversaw the remaking of Niagara Falls and the St. Lawrence River for hydropower. [Read more…] about Robert Moses’s Imperial Niagara and St. Lawrence Megaprojects
As we approach the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution there is a concerted effort to broaden the story of our founding by seeking out the stories of those who either labored in the background on both sides – women, the enslaved, and Native Americans for example – or those who outright opposed the Revolution. [Read more…] about Isaac Mann: A Saratoga County Loyalist
Foremost among new state park developments in the 1950s was the 1959 completion of a new state park on Barnhart Island on the St. Lawrence River, in present-day Robert Moses State Park (formerly St. Lawrence State Park) in the Thousand Islands region. [Read more…] about Robert Moses State Park’s Midcentury Modern Designs
The latest episode of “DEC Does What?!” a podcast from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, explores the work of DEC’s Great Lakes Program to protect the iconic Great Lakes, the largest freshwater ecosystem in the world.
DEC’s Great Lakes Program oversees the largest watershed by land area, working across more than 42 percent of the state’s land area and along over 750 miles of shoreline. [Read more…] about The Great Lakes: World’s Largest Freshwater Ecosystem
Dante Piraino of Baldwinsville smashed the existing record when he reeled in a 9 pound smallmouth bass from the St. Lawrence River while fishing in a bass tournament out of Ogdensburg on September 22nd. [Read more…] about New State Record For Smallmouth Bass Set Six Months After Last Record
Governor Kathy Hochul and the Thousand Islands Land Trust have announced the acquisition of nearly 1,000 acres in Jefferson County through 17 projects focused on protecting the region’s drinking water sources.
The partnership, supported with more than $5.8 million in State grants through the Water Quality Improvement Project Program, is expected to have lasting impacts on the water quality and habitats of the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario. [Read more…] about 1,000 Acres in Jefferson County Protected
Here is a list of highlights and noteworthy items from the past year here in the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Bureau of Fisheries. [Read more…] about DEC Fisheries 2023 Year in Review
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