Aside from humans, perhaps no other species can modify its surroundings for its own purposes as much as beaver.
Throughout much of North America, these busy critters take down trees and dam streams to create waterways safe from predators and to lay up enough woody food stores to last the winter.
This exuberant activity is why beavers are known as “ecosystem engineers,” or species that profoundly change their environment in out-sized proportion to their numbers. [Read more…] about How Beavers Modify Forests: New Understandings
DEC’s Division of Water has asked people who recreate on or near waterways in Central New York to participate in the Citizen Recreational Evaluation of Environmental Quality (CREEQ) citizen-science initiative.
A study published this week in the journal Wetlands documents an invasion happening in the Adirondacks: the black spruce, tamarack, and other boreal species are being overcome by trees normally found in warmer, more temperate forests.
The SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) has named Dr. Mariann Garrison-Johnston director of its Ranger School.
In 1858, 10 scholars left New England society for a sojourn in the Adirondacks. Seeking to immerse themselves in the natural environment, they hunted, rowed, fished and camped. 
The Philosophers’ Camp, an annual collaboration between SUNY-ESF’s Northern Forest Institute and St. John’s College Santa Fe, reimagines the original Adirondack excursion as a weekend retreat in elegant Great Camp style at the historic Masten House, will be held September 29 to October 1, 2017.
