CATS, along with the Eddy Foundation and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), are pleased to introduce Alex Caskey, our summer intern working on a fascinating project looking into wildlife friendly farming in the Champlain Valley. Alex is a graduate student at Tufts University (’18) and is currently conducting interviews with local farmers about their interactions, positive and negative, with local wildlife. As Alex has noted, the unique working landscape of the Champlain Valley provides … [Read more...]
Split Rock Wildlife Sightings: Black Bear, Bobcat, & Coyote!
Our latest batch of photos from Beaver Brook land, protected by Eddy Foundation and Northeast Wilderness Trust, with a proposed CATS trail through, includes these nice ones of Bobcat, Black Bear, and Coyote, as well as Turkeys, Raccoons, squirrels, and deer. Success of wildlife cameras on our lands in Wildway seems less in summer, so these may be last good photos for a while. Click any photo to enlarge. The “Split Rock Wildlife Sightings” series features periodic updates of … [Read more...]
Sturgeon: Unsung Champs of Lake Champlain
Locals around Lake Champlain know well and joke often about the stories of Champ, a mythical monster of our deep blue lake. Along with a bevy of fanciful explanations for Champ sightings (cousin to Scotland’s Loch Ness Monster, among the most imaginative!), one wild possibility is that the large humped back that various boaters have reported seeing on the surface of Lake Champlain is at least sometimes the dorsal fin of a Lake Sturgeon. This should be thrilling enough! For sadly, Lake … [Read more...]
BATS: Our Flying Mammal Neighbors
Last blog we told you the grim news of white-nose syndrome, caused by an alien fungus, and how it is decimating bat populations in the Adirondacks and across much of the East and Midwest. Here we’ll say a little more about what this means for New York’s Adirondack Park. What bat species grace our lovely Adirondack Park? Of Earth’s thousand-plus bat species (second most species-rich mammal order after rodents), we have nine. Eastern Red Bats (Lasiurus borealis), colorful and handsome, … [Read more...]
BATS: Canaries in the Iron Mine?
The concept of ecological indicator species was foreshadowed long ago by using canaries — small tropical birds, sensitive to invisible gases that could kill miners — to warn the men if carbon monoxide levels were dangerously high. An expression some of us absent-mindedly use, “the canary in the coal mine”, comes from that rather exploitive history of animal use. Other small winged creatures, bats — Earth’s only true fliers among mammals (“flying” squirrels of North America and Asia and … [Read more...]
Lake Champlain Boathouse Blues
Welcome to spring in the Champlain Valley. And to Rosslyn's annual spring drama: the Lake Champlain boathouse blues! Over the last month lake water level has been rising, rising, rising. And rising some more. In fact, it's even risen since I started drafting this post. (Current level a little further down.) Boathouse Blues Begin Until recently I was singing the end-of-ski-season rag and the dandelion ditty while quietly hoping that Lake Champlain water levels would rise enough to hedge … [Read more...]
Porcupines as Sculptors
I see more Porcupines in the average month around my home in the Adirondacks than I saw in a year and a half of trekking the Eastern and Western Wildways, though on those long conservation journeys I hiked through thousands of miles of forest that looked plenty inviting for bark-eaters. My fellow rambler Jerry Jenkins, author of the Northern Forest Atlas Project, has half-seriously proposed that here in the Adirondacks, at least, Porcupines — not quite the largest, but surely the pointiest of … [Read more...]
Salamanders: Little Things that Run a Forest
Be honest now. How many of you have squashed an Eft? That is, how many of you have inadvertently run over the terrestrial, juvenile, bright-red form of the Eastern Newt (Notophthalmus viridescens)? I know I’m guilty, probably several times over. Unless you’ve transcended the American addiction to cars, you’ve probably crushed Efts and other amphibians, too. We can reduce chances of that tragedy by slowing down and minimizing night-time driving. Efts are the salamanders we most often … [Read more...]
Melting, Mating, and Moving: Adirondack Life in Early Spring
Perhaps uncharitably, some of us lucky enough to inhabit Adirondack Park year-round refer to early spring as "Mud Season." Mud, slush, and soft ground surely are parts of the winter-to-spring transition here; but so are rushing rivers, running sap, surging freshets, budding trees, and migrating and reproducing animals. Indeed, we could as well call this lustiest time of year "Mating Season" or "Movement Season." For throughout spring, most wild animals are searching for mates, food for their … [Read more...]
CATS Long Pond Program Conserves 25 Acres
Frank White and Christine Babson have been visiting Long Pond in Willsboro for their whole lives. When they inherited their parents’ properties, they considered ways to continue that enjoyment while protecting the lake they loved. They focused on a 25-acre parcel they owned at the southwest corner of the lake. It contained part of stream and wetlands by the lake. Plus, it had a nice little forested ridge that would make a beautiful building site. The only problem was that a house there would … [Read more...]
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