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Conservation Report
October, 2015
Vice-Chair, Conservation: John Omohundro, 315-265-8365
Lampson Falls DEC Forester Pat Whalen, Tom Ortmeyer, engineering professor Robert Davis, who is coach of the Clarkson bridge-building club, and I walked the riverside trail at Lampson Falls this spring, assessing where bridges were needed. Our chapter built four nice ones in 2009 but Irene washed two of them away. A third one is now too short for the slough it is supposed to cross. The fourth has rotten stringers. Professor Davis’ students will be coming back this fall to build four new bridges. I’ll post photos of them at that time. Thanks to Tom for bringing Professor Davis into the mix and to Pat Whalen for his enthusiastic support!
Aquatic Invasive Plants I organized a meeting in Keene Valley of the Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program (APIPP), Paul Smith College’s Adirondack Watershed Institute (AWI), SUNY Potsdam Environmental Studies, Adirondack Mountain Club’s Backcountry Stewards Program, and the Au Sable River Association. You couldn’t assemble a more knowledgeable group to combat invasive aquatic plants. These experts were advising me for a grant I was writing to the Raquette River Advisory Council (see p. 1) to fund a steward at Blake Flow reservoir in summer of 2016. AWI is funding a steward at Carry Falls and NYSDEC is co-sponsoring a boat cleaning station on Rt. 56 near the Snow Bowl, but too many of the Raquette access points are still un-monitored, and we fear aggressive invasive species such as Eurasian milfoil or zebra mussels will get into the river. Research by AWI in 2005 indicated only a light infestation of vari-leaf milfoil in the upper Raquette. So we still may have time to protect these waters. It’s going to take a lot more than my little grant, but I’m treating this as a pilot project in hopes of encouraging Brookfield to invest more in the near future to protect the Raquette.