College Lodge survey
Here’s RTPI Conservation Technician Elyse Henshaw checking for Hemlock Woolly Adelgid on an Eastern Hemlock tree (Tsuga canadensis) yesterday at the College Lodge. Our staff is currently conducting a year-long plant and wildlife assessment of the approximately 200-acre property owned and operated by the Faculty Student Association of SUNY Fredonia. Working with SUNY staff and experienced local naturalists RTPI staff is surveying all forms of life in order to create a conservation and management plan recommending best practices for the site. In July 2014 there will be a BioBlitz of the...
Read MoreConnecticut’s friendly coyotes
Connecticut is a strange and unique region that often seems to me to be an open zoo along the coast and through the center of the state. These are the major population centers where natural habitat and resources have been severely reduced or strained. The tireless efforts of federal, state and local agencies, organizations and conservationists help to preserve and protect what is left. However, there is only so much that can be done with so little open space left in some areas. Packs of coyotes can be heard howling away nearly every night in this time of the year in my area of Connecticut....
Read MoreEcological catastrophes: what’s here, what’s next?
For my first blog post of 2014 I wanted to talk about something I ponder frequently in this line of work – apart from the ongoing environmental disasters we acknowledge and in some cases are working to correct, what silent or invisible calamities are occurring right now that we should be detecting, analyzing and stopping? Climate change is the number one global nightmare that is finally being accepted by the average person, something that is long overdue. However, we are nowhere near addressing it and it may already be too late in many regards. Smaller scale disasters like the spread of...
Read MoreEaster Island’s history rewritten, previewing ours?
This post was inspired by this piece on NPR by Robert Krulwich detailing what happened on Easter Island – the old story and the supposed new story. Twan and I independently read this and had the similar thought (I love when that happens) of it being a good follow-up to my recently posted entry on climate change. You can read in detail about Easter Island on NPR but essentially the old tale tells of the inhabitants spending hundreds of years destroying the tiny remote island’s environment in order to feed themselves and prosper only to be left in ruin when it was all gone, slowly...
Read MoreAirports, technology and birds
Last week Twan showed me this link which contains a New York Times Op-Ed. “Those Hazardous Flying Birds” discusses airplanes and bird strikes while citing Federal Aviation Administration statistics which say more than 9,000 birds are hit by airplanes each year and in the last 23 years about one plane each day is forced to land because of such impacts. Apparently since the “Miracle on the Hudson” when US Airways Flight 1549 was steered to safety on the river after a Canada Geese strike by Captain “Sully” the federal government has slaughtered about 25,000...
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