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PRECIOUS PARK: Not all heroes wear lab coats

Citizen science reporting ‘vital’ to natural resource protection in the Adirondacks

Volunteers gather data for the Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation’s annual loon census. (Provided photo — Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation)

Every winter, you may sit by your backyard window with binoculars, looking at the birdfeeder, checking off a list of species for Audubon’s annual Christmas Bird Count or Great Backyard Bird Count. But maybe that’s not enough. Maybe you’re looking for more ways to help out the natural world.

Good news. There are plenty of opportunities inside the Adirondack Park for “citizen scientists” to help local groups learn about wildlife and help the environment.

Citizen scientists are busy in the Adirondacks. They’re helping local efforts to eradicate invasive species, identify native plant and wildlife species and track environmental threats such as the use of road salt.

And while these volunteers don’t get paid the salary of a scientist, they reap the reward of knowing they’ve contributed to a broader effort to protect the Adirondack Park’s natural resources.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation confirmed the first-known Adirondack occurrence of beech leaf disease in Herkimer County this June. The disease can kill beech trees, which sequester carbon and are an important source of food for wildlife, within two to seven years, according to the DEC’s website. Becca Bernacki, who’s the terrestrial invasive species project coordinator for the Keene Valley-based Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program, said the challenging part of beech leaf disease — or BLD — is that scientists don’t yet know how it spreads. That’s why APIPP, which partners with other environmental entities to manage invasives in the park, and the DEC are relying on citizen science reporting to combat this particular invasive species — there’s still so much to learn about the disease, and every piece of information helps.

Becca Bernacki, terrestrial invasive species project coordinator for the Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program in Keene Valley, identifies a few invasive plant species on the Rooster Comb Trail on Sept. 20, 2022. She said citizen scientists are “vital” to parkwide efforts to keep invasive species at bay. (News photo — Lauren Yates)

For invasives such as beech leaf disease that haven’t yet spread across the park, early citizen reports of invasive species can be instrumental in keeping them at bay. Bernacki said that a camper reported the first known occurrence of hemlock woolly adelgid, an invasive that hasn’t yet established itself in the Adirondacks, in Lake George in 2017. Because of that report, APIPP was able to check out the localized infestation and eradicate a 250-acre swath of the species.

“Those early detections are really hard to get, but citizen scientists and folks just paying attention while they’re out and about goes such a long way,” she said. “The proof’s in the pudding. Had that camper not reported it to us, we probably still wouldn’t have known it was there.”

In recognition of the importance of citizen science reporting, APIPP runs the Lake Protectors program, an aquatic invasive species program, and the Forest Pest Hunters program, a terrestrial invasive species program. People receive free training on invasive plant and species identification, and they’re encouraged to identify invasives while hiking, paddling or otherwise recreating in the park.

The most popular citizen science reporting tool is iMapInvasives, a mobile app and website that allows people to report either the presence or non-presence of an invasive species. Both the DEC and APIPP ask for citizen reports of invasives like BLD to be filed using iMapInvasives.

The Forest Pest Hunters program started in 2020 with a focus on identifying hemlock woolly adelgid, and last week, APIPP added a beech leaf disease identification program to the docket. But citizen science reporting is a longstanding tradition in the Adirondacks.

Hemlocks, like the one seen here on the Rooster Comb Trail in Keene Valley on Tuesday, Sept. 20, are important to protect lands from erosion and trout populations from the sun. That's why citizen science efforts to track the presence of hemlock woolly adelgid, an invasive species that can kill hemlocks, are important in protecting hemlock populations in the Adirondacks. (News photo — Lauren Yates)

APIPP’s Lake Protectors program has been in place for around 20 years.

For 22 years, the Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation has relied on citizen surveys to track common loon populations in the Adirondacks. ACLC Education Coordinator Jennifer Denny said that the center’s annual loon census, which is completely informed by citizen sightings of loons in waters across the Adirondacks, has revealed that loon populations in the Adirondacks have been steadily rising over the last 20 years.

For 25 years, Protect the Adirondacks and the Adirondack Watershed Institute have partnered on the Adirondack Lake Assessment Program, a citizen science-powered water quality monitoring program. AWI Senior Research Scientist Brendan Wiltse said that the decades of data gathered by hundreds of volunteers has been important to AWI in understanding the state of Adirondack lakes — especially when it comes to the influence of road salt use in Adirondack waters.

This year, Wiltse said volunteers are collecting water samples and data from 120 Adirondack lakes. The data that comes from citizen science reporting is nothing to shrug off. Wiltse said it’s “high-quality, defensible data that’s comparable to if we were using our professional staff to do this work.” That’s because organizations like AWI devote time and resources to training their citizen scientists and ensuring the data they collect can be used. Wiltse said that a “big chunk” of the data used in a 2012 study on road salt and Adirondack waters — authored in part by AWI Executive Director Dan Kelting — came from the Adirondack Lake Assessment Program. The paper showed that waters with higher salt concentrations shared proximity to roads maintained by the state Department of Transportation each winter. The paper taught AWI staff that efforts to address road salt concentration in Adirondack waters require cooperation with the state DOT, Wiltse said.

“For the road salt issue in particular, we wouldn’t have the understanding of the severity of that pollutant in the Adirondacks without our citizen science program,” Wiltse said.

Citizen scientists also help local environmental organizations that have a small staff to cover more ground than they’d be able to on their own. Bernacki said that around 30 people volunteered for the Forest Pest Hunters program over the winter in search of hemlock woolly adelgid, and they collectively donated over 400 hours of their time to document the species. That amounts to 11 weeks of full-time work for one APIPP staff member.

“It’s just time we could never spend doing those surveys, and they’re so vital to knowing where this thing (HWA) is,” Bernacki said.

Wiltse also noted the limitations of AWI staff to perform ALAP’s extensive research. He said the project wouldn’t be possible without citizen scientists. But citizen science is about more than the money environmental organizations save and the projects they can complete, he added; it’s also about fostering land stewardship in citizens through community engagement.

“These folks then just have a generally better understanding of the science and science in general, but also a better understanding of the resources they care about, and so they can be better stewards of those resources,” he said.

These are just a few of many citizen science-oriented efforts across the park, which are growing every year.

– The DEC implemented the Clean, Drain, Dry law this year — inside the Adirondack Park and within 10 miles of its border — requiring boaters and encouraging paddlers to check their watercraft for aquatic invasives before getting into the waterways.

– In its Adirondack Pollinator Project, Keeseville-based ADKAction set a goal to “empower people to take individual and collective action to ensure a future where pollinators thrive, native habitat abounds, and Adirondack residents and visitors are engaged pollinator advocates.” It provides free native flower seeds for people inside the Adirondack Park who want to plant a pollinator garden that feeds native pollinator populations.

– In light of this summer’s news that migratory monarch butterflies were added to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species list, the Paul Smith’s College Visitor Interpretive Center’s efforts to encourage citizen scientists to track tagged monarchs have renewed importance.

– The Adirondack Land Trust has supplied the Saranac Lake Free Library and the Keene Valley Public Library with backpacks filled with bird-watching supplies, including binoculars, bird identification books and a notebook for record-keeping. People are encouraged to document their bird-watching findings on apps like eBird, a citizen science database people can use to document birds they’re seeing and hearing in a particular location. That information is then collated and vetted by regional reviewers.

Getting involved with local citizen science programs is free and easy — just check out the websites for local environmental organizations and browse their citizen science programs, or call the environmental organizations directly to ask how you can help.

Starting at $1.44/week.

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