BRANCHING OUT Spring/Summer 2010 A newsletter of the School of Forestry and Natural Resources at Paul Smith’s College
Letter From the Dean If
. Nearly 2,000 people came to campus in April for Spring Meet.
Sawdust in the forecast
In
. Tyler Rothe competes in a birling event. Rothe was an instructor at the first Adirondack Woodsmen School, which was featured in a New York Times story in July. (http://nyti.ms/c6gPtT)
addition to hosting the annual Spring Meet, this summer, Paul Smith’s hosted the firstever Adirondack Woodsmen’s School. For two, one-week sessions, members of the college’s woodsmen’s team and Coach Brett McLeod gave aspiring high school and college woodsmen hands-on training in chopping, chainsawing, birling and more, while teaching them the history and tradition behind the industry in the Adirondacks. More than
20 participants signed up for each session, for which they can earn college credit. About that Spring Meet: The college’s women’s and jackand-jill teams took first place, while the men’s team came in third. Smitties Jon Preston and Rosalie Santerre won their divisions in the Stihl Timbersports Northeast Collegiate Challenge, while Tyler Rothe won the Ironjack competition held that weekend. (Preston’s triumph aired on ESPNU on Friday, July 23.)
IN THIS ISSUe: Field notes
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Student cleanup 2 Faculty updates 3 Woodsmen’s school
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Dillon Park
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it is true that mobility is a sign of life – as stated emphatically on several occasions by Paul Smith’s College President John Mills, a highly regarded microbiologist in a previous life – then I and my family are very much alive. By the time you read this, I’ll have moved on from Paul Smith’s to take on the directorship of the federally funded New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute. I’m looking forward to returning to research and outreach in ecological restoration with a great professional staff in the beautiful highlands region of New Mexico. At the same time, I
will certainly miss working with the excellent and extremely dedicated faculty at the School of Forestry and Natural Resources and our motivated and hard-working students. There is reason for optimism about the future of the forestry and natural resources program, despite challenging economic realities. Enrollment is strong – our division will account for almost 50 percent of the college’s freshman enrollment this fall, when we will also launch a new program in natural resources sustainability. And while forestry programs across the country are struggling for enrollment,
Andrew egan our own is experiencing healthy, steady growth, with almost 60 new students arriving this fall. More than 60 new students are expected this fall in our fisheries and wildlife science program, one of the college’s largest. Programs in arboriculture and natural resources management and Continued on Page 2 ?
Dillon Park update
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his summer marks the fifth anniversary of John Dillon Park, a joint partnership between Paul Smith’s College and International Paper. The park, which opened in 2006, is a fully accessible wilderness facility – designed so guests with disabilities can enjoy the outdoors without barriers. The park features several lean-tos and a tent site for camping; hiking trails; a fishing platform; and a pontoon boat for tours of the lake or fishing. The park, which is located about an hour from campus between Long Lake and Tupper Lake, is managed exclusively by Paul Smith’s faculty and students. For further information or to make a reservation:
Change Service Requested
P.O. Box 265, Paul Smiths, NY 12970-0265 School of Forestry & Natural Resources
Non-profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Utica, NY Permit No. 566
www.johndillonpark.org May 1-August 31: (518) 524-6226 September 1-April 30: (518) 327-6126
SFNR FIeLD NOTeS
SFNR FACULTy UPDATeS
? Jessie Gardner ’10 graduated with a
Peer-reviewed PaPers, book ChaPters, books and other aCComPlishments
bachelor’s degree in fisheries & wildlife sciences after a great career as captain of the cross-country team and Sunrise Conference female runner of the year. This exemplary FWS student was named outstanding senior of the Class of 2010 at Commencement. Gardner presented her preliminary hare research at the Adirondack Research Consortium’s meeting last year, and then presented her final paper at the The Wildlife Society conference in Alexandria Bay. ? Gardner and Laura Upham ’10 (B.S., Forestry) were voted the top graduates in the School of Forestry and Natural Resources in 2010.
? Dr. Jeff Walton will serve as interim dean of the School of Forestry and Natural Resources, beginning this summer. A nationwide search for a new dean is currently under way.
Students keep Saranac Lake Park safe Students in the Arboriculture course conducted a community work project at Denny Park in Saranac Lake this spring. Under the supervision of instructors Randall Swanson and Dan Groves, the students removed three large, dead trees posing a risk to park users. They also removed four smaller dead trees and pruned five others as part of the project, which was reported in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. Also, on Arbor Day, the students planted a hackberry on campus near the Freer Science Building.
? Dr. Jorie Favreau attended the annual meeting of the Northeast Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (NEAFWA) meeting in Newton, Mass., in April, where she presented three research papers, on conservation officers, snowshoe hares and flying squirrels (with Eric Holt ’09). She was accompanied by four FWSW students: Jacob Dillon, Nicole Bellerose, Emily Bixby, and Dominique Biondi. They networked with fish and wildlife professionals, and attended poster sessions and oral presentations. ? Under the direction of Prof. Joe Dadey, students in the recreation, adventure travel and ecotourism program will be returning to Belize and Guatemala for their eco-adventure practicum in January 2011. ? Forestry students Rosalie Santerre,
Greg Rose, and Josh Fitzgerald will help with Forestry Fall Block as undergraduate teaching assistants in mensuration, harvesting, and surveying, respectively, in fall 2010.
Letter from the Dean Continued from Page 1 policy are also growing, while the rest are either holding steady or decreasing slightly. Those students will learn their skills at up-to-date facilities: we have spent $200,000 to modernize the sawmill and more than $30,000 on GPS- and geographic information systemsrelated equipment and software in the past year. As the School of Forestry and Natural Resources evolves, several of our faculty are actively engaged in significant research and outreach efforts that often involve our students. Those students are actively involved in service (see the article on the recent good work of the arboriculture students), connecting them both to the broader community and to the realization that they have the power and the responsibility to use their knowledge and skills to help make the campus, the local community, the Adirondacks, and the world a better place for everyone. Thanks to all for your support. Best,
Andrew Egan, Dean, SFNR
? Dr. Jorie Favreau was recently awarded the college’s Chamberlain Award for excellence in teaching. In addition, Favreau presented a poster on flying squirrel movement at the NEAFWA meeting in April. She also presented her research on conservation officers and snowshoe hares, the latter a collaborative effort with Paul Smith’s College capstone students. Favreau was also recently appointed program director for the fisheries and wildlife sciences program, which enrolls more students at Paul Smith’s than any other. ? Dr. Dan Kelting and Corey Laxson recently published a peer-reviewed paper on the cost and effectiveness of hand harvesting to control the Eurasian watermilfoil population in Upper Saranac Lake (Journal of Aquatic Plant Management). Kelting also presented his work at the Adirondack Research Consortium meeting in May. He will represent Paul Smith’s on the ADK Invasive Species Team (other partners are the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, New York State Department of Transportation, the Adirondack Park Agency and the Nature Conservancy), and will host an invasive species conference at campus on August 10-11. Kelting has also signed a memorandum of understanding with the Boquet River Association to assist them with GIS-based watershed assessment and will be integrating this into courses at Paul Smith’s, including capstone projects, Forest Soils and Watershed Management. Kelting and Laxson also published a review of the effects and costs of salt use on Adirondack roads in the Adirondack Park (Adirondack Watershed Institute Report #AWI2010-01) and presented a summary of their report to participants in a winter road management conference at the college in May. In addition, Kelting traveled to Washington, D.C., with a delegation from the Adirondacks to meet with legislative representatives to educate them about invasive species. He also met with Department of Transporta-
> Mahogany and plantain agroforestry at the Escuela Nacional Forestal, Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic. Prof. Brett McLeod will be returning soon to work with the government of the Dominican Republic on ecotourism projects.
? Early morning Pinus caribaea seedlings, Escuela Nacional Forestal, Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic.
? Dr. Andrew Egan has published two peer-reviewed papers so far in 2010 – one on residual stand damage along skid trails in a group selection harvest (Northern Journal of Applied Forestry, June) and another on challenges to sawmill businesses in New England and New York State (Journal of Forestry, September). In addition, Egan was invited by USAID to work on a project related to forestry curriculum planning and development at the forestry school in Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic, in the spring, a follow up to his USAID-sponsored work there last fall. Prof. Brett McLeod also participated in this summer’s project with the expectation that it will lead to further collaborations between the forestry school in the Dominican Republic and Paul Smith’s College, including student and faculty exchanges. McLeod gave a presentation on ecotourism in Santo Domingo and will likely return to the island in January as a guest of the minister of the environment to follow up with ecotourism projects there.
tion officials in Albany to review and discuss winter road management practices. ? Prof. Robert McAleese is taking the lead in estimating the carbon value of the college forestlands. He has also developed forestry summer camp courses in forestry field ecology and measurement and mapping that all forestry students will take beginning in summer 2011. ? Dr. David Patrick has two peer-reviewed papers currently in press so far in 2010 – one on the movement of freshwater turtles across an urban-rural gradient (Landscape Ecology) and the other on effective culvert placement and design to facilitate passage of amphibians across roads (Journal of Herpetol-
ogy). He has also been awarded a $15,000 grant to assess biodiversity, forest condition and the effects of management in the Northern Forest, and was invited by the University of Maine to present his work on the use of spatially explicit habitat resistance models to guide mitigation of road effects on amphibian and reptile populations. ? Dr. Elizabeth Harper will be joining the School of Forestry and Natural Resources faculty during the fall to teach several wildlife labs, capstone, and Ecological Foundations of Sustainability, the new sustainability program course. ? Professor Hans Michielen and the sugar bush crew had another very successful sugaring season in 2010.