Adirondack Watershed Institute Stewardship Program: Summary of Programs and Research 2015
Adirondack Watershed Institute
Eric Holmlund, Lauren Henderson, Sue O’Reilly, Jamie Parslow, Sean Regalado, Jeff Sann, & Kathleen Wiley
This report summarizes the data and program highlights for the 2015 field season of the Paul Smith’s College (PSC) Adirondack Watershed Institute Stewardship Program (AWISP) in Paul Smiths, New York. In 2015, New York State contracted with PSC to launch the Adirondack AIS Spread Prevention Pilot Program, a NYS Environmental Protection Fund (EPF) initiative through which the AWISP provided stewards at several previously unserved waterways, and supervised the establishment of 11 decontamination stations across the park. 73 stewards were stationed at 61 boat launches and decontamination stations across the Adirondack region and beyond, implementing a landscape-scale, coordinated aquatic invasive species (AIS) spread prevention program. Stewards greeted and educated 96,140 visitors about AIS issues and spread prevention techniques while inspecting 43,806 watercraft of multiple types. Stewards discovered and removed 1,125 instances of confirmed AIS, approximately 3% of all watercraft inspected. A comparative analysis of data from all 61 steward locations revealed variation in traffic encountered, visitor receptivity to inspection, AIS transport rate, percentage of visitors taking AIS spread prevention measures, and type of watercraft launched. Visitors reported using their watercraft within the previous two weeks on over 350 different water bodies across the United States and Canada. This report also includes summaries of steward projects and research initiatives including public education and outreach, community improvement and research projects, summit stewardship, surveying and management of invasive species, banded loon monitoring, and a comprehensive biological stream assessment as part of an ongoing AWI research project. The program was funded in 2015 by a United States Environmental Protection Agency/ Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (EPA GLRI) grant, New York State’s Natural Heritage Trust (NHT), the Upper Saranac Lake Foundation (USLF), the St. Regis Foundation, the Lake Placid Shore Owners’ Association (LPSOA), the Saratoga Lake Protection and Improvement District (SLPID), the Rainbow Lake Association (RLA), the Adirondack White Lake Association, Great Sacandaga Lake Advisory Council, Great Sacandaga Lake Association, Lake Champlain Basin Program (LCBP), S.A.V.E. (Stop Aquatic inVasives from Entering) Lake George Partnership, and PSC.
