ALBANY: Dr. Roland Kays, Mammalogist with the New York State Museum, explained to a large, appreciative Save the Pine Bush audience, why carnivores are important to ecosystems. Carnivores have a Òtop downÓ effect on ecosystems. For example, wolves eat moose, who eat plants. A change in the number of wolves will affect a change in the number of moose, which changes the vegetation in the ecosystem. Or, coyotes are known to eat cats. The population of coyotes has an effect…
DEC reintroduces box turtles in Albany Pine Bush Experiment Born Free DEC reintroduces box turtles in Albany Pine Bush Experiment Reprinted from the Daily Gazette, June 24, 1997, By Paitrick Kurp, Gazette Reporter COLONIE – Deep in the Albany Pine Bush – some 500 yards, that is, from the New York State Thruway – among the pitch pines, white oaks and chestnut oaks, stands a rickety corral of wooden stakes and chicken wire. The floor of the 400 square foot…
ALBANY – On a warm, moonlit night in the Albany Pine Bush Preserve, a group of biologists listened at the foot of a grassy dune for the lilting, three-note song of a once-common nightbird that has now become rare. “We were pretty excited to hear the whippoorwill here again,” said Neil Gifford, conservation director of the preserve. “It had been 13 years since it was last heard around here.” Gifford believes intensive work in recent years to restore the rare…