Inside ESF, December 2014

The Magazine of the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry

ESF Inaugurates Quentin Wheeler as Fourth President Page 14

Work-study student Nicole Madden, ’16, an aquatics and fisheries major, helps move plants into the newly refurbished ESF greenhouses.

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Contents

SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry

2 Campus Update

President Quentin Wheeler

7 News from the North

Vice President for Enrollment Management and Marketing Robert C. French

10 American Classic Restored

ESF researchers have developed a blight-resistant American chestnut

12 Top 10 College announced new species for 2014

14 Hail to the Chief

Office of Communications 122 Bray Hall 315-470-6644 www.esf.edu/communications Editor Claire B. Dunn

Quentin Wheeler installed as ESF president

Art Director Wendy P. Osborne

16 Bioblitzed

Staff Writer Karen B. Moore

24 hours, one lake, 450 species

18 Wilderness Kept Wild

Office Staff Peggy Olrich

25 Pulling Mussels from a Shell

Contributing Editors Dee Klees Tom Boll

26 All God’s Creatures Faith and ecology entwined in sacred web

Contributing Writers Alison Gibson ES ’14 Renée K. Gadoua Dee Klees

ESF alumni take wilderness to heart Bacteria found to control zebra mussels

28 Acorn Nation

The latest on ESF’s athletic teams

InsideESF is produced by the Office of Communications of the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

www.esf.edu

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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On the cover: ESF President Quentin Wheeler speaks at his inauguration in Hendricks Chapel.

Photograph | cover and inside cover, Wendy P. Osborne

We invite letters to the editor.* You can email your comments to InsideESF@esf.edu or mail them to us at: Inside ESF, SUNY-ESF, 122 Bray Hall, 1 Forestry Drive, Syracuse, N.Y., 13210-2778 *Inside ESF reserves the right to edit letters for content or length.

Incoming freshmen and ESF’s Orientation Leaders take to the Quad to show their school spirit.

Record Class Arrives for New Academic Year ESF this fall welcomed the largest entering class in its history. More than 330 first-year students and an additional new 250 transfer students arrived on campus for the fall 2014 semester.

The combined total of more than 580 new undergraduates surpasses the previous record of 551 set in fall 2012.

The transfer class includes more than 60 students who enrolled at ESF’s Ranger School campus in Wanakena, N.Y. The recent addition of a new degree program in environmental and natural resources conservation has helped to attract the largest number of Ranger School students in many years.

Students arriving at the main campus in Syracuse moved into a newly expanded residence hall. An addition to Centennial Hall, which is LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold Certified, expands the building’s capacity from 452 to 536 students. The College expanded the building in response to student needs for on-campus housing.

Several characteristics make this ESF freshman class unique: n Twenty-two percent of the entering first-year students and 10 percent 2

of the transfer students came from outside New York state, maintaining ESF’s position as one of the most geographically diverse campuses in the SUNY system. n The record class also set a new standard for student diversity. Twentytwo percent of the first-year students and 10 percent of transfers identify themselves as African-American, AsianAmerican, Native American, Hispanic or multiple race. Three percent of the firstyear students are international students and 47 percent are women. n The “typical” first-year student earned a high school average of 91 percent, a class rank in the top fifth of his or her graduating class and SAT college entrance examination scores in the top 25 percent of all students tested nationally. Incoming transfer students also earned strong grades at their previous colleges, averaging 3.15 (B+) on a 4.00 scale.

On a graduate level, ESF enrolled approximately 120 new graduate students for the 2014-15 academic year bringing graduate school enrollment to approximately 465 students.

Photograph | Wendy P. Osborne

ESF Among America’s Best Colleges ESF has received high marks in a number of college ranking publications including U.S News.

The College is ranked 30th among the nation’s top public universities in U.S. News’ 2015 edition of Best Colleges, the smallest institution to receive such a distinction, and is listed as 76th for overall quality on the Best National Universities list.

ESF is also recognized as one of the best college values in the nation, ranking 45th in the U.S. News “Great Schools, Great Prices” category comparing college costs and quality, and 25th among National Universities where students graduate with the least amount of student loan debt.

ESF was ranked 20th nationwide for Best Value Colleges 2014 by Forbes on its Forbes.com website.

The 2014 Washington Monthly College Guide ranked ESF among the Top 100 National Universities for its “contribution to the public good” and among the Top 50 universities in the guide’s “Best Bang for the Buck” value ranking.

‘Humanitarian Engineering’ Puts ESF Students to Work ESF students have an opportunity to combine their education, interest in service work and budding professional skills to improve communities, both locally and globally, through projects described as “humanitarian engineering.”

About 50 students in the College’s Engineering for a Sustainable Society (ESS) club have been involved for the last several years in community projects in the Syracuse area and in Central and South America.

“Humanitarian engineering implies students are using professional skills to provide critical services for communities in need,” said Dr. Ted Endreny, club adviser and chair of ESF’s Department of Environmental Resources Engineering.

Endreny said the club formed in response to community need, student desire and professional obligation. The effort began more than 10 years ago when a club called Engineers Without Borders (EWB) was created at ESF and included Syracuse University students. Since then, ESF students launched a new organization, now formally recognized as ESS. Their projects have taken them to Honduras, Peru, Mexico, Dominica and Panama and, more recently, to communities closer to home where they make a difference.

Members of ESS gather outside the Amberations barn, where they had been working on a project. n In 2007, the EWB club began working to provide potable water to three communities in Buena Vista, Honduras, that are home to about 300 people. This past summer, Endreny, ESS President Thomas Decker and Taylor Brown, ESS public relations officer, visited Honduras to hand over to community members the responsibility for maintaining the project. n ESS has another ongoing international project in Peru, where the mission is to provide sustainable energy, through solar panels and hydroelectricity, to a community of about 150 people. The project was funded by $20,000 raised through ESS, Rotary International and the organization known as IEEE.

n Closer to home, ESS students worked with an organization called Amberations in the community of Marietta, about 30 minutes southwest of the ESF campus. Amberations is a not-for-profit organization that supports mental health through natural environment interaction. Research on the project began in 2012, and this past summer the club finished work on installing a composting toilet near Amberations’ trail system.

Decker said he is proud that he has been able to use his education to take a lead role in projects that have an impact on people’s lives. “It’s almost like you’re part of the community,” he said.

— By Alison Gibson ES ’14

$20M Grant Funds Water Research Education Center N.Y. Governor Andrew Cuomo announced in September that ESF and several partners will receive $20 million through the New York SUNY 2020 Challenge Grant program to develop a SUNY Water Research and Education Center (WREC) at Onondaga Lake.

The SUNY WREC will bring research, educational opportunity, tourism and sustainable development to the shores of a nationally recognized lake cleanup effort. Scientists from ESF, the Upstate Freshwater Institute and the Onondaga Environmental Institute will monitor changes to the lake ecosystems. In partnership with the Great Lakes Research Consortium, research funding will flow to the areas of robotic water-quality monitoring, lake restoration and water-quality sensor design. Additional opportunities exist for tourism, STEM education for K-12 students, distance learning and other workforce education.

Companies will be attracted to the Center in connection to the STARTUP NY program and on-site research. The Center will strengthen Photograph | courtesy of Kristine Ellsworth.

Central New York’s role as a national center for water research technologies and related industries.

The project will include a 34,000-square-foot LEED Gold-certified building on the shore of Onondaga Lake at the heart of the Syracuse Inner Harbor. The short-term economic impact of the Center at Onondaga Lake is projected to be $37 million; it is expected to create 532 temporary jobs. The long-term economic impact is estimated to be $11 million annually, and the project is expected to create and sustain 186 permanent jobs.

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Donors Put Centennial Campaign Ahead of Target The Centennial Campaign, ESF’s first comprehensive campaign, appears poised to meet — and perhaps surpass — its $20 million goal ahead of schedule.

At the end of October, the ESF College Foundation, Inc., reported that gifts to the campaign were at 99 percent of the total goal, or more than $19.8 million.

“This success has positioned us well,” said Dana Piwinski ’80, Centennial Campaign manager for the ESF Development Office. “We have revised our goal to reach the $20 million target by December 2014 and to wrap up the campaign a year early, in June 2015. This illustrates the loyalty and devotion that ESF inspires in its alumni and friends. People believe in the College’s mission, and they are eager to support our students as they pursue their education. We have a lot of people to thank for this success.”

Piwinski shared some of the numbers behind the Centennial Campaign’s success: n more than 6,500 individual supporters have contrib uted so far to the campaign, including ESF alumni,

faculty and staff; members of both the ESF College

Foundation Board and the ESF Board of Trustees;

corporations, foundations, community groups and

friends of the College. n more than 30,000 separate gifts have been made.

n

more than $6 million of the total raised has been

through planned gifts, such as bequests through

estate plans. Those donors are members of the

Robin Hood Oak Society. n approximately $1 million has been donated

through the 1911 Society. Named for the year the

College was founded, the 1911 Society includes

those who make an annual unrestricted gift of

$1,911 to the Foundation. n more than 250 corporations have participated

through either direct or matching gifts. n 33 foundations participated.

The Centennial Campaign benefited from the largest gifts ever made in ESF’s 103-year history: n Raymond M. ’52 and Rita J. Smith, $2.4 million for

undergraduate scholarships. n Edna Bailey Sussman Fund, more than $3.1 million

for graduate internships. n Open Space Institute, more than $1.2 million in

property and supporting funds, involving transferring

ownership of the Masten House in Newcomb, N.Y.,

to ESF and supporting refurbishment of the historic building. n J. Lawrence Murray, more than $1 million for under-

graduate scholarships.

Campaign Donation Sources 23% 16%

46%

15% ESF Family Foundations Friends Corporations

$2M Project Will Showcase ESF’s Roosevelt Wild Life Collection ESF has received $2 million from the State University of New York to create a facility that will make the College’s renowned Roosevelt Wild Life Collection more available to students for both research and education.

The funding will be used to finish 5,000 square feet of space in the lower level of the College’s Gateway Center to house the extensive specimen collection, provide space for classes and give visitors an opportunity to learn about the scientific preparation and study of the collection.

“Most of what science knows about biodiversity is contained in the roughly 3 billion specimens that have been collected over the past 300 years,” said ESF President Quentin Wheeler. “As we confront issues of habitat loss, invasive species, extinction and climate changes, collections such as this one often provide the only baseline data against which we can measure the status quo.”

The collection supports ESF’s research and education in natural history and

environmental science. It was established at the College in 1919. The new space will be part of an effort to link students with collections and their relevance to research and education in environmental biology.

Wheeler, a taxonomist who is founding director of the International Institute for Species Exploration, said the new facility will also serve the public as a gateway to New York state’s natural heritage and SUNY’s role in its exploration and conservation.

The newly finished space will provide room to consolidate the Roosevelt Wild Life Collection and associated data management. It will provide modern, environmentally controlled conditions to house the scientifically valuable collection, which contains more than 10,000 specimens of birds, mammals, freshwater and marine fishes, reptiles and amphibians. The new space will include windows from the hallway so visitors can watch research being done.

Long-eared owl from the Roosevelt Wild Life Collection

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Photograph | Wendy P. Osborne

New Frog Species

Identified Along East Coast Researchers have identified a new species of leopard frog living in largely urban areas in the Interstate 95 corridor from the metropolitan tri-state area as far south as North Carolina.

A scientist from the New York Natural Heritage Program, which is administered through ESF, contributed to a report Oct. 29 in the journal “PLOS ONE” that says the new species has been named the Atlantic Coast leopard frog.

The frog was identified as a separate species largely because of its distinctive call, a “chuck” that sounds more like the call of a wood frog than the noises made by other species of leopard frogs.

Bioacoustic testing set it apart.

“The call is what really gave it away,” said Dr. Matthew Schlesinger, a zoologist with the Natural Heritage Program, during a visit to ESF. “Now we can say its call is definitely different from the northern and southern leopard frogs and its morphology and patterning are somewhat different.”

The frog became a subject of research several years ago when a Rutgers University graduate student began researching southern leopard frogs in southern New York state. Schlesinger, who got involved in the project about seven years ago, said researchers noticed the frogs did not look like southern leopard frogs elsewhere.

“We started to think there might be something else here, a cryptic species that’s morphologically similar to other species but turns out to be different genetically and perhaps in other ways,” he said.

Schlesinger and his colleagues teamed up with geneticists now at the University of

California at Los Angeles, who analyzed tissue samples and found evidence this frog is a distinct species. Those genetic differences were described in a publication two years ago but the research team stopped short of naming the species and compiling a formal taxonomic description.

Now, he said, the bioacoustic description and the morphological data that describes the frog’s appearance and measurements establish it as a distinct species. Because of the frog’s occurrence in urban areas, including the New Jersey Meadowlands, the paper reporting the study is titled, “Cryptic Diversity in Metropolis.”

The frog, which would fit comfortably in the palm of an adult’s hand, is found primarily in large wetlands with open canopies.

Schlesinger and his colleagues are now halfway through a two-year study to determine the frog’s distribution and population status through nine states from Rhode Island to Virginia.

“Much to their credit, the Atlantic Coast leopard frog team guided by Matt Schlesinger has not stopped at simply describing this remarkable new discovery,” said Dr. James Gibbs, a professor of vertebrate conservation biology and the director of ESF’s Roosevelt Wild Life Station. “They are now embarking on the more complicated and arduous process of defining where the species occurs, what its habitat needs are and how we can ensure its persistence into the future.”

The lead author on the paper is Jeremy A. Feinberg of Rutgers University.

Other contributors are Catherine E. Newman of Louisiana State University, Gregory J. Watkins-Colwell of Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Brian Zarate of the N.J. Division of Fish and Wildlife, Brian R. Curry of the University of California at Los Angeles, H. Bradley Shaffer of UCLA and Joanna Burger of Rutgers.

The Atlantic Coast leopard frog, a new species of frog, has been discovered along the East Coast.

Photographs | Courtesy of Matthew Schlesinger

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Giant Tortoises

Species Gains a Foothold on a Galapagos Island

A population of endangered giant tortoises, which once dwindled to just over a dozen, has recovered on the Galapagos island of Española, a finding described as “a true story of success and hope in conservation” by the ESF professor who was the lead author of a study published recently.

Some 40 years after the first captive-bred tortoises were reintroduced to the island by the Galapagos National Park Service, the endemic Española giant tortoises are reproducing and restoring some of the ecological damage caused by feral goats that were brought to the island in the late 19th century.

“The global population was down to just 15 tortoises by the 1960s. Now there are some 1,000 tortoises breeding on their own. The population is secure. It’s a rare example of how biologists and managers can collaborate to recover a species from the brink of extinction, ” said Dr. James P. Gibbs, a professor of vertebrate conservation biology at ESF and lead author of the paper published in October in the journal “PLOS ONE.” Gibbs and his collaborators assessed the tortoise population using 40 years of

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data from tortoises marked and recaptured repeatedly for measurement and monitoring by members of the Galapagos National Park Service, Charles Darwin Foundation and visiting scientists.

But there is another side to the success story: While the tortoise population is stable, it is not likely to increase until more of the landscape recovers from the damage inflicted by the now-eradicated goats.

“Population restoration is one thing, but ecological restoration is going to take a lot longer,” he said.

After the goats devoured all the grassy vegetation and were subsequently removed from the island, more shrubs and small trees have grown on Española. This hinders both the growth of cactus, which is a vital piece of a tortoise’s diet, and the tortoises’ movement. Chemical analysis of the soil done by Dr. Mark Teece, an ESF chemistry professor, shows there has been a pronounced shift from grasses to woody plants on the island in the last 100 years.

The shrubs and trees also inhibit the movements of the endangered waved

ESF researchers find tortoises are recovering with the plant life of Española. The albatross population has yet to take off.

albatross that breeds on the island. Gibbs said the plants make it difficult for the ungainly sea birds to take flight.

Gibbs’ co-authors on the study are Elizabeth A. Hunter, an ESF alumna who is now a Ph.D. student at the University of Georgia; Kevin T. Shoemaker, an ESF alumnus who is now a research scientist at SUNY’s Stony Brook University; Washington H. Tapia, formerly of the Galapagos National Park Service; and Linda J. Cayot of the Galapagos Conservancy. The research was supported by the Galapagos National Park Service, the Galapagos Conservancy, the Prometeo Program of Ecuador’s National Secretariat for Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Photographs | James P. Gibbs

REGIONAL CAMPUS NEWS

Newcomb Exercise Builds Leaders Luke Haumesser was two hours up a steep trail on a cold, rainy, Adirondack April day. The higher he climbed, the deeper the snow was underfoot.

“I was sitting on a log, wet, miserable and eating a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich,” he said. “And I still felt really good about what I was doing.”

Haumesser and his companions were participants in the first SUNY Adirondack Leadership Challenge, held at ESF’s Newcomb Campus in April. The day they climbed the mountain, they were practicing lessons they had learned the previous day about how to cultivate successful leadership behaviors and operate from the most favorable emotional state.

“There was a moment on that hike when some of the group became concerned that we’d lost the trail,” Haumesser said. “But instead of panicking, we decided to take a step back, eat our lunch and make a decision and work as a group. We had to ask ourselves if we trusted each other. And we did. We found out we were going the right way. In fact, we were only 45 minutes from the top.”

Haumesser, an area coordinator in residence life at SUNY Geneseo, was one of 13 people who participated in the Leadership Challenge. Twelve participants came from eight SUNY institutions; one came from St. John Fisher College in Rochester.

The program is a partnership between ESF’s Newcomb-based Northern Forest Institute (NFI) and the SUNY Leadership Institute (SUNYLI), which serves the entire university system.

The challenge was led

by Paul Hai, program director with NFI; Lee Riddell, director of SUNYLI; Michael Pastore, an associate with SUNYLI who serves as registrar at Cayuga Community College; and Norm Pure, a SUNYLI associate who has been involved in Top, photo taken at the overlook at Newcomb, N.Y., surrounded the field of human potential by the High Peaks. Above, Luke Haumesser, left, was among those development for more than participating in the first SUNY Adirondack Leadership Challenge at ESF’s Newcomb Campus.

20 years.

SUNYLI is to provide expertise on leadership “We have begun delivering development that prepares college leaders leadership programs in keeping with our for broader roles and greater responsibility. name,” said Hai. “And this is the first time The institute serves executives, administrawe’ve gone public in that way to meet the tors, faculty and trustees from SUNY’s 64 needs of SUNY.” campuses, as well as public and private colWhile usually referred to simply as NFI leges across the United States and Canada. for brevity’s sake, the institute’s full name is The three-day program weaves group Northern Forest Institute for Conservation problem-solving tasks, interactive discusEducation and Leadership Training. sions and outdoor active learning to enhance Riddell said the leadership program leadership skills. Interactive sessions focus gave participants a chance to understand on helping participants recognize how their how they react under stress and to use their feelings at any given moment can influence strengths to face a challenge. She said the their performance as a leader and how a natural setting at Newcomb was uniquely leader’s performance, health and relationsuited to that purpose. Getting outdoors in ships can be influenced by emotional a natural environment with limited access triggers over the course of a day. To obtain to electronic communication gives people a more information about SUNYLI or to see chance to focus on themselves, she said. a PowerPoint presentation about the first Her goal, she said, is to cultivate a culture SUNY Adirondack Leadership Challenge, visit within the SUNY system that encourages http://sunyli.suny.edu/. faculty and staff members to use their strengths to face challenges. The mission of

Photographs | top, Wendy P. Osborne; above right, courtesy of Paul Hai

The second SUNY Adirondack Leadership Challenge will be held April 23 to 26, 2015, at ESF’s Newcomb Campus. If you would like to attend or simply learn more about it, email Paul Hai, program coordinator for ESF’s Northern Forest Institute, at pbhai@esf.edu.

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REGIONAL CAMPUS NEWS

One Day, More Than 80 People, 93 Species of Bees: All in a Day’s Work at ESF’s Newcomb Campus

Top picture, a Megachile latimanus that was collected during the Adirondack AllTaxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI) and photographed using macro photography.

Left, Sam Droege ’86 MS, is a world-renowned bee expert with particular interest in macro photography of these insects. He is a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. During his visit to Newcomb, he shared his knowledge about the importance of these essential pollinators and demonstrated special photography techniques to reveal intricate details of bee morphology and beauty. Right, specimens collected and labeled during the ATBI.

ESF Forest Manager Honored by SAF

Bruce Breitmeyer

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The Newcomb Campus was a hub of activity in June as the Adirondack All-Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI), which surveys the diversity of life in the Adirondacks and connects people to natural communities through participation in inventories, brought its focus on pollinators to ESF’s Adirondack Interpretive Center.

ESF is a co-founder of the 10-year-old ATBI, which is based at Paul Smith’s College; the pollinator event was a first for the Newcomb Campus.

The scientists and interested citizens who collected specimens during the event identified close to 100 species of bees across the park and collected almost 1,000 individual specimens, using “bee bowls” (small, colorful plastic bowls filled with soapy water that attracts bees) as well as nets.

“Now that we have a baseline for what’s there, we have important information for researchers studying biodiversity,” said Stacy McNulty, associate director of the Adirondack Ecological Center on the Newcomb Campus.

“The main purpose of the bioblitz was to bring regional naturalists together to catalog the biodiversity of the site, to get the public to help identify the species and learn more about them,” said Ezra Schwartzberg ’01, an ESF alumnus who now works as a consultant and helped organize the event. “Having 100 bee species identified is an effort that has not been done in the park that I know of.”

To learn more about the pollinator bioblitz, go to www.inaturalist.org/projects/2014-atbi-bioblitz. Data are still being entered as bees are identified.

Bruce Breitmeyer, ESF Adirondack forest property manager, was recently named a Fellow by the Society of American Foresters (SAF).

The SAF is an organization that advances and advocates for the forestry profession in the United States. The SAF annually honors members who consistently provide exemplary contributions to both the forestry profession and the society by naming them fellows. Receiving a fellowship is the society’s highest honor, with only about 5 percent of members receiving this designation.

Breitmeyer has been with the College as forest manager since 1983 and currently

oversees the management of ESF’s Adirondack properties, which include close to 20,000 acres across the Adirondack Park in Newcomb, Warrensburg and Wanakena. He works out of the College’s Newcomb Campus.

His responsibilities include taking forest inventory, mapping forests and forest management planning while supporting ESF’s mission of teaching and research. Breitmeyer is also a New York Trained Certified Logger and was chair of the New York Society of American Foresters in 2010-2011. Breitmeyer has been an active member of SAF since 1978.

Photographs | top, macro photo stack by Dejen Mengis, USGS bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab; middle, Wendy P. Osborne; bottom, courtesy of Bruce Breitmeyer

AIC Exhibits First Resident Artist

Samouel Beguin

Saving Sounds of the Wild Graduate student Samouel Beguin says his master’s research gives him a chance to view an ecosystem in a way that does not actually involve looking at anything at all.

“I’m studying soundscapes in the Adirondack Park,” Beguin said. “A lot of people might not know what a soundscape is but, basically, it’s when you look at the landscape in a completely different way. In fact, you’re not actually looking at the landscape but you’re listening to the landscape.”

Beguin believes his project is the first to examine complete, multiday soundscapes at boreal wetlands in the Adirondack Park. His adviser, ESF Adirondack Ecological Center researcher Stacy McNulty, said the research could shed light on whether bird song is affected by human noises, even in highly protected landscapes.

Beguin spent his summer working out of ESF’s Newcomb Campus, using automated digital recording systems to capture sounds at more than 20 different locations. He left the recorders at each location for 55 hours in June and again in July before retrieving them and uploading the data to his computer for later analysis. He recorded more than 2,000 hours of sound.

He focused on boreal peatlands, a type of low-lying wetland where

sphagnum moss and acidic water create a unique habitat. Boreal peatlands are more common in Canada, he said.

Although some isolated peatlands exist in West Virginia, the Adirondacks is the southernmost region with a significant proportion of peatlands on the landscape.

The recordings pick up three types of sound described by Beguin: biophony (sounds made by animals); anthrophony (sounds made by humans); and geophony (sounds from the natural world such as running water and storms). Together, these different sounds combine to form a complete soundscape.

“I am capturing detailed snapshots of how these wetlands sounded this summer and preserving these soundscapes for future use by researchers and anyone interested in hearing what these places sounded like in the past,” Beguin said.

The information will become a historical record that details which bird species were present as well as the amount of audible airplane and car traffic. It could serve an educational purpose for children learning about animal sounds and park visitors getting a glimpse of biodiversity. The research results could ultimately help guide conservation and management of Adirondack boreal wetlands by providing an indication of how human noise can affect the animals that rely on those habitats.

ESF hosted its first art exhibition in October when the work of Frances Gaffney was featured in Moon Library as part of Friends and Frances Gaffney Family Weekend.

Gaffney spent the summer as artist-in-residence at ESF’s Adirondack Interpretive Center (AIC) at the College’s Newcomb Campus. Throughout the summer, she worked onsite creating pieces inspired by the local landscape. Gaffney led drawing and watercolor workshops on the last Saturday of every month.

Her work was on display all summer at the AIC. The artist was on hand at the Oct. 8 opening reception answering questions and discussing her art with students, faculty, staff and guests of the College.

Gaffney, who frequently uses the Adirondacks as a backdrop and source of inspiration, was the first artist-inresidence at the AIC, the site of public outreach at the Newcomb Campus.

During her time at the AIC, Gaffney worked on a series of paintings titled Feeling is the Prayer. In addition to painting, Gaffney interacted with the public, working along the trails every Sunday.

Guests often stopped by to chat and observe the artist as she worked.

Pray Bees, oil on canvas, by Frances Gaffney Photographs | top, Wendy P. Osborne; right, courtesy of Frances Gaffney

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Left, Andy Newhouse, collects nuts. Above, William Powell holds chestnuts.

Blight-Resistant

American Chestnut Trees Take Root by Claire B. Dunn ESF scientists are growing the first American chestnut trees that can withstand the blight that virtually eliminated the oncedominant tree from the eastern United States.

Members of the ESF research team recently published three peer-reviewed papers that, along with continuing research, support their conviction that their biotechnology work with a gene originating in wheat makes the American chestnut tree at least as blight resistant as the Chinese chestnut tree that can co-exist with blight with minimal ill effects.

“Our goal was to develop an American chestnut tree that has blight resistance 10

equal to that of a Chinese chestnut, and we are there. We’ve done it,” said Dr. William Powell, an ESF professor who leads the research project along with Dr. Chuck Maynard. “The leaf assays show it, the smallstem assays show it,” Powell said, referring to the analytical processes the researchers go through to determine the level of blight resistance. “These American chestnut trees are blight resistant.”

“It is tremendously satisfying to reach this level of success. We have a lot of people to thank for this. It’s been a long haul, but we are happy with where we are,” Maynard said. A significant milestone in the process, he said,

was reached when the transgenic trees, inoculated with the blight during testing, remained essentially as healthy as control trees that had been inoculated with only water.

The tree was once prominent enough to have earned a place in American culture, with chestnuts roasting over open fires in the winter and Chestnut Streets running through towns across the country. The wood of American chestnuts is rot-resistant, making it suitable for construction purposes, and its abundant nuts were once a dietary staple for wildlife.

The next step in the trees’ return is for the researchers to select one of the 14 lines of transgenic trees with blight resistance and submit a detailed application to the federal agencies that will conduct a rigorous review process. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, and Food and Drug Administration must approve the trees before they are available to the public for planting. If all goes well, the process could take around five years.

This is the first time the approval process will be used for a tree that is ultimately destined to be planted in the wild. The process has been applied to many crops, orchard and plantation trees, but not to species that are native to U.S. forests.

In the meantime, Powell, a molecular plant biologist, and Maynard, a tree improvement specialist, will produce as many trees as possible, perhaps 10,000, so they are ready for planting if and when the approval process is complete. The ESF College Foundation, Inc., which supports the College’s educational mission, continues fundraising efforts to support the work.

“The team has accomplished a major goal, the generation of a blight-resistant Photographs | Claire B. Dunn

American chestnut tree,” said Dr. Timothy Tschaplinski, a scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory who does chemical analysis for the research team to determine if the tissue of transgenic trees differs from that of wildtype trees. “The results of the metabolite analyses indicate that the nuts produced from transgenic plants aren’t appreciably different from those produced by wild-type plants and should be safe for consumption. The sum total of these efforts is a major step forward for the goal of restoration of American chestnut to the North American landscape.”

Continuing research by ESF and collaborators from other institutions indicates that the transgenic trees do not affect the composition of leaf litter, the feeding habits of insects or the growth of ecologically important fungi.

“We’re doing all these tests to be sure there are no ill effects because we are the first to develop a transgenic tree for an environmental restoration program,” Powell said.

Powell said the fact that the gene used to enhance blight resistance is obtained from wheat should allay concerns about the genetic engineering that went into producing the new lines of trees. “We eat it all the time,” he said. “If you had a bagel for breakfast, you ate it today. And this gene is gluten-free.”

He said that in trees produced in the laboratory, only two genes — the wheat gene and a common selectable marker gene — did not originally occur in the American chestnut, which has about 40,000 genes. A selectable marker gene is one introduced to an organism to help researchers be sure the resistance-enhancing gene is present.

Many hybrid chestnuts made by crossing different chestnut species, such as the Dunstan chestnut and others commonly on the market today, mix tens of thousands of genes. Even backcross breeding results in trees that have some 2,500 genes introduced by humans and are nearly one-sixteenth Chinese chestnut genetically. “Our transgenic American chestnuts are much, much closer to the original trees that were in our forests, and we got there by adding only a couple genes,” Powell said.

The most recent study, published this fall in the journal “Plant Science,” shows that when American chestnuts acquire blight resistance in the laboratory, they pass it on to the next generation, so trees planted in the wild would have blight-resistant offspring.

The two previous publications show that the level of blight resistance in an individual tree is linked to the presence of the resistance gene from wheat and that laboratory tests performed on leaves predict the level of blight resistance that is seen in field tests.

Powell and Maynard said the process shows the value of biotechnology in dealing with invasive species, such as the pathogenic fungus that arrived in New York City more than 100 years ago and virtually wiped out what was once the most abundant forest tree in the eastern United States.

“It’s possible to enhance disease resistance in plants with genetic engineering. This is a powerful tool that can be added to all the other tools available to improve forest health.

This technique can be used for many species of trees that are threatened by disease. It goes beyond the American chestnut,” Powell said.

Ten Thousand Chestnut Challenge The ESF College Foundation, Inc., launched its first crowd-funding campaign, the “Ten Thousand Chestnut Challenge,” to support the restoration of the American chestnut tree.

With the Centennial Campaign drawing to a close, the news spreading about ESF’s success in the restoration effort and the beginning of roastedchestnut season, the Foundation kicked off the month-long challenge Nov. 6.

Using the online platform Fundly.com and promotion through social media, the Foundation directed its appeal at alumni, faculty, staff, students, friends of the College and members of the public.

The focus was raising money to help cover the expense of growing 10,000 blight-resistant American chestnut trees that will be ready for widespread planting as soon as the approval process is complete.

The crowd-funding campaign was set to wrap up in early December, but you can still help by going to www.esf.edu/chestnutchallenge to make a gift that will help get a healthy American chestnut tree in the ground.

Chuck Maynard, left and William Powell.

Maynard, Powell Named ESF Exemplary Researchers Dr. Charles Maynard, Department of Forest and Natural Resources Management, and Dr. William Powell, Department of Environmental and Forest Biology, were named ESF’s Exemplary Researchers for 2014-2015 for their groundbreaking work to restore the American chestnut tree. The recognition comes with a $5,000 research account and a presidential salary adjustment.

This college-level award recognizes successful, currently active researchers with exemplary research activity, publication records and graduate/undergraduate student mentorship programs.

Maynard and Powell presented a campus-wide research seminar in September as the first seminar in this year’s Adaptive Peaks Series. They were presented with a plaque recognizing the achievement.

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ESF Announced Top 10 New Species for 2014

By Karen B. Moore and Claire B. Dunn

An appealing carnivorous mammal, a 12-meter-tall tree that has been hiding in plain sight and a sea anemone that lives under an Antarctic glacier are among the species identified by the ESF International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE) as the top 10 species discovered last year.

An international committee of taxonomists and related experts selected the top 10 from among the approximately 18,000 new species named during the previous year and released the list May 22 to coincide with the birthday, May 23, of Carolus Linnaeus, an 18th century Swedish botanist who is considered the father of modern taxonomy.

The list includes a quartet of tiny newcomers to science: a miniscule skeleton shrimp from Santa Catalina Island in California, a single-celled protist that does a credible imitation of a sponge, a clean room microbe that could be a hazard during space travel and a teensy fringed fairyfly named Tinkerbell.

Also on the list are a gecko that fades into the background in its native Australia and a fungus that, conversely, blazed its way into contention by virtue of the bright orange color it displays when it’s produced in colonies. Crawling slowly into the final spot on the alphabetical list is Zospeum tholussum, a tiny, translucent Croatian snail from one of earth’s deepest cave systems.

Olinguito: A New Carnivore, Hidden in Trees Bassaricyon neblina • Location: Ecuador The appealing olinguito, resembling a cross between a slinky cat and a wide-eyed teddy bear, lives secretively in cloud forests of the Andes mountains in Colombia and Ecuador. It is an arboreal carnivore that belongs to the family Procyonidae, which includes the familiar raccoon. The olinguito is smaller, though, typically topping out at about two kilograms (approximately 4.5 pounds). It is the first new carnivorous mammal described in the Western Hemisphere in 35 years. Its apparent dependence on cloud forest habitat means deforestation is a threat.

Kaweesak’s Dragon Tree: Mother of Dragon

The annual list, established in 2008, calls attention to discoveries that are made even as species are going extinct faster than they are being identified.

“The majority of people are unaware of the dimensions of the biodiversity crisis,” said Dr. Quentin Wheeler, founding director of the IISE and ESF president.

Scientists believe 10 million species await discovery, five times the number that are already known to science.

“The top 10 is designed to bring attention to the unsung heroes addressing the biodiversity crisis by working to complete an inventory of earth’s plants, animals and microbes. Each year a small, dedicated community of taxonomists and curators substantively improve our understanding of the diversity of life and the wondrous ways in which species have adapted for survival,” Wheeler said.

“One of the most inspiring facts about the top 10 species of 2014 is that not all of the ‘big’ species are already known or documented,” said Dr. Antonio Valdecasas, chair of the selection committee and a biologist and research zoologist with Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, Spain. “One species of mammal and one tree species confirm that the species waiting to be discovered are not only on the microscopic scale.”

in the limestone mountains of the Loei and Lop Buri Provinces in Thailand and may also be found in nearby Burma. Valued as a horticultural plant, its small number (perhaps 2,500), and the fact that it grows on limestone that is extracted for the manufacture of concrete, has earned this species a preliminary conservation status of endangered.

Orange Penicillium: A New Fungus among Us Penicillium vanoranjei • Location: Tunisia Distinguished by the bright orange color it displays when produced in colonies, this fungus was named as a tribute to the Dutch royal family, specifically His Royal Highness the Prince of Orange. It was reported in a journal published by the National Herbarium of the Netherlands. The newcomer was isolated from soil in Tunisia.

This species also produces a sheet-like extra-cellular matrix that may function as protection from drought.

Dracaena kaweesakii • Location: Thailand Sounding like something out of “Game of Thrones” and standing 12 meters (nearly 40 feet) tall, it’s hard to believe the dragon tree went unnoticed this long. Beautiful, soft, sword-shaped leaves with white edges and cream-colored flowers with bright orange filaments are the hallmarks of this impressive plant. The dragon tree is found 12

ANDRILL Anemone: Discovery on Ice Edwardsiella andrillae • Location: Antarctica A species of sea anemone, living under a glacier on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica, raises questions by its very existence. It is not clear how the species withstands the harsh conditions in its Photograph | Mark Gurney / CC BY 3.0

habitat. It is the first species of sea anemone reported to live in ice.

It was discovered when the Antarctic Geological Drilling Program (ANDRILL) sent a remotely operated submersible vehicle into holes that had been drilled into the ice. This revealed the presence of small creatures, less than 2.5 centimeters long (one inch) with most of their pale yellow bodies burrowed into the ice shelf and their roughly two dozen tentacles dangling into the frigid water below.

Skeleton Shrimp: A See-through Crustacean Liropus minusculus • Location: California, U.S.A. This tiny shrimp, the smallest in the genus, was identified from among specimens originally collected from a cave on that island of romance, sunny Santa Catalina, off the coast of Southern California. Part of a marine family known as skeleton shrimp, only distantly related to the ones some humans love to dip in cocktail sauce, this crustacean is the first of its genus to be reported in the northeastern Pacific. The new species has an eerie, translucent appearance that makes it resemble a bony structure. The male’s body measures just 3.3 millimeters (about an eighth of an inch); the female is even smaller at 2.1 (less than a tenth of an inch).

Leaf-tailed Gecko: Look Hard to See This One Saltuarius eximius • Location: Australia It’s not easy to spot this gecko, which has an extremely wide tail that is employed as part of its camouflage.

With longer limbs, a more slender body and larger eyes than other Saltuarius species, this one has a mottled coloration that allows it to blend in with its surroundings. Native to rain forests and rocky habitats, this gecko is a bit of a night owl. It is found on the vertical surfaces of rocks and trees as it waits for prey. Surveys of similar habitat near the area where this species was found did not reveal additional populations, so this may be a rare species. The gecko was discovered on rocky terrain in isolated rain forests of the Melville Range of eastern Australia.

Amoeboid Protist: Body Builder from the Mediterranean Spiculosiphon oceana • Location: Mediterranean Sea This one-celled organism is four to five centimeters high (1.5 to two inches), making it a giant in the world of single-celled creatures.

This foram (part of a distinct group among the many amoeboids) from the Mediterranean Sea gathers pieces of silica spicules, which are actually sponge fragments, from its surroundings and uses them like so many Lego blocks to construct a shell. It ends up looking much like a carnivorous sponge as well as feeding like one, extending pseudopods (a protist’s version of arms) outside the shell to feed on invertebrates that have become trapped in the spiny structures.

This species was discovered in underwater caves 30 miles off the southeast coast of Spain. Interestingly, they are the same caves where carnivorous sponges were first discovered.

Clean Room Microbes: Alien Invaders?

Tersicoccus phoenicis • Location: Florida, U.S.A., and French Guiana There are some things we don’t want to send into space and the newly discovered clean room microbes are among them. Found in rooms where spacecraft are assembled, this microbial species could potentially contaminate other planets that the spacecraft visit.

Tersicoccus phoenicis was independently collected from the floors of two separate clean rooms around 2,500 miles apart, one in Florida and one in French Guiana. While frequent sterilization reduces the microbes found in clean rooms, some resistant species persist that can tolerate extreme dryness; wide ranges of pH, temperature and salt concentration; and exposure to UV light or hydrogen peroxide.

Tinkerbell Fairyfly: Do You Believe in Fairies?

Tinkerbella nana • Location: Costa Rica The tiny size and delicately fringed wings of the parasitoid wasp family Mymaridae led to their common name: fairyflies.

Tinkerbella nana, named for Peter Pan’s fairy sidekick, measures just 250 micrometers (0.00984 inches) and is among the smallest insects. It is the latest addition to the 1,400 or so known species of the family. The new species was collected by sweeping vegetation in secondary growth forest at LaSelva Biological Station in Costa Rica. Although its host is not yet known, like other fairyflies it presumably has a life span of not more than a few days and attacks the eggs of other insects.

Domed Land Snail: Looks Ghostly, Moves Slowly Zospeum tholussum • Location: Croatia Living in complete darkness some 900-plus meters (nearly 3,000 feet) below the surface in the Lukina Jama-Trojama caves of western Croatia is Zospeum tholussum. This land snail lacks eyes as they’re not necessary in the total darkness of the caves, and it has no shell pigmentation giving it a ghost-like appearance. Only one living specimen was collected in a large cavern among rocks and sand with a small stream of running water nearby, however many shells were also found in the area.

Even by snail standards, Zospeum tholussum moves slowly, creeping only a few millimeters or centimeters a week. Researchers suspect these small snails, measuring only 2 millimeters in length (0.08 inch), travel in water currents or hitchhike on other cave animals, such as bats or crickets, to travel longer distances.

Photographs | top left, SINC (Servicio de Informacion y Noticias CientÌficas) and J.M. Guerra-García; top right, Conrad Hoskin; bottom left, Jennifer Read; bottom right, Jana Bedek

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Quentin Wheeler Installed as ESF’s Fourth President

This page, clockwise from left: President Wheeler gives his inaugural address in Hendricks Chapel.

Dr. Robin Kimmerer, Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology at ESF, welcomes President Wheeler on behalf of the ESF faculty.

SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher presents Wheeler with the ESF presidential medallion after installing him as ESF’s fourth president.

Faculty, staff and visiting dignitaries participate in the academic procession.

Facing page, from top: Dr. Neal Lester, Foundation Professor of English at Arizona State University, gives a reading from “The Holy Earth” by Liberty Hyde Bailey ESF Board of Trustee members Matthew J. Marko, Vita DeMarchi, chair, and Robert E. Moses.

President Wheeler and his wife, Marie, talk with Dr. Jacqueline Frair, associate professor in ESF’s Department of Environmental and Forest Biology, after the inauguration ceremonies.

People mix and mingle after the inauguration ceremony.

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New Era for College Celebrated ESF faculty and delegates from academic institutions in full regalia processed from the ESF campus to Hendricks Chapel to the strains of “Scotland the Brave” to herald the inauguration of ESF’s new president, Dr. Quentin Wheeler.

Wheeler was installed as the College’s fourth president in the institution’s 103-year history Sept.

12 in the presence of members of the College community, family and friends.

“We have no doubt you are the perfect fit for ESF. In the six months you’ve been on campus you have lit a fire in the academic heart on campus,” said Peter “P.J.” Connell, president of ESF’s Undergraduate Student Association, in his greetings on behalf of the student body.

Said ESF’s past president, Cornelius B. Murphy, Jr., “Enjoy the adventure before you. Make your mark, always put the students first and let’s continue to grow this extraordinary institution.”

Wheeler acknowledged ESF’s deep commitment to the environment in his inaugural address, saying ESF is uniquely positioned to solve the environmental challenges such as natural resources exploitation, climate change and degraded ecosystems, that face the world today.

“The ESF community, with its passion for the environment, small and nimble size, access to America’s great experiment in conservation — the Adirondacks — and networked with the great institutions of SUNY, is perfectly poised to create a new vision, take necessary risks and become a model institution for the confrontation of this new generation of problems,” he said.

Wheeler issued a challenge to the ESF community: “I challenge our dedicated and creative faculty and staff to redesign the ESF experience for undergraduates … that fully prepares the next generation of environmental leaders. … Let’s compile a list of learning outcomes that distinguish our grads from all others, and that stretch the normal definition and boundaries of education.”

The responsibility to be good stewards to the planet doesn’t end with ESF students, he said. Wheeler implored all those attending to get involved. “Environmentalism — having a concern for the status and welfare of the planet you live on — should not be a controversial or partisan thing, but a responsibility eagerly shared by all,” he said.

For a video of inauguration highlights, go to www.esf.edu/inauguration/video

Highlights from Wheeler’s address n “Finding scientific and technological solutions is no longer enough. In order to fundamentally shift our society to a more sustainable footing will require broad public support.”

n “To truly understand what makes us human is to explore and understand all kinds of life, tracing its history all the way back to the first single-celled ancestor.”

n “ESF’s work thus does not end at the edge of campus.

Increasing science literacy in the public is imperative, as is awakening a love of nature in children.”

Bagpiper Avery Head

n “Environmentalism — having a concern for the status and welfare of the planet you live on — should not be a controversial or partisan thing, but a responsibility eagerly shared by all.”

Photographs | Claire B. Dunn and Wendy P. Osborne

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Onondaga Lake Bioblitz:

More Than 400 Species in 24 Hours

S

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cientists and citizen volunteers who fanned out across Onondaga Lake and its shoreline in a bioblitz that was part of President Quentin Wheeler’s inauguration celebration found some 450 species of plants and animals in 24 hours.

Among the discoveries during bioblitz, which was conducted by ESF in partnership with the Onondaga Lake Conservation Corps, was a patch of rare American ginseng, a naturally reproducing population of brown trout in Onondaga Creek, and a lush moss community on the roofs of park pavilions.

“I found most interesting the sheer interest people show about what’s in their backyard,” said Dr. James Gibbs, a professor of conservation biology who helped plan the event. “Nature observation is fundamentally inclusive.

There are few things that are better at bringing people together because wonder at nature is universal. That was what impressed me the most — the community that built around the event.”

The Onondaga Lake Conservation Corps is a growing organization of community volunteers who contribute to restoration projects that create or improve wildlife habitat in the Onondaga Lake watershed. Founding partners include Montezuma Audubon Center, Onondaga Audubon Society, Parsons, O’Brien & Gere and Honeywell.

“The Onondaga Lake Conservation Corps is working with the SUNY-ESF faculty, experiencing lake habitat, and counting the organisms,” said John McAuliffe, Honeywell’s Syracuse program director. “SUNY-ESF has been an integral partner in the Onondaga Lake cleanup and at the forefront of a national and local team designing for, and monitoring, biodiversity in and around the lake. The bioblitz showcases their excitement for increasing the lake’s biodiversity and restoring native habitats.”

To learn more about the bioblitz, go to www.esf.edu/ inauguration/bioblitz.htm.

Photographs | Claire B. Dunn, Wendy P. Osborne and Julia P. Allis

What’s out there?

Scientists and volunteers working in and about the waters of Onondaga Lake identified: 25 species of fish in the lake 16 species of fish in the tributaries 58 species, total, of phytoplankton and zooplankton, plus five macrophyte species and five benthic (bottom-dwelling) invertebrates about 150 species of insects 19 species of snails and 25 species of meiofauna (microscopic invertebrate animals and single-celled organisms) 300 species of vascular plants 66 species of mosses between 60 and 70 species of fungus three species each of reptiles and amphibians 12 species of dragonflies and damselflies four species of bats 10 species of mammals in addition to the bats 99 species of birds

Images from the Onondaga Lake Bioblitz

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Roots of Wilderness Act Run Deep at ESF

By Dee Klees

T

his year marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the federal Wilderness Act, a law that preserves areas in our nation that remain wild and “untrammeled by man.” Perhaps overshadowed by other dramatic events of 1964 — the War on Poverty, Beatlemania and the conflict in Vietnam — the Wilderness Act still has had profound effects on the nation.

Photograph | Wendy P. Osborne

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While it is often associated with sprawling lands in the West, the law’s roots extend deep into New York state’s conservation history where a model for shielding our land from damaging exploitation was written.

Those roots also reach to ESF, where significant figures from the College’s early days have connections to both the state and federal land-protection efforts.

“It’s pretty amazing that landscapes across the United States would not look the way they do without the influence of a small

Chad Dawson

college in upstate New York that sits in the shadow of the Carrier Dome,” said Andrew Johnson M.S. ’01, now a district ranger with the U.S. Forest Service in Minnesota. “An idea born in New York, indirectly in some ways, influenced the idea of protecting wilderness.”

The “forever wild” provision of New York state’s Constitution that has protected the Adirondack and Catskill mountains for 120 years is credited as the inspiration behind the Wilderness Act. The origins of the federal law can be traced back to those mountains and to the same strategists who helped establish ESF. The anniversaries celebrated this year in events across the state and the nation are doubly significant for ESF and New York state, said Dr. Chad Dawson, editor-in-chief of the “International Journal of Wilderness” who recently retired as a professor of recreation and tourism at ESF. Dawson said the principal author of the Wilderness Act, Howard Zahniser, acknowledged that he was inspired, in part, by the

Alice Zahniser (center) receives a pen from President Lyndon B. Johnson after he signed the 1964 Wilderness Act into law in the White House Rose Garden. Also pictured are Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, Senator Frank Church, Mardy Murie and Representative Wayne Aspinall, among others.

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writings of one of ESF’s most famous alumni, Robert “Bob” Marshall ’24, who helped found the Wilderness Society. Zahniser, former executive director of the Wilderness Society, began drafting the law in 1956. Dawson, who has written about the origins of the Wilderness Act with Zahniser’s son, Ed, said that in addition to being influenced by Marshall’s writings, Zahniser was inspired by a hike through the High Peaks of the Adirondacks.

Howard Zahniser bought a camp in the Siamese Ponds area in the southern Adirondacks and did much of his writing there. He experienced first hand the peace of the deep woods beside cool Adirondack lakes and expansive views earned after rugged uphill climbs. Zahniser’s push for legislation to protect remaining wildness across the nation was an uphill climb of its own and one he did not manage to complete before his death. His wife, Alice, in his stead, stood at the side of President Lyndon Johnson when he signed the bill into law.

Bob Marshall in the Quetico-Superior wilderness area on the Minnesota-Ontario border known as the Boundary Waters.

Photograph | top, courtesy of Chad Dawson; left, Abbie Rowe; right, Sig Olson

That Adirondack expanse enjoyed by Zahniser is, to this day, protected by Article XIV of the New York State Constitution, which was overwhelmingly approved by voters in 1894. That provision was defended by Robert Marshall’s father, Louis Marshall, a prominent lawyer who helped establish the New York State College of Forestry, as ESF was known in its early years. Louis Marshall also established the family’s summer home at Lower

...the land “forever kept as wild” may be wilder now than 120 years ago.

Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks and served as the first president of the College board of trustees. ESF’s second-oldest building, Marshall Hall, is named for Louis Marshall; and the student organization that runs outdoor trips is called the Bob Marshall Club.

Robert Marshall and his brother George earned their own Adirondack credentials when they and their guide Herbert Clark became the first people to climb all the mountains now listed as the 46 High Peaks of the Adirondacks. Robert Marshall went on to get a master’s degree at Harvard University and a doctoral degree from Johns Hopkins University before he built a career with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Forestry Service. Despite his early death from heart failure at age 38, Robert Marshall left an enduring legacy, as did his father.

The nation acknowledged Robert Marshall’s impact on the conservation movement with the inclusion of the Bob Marshall Wilderness in the initial 9.1 million acres protected by the Wilderness Act in 1964. “The Bob,” as the area is affectionately known, is a preserve of more than 1 million acres in grizzly bear territory along the Continental Divide in western Montana.

New York has its own potential version of “The Bob” in the form of a proposal for a Bob

Photograph | courtesy of Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson “We are the beneficiaries of the work that went on starting with Louis Marshall in New York...”

By Claire B. Dunn Thirteen years after earning his master’s degree in forest recreation management, Andrew Johnson oversees a million-acre swath of federal, state and private lands in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota.

Nearly half those million acres are federal land, and 266,000 acres are a designated wilderness area. Johnson, a district ranger with the U.S. Forest Service, is responsible for the administration and management of the entire ranger district.

“The U.S. Forest Service has a multiuse mandate. While we’re working to support timber sales we’re also working to preserve moose habitat. The district ranger has a piece of all of it,” said Johnson, who earned his master’s degree in 2001. “It’s a big challenge.”

Johnson worked for the Forest Service in Montana, Arizona and Utah before joining the agency’s staff in Superior National Forest in Minnesota, which includes Boundary Waters. His career gives him an opportunity to indulge his love of being in the woods and exploring them — on foot or in a canoe — under his own power.

He spent summers as a St. Lawrence University undergraduate in the Adirondacks as an assistant forest ranger with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Then his studies as an ESF master’s student brought him into 16 designated wilderness areas in the Adirondacks. During those years, he said, he came to understand how much Louis and Robert Marshall and some of their contemporaries in New York state had influenced Americans’ understanding of wilderness and how that legacy is both rooted in and passed on by ESF. “We are the beneficiaries of the work that went on starting with Louis Marshall in New York, to protect the state’s wilderness areas, and continuing with the work of his son, Bob, to value conservation and create federally protected wilderness areas,” Johnson said. “I appreciate it as a citizen, a lover of public lands and a user of wilderness, not to mention as an employee of the Forest Service. They gave us an incredibly simple legal framework for preserving our natural heritage.”

Claire B. Dunn is the editor of Inside ESF magazine.

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Marshall Wild Lands Complex of about a half million acres of public and private land in the western Adirondacks, which is being considered for official state wilderness designation.

“I’d known about Bob Marshall’s work but I became aware of Louis Marshall’s legacy when I was studying at ESF. After all, I was taking classes in Marshall Hall,” Andrew Johnson said. “Their work had a tremendous influence on the geography of New York state and the United States.”

“Last May I returned to Cold River and found my nightmare had come true. The Cold River drainage is no longer a whole world where one can live the splendid life of the primeval.”

— Robert Marshall in 1936 While New York voters over the years since 1894 have approved amendments to Article XIV to allow construction of a highway and power lines, and accepted land swaps, which generally have increased the size of the preserve, the land “forever kept as wild” may be wilder now than 120 years ago.

Trekking toward the center of the High Peaks north along Calamity Brook hikers are apt to find, deep in the forest, a few stones piled in a remnant of a wall or a half-buried iron wheel, evidence of an abandoned farm or mine. They are reminders that in 1894 families were still trying to manage subsistence farming in the Adirondacks despite the region’s short growing season. In that era when the logging industry dominated the Northern New York economy and when homes and industry often were heated and powered with wood, deforestation was an obvious threat to the health of the land.

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Paul Dawson “I see the impact of what the Wilderness Act was able to preserve.”

By Karen B. Moore The Wilderness Act not only preserves some of the country’s most beautiful areas, it also gives Paul Dawson “an amazing place to have as (his) office.”

Dawson, FNRM ’09, came to his career in forest management later than some.

He spent two years at another university majoring in aerospace engineering before realizing he “didn’t want to work inside at a desk.” Instead, he opted to follow his father’s footsteps and chose a career in forestry.

Dawson is the son of Dr. Chad P. Dawson, who retired as a professor in the Department of Forest and Natural Resources Management. “He had a huge impact on my decision,” said the younger Dawson. “We would go fishing and wandering around in the woods and I realized I wanted to do that as a career.”

Today, Dawson works for the forest service as the trail crew lead for the Boulder Ranger District in Boulder, Colo., where he focuses on trail maintenance.

The job is never the same day to day, said Dawson, which appeals to him. “It depends on the day,” he said. Some days the crew cuts down hazard trees or deals with blow downs; other days it’s bridge construction or other forms of trail maintenance. Last fall, a huge flood left a significant amount

of damage in its wake and a trail had to be re-created where the flood had destroyed it.

“It’s great to not do the same thing every day,” he said. Often, Dawson has the pleasure of going old school in his job.

Under the Wilderness Act, the use of gas or electric tools is prohibited in designated areas. When working in these areas, Dawson said, they use the rustic tools — ax, hand drill and crosscut saw.

The use of the rustic tools “allows for maintenance to be done,” he said, “but doesn’t impede on someone else’s wilderness experience.”

Many of the trails he works on are in the Indian and James Peaks Wilderness areas. “Once the snow finally melts — usually in July, August and September — I see the impact of what the Wilderness Act was able to preserve. It’s an amazing place to be and work,” he said.

His time at ESF had a huge impact on his career, he said. “I was able to take some pretty interesting and useful classes at ESF,” he said. “I apply almost every ESF class — soils, policy, classes my dad taught. … It’s pretty cool to be able to use all of those classes and apply them every day at work.”

Karen B. Moore is a staff writer for Inside ESF magazine.

Photograph | Courtesy of Paul Dawson

Much of what is now protected forest had been destined to be milled into paper or building materials.

Robert Marshall, who aspired to a career in practical forestry in his years at ESF, addressed the damage he saw. “A couple of centuries ago there was scarcely a break in the untrammeled forest which covered New York. Today 99½ percent of those forests have been cleared, lumbered or burned,” he wrote as an ESF student in an article published in the “Journal of Forestry” in 1925. The piece is included in a collection of his writings edited

by Phil Brown and published in 2006.

While remnants of settlements persist, nature has taken much back and grown over damage in many areas, reforesting logged lands and increasing the buffers around remaining primeval forest.

Dawson smiled as he imagined what Marshall might think if he could see the effect of forest recovery efforts in the Adirondacks that Dawson has witnessed with his students.

“In 2001, in August, we retraced some of Bob’s wanderings. We canoed from Long Lake to the Raquette River and Cold River.

From there we backpacked the Ouluska Pass,” Dawson said.

Along the way they were taking in sights that Marshall had recorded during his time as a student at a lumber camp and again in 1936 when he wrote, “Last May I returned to Cold River and found my nightmare had come true. The Cold River drainage is no longer a whole world where one can live the splendid life of the primeval.”

In Marshall’s day “it was just stumps as far as you could see,” Dawson said. “Today it’s all forest.”

“We climbed Mount Emmons and read some of his stuff.”

And what would Marshall think of today’s view from Mount Emmons?

“He would be elated,” Dawson said.

Interestingly, the constitution that protects New York’s wild areas has created an apparent anomaly in the form of an absence of nationally protected wilderness areas in the state. While the amount of land protected by the federal Wilderness Act has grown from 9.1 million acres in 1964 to nearly 110 million acres today with areas added almost every

Photograph | Courtesy of Victoria Houser

Victoria Houser “Up here, people hear ‘New York’ and they think about a big city. It’s great to be able to span that huge cultural difference...”

By Claire B. Dunn One of the things Victoria Houser likes about her job with the U.S. Forest Service in Tongass National Forest in Alaska is that it provides a connection to one of her heroes: ESF alumnus and wilderness activist Bob Marshall.

“He was a New York guy,” Houser said, referring to the 1924 graduate who helped found the Wilderness Society. “Up here, people hear ‘New York’ and they think about a big city. It’s great to be able to span that huge cultural difference between the idea of a real city and the real wilderness.

That’s what Bob Marshall did. My studies at ESF really helped me bridge that gap because ESF is right in the middle of it all.”

Houser graduated from ESF with a master’s degree in resource management in 2004. Her first job brought her to Alaska, where she remains, working as a recreation planner on Prince of Wales Island.

The island contains 2 million of the 17 million acres that make up Tongass National Forest, the largest national forest in the United States. She manages five wilderness areas within the forest, doing monitoring and education, and ensuring the areas meet the Forest Service Chief’s 10-year Wilderness Stewardship Challenge

goals. In March, Houser helped organize a 50th anniversary celebration of the Wilderness Act, introducing members of the public to the wilderness areas and running educational programming with school children.

Her job, she said, would be vastly different without the Wilderness Act to define it. “It would be much harder for me to do my job,” she said. “I tell people the U.S. Forest Service is a multi-use agency. We deal with sustainable timber management, and we also stress importance of wilderness. It helps to balance my job out.”

Houser is convinced her work makes a difference to the public.

“This is a fishing and logging community,” she said of the town of Craig, where she lives with her young family. “We really value those uses here but, at the same time, we’re seeing the value of other uses, such as recreation. And that’s a good thing.”

And while she’s working there, she is using the opportunity to introduce ESF students to the Alaska wilderness. Part of her job is to hire seasonal summer employees for the Forest Service.

“I always look for them,” she said. “I know they’re going to be qualified.”

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year, only one of those areas is in New York.

That is the Otis Pike Fire Island High Dune Wilderness off Long Island. Its 1,380 acres are administered by the National Park Service.

That could be seen either as the result of a shortfall in federal legislation or strength in the state’s own law. New Yorkers have consistently resisted efforts to turn the Adirondacks into a national wilderness area.

“They said, ‘No, we’re going to do it our way,’ and they did it well,” Dawson said.

There is no doubt about the continued need for the laws and their need to provide some balance to the demands of commercial interests. Today that can come in the form of requests to clear forest for pipeline and power line rights-of-way. Adirondack communities and conservationists alike have expressed concerns recently about the dangers posed by freight trains carrying tankers of oil through the park. That’s a particular worry as rail lines tend to run along waterways in the mountainous park where an oil spill could cause lasting damage and spread downstream quickly. In the past, railroads and railroad barons proved to be both an asset to the mountains and a hazard to them, making them accessible to the public and making the public aware of the mountains as a resort while also making mining and transport of lumber easier.

“The other big one is always the threat of mega-resort development proposed for private lands and developers who want access to public lands,” Dawson noted.

The state’s constitution requires a statewide vote for approval of any land swaps, and that can take a lot of work to accomplish. So far it has ensured that New Yorkers have the final word on what can be done to the largest publicly protected, state-owned, forever-wild area in the contiguous United States.

“The Adirondacks is a unique example of trying to leave something for future generations,” Dawson said.

“The problem is we would develop it to death if there were no laws.”

Dee Klees is a freelance writer and editor in Syracuse, N. Y.

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Kristofer A. Alberga “We need to develop that next generation of people who will protect our natural resources.”

By Clare B. Dunn Not a day goes by that Kristofer A. Alberga isn’t acutely aware of his alma mater’s link to the forested lands he works to protect.

As the regional forester in the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) Region 5, Alberga is the regional program manager for threequarters of the Adirondack Park, an area that stretches from Saratoga and Fulton counties north to the Canadian border.

It includes more than 2 million acres of Forest Preserve land, nearly a half-million acres of conservation easement lands and 85,000 acres of multi-use state forest.

Alberga earned his bachelor’s degree from ESF in 1989. He was a student in the dual-degree program that combined classes in forestry with classes in environmental and forest biology. He returned to the College for a master’s degree in forest resources management, which he completed in 1993. He now works out of the DEC’s office in Ray Brook.

Alberga has been involved in some significant efforts to increase public access to forested land in the Adirondacks, including former Finch Pruyn, International Paper and Domtar lands.

He points out how lucky residents of the Northeast are to be within a day’s drive of the Forest Preserve. Some 20 million people live within a day’s drive of the Adirondacks. And many of them drive past his office, tucked among the natural splendors that make up the Adirondacks’ most visited region: the High Peaks.

“It’s one of the places that could be loved to death,” Alberga said. “It has been a challenge to the DEC to protect that unique natural resource and, at the same time, make it available for recreational purposes.”

That balance was reflected in the work of Robert Marshall, who hiked extensively in the Adirondacks and once climbed 13 of the 46 High Peaks in a single day.

“Bob Marshall was certainly an advocate for protecting the wilderness. Yet his legacy, as one of the first 46ers, is to ensure that that wilderness also provides a public benefit. He knew that we need to see it and be in touch with it. We are an increasingly urban people who have become increasingly disconnected from the natural world around us. We need to develop that next generation of people who will protect our natural resources.”

Photograph | Courtesy of Kristofer A. Alberga

Developing Mussel Control

ESF Alumnus Finds Bacteria Quell Invasive Mollusks “I know the answer is there and that what is required to find it is perseverance,” said Dr. Daniel Molloy of the 20 years he spent leading a research team looking for a way to control zebra mussels in the nation’s waterways.

Molloy, emeritus biologist at the New York State Museum in Albany and ESF alumnus (Ph.D., ’77), found that a bacterium — Pseudomonas fluorescens strain CL145A — kills zebra mussels and their invasive cousins quagga mussels, but has little to no effect on other organisms.

Zebra mussels are an invasive species that disrupt ecosystems by eating phytoplankton, the base of the aquatic food web.

They entered the United States through the Great Lakes aboard freighters that inadvertently transported them from Eurasia. Zebra mussels also clog water intakes and pipes of power plants and municipalities.

Available commercially as Zequanox, the dead bacteria was initially registered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for power plants to control the zebra mussels that clog water intakes and pipes. This year, Zequanox was also registered for use in open waters, lakes and rivers.

Zequanox isn’t the cure-all, Molloy cautioned. “It won’t eradicate zebra mussels from a lake,” he said, and it needs to be applied yearly, but it will help reduce the numbers and can be applied to specific

areas such as beaches and marinas. “It’s not technically or economically feasible to do a whole lake,” he said.

Currently a research biologist at SUNY Albany, Molloy began working with biological control methods while working on his thesis at ESF in conjunction with the New York Museum. At that time, he was looking for a method to biologically control black flies in the Adirondacks. Working with an international team of black fly specialists, his research demonstrated that one bacterium — Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bti) — could effectively and safely control black flies.

“Our research in New York, particularly a larger scale pioneering trial near Saranac Lake, showed it was safe and effective,” he said.

Since the 1980s, Bti has replaced the chemical applications that were used previously.

“ESF was an incredibly enriching educational experience,” Molloy said. “I was surrounded by people who were very interested in environmental matters. It was intellectually stimulating.”

Molloy’s next project is “going for the gold.” He is looking for another environmentally safe organism for the biological control of both zebra and quagga mussels. This time, he said, it would be a highly specific parasite

By Karen B. Moore that, following application, would become established and naturally spread, infecting and controlling zebra and quagga mussel populations in one lake after another.

“I am convinced that such a parasite exists in the native range of these mussels.

Finding it — and of course subsequently demonstrating its safety — will be like trying to win the gold medal of pest control.”

“If I have the funding, I’m going to accomplish it,” Molloy said, “but don’t expect it next month or next year. These things take time.”

And perseverance.

Dr. Daniel Molloy, (Ph.D., ’77) pictured above and at right, researches methods to biologically control invasive species.

Photographs | Courtesy of Daniel Molloy

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By Renée K. Gadoua

Sister Caryn Crook keeps environmental concerns alive in her religious devotions

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hen Sister Caryn Crook, a

member of the ESF class of

1988, needs a few minutes to

herself, she walks the grassland trail at Alverna Heights, in Fayetteville, N.Y. There she can rest on a bench and revel in the beauty of plants and wildlife.

“It’s just me and the grasses and the birds and God,” Crook said.

That resting spot represents the connections between her love of nature and an unexpected religious vocation. Crook’s journey to becoming a Roman Catholic nun was sometimes rocky, usually unmarked. But the endpoint, Crook said, is a perfect fit.

Crook grew up in Fulton, N.Y., one of four siblings in a family that spent a lot of time outdoors. They vacationed in the Adirondacks and enjoyed swimming, fishing and boating.

“I was always outside catching things,” Crook said. “Mud was the best toy ever.” She grew up watching “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” on television, and she figured she’d be a veterinarian. “I wanted to help animals,” she said.

In 2005, 17 years after graduating from ESF, Crook joined the Roman Catholic women’s community, the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities. Six years later, she made a lifelong commitment to poverty, chastity and obedience to the Syracuse-based religious order that follows the tradition of the 13th century Italian saint, Francis of Assisi.

Crook is gentle, but intense; she shares the Franciscan habit of hugging people she meets. At the start of an interview at Alverna Heights, she shrugged off formality, saying, “Call me Caryn.” She often wears jeans and sweaters. Around her neck hangs a silver Tau cross, a Christian symbol Franciscans use to show their faith.

Before becoming a Franciscan, she knew St. Francis as “the one who preached to the birds.” But she knew little of his teachings and how well they meshed with her environmental background.

After graduation, she spent two years with the Peace Corps, helping people in the Central African Republic farm tilapia. She Photograph | Wendy P. Osborne

was the sole Peace Corps worker within 40 kilometers. She was also different from the vast majority of people around her: She was among less than a dozen whites in the area and a rare Roman Catholic in an area where Evangelical Christian missionaries served and nomadic Muslim tribes traveled.

“The farmers I worked with knew more about fish farming than I did,” Crook said. “I had to accept that I was there for other reasons.”

The transforming lessons Crook learned would serve her well in religious life. She gained self-confidence and overcame a lifelong shyness that made her more comfortable with animals than talking with people.

She learned to take risks and to appreciate people with different traditions and ethnic backgrounds.

Her next career stop took her to Cortland, N.Y., where she worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service restoring wetlands. She settled in, bought a house and enjoyed her work with grasslands and streams.

She began to feel restless around 2000, sensing the universe tugging her elsewhere.

She began meeting with other Catholics seeking to understand their faith. Eventually, Crook felt she was meant for life as a Catholic nun. In time, she joined the Franciscans, whose namesake preached a simple message: “We are all creatures of one family.”

St. Francis has long been one of the most popular of thousands of Catholic saints and, in 1979, Pope John Paul II named him the patron saint of ecology.

St. Francis’ poem, “Canticle of the Creatures,” shares a simple, but profound understanding of the interconnectedness of the universe. The poem describes Sister Moon and Brother Wind, “and every kind of weather through which you give sustenance to your creatures.”

Joining the convent meant an end to her life working with nature, Crook thought. “I was going to leave behind everything environmental and help people,” she said. “I saw them as two different ministries.”

Image | Shutterstock

In the Catholic religion, St. Francis of Assisi is known as the patron saint of animals and ecology due to his love for animals and nature.

But after a long season of introspection and study, she was taking a walk with another Franciscan candidate. While looking at birds and flowers, Crook acknowledged the centrality of nature in her life. “I have to be outside,” she said. That’s when she realized that her work as a Franciscan needed to include getting her hands dirty, too.

The teachings of St. Francis made more sense to her then. Accounts of his life describe Francis walking gently through the water so he would not create mud and disturb creatures’ homes. He told the gardener to keep part of the field wild, so animals could live there. And he believed in planting beautiful flowers so people could praise God. Crook embraces the Franciscan view that the world — creation — is God’s expression of love. She sees every part of creation as a place to encounter God. She strives for a balanced life, understanding that how she walks will affect the rest of the world.

The world, she says, is a sacred web and Francis’ teachings are relevant to today’s environmental crises.

“Canticle of the Creatures” illustrates her point.

“One stanza of the poem, is ‘Praised by you, my Lord, through Sister Water who is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.’ Through hydrofracking, water is contaminated, pumped deep into the earth and is never able to be used again. How can creation continue to praise God when we degrade it?” she said.

Her faith parallels today’s call from environmentally-minded people to be good stewards of the Earth so it will remain for future generations. “It’s God’s, not ours,” Crook said. “We do not inherit the Earth and pass it on. It’s always God’s.”

In 2007, Crook began working at Alverna Heights, serving as Franciscan ecology coordinator at the Spirituality and Nature Center at Alverna Heights in Fayetteville. She presents programs on issues such as care for creation and helps to restore and manage wildlife habitat on the site’s 161 acres. For several years, she has planned an annual Invasive Species Conference, bringing experts to speak at Alverna Heights.

She lives with seven other religious sisters who live in two houses at the picturesque Alverna Heights, which is reminiscent of the simplicity and solitude St. Francis modeled.

In 2013, she started the Syracuse chapter of Franciscan Earth Corps, a young adult program focusing on prayer, service and creation advocacy. The chapter is among at least 10 in the nation that encourages young adults to link their faith with Franciscan values of simplicity and sustainability. Crook has helped the group with projects including cleanup at a soup kitchen, weeding a community garden, a neighborhood cleanup and planting trees.

In the fall, she will take on a new assignment as vocation director for the Franciscans.

She’ll remain at Alverna Heights, and she will continue working with the Franciscan Earth Corps. But now she understands that her love of nature cannot be separated from her faith or her work.

“I have this picture of people looking at birds through binoculars,” she said. “Now I look at the environment through a Franciscan perspective. It has placed me into creation instead of being on the outside looking in.”

Renée K. Gadoua is a freelance writer and editor in the Syracuse area.

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Men’s XC Team Wins Fourth National Championship For the fourth year in a row, the ESF men’s cross country team ended its season with a USCAA Cross Country National Championship title.

During the season, the men’s team won the Hobart Invitational, came in second at the CCOC meet and finished fourth at the highly competitive Paul Short Run held at Lehigh University. The men’s team was led by graduate student Timothy Callahan.

Callahan won individual titles at the 2014 USCAA Cross Country National Championships and the Hobart Invitational. He was named a USCAA first team All-American

along with teammates junior Stephen Slonosky and senior Thomas Arcuri.

The women’s team finished third at the 2014 USCAA Cross Country National Championships. The team won the CCOC meet and had a second place finish at the Hobart Invitational. Senior Cambria Ziemer and freshman Camila FergusonSierra were named USCAA second team All-Americans.

Cross Country Coach John View was named Men’s Cross Country Coach of the Year by the USCAA.

Top, ESF men’s cross country team and bottom, ESF women’s cross country team at the USCAA Cross Country National Championship.

Get ESF sports schedules and updates at www.esf.edu/athletics.com Mike Longacre, left, and Zach Longo show off trophies won by the ESF bass fishing team.

Woodsmen Teams Win Big The women’s team won first place in the 10th Annual East Coast Lumberjack Roundup in Tully, N.Y. The men’s team finished second in the competition.

The women’s team also won the Paul Smith’s Woodsmen Weekend while the men finished in second place.

The Woodsmen teams will return to action in the spring semester.

Golf Team Improves The Mighty Oaks men’s golf team saw improvements during the fall 2014 season, which was highlighted by wins at the Syracuse University and ESF invitationals.

The team also placed 11th out of 25 teams at the 2014 USCAA National Championships.

Junior Alex Brown led the team in individual scores.

Seniors Nick Reddick, TJ Rimmer and Tucker Smith also delivered strong performances in several matches this season.

The team looks forward to the 2015 season with newly appointed Co-captains Brian Walsh and Alex Brown taking on leadership roles.

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Women’s Soccer Team Ends Year 13-2 The Mighty Oaks women’s soccer team ended its season with a programbest 13-2 record including earning a #2 seed at the 2014 USCAA Soccer National Championships.

The women’s team won its first seven games, including the NHTI Tournament as well as the Queen of the Hill Cup versus Onondaga Community College. In its first seven games, the team did not allow any goals.

Its only regular season loss came at the hands of defending USCAA national champions University of Maine-Fort Kent in a double overtime thriller.

In the USCAA Soccer National Championships, the Mighty Oaks defeated Albany Pharmacy, 1-0 in double overtime to advance to the semifinals. In the semifinals, the team lost to Daemen College, 1-0.

Senior Bridget Cuddihy led the team in scoring with 18 goals. Sophomore Heather Carl led the team with 11 assists and sophomore goal keeper Kiki Hilmer led the nation in goals against average (.086). Hilmer and the Mighty Oaks defense also recorded 11 shutouts during the season. Carl, Hilmer and senior Ashley Miller were named USCAA first team All-Americans.

Mighty Oaks women’s soccer team Head Coach Dan Ramin was named the 2014 USCAA Women’s Soccer Coach of the Year.

The Mighty Oaks men’s soccer dominated in its first six games with a combined score of 29-4, including winning the NHTI Tournament. The team finished the season with a record of 9-7.

One of the highlights of the season was double-overtime victory versus Paul Smith’s College at the fourth annual Barkeaters Cup game. The game was overshadowed by the loss of Paul Smith’s College men’s soccer Captain Mark A. “Max” Calderone, who died the day before the game in a car accident. The ESF team honored Calderone’s memory by presenting the Barkeaters Cup to Paul Smith’s when the game was over.

The Mighty Oaks were led throughout the season by senior Dillon Buchberg, who scored nine goals for the season. Senior Kyle Bardwell led the team in assists with nine, and senior Mike Walczyk led the team in saves with 38 and a save percentage of .864.

Photographs | Top, Wendy P. Osborne and left, courtesy of the ESF bass fishing team

ESF People SUNY Honors 3 Professors Three ESF faculty members received SUNY’s highest faculty honor this year. Dr. Russell Briggs and Dr. Stephen V. Stehman were appointed Distinguished Teaching Professors and Professor Richard S. Hawks was appointed Distinguished Service Professor.

The Distinguished Teaching Professorship recognizes and honors mastery of teaching.

The designation means Briggs and Stehman, both professors in the Department of Forest and Natural Resources Management, have demonstrated superior mastery of teaching skills, scholarship, professional growth, student services, academic standards and evaluation of student performance.

Briggs is a professor of forest soils, director of the Division of Environmental Science and director of the Forest Soils Analytical Laboratory. Stehman is a professor of biometrics.

Candidates for Distinguished Service Professor have demonstrated outstanding service at the campus and SUNY level and at the community, regional and state levels. Hawks is a professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and a former department chair.

View Honored with Lifetime Achievement Award John View, former director of financial aid at ESF, was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the New York State Financial Aid Administrators Association (NYSFAAA).

The award is presented to individuals based on nationally and/or regionally recognized service to the student financial aid field and/or the significant advancement of the profession by individuals from New York state or elsewhere.

Honorees’ activities may have the impact of expanding student resources, improving delivery opportunities or promoting the profession of financial aid administration.

Only nine such honors have been presented

by NYSFAAA since the awards’ inception in 2000.

Since View has transitioned from the director’s position he now serves as the College’s financial aid compliance officer and director of Educational Opportunity Program (EOP).

ESF Fills Four Leadership Roles ESF named a new chief of university police and announced three promotions.

Thomas J. LeRoy was named ESF’s new chief of University Police. He is a native of Long Island and holds a bachelor of science degree in criminal justice from Niagara University. He obtained his law enforcement certification at the Monmouth County, N.J., Police Academy. He joined the Howell Township Police Department in March 1983. LeRoy came to Syracuse in 1989 as a patrolman and sergeant with the Village

of Baldwinsville, before being appointed to lieutenant in 2008.

He succeeds former Chief of University Police Scott Becksted, who retired in the spring.

Dr. Maureen O’Neill Fellows was named vice president for strategic initiatives and government relations. She joined ESF in 1986 as director of institutional research. Fellows served the College as director of government relations and institutional planning. In her new position, she will coordinate strategic planning and assist President Quentin Wheeler with a range of initiatives including state and federal legislative affairs, funds development, partnership development and special projects.

Mark Hill has been promoted to director of Financial Aid and Scholarships. He succeeds longtime financial aid director John View, who is transitioning to a new position as ESF’s financial aid compliance officer and director of the Educational Opportunity Program. Hill came to ESF in 2003 as senior financial aid adviser.

Leslie Rutkowski was promoted to College Registrar. Rutkowski has a wealth of experience at ESF as both assistant and associate registrar, and previously at Syracuse University.

ESF Employees Receive Honors Dr. Stephen V. Stehman, Department of Forest and Natural Resources Management, received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities. The award recognizes outstanding academic and creative achievements across a broad spectrum of scholarly and artistic fields.

Dr. Kelley Donaghy, Department of Chemistry, received the Chancellor’s Award for Faculty Service, which recognizes outstanding achievement and skill in providing leadership, service and assistance to the university, community and profession that exceeds expectations.

Dr. Charles Kroll received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, an award that honors those who consistently have demonstrated superb teaching at the undergraduate, graduate or professional level.

Susan E. Benoit, Office of Research Programs, received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Professional Service. The award recognizes consistently superior professional achievement within and beyond the position and those who serve as professional role models.

Teri Frese, secretary 1 in the Department of Environmental Resources Engineering, received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Classified Service. The award is given to University Classified Service staff who have consistently demonstrated superlative performance within and beyond their position.

Emanuel Carter Jr., a professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture, received ESF’s Public/Community Service Award in

recognition of contributions made on behalf of the College to the community through public/ community service.

Dr. Gary M. Scott, chair of the Department of Paper and Bioprocess Engineering, received the 2014 ESF College Foundation Award for Exceptional Achievement in Teaching.

Barb Sorrells, secretary 1 in ESF’s Physical Plant, was honored with the campus Quality of Worklife Award in recognition of her contributions to the College, exemplary performance of duties beyond expectations, and involvement in campus activities.

Two Students Receive Chancellor’s Awards ESF students Beverly Agtuca of Holbrook, N.Y., and Lauren Alteio of Montgomery, N.Y., were honored in 2014 with the Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence. Both were members of the Class of 2014.

Chancellor’s Award honorees excel both in academic achievement and in at least one of the following areas: leadership, athletics, community service, creative and performing arts or career achievement.

Agtuca was an biotechnology major. She participated in the ESF Honors Program and was a member of Alpha Xi Sigma honor society and Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity. She was an intern at Brookhaven National Laboratory and an undergraduate research assistant for the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.

Alteio was a environmental biology major.

She was the recipient of an internship at Harvard Forest. Alteio participated in the ESF Honors Program and was awarded an Honors Program Scholarship to complete her senior thesis on the effects of earthworm invasions on microbial enzymatic decomposition.

Awards and Books

Paul Hai, 11th Annual R.W. Sage Memorial Town of Newcomb Volunteer of the Year Award from the Newcomb Town Board, April 2014 Thomas R. Horton, William A. Weston Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Mycological Society of America, June 2014 Myron Mitchell, Adirondack Achievement Award from the Adirondack Research Consortium, May 2014 Lockie, Stewart, David A. Sonnenfeld, and Dana R. Fisher, eds. 2014. Routledge International Handbook on Social and Environmental Change. London and New York: Routledge.

Smith, Ted, David A. Sonnenfeld, and David Naguib Pellow, eds. 2014. Tiǎozhàn Jīngpiàn: Quánqiú Diànzǐ Yè De Láodòng Quán Yǔ Huánjìng Zhèngyì [Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry], complex Chinese edition (with new material). Tr. Citizen of the Earth, Taiwan.

Taipei: Socio Publishing Co.

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