Hudson Taconic Lands

06/05/2026

We’re so happy to welcome Libby Daly as Stewardship Technician for the summer! Libby hails from Averill Park, where she grew up playing in the woods behind her house and swimming in the many nearby lakes.

She recently graduated from SUNY Plattsburgh, where she studied ecology and geology, and she’s excited to spend the summer outdoors learning more about conservation! Libby will be working as part of our small but mighty stewardship team, marking the boundaries of Hudson Taconic Lands properties and helping with other projects such as invasive species management and research.

Since joining the team last week, Libby has been out in the field quite a bit and learned that the Rensselaer Plateau is the 5th largest forested area in New York State. 🌲

Please join us in welcoming Libby! 🌳

06/05/2026

It’s Friday and we hate to put a damper on it, but as you plan your weekend hiking, please remember that ticks are out in force this year. Ticks can cause serious illnesses from diseases such as Lyme Disease, Anaplasmosis, and others BUT you can help keep yourself and your family healthy by following some simple tick prevention protocols. Here are a few of our favorite tips:

✅ Stay on trail - ticks live in grassy, bushy, and wooded areas.

✅ Consider treating your clothes with tick repellent, wearing light-colored pants so you can more easily spot ticks, and tucking your pants legs under your socks.

✅ After your hike, do a thorough tick check and change out of your hiking clothes.

✅ If you find an embedded tick, seek medical attention. Early treatment can prevent illness.

Feel free to share your protocols in the comments below! 👇

06/05/2026

Want to support local conservation and win a private, guided hike with Jim Bonesteel, HTL’s Executive Director? Enter our Spring Raffle for Conservation today! 🥾

If you love Jim’s group hikes but wish one could be for just you and a few friends — or if there’s a special place in nature you’ve been dreaming of visiting — HTL’s Spring Raffle for Conservation is for you! 🥾 🌲

The raffle opens TODAY and runs until Wednesday, July 1. All raffle tickets 🎟️ support HTL’s ongoing conservation work.

The winner can choose from any Hudson Taconic Lands property, including those not yet open to the public, or any other public nature area, state forest, or park. Discuss your ideal experience with Jim and plan a trip together. Learn more about local conservation and the land. Invite friends for a group of up to eight people!

Get your tickets 🎟️ today: https://hudsontaconic.org/spring-raffle/

06/04/2026

Wow, what a fantastic two days we shared a few weeks ago with the 4th and 5th graders of Miller Hill Elementary School! Both grades spent a morning with us as part of the annual Miller Hill Day of Service. Scroll through photos in order of activities!

🦫 On Monday, the entire 4th grade spent a warm morning at the school’s future Learning Landscape, adjacent to the school. They learned all about beavers, investigated part of the forest flooded by beavers, did some trail building for future walks, and built habitats for small mammals like squirrels, rabbits, and mice. 🐿️

🐝 On Tuesday, the entire 5th grade visited Albert Family Community Forest where they cleaned up and weeded in the Sensory garden, did trail work on the Pileated Pathway Equal Access Trail, and just explored the woods.

We had a blast with these curious, eager, and hard working young people! We hope they went home with many good memories, too! ✨

06/03/2026

Last Friday morning, Trout Unlimited Northeast and Hudson Taconic Lands hosted a volunteer tree planting at Kinderhook Creek Preserve. Together with volunteers and staff we planted 100 native trees 🌳 and shrubs — such as black willow, speckled alder, silky dogwood, and basswood — provided by NYS Department of Environmental Conservation Hudson River Estuary Trees for Tribs program. We also planted speckled alder cuttings from another HTL property.

HTL and TU staff identified the location along Kinderhook Creek as a great opportunity to remove some invasive species such as knotweed, mugwort, and multiflora rose, and plant native trees and shrubs in their place. The hope is that they will grow and eventually shade out the invasives, while stabilizing the bank and helping to keep the water nice and cool for trout. 🐟

A big thank you to everyone who came out, got their hands dirty, and got some beautiful trees and shrubs in the ground! 🌳 🙏

📷 Final photo (group photo) by New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

06/02/2026

If you love Jim’s group hikes but wish one could be for just you and a few friends — or if there’s a special place in nature you’ve been dreaming of visiting — HTL’s Spring Raffle for Conservation is for you! 🥾 🌲

The raffle opens TODAY and runs until Wednesday, July 1. All raffle tickets 🎟️ support HTL’s ongoing conservation work.

The winner can choose from any Hudson Taconic Lands property, including those not yet open to the public, or any other public nature area, state forest, or park. Discuss your ideal experience with Jim and plan a trip together. Learn more about local conservation and the land. Invite friends for a group of up to eight people!

Get your tickets 🎟️ today: https://hudsontaconic.org/spring-raffle/

06/01/2026

“Luke came home, got his sister and went straight into our woods to explore. I love how curious and covered in dirt he came home from it,” said the mother of a participant in Saturday’s Berlin Forest Conservation Corps Spring Pop-Up event at Berlin Community Forest.

Seventeen 14 to 16-year-olds from Berlin Central School District spent the day at their new Learning Landscape, helping to break ground at what will soon become an outdoor classroom for Berlin Elementary and Middle High Schools!

Despite chilly temperatures, some spitting rain, and wind, the students were eager, curious, and hard working all day. They broke into three groups to 🌳 build a split rail fence dividing a bypass trail from an agricultural field, 🐦 build and install bluebird boxes, and 🔨 mark trails through the forest.

In the afternoon they played games, learned Leave No Trace principles, and took a hike up the newly marked trails all the way to a building that we call the “Cabin in the Sky” at around 2,000 feet! Students were able to gaze down at their old Elementary School in the valley below.

We were so impressed and inspired by these young people and thank them for spending the day with us. We also thank volunteer Mark Kulchock for helping to lead the bluebird box project and Jeanne, who came back to help from last year’s FCC season. Along with talented HTL staff, it was an incredible team! 🙌

We’re super excited for this Learning Landscape to continue to take shape, with lots of work underway this summer!

The Berlin FCC Spring Pop-Up was funded by the .s.forestservice. 🌳

05/30/2026

✨ Spring bog appreciation post! ✨ Rowan, HTL’s Stewardship Associate, recently visited a bog on one of preserves. Since the property isn’t open to the public, we wanted to share these beauties with you here! 🌺

In order of appearance, they are: early azalea, pink lady slipper (actually an orchid!), marsh calla lily, Labrador tea, pitcher plant (carnivorous!), and tamarack or larch (a conifer that actually drops its leaves - needles - in fall!).

Bogs are unique, highly acidic freshwater wetlands with spongy, peaty soil and a lack of streams or groundwater inflows. They rely entirely on precipitation (rain and snow) for their water and are dominated by sphagnum moss, which can hold A LOT of water. 💦

Fun fact: When we talk about the Rensselaer Plateau wetlands that absorb heavy rains and help to minimize flooding, sphagnum moss is a big part of that, acting like a sponge. We need our bogs, as much as they need us to keep them protected and undeveloped!

05/29/2026

Wednesday was a beautiful (and warm!☀️) day for the annual Berkshire Taconic Regional Partnership (BTRCP) gathering at in Adams, MA!

This group of conservation partners gets together occasionally to network, learn from one another, and spend time on the land together. The gathering allows us to strengthen connections between neighboring land trusts, discover where our work overlaps, and maintain or plan new collaborations.

The theme for this year’s gathering was conservation and restoration at the watershed scale, with presentations from , , and . There were folks from sixteen conservation organizations and agencies from the BTRCP region in VT, CT, NY, and MA!

We ended the day with a walk to Peck’s Brook, which is upstream from a project that Trout Unlimited is currently working on. We learned about the importance of community engagement and how stream quality, and barriers such as dams, affect local trout populations. 💦

It was wonderful to reconnect with everyone! Until next year.🌳

Sheffield Land Trust, Taconic Hiking Club,

05/27/2026

Give invasive species the brush off and help keep our forests healthy! Our second Boot Brush Station 🥾 sign is up at John B. Staalesen Vanderheyden Preserve! You’ll see more of these stations coming soon to some other preserves.

Why brush your boots before entering and when leaving a preserve?

🌱 Boot brushes remove mud, seeds, and plant fragments from footwear that often travel from place to place.

🥾 Brushing our boots or shoes helps to prevent the spread of invasive plants, allowing native plants and ecosystems to thrive.

Brushing when leaving a preserve like Staalesen, which has a lot of invasive plants, or before entering a preserve with fewer, can really make a difference!