By, Christian Tufino
Lights shine on the Olive Ridley’s stage as students Kaiser Beckford and Taygin Jump welcome participants to the first Late Night for The Planet of the semester on Sept. 9.
The talk show held three segments with each having a special guest talk about the environment based on their different specialization.
The first guest introduced was Lawyer Claudia Braymer who specializes in environmental law.
Braymer brought her expertise in environmental law to raise awareness to her non-profit organization Protect the Adirondacks. Representing the organization, she spoke about their mission to protect local wetlands, old growth forests, and the Adirondack park. The organization’s current goal is to focus effort into protecting the Central Adirondacks.
“It’s 36,000 acres of land owned by private landowners, and it’s up for sale, it’s called the Whitney Park land,” Braymer said. “It has 22 lakes and ponds, 100 miles of underdeveloped shoreline, and we’ve been advocating for the state to purchase that land to add it to the forest preserve.”
After Braymers segment the second guest speaker, Gary Henry of Ausable Freshwater Center, held his segment.
Henry uses his multiple degrees in geology and decades of experience in stream restoration to advance the science and stewardship of the Adirondacks as the director of stream conservation at the Ausable Freshwater Center.
Henry and his team recently finished a project in the North Branch Bouquet River in Lewis that took the river that was being shoehorned by 16-foot culverts, prominently used by salmon, and opened it up to create a 130 foot bridge.
“According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, this was probably one of the most important stream crossings in the Lake Champlain Basin, with respect to the landlocked Atlantic Salmon,” Henry said.
The last segment introduced Associate Professor Mary Alldred of Center for Earth and Environmental Science of SUNY Plattsburgh.
Alldred shared her experience at Notre Dame Environmental Research Center and her work in salt water marshes in New York. She said she plans to use her expertise in combination with facilities at SUNY Plattsburgh to share her knowledge with future environmental scientists.
“I come here and interview, and we have planning, and we have geology, and we have environmental science, and we have ecology, and it’s all in the same center,” Alldred said. “I interviewed all over the country that year, and I hadn’t seen a program like that before, it’s amazing.”
Hosts Beckford and Jump urged people to get involved with their community and use their resources.
“The Adirondacks is an important place,” Beckford said. “And that’s why we have professionals like the ones we saw tonight protecting it and doing things to improve it, keep it beautiful.”
