What's Your Nature?
Become a Nature Up North explorer to share your encounters with wild things and wild places in New York's North Country. Post your wildlife sightings, landscape shots, photos from your outings, and even your organization's events!
Just Our Nature - news, updates and insights
Summer Intern Farewell
By Emlyn Crocker on August 11, 2018
Summer in the North Country is a special thing - we live in a beautiful place, and enjoy the company great people and warm (but usually not too warm!) weather. Plus, there is an abundance of good swimming holes, if you know where to look. Here at Nature Up North, summer is a chance for us to put extra energy into creating interesting workshops and events to support community and family outdoor…
Blog category: Just Our Nature
Nature Up North visits St. Lawrence - Lewis BOCES Tech Camp!
By Erika Barthelmess on August 10, 2018
The Nature Up North team was delighted to be able to present at the annual Tech Camp presented by the Model Schools team. Our goal was to provide an overview of the resources we have at Nature Up North to support environmental learning in K-12 classrooms. We featured two of our citizen science projects, Monitor My Maple and North Country Wild, and also looked over a variety of other resources…
Blog category: In the Schools
Teachers Get Outside the Classroom
A small crowd assembles with various instruments, test sets and other equipment in preparation for the lab assignment. Carefully they organize ampules, sample nets and data sheets. These citizen scientists are sampling the waters for invertebrate animals, dissolved oxygen levels, pH (acidity) and phosphorus and nitrogen levels. This is not an indoor lab, but right on the Grasse River in Canton.…
Blog category: In the Schools
I have an ash tree! What now?
By Allison Pilcher on July 31, 2018
Emerald Ash Borer is an invasive beetle that has killed tens of millions of ash trees since its discovery in Michigan in 2002. EAB reached St. Lawrence County in 2017. If you have ash trees on your property, it is important to plan for EAB.
Read more about Emerald Ash Borer
Ash trees are frequently found along our streets and as shade trees in our yards. Besides aesthetic value, they clean our…
Blog category: Just Our Nature
Finding Hope for Ash Tree Survival
By Emlyn Crocker on July 24, 2018
You look out your window on a mid-summer day: the sun filters through the full, bright green leaves on the big ash tree in your yard, making patterns that dance across your floor. You hear birds sing too; a pair of robins is nesting again in one of the upper branches. It’s a pretty picture, until you learn that emerald ash borer larvae (Agrilus planipennis) are slowly destroying this tree, eating…
Blog category: Just Our Nature
Emerald Ash Borer: Getting Your Community Ready
By Allison Pilcher on July 17, 2018
New York State has over 900 million ash trees. They line our streets, they shade our parks, and they’re in our yards. What would happen if those 900 million ash trees, 7% of all the trees in the state, died in only a few years?
Dead and dying ash trees can collapse spontaneously and without provocation, causing hazard to people and structures nearby. Many consider widespread ash death inevitable…
Blog category: Just Our Nature
Nature Up North 2019 Calendar Photo Contest
By Emlyn Crocker on July 10, 2018
Calling all North Country nature photographers!
Have you dusted off your camera yet this season? Well now's the time, because Nature Up North is once again hosting our annual calendar contest for nature photos that will be featured in our 2019 wall calendar.
At Nature Up North we hope to inspire exploration and appreciation of the North Country environment. One way we do this is through the …
Blog category: Just Our Nature
More Blissful Ignorance, Please
By Paul J. Hetzler on July 3, 2018
It’s a rare blessing to have a job I absolutely love, but it’s not all roses. Although some of it is, literally, roses. All too often it is my dubious honor to bring to public awareness a new invasive pest or disease, and history has not always been kind to the bearers of bad news. There is an old saying that knowledge is power, but there is another one that ignorance is bliss, and some days I’d…
Blog category: Just Our Nature
Why Did the Turtle Cross the Road?
By Alyssa LaCoy on June 20, 2018
...to get to the other side!
Many of us rely on crosswalks to safely navigate through bustling traffic, but wild animals are often not so lucky. Road kill is a major issue that continues to decrease animal abundance and biodiversity. While road signs are established for animal crossing in certain areas, there is no way to determine exactly when and where an animal will cross.
As summer progresses…
Blog category: Just Our Nature
Take A Hike: Getting Back Outdoors
By Ella Gurney on June 13, 2018
There’s ice coating one of the boulders next to me. Water drips off of it slowly, tracing a path through some moss below. The boulder in front of me is much larger and steeper, but isn’t slippery with ice, and, looking around me, I can see that the only way forwards is up. Gritting my teeth, I grab a nearby exposed tree root that’s jutting out from the top of the boulder, dig my toes into a crack…
Blog category: Just Our Nature