Landon Highbloom and Emily Valenti, students engaged in MRG’s College Internship in Suburban Ecology, are getting hands-on experience in trail stewardship and riparian corridor restoration at the same time. They are planting over 100 wetland plants along stream edges. The white turtlehead, cardinal flower, and blue lobelia were all grown in MRG’s restoration garden. MRG’s […]
Category Archives: Research News
Wildlife Technician Program – Worms!
Yorktown H.S. graduate Sofia Natasi recently completed her three-year tenure in MRG’s award-winning Wildlife Technician Program (WTP). Sofia was mentored by Director of Research & Education Chris Nagy who has led the program for the past 10 years. Sofia studied the change in distribution of invasive earthworms of the genus Amynthas spp., which were introduced […]
Spotlight on Research and Education, Summer 2024
July 2024 MRG high-school researchers present their work at the 2024 Northeast Natural History Conference Two of our graduating seniors in our Wildlife Technician Program presented their completed research at the 2024 Northeast Natural History Conference in April. Alex Thompson (Blind Brook HS) gave a lecture on his study of frogs in several wetlands and […]
Bridging 70 years of wildflower monitoring to examine regional climate change
In the earliest days of the Mianus Gorge Conservation Committee, as Mianus River Gorge was originally known, the founders were fascinated with the flora and fauna they found here. They contacted biologists, botanists and other professionals to help them catalog the biodiversity of the Mianus River Gorge. Beginning in the mid 1950s, Dr. Henry A. […]
MRG’s Chris Nagy interviewed on Fox at 5
Watch the video here. An especially large coyote–that looked a lot like a wolf–was sighted in Central Park. Gotham Coyote Project co-founder Chris Nagy was called in to explain that the eastern coyote is indeed part wolf, the result of decades of cross-hybridization between the two species. “They all have some wolf ancestry, meaning that […]
Spotted Lanternfly
Intro to SLF The spotted lanternfly is an invasive insect that has recently made its way to the Mianus River Gorge and surrounding areas. Native to China, the spotted lanternfly was first discovered in the US in Pennsylvania in 2014, but was not detected at the Gorge until 2022. Just one year after their arrival, […]
Spotted Lanternfly Biology
The spotted lanternfly is an invasive insect that has recently made its way to the Mianus River Gorge. Native to China, the spotted lanternfly was first discovered in the US in 2014, but was not detected at the Gorge until 2022. The spotted lanternfly has now been seen in at least 14 states, primarily in […]
FORMER INTERN SPOTLIGHT
Meet Tim Morris, Fierke Lab, Department of Environmental and Forest Biology SUNY ESF In the summer of 2016, I was lucky to intern at MRG where I was exposed to the basics of conducting field experiments and hands-on research regarding invasive species. That experience helped shape my academic trajectory. The work with invasive species lead […]
RAP Update
MRG’s Research Assistantship Program (RAP) awards grants to graduate students in ecology, environmental science, and conservation who are doing field studies for their M.S. or Ph.D. The awards offer $10,000 over two years for Master’s degree candidates and $15,000 over three years for Ph.D.’s. We currently have two Ph.D. students in the program, Andy Cortese […]
Hemlocks 2023
MRG inoculated another 1,000 eastern hemlock trees against the hemlock woolly adelgid and hemlock scale in 2023. Click here to view a video that walks you through the hemlock forest. With your help, Mianus River Gorge can continue the important work of preventing the demise of this diverse forest that supports rare wildflowers, over 100 […]