This summer, I interned at AdkAction, a nonprofit based in Keeseville, NY, in the Northeastern part of the Adirondack Park. AdkAction focuses on community-based initiatives to help relieve challenges specific to the Adirondacks and surrounding regions, finding success in program development through the monitoring of future changes in federal and state funding and subsequently designing efforts to alleviate the repercussions of such changes before they harm the local community. By being based in the region that they serve, AdkAction staff are able to understand and connect with those who are most aided by their programs, working from the ground up to generate successful community initiatives. Their current programs target food and housing insecurity, the impact of oversalting of roads on clean water, loss of community vibrancy, and threats to native pollinators.
I worked specifically on the Adirondack Pollinator Project, a collaborative effort with Paul Smith’s College, the Wild Center, and Northern New York Audubon to increase pollinator habitat and to prepare for successful conservation efforts through increasing pollinator data across the Park. While this project is more ecology-based than AdkAction’s other projects, a stable pollinator population is necessary for the ecological and agricultural processes that are vital for the Adirondack community. My project was two-pronged: develop a community science initiative to increase data on pollinators in the park and assess and maintain native groundcover plant test plots on the Adirondack Pollinator Project’s future ADA accessible pollinator garden and education site on a reclaimed capped landfill in Indian Lake. For both of these projects, I sought to implement AdkAction’s project development strategy, working to connect with the main stakeholders of each project to develop initiatives that provide the most opportunities and address challenges or needs unique to those communities.
In conversation with residents and visitors, I learned that community science initiatives can be successful only when the individual participants gain from participation. With this information, I identified local trail programs and educational ecology programs; recreationists and those interested in ecology, due to personal interest in nature, will have a higher likelihood of participation in the Adirondack Pollinator Project than the general public. I met with representatives of these identified programs, and I introduced them to the lack of pollinator data and the importance of such data in conservation efforts; we then discussed the implementation of iNaturalist into their existing programs. Following these meetings, I designed specific initiatives for each program to increase education and awareness of threats to pollinators, increase pollinator data across a large geographic range, consider and improve equity and access for participants, be sustainable and mutually beneficial for all programmatic missions, and allocate resources in an effective manner. By not imposing a set program onto these distinct entities but rather by working with their established practices, I hope to have maintained reliability for participants of their programs in addition to forming lasting connections between AdkAction and these collaborating partners.
At the field site and in Indian Lake, I worked to establish a strong connection between AdkAction and the town through the development of learning opportunities on the site. I used the lens that works in other people’s communities, and I should strive to incorporate that community, even if the work doesn’t inherently need that connection. While the majority of my time spent in Indian Lake was allocated towards maintaining native plant test plots and collecting data on plant success in various microenvironments to inform the future expansion of the landfill reclamation project, I developed programs to include the local community in preparation for the pollinator garden. I worked with the Indian Lake Central School District teachers to create a field-site curriculum that will be consistent throughout a student’s time in school. In addition to expanding existing ILCS monarch projects and working with the New York State Education requirements, this program gains complexity as the children continue their education, provides autonomy in learning, and fosters a connection to the local land. Hopefully, having programming designed specifically for the school system will enrich the students’ educational journeys.
As these two projects get off the ground, we hope to, on a macro-level, understand pollinators better and provide proper pollinator habitat. On a micro-level, however, as each program is rooted in education and the communities that they operate in, we hope that individuals are able to learn from and connect with the land that they live on. Because the initiatives were designed to further the programmatic missions of our collaborating organizations—the Town of Indian Lake, the Indian Lake Central School District, Champlain Area Trails, the Nature Conservancy of Keene Valley, OCM Boces, and SUNY ESF—these collaborating programs will be in charge of continuing the initiatives and growing them to fit their needs, but AdkAction will always be accessible as a resource for better understanding of the problem or problem solving with respect to iNaturalist programming.
As a double major in Environmental Studies and Biology, I was drawn to Field School and the AdkAction project due to my academic interests, desire to explore different careers before graduation, and the opportunity to live in and learn about the Adirondacks. This project has introduced me to numerous fields related to biology and environmental studies, both within and outside of AdkAction and the Adirondack Pollinator Project. Through the Field Institute, I gained valuable insight into my strengths and weaknesses in an office setting, which will allow me to become a more well-rounded candidate for future opportunities. My time at AdkAction has allowed me to understand which company structure might work best for me. With an interest in both environmental work and health care, and due to my favorite aspect of my job this summer being my interviews and meetings with collaborators. I am definitely interested in working in a community-focused field and am motivated by the values of non-profit organizations. I am excited to see how this experience will shape my future! — Jessica Lee ’27