LOCALadk Magazine

LOCALadk 35 bie-Measek. Many other community and individual projects have been supported by the Adirondack Pollinator Project, formed in 2016 to broaden the non-profit Adk Action's existing work on protecting monarch butterflies. Pro- gram partners include Paul Smith's College, Northern New York Audubon, and the Wild Center. Since 2011, they have planted 26 community pollinator gardens, sold over 10,000 pollinator-friendly plants, and given away around 70,000 free packets of milkweed and wildflower seeds. They initially focused on individual gardens and community projects that they installed using a mobile pollinator trailer. An interactive online map shows their signature hexagonal beds scattered from Glens Falls in the south, to Greig in the west, and north all the way to Chazy. More recently, the Adirondack Pollinator Project has shifted its primary focus to providing a local source of native plants and facilitating larger scale projects. "It's not that easy to find these different varieties of native plants grown specifically for our climate up here in the Northeast" said Hannah Grall, Project Manager at Adk Action. At least 200 people attended the seventh annual native plant sale in Lake Placid in June, where organizers sold out of nearly all of the approximately 2,000 native plants that they grew. Next year, they'll try to offer even more. They're also looking toward bigger projects, like planting a pollinator meadow on Indian Lake's capped landfill. "It's been shown that larger swaths of habitat create more pollinator corridors and allow for polli- nators to find these pockets of habitat more easily as they're traveling throughout the Park," said Grall. But even as they pursue larger projects, Grall emphasizes the importance of individual efforts. "I think that's one thing we definitely try to promote and hold onto, is that every person in our communities can be a pol- linator advocate and create pollinator habitat, even if it's small." And even if planting a small wildflower plot in your yard might not have a measurable impact by itself, "Doing it has other benefits," said Schlesinger, a co-au- thor of the Empire State Native Pollinator Survey. "It might influence others to do the same. It raises aware- ness," and that can lead to a patchwork of small plots that together do provide benefits for native insects. Protecting native pollinators will help maintain our native plant communities and bolster local agriculture. But perhaps even more importantly, "my argument is always that you save the insects for the insects' sake, not because they do things for people," said Schlesing- er. "They belong here and…it's our responsibility, if we have caused their declines, it's our responsibility ethically to try to bring them back." t Educational sign (top) and a Coneflower (middle) in the Richards Librar y rain garden, Warrensburg. Photo credit: Erika Schielke Bottom: Attendees browse native plants at the Adirondack Polli- nator Festival in June. Photo credit: Adk Action

• Cover