PART OF OUR REGIONAL CONSERVATION AGENDA

Save Farms, Wineries & Rural Character

Theme 2 from our report on strategies for permanently protecting the priceless lands and waters of the Finger Lakes region

Here we share the second set of strategies from Lakes, Farms, and Forests Forever, our fully illustrated report which you can find on our web site at fllt.org/top10.

The Finger Lakes region is famous for sweeping expanses of farmland and picturesque lake views.  Millions of tourists flock to the region to explore over 50 farmers markets, 3 wine trails, u-pick apple orchards, and emerging beer and cheese trails.  Drawn by the lakes and agricultural tourism opportunities, visitors and residents alike are charmed by the rural character of our region.

Yet our agricultural land and iconic views are increasingly under threat.  Farmers are challenged by the conversion of land for residential and commercial development — a particular concern for farms that rely on significant amounts of leased land.  We are calling for sustained investment to save the farmland and scenic vistas that are most imperiled by development.  By increasing funding from public and private sources — and providing technical assistance to municipal planning boards — we can preserve our farms, vineyards, and rural character forever.

The conservation strategies in this theme:

Save Threatened Farms & Wineries

Preserve agricultural lands that are most threatened by development through increased funding for New York State’s farmland protection program.  Investment in this program will also spur economic development by aiding agricultural enterprises.

Protect Scenic Vistas & Designated Byways on Cayuga and Seneca Lakes

Inventory publicly accessible vista points across the region and lands bordering the Cayuga Lake and Seneca Lake Scenic Byways.  Secure the highest quality vistas and lands through the acquisition of conservation easements.

Maintain Rural Character Through Stronger Land Use Planning

Strengthen locally-based land use planning by providing increased technical assistance to town planning boards and producing a region-specific guide to best practices for rural land use.

What you can do

If you love the Finger Lakes region, please take a moment to read Lakes, Farms, and Forests Forever.  You can download a digital copy at fllt.org/top10 and request free print copies.  Please share with friends who love our lands and waters, and consider supporting the Finger Lakes Land Trust by becoming a member and getting involved with our events and volunteer opportunities.

PART OF OUR REGIONAL CONSERVATION AGENDA

Keep Nature Wild & Enhance Public Access

Theme 3 from our report on strategies for permanently protecting the priceless lands and waters of the Finger Lakes region

Here we share the third set of strategies from Lakes, Farms, and Forests Forever, our full illustrated report which you can find on our web site at fllt.org/top10.

The southern expanse of the Finger Lakes region features wild lands known for rugged gorges, rolling forests, sparkling waters, and diverse wildlife.  Wide-ranging mammals including black bears and fishers roam the hills. Tourists and residents enjoy existing conservation lands where they find majestic waterfalls, panoramic lake views, and quiet hiking trails.

There are many places worthy of protection, but we believe that the greatest impact can be achieved by focusing conservation efforts on the south ends of Canandaigua Lake and Skaneateles Lake; the Emerald Necklace surrounding the south end of Cayuga Lake; and, a stretch of the Chemung River just east of Corning.

For each of these focus areas, the Land Trust aims to partner with a broad coalition of public and private stakeholders to knit together conservation corridors with an eye to protecting waterways, linking conserved lands, and building trails.

The conservation strategies in this theme:

Create the Canandaigua Skyline Trail

Establish a corridor of conserved lands extending from the shores of Canandaigua Lake to the summit of Bare Hill and southward to the village of Naples — expanding the “nature nearby” opportunities for Rochester residents and visitors to the western Finger Lakes.

Complete Cayuga Lake’s Emerald Necklace

Secure the Finger Lakes Trail and adjacent natural lands within an 80-mile arc of public open space surrounding the southern end of Cayuga Lake.

Create the Chemung River Greenbelt

Create a world-class assemblage of riverfront parks, conservation lands, and agricultural lands bordering the Chemung River between Corning and Elmira — providing a variety of recreational opportunities.

Save the South End of Skaneateles Lake

Create a ridge-to-ridge greenbelt that hosts a regional multiuse trail network and helps ensure water quality within Skaneateles Lake.

What you can do

If you love the Finger Lakes region, please take a moment to read Lakes, Farms, and Forests Forever.  You can download a digital copy at fllt.org/top10 and request free print copies.  Please share with friends who love our lands and waters, and consider supporting the Finger Lakes Land Trust by becoming a member and getting involved at our events and volunteer opportunities.

Finger Lakes All-Star Cast!

Watch the third “Creature Feature” to see who is visiting the hot spots at our nature preserves. Filmed by the stewardship crew of the Finger Lakes Land Trust using a motion camera.

We issued this fun short as a thank you to members, volunteers, partners, and everyone who supports conservation in the Finger Lakes region.

Why Are the Bobcats Bobbing?

Find out why the woodland critters of the Finger Lakes region are bobbing, dancing, bouncing, and posing! Filmed by the stewardship crew of the Finger Lakes Land Trust using a motion camera.

We issued this fun short as a thank you to members, volunteers, partners, and everyone who supports conservation in the Finger Lakes region.

A Winter Night’s Tail

See who is gathering under an old apple tree on a small nature preserve. Filmed in Tompkins County by the stewardship crew of the Finger Lakes Land Trust using a tree-mounted motion camera.

In the video you will see coyote, rabbit, raccoon, deer, and oppossum.

We issued this fun short as a thank you to members, volunteers, partners, and everyone who supports conservation in the Finger Lakes region.

Voices in Favor of Forever

To everyone who supports conservation in the Finger Lakes region, thank you for accelerating our forever work! Please enjoy this short video from the Annual Meeting of the Finger Lakes Land Trust, and share it with friends who would love to help us save more land and water.

The Magic of Places Like These

To everyone who supports conservation in the Finger Lakes region, thank you for accelerating our forever work! Please enjoy this short video from the Annual Meeting of the Finger Lakes Land Trust, and share it with friends who would love to help us save more land and water.

Our Forever Work

To everyone who supports conservation in the Finger Lakes region, thank you for accelerating our forever work! Please enjoy this short video from the Annual Meeting of the Finger Lakes Land Trust, and share it with friends who would love to help us save more land and water.

Animals and Plants of the Finger Lakes

Goddess of the Moon: The Life History of the Luna Moth

We can thank Linnaeus for the name of the luna moth, Actias luna, an apt epithet for this, perhaps the most beautiful of our nocturnal insects.

It seems likely that Linnaeus recalled the Roman moon goddess Luna in 1758 because of the moth’s distinctive hindwing spots – translucent discs with a dark crescent edge, like the moon when it’s nearly full. Perhaps he also realized that the entire moth is a living avatar of the moon – at rest by day, on the move by night, exquisitely pale, subtle yet spectacular.

Luna moths are among the largest moth species in North America, with a wingspan of 3 to 4 inches. They are common in deciduous forests from Saskatchewan to Texas, and from Nova Scotia to Florida. Scientists believe that populations of luna moths throughout their range have adapted to prefer particular local hardwood trees as host plants, including birch, hickory, beech, willow, and cherry.

The larvae have five molt stages, or instars, culminating in the formation of a pupa encased in a papery cocoon and wrapped in leaves. After about three weeks, their metamorphosis now complete, adult luna moths cut their way out using serrated spurs near the base of the front edge of their wings. They typically emerge in the morning, leaving time to spread and dry their wings before their first night of flight.

Adult luna moths do not eat at all, and therefore have only vestigial mouthparts and no digestive system. Their sole purpose in life is to reproduce. They have only about a week to do so before they die.

The females emit a sex pheromone, which the males can detect even at a great distance with their broad, feathery antennae. They usually mate after midnight. The females begin laying eggs by the following night, continuing for several nights more. The eggs hatch after another week, and the cycle begins anew.

In the northern parts of their range, including our Finger Lakes region, luna moths typically breed once per year in June. In the south, luna moths breed up to three times a year. For the year’s last generation, the shorter duration of sunlight late in the season causes the pupa to enter diapause, a state of suspended development. Late-forming pupae fall to the ground in autumn with the leaves that encase them, and then spend the winter waiting in the leaf litter on the ground until the longer days of spring signal that it’s time to emerge.

Luna moths, especially large larvae and adults, are high-value targets for insectivores. Therefore, luna moths have evolved remarkable adaptations to foil predators. The caterpillars are light green, matching the color of the leaves they feed on. But when they sense a predator about to strike, the caterpillars abandon attempts at concealment. Instead, they rear up their heads, possibly to confuse the predator, sometimes making a clicking sound with their mandibles, followed by regurgitation of foul-tasting liquid.

Luna moths likewise rely on visual camouflage as adults. Their green wings blend right in among any cluster of broad leaves. Furthermore, the forewings have reddish-brown leading edges that branch to teardrop-shaped spots, looking just like twigs with little emergent buds. Therefore, people rarely find luna moths in their natural habitats, instead encountering them most often near buildings illuminated by artificial lights at night.

Most amazingly, adult luna moths have even evolved acoustic camouflage to evade capture by echolocating bats. The key is the long twisting tails on the moths’ hindwings. In 2015, biologists at Boise State University recorded that bats captured 81 percent of luna moths whose tails were removed, but only 35 percent of those whose tails were intact – in the latter case, commonly directing their attacks at the moths’ tails instead of their bodies. Then in 2016, experts in applied physics and neuroscience at the University of Washington and Johns Hopkins University determined that the tails not only shift the location of the echoes, but because of their twists, also scatter the reflected sounds in all directions.

Thus the luna moth embodies not only the full moon in its pale majesty, but also the new moon in its obscurity and unrevealed potential. Hidden among the green leaves, unseen on the forest floor, undetected even by close-range sonar calibrated through eons of evolution, the moth eludes the senses even as it fires the imagination. And just as the ancients saw divinity in the new moon advancing to fullness and waning again, so too can we marvel at the moth’s life history, from egg to caterpillar to pupa to adult and repeating in a never-ending cycle, miraculous in all its phases.

This story by Mark Chao first appeared in our newsletter, The Land Steward, as part of the Closer Look series about plants and animals of the Finger Lakes region.

Animals and Plants of the Finger Lakes

Ol’ Greenie Back-eye: The Eastern Newt

The three weird sisters in Macbeth stirred eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog, along with a number of other eclectic ingredients, into their cauldron.

Although there’s some speculation that “eye of newt” might have been an herbalist’s term for mustard seed or daisy, it’s quite likely that the witches were in fact using small amphibians to give extra oomph to their spirit-conjuring potion. Following are a few reasons why you, too, might want to consider using the eastern newt (Notophthalmus viridescens) in your own enchanted homebrew this summer.

Second of all, newts are, like adder’s fork or blind-worm’s sting, wonderfully poisonous. There’s probably nothing special about their eyes, but their eggs and skins are saturated with a powerful neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin. It dissuades fish, though apparently not frogs and turtles, and it’s the same substance found in the flesh of fugu, the deadly pufferfish prized by Japanese gourmands. According to urban legend, hallucinations can be induced by licking amphibians, but licking a newt is likely to land you in the hospital, or worse. (The newts of the West Coast are even more poisonous than those of the Finger Lakes. In one infamous case, an entire Oregon camping party died when a rough-skinned newt fell into their coffee pot.) Tetrodotoxin won’t pass through intact skin, though it can irritate eyes and mucous membranes. Ironically, we’re far more toxic to newts than they are to us: the oils, salts, and chemicals that coat human hands soak right into their permeable skins.

Finally, they’re even more spectacular shapeshifters than our other local amphibians. A newt starts life as a dull-colored, translucent, minnow-like larva that feeds on even smaller aquatic crustaceans and insect larvae. Its almost invisible, twig-like legs are dwarfed by feathery gills growing like squirrel ears from the tops of its neck.

After two to five months, the larva metamorphoses into the terrestrial juvenile form known as the eft. (Linguistic note: “eft” is an ancient form of the word “newt.” Through changes in spelling and pronunciation, mistakes in copying texts, and shifts in language patterns, “a newt” became the standard way to refer to certain members of the family Salamandridae, whereas “an eft” became a rare dialect form. Like the creatures themselves, one word slowly transformed into another over time.) The gills of the larva disappear and lungs develop; the rudderlike tail shrinks; the legs grow much more substantial, and eyelids grow over the eyes. Its body floods with tetrodotoxins, a fact that it advertises by changing its color to an uncanny red-orange that stands out like a neon sign against the dark forest floor. The larva had the furtiveness of a tiny prey item, but the eft moves with the doggedness of an animatronic toy. Like other animals with prominently advertised chemical defenses such as skunks, efts don’t need to move quickly or hide from predators. They look good enough to eat – I’ve always thought that they resemble Japanese gummy candy – but they’re ten times more poisonous in this stage, so please resist putting them in your mouth.

The eft’s noxiousness is so well respected by predators that several other species have evolved reddish coloration in order to piggyback on its success: the red salamander (Pseudotriton ruber), the northern redback salamander (Plethodon cinereus), and the spring salamander (Gyrinophilus porphyriticus).

After several years, the eft grows up. Skin that was dry and vermillion becomes slimy and dull olive-green; the rudder-like tail regrows and the adult re-enters the water, though it keeps its lungs for the rest of its life. Most of the poison ebbs from its body and it will rely mostly on camouflage for protection. Its wild teenaged years may be over, but it retains tiny red spots on its back that are a sign to the local fish that it still contains enough tetrodotoxin to make a charm of powerful trouble: like a hell-broth, boil and bubble.

This story by Jacqueline Stuhmiller first appeared in our newsletter, The Land Steward, as part of the Closer Look series about plants and animals of the Finger Lakes region.