Adirondack-focused actions to get you started
Earth Day — April 22 — is an annual reminder that we can all do more for the environment. Here are some Adirondack-focused steps to take:
Spring clean up
Perhaps the most classic Earth Day activity, with many events taking place. Here are a few options:
⎥ The Ausable Freshwater Center (formerly the Ausable River Association) hosts an annual river clean up.
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⎥ The volunteer-run “Maintain the Chain” features a range of organizations teaming up around clean up work along the Fulton Chain of Lakes.
Volunteer for trail work
While trail work tends to be a summer time activity, get a jump this Earth Day by planning ahead on volunteer efforts:
⎥ Help out the Adirondack Mountain Club during National Trails Day in early June or on one of their other projects.
⎥ On the eastern side of the Adirondacks, volunteer with Champlain Area Trails.
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⎥ Northern Forest Canoe Trail hosts waterway work trips on a river or lake.
⎥ Barkeater Trails Alliance maintains ski and mountain biking routes.
Compost
⎥ Start a pile at home or use a rotating drum. Read more about composting efforts across the region.
⎥ Some local governments—such as Warren County—are developing drop off sites.
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⎥ A number of businesses—such as River Valley Regeneratives in Redford and Adirondack Worm Farm in Hudson Falls—have popped up around the park and will take your food scraps for a fee.
Start a pollinator garden
⎥ The nonprofit AdkAction, through its Adirondack Pollinator Project, offers links to planting guides and seed distributors at adkaction.org. You can sign up for free seed packets and buy plants that can be picked up in June at the Adirondack Pollinator Festival in Lake Placid.
Identify and report invasive species
⎥ Educate yourself through programs offered by The Nature Conservancy’s Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program.
⎥ Boat owners should “Clean, Drain, Dry” watercraft before putting in Adirondack lakes. Check out Adirondack Watershed Institute’s website for a list of locations they staff rinsing stations.
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⎥ Report possible sightings through imapinvasives.org.
Invest in clean energy
⎥ Staff at Adirondack North Country Association, which runs the North Country’s Clean Energy Hub, helps homeowners, businesses and municipalities figure out which solutions will have the most impact.
⎥ Reach out to your electricity provider to see what other options are available to you for buying renewable energy.
—Mike Lynch, Melissa Hart
Photo at top: Photo from the 2021 Ausable River Earth Day cleanup event. Explorer file photo courtesy of John DiGiacomo/Ausable Freshwater Center
Bravo Mike Lynch for your upbeat look at some worthwhile ways people might celebrate Earth Day this year.
April 22,,2025, marks fifty-five years since that first, largely spontaneous, outpouring of concern when increasing environmental degradation came to a boiling point all over America, resulting in the first Earth Day in 1970.
In the Adirondacks, a handful of local people answered the notice placed in the weekly North Creek News-Enterprise, inviting anyone interested in planning a local Earth Day event to meet at the Wevertown Methodist Church. On the night of the meeting, a handful of people showed up, including two school teachers, two local ministers, two forest rangers, a local contractor and an active member of the Adk. Mtn. Club.
That initial meeting led to the first town-wide cleanup of roadsides ever held in the Town of Johnsburg. The event was widely supported by everyone, from local kids to working people to retirees, in an outpouring of support for Earth Day – and also, to demand greater protection for our air, land, and waters, and for preserving our fragile Adirondack nature.
Earth Day spring cleanups, picnics for cleanup workers, and many other environmental activities continued over the next twenty years , led by members of the Upper Hudson Environmental Action Committee , formed as a result of that first Earth Day in 1970. As time passed, the group received advice and encouragement from many regional environmental organizations and well-respected conservation leaders, who saw great value in staying in touch with local Adirondackers “at the grass roots” level. Their assistance helped the UHEAC grow in membership and in its ability to support to many worthwhile activities more effectively..
As we have just seen recently when the three children were “disappeared” by ICE in Sackets Harbor, concerned people can still put aside their differences and join together to express valid concerns, or to right an injustice! That was also one of the most important lessons learned from that first Earth Day in 1970. It is how people are able to join together in “community”, and it is a lesson that we all should remember in the days ahead.
The choices we will make, regarding the future of our natural resources and for our towns & counties and the services they provide, may depend upon our ability to be a “community” that works for the benefit of all of us.