The Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program has an eventful week planned for New York’s Invasive Species Awareness Week (NYISAW), which is June 8-14.

NYISAW is an annual statewide campaign organized by the state Department of Environmental Conservation to educate the public about invasive species and how to stop their spread.

To participate in NYISAW, APIPP is hosting two events and celebrating the launch of a brand-new website.

 

Boquet River Nature Preserve Invasive Species Training 2026

To kick off New York’s Invasive Species Awareness Week, APIPP Terrestrial Invasive Species Manager Ari Giller-Leinwohl will lead an educational walk at Boquet River Nature Preserve from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Monday, June 8.

The walk will focus on how to identify and manage some of the most common invasive plants including honeysuckle, knotweed, and barberry.

Kiana French, curator of the Ausable Conservation Nursery with Ausable Freshwater Center, will also be on hand to demonstrate the Center’s newly launched Community Seed Scouting initiative and provide an orientation for folks interested in assisting with tracking and locating potential seed-collection sites for propagation materials at the Ausable Conservation Nursery, a native plant nursery in Lake Placid.

 

Love Your Lakes and Lands event

The first-ever Love Your Lakes and Lands event will be held from 4-8 p.m. on Thursday, June 11, at Dewey Mountain Recreation Center in Saranac Lake. This fun, free, all-ages event is part of NYISAW, but many topics besides invasive species will be included.

Love Your Lakes and Lands will feature about a dozen organizations, all there to teach the public about being good stewards of nature through various workshops, talks, walks, and hands-on activities.

The event begins at 4 p.m. and a series of three short talks beginning at 5 p.m. will cover aquatic invasive species, native seed collection, and aquatic invasive species management on Upper Saranac Lake.

After the talks, there will be a native seed collection walk at 6 p.m. and a guided birding walk at 7 p.m., both along the Dewey Mountain trails.

Demonstrations will occur every half hour and will include how to properly wash fishing waders by Ausable Freshwater Center, how to use a boat wash station by Adirondack Watershed Institute, how to prepare for a paddle by Northern Forest Canoe Trail, and a microplastics workshop by The Wild Center.

There will also be an ongoing lead sinker tacklebox check by the Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation—anyone who brings a tacklebox can have their lead sinkers replaced, free of charge.

Food and drinks will be available for purchase from vendors.

The event was organized by staff from the Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program,  Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation, and Adirondack Watershed Institute.

More information on both events can be found at www.adkinvasives.com/events.

 

Introducing the new adkinvasives.com

After months of planning, APIPP is pleased to announce the launch of the updated adkinvasives.com.

The revamped website features a long list of technical and aesthetic upgrades, including an updated design and improved user experience.

One of the overarching goals of the project was to make it easier for users to learn how to identify invasive species, how to volunteer to monitor for invasive species, how to manage invasive species and how to report invasive species using the iMapInvasives app. All of that information is now more readily accessible, thanks to the website’s improved structure and features like “identify,” “report,” and “volunteer” buttons that appear on every page.