(Town of Lenox, NY – Jan. 2015) The Great Swamp Conservancy will hold its annual and general membership meeting Jan. 18 at 1 p.m.
The public is invited to come and enjoy the expertise of guest speaker retired DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) Forest Ranger Gary N. Lee of Inlet. Lee now spends his time as a licensed guide doing fishing, hiking, and birding trips in the Adirondacks. With his experience of the great out of doors he shares this through lectures on a variety of nature topics.
Lee has traveled extensively and has identified and photographed most plants, animals, birds, snakes and butterflies on his journeys. He has worked on the state Bird Breeding Atlas from 1980-1985 and 2000-2005.He is well known for banding birds at Crown Point Banding Station. He bands birds at his home and has banded gulls, cormorants, black crowned night heron and cattle egrets on Four Brothers Islands in Lake Champlain.
Lee helped with the first banding of Common Loons in New York (1998) and is a loon expert. He has worked as a field observer for the Adirondack Cooperative Loon Program, which is in partnership of the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks, state DEC, Biodiversity Research Institute and the Audubon Society of NY, Inc.. These groups monitor previously banded loons as to where they are nesting and productivity. Each year they band, take blood and feather samples from these birds to be tested during winter for mercury and other contaminates. In the summer of 2003-2005, satellite transmitters were put on a few birds to track them in their wintering areas.
With participation in the DEC Live Otter Trapping Program in 1999-2000 Lee captured for release 16 live otters from an area to a new safe location. He has received numerous conservation awards, served on many conservation boards, author of outdoor columns and co-author of Adirondack Birding 60 Places to Bird in the Adirondacks.
For more information, call 697-2950 or visit www.greatswampconservancy.org.