Wildlife and conservation centers offer unique educational opportunities and recreational experiences by interacting with nature.
In Sherburne, the Friends of Rogers Environmental Education Center is devoted, according to friendsofrogers.org, to “providing outstanding educational opportunities that excite, inspire and motivate people of all ages and abilities to enjoy, understand, appreciate and protect our natural environment.”
The center spans 600 acres, five facilities and seven miles of trails, all of which further its mission.
“Really, Rogers Center is committed to offering outstanding opportunities for environmental education that inspire people to be good stewards to the world around them,” said Ariah Mitchell, education and communications associate with Friends of Rogers. “We have programming for children, adults and families, and it’s all about supporting central New Yorkers and anyone else who is traveling through and on their journey to learning and caring for the natural world.”
In Oneonta, the Delaware-Otsego Audubon Society Sanctuary is similarly focused.
According to dec.gov.ny, the sanctuary overlooks Oneonta and “is the site of the Franklin Mountain Hawkwatch, one of New York state’s premier fall hawk watches … particularly said for late-season flights of red-tailed hawks and golden eagles.” The sanctuary is home to red-tailed hawks, golden eagles, bald eagles, songbirds and white-tailed deer.
Andy Mason, co-president of the DOAS board, said such wildlife and more can be seen throughout the 100-acre property.
“(The sanctuary) provides a marked hiking trail through a variety of habitats — open fields, second-growth forest, old pastures and mowed fields — and there’s also a large wetland,” he said. “Its basic purpose is to preserve a large, generally undisturbed piece of land for wildlife and humans to experience wildlife. There’s a wide diversity there — many bird species, mammals, amphibians and reptiles, and a variety of native plants.”
The organization, Mason said, includes “about 300 people, and we have members out in Schoharie and Chenango (counties), and some even more distant, but it’s definitely centered in Otsego and Delaware.”
In Smyrna, Wolf Mountain Nature Center offers 65 hilltop acres of tranquil property, featuring gray wolves, eastern coyotes and arctic foxes. According to its social media page, the 562 Hopkins Crandall Road site, founded in 2006 by Will Pryor, is a nonprofit organization focused on “advocacy for wolves, coyotes, foxes and nature altogether.”
In a 2019 interview with The Daily Star, Pryor’s partner, Pam Mennis, said, “Our license is to educate the public and study wolf behavior. When you go to the zoo, you’re going to see animals (that exist in) the wild, whereas wolves, coyotes and arctic foxes are all native to the U.S. But because of fear, people misunderstand them, so we’re here to explain what’s really going on with wolves. It’s a very tranquil setting to get away, unwind and see and learn about wolves at the same time.”
Mennis said Wolf Mountain draws diverse visitors.
“We’ve had homeschooler, preschool and younger groups come out and do different activities like hikes and programs in our tipi village,” she said, adding that state regulations prohibit contact with the wolves, but visitors can come within four feet. “I just took a tour out with a 7-year-old and people in their 70s, so we have all ages.”
The average visit, according to thewolfmountainnaturecenter.org, is two hours, without picnicking. Outside food is permitted.
“We’ve had a lot of family trips and we invite people to bring their own coolers, and we have hibachi grills,” Mennis said. “They’ll look at the animals, take their time, visit the classroom, which has a kids’ touch table, and have lunch. We’re more of a preserve sanctuary, so we’re not open all the time, but that’s how we want it.”
Mitchell said Friends of Rogers is unique in how its mission gets implemented and sustained.
“It’s interesting, because we’re operated by a Friends of Rogers group, which is basically a grassroots nonprofit organization that champions public lands, but Rogers Center is unique in the fact that … it’s the oldest environmental education center in New York,” she said. “It’s been operating since 1970, and we were state funded and run by a whole team of environmental educators that were DEC staff up until 2010. During the recession, the state decided to close two of its five education centers, and Rogers Center was chosen. At that time, there was a Friends group that had been doing minor fundraising for the Rogers Center — bake sales, things for special programming — and when they found out the state had intentions of closing the center and demolishing the building on the property, they banded together.
“So many community members have wonderful memories here,” Mitchell continued. “We’ve offered programming since 1970, so there’s a long history in the region, and people come in all the time with stories of having come in as kids and are now taking their grandkids. So, we are currently in an operating agreement with New York state. We’re still state-owned land and right next to Region 7 of the DEC office, but all the operating is done by Friends of Rogers. We run all the programming, we staff the building and sell things in the gift shop and run summer camps and we write the grants for improvement. The state does the maintenance, and we have to abide by (the state’s approval of programming plans). We really rely on the community that we serve for our operating budget.”
Mason said DOAS counts on collaborative and volunteer engagement.
“The trails need maintenance every year — branches come down and we have to cut things back — but we were fortunate the last few years that we had college students volunteer to do that work, and anything else that needs attention,” he said. “It is a relatively low-maintenance property, though we do mow trails through the fields.
“Just last year, we built a handicap accessible trail a couple hundred feet long, and that ends at a spot overlooking the wetland,” Mason continued,” and we have plans this year to build an accessible platform.”
Fiscally, Mason said, DOAS relies on membership dues and grant and fundraised funds.
“When we have a special project, like the handicap accessible trail, we did go out and do specific fundraising, and we did get a couple grants to help with that,” he said. “We had a program this spring on convincing people to put up devices to keep birds from hitting their windows, and we did get a grant for those materials, and to do workshops for people, which were well attended.”
Mitchell said that given its operating structure, Friends of Rogers’ solvency is multi-faceted.
“We do have a board, that consists of over a dozen people, and we have three full-time staff: the executive director, senior executive director and our education and communications associate,” she said. “Then two part-time staff year-round and, in the summer, interns for the summer camps. I think it’s quite remarkable what we accomplish, even though we’re a small team.
“That’s an advantage of being a nonprofit, because we’re very nimble,” Mitchell continued. “We can operate in ways a state-funded organization might not be able to, but we still have those resources. I meet bimonthly with DEC coordinators and actively work together on press releases and we have shared events … so there’s opportunity for collaboration, but we largely have autonomy over anything we do.”
Reaching volunteers and people can prove challenging, but is a primary goal.
“We are always looking for volunteers and have a variety of volunteer positions — education, trail work, operating our sugar shack when it’s that time of year,” Mitchell said. “It’s a wide variety of opportunities, and that’s something we’re building out. We’re hiring on a new communications engagement coordinator, and one of the main goals of that position is to increase our outreach to underserved groups. As a part of our marketing plan for the year, we’re hoping to do more outreach to college-age students and more young people. We get a lot of families and older people, but we have a certain demographic we’d like to increase our outreach to.
“As of right now, I would say the majority (of visitors) are from Chenango County or within an hour drive,” she continued. “We have a lot of Sherburne, Earlville, Norwich folks, but we get other areas like Oxford, Greene, and people are coming from Syracuse a lot and Hamilton, so a lot of the region we serve isn’t just Chenango County, but places near enough that schools can bring kids for field trips. And we have partnered with the refugee community in Utica to offer camps and recreational opportunities … and that’s something we’re really looking to increase.”
“We have, for a number of years, had a summer day camp,” Mason said. “We’re not having it this summer, but hope to restart it next year. It’s tough to get camp counselors, and it’s a very popular program, so it’s unfortunate that we’re not doing it.
“We’re fortunate that we have a good, active board of directors, and that’s always important and, over the years, we’ve been able to maintain that,” he continued. “But, getting volunteers, for any organization, is a challenge. We do a lot other than the sanctuary, although that’s sort of out only physical presence, but we do what we can in terms of the available volunteers and we have two other pieces of property that are not really open to the public. They’re inaccessible, but we acquired them just to protect them, and one is a wetland in the town of Burlington.”
At Wolf Mountain, interactive outreach events are announced via the center’s Facebook page. The next “wolf communication and howl night” begins at 7 p.m., Saturday, June 14. According to Facebook, the event “includes tours of wolf (and) coyote exhibits as well as discussions/programs about the various ways wolves communicate, including scent marking, body language and vocalizations.” The program concludes, it noted, with a pack howl and participants are encouraged to bring a flashlight.
Culturally, engagement with conservation is up.
“I think over the last 10 years (engagement has increased),” Mason said. “In the first Trump administration, our membership jumped, and it’s held steady since. I think there is an interest in and awareness of a need for conservation, probably now more than ever.”
“We have the Chenango County Bird Club, which meets here every third Wednesday of the month, and, at one of our more recent meetings … the director of sustainability at Colgate did a presentation on the Florida panther because he did a bunch of work with tracking them when they were near extinction,” Mitchell said. “It was such a well-attended event, and that makes me think of how many species are really threatened right now, and the decline of monarchs and pollinators and certain birds. It’s so visible now and it is becoming more visible than it ever has been. That has people thinking.
“We just wrote a grant that we received $250,000 for, for pollinator habitat restoration,” she continued. “That nearly doubles our operating budget and we’re going to be expanding 25 acres of pollinator habitats to support those declining species so, with people’s concerns about climate change and how they can make change – something actionable – they can come to the Rogers Center and volunteer and make a real difference. We are doing the pollinator habitat restoration, tree planting, invasive species removal – Rogers Center has a wide swath of projects that we engage in that are actively restoring ecosystems. It’s this ability for people to have some cause and effect and see their support – their contributions and donations of time or financial support – really come to fruition and make a difference in the community. We’re supported by the community and we support the community that gives back to us through our projects that are actively helping conservation in New York State.”
For more information on the Friends of Rogers, visit friendsofrogers.org or stop by the center, open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday, and noon to 4 on Sunday.
For more information on the Delaware Otsego Audubon Society, visit doas.us. Find “Wolf Mountain Nature Center” on Facebook.
DEC also offers programming for those interested in becoming licensed wildlife rehabilitators.
“Wildlife rehabilitators aid in the care and recuperation of injured or sick wild animals,” dec.gov.ny stated. “All wildlife rehabilitators are licensed by the DEC. Rehabilitators volunteer their time to provide services to wildlife. Not all rehabilitators may be able to accept every injured or orphaned animals No state funding is available for animal caging, veterinary care, medicine or food.”
The site includes a database for contacting rehabilitators.