| Fast Facts |
location
30 miles north of Syracuse
ecoregion
Northern Appalachian–Boreal Forest
project size
720,000 acres
preserves
Tug Hill Conservation Area
public lands
Tug Hill Wildlife Management Area, Winona State Forest, Whetstone Gulf State Park, Littlejohn Wildlife Management Area
partners
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Tug Hill Commission, East Branch of Fish Creek Working Group, Tug Hill Tomorrow Land Trust, GMO Renewable Resources
conservancy initiatives
Freshwater, Fire
natural events
bird migrations, May; wildflower blooms, May; fall foliage, September | |
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Tug Hill marks the westernmost edge of the Great Northern Forest, 26 million acres of mountainous woodland extending from Lake Ontario to eastern Maine. |
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Beaver pond, Tug Hill Plateau.
© Elinor Osborn |
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Atop the Tug Hill Plateau stretch 150,000 acres of unbroken northern hardwood forest, its bounds encompassing the headwaters of four major rivers and thousands of acres of streams and wetlands. River gorges cut chasms of layered stone 300 feet deep. This forested plateau sandwiched between Lake Ontario and the Adirondacks is home to numerous birds and mammals needing extensive intact forest to forage and breed.
Water shapes the Tug Hill landscape, and the plateau’s extensive waterways are fed by its extreme climate. Each year, winds sweeping eastward off Lake Ontario unload an average of 55 inches of precipitation on the plateau, more than a third falling as snow. The region receives the highest snowfall east of the Rockies—more than 20 feet per year. |
Bog copper butterfly.
© Elinor Osborn |
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To date, Tug Hill’s heavy precipitation coupled with poor soils have kept its upper reaches undeveloped and free of roads. Europeans arriving at the plateau via Lake Ontario in the early 1800s were greeted by towering red spruce rising above a lower canopy of maple, yellow birch and beech. Trees soon became, and continue to be, the foundation of the region’s |
| economy. As a result of intensive softwood harvesting in the late 1800s, hardwoods overtook the plateau. Local mills now process birch, maple and black cherry into lumber for export or sale to other local businesses that fashion products ranging from bowling pins to fine furniture. | |
In our largest-ever New York acquisition, The Nature Conservancy in 2002 brokered a deal with the state and a private timber company to protect 45,000 acres in the heart of Tug Hill Plateau—one-third of its core forest and critical habitat for forest birds and wide-ranging animals like fisher and bobcat. Under this agreement, much of the forest will be logged sustainably and compatible public recreation will be permitted. The most sensitive ecological areas, like those near watercourses and wetlands, will be preserved and restored.
Learn more about The Nature Conservancy's work in New York. |
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| Conservation Profile |
targets
spruce northern hardwood forest, interior-forest nesting birds like blackburnian warbler, fisher, bobcat, three-toed woodpecker, eastern pearlshell mussel
stresses
forest fragmentation from roads and development, sedimentation of streams from unsustainable forest management and all-terrain vehicle trails
strategies
acquire land, secure conservation easements, build conservation alliances, encourage sustainable management of private timberland, restore ecosystems
results
45,000 acres in conservation management | | | | |
