Suitable for teens and adults
Join us for a 3-hour tour of the Albany Pine Bush Preserve. We will take a hike on the Karner Barrens Trailhead Yellow Trail, a 2.6-mile sandy trail that meanders through forest and dunes and some of the best pitch pine-scrub oak barrens in the preserve to explore fire ecology and ethnobotany. The program will feature Albany Pine Bush Preserve Commission Conservation Director, Neil Gifford and Wild Hudson Valley Ethnoecologist, Justin Wexler for an extraordinary journey into this globally rare, nationally significant, and locally distinct inland pine barrens. Precolonial Indigenous cultures relied on the once extensive Pine Bush for food, medicines, and other essential natural resources. Indigenous fire stewardship historically helped maintain fire-dependent medicinal plants, and the rare wildlife they support. Today we emulate some of those traditional practices with prescribed burns, which not only benefit rare plant and animal species, but also reduce the risk of wildfires that could threaten surrounding human communities. This program meets inside the Discovery Center.
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