Press-Republican
---- — The Adirondack Council honored the work of Susan Morse, founder of Keeping Track, as part of its annual summer gathering at the Split Rock Lighthouse in Essex Thursday.
Morse is a nationally recognized tracker and wildlife habitat expert. She has tracked and taught in the Split Rock Wildway -- an area linking the habitats of the Champlain Valley with the High Peaks region; in Vermont she helped launch the Chittenden Uplands Conservation Project, as well as Keeping Track programs in Charlotte, Jericho, Lewis Creek and elsewhere.
Keeping Track is a grassroots, citizens' science organization that monitors wildlife movement throughout the Northeast.
Morse is widely known for her expertise in monitoring large carnivores as well as interpreting wildlife uses of habitat.
A forester, hunter and photographer, Morse has a wide range of experience to bring to the monitoring programs she teaches.
With support from the Adirondack Council, The Northeast Wilderness Trust and Champlain Valley Conservation Partnership, Morse will be bringing a Wildlife Event to Floral Hall at the Essex County Fairgrounds Oct. 6.
Keeping Track's Wildlife Events include an exhibit of hundreds of pelts, skulls, feet, track molds and mounts along with a slide show of Morse's spectacular photography.
A Keeping Track Monitoring Program in the Champlain Valley is planned beginning in January 2011.
Thursday's gathering was sponsored by Split Rock Lighthouse owner Gary Heurich, a former trustee of the Adirondack Council and former owner of the Split Rock Wild Forest, which he sold to the state for inclusion in the "forever wild" Forest Preserve in 1994.
-- By Contributing Writer Elizabeth Lee
