With the long holiday weekend upon us, thousands of visitors will be in area to enjoy the natural beauty that surrounds us. One of our main attractions is the Finger Lakes National Forest – New York’s only national forest. Humans, however, aren’t the only macrofauna making their annual reappear
ance at the Finger Lakes. Mid-May is the kickoff to the annual Hector Grazing Association season, which since the 1940’s has brought thousands of head of cattle annually to graze thousands of acres of the forest – or rather, the grassland portions of the forest. The HGA is by far the largest continual grazing operation in New York and probably in the entire Northeast. This on-going relationship enables the Forest Service to maintain much of the traditionally non-forested portions of the forest as productive grasslands – key habitat for most species of wildlife that call the Finger Lakes home.
To learn more: https://www.americanforests.org/magazine/article/more-than-lakes/
