The DEC just announced some grant funding for private landowners interested in helping out the bog turtle.

Grant recipients are eligible for awards ranging from $5,000 to $50,000, depending on the project. To maximize the program's benefits, DEC will limit LIP eligibility to private landowners within the focus area, which includes portions of Columbia, Greene, Ulster, Dutchess, Putnam, Sullivan and Orange counties. A map of the focus area can be found at http://www.dec.ny.gov/pubs/48737.html .

Bog turtles are endangered in New York State -- probably because they make their home in soggy, mucky, tussocky fields, a type of habitat both property developers and invasive purple loosestrife plants love to re-landscape. The DEC says 95 percent of bog turtle habitat is on private land.

A barn in Saugerties lifts a hopeful face toward spring.

Photo by Flickr user Blue_Mtn_Photos, posted in the Watershed Post pool on Flickr. All rights reserved.

We attended the Department of Justice's visit to Batavia to talk dairy today -- you can see our minute-by-minute coverage of the event here. The hearing was an historic one: the first time the DOJ has actually met dairy farmers on their own turf. This afternoon, articles are already being released by various news outlets, most of which seem to focus on remarks made by Senator Charles Schumer. Here's a roundup:

From the Rochester Business Journal:

Dairy prices hit historic lows in 2009, while revenue for dairy farmers per dollar spent on milk by consumers declined, said Schumer, D-N.Y. “For too long, farmers have been receiving rock-bottom prices for their products while prices have not dropped commensurately for consumers at the stores,” Schumer said in a statement. “It just doesn’t add up.

From the AP:

The FBI's Albany office has just launched a website called "Bandit Tracker Northeast," on which it lists and maps bank robbery suspects who have struck throughout New York. But it doesn't seem to have the crooks who hit the NBT bank at Grand Gorge in January. Or any other bandits in upstate NY -- at all. Something tells me that's a little too optimistic. 

After almost a decade at Catskill Point in the village of Catskill, the local farmer's market is moving to the center of town, reports The Daily Mail. Not everyone is happy about it:

Kay Stamer, executive director of the Greene County Council on the Arts, who has organized the artisan market and accompanying music components of the market, expressed disappointment in Seeley’s decision. “I am very, very sad that it is going out of the park that we worked so hard to build,” she said. “Even though it is a County park, it is such a wonderful thing to have in our Village; we have the Catskills and the Hudson River and that is what we were about promoting.”

A local baker had similar thoughts:

“It is a shame that they gave away something that was unique to Catskill and are making it an event that everybody has,” she said.