Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program January 2026 Newsletter

On behalf of the APIPP team, we hope all of you have been healthy and happy through the holidays and New Year. Now that we are into 2026, APIPP staff are looking ahead and planning how to improve our collective efforts. We’re also finishing up our annual report, which means we will have some impressive data—a lot of which is thanks to the work of engaged community members and partners like you—to share in the next newsletter. Until then, we wanted to give everyone a look at what we’re most excited about in 2026.

But before we do that, be sure to mark your calendars for next week’s kickoff to our volunteer Forest Pest Hunters program, a free webinar called Hope for Hemlocks: Biocontrols, Volunteers, and Tips for Landowners. The webinar will feature Nick Dietschler, Forest Health Researcher with New York State Hemlock Initiative at Cornell University, who will talk about biological controls that are being released to control hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA) in the Adirondacks as well as HWA control options for landowners. After Nick speaks, there will be a brief refresher by APIPP Terrestrial Invasive Species Manager Ari Giller-Leinwohl on how to monitor for and report HWA through APIPP’s Forest Pest Hunters program. Besides the HWA webinar, we have also scheduled our two annual partner roundtables for Feb. 11 and 12. Please scroll down for more information.

APIPP Wish List for 2026

The APIPP team is looking forward to continuing working with partners and volunteers this year. Keep reading to learn about some of the initiatives, both professional and personal, that we are looking forward to in 2026.

Brian Greene

Program Director

Planning and hosting an interactive and informative Adirondack Invasive Species Summit.
Developing new APIPP-led research projects to help us understand how to better manage aquatic invasive species.
Hiring new seasonals in 2026.
Getting to see new parts of the Adirondacks.

Ari Giller-Leinwohl

Terrestrial Invasive Species Manager

Growing existing partnerships and forge new ones—our impact is multiplied in collective efforts in invasive species prevention, surveys, and control of emerging populations.
Having a safe and productive field season with engaged partners, seasonal in-house staff, and contracted crews.
Offering enthusiastic, informative, and effective guidance for terrestrial invasive plant and forest pest management practices.
Continuing to work with community-based programs like the Forest Pest Hunters survey seasons and holding more in-person trainings and work-day events with partners.

Anna Hardiman

Aquatic Invasive Species Manager

Thank you for the warm welcome to APIPP last summer—it was a pleasure to meet many partners and volunteers on their incredible home waterbodies through doing shared AIS work. I am excited to spend more time on the water with partners doing AIS surveys.
APIPP's Lake Protector trainings, especially the in-person sessions with species specimens! These workshops are a great opportunity to refresh your AIS identification skills and meet other passionate aquatic stewards.
Providing support to lakes in tracking AIS presence and native vegetation trends to assess AIS management success through the Lake Management Tracker Program. With all the work that goes into AIS management, it is invaluable to see the data come together and show vegetation trends over the course of multiple seasons to track that progress.
Continuing APIPP's work in answering AIS monitoring and management questions through innovation projects, such as the continuation of the eDNA monitoring methodology refinement project. This type of project helps to move us forward at pace with the ever-evolving AIS challenges and potential opportunities for successful information gathering and response.

Shaun Kittle

Communications Manager

In 2025 we increased the number of in-person trainings we offered, and I am looking forward to doing even more this year.
We recently began the process of developing a new APIPP website and I am excited to launch it later this year.
Planning and holding the next Sips and Science event—stay tuned for more details!
On a personal note, our youngest is turning 2 in March and I can’t wait to go camping with him and the family.

Carolyn Koestner

Conservation and GIS Analyst

In 2026, I'm excited to build upon the work I did in 2025 to create a PRISM history of invasion and drill this data down even further to create a summary of invasion by lake for waterbodies in our area. That data will help us to track how invasive species enter lakes and how we can best address those pathways. Interested in exploring the existing data? Visit our interactive mapper on ArcGIS Online!