Deer Lick Conservation Area, a National Natural Landmark located in Zoar Valley on the South Branch Cattaraugus Creek, is a 398-acre nature preserve maintained by The Nature Conservancy. Deer Lick preserve offers five hiking trails, from short, easy ventures to more challenging treks. Deer Lick offers a variety of landscapes, from mature forests and meadows to striking vistas of canyon-wall waterfalls in deep gorge canyons. The serenity and beauty of the Deer Lick Falls area is not to be missed!

Deer Lick was preserved through land donations by Evelyn Alverson, Jimmy Wells and Herbert F. Darling, Sr.

For more information on The Nature Conservancy's ongoing work in Zoar Valley, to learn about TNC's many programs, and to become a member of The Nature Conservancy, please click here.

This year the Nature Sanctuary Society of Western New York celebrates sixty years of ownership of the William Prindle Alexander Preserve. Located about seven miles from Springville in the beautiful Zoar Valley, this 118-acre preserve was purchased in 1940 and dedicated in 1941.

This Preserve was named in honor of one of the founding members of the Society. Prof. Alexander was a long-time Curator of Adult Education at the Buffalo Museum of Science. He was also one of the founders of the very successful and well known Allegany School of Natural History that existed for numerous years in the Quaker Run area of Allegany State Park.

Dr. Alexander best described the nature of the preserve when he wrote in Hobbies, the Magazine of the Buffalo Museum of Science, Volume 31, No. 2, December, 1950, the following: "The Sanctuary land under consideration is perhaps the most striking landscape property to be found in all of Zoar Valley. It rises hill-like from the valley floor to a considerable height, and the Cattaraugus Creek sweeping around it in a wide graceful curve has by its eroding power fashioned precipitous slopes on its eastern and southern sides. Indeed, the slope on the south side ends in a vertical cliff of what is now known as Gowanda shale. The north and west sides, in contrast, are mild declivities that undoubtedly owe their contours to the action of the ice that once overrode them, and the deposition of transported glacial debris on the surface."

Three major forest types are found at the Preserve: Beech-Birch-Maple, Oak-Hickory, and Mixed Mesophytic. Along the banks of Cattaraugus Creek there is a well-developed flood plain community which has for many years supported on of the most showy stands of Virginia Bluebells, Mertensia virginica (L.) Pers., in Western New York each spring.

In the early days, it was the practice to transplant into the Preserve certain plants that were thought to be "rare" or hard-to-find in other Western New York sites. Some of them still remain. The American Columbo or Green Gentian, Frasera carolineensis Walt., was transplanted from an Allegany County site near Rushford; it flowers during some seasons, such as in 1999, but it did not flower in 2000.

The more recent years have seen little activity of this kind at the Preserve. Most of the habitats have been left undisturbed and the area now is reverting, in general, to mature forest. In fact, recent attention has been given to the Preserve by the Old-Growth Forest Committee of the Niagara Frontier Botanical Society. Rodger Sweetland reports elsewhere in this Newsletter the demise of one of the very old Red Oak, Quercus rubra L., trees on the top of the plateau.

In the late 1940's the writer was involved in some of the nesting bird surveys that were done at the Preserve. At that time close to 60 species, most of which were small land birds, were thought to be using the Preserve. Now, over 50 years later, we do not know what nests there, but there are plans to find out in the approaching spring season. One thing we do know is that the preserve is located within an area that has one of the highest diversity of breeding birds found anywhere in Western New York. This was shown in they year 2000 as part of the New York State Breeding Bird Atlas program, when two birders, Willie D'Anna and Betsy Potter, recorded 95 and 96 species in two separate blocks of land, one of which included the Preserve.

In 1954 the Society published a combined list of the vascular plants and mosses of both the Alexander Preserve and the Houghton Preserve. Recently that list has been updated and separated so that there are two lists, one for each Preserve. Hopefully, these lists will initiate new interest in the Preserves and new studies of the plants that can be found there at the present time.

(Reprinted with kind permission of the author. This article originally appeared in the February 2001 edition of Nature Preserves, A Newsletter of the Nature Sanctuary Society of Western New York. The author is the President of the Nature Sanctuary Society of Western New York, the past-President of the Buffalo Audubon Society and Buffalo Ornithological Society, he headed up the Western New York Breeding Bird Atlas 2000 survey, is a member of the Niagara Frontier Botanical Society, and is the Treasurer of Friends of J.N. Adam Historic Landmark & Forest. Whew!)

The William P. Alexander Preserve is open only to members of The Nature Sanctuary Society of Western New York, Inc. For information about joining this organization and scheduled outings at their various preserves, please contact Dr. Wayne Gall, Treasurer, at (716) 681-8238, or Richard Rosche, President, at (716) 652-8409. The Property Custodian of the Alexander Preserve is Frank Hugar, (716) 652-9613.

The goal of The American Chestnut Foundation is to restore the American Chestnut tree to its native range within the woodlands of the eastern United States, using a scientific research and breeding program developed by its founders. A blight-resistant American Chestnut tree is expected to be ready for forest test-planting in 2006 and for wider distribution within the next decade.

Not so long ago, the American Chestnut was one of the most important trees of forests from Maine south to Florida, from the Piedmont west to the Ohio valley. In the heart of its range only a few generations ago, a count of trees would have turned up one chestnut for every four oaks, birches, maples and other hardwoods. (In other woods, up to 25% of the forest cover.) Many of the dry ridgetops of the central Appalachians were so thoroughly crowded with chestnut that, in early summer, when their canopies were filled with creamy-white flowers, the mountains appeared snow-capped.

And the trees could be giants. In virgin forests throughout their range, mature chestnuts averaged up to five feet in diameter and up to one hundred feet tall. Many specimens of eight to ten feet in diameter were recorded, and there were rumors of trees bigger still.

Native wildlife from birds to bears, squirrels to deer, depended on the tree's abundant crops of nutritious nuts. And chestnut was a central part of eastern rural economies. As winter came on, attics were often stacked to the rafters with flour bags full of the glossy, dark brown nuts. Springhouses and smokehouses were hung with hams and other products from livestock that had fattened on the harvest gleanings. And what wasn't consumed was sold.

Chestnut was an important cash crop for many Appalachian families. As year-end holidays approached, nuts by the railroad car-full were shipped to New York, Philadelphia and other cities where street vendors sold them fresh roasted.

The tree was one of the best for timber. It grew straight and often branch-free for 50 feet. Loggers tell of loading entire railroad cars with boards cut from just one tree. Straight-grained, lighter in weight than oak and more easily worked, chestnut was as rot resistant as redwood. It was used for virtually everything - telegraph poles, railroad ties, shingles, paneling, fine furniture, musical instruments, even pulp and plywood.

Then the chestnut blight struck First discovered in 1904 in New York City, the blight - an Asian fungus to which our native chestnuts had very little resistance - spread quickly. In its wake it left only dead and dying stems. By 1950, except for the shrubby root sprouts the species continually produces (and which also quickly become infected), the keystone species on some nine million acres of eastern forests had disappeared.

The New York Chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation has active research, field work and education programs to advance the goals of the Foundation and restore the American Chestnut to the eastern woodlands. To find out how you can volunteer, donate and participate in activities, including Spring Planting Day and Fall Harvest Day at the chestnut plantation in Zoar Valley, check out http://www.acf.org/Chapters_ny.php.

Mr. Darling exuberantly enjoyed nature and cherished Zoar Valley. He did more than anyone to preserve it by gifting unspoiled land to the people so it could be enjoyed by all in its natural state. Mr. Darling and his family made many generous land gifts of natural areas in Zoar, putting almost 2,000 acres throughout Zoar under the stewardship of the Dept. of Environmental Conservation, The Nature Sanctuary Society of WNY and The Nature Conservancy. While, sadly, he left his remarkably full and active life much too soon - a life full of family, nature and civic work - he left behind incredible gifts for all the living things in Zoar Valley that will live on forever for all of us to enjoy and preserve.

Carol, in one incarnation of her creative and spirited life, launched the Coalition on West Valley Nuclear Wastes and ended up doing so much to protect Zoar by working for more than 30 years to stem the flow of nuclear waste going to West Valley (and ultimately into Cattaraugus Creek and through Zoar Valley). She worked tirelessly to push reluctant bureaucrats to clean up the toxic mess in West Valley. Her torch never touched the ground, so many are those she inspired.

From The Great American Forest, by Rutherford Platt, 1965

"Until recent times, a magnificent forest overlay our country from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River, from the spruces of Canada to the cypress swamps of the Gulf coast. We can catch a glimpse of its coattails disappearing around the corner. Our grandfathers beheld it. Descendents of its trees are imprisoned in our parks and reservations. In some places highway engineers and city developers are mobilizing considerable power to blast remnants of woodland. Residual strongholds, particularly in mountains and lake country, can still be found where people yet hunt, fish, breathe forest air and enjoy a personal, first-hand experience of the wonderful forest delivered to them in a kind of modern packaging all tied up with highway ribbons.

"Considerable relics of the great deciduous forest remain because of its original immensity, the dynamic nature of trees, flowers and animals, and above all because it was not invaded until recent times. The human population explosion and aggrandizement of cars did not reach obliterating proportions until the last decade.

"The forest of the Red Man, the log cabin, Daniel Boone, and Audubon has been slain and hewn asunder - but living fragments of the wonderful organism still reflect its original style and grandeur, still impart much of its odors, colors and motions. Our woodlands still perform the age-old celebrations of the revolving seasons with dramatic changes of scenery."

Webmaster - Mike Stroh
Initial launch site - Paul Wilcox of www.designerdonline.com
Design Concepts - Julie Broyles

Ancient Forest Zenith photo on preceding page © Carl Milazzo.  Autumn Canyon Rim, S. Branch Ancient Forest Terrace, Creek Bed Gorge, Deer Lick Kiosk Dedication, and Autumn from Valentine Point photos © Julie Broyles.  Pyramid View painting © Thomas Annear.  Aerial Fishin' Hole photo © Vince Tobia and Cattaraugus Creek Outfitters.  American Chestnut Plantation photos © Amy Fantaske.  Herbert F. Darling, Sr. photo © and kind courtesy of the Darling Family.  Carol Mongerson photo © and kind courtesy of the Springville Center for the Arts.