News and Events

Bard College, supported by New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s (NYSERDA) REV Campus Challenge, announced today the launch of a new website to be a centralized, public resource for exploring sustainable micro hydropower in New York State. The website also documents this process for the Saw Kill Micro Hydropower Project on the Bard Campus, including the installation of real-time water quality monitoring equipment.

The website is organized to streamline and standardize the process for evaluating and implementing a potential micro hydropower site responsibly. The site breaks down the requirements for assessing, implementing, and maintaining a micro hydropower system. Using the Saw Kill Project as an example, lessons learned are provided as a resource for landowners, local governments, and researchers alike.

The MicrohydroNY website will be updated on a regular basis with news about the Saw Kill Project and changes that affect micro hydropower in New York State. Visitors are encouraged to explore the website and sign up for direct emails from MicrohydroNY at microhydrony.org.
 

On Thursday, October 10, Bard College features author Isabella Tree presenting her new work Wilding: returning nature to our farm (New York Review Books, 2019), winner of the 2019 Richard Jefferies prize for nature writing and chosen by Smithsonian as a top 10 science book for 2018. The event takes place at 5 p.m., in Weis Cinema, Bertelsmann Campus Center. Admission is free and no reservations are necessary. Books will be available for purchase at this event courtesy of Oblong Books & Music.

The event is sponsored by the Bard Center for Civic Engagement, Office of Sustainability, Environmental and Urban Studies Program, and Lifetime Learning Institute.

About the Author
Isabella Tree writes for publications such as National Geographic, Granta, and the Guardian, and is the author of five nonfiction books. Her articles have been selected for the Best American Travel Writing and Reader’s Digest Today’s Best Non-Fiction, and she was Overall Winner of the Travelex Travel Writer Awards. Her latest book Wilding: returning nature to our farm charts the story of the pioneering rewilding project in West Sussex where she lives with her husband Charlie Burrell. Forced to accept that intensive farming on the heavy Sussex clay was economically ruinous, they decided to step back and let nature take over. By introducing free-roaming herbivores—proxies of the large animals that once roamed Britain—the Burrells’ degraded agricultural land has become a functioning ecosystem again. In less than 20 years, wildlife has rocketed and numerous endangered species have made Knepp their home. The Knepp experience challenges conventional ideas about our past and present landscapes, and points the way to a wilder, richer future—one that benefits farming, nature, and us.

For more information about the book, visit nyrb.com.

For more information about the author and Knepp Castle Estate, visit isabellatree.com and knepp.co.uk.

In this podcast Associate Dean of Civic Engagement Brian Mateo talks about his involvement as a Climate Reality Leader and how it’s shaped his ideas about climate change activism; climate migration in Afghanistan, Central America, and the United States; and how to get through to climate change deniers. “Sometimes I feel like the conversation is only about emissions,” says Mateo, “and there's so much more than that. I want to be able to see politicians and world leaders talk more about the people who are being displaced, talk more about food scarcity, talk about how we’re building communities. Lowering emissions is very important, but that's not the only driving part of the conversation.”