ECOLOGY
"The Schoharie watershed is literally crawling with life. An amazing variety of habitats, people, plants, and animals are all interconnected in a fragile web of life, often referred to as biodiversity. Every member is essential to keeping this web in balance.
There are many ecosystem functions/services we receive from nature including cleaner air through vegetation respiration, cleaner water through soil and wetland filtration, soil formation from forests, pollination of food crops from our native insects, natural flood water retention/groundwater recharge, and pest control from our native bats, birds, and insects. The plants and animals that inhabit the Schoharie watershed are suited to the habitats provided by our temperate climate. When early 1900’s industry in the valley declined, previously cleared growth has returned to forested land through a reforestation program - approximately 85% of the Schoharie-basin’s land cover being classified as forest in a 2001 NYCDEP analysis.
The upper Schoharie, and many of its tributaries, are primarily cold water streams, meaning they provide suitable water temperatures for organisms such as brook trout and sculpins.
The Upper Schoharie Watershed contains a high degree of biological diversity with a species assemblage that is unusual within the Hudson River Valley. Forests with features such as talus slopes, cliffs, and mature stands are habitat for plants and animals adapted to these conditions. The large, unfragmented nature of the forests creates favorable habitat for wide-ranging animals (such as black bear and bobcat) and wildlife that prefer forest interiors (such as black-throated blue warbler). It is likely that forests of the Upper Schoharie watershed are important breeding areas for raptors such as broad-winged hawk, Northern goshawk, and sharp-shinned hawk."
