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Studies conducted in a wide range of freshwater ecosystems have revealed specific suites of attributes that predispose certain ecosystems to being sites of elevated MeHg bioaccumulation in fish and piscivorous birds and mammals. These hotspots result from a complex sequence of biotic and abiotic mechanisms that occur at critical points in the transfer of Hg in the environment from Hg supply, methylation, transport, bioaccumulation, and transfer in food webs. System-specific case studies are described in which Hg concentrations in biotic endpoints are known to be elevated. These studies highlight mercury sensitivity factors in natural lakes and ponds occupying sensitive landscapes, small and large managed reservoirs, the Florida Everglades, the Great Lakes, and in industrially impacted rivers.

This chapter focuses on beaver reintroductions and other transplants. Both the Eurasian and North American beavers have been transplanted many times and in many parts of the world in order to reintroduce them where they had become extinct and to introduce them as “exotics” to new areas. At the present time, especially the Eurasian beaver is rapidly expanding both its populations and its overall range by artificial and natural recolonization. The purpose of most transplants has been to replenish depleted stocks or replace extirpated populations of the same species in parts of its former range. This chapter considers the decline and recovery of North American beaver stocks in New York's Adirondacks and in the American South as a result of, reintroduction and transplantation. It also discusses the movements of transplanted beavers and concludes by looking at beavers that have been introduced as exotic species.

In August 1871, Theodore (Teedie) Roosevelt, then twelve years old, went camping with his family to the Adirondacks for a holiday near nature. He wanted to be a naturalist. As a boy Teedie became fascinated by a volume by Christian missionary and explorer David Livingstone, who described his journeys through the Dark Continent. He wrote a journal for the Adirondack camping trip entitled “In the bush.” Soon Teedie would own a collection of all kinds of dead and living animals such a frogs, field mice, snapping turtles, and even a woodchuck, complemented by more reading of natural history. An important influence in Roosevelt's interest in the natural world as a young boy was Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which Darwin described in detail in his book The Origin of Species. Part theology, part ethics and social theory, Teutonic racialism drew the interest of Roosevelt, who spent the better part of his life trying to apply the realities of the natural world not only to the study of history but also to the practice of politics.

This chapter presents an account of the events leading up to the war between the Adirondacks and Five Nations as told by the French. The war started when the Adirondacks asked some young men of the Five Nations to assist them in their hunting. The Five Nations willingly agreed in hopes that their people might acquire hunting skills. It was a custom among all the Nations of Indians, to divide themselves into small companies while they hunt. One of these parties consisted of six Adirondacks and six Five Nations. The Adirondacks were unlucky and returned to their cabin empty-handed. The Five Nations, however, were “dextrous” with their bows and returned loaded with the flesh of wild cows. Jealous of this success, the Adirondacks conspired together and murdered all the six men of the Five Nations while they slept.

This chapter details events following the Peace of Reswick. After the news of the Peace of Reswick reached New-York, the governor sent an express to Canada, informing the governor there of it, that hostilities might cease. The Five Nations, having an account of the peace earlier than they had it in Canada, took advantage of it, in hunting beaver near Cadarackui Fort. The Governor of Canada, however, being informed of this, and believing that the Five Nations thought themselves secure by the general Peace, resolved to take his last revenge by sending a considerable party of Adirondacks to surprise them, which they did, and killed several, but not without loss of many of their own men.

Though it was announced with great fanfare in 1846, the reporters and activists who first celebrated the Adirondack land grant experiment initiated by abolitionist Gerrit Smith quickly revealed their growing pessimism over its fate. When the offer of 3,000 40-acre parcels to black New Yorkers succeeded in attracting only a small percentage of willing migrants to the region (including to one settlement in North Elba, New York, nicknamed Timbucto), records show that these same writers struggled to understand and explain the reasons for the lackluster response and the perceived “failure” of those who did eventually make the trip. This chapter will review the accounts written by these commentators and will consider the role that ideas about race and the realities of racism played in their creation. It will also describe recent remembrances of Timbucto and consider the political ethics of present and future commemorations, including those carried out under the auspices of the Timbucto Archaeology Project.