Expanding a natural resource


Todd Bittner

Cornell Plantations recently acquired a key 10-acre parcel at the headwaters of Cascadilla Creek, thanks to a gift from John Semmler '68 and financial support from the Town of Dryden.

The Andrew Semmler Tract, named in memory of Semmler’s son, is now part of Plantations’ 230-acre Ringwood Ponds Natural Area, seven miles east of the Cornell campus. Established in 1934, Ringwood Ponds is dominated by old-growth, maple-beech forest and features rolling glacial topography, eskers, kettle hole ponds and forested wetlands.

The addition “creates a more well-defined boundary between this unique preserve and one of the privately owned parcels it borders,” Semmler said. “More important for me, it permanently recognizes Andrew’s love of nature in a way that would have been truly meaningful to him.”

Cornell Plantations has 3,400 acres of natural area holdings with a diversity of habitats and unique landscapes for use as outdoor classrooms and open to the public; and manages a system of 44 preserves facilitating research in the natural sciences.

– Daniel Aloi