Tag Archives: Friends of Reinstein Woods

Friends of Reinstein hiring Development & Marketing Associate

Friends of Reinstein Woods is hiring a Development and Marketing Associate to work closely with staff and volunteers to promote the long-term financial well-being of Friends of Reinstein Woods. The Associate will be responsible for diversifying the organization’s funding streams and growing our donor base. This is a full- time position. Occasional weekend and evening hours related to special events required.

 

 

For details about the job, see the attached announcement. Application deadline: January 15, 2023. 

 

 

 

Outdoors Day Fun!

About 540 people enjoyed exploring new outdoor skills at Get Outdoors! Community Day on June 8 at Reinstein Woods.

Thank you to the Towns of Amherst and Cheektowaga Youth & Recreation Departments, New York State Parks Interpretive Office, Niagara Frontier Search & Rescue Team, DEC Forest Ranger Kennedy, and all our volunteers for making a fun day!

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Welcome table
state parks exhibit
camping
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search and rescue
ranger demonstration
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food trucks
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Pictures by staff and Abby Mandris.

Job Opening: Summer Camp Director 2019

Friends of Reinstein Woods is hiring a Summer Day Camp Director for Kids in the Woods summer day camp. Applications are due by December 19, 2018. You can view the full job announcement here.

Celebrating a Sustainable Earth at Fall Festival

About 2,300 people braved extreme heat to celebrate at the 18th Annual Reinstein Woods Fall Festival.  While most festival-goers came from Erie and Niagara counties, there were visitors from as far away as Rochester, Syracuse, the Adirondacks, Florida, Tennessee, and even France!

Mama Earth’s interactive music shows provided entertainment throughout the day. The festival area extended out to Flattail Lake, where attendees watched drone and search and rescue demonstrations. To go with the “Sustainable Earth” theme, volunteers at two Waste Centers collected trash from the event, diverting as much as possible into recycling and compost. We collected about 100 pounds of household batteries to be recycled and many pounds of other recyclables and organic wastes that otherwise would have gone to a landfill. Friends of Reinstein also purchased a carbon offset to reduce the festivals’ carbon footprint even further. To learn more visit www.footprintnetwork.org.

Special thanks to M&T Bank for sponsoring the event and providing a reusable bag to the first 500 families attending the event!

Thanks to everyone that made the 18th Annual Fall Festival a success, including the Cheektowaga Police Department, Lexington Co-op, Mayer Brothers, Nussbaumer & Clarke, Inc., Paula’s Donuts, Paths, Peaks and Paddles, and all of our volunteers and exhibitors.

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Volunteers Care For Reinstein Woods on I Love My Park Day!

More than 90 volunteers helped care for Reinstein Woods on the first Saturday in May as part of I Love My Park Day.

These volunteers:

  • planted 50 trees,
  • repaired 2 trails,
  • collected more than 20 bags of garbage and invasive species,
  • removed a “new” patch of invasives we found late last fall,
  • disassembled a large survival shelter that was an attractive nuisance,
  • protected a few dozen trees from beavers by repairing existing wire enclosures,
  • spread woodchips on and improved the nature play area, and cleaned our outdoor turtle enclosure.

Friends of Reinstein Woods provided pizza lunch for all the participants.

We are grateful to groups from Geico, Fiserv, Excelsior Conservation Corps, Depew High School Leo Club, Boy Scout Troop 554,  and Cub Scout Packs 451 and 619 who helped alongside individual volunteers. We hope to see everyone again next year!

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Hawk Creek Presentation at Holiday Party

Members of Friends of Reinstein Woods enjoyed lunch together with a special presentation by Hawk Creek Wildlife Center earlier this month. Guests saw animals such as a striped skunk, porcupine, opossum, red-tailed hawk, screech owl, and turkey vulture during this engaging presentation. The younger ones even got to feed the porcupine carrots on a stick! The afternoon concluded with a visit from Santa. This event is an example of the great member-only programs we offer. See a list of our upcoming Member – Only Programs here.

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Photos Courtesy of Henry Ciesla and Mike Adriaansen

Job posting: Summer Camp Director

Friends of Reinstein Woods is hiring a Summer Day Camp Director for 2018. Please see the attached  announcement below.

Summer Camp Director

Naturalist Intern Program Turns 10 Years Old!

In Fall 2007, DEC started a Naturalist Intern Program at Reinstein Woods, a paid internship program that provides training and experience to college students or recent graduates interested in environmental education. Since then, 63 people, ranging in age from 20 to 40+, have experienced what it’s like to teach and learn at Reinstein Woods.

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Interns & Staff at Reunion 2017

Last month, 18 past and present interns gathered with staff for a reunion to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the program!

 

Interns standing with Intern coordinator
Intern Program Coordinator Kristen Rosenburg with former interns Susie Platino and Jonathan Roth

Representatives from almost every year attended the reunion. The former interns enjoyed snacks provided by Friends of Reinstein Woods while reminiscing about their time here, viewing a slideshow of all 63 interns and sharing updates about what they are doing now. They had a chance to look back at their past projects and activities, too. There was even a photo area with animal costumes and props! Most of the group took a walk together around the trails, stopping to check out the screech owl roosting in its usual spot and heading out to see the remains of the champion beech tree.
 Interns from 2012
Former interns have gone on to work or intern for a variety of companies, non-profits, and government agencies, in locations as far away as California, New Hampshire and Florida (see below for a sampling!). We hope that our former interns share their love of nature and what they have learned at Reinstein Woods wherever they go, and we are looking forward to seeing them again at the 15th anniversary in five years!

Information about applying to the Naturalist Intern Program can be found on DEC’s website.

Interns from 2014Where Have Reinstein Woods Naturalist Interns Gone? 

Adirondack Mountain Club; AmeriCorps/SCA; Buffalo Museum of Science; Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper; Buffalo Zoo; Earth Spirit Educational Services; Erie County Park Rangers; Five Rivers Environmental Education Center; Friends of Reinstein Woods; General Motors; Girl Scouts; Heritage Education Program; Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest (NH); Mendacino Woodlands (CA); The Nature Conservancy (PA); NYS Department of Environmental Conservation; NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (Evangola State Park & Taconic Outdoor Education Center); Parks & People Foundation (MD); Pigeon Key Marine Science Center (FL); Pinellas County Park Rangers (FL); Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PA); Praxair (TX); Rochester Museum & Science Center; Rogers Environmental Education Center; Tetra Tech; Tifft Nature Preserve; Town of Amherst; US Fish & Wildlife Service; Virginia Department of Emergency Management; Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources; Western New York PRISM.

Get Out There! A Message from the President

Summer is not officially over until the Autumn Equinox arrives at 4:02 p.m. on September 22. We know the days get shorter until the winter Solstice – but let’s not think about the “s” word and just enjoy the upcoming palette of color that nature so easily paints for us!

Reinstein Woods will certainly be a hot spot this fall as activities abound to get us outdoors. Our annual Fall Festival is by far our most attended event and has something for all ages to enjoy. I encourage you to attend – it truly showcases Reinstein Woods and all it has to offer.

Friends members can tour the Erie County Saw mill (who knew we had one!) on Saturday September 30. Also, remember that our annual Friends of Reinstein Woods membership meeting is Tuesday, October 17 where you can meet board members and socialize with other members. If you are wondering how the Friends group interacts with NYSDEC both financially and in its day to day operations, this meeting will most likely answer your questions. Buffalo Audubon’s Mark Carra will entertain as John J. Audubon. I encourage members to attend, and if you’re not a member, you can join that evening.

Lastly, our annual art, wine & cheese show Nature’s Gathering takes place Saturday, November 11 at Knights of Columbus on Union Road in Cheektowaga.

I would like to thank everyone for their generous contributions over the past year as the Friends closes its fiscal year in October. Whether you donated to an appeal, bought plants from the Native Plant Sale, or volunteered, you made a difference. I would also like to personally thank the board of directors, volunteers and community partners who attended meetings to begin the process of developing an updated strategic plan. This is an exciting process that will steer the future growth of Friends of Reinstein Woods. We will elaborate more on this plan at the annual membership meeting in October.

Hope to see you soon at the Woods!

Enjoy and Respect Nature,

Terry Boyle

Giving News

We would like to share some news with all members of Friends of Reinstein Woods! Many of you may already know of this news, and some of its impacts are already being seen around the preserve, but we feel it deserves some special coverage.

In 2015, a member of the Friends of Reinstein Woods graciously left us a large and unexpected gift as part of her estate. Dr. Carolyn Tasa was a Friends member since 2009. She worked in our community as a professor of Anthropology and Psychology at ECC for several years. She was a lover of animals and nature, and her special gift to us has and will allow us to further our mission.

This generous gift came as quite a surprise. The Friends of Reinstein Woods board of directors met to decide how best to use these funds that were given to us all. We felt so grateful to know that another person loved this place as much as we all do, and she took action on that feeling to plan this extraordinary gift.

Some of the improvements that have been made with Carolyn’s gift include:

  • Acquiring new equipment for the “Day in the Life of the Buffalo River,” a field experience for more than 300 students annually,
  • Acquiring new taxidermy mounts, and protect existing mounts from moth infestations with custom-built enclosures for the mounts most frequently used in education programs,
  • Providing public Wifi for visitors and for use in programs, such as the recently held “Nature Tech” spring break series for kids,
  • Improving our education programs by purchasing insect nets, skulls, and a display board,
  • Increasing our operational efficiency through new shelving units to hold snowshoes and education program supplies, an updated computer for the office manager and a laptop for the naturalist interns, and
  • Replacing a broken refrigerator and freezer to store items used for Friends’ events and fundraisers.

The donation is also supporting our current strategic planning process, enabling us to strengthen the long-term health of the organization.  The remaining majority of the gift has been invested wisely by our finance committee to provide future income for the Friends and support future needs.

If you would like more information about making a planned gift to Reinstein Woods, please contact Stefanie Ecker at (716) 432-0397. Gifts do not have to be large to be meaningful, and a planned gift can be a great option for many of us.

-Stefanie Ecker, VP of Friends of Reinstein Woods