These local students receive SUNY Oneonta scholarships:

— Sarah Alden of Altamont, John Ben Snow Fellowship Fund;

— Sabrina Balzan of Slingerlands, OAS Scholarship for Nutrition, Dietetics, Food Service & Restaurant Administration & Fields of Simil;

“The bigger ecological story here is the fact that the beetles can damage the pine stands — that is more a symptom of an ecosystem’s health,” says Neil Gifford, the conservation director for the Albany Pine Bush Preserve.

Robert C. Lawrence and his wife, Carol Ann, were kayaking on an Adirondack lake, watching some loons, when she asked him how the mountain looming over them, Blue Mountain, got its name.

Lawrence thought he’d buy a book on Adirondack place names at the Blue Mountain Museum to answer the question. But there was no such book.

The Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy, Northeastern Cave Conservancy, and Huyck Preserve and Biological Research Station each received funds from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation as part of a $3.4 million statewide grant disbursement.

The state’s comptroller has issued an audit showing that many school districts in New York lack sufficient staff for mental-health services.

COLONIE — Kenneth M. Gordon, an Army veteran who traveled the world, died on Thursday, April 14, 2022, at the Shaker Place Rehabilitation and Nursing Center. He was 89.

Born on Nov. 1, 1932, in Troy, he was the son of the late Martin A. and Catherine E. Daly Gordon.

On April 14, the state issued an order to ban all fowl auctions and other events for the purchase, sale, swap, or trade of fowl in New York State to help prevent the spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza.

Both the state and federal governments have renewed their public health emergencies because of the ongoing pandemic.

Southern pine beetles, a destructive forest pest, pose a “significant threat” to pine forests, particularly pitch pine like that found in the Albany Pine Bush, according to the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation.