April 28, 2014 — The 22-year-old Marist College pre-med student spent four years at Poughkeepsie High School taking part in the glass eel monitoring program run by the state Department of Environmental Conservation's Hudson River Estuary Program and National Estuarine Research Reserve, in partnership with Cornell's Water Resource Institute.
Since 2008, the DEC has partnered with college interns, high school students, teachers, watershed group members and residents to conduct surveys of the long, thin bony fish.
The program has been headed up from the beginning by a 43-year-old Ulster Park resident, Chris Bowser.
"He was amazing," Wilks said. "He was the nicest guy on the planet."
On Wednesday, Bowser received an Environmental Quality Award from the Environmental Protection Agency's regional office.
"Thanks to Chris' abilities to educate, energize and inspire, participants have contributed needed data to fisheries managers and helped over 100,000 young eels over in-stream barriers," EPA spokesman Chris Sebastian said, citing language from the award. "Some volunteers have won prizes in national science contests and gone on to study environmental science in college."
The EPA is also highlighting that through the study of eels, participants learn about ecological links between the sea and freshwater rivers and watersheds, recognize that local creeks are vital habitats for fascinating creatures and become stewards of these habitats.
Bowser said the program was conceived as a way to study a species about which much is still a mystery, and to involve citizen scientists in the process.
Read the full story at the Poughkeepsie Journal