The Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation has announced that former founding director Dr. Nina Schoch has left the organization as of July 1, 2025.
“We are appreciative of the contributions Dr. Schoch made to this organization and are deeply committed to continuing the important mission of research, education and studying loons as environmental sentinels in the Adirondack Park,” they Center told supporters in a brief announcement.
“As a veterinarian and wildlife rehabilitator with decades of experience, I will now be pursuing my long-term passion and dream of expanding wildlife health and conservation opportunities in the Adirondacks,” Schoch wrote in a letter to Adirondack Explorer. “In collaboration with others, this idea will lead to ongoing wildlife health research, training opportunities for wildlife professionals and students (including undergraduate, graduate, veterinary…), and diagnostic and treatment resources for wildlife rehabilitators in and around the Adirondacks.”
She has not detailed what form the new organization would take, saying plans were still in the works.
Dr. Schoch earned both a veterinary degree and a graduate degree in wildlife health and conservation before moving to the Adirondacks in 1991. In order to pay off student loans, she began working as a veterinarian at private practices, including with Dr. Cogar at High Peaks Animal Hospital in Ray Brook.
She first volunteered and then worked part-time at Adirondack Nature Conservancy, helping to establish the Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program with co-founder Bill Brown.
“While attending conferences, Dr. Schoch met Dr. Mark Pokras, currently an associate professor emeritus at Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine and widely regarded as an expert in environmental pathology and toxicology, including lead toxicosis in common loons, so she reached out to him for advice about a next career move,” according to a 2024 blog post about her career. “He suggested I go to ‘this loon meeting’ at DEC’s office in Albany,” she recalled.
“At the meeting, she met Dr. David Evers from Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI) and learned about the nationwide loon-mercury study. BRI made a request to include loons from New York to spatially evaluate loon mercury levels across the US. The initial plan was to capture, band and sample loons in the Adirondacks for two weeks a year for three years.”
“BRI and the other members of the Northeast Loon Study Working Group (NELSWG) were monitoring the banded loons to determine their reproductive success in relation to the mercury levels in the birds,” Dr. Schoch said. “The data was used to assess the impact of environmental mercury pollution on aquatic ecosystems using loons as indicator species. I learned more about the environmental impacts of airborne pollutants acid deposition and the work that was being done to monitor and better regulate them.”
In 2001,she was hired on contract part-time basis by the Adirondack Cooperative Loon Program, a new partnership comprised of BRI, DEC, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Audubon International and the Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks (NHMA – now the Wild Center). The next year she began working full time and in 2009 became a full-time employee of BRI.
In 2016 she established a space in Saranac Lake and the next year 2017, the Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation became an independent nonprofit, moving into a storefront on Broadway Street. In 2021, they relocated to their current space at 75 Main Street. The also added Executive Director Dorothy Waldt to the staff and Dr. Schoch transitioned to the role of Director of Conservation and Science.
You can read more about her career here.
Read about loons in New York State here.
Photo: Dr. Nina Schoch treats a loon rescued after a grounding in North Lawrence in July 2024 (ACLC).
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