In cooperation with local leadership, the Conservation Advisory Council (CAC) of the Town of Cornwall is developing a natural resources inventory for the Town, including the Village of Cornwall-on-Hudson. The CAC is working with partners that have been providing technical and financial assistance, including the Orange County Planning Department, NYSDEC's Hudson River Estuary Program, Orange County Water Authority, and Cornell University. As part of this project, County staff has created the below series of maps that will be included in the NRI, which will be comprised of the maps and corresponding narrative, written by CAC volunteers, that describes local natural resources in detail. The full NRI document will be available in late Fall 2018.

As described in the publication Creating a Natural Resources Inventory: A Guide for Communities in the Hudson River Estuary Watershed (Haeckel, I. and L. Heady. 2014): A natural resources inventory (NRI) compiles and describes important, naturally occurring resources within a given locality (e.g., municipality, watershed, or region). Cultural resources, such as historic, scenic, and recreational resources, are often included in an NRI as well. The inventory has two basic purposes: 1) to provide the building blocks for comprehensive land-use and conservation planning, and 2) to allow natural resource information to be included in local planning and zoning. The scope of the NRI is determined by the community. At its simplest form, an NRI is the compilation and description of existing natural resources data. At its most complex, it includes detailed analysis of resources or new data collected specifically for the inventory.

Once completed, the CAC hopes to have the NRI used as a tool that will support and enhance large- and small-scale planning and conservation decisions.

To learn more or get involved, please contact the Conservation Advisory Council at cornwallnycac@gmail.com.