Almanack Contributor David Gibson

Dave Gibson, who writes about issues of wilderness, wild lands, public policy, and more, has been involved in Adirondack conservation for over 30 years as executive director of the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks, executive director of Protect the Adirondacks and currently as managing partner with Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest PreserveDuring Dave's tenure at the Association, the organization completed the Center for the Forest Preserve including the Adirondack Research Library at Paul Schaefer’s home. The library has the finest Adirondack collection outside the Blue Line, specializing in Adirondack conservation and recreation history. Currently, Dave is managing partner in the nonprofit organization launched in 2010, Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve.


Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Our Forest Preserve: A Wildland System

Adirondack Explorer’s reporter and writer Gwendolyn Craig has authored a fine article this month titled “The Long Wait for Forest Preserve Plans,” referring to the lack of  unit management plans (herein, “UMP”) for some significant Forest Preserve Wilderness areas, like West Canada Lake and  William C. Whitney, and for a group of Wild Forest areas, such as Lake George, Ferris Lake, Wilcox Lake in the southern half of the Park, and Debar Mountain and Chazy Highlands in the northern half.

The APA Act of 1973 “directs DEC, in consultation with APA, to develop individual unit management plans for each unit of land…classified in the master plan…All plans will confirm to the guidelines and criteria set forth in the master plan and cannot amend the master plan itself.”

Craig’s article accurately points out many staffing and budgetary shortfalls, policy hurdles and other challenges in completing UMPs in order to comply with the master plan (and updating them). DEC Lands and Forests has suffered from serious personnel and other cuts since the late 1990s. There were a few, but far too few, young DEC professionals appointed around 1999 to respond to then Governor Pataki’s announcement to complete all UMPs within five years. They worked diligently and drafted UMPs but as the new century began discovered that their superiors were unable to provide them with clear, enforceable policy with respect to controversial matters such as the expansion of roads, all-terrain vehicles, and snowmobiles in classified Wild Forest areas.

» Continue Reading.


Friday, July 21, 2023

Before there were motor free lakes

man with walking stick in front of a lake with a mountain in the background

Although by 1973 Wilderness areas had been officially designated on about one million acres within the Adirondack Forest Preserve, the question of whether waterbodies within those million acres would be similarly free of use by motors was still highly uncertain.

In June 1973 the first Commissioner of the new DEC, Henry Diamond, “announced a complete ban on airplanes and mechanically propelled boats in Adirondack Forest Preserve waters classified as Wilderness, Primitive and Canoe….One of rarest, hence most valuable, recreational assets is solitude – a chance to get away from the sight and sound of others,” the commissioner said. “We want to provide areas in which intrusion by man and his works are minimal” (DEC Press Release, June 1973).

DEC issued a list of 700 Wilderness lakes which were, by regulation, to be free from such mechanization. The list of lakes was far from roadways and within designated Wilderness zones. Diamond pointed out that many larger lakes populated by motorcraft were completely untouched by the new regulation, places like Lake George, the Fulton Chain of Lakes, Indian Lake, Long Lake, Tupper Lake, Lake Placid and the Saranac Lakes.

» Continue Reading.


Friday, June 23, 2023

At the APA, Critical Questions about Wetland Protection Are Not Asked

aerial image of Ampersand Bay

APA’s staff presentation about the variance recently issued for SL Marina on Lower Saranac Lake may have been “heroic,” just as APA chair John Ernst stated. The marina has a lengthy and complex history of regulatory and legal actions since 2014 to remove wooden, dilapidated shoreline covered slips that predated the APA Act and replace them with modern boat slips out into the water, among other improvements. APA staff covered that history with competence and explained why approval of a variance to the Agency’s shoreline setback regulations would improve the shoreline’s ecological health and, of course, advance the marina’s business and services.  With some 290 boat slips, this is the largest private boat marina in the Adirondack Park.

What the presentation and APA member questions did not clearly answer is why a wetland permit was not required during this round of review.  A wetland permit was required and issued to SL Marina during the earlier Agency review in 2020. Why not now?

In March of this year the APA’s 2020 permit and variance for SL Marina were annulled by the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court because, stated the court,  APA violated its wetland regulations by improperly valuing the wetlands in Ampersand Bay. APA gave these shallow water wetlands an incorrect value rating of two. “APA should have assigned an overall value of one to the Annex wetland,” stated the Court, “ and should have analyzed the wetlands permit application accordingly. Its assignment of an overall value of two, based upon a reading of the regulations that is contrary to their plain meaning, lacked a rational basis.”

» Continue Reading.


Wednesday, May 31, 2023

Keeping forests as forests: Clarence Petty’s vision

clarence petty memorial

Clarence Petty (1905-2009) grew up in the Adirondacks and eventually had a career with the state conservation department. His biography by Chris Angus, The Extraordinary Adirondack Journey of Clarence Petty. (Syracuse University Press, 2002) is still available.  After a few years with the new APA, upon retirement in 1974 Clarence became one of the great citizen advocates for conservation. I first met him in 1987 in the board room of the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks, where his voice stilled the room. He never dominated a meeting, but when he did speak his voice carried to good effect. He declared his point of view firmly, born of his life’s experience, with a chuckle or two to lighten the atmosphere and to illustrate his point.

Clarence’s core message cut through the many emergencies we were addressing at any given time to remind us that the surest way to protect Adirondack land was to acquire it as Forest Preserve or as conservation easements, and to follow up those actions with more DEC real property staff and forest rangers to ensure that the state could compete for the real estate, as part of the statewide open space plan, and also be a good steward of that land over the long term.  “We’ve got to get busy protecting more of the Adirondacks” was his frequent take-away message, followed quickly by “and we’ve got to take care of the Forest Rangers,” points well taken and easily remembered between meetings.

» Continue Reading.


Thursday, May 18, 2023

Did the APA Learn a Lesson?

Members and staff of the Adirondack Park Agency sit around a table listening to a presentation during the March 16 meeting in Ray Brook. Photo by Gwendolyn Craig

Did the APA learn a lesson in May? Apparently so, though only one person around the APA’s table would say so in public.  That admission came from the non-voting representative of the Adirondack Park Local Government Review Board, Jerry Delaney. “We’ve had a lesson in how important the people take their opportunities for public comment,” Mr. Delaney said. I am glad he said it because I suspect most were thinking it.

The senior APA staff, hit with hundreds of negative comments from diverse directions since March, including from some of its own members and from groups like mine (Adirondack Wild) and the Review Board, caved in May on their intention in March to ram through restrictions on public comment opportunities and subjecting future Agency policy and guidance documents to rapid decisions during a single meeting.

I was glad the staff caved. Act in haste, regret at leisure. It was certainly audacious of the senior staff to think over the winter that cutting down on public comment opportunities and on the time for consideration for changes to APA policy and guidance documents would not be noticed and needed no notice.  The question is, why did they propose such changes to begin with?

» Continue Reading.


Friday, April 21, 2023

Another Test of the APA’s Large Subdivision Review

Concerning a proposal for about 120 units of townhouses, “estate” homes, a hotel or clubhouse, associated several miles of roadways, parking lots, driveways, and trails on 385 mostly wooded acres in Jay near Ausable Forks, the applicant has just submitted new information to the APA.

The APA issued their second additional information request of Mr. Stackman last September, 2022. This month Mr. Stackman writes that he has been working diligently to respond. You can find it all on the Agency website. For this post, I’ll focus on just one aspect of that response to the APA’s second request for additional information: biological surveys.

» Continue Reading.


Tuesday, March 28, 2023

A Material Increase and Burdens on the Forest Preserve

How the Adirondack Park Agency interprets its own State Land Master Plan with respect to public motorized uses of roads on the Forest Preserve (Wild Forest guideline, “No Material Increase”) has been in the news since last spring and deservedly so. In contrast with more intensively developed park facilities elsewhere, the Adirondack and Catskill  Forest Preserve are “forever wild,” written into our state’s constitution.

The public’s general expectations on the Forest Preserve today is much as it always has been, to seek, find and experience peace, tranquility, awesome scenery, quiet, solitude, bird song, bees humming, red squirrels chattering, a sense of the primitive. The overall expectation is not to hear motors idling or accelerating. That is the contrast value of the Forest Preserve. No other state can boast of it. No other state has a Forest Preserve in their state constitution, kept, mostly,  primitive and quiet, most of it within 3 miles of a paved road or highway. 20th and 21st century voters seem to like it that way.

» Continue Reading.


Friday, March 10, 2023

APA failure to hold public hearings has consequences

lake george

Last April, Adirondack organizations wrote to the Adirondack Park Agency asking APA to rediscover their discretionary power to hold adjudicatory public hearings on particularly complex, controversial Adirondack land use projects. No response to our joint letter has been forthcoming from the APA. However, a rather resounding response has just come from a member of our state’s judicial branch.

Only one formal APA adjudicatory public hearing has been held in recent memory, and that was in 2011 and concerned the Adirondack Club and Resort in Tupper Lake. Ever since, APA staff have refused to recommend that the board take any land use and development to public hearing. And no APA board has produced the required six votes to do so.

» Continue Reading.


Thursday, March 2, 2023

Nearly 100 people attend Adirondack Park Lobby Day in Albany

Adirondack lobby day participants

Nearly 100 people from 20 different Adirondack organizations met with 50 state legislators and their staff during Adirondack Park Lobby Day to advocate for funding and policy advancements for the Adirondack Park. A group of Eagle Scouts from Queens, NY took the bus to Albany to help the group make a collective case for Wilderness, Clean Water and Green Jobs, including:

  • $4 million for a Survey of Climate Change and Adirondack Lakes ecosystems;
  • At least $500 million for clean water projects, including road salt pollution prevention;
  • $2 million for the Timbuctoo Summer Climate and Careers Institute, a partnership exposing high school students from the City of New  York to training and possible careers in natural resources in the Adirondack Park;
  • Doubling and diversifying the number of DEC Forest Rangers;
  • $40 million for open space protection, and $21 million for preserving farmland;
  • $12.8 million for Forest Preserve stewardship, and visitor use management;
  • $500,000 for Visitor Interpretive Centers at Newcomb and Paul Smith’s;
  • $400,000 for the Adirondack Diversity Initiative.

In addition, the group urged passage of non-budgetary legislative action, including:

» Continue Reading.


Wednesday, February 22, 2023

The Heart of the Adirondacks

Charlotte Demers demonstrating use of E-Bird and Merlin during a bird walk

Photo: Charlotte Demers demonstrating use of E-Bird and Merlin during our bird walk

Newcomb is in the heart of the Adirondack Park, and Newcomb’s Adirondack Interpretive Center (AIC) of the State University College of Environmental Science and Forestry is the beating heart of Park ecological science. AIC operates one of the longest, if not the longest, uninterrupted study of the interactions of forest and aquatic ecosystems and wildlife in all North America, if not the globe. That forest is the Huntington Wildlife Forest, and the published research findings there span more than 90 years.

Huntington and the AIC are not only important for the Adirondacks but for the nation. It is one of the few data collection centers for the National Atmospheric Deposition program which monitors acid deposition and other atmospheric inputs into these forests, wetlands, streams, and lakes. Given the value of all of that research, Huntington Wildlife forests, lakes and streams on these 20,000-acres rank very highly in the Adirondack Park’s ecosystem, as do its scientists, students, and all who support them, from  Syracuse to Newcomb.

» Continue Reading.


Monday, February 6, 2023

APA Act at 50 – Interdependence, not Balance

Gov Nelson Rockefeller signing the APA Act in 1973 while others look on

Well, it’s happened again. Another state budget is proposed by the Executive wherein the Adirondack Park Agency’s job is mischaracterized by this Governor’s (and former governors’) budget divisions as working “to achieve a balance between strong environmental protection and sustainable economic development opportunities for the residents of the Adirondack Park” (2023 Executive Budget Briefing Book).

Balance is important to strive for in our individual lives. However, nothing in the Adirondack Park Agency law, now reaching 50 years in May, calls for “a balance between strong environmental protection and sustainable economic development.” That is a construct and interpretation that has been superimposed upon the law, most especially since Governor Andrew Cuomo began his first term in 2011, as in this example from that year: “The APA Act is a balance of the adverse resource impacts of the project with its potential benefits” (APA staff during the Adirondack Club and Resort public hearing). Many have stated similar “balancing” objectives since then.

The unstated assumption behind such a statement seems to be that natural resource protection and economic development are on a seesaw, oppositional in purpose and competing in nature, and therefore requiring a state referee to provide necessary balance. That is not what the APA Act is about.

» Continue Reading.


Wednesday, January 4, 2023

DEC Lands and Forests – Should It Still Do More with Less?

DEC discussing future accessible trail to Boreas Pond lean-to

Governor Kathy Hochul has signed the “30:30 by 2030” state legislation whose objective is, in line with national goals, to bring New York State’s percentage of protected lands and waters up to 30 percent by 2030.

The eminent, late biologist and ecologist E.O. Wilson urged that the nations of the world protect 50% of the lands, freshwaters and oceans under their jurisdiction in order to slow the loss of habitats and species dependent on them, including humans whose livelihoods completely depend on the health of fisheries, forest products and other natural ecosystems. At the same time, E.O. Wilson’s goal would accelerate carbon sequestration within the rich, but shrinking carbon sinks of coastal eelgrass beds, mangrove swamps, ocean surfaces and inland forests. Habitat protection and climate mitigation are inextricably linked, he taught us.

» Continue Reading.


Sunday, December 11, 2022

Raising Standards at the Adirondack Park Agency

A few items captured my attention about the November 2022 meeting of the Adirondack Park Agency.

First are the public privilege comments of Park resident and retired APA deputy counsel Barbara Rottier. She spoke to the Agency of prior, 1996 written decisions of the APA staff that would shed light on the agency’s current deliberations about whether there has been a material increase in the mileage of roads and snowmobile trails open to motorized use by the public in wild forest areas since 1972. » Continue Reading.


Friday, November 25, 2022

The Sagacious White-Tail: Memories of Paul Schaefer

Paul Shaefer

Paul Schaefer in his early 70s in the Siamese Ponds Wilderness during deer season, perhaps around 1980.

I think of Adirondack conservationist and forever wild advocate Paul Schaefer (1908-1996) during deer season, actually in any season, but particularly in deer season at his Adirondack cabin. From 1921 on, over a century now, Paul Schaefer and his family, friends and hunting club comrades in the Cataract Club ventured into the wilderness from cabins in the Adirondack mountains. Some of them stayed in deer camp during big game season, others came and remained in the area for a lifetime. Physically, Paul frequently came and went for 75 years, but his spirit lingered in the mountains and cabin country, as he called it. Friends my age and I only knew him in his final decade. I wish that I could have known him as his family, Adirondack neighbors and hunting companions knew him, in full vigor, ever alert, loping, climbing and watching through the big woods, hills and ledges of the Siamese Ponds Wilderness, searching for the “sagacious and graceful” white-tailed deer.

» Continue Reading.


Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Dialogue for the Wild – Forest Preserve Lakes

adirondack waters

At Adirondack Wild’s  October meeting at the Paul Smith’s Visitor Interpretive Center, lakes and ponds came under the spotlight in a panel discussion about Cooperative Stewardship of Adirondack Lakes. Of particular interest was a given lake’s classification and subsequent comprehensive study, planning and management. If Adirondack waterbodies are considered part of the Forest Preserve, and for the last fifty years the State Land Master Plan talks about incorporating both land and water, then the law requires that lakes and ponds be classified, just as forests are. That raises important questions.

Classification leads to…If the lakes are classified, then they are subject to unit management planning, just as trails, trailheads and mountain summits are. The classification sets the basic guidelines and legally required outcomes. If lakes and ponds are subject to UMPs, then their carrying capacity, or ability of lakes and ponds in the Forest Preserve to withstand a variety of present and anticipated future uses, must be evaluated, like the requirement to measure and assess actual and projected public use on our forest’s trails and summits. I am not suggesting such assessments are an easy or inexpensive thing to do. Under the APA Act, however, it is a legal requirement, however often left untried or unfinished.  And the state legislature just appropriated a lot more money than DEC has ever had before for wilderness protection and management.

» Continue Reading.



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