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.


Friday, October 2, 2020

High Intensity, Multi-Day, Air-Land Military Training Coming to the Park

Back in June something occurred with potentially great significance for the Adirondack Park that flew below the proverbial radar. That month, a letter was mailed from the U.S. Army at Ft. Drum to selected agencies notifying them that “Fort Drum is initiating agency coordination for a new proposed action within the existing nine county Local Flying Area surrounding Fort Drum’s Installation Restricted Airspace area.”

That nine county Local Flying Area includes large portions of the Adirondack Park.

Interestingly, the Army’s letter and lengthy environmental assessment document never mentions the existence or the significance of the Adirondack Park, or of the Forest Preserve, or of state constitutional protection under Article 14.

» Continue Reading.


Thursday, September 10, 2020

“We are seriously degrading the resource”

Thank you to reporter Gwen Craig of the Adirondack Explorer (and Times Union) for her recent articles about recreational user pressures created by all of us entering the High Peaks Wilderness from the private lands of the Adirondack Mountain Reserve (AMR)/Ausable Club off of Rt. 73.

As reported, user pressures and resulting damage to the private lands have reached the point where the private landowner is considering restrictions or limits on public access through the AMR to the High Peaks Wilderness.

» Continue Reading.


Friday, August 28, 2020

Limited Entry System for the High Peaks – Let’s Get Started

I appreciate the Adirondack Council’s recent press release, which highlights the many benefits of permit reservation or limited entry systems and how such a system is needed and necessary now in parts of the High Peaks Wilderness Area. (Editor’s note: See the Explorer’s article about it here) Support from the Adirondack Council for such a system comes at an important moment, as overuse of the peaks continues to spike during this pandemic summer.

Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve has been publicly advocating for a limited entry or permit reservation pilot project in the High Peaks since we met with Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner Basil Seggos in September 2016. For the past four years we have advocated that such a system must be one part of a comprehensive management approach, including Leave No Trace education and use of many information platforms, including High Peaks social messaging to hikers and campers before they leave home.

» Continue Reading.


Wednesday, August 19, 2020

Ending the Campfire Prohibition on the Chain Lakes Makes No Sense

The 19,000-acre Essex Chain of Lakes between Indian Lake and Newcomb certainly has received lots of public attention. In 2007, it was a major part of the Finch, Pruyn and Company sale of 161,000-acres to the Adirondack Nature Conservancy, with help from the Open Space Institute.

Today, the first amendment to the Essex Chain of Lakes Primitive Area Unit Management Plan is up for public comment. Should it be approved? Before tackling that question, let us review.

What an earthquake the 2007 Finch, Pruyn sale felt like, with many aftershocks. It promised an exciting time for land conservation and for advocates for open space conservation like me and the nonprofits I worked with. It still is. It was a scary time for Finch employees, contractors, leaseholders, and many townspeople, including guides tied closely to the land and its future uses. The consequences of that land sale are still playing out and will continue to.

» Continue Reading.


Monday, July 20, 2020

Developer Rejects Conservation Design at Northville’s Woodward Lake – Again

Even during the summer’s pandemic, development submittals to the Adirondack Park Agency have not slowed very much. Case in point: the proposed developer of Woodward Lake in Fulton County has submitted additional information to the Adirondack Park Agency this month (of July). APA has issued multiple requests for additional information since the applicant, New York Land and Lakes LLC, Oneonta, NY, first submitted an application in 2018 to subdivide an undeveloped 1,100-acre lake and forest near Northville into 37 second home lots, driveways and onsite septic. There is no public water or sewer here and the applicant proposes none.

» Continue Reading.


Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Did the Governor Appoint APA Members on the Basis of their Qualifications?

The protection and planning for the Adirondack Park’s six million acres, one-fifth of the state, rests in large measure on the motivation and independence of the Adirondack Park Agency’s staff and board members in Ray Brook.  Seven members were just nominated by Governor Cuomo and confirmed to sit at the APA’s table by the State Senate.  How should we think about them? How should we think about them in light of Governor Cuomo’s challenge to reimagine and improve public policies and practices – to “build back better”?

» Continue Reading.


Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Amending the APA Map and the burden of proof

George Davis is a visionary and practiced land use planner and ecologist. In the early years of the Adirondack Park Agency, George helped to conceive, draft, and implement the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan and the park’s Private Land Use and Development Plan.

George Davis comes to my mind now because of several proposed amendments to the APA’s Adirondack Park private land use map, the so-called “fruit salad” map displaying the private and public land classes. The proposed amendments to the map now up for a decision are for 34 acres to go from Moderate Intensity Use to Hamlet in Lake Placid, sponsored by the Town of North Elba, and for 105 acres to go from Rural Use to Moderate Intensity in Lake Luzerne, sponsored by that town.

» Continue Reading.


Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Environmental Champion Bernard C. Smith

Marking 50 years of Earth Day (1970-2020) should not pass without paying tribute to the late New York State Senator Bernard C. Smith.  The late State Senator and chair of the Senate’s environmental conservation committee combined a strong moral and ethical compass with political talent and negotiating skill to protect and conserve our state’s wild lands, wild rivers and natural resources from 1965-1978. He was a steadfast and very influential Republican proponent for the environment precisely when such a Republican was needed in Albany. He worked his political skills at the State Capitol, but his love for fishing and the outdoors was expressed at his home on Long Island and in the streams and rivers of the Catskills, where he had a camp near the Esopus Creek, and on the upper Hudson River in the Adirondacks.

» Continue Reading.


Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Every Day is Earth Day

View from the Siamese Ponds Wilderness

Every day is Earth Day. That’s what folks knew and said to each other on April 23, 1970 – and ever since. Fifty years on, April 22, 2020, it’s obvious as well as vital to act accordingly since life support systems on our fragile earth have been torn and rendered by human activity and population growth since 4/22/70. This Coronavirus COVID-19 is novel to human beings. Today’s atmospheric carbon concentrations are novel for all life on earth – and only existed some 3.5 million years ago.

» Continue Reading.


Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Louis Marshall and Forever Wild

Paul Schaefer

Thirty-three years ago, that champion of the Adirondack wilderness, Paul Schaefer, then aged 78, first introduced me to his Adirondack library. Among the first volumes he brought to my attention – because he valued it and had read it repeatedly since he was a younger man – was the transcript of the 1894 New York State Constitutional Convention in Albany – the one that, after weeks of debate, by vote of 122-0 approved the “forever wild” provision protective of the Adirondack and Catskill Forest Preserve.

 

» Continue Reading.


Sunday, March 15, 2020

Mt Marcy, Influenza And Our Impulses To Protect Public Land

Whether we seek a wilderness, park, backyard, garden or streetscape, studies show we can expect an emotional, psychological, and physical benefit from regular outdoor activity, interactions with trees or woods, waters and views, however prosaic or sublime. The more we can focus on the natural world around us, the more our powers of awareness grow and the more our minds can grow quiet.

As the First World War slowly ended, another pandemic, influenza, was spreading around the world and killing tens of millions. The impact of losing so many young people so suddenly from that flu, coming on top of so many deaths and injuries resulting from the war itself, must been extremely profound. That time of death, threat and recovery motivated many to get outdoors and to push to acquire more public lands in which to literally “re-create” themselves. » Continue Reading.


Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Viewpoint: Require APA To Track Climate Data, Trends

APA Building in Ray Brook NYHow has the Adirondack Park Agency fared under Governor Andrew Cuomo’s 2020 executive budget proposals? The question hasn’t received any media attention for obvious reasons. It’s a mini state agency, budget-wise.

With a proposed operating budget of $5 million – just .004 percent of the proposed state budget of $137 billion – APA hardly raises fiscal eyebrows.  Budgeted for 54 full time staff, APA employs .03 percent of all state employees.

Yet, the Adirondack Park comprises one-fifth the acreage of New York State. It’s constitutionally protected wild lands are honored as a National Landmark and International Biosphere Reserve. It’s subject to one of the country’s earliest and largest regional land use planning laws. But the Park has just one legislatively authorized planning agency, the APA, congruent with all six-million acres. » Continue Reading.


Sunday, January 19, 2020

The Great Recession Changed Our Development Landscape

News came from New England’s north woods last fall that a large residential and commercial development on 17,000-acres near Maine’s Moosehead Lake conceived before the Great Recession has not begun and would not move forward.

The APA-permitted Adirondack Club and Resort near Tupper Lake has also not commenced, largely for economic reasons. The developer, Preserve Associates, is being foreclosed upon, their creditors are pressing for relief, and the new mortgage holders (Crossroads LLC) are trying to figure out what to do once they acquire the 6,200 acres.

» Continue Reading.


Thursday, December 26, 2019

Gibson: DEC Evaded Review of Bridge Over Scenic River

New York State’s expedient evasion of its own State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR), has no better recent example than the Cedar River Snowmobile Bridge. The new bridge is being built north of Indian Lake, six miles inside the Adirondack Forest Preserve across a river designated by the State as Scenic.

A Supreme Court just rubber-stamped DEC’s actions in a ruling against Adirondack Wild and Protect the Adirondacks. There is plenty to say about how the Court’s decision (and DEC’s self-issuing Permit and Variance) sets a negative precedent for protection of Scenic Rivers under the State’s Wild, Scenic and Recreational Rivers Act, but for the present let’s address the SEQR evasion. » Continue Reading.


Sunday, November 24, 2019

95% Protected Open Space? APA Knows Better

At this month’s Adirondack Park Agency meeting in Ray Brook, senior APA staff presented a review of large-scale residential subdivisions permitted by APA between 2012 and today. By large-scale, they meant the size thresholds created by the APA, mirrored in pending conservation subdivision design legislation in Albany: five or more lots in Resource Management (colored green on the APA Land Use and Development Plan map), ten or more in Rural Use (yellow), and 25 or more in Low Intensity Use (orange).

Resource Management (RM) being the most protected private land use classification in the Park, I’ll restrict my post to what APA senior staff said about the four subdivision permits issued for projects of five lots or more in RM from 2012 until today. There have been four such permits issued: Adirondack Club and Resort, Tupper Lake, in 2012; Highland Farmers, Keene, in 2012; New York Land and Lakes, Bleecker, in 2015; and Barille family, North Elba, in 2017. » Continue Reading.



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