Almanack Contributor Neil Woodworth

Neil Woodworth, Executive Director and Counsel of the Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK) works directly with the Executive Chamber and Legislature in New York, and Congress to advocate for the acquisition, preservation and wise management of the Adirondack and Catskill Forest Preserves, New York’s state parks and for public lands and open space throughout New York.

Woodworth is an environmental lawyer who has served in many official capacities in conservation affairs, including service on the Congressional Northern Forest Lands Council, the Empire State Task Force for Land and Water Conservation Funding, New York Open Space Advisory committee, the New York Forest Preserve Advisory Committee, and the Governor's Task Force on the Adirondack Park Agency.

He has worked on a variety of legal cases involving wilderness protection of the Adirondack and Catskill Forest Preserve, public navigation rights on rivers (Moose River case) and has represented ADK in lawsuits against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to successfully challenge attempts by the Bush/Cheney era EPA to the New Source Review acid deposition and MACT mercury control prevention provisions of the Clean Air Act.

With John Caffry, he represented ADK in the Balsam Lake Anglers Club, Adirondack League Club and Lows Lake cases as well as cases involving the nature and extent of snowmobiling in the Adirondack Forest Preserve. He has been involved in the analysis and advocacy of every proposed Article 14, section 1 amendment from 1982 to the present day.

Mr. Woodworth spent ten years as a trial and litigation lawyer before assuming his duties with the Adirondack Mountain Club in 1989. He is a graduate of Hobart College (1975) and Albany Law School of Union University (1978).