Almanack Contributor Peter Bauer

Peter Bauer is the Executive Director of Protect the Adirondacks.He has been working in various capacities on Adirondack Park environmental issues since the mid-1980s, including stints as the Executive Director of the Residents' Committee to Protect the Adirondacks and FUND for Lake George as well as on the staff of the Commission on the Adirondacks in the Twenty-First Century. He also worked at Adirondack Life Magazine. He served as Chair of the Town of Lake George Zoning Board of Appeals and has served on numerous advisory boards for management of the Adirondack Park and Forest Preserve. Peter lives in Blue Mountain Lake with his wife and two children, enjoys a wide variety of outdoor recreational activities throughout the Adirondacks, and is a member of the Blue Mountain Lake volunteer fire department.Follow Protect the Adirondacks on Facebook and Twitter.


Tuesday, May 23, 2023

It’s Time To Ban Wildlife Killing Contests In New York

This year, Protect the Adirondacks is working with a number of other groups to support legislation banning wildlife killing contests. Legislation introduced by State Assembly Environmental Conservation Chair Deborah Glick and State Senator Timothy Kennedy, makes it “unlawful for any person to organize, sponsor, conduct, promote, or participate in any contest, competition, tournament or derby where the objective of such contest or competition is to take wildlife.” This legislation protects coyotes, small mammals, and fur bearers.

This bill amends the Environmental Conservation Law to make it unlawful for any person to organize, sponsor, conduct, promote or participate in any contest, competition, tournament, or derby with the objective of taking or hunting wildlife for prizes or other inducement, or for entertainment. Contests for taking or hunting white-tailed deer, turkey or bear are exempted, which are already regulated by seasons, bag limits, and reporting requirements. Special dog training areas or field trials or similar canine performance events are also exempted. Violations are punishable by fines of $500 to $2,000. In addition, the remains of any wildlife killed in violation of the bill’s provisions are forfeited to the Department of Environmental Conservation.

» Continue Reading.


Wednesday, April 5, 2023

2022 US Census Estimates: 89% Of NYS Counties Lost Population

The US Census recently released its estimates for changes in U.S. population for 2021-2022. These are estimates that are based on samples and models from across the country and are not the complete counts that we see with the decennial census. This new estimate for New York State projected that the state lost just over 180,000 residents in the last two years, with losses projected from every part of the state. Across New York, 55 of the state’s 62 counties were estimated to have lost population.

Now, be advised that we should all take these estimates with whatever grain of salt that one chooses. Remember that throughout the 2010-2019 decade, the US Census estimates had New York State losing population, estimate after estimate, but the actual 2020 decennial US Census recorded a gain of over 800,000 new residents for the decade. The 2020 US Census was an important correction to the series of big misses from the estimates since 2010. There’s a difference between estimates that model a variety of samples and the actual counts undertaken every 10 years. This is also just county-level data; estimates are not done at the town level.

» Continue Reading.


Tuesday, March 21, 2023

APA-DEC Take A Bold Stand To Deny Reality

The Adirondack Park Agency (APA) and Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) have teamed up to formally interpret an important guideline in the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan (Master Plan) that deals with the mileage of roads allowable in Wild Forest areas of the Adirondack Forest Preserve. This is a high stakes action by these agencies because of the potential to significantly expand the mileage of roads open to motor vehicles in all corners of the Forest Preserve.

There is no greater impact to a wild area than a road. From the fact that motor vehicles travel on roads at high speeds to the fact that roads are conduits for invasive species, the impacts of roads are undeniable. Roads change and fragment forest habitats, impact wildlife travel pathways, and impact streams, rivers, and wetlands that they cross and border. They are also extremely expensive for the DEC to maintain and repair.

» Continue Reading.


Thursday, March 16, 2023

NYSDEC Now Admits Cooperstown Wolf Was A Wild Wolf

gray wolf was one of the top 10 stories from 2022

After a large 85-pound canid was shot by a hunter in Otsego County in December 2021, the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) announced that the animal was a coyote.  Despite possessing wolf-like size and physical characteristics—and the hunter’s own belief that he had mistakenly shot a wolf—DEC claimed that a DNA analysis showed that the animal was just a large coyote and cited the DNA study in its press comments. Mike Lynch at the Adirondack Explorer reported in July 2022 that DEC had a DNA analysis that showed the Cooperstown wolf was “closely identified as an Eastern coyote, with a mix of coyote, wolf, and dog genetics.” WTEN News 10 in Albany reported the story with a quote from Lori Severino, a DEC spokesperson, saying “Initial DNA analysis conducted determined the wild canid to be most closely identified as an eastern coyote.”

» Continue Reading.


Wednesday, February 15, 2023

Did Covid Reshape Adirondack And New York State School District Enrollment?

The answer appears to be not so much. School district enrollment trends in New York State have been consistent for the last few decades, and an assessment of enrollment numbers over the last five years doesn’t show a big or lasting change to these trends. The last five years for which we have data, 2017-18 to 2021-22 (2022-23 data will not be released until September 2023), show that student enrollment in the 718 school districts across New York collectively dropped from 2,607,284 K-12 students in the 2017-18 school year to 2,418,569 in 2021-22, a loss of 188,715 students.

» Continue Reading.


Thursday, February 2, 2023

PROTECT Challenges DEC’s Road Rebuilding in Wilderness

On January 20, 2023, Protect the Adirondacks filed a lawsuit challenging the reconstruction by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) of a previously closed and reclaimed road in the High Peaks Wilderness Complex. DEC’s road construction activity in the High Peaks violates the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan (Master Plan) which prohibits roads in Wilderness areas.

» Continue Reading.


Monday, January 23, 2023

DEC-APA Defy The Courts And Keep Unconstitutional Trails Open

It’s been nearly two years since the New York Court of Appeals, the State’s highest court, ruled that extra-wide Class II Community Connector Snowmobile Trails designed, approved, and constructed by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) violate Article 14, Section 1, of the New York State Constitution, the famed the “Forever Wild” clause. The high court’s decision followed a decision in 2019 by the Appellate Division, Third Department, that Class II trails violate Article 14. The Court of Appeals decision came out in May 2021 and we’re now into our second winter where the DEC and APA continue to operate unconstitutional Class II trails as if the courts have not ruled against them.

Protect the Adirondacks is now back in court in an effort to get the state to comply with the appellate court decisions.

» Continue Reading.


Thursday, January 12, 2023

Russell Banks And The Frozen North

Author Russell Banks at his Saratoga Springs residence in 2008. Photo by Cindy Schultz, courtesy of the Times Union

The news of Russell Banks’s death reached me through a text from a friend. I then read his obituary in The New York Times. I knew  Russell Banks a little bit, but I had been a fan of his books since the 1980s when I was living in New York City, and a friend lent me a review copy of Continental Drift. I was blown away by the book but could not finish it before leaving for a trip west. I remember finding Continental Drift in a bookstore in Boston a few months later and read the last few chapters there. Continental Drift was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction but lost to Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.

» Continue Reading.


Monday, November 28, 2022

Lame, Tired, And Wrong Blame-The-Park Editorializing Persists

In the Adirondacks, I thought we had moved beyond weak economic and social analysis that blames the Park for all of the problems and challenges facing Adirondack communities. I thought that many in the Adirondacks had looked at long-term national rural population and economic trends and learned that the issues facing Adirondack communities are the same issues facing Rural America – and that the first decades of the 21st Century in the U.S. have proved extremely difficult and challenging times for Rural America.

But I was wrong. A recent editorial in Sun Community News went in big with a blame-the-Park rant. Its editorial started out lamenting the closure of an Emergency Room at Adirondack Health in Lake Placid but then went all in on blaming the Park. Now, I live in a community in Hamilton County where we’re at least an hour’s ambulance drive from the nearest Emergency Room, so I get the concerns about the ER closure.

» Continue Reading.


Friday, November 18, 2022

DEC Illegally Rebuilt A Mile Of Road In The High Peaks Wilderness Area And The APA Swept It Under The Rug

A year ago, we published a piece in the Adirondack Almanack alerting the public to a weird incident where the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) had worked for two years to tear apart abandoned logging roads on newly purchased lands at the south end of the High Peaks Wilderness, only to go back in with heavy machinery and start to undo their work and rebuild the road. Heavy rains last December limited how much of the road the DEC was able to rebuild before winter set in, but by our measurements they managed to rebuild 0.82 miles.

» Continue Reading.


Sunday, October 16, 2022

Important NYSDEC Forest Preserve Management Reforms, Part 2

The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) recently issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for development of a “Visitor Use Management” Plan for the Central High Peaks Wilderness Area in the Adirondack Park and the Kaaterskill Clove/Route 23A corridor of the Catskill Park. The RFP marks a major step forward in DEC’s efforts to evaluate and address a series of impacts to the natural resources, the visitor experience, and public safety due to high recreational use in these two popular destinations on the Forest Preserve.

» Continue Reading.


Wednesday, October 5, 2022

Important NYSDEC Forest Preserve Management Reforms, Part 1

2022 may end up as the year where some of the most important reforms in Forest Preserve management were started, both in practice and in theory. Forest Preserve management reform has been a long time coming as the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), which is responsible for the care and custody of the Forest Preserve, has struggled for years with how to improve its overall management program. Small changes have been attempted at various points, but no major reforms have been successfully brought to the DEC’s Forest Preserve management.

As this fall’s Crayola crayon box colors blossom across Adirondack Park mountainsides, hillsides, and shorelines, reform is mixed in the air with the first autumn chills. This is the first article in a 3-part series that looks at nascent Forest Preserve management reforms underway at the DEC.

» Continue Reading.


Monday, September 26, 2022

NYSDEC Reverses Course, Now Calls The Cooperstown Wolf A Wolf

On September 21, 2022, after a second independent DNA study confirmed that the wolf killed outside of Cooperstown, New York, was really a wolf, the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) reversed course and announced that the wolf was indeed a wolf. DEC had been calling the Cooperstown wolf a coyote since it examined the dead animal in December 2021 and conducted a DNA study in early 2022. DEC publicly called the wolf a coyote in July in many news reports, after the release of an independent DNA study by Trent University in Canada, organized by the Northeast Ecological Recovery Society (NERS). The Trent University DNA analysis found that the Cooperstown wolf had 98% wolf genes.

» Continue Reading.


Tuesday, September 20, 2022

38 Groups Call On NYSDEC To Protect Wolves in New York

wolves

The plot thickens around the killing of an 85-pound wolf near Cooperstown in December of 2021 and the response by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). Under state and federal law, a wolf that wanders into New York State is protected under the Endangered Species Act. The wolf shot near Cooperstown by a coyote hunter clearly enjoyed no such protections.

» Continue Reading.


Wednesday, July 13, 2022

A Review of the AMR Parking Permit System in Year Two

2021 was the first year of the new permit system at the Adirondack Mountain Reserve (AMR) parking area and trailheads in St. Hubert’s, organized by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). The permit reservation system is seasonal and runs from May 1st to October 31st. 2022 is year two. Last year I went through the system in its first month on a hike up Gothics Mountain and wrote a review about my experience.

This year, I went back on a summer weekend, a day I figured to be a busy weekend, on Saturday, July 9th, the height of the hiking season in the High Peaks. I’ve looked at the AMR reservation system as an important experiment in public use management in the High Peaks Wilderness, an area that has seen remarkably little experimentation over the years.

» Continue Reading.



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The Adirondack Almanack

The Adirondack Almanack is a public forum dedicated to promoting and discussing current events, history, arts, nature and outdoor recreation and other topics of interest to the Adirondacks and its communities

We publish commentary and opinion pieces from voluntary contributors, as well as news updates and event notices from area organizations. Contributors include veteran local writers, historians, naturalists, and outdoor enthusiasts from around the Adirondack region. The information, views and opinions expressed by these various authors are not necessarily those of the Adirondack Almanack or its publisher, the Adirondack Explorer.

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