Land Use Planning in the Adirondack Park

In 1967 a stretch of Interstate Rte. 87 linking Albany and Montreal was completed. This stretch of highway, known as the Northway, runs along and through the Eastern side of the Adirondack Park. When the Northway was completed the Adirondack Park was within a day's drive of sixty million people. Conservationsists feared that this easy access would spark new development on private land in the park that would destroy its environmental itegrity. In response to this concern then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller's brother Laurance spearheaded a drive to create a national park in the Adirondacks. His proposal met with almost universal resistance from New Yorkers, but it eventually led to the creation of the Temporary Study Commission on the Future of the Adirondacks. This, in turn, led to the creation of the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) in 1971. The APA was charged with creating a State Land Master Plan to guide the Department of Environmental Conservation in managing state lands in the Adirondack Park, and a Private Land Use and Development Plan.


Using a process that was, in effect, the analog predecessor of modern GIS techniques, early Adirondack Park Land Use Maps were created by stacking translucent overlays each of which represented a particular environmental condition such as proximity to roads and shorelines, soil type, elevation and slope, scenic overlooks, associated with corresponding areas on a map of the park. Light shining through the layers produced varying shades of gray on the map such that darker shades indicated land that needed greater need for protection from development and other human activities. APA planners then converted the shades of gray into colors that designated different public and private land use categories. Governor Rockefeller accepted the first State Land Master Plan in 1972 and, after a great deal of debate and compromise, the state legislature approved the first Private Land Use and Development Plan in 1973.


Today both land use plans are periodically revised using digital mapping technology and information provided by APA scientists and planners. Final decisions about those revisions rests with the eleven Adirondack Park Agency Board Members. Eight of the members are appointed at the descretion of the Governor (by convention five of these seats are held by park residents and three are held by out-of park residents). The three remaining members are the Secretary of State, the head of the Department of Environmental Conservation, and the head of the Department of Economic Development. The Board makes park policy decisions and acts on permit applications during its monthly open meetings. While the Governor obviously has enormous influence over the Board, the diversity of interests represented by its members and its open meetings generally encourages it to make pragmatic decisions.


Evidence of pragmatic decision making can be found in the two main land use categories and managment strategies that comprise the constitutionally-protected Adirondack Forest Preserve. About 50% of the Forest Preserve is categorized as Wild Forest, a wilderness designation that allows some permanent man-made structures (e.g bridges) and use of motorized vehicles on designated trails and roads. The other 50% is categorized as Wilderness, a designation that prohibits use of motorized vehicles and permits only primitive structures for trail maintenance. Maintaining a consistent balance between these land use categories over time has helped to create a broad-based, if sometimes uneasy, coalition among recreational users, park businesses, and preservationists where park politics are concerned.

The Private Land Use and Development Plan embodies pragmatic view of nature by inserting environmental concerns into the private market for Adirondack Park real estate. Under the plan private land is divided into six categories: Hamlets, Industrial Use Areas, Moderate Intensity Use Areas, Low Intensity Use Areas, Rural Use Areas, and Resource Management Areas. For each category "overall intensity guidelines" prescribe the approximate number of principle buildings that are allowed in a square mile area. Each category is defined by a "character description" and a statement of "purposes, policies, and objectives." In addition, "development considerations" are listed to point out possible adverse impacts of development, and "compatible uses" are listed as a positive guide to acceptable development for each category. Finally, the plan defines projects within each category that require APA approval due to their regional impact. In the case of subdivisions, for example, "regional projects" range from 100-lot projects in Hamlet Areas to two-lot projects in Resource Management Areas.


Together, the State Land Master Plan and the Private Land Use and Development Plan continue the pragmatic tradition that has marked the Adirondack Park since its founding. Take, for example, the issue of shoreline protection. Since the majority of Adirondack Park homes and businesses are located on or near the park's 11,000 lakes and ponds and 30,000 miles of rivers and streams, regulation of shoreline development is one of the most controversial aspects of the Private Land Use and Development Plan. The 1973 Land Use Plan was approved by the legislature only after regulations for development along shorelines were rendered less restrictive than regulations for other areas of the park. Since that time, environmentalists have continually lobbied for stricter regulations on shoreline development in the park, but it took 35 years for the APA to require shoreline property owners to obtain permits for rebuilding or expanding exisiting buildings. For most radical environmentalists the APA's action is meaningless gesture that fails to address the root cause of the problem (capitalism). For most anti-environmentalists it is needless restriction of private property rights. For most pragmatic environmentalists, it is a step in the right direction that improves environmental quality without dramatically altering economic and social conditions in the park.

How to Define Big---Adirondack Park is Massive

Although New York history represents a major portion of the New York State third grade curriculum, many New York college bound students fail to recognize the Adirondacks as a major state park. Adirondack Park is larger than all other state and national parks in the 48 contiguous United States. In fact, only three national parks/preserves in Alaska out rank the Adirondacks in absolute size. Gates of the Arctic, Noatak National Preserve, and Wrangell St. Elias National Park and National Preserve are bigger at 7.5, 6.6, and 13.2 million acres, respectively. The Adirondack Park weighs in at a tad more than 6 million acres (2.5 million hectares or 24,281 square kilometers). Adirondack Park is bigger than Yellowstone N.P, Death Valley N.P, Rocky Mountain N.P., and the Grand Canyon. Adirondack Park is as large as the neighboring state of Vermont.

Adirondack Park sticks out like a large green blot on the Google Earth Map of New England. From space, its jagged border separates the green forests within to the non-park lands on the outside. There are 86 countries with less land area than the Adirondacks. This includes several developed countries with a large human presence. These include Luxemburg, Jamaica, Belize, El Salvador, Kuwait and Puerto Rico. The island country of Sicily is nearly the same size at 25,708 square kilometers. Costa Rica with its rich biodiversity is only twice the size at 51,000 square kilometers.
A few years ago, my field biology students measured and counted trees on 200 square meter plots on Long Point at Raquette Lake. We learned that on average, a typical hectare of this Adirondack forest has 638 trees of various sizes. Hemlock was the most abundant and accounted for 50% of the trees. Yellow birch and American beech were dead even at 13% each in the forest. If these values are typical, and we have no reason to suspect otherwise, then we predict that there are about 793 million eastern hemlock trees in Adirondack Park. Of the 1.6 billion trees, 207 million are yellow birch and another 207 million are American beech. We also determined that a hectare of Adirondack forest contained 280000 kg of dry biomass in living trees for a total of 1.8 x 1012 kg in the park. This mass is the same as 165 million yellow school buses.

Hidden within this great forest are large numbers of uncountable animal species. Anyone who has driven Adirondack roads on rainy summer nights is aware of the great numbers of American toads plopping across wet roadways. Much of the animal diversity and volume is unaccounted because we rarely see it. Take for example the eastern red-backed salamander. This species is very common across New York State. It leads a totally terrestrial lifestyle and one is very likely to encounter dozens of these in a short period of time, just by gently lifting rocks, logs, and humus in the forest. Ducey and Breisch in “The Amphibians and Reptiles of New York State” (Gibbs et al., 2007) estimate that the average forest has 1,660 eastern red-backed salamanders per acre. This translates into an astounding 10 billion eastern red-backed salamanders in the Adirondacks and places them near the top as the nation’s most abundant vertebrate.

These comparisons illustrate the Adirondack Park is easily the greenest place in the 48 contiguous states. More than 85% of the wilderness east of the Rocky Mountains is located in the Adirondack Park. The trees are protected by the New York State Constitution. Their presence and protection makes them a valuable environmental sponge by removing large quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year. Do you suspect that my numbers and calculations are a little overzealous? After all, the Adirondacks have a significant surface are of water. On the other hand, the 6 million acres are flat terrestrial quantities, but the Adirondacks are anything but flat. If anything, my numbers are a complete underestimate of forest biomass as the vertical rises in the ADK add significantly to the total tree count.

Blow Down Natural History Part 2

Any visitor to a New England or Adirondack forest will note the pock-marked surface of the forest floor. The boils and depressions of the forest floor are grave markers where the past giants of the eastern forests once stood. Trees die of old age in the forest. They reach a point in their life where wood rots from within, insects and parasites rob the tree of energy, and even the stress of maintaining tissues on a giant tree decreases their vigor. Many trees fall on their own, but more often than not, they receive a nudge from occasional winds.

The winds of July 15, 1995 were anything but occasional. The blow delivered to the forest toppled healthy trees along with the diseased trees. The canopy of leaves acted like a sailboat spinnaker capturing the wind and bending to inflate. Yes, some trunks buckled, stretched and snapped. Roots cracked from the strain and where the wood held tough, the roots were pried from the sandy Adirondack soils. The legacy of the great blow was recorded in tree trunks laying in an easterly direction, shallow root profiles erected 90º from the horizon, and divots left where the roots once lay. Smaller sub canopy trees still stand and smaller saplings still dotted the forest floor.

Although the woods must have looked like a war zone, they remained healthy over the coming weeks, months and years after the mighty blow down. Leaves slowly died and fell to the forest floor. The greenness of the leaves represents the tree tissue of the highest nutrient content. Leaves are loaded with nitrogen rich photosynthetic pigments and proteins. Foliage also contains essential elemental nutrition of calcium, phosphorus, and magnesium. The leaves softly buffer the forest floor and protect it from excessive dryness and intense sunlight. The salamanders, wood beetles, bacteria, and fungi all profit from the added protection as the woodlands suddenly were more exposed to life outside of the forest. As the leaves decompose, the nutrients are quickly capture by bacteria and fungi and transferred to forms utilized by the saplings. The forest babes grow quickly with the added sunlight and flush of life supporting nutrients.

Wood takes longer to decay. Wood beetles assist by tunneling under the bark and through the wood. This activity introduces bacteria and fungal spores to the tree’s interior and channels oxygen rich air in to support the decomposition. Armed with the right stuff in terms of enzymes and metabolic machinery, the fungi dismantle the hardened lignin and cellulose of the tree. Wood Decomposition takes time. Over several years, the bark loosens, the wood softens and splits and fungal threads infiltrate deeper into the wood. The tree cadaver becomes a sponge and water is slowly wicked from the soil upward and held in place by the pits, cells, and capillary fractures in the wood. Wood is not the most nutrient rich tissue, but it does add vital elements of calcium and potassium to the soil as it decomposes. By now, the tender saplings have grown into vigorous adolescents and shade the trunk. New organisms colonize the exposed surface of the bark. Moss and fern spores, land and germinate on this optimal bed of wet organic matter. The fragile filaments of moss branch, take root, and begin their assault on the new territory. Without surprise, red-backed salamanders have found the understory beneath the tree trunk as an ideal place to find invertebrate food and to mate, lay eggs, and bring forth young. New tree life springs forth from the mossy surface. Hemlock and yellow birch have a crazy itch to grow only atop mossy logs, tree stumps, and rocks with thin moist soil. This unique behavior ultimately produces hemlocks and birches with stilted roots in the woodland.

Every bit of the dead tree provides life and new opportunities in the Adirondack woodland. The empty divot where the roots once laid creates an interesting microhabitat of shade and moisture. Herbaceous wildflowers and ferns may utilize the more protected facets of the wind throw. The newly excavated underground caverns provide dens for weasels, fox, and skunk. Black bears may use larger excavations for winter dens. Owls seek winter refuge in the hollows of tree snags from the giants that snapped leaving a partial trunk in place.

So, what if the state/NYS DEC elected to harvest wood from the 1995 blow down? What impact would the harvest have on the land? Clear cut practices have a definite detrimental impact on the future recovery of the forest. Clearing wood from the blow down is far from clear-cutting, but some of the land would be negatively affected. First, machinery used to drag, load, and process the wood will rake and aerate some soil. Tire ruts and truck paths will compact the soil in other areas. Both disturbances will negatively impact the soil flora and fauna. Higher aeration leads to more rapid decomposition and drying of the soil. Mycorrhizal fungi that worked diligently with the forest die, retreat, or hide as spores. Rapid decomposition floods the environment with nutrients faster than the remaining seeds and saplings can use. Some of the more soluble elements such as nitrogen and phosphorus may leach from the soil throughout the watershed. Without the mycorrhizal fungi and the elemental nutrition, a new forest will recover more slowly and less vigorously. Without a quick recovery of juvenile trees, the slash and remaining wood dry and fail to support the microcosm of invertebrates, moss, salamanders, and young birch/hemlock seedlings. Without a rapid recovery, the ecological impact is felt in local streams that choke with increased erosion and mineral enriched waters.

Over the period of hundreds and thousands of years, the impact of a single wood harvest would be negligible. The most destructive force in the Adirondacks during the past 25,000 years hasn’t been wood harvests. Glaciers after all scoured all terrestrial life from the Adirondacks. The greatest threat from blow down harvest is a recession of ecological recovery. If timber harvests were allowed very time a blow down occurs, then the great AMerican forest may loose species diversity, and its rugged aesthetic appeal. Harvesting wood without ecological thinking will diminish the natural process of recovery that our state constitution guarantees for the Adirondack wilderness.

Our camping excursion to Spruce Island in Lake Lila on September 17, 2008 placed Tom and I near the heart of the 1995 blow down. The island is about 400 meters in length and no more than 100 meters at its widest point. For the most part, the island contains vegetation representative of the surrounding forest. Red spruce and balsam fir dominated the narrow north end of the island with paper birch, white pine, and hemlock on the wider southern end. It is within the later area that the impact of the 1995 blow down was observed. Former trees with heights of 75 meters lay in an easterly direction with root mass upturned and facing westward. The trunks were in various stages of decay. The bark was intact on most of trees from the blow down, although it was loosened and could easily be broken or lifted from the trunk. Shards of paper birch from the blow down provide the ignition matrix for our evening fires.

It was easily to distinguish trees from the 1995 blow down from older falls. The island was full of decaying logs where moss had colonized the trunk surface and rain and wind had deteriorated exposed root masses. The older trunks laid at angles much different from those that fell in 1995. The island has numerous craters, divots, and pock-marks of various stages of weathering. Much of the forest floor looked as if artillery explosives had once battered the island. The abundance of fallen trunks and overhanging limbs made island exploration a gymnastic adventure. Magnificent white pine trunks were still solid enough to permit the combined mass of Pasquarello and Broyles. Our greatest fear from trekking across blow down timber was the potential to impale our body part from half broken limbs.

We were impressed with the destructive power of blow down winds. Not only had massive trees with thousands of pounds of biomass tumbled, but incredible root systems with hundreds of pounds of soil had been uplifted like the light end of a school yard teeter-totter. Any rock with roots wrapped around it had also been uplifted and reoriented. Some of the craters were nearly a meter deep although most were significantly less than 0.5 meters. Adirondack soils, after all, are sandy and thin.

The blow down trees created light gaps in the forest and several species of tree took advantage of the sudden increase in sunlight. Several root masses provided a suitable site for new paper birch seedlings to colonize and grow. Straight vigorous paper birch saplings burst forth from the vertically oriented root masses. Red maple had colonized another light gap, and fire cherry was quick to invade two other sites. The presence of fire cherry is interesting on Spruce Island. No other large fire cherries occurred here and there was no indication that it existed on the island before the blow down. These plants were most likely new recruits from the surrounding forest. Their seeds probably traveled by blue jay, hermit thrush, or grosbeak from the surrounding Lake Lila forest. After passage through the avian intestinal pathway, the seeds of this pioneer species landed in these new light gaps with intent to grow.

Fallen trees from the 1995 blow down were evident elsewhere in the Lake Lila Wilderness. In all but a few locations, the damage was well-hidden within the forest. Three-hundred year old yellow birch still stood tall in upland areas, and wind-shaped white pine lined the lake. On the north end of Lake Lila, two campsites (#4 & 5), free exploration of the surrounding woods was limited by large fallen trees and tangles of dead branches. ALthough I didn't observe these campsites before the 95 event, I can imagine that the effective area of these camp sites had significantly decreased. A small pennisula just south of camp sites 4 & 5 bore the most glaring woodland scar. Here a large notch had been carved out of the pine forest. The site was impenetrable with downed logs. Nevertheless, recovery was evident here as well as seedlings and saplings had begun their assault on the freshly contested terrain. Nature wields the pain or destruction and the cures of ecological recovery in the Adirondacks.

Doctors of Philosophy Camp at Lake Lila

One of the interesting episodes in the history of the Adirondacks took place at Follensby Pond in 1858. There Philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, Biologist Louis Agassiz and eight other artists and scholars participated in what has come to be known as the Philosopher's Camp. On it's 150th anniversary there is little on record about this event except for a few pages in some comprehensive histories of the region (see, for example, Frank Graham's 1978 book The Adirondack Park pp.20-22) and a lengthy poem by Emerson that can be found at: http://wildernessandwaterslides.blogspot.com/2008/10/adirondacs-this-poem-in-its-entirity.html

It might seem a tad self-inflated to call the recent camping trip Steve and I took to Lake Lila a modern-day version of the Philosophers Camp, but both of us have Ph. D's and that at least allows us to claim a similar title for our experience. We did not dissect any animals as they did at the original Philosopher's Camp (although Steve did sacrifice some mushrooms to make "sporecasts"), and we did not hunt, fish, or shoot at targets with rifles as they did. We drank our "foaming ale" from not from "hunter's pans" but from plastic cups, and at times our laughter "echoed through the woods" as theirs did 150 years earlier. We ate processed food we brought with us in a smooth plastic anti-bear canister rather than feasting on "wild game and fresh baked bread." When we weren't pumping our drinking water through a micro-filter, gathering "dead and down" firewood to get us through chilly nights and mornings when temperatures dipped into the 30's, washing our dishes and ourselves with biodegradable "camp soap" made from hemp oil, or taking care of other camp chores, we explored Lake Lila in the same manner that the Philosophers explored Follensby Pond, by canoe and on foot. After two days we returned to soft beds and "the fires of home" and were greeted by news of collapsing financial markets that history may someday judge as significant as the laying of the Trans-Atlantic cable.

At about the midpoint of our stay we began to focus our explorations and discussions on two questions: What makes camping at Lake Lila special, and what circumstances and policies make or help keep it that way? One of the first things we noticed about Lake Lila was how quiet it was. So quiet, in fact, that during our stay we noticed at times that our ears "ringing" in response to the lack of background noise. Much of that quiet is due to the fact that motorized boats and vehicles, generators, and chainsaws are prohibited. The nights were clear, and that made us aware of the fact that there is almost no light pollution, which made the night sky a much more crowded and interesting place then the night sky in Cortland (it actually made some of the familiar objects we looked for to help us find our way around the night sky unfamiliar). Isolation from other campers contributed to the quiet and our sense of solitude. A quick check of the register at the parking area revealed that there were probably fewer than 30 other campers occupying the 1400 acre lake and shoreline during our stay, and the only other voices we heard aside from our own were from two or three boats that passed by during the 48 hours we spent at our island campsite.

Another special things about Lake Lila were water that is probably clean enough to drink without filtering if it weren't for the omnipresent backwoods threat of Giardia contamination. We saw no litter on land or water except for a few small scraps right near our campsite and a helium-filled mylar balloon that had blown in from somewhere (Ohio? Michigan? California? China?). With the exception of a two foot tall box privy DEC had placed near our campsite and the railroad tracks we crossed over on our hike to the summit of Mt. Frederica, no man-made structure was visible anywhere on the lake, and Steve noted the welcome absence of invasive species such as purple loosestrife and zebra mussels.

We decided that the spacing of the campsites was one of the things that made our experience at Lake Lila special. With three exceptions, the twenty-four designated shoreline and island campsites are strategically placed to minimize contact with each other. The most desirable campsites (and we concluded this was probably somewhat a matter of personal preference) regularly become available to newly arriving campers due to a regulation that limits stays at a specific campsite to three days unless prior permission for a longer stay is granted by a forest ranger assigned to the area. A provision that allows camping anywhere in the area outside of 150 feet of lakes, ponds, streams, trails, or roads insures that no one will spend a lot of effort only to be completely denied the experience of camping at Lake Lila, and the fact that there is no fee means people are less likely to feel cheated if they must camp at one of the less-desirable sites. Lake Lila's location near the center of the park, far from the popular tourist and commercial centers such as Old Forge, Lake George, Lake Placid/Saranac Lake, and Tupper Lake that dot it's edges keeps visitors down, which contributes to the sense of isolation and solitude. It also means that people who wish to camp must plan there visit carefully since there are no stores, restaurants or motels nearby, and we concluded that such people are likely to be better neighbors when it comes to camping in a natural setting.

Despite the its isolation, Lake Lila provides a relatively safe and comfortable camping experience from July through October. The lake can be choppy, but it is relatively narrow and the water is warm if the waves cause paddlers to tip. The Adirondacks are generally free of dangerous flora and fauna (especially compared to, say, tropical rain forest). There are no poisonous plants or snakes. There are no grizzly bears, only relatively unaggressive and (thanks to Lake Lila's widely spaced campsites and generally well-equipped and well-educated campers that frequent them) wary of humans black bears. The largest predator in the Adirondacks is the coyote, and we know of no instance of coyotes attacking humans.

On the other hand, the often early onset of harsh winter weather and Lake Lila's cool and buggy (e.g. black flies) springs keeps most campers away for seven months, and this reduces human impact on the ecosystem. So does the fact that it takes 1/2 an hour to cover the last 8 miles of bumpy dirt road to the parking lot, after which campers face a 1/3 mile portage for boats or a 3 mile hike. This makes most campers reasonable well-equipped, educated (e.g. about bears, camp soap, burning only dead and down wood, etc.), and respectful of others' camping experience, although the physical demands of camping at Lake Lila are not such that only a tiny percentage of people may reasonably participate.

In some ways, Lake Lila has changed considerably since I last camped there in the mid 1990's. Where before it was a thin strip of state-owned land surrounded by large tracts of private forest products land, it is now part of a large new wilderness area in the Adirondack Forest Preserve that was created in March 2000 by the purchase of 15,000 acres of land from the Whitney family using money from the Environmental Protection Fund and the Clean Water/Clean Air Bond Act (need links). The William C. Whitney Wilderness that resulted form this purchase embodies a pragmatic view of nature in several important respects.

The William C. Whitney Map and Guide published by DEC states that the "former road system of the Whitney purchase is quickly being overtaken by vegetation (and gradually taking on) the character of a wilderness." At the same time, a well-maintained combination of a paved and dirt road provides relatively easy travel to designated parking areas, which greatly increases access to the interior of the wilderness. A road around the north edge of Lake Lila is closed to motor vehicles and bicycles, but owners of private land bordering the wilderness retain a legal right to use the road. Other roads at the headquarters area of the wilderness are closed to public motor vehicle use but open to "people with mobility impairments who utilize mechanized aids (i.e., non-motorized or motorized wheelchairs or other similar devices), and there is a privately-owned inholding of several hundred acres adjacent to the headquarters. Finally, the Remsen-Lake Placid Travel Corridor, which allows public use of snowmobiles and ATV's borders the wilderness on the west, but riders and their machines are not legally allowed into the wilderness itself.

In the end, it may be that Lake Lila provides an outstanding camping experience to those who for whom outstanding camping requires a healthy dose of nature because its design and regulation allow it to function as a "public good" whose use in this context by one does not significantly diminish its use by others. At the same time, it is accessible to a relatively wide range of individuals who are seeking a natural camping experience. This arrangement is appropriate given that it is collectively-owned by the citizens of the State of New York.

Since we got home we've begun to explore the idea that Lake Lila "works" because it is rooted in a pragmatic concept of nature. As Louis Menand explains in his 2001 book The Metaphysical Club for a pragmatist ideas are "tools people devise to cope with the world", and ideas work best when they are adaptable. this means, Menand tells us, that ideas "should never become ideologies -either justifying the status quo or dictating some transcendent imperative for renouncing it." In a sense the entire Adirondack Park embodies a pragmatic concept of nature that is adaptable enough to balance the diverse and sometimes competing values (spiritual, recreational, ecological, utilitarian) that humans impose on the landscape. Lake Lila illustrates on how this concept can work to protect nature on a smaller scale. This is, in turn, provides a model for our research and writing about the Adirondack Park where we seek to examine various aspects of the park with an eye toward devising tools that can help us protect nature in our industrialized, mass-society, world.

Back to School in the Adirondacks

As children across New York State return to school this week, Steve and I return to writing our Wilderness and Waterslides blog after a brief hiatus. A few thousand of those children live in the Adirondack Park, and the schools they are returning to are funded in part by taxes New York State pays to local governments on the Adirondack Forest Preserve. A closer look at one of those communities shows why this practice is essential to maintaining the Park's marriage of public and private land.

Many towns and counties in the Adirondack Park contain a large percentage of state-owned land. Approximately 80% of the land in Hamilton County, for example, is owned by New York State. Until recently, the Hamilton County town of Raquette Lake operated a two-room public school for children in grades K-6. But declining enrollments made that arrangement impractical, and now the three elementary students who live in Raquette Lake must make a 45 minute journey each way to attend school in Indian Lake. The taxes New York pays on Forest Preserve lands allows Raquette Lake to pay for transportation and tuition for those students. It also allows the town and county to maintain the roads the children travel on, and the Raquette Lake School to stay open as a community meeting place. Throughout the Adirondack Park roads, schools, bridges, and public safety are supported by local taxes paid on state lands that require very few services in return. This makes it possible for permanent residents of the park to maintain viable communities under circumstances where this might otherwise be impossible.

Recently the arrangement has been threatened by the November of 2007 decision of acting state Supreme Court Justice Timothy Walker, who found the mix of payments and examptions made by New York on various types of state-owned land to be arbitrary and unfair, and ordered payments to municipalities stopped. Walker then stayed his own decision pending review by higher courts, but his action prompted Assembleywoman Theresa Sayward and State Senator Betty Little, both of whom represent Adirondack districts, to propose a moratorium on purchases of state land until the case is resolved. Senator Little argued that "enough is enough" suggesting that future state land acquisition would interfere with necessary development in the park. Environmental groups such as the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks argued against the proposed moratorium as "counter to the best interests of Adirondack and Catskill residents" since "if the State cannot compete to acquire important lands coming on the market in near future, those very lands could be enrolled under the forest tax law by private landowners, who then receive an 80% tax exemption, thus forcing other landowners to be taxed more to be able to maintain local services."


As the events above illustrate, decisions about environmental policy are often made in the political arena where competing values interact in complicated ways. This sometimes leads environmentalists to yearn for a decision-making process that circumvents the messier aspects of democracy. In 1990 environmentalists thought they had such an opportunity when Mario Cuomo put together his Commission on the Adirondack Park in the Twenty-First Century. But the result was policy gridlock and political rancor on a scale unprecendented in the often-turbulent history of the Adirondack Park. If we wish to use the Adirondack Park as one of the world's oldest and largest experiments in marrying public and private land and derive policy lessons for those who would use such arrangements to protect nature in the modern world, we must examine its failures along with its successes. In future posts we will examine the failure of the Commission on the Adirondack Park in the Twenty-first Century with that in mind. Meanwhile we await a decision on Walker's ruling by the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court later this fall.