OSI achievements under the leadership of Christopher ‘Kim’ Elliman include safeguarding over two million acres and advancing recreation in the Adirondacks
By Mike Lynch
After more than three decades at the helm of the Open Space Institute (OSI), President and CEO Christopher “Kim” Elliman retired in April, being replaced by Erik Kulleseid, former commissioner for the Office of Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation
During Elliman’s tenure, OSI and partners protected more than two million acres from Florida to Canada, including 160,000 acres in New York. Those purchases included the Split Rock Wild Forest on Lake Champlain. He also guided OSI as it transformed the Upper Works Trailhead, a gateway to the southern High Peaks. OSI has also been heavily involved in purchasing land for wildlife and recreation corridors in the eastern Adirondacks.
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Prior to his departure, the Explorer interviewed Elliman. The following are excerpts from that interview edited for brevity and clarity.
What do you consider some of OSI’s main accomplishments in the Adirondacks during your time at the organization?
We extended our work from the mid Hudson to the upper Hudson. Some of the first projects we did were really exciting because they protected miles of the Hudson River, north and west of Glens Falls. Effectively, we doubled the size of Moreau State Park.
When Joe Martens was president, OSI acquired National Lead land now called Tahawus Tract. In some respects getting the approval from Long Lake and Newcomb to do that work, I think created a kind of dialogue and lowered the heat on what had previously been a really contentious fight between town officials and environmentalists.
Again, credit Martens meeting with Newcomb Supervisor George Cannon early, often and repeatedly so that most of that property got converted to the forest preserve.It really was a precursor to the larger Finch, Pruyn deal with The Nature Conservancy paying $110 million for 161,000 acres. OSI loaned TNC $25 million, in part because we wanted to keep the cost of acquisition, their interest costs and their carrying costs low. Eventually, as the state acquired that land piecemeal we were paid back.
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What are some of the bigger changes you’ve seen in the way conservation is done now in the Adirondacks?
In the 1970s and ‘80s, the fight and the fear was that the backcountry would get subdivided. There’s not as much concern about (fragmenting) in the Adirondacks now. The Nature Conservancy, Trust for Public Land, OSI and Adirondack Land Trust have done a good job of protecting the most vulnerable and most important parcels of land. I think that the fights in the Adirondacks have moved from land use of public lands or timberlands and (fragmentation) of the private lands to more about how do communities survive in a park. How do we provide, if you will, sustainable recreation access? The conservation community has been so successful in protecting the park and making it an attractive recreational destination.
What work is left undone for Erik going forward? What are some of the big projects he’s going to have to work on?
We have only just started to look at how to provide better access to some of these wild places. There is also the extension of the Palmerton Range in Saratoga County and what we’re calling the Adirondacks to the Green Mountains in Vermont, one of the crucial biological corridors in the Northeast. There’s migration of flora and fauna, migration as climate change comes up. So we’re trying to create important ecological corridors, important recreational corridors, and then building out recreational access for people.
I seem to recall the Elliman was involved with a now-defunct company called Long Lake Energy, a hydropower developer that filed dozens of FERC permits to lock up potential hydropower sites back in the seventies after PURPA 1978 was signed into law by President Carter. At the same time Elliman was was using his connections with preservationist organizations, like the Adirondack Council (although it may have been another like-minded NGO), to stymie his competitors who had been issued FERC permits on potential sites that he wanted. Not cool.