Changing of the guard brings new leaders to tackle Adirondack Park challenges
By Gwendolyn Craig
An exodus of green group leaders in the Adirondack Park is setting up 2025 as a year of change.
Longtime leaders of two influential environmental organizations—the Adirondack Council and Protect the Adirondacks—stepped down and new ones are stepping up. And at one of the largest nonprofits, the Adirondack Mountain Club, a search is underway for the next CEO, with the interim director in the running.
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Beyond that, environmental organizations with more niche focuses are also experiencing turnover at the top. The Lake George Association welcomed Brendan Wiltse, who left the Adirondack Watershed Institute at Paul Smith’s College, as its new executive director. The Open Space Institute is now headed by the former state commissioner of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Erik Kulleseid.
Entering 2025, how will these advocacy groups be heard from, and will they be more or less visible under new leadership styles?
Groups that have already left their mark in the Adirondacks through their lobbying, litigation and messaging are evolving and a shift in strategy is becoming evident.
The challenges they face are not just to the natural environment, where devastating floods and tornadoes arise from climate change. Groups are dealing with the rearranged Republican presidential administration and the uncertain environmental commitments of a Democratic governor. They’re also keeping watch on the direction of the agency charged with protecting the park and of the interim commissioner running the state’s environmental department. Some claim both state regulators have leaned more toward promoting development than conservation over the last couple of decades..
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These shifts are happening alongside major policy decisions. The state has been considering edits to the regulations governing the park’s public lands, proposing changes so significant that environmental groups rallied for fear of losing wilderness.
As of press time, the edits were still in pencil.
Moreover, last year the Adirondack Park Agency authorized some of the most impactful private development projects in the park over objections of environmental groups—the expansion of a sixth-generation garnet mine and the treatment of the park’s cleanest drinking water source with herbicide to combat an invasive species.
The APA, which oversees public and private development, has been neglected by recent governors. Five of eight citizen representatives are serving on expired terms and one seat has been vacant since early 2023. Kathy Hochul has visited the park few times as governor, and state funding for the region has largely been for recreation, like the 34-mile Adirondack Rail Trail or Olympic Regional Development Authority sites.
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The state has fallen behind in its land conservation efforts and in reaching its greenhouse gas reduction goals under the state Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. Groups are also bracing for federal regulatory changes to clean water and air protections, which could impact the park as Donald Trump moves back into the White House. Current federal clean air regulations came about after a long-fought campaign by groups like the Adirondack Council, which sought to curb the deleterious impacts of acid rain and succeeded.
“There are so many critical issues right now,” said Sarah Collum Hatfield, chair of the Adirondack Council.
Some who have stepped away from the action are alarmed by state and federal stewardship and think the park’s nonprofits must take stronger stances.
Willie Janeway, who headed the Adirondack Council for about a decade before retiring in 2023, said he is disappointed in Hochul’s “failure to lead on preservation of the East’s greatest wilderness, but appreciative that the Legislature has now stepped up to increasingly fill that vacuum.” There hasn’t been a governor that has championed conservation, wildlife and clean water in the park since Republican Gov. George Pataki, he said.
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Janeway, is disappointed, too, in how some environmental groups have responded, or not.
Groups traditionally focused on wilderness preservation have broadened their scope to include issues like housing and community infrastructure. Voices that once boomed in the halls of Albany now seem quieter and more behind the scenes. There are fewer press releases, fewer statements of gubernatorial criticism. And some see the APA’s stagnant board, its blanket approval of all projects over the past decade and other examples as showing this more reserved approach isn’t working.
As the council celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, Hatfield said the goal is to put opportunities over problems.
Protect the Adirondacks, known for its litigiousness, may also be redirecting its energy.
Peter Bauer led the organization for more than a decade. His legacy includes winning a rare case interpreting the state Constitution’s “forever wild” clause. Bauer spent about a year training new Executive Director Claudia Braymer for the role. A Glens Falls environmental attorney, she was part of the forest preserve case.
Between the hire of Braymer and of Conservation Director and Counsel Christopher Amato, also an environmental attorney, it would appear Protect was bolstering its legal expertise to become the park’s defense fund. But Charles Clusen, chair of Protect’s board, said that was never the intention, and in fact noted that Protect was going to “be careful about picking too many (lawsuits) because we need to have time for all the other things.”
He said he has been disappointed with the Hochul administration and Bauer said he’s never been able to get a clear statement from the governor’s office on its Adirondack agenda. Clusen and Bauer think Hochul can improve her environmental reputation by the state purchasing the remainder of Whitney Park, one of the park’s last, largest private inholdings, located in Long Lake.
Hochul spokesman Paul DeMichele said the governor “is a strong advocate of protecting and preserving the Adirondack Park and her administration is continuing its search for the best possible candidates to serve New York State at the Adirondack Park Agency. This process requires time, but it’s vital to guarantee the park’s future.”
The governor’s office did not respond to an inquiry about when it would appoint a commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, filling the post vacated by Basil Seggos in the spring of 2024.
Hochul’s spokesman highlighted the $400 million Environmental Protection Fund, which includes $10 million for stewardship in the Adirondacks and Catskills. That funding, however, arrived after lobbying by environmental groups and after the Legislature got it into the state budget.
Hochul’s aide also referred to water funding, including a $2 million Survey of Climate Change and Adirondack Lake Ecosystems, which was also not in the governor’s initial budget but came through legislative negotiations. After hearing concerns from local governments about their eligibility with water infrastructure grants, the state increased the cap on such grants from 25% of the project costs to 50%, the Hochul administration said. The Adirondack Park received funds from this program.
Leaning into the 2025 legislative session, the Explorer checked in with new and seasoned leaders of the park’s environmental organizations, an Adirondack fab five of sorts, who have banded together on advocacy issues like penning a joint letter on the APA’s proposed edits to its state land policies.
Top photo: Adirondack Park Lobby Day in 2023 in Albany. Photo courtesy of David Gibson
Adirondack Mountain Club
Year of origin: 1922
Mission: To protect New York wild lands and waters by promoting responsible outdoor recreation and building a statewide constituency of land stewardship advocates
Membership: More than 30,000
Revenue: $4.9 million, according to 2022 IRS records
Protect the Adirondacks
Year of origin: 2009, (the consolidation of the Residents’ Committee to Protect the Adirondacks and 1901-born Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks)
Mission: Grassroots protection and stewardship of the public and private lands of the Adirondack Park; building health and diversity of natural and human communities for the benefit of current and future generations.
Membership: Around 2,000
Revenue: $353,000, according to 2022 IRS records
Adirondack Council
Year of origin: 1975
Mission: To ensure the ecological integrity and wild character of the Adirondack Park with clean air and water, large ‘forever wild’ wilderness areas, working forests and farms, and vibrant, safe and inclusive communities.
Membership: 18,000 to 20,000
Revenue: $2.96 million, according to 2022 IRS records
Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve
Year of origin: 2010 (with roots to Friends of the Forest Preserve founded in 1945)
Mission: To advance New York’s ‘forever wild’ legacy and forest preserve policies in the Adirondack and Catskill Parks, and promote public and private land stewardship that is consistent with wild land values through education, advocacy and research.
Membership: Around 1,000
Revenue: About $171,000 according to 2022 IRS records
Adirondack Wilderness Advocates
Year of origin: Founded in 2016, incorporated in 2019
Mission: Dedicated to promoting knowledge, enjoyment, expansion, and protection of the wildest places in the Adirondack Park.
Membership: No formal number
Revenue: Less than $50,000
Thanks to Gwen Craig for this update on environmental leadership changes.
Perhaps, in an even larger sense, you are forcing readers to face some of life’s realities such as; “change is inevitable”, or to put it even more bluntly; “things change, people die”.
The billion dollar question is will 2025 be a turning point of historic significance for all of us who care about our wonderful Adirondack nature? Also, will 2025 be a turning point for the core values of America writ large?
Or, to put it more bluntly; do we Americans still hold dear the words of President Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg in 1863; ” that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”?
Happy Presidents Day!