The only independent, nonprofit news organization solely dedicated to reporting on the Adirondack Park.
A state judge has ruled that a village near the Adirondack Park improperly allowed all-terrain vehicles to operate on two of its streets without first justifying that a new ATV trail couldn’t othewise be connected to the Lewis County trail system. Acting State Supreme Court Justice Peter Schwerzmann, in a decision handed down Monday, concluded…
Julia Goren stands atop 5,344-foot Mount Marcy, a forest-green name tag pinned to her short-sleeve khaki button-down shirt. Her uniform marks her as one of the Summit Stewards, the conservation professionals who educate hikers about the rare plants found on New York’s alpine summits.
By Phil Brown
Four environmental groups and two Adirondack towns urge Governor Cuomo to take immediate action to stop the storage railroad tank cars in the Adirondack Park.
By Phil Brown
The state Department of Environmental Conservation’s closure of the Wakely Mountain trail once again raises questions about the future of the fire tower on the summit. DEC closed the tower in December because of structural defects and this week closed the hiking trail too, lest the tower collapse and injure someone. “The condition of the…
By Phil Brown
The Adirondack Park Agency board will soon lose its strongest defender of wilderness: Dick Booth does not intend to serve another term. Booth’s current four-year term expires June 30, but he said he will stay on awhile if a successor is not appointed by then. A professor in Cornell’s Department of City and Regional Planning,…
DEC’s proposals for managing the former Finch, Pruyn lands kindle a debate over motorized use. By Phil Brown More than five years after the Nature Conservancy bought all 161,000 acres of Finch, Pruyn & Company’s timberlands, the state has acquired eighteen thousand acres for the Forest Preserve and intends to open up some of the…
By Phil Brown
The Adirondack Park Agency voted 10-1 today to approve the controversial Adirondack Club and Resort, the largest development ever to come before the agency. Several commissioners said they had concerns about the project—including what they described as the developers’ optimistic sales projections—but they concluded that it fell within the APA’s regulations. The commissioners agreed with…
By Phil Brown
The Adirondack Council wants the state to purchase or otherwise protect a 2,257-acre parcel near Poke-o-Moonshine Mountain that is on the market for $2,275,000. Dubbed Burnt Pond Forest, the tract lies just southwest of Poke-o-Moonshine, bordering state Forest Preserve. It is being marketed by LandVest, a real-estate company that deals in timberlands the Northeast. In…
By Phil Brown
Resource Management is the most restrictive zoning category for private land in the Adirondack Park. In the debate over the Adirondack Club and Resort, one of the big questions is whether the proposed resort is suitable for RM lands. Essentially, RM lands are timberlands. The Adirondack Park Agency Act says the primary (or best) uses…
By Phil Brown
After hiking, biking, canoeing, and sailing 7,600 miles over 280 days, John Davis says the hard work has just begun. Davis resigned as the Adirondack Council’s conservation director last year to undertake TrekEast, a muscle-powered journey designed to draw attention to the need to protect wild lands in the eastern United States and Canada. He…