The only independent, nonprofit news organization solely dedicated to reporting on the Adirondack Park.
By Phil Brown
Hamilton County officials are livid over the state’s plan to close the Moose River Plains Recreation Area to motor vehicles, saying it will hurt the region’s economy, intensify political tensions, and harden stances against land acquisitions by the state. “It’s one of the worst ideas I’ve seen in recent times,” said Bill Farber, the chairman…
By Phil Brown
Because of the state’s fiscal crisis, the Department of Environmental Conservation doesn’t plan to open the roads in the popular Moose River Plains Recreation Area this year. The large tract of state land, located between the hamlets of Inlet and Indian Lake, has forty miles of dirt roads and 140 primitive campsites. The sites are…
By Phil Brown
In this age of climate change, it’s nice to know that April showers still bring May flowers. This afternoon, I took my customary jaunt up Baker Mountain and found many wildflowers in bloom, including spring beauty, trout lily, red trillium, saxifrage, yellow violets, and Dutchman’s breeches. I am always amused by the last flower—both its…
How logging, fish stocking, acid rain, and other man-made calamities nearly wiped out an Adirondack icon: the wild brookie. By George Earl In early May, vernal patches of birch stood out among the darker evergreens lining the remote kettle-hole pond. As we put our canoe into the icy water, a welcome breeze dispersed the cloud…
Thompson family contends DEC is closing access to the isolated hamlet of Beaver River. By Alan Wechsler If you’re looking for the most isolated community in New York State, you might find it in Beaver River. The itsy-bitsy hamlet lies deep in the woods in the western Adirondacks, about twenty miles from the nearest community…
By Phil Brown
The New York Post has raised questions about the state’s purchase of Lyon Mountain from the Nature Conservancy in late 2008 for $10 million. Four years earlier, the conservancy paid $6.3 million for the same twenty thousand acres. In an editorial on Wednesday, the Post called the rise in price “a staggering 57 percent profit…
By Phil Brown
A year ago, scientists learned that a large bat hibernaculum exists somewhere near Chapel Pond. They inferred as much when dying bats were discovered flying around Route 73 last March, long before bats usually emerge from hibernation. Peregrine falcons that nest near Chapel Pond also discovered the bats. They returned from their winter habitat early…
By Phil Brown
David Gibson has stepped aside as executive director of Protect the Adirondacks, but he is continuing to work for the organization as an adviser on conservation issues, the Adirondack Explorer has learned. Gibson had been the executive director of Protect since its creation last year, when the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks merged…
By Phil Brown
A top-secret confidential source sent me a link to a YouTube clip that offers definitive proof that the government is releasing mountain lions in the Adirondacks. It’s part of a Nazi plot.
By Phil Brown
A coalition of environmental groups launched an ad campaign today to protest Governor David Paterson’s proposed $69 million cut to the Environmental Protection Fund, which is used to pay for a variety of green initiatives, including land preservation. The Adirondack Council sent us the ad below, which features a snapping turtle, eastern bluebird, beaver, and brook…