About Gwendolyn Craig

Gwen is an award-winning journalist covering environmental policy for the Explorer since January 2020. She also takes photos and videos for the Explorer's magazine and website. She is a current member of the Legislative Correspondents Association of New York. Gwen has worked at various news outlets since 2015. Prior to moving to upstate New York, she worked for a D.C. Metro-area public relations firm, producing digital content for clients including the World Health Organization, the Low Income Investment Fund and Rights and Resources Initiative. She has a master's degree in journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. She has bachelor's degrees in English and journalism, with a concentration in ecology and evolutionary biology, from the University of Connecticut. Gwen is also a part-time figure skating coach. Contact her at (518) 524-2902 or gwen@adirondackexplorer.org. Sign up for Gwen’s newsletter here.

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  1. Vanessa B says

    Well. The more this dude talks to the press… (he’s too out-of-touch to hire a PR person, apparently?)

    …let me just get one thing out, and I want to be very clear that it’s GOOD that Gwen got this quote – but I think his motivations and thinking are *quite clear when he implies that the state preserving the land for public use will somehow be more environmentally destructive than logging. We’re talking some careful trail cutting (at most) versus cutting down massive amounts of trees. That he would financially benefit from.

    I’ve questioned his motives before, but I’m just not hearing a lot of evidence as we go on here that he has a realistic plan. This is a rich guy that wants to cash out with as much profit as possible. Nothing more. (Side bar: when you’re worth at least hundreds of millions of dollars, you’d be surprised how few people are sympathetic to an IRS audit…he’s also asking us to just trust him that he’s always been righteous in the way he’s allowed those millions to be taxed.)

    The thing is, in our fine modern age, there are clever ways to cash out AND actually help the environment. Forget conservation easements, which are him saying, I want to exploit this land but then you can’t. He should create some sort of a B Corp or non profit and raise $$ to preserve the land and ecosystem as a climate-change mitigating carbon sink. I don’t have enough detail to understand how these sorts of orgs work, but it’s a popular strategy in the west.

    He wants to attract the capital of a Bill Gates like figure? Then talk like you’re a philanthropist from this century, not a previous one. Logging isn’t even a universally profitable business endeavor anymore, depending on your situation. For better or worse, there’s money to be made in all the weird market-based schemes people are coming up with to fight climate change. His biggest asset here is intact environment. He should pay someone to help him realize this. :/

  2. Vanessa B says

    As a follow up to prove that I’m not full of crud re suggestion above: http://www.uwyo.edu/haub/ruckelshaus-institute/private-lands-stewardship/conservation-toolbox/carbon-offsets.html

    In summary, there are fancy ways to preserve the land plus raise a decent amount of $$. Again, he is wealthy enough that hiring someone to help with this is an investment that will pay off extremely well, rather that slapping a price tag several times above market value that no one is going to pay.

  3. Walt Linck says

    Re: “The former master plan also pointed to the 1994 microburst that blew down a number of trees in the Adirondack Park.”

    My recollection is that the “derecho” occurred in July of ’95, and a HUGE number of trees were leveled.

  4. Peter Vaughn says

    How can Whitney Park be priceless, and worth less than $5,000 an acre at the same time? I would love to see it one day…imagine 22 lakes to explore? However, I do see his point about the state not having the resources to manage it. In the end, hopefully, it will end up being run as well as it has for over 100 years.
    Some of these so-called environmentalist don’t want to protect Whitney Park; they just want to acquire it.

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