Ideas for a better park. By Mal Provost
At Adirondack Explorer conference, speakers call for strengthening the APA in order to protect water quality and the region’s wild character.
“There is no constitutional right to sprawl.” -Randall Arendt, keynote speaker

  The state needs to do much more to protect shorelines, uplands, and the privately owned backcountry. By Philip Terrie In the Adirondacks, we often point with pride to the extraordinary oddness of the Adirondack Park. From Manhattan’s Central Park to California’s Yosemite, Americans have gotten used to parks with neat boundaries enclosing a domain wholly owned by the people. Because the land within the boundary is public and that outside private, when you walk or drive across that boundary, you’ve gone from one sort of place to another. You have certain expectations outside that boundary, which are different from >>More

Environmentalists say the APA needs to update its regulations to incorporate “smart growth” principles. By Kim Martineau As the proposed Adirondack Club & Resort in Tupper Lake wound its way through the approval process, two planning consultants separately recommended in 2008 that the Adirondack Park Agency require clustering of homes in the backcountry. Under a draft clustering policy written by one consultant, the resort’s “Great Camp” estates would have consumed 280 acres of forest instead of 2,800 acres. “The same number of homes could have been constructed, but the project would have been largely concentrated near the [Big Tupper] ski >>More

Environmentalists want the state to do more to protect and enhance the region’s identity as a special place. By Kim Martineau The Adirondack Park is more than double the size of Yosemite and Yellowstone National Parks combined, but its greatness is not always apparent. Silver lakes and dark woods beckon from some roadsides, while lawns and driveways interrupt the wild scenery from others. With its mix of private and public land, the Adirondacks have always had something of an identity problem. Four decades after the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) was created to oversee development on private lands, the Park is >>More

  Critics say existing regulations are inadequate to stop upland development from marring the natural beauty of the Adirondack Park. By Kim Martineau In a field bordered by forested hills and rocky ridges, Dan Plumley unfurled a zoning map of the Adirondack Park. The color-coded map was a reminder of how much private land lay before him, and how potentially fleeting the natural views from Marcy Field could be. He pointed to a bald patch on Corliss Point above the valley, where lights from a house inconspicuous by day blaze into a flying saucer at night, one of many signs >>More

                        Critics say political compromises in the 1970s have led to a degradation of waterfront and water quality in the Adirondacks. By Brian Mann On a gray, rain-swept morning, environmental activist Peter Bauer points to the Lake George shoreline just outside the hamlet of Bolton Landing. From his boat we can see gleaming Gatsbyesque mansions rising above the lake one after another, divided by narrow strips of manicured forest. Lawns, paved patios, and seawalls stretch to the water. Four decades after the Adirondack Park Agency was created and charged >>More

Environmentalists and local leaders agree that the privately owned backcountry should be protected—but how? By Phil Brown Nearly forty years have passed since Governor Nelson Rockefeller, while signing a law regulating development in the Adirondack Park, declared to the reporters and conservationists in the room, “The Adirondacks are preserved forever.” He had some reason for optimism. The Adirondack Park Land Use and Development Plan represented a leap forward in conservation, a bold attempt to preserve the beauty and wild character of a vast region that encompasses both public and private lands. Four decades later, preservationists question whether the law has >>More