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Through its news reporting and analysis, the nonprofit Adirondack Explorer furthers the wise stewardship, public enjoyment for all, community vitality, and lasting protection of the Adirondack park.
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By Phil Brown
November 13, 2009
The Adirondack Park Agency voted 10-1 Friday to approve snowmobile-trail guidelines despite objections by environmental groups that they violate the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan. The executive directors of the Adirondack Council, Adirondack Mountain Club, and Protect the Adirondacks say the guidelines would permit trails that fail to meet the master plan’s mandate that snowmobile…
By Phil Brown
November 12, 2009
The Adirondack Park Agency could face legal action if, as appears likely, it approves new snowmobile-trail guidelines at its meeting on Friday. The APA’s State Land Committee voted this afternoon (Thursday) to permit the agency’s full board to consider the guidelines at its Friday meeting. Afterward, the executive directors of the Park’s three major environmental…
By Phil Brown
November 12, 2009
This week I was forwarded some heated e-mails written by Sandy Lewis, the outspoken owner of a large farm in Essex County, and his antagonist at the Adirondack Park Agency, lawyer Paul Van Cott. Lewis has been vociferous in his disdain for the APA. He sued them and won after the agency contended he needed…
By Phil Brown
November 6, 2009
The Wild Center in Tupper Lake will host 170 students from high schools and colleges throughout the Adirondacks next week for its first Adirondack Youth Climate Summit. Each school will send a team of students, educators, and school administrators who will develop plans to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions. They also will learn how…
By Phil Brown
November 5, 2009
Judith Enck, the governor’s deputy secretary for the environment, has been named a regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She will oversee EPA’s Region 2, which includes New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. She is expected to assume the job in about a month. Enck was a longtime…
By Phil Brown
November 4, 2009
Voters overwhelmingly ratified on Tuesday a constitutional amendment to allow the state and National Grid to swap parcels of land in the northwestern Adirondacks. The amendment retroactively approves the construction of a power line in a two-mile strip of Forest Preserve along Route 56. The state will receive forty-three acres from National Grid in exchange…
By Phil Brown
October 28, 2009
On Tuesday, voters will be asked to approve the construction of a power line that’s already been built—through the forever-wild Forest Preserve in the northwestern Adirondacks. If Ballot Proposal One is approved, the state will cede to National Grid a two-mile strip, totaling six acres, along Route 56 where the line was built last year.…
By Phil Brown
October 25, 2009
I went to Albany this past weekend to attend the Adirondack Mountain Club’s annual Presidents’ Dinner and pick up an award for the Adirondack Explorer. ADK gave me the Eleanor F. Brown Communication Award, which is named after its first recipient, who several years ago published a marvelous reference work titled The Forest Preserve…
By Phil Brown
October 20, 2009
Scientists have recognized for a while that Adirondack coyotes are bigger than western coyotes, but there has been debate over whether the cause is genetic or environmental. A recent study led by Roland Kays, mammal curator at the New York State Museum, comes down squarely on the side of genetics: the Adirondack coyote is part…
By Phil Brown
October 8, 2009
The Adirondacks and sportsmen everywhere lost a friend this week when Nellie Staves passed away at ninety-two. We liked to think of Nellie as our friend, too. In 2000, Ed Kanze wrote a nice profile of Nellie that we published in the Explorer. After that, she often stopped in the office when she was passing…