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assessing the apa

Latest Story

Ideas for a better Park

By Kristina Ashby

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

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Park Perspectives: Regaining the Lead in Park Protection

By Kristina Ashby

By Tom Woodman FOUR DECADES ago the Adirondack Park Agency came into being. It was not an easy birth or infancy. Political opposition weakened this new creature even before it saw the light of day. And controversy surrounded its early years as it worked to incorporate conservation values in the regulation of private lands. Its…

How to fix the APA

By Adirondack Explorer

  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…

Designing the Park

By Adirondack Explorer

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…

eagle lake sign

What makes this a park?

By Adirondack Explorer

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…

Highlands at risk

By Adirondack Explorer

  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…

Weak law hurts shorelines

By Adirondack Explorer

                        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…

Future of open space

By Adirondack Explorer

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…

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