Celebrating Evelyn Greene By Dave Gibson More than a couple of my Adirondack journal entries begin with something like this one dated February 15, 1999: “Evelyn phoned me. Have you been to Nate Davis Pond, she asked? Never, I answered. Wanna go, she asked?” And I was off on another adventure with North Creek’s Evelyn…
APA on Whitney in 1996: “A Significant Open Space and Ecological Resource” By Dave Gibson Adirondack Explorer’s writer Jim Odato recently reported of a pending sale of 36,000-acre Whitney Industries lands and waters in Long Lake to a Texas-based developer named Shawn Todd, known for constructing “high-end housing, golf courses, and resorts.” Given its private…
COMMENTARY: Recreational Carrying Capacity of Adirondack Lakes By Dave Gibson The recently approved 2025-26 state budget includes a modest $1 million appropriation within the NYS Environmental Protection Fund which tasks and begins to fund the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation for an important pilot study delayed by more than 50 years: a carrying capacity study…
Conservation Minded Design for Adirondack Subdivisions Still Rarely Employed By Dave Gibson Ecologist and land use planner George Davis and his staff at the Commission on the Adirondacks in the 21st Century wrote in the Commission’s final report in 1990 that “rising land values and increasing costs of land ownership are making it difficult for forest and…
Michael Wilson – A river ran through him Michael died this winter, and I will remember him with much affection and admiration. I remember his laugh, and his eyes lit up when we met. I remember Michael investigating the social, cultural, and class dimensions of Adirondack wilderness, conservation, architecture, and other histories all around his…
Adirondack Park Agency Staff: ‘We Have A Hostile and Toxic Work Environment’ By Dave Gibson On February 12, 2025, the regional field representative for the Public Employees Federation (PEF), the union representing approximately 50,000 State employees with professional, scientific and technical responsibilities, sent an email to each of the eleven members of the Adirondack Park…
COMMENTARY: Ten Questions to Challenge Business as Usual at the APA By David Gibson The Adirondack Park Agency’s monthly public comment opportunities and long list of permits issued during the year are duly posted on the APA website and at Adirondack Almanack. This posting of basic Agency information is positive. However, behind the apparent conduct…
COMMENTARY: Is APA OK with ceding its authority over the Master Plan? For decades the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan (APSLMP) has required that State Land Unit Management Plans “will address, on a site specific basis the identification, in intensive use, historic and appropriate portions of wild forest areas accessible by motor vehicles, of…
Peter Brinkley: The Adirondack Brand What follows is a guest essay by Peter Brinkley who lives in Jay and is Senior Partner of Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve. This essay was prompted in part by new Almanack contributor Kimberly Rielly’s piece “Understanding the Adirondack Brand“. We hear of the need for businesses in…
COMMENTARY: APA Proposes to Weaken Wilderness Protection On behalf of the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks, I was one of the intervenors to sign the 2001 Galusha v. NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and Adirondack Park Agency (APA) consent order before U.S. Federal Judge Kahn in Albany. Following the lawsuit in federal…