COMMENTARY: Debar Pond Lodge: 2025 DEC analysis falls short, again Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve challenges DEC plan to raze historic Adirondack lodge By Dave Gibson In 2020, DEC issued a draft unit management plan (UMP) for Debar Wild Forest which included the removal of Debar Pond Lodge and in its place the…
Cabin Fever & Adirondack Storytelling By Dave Gibson As big game season and Veterans’ Day align, I tend to think of my friend, the late Don Brightman, who died in 2019. Don, a resident of Burnt Hills, was a founding board member of Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve. Don visited, fished, hunted, rowed,…
Gibson: APA Members Must Have Their Questions Addressed By Dave Gibson This month’s pressure placed on Adirondack Park Agency members to accept the APA staff’s permit conditions for a very large expansion of an RV Park (Sunset View) on the Great Sacandaga Lake in Mayfield is part of a pattern of exerting tight staff control…
COMMENTARY: More big picture questions needed at APA By Dave Gibson At the Agency’s September meeting, Adirondack Park Agency member Rush Holt asked “big picture” questions which, for an Agency that spends much of its time on details, process, and staff talking points, rarely get asked. His question concerned the amendments to the Park’s State…
Adirondack Wild: A Legacy Leader By Dave Gibson Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve was honored to be represented as an Adirondack Legacy Leader at the 50th anniversary of the Adirondack Council on July 19, 2025. Ceremonies were held at the historic Silver Bay YMCA on the shores of Lake George. While it was…
Norm Van Valkenburgh: Catskill and Adirondack Conservation Champion By Dave Gibson Norman J. (Norm)Van Valkenburgh has slipped his earthly bonds. Of this remarkable Catskill native and champion of the public’s wild forests and wildernesses, I can locate no obituary, just a death notice of Norm’s passing in July 2023 in Orono, Maine at the age…
COMMENTARY: Adirondack Park Agency’s “ADA Explainer” Fails to Fully Explain By Dave Gibson During the June APA meeting, Adirondack Explorer covered the State Land Master Plan discussion, noting that “the leaders of environmental groups, who had raised concerns about the earlier accessibility language, thanked agency officials for removing the proposed changes and called for continued…
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…