By Dave Gibson, Managing Partner Adirondack Wild. Adirondack Park within NYS Climate Strategies – Barely Mentioned It is in Chapter 19 of the NYS Climate Action Council’s Draft Scoping Plan, the chapter on “Land Use,” that I expected the words “Adirondack” or “Adirondack Park” or “Adirondack Park Agency” to get some focused attention. I was…
By Dave Gibson, Managing Partner Adirondack Wild. Paul Schaefer and the making of an Adirondack map The Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks had hired me the previous winter. It was now the spring of 1987. Windows and doors were again opening to the hope and then the reality of spring’s warmth. The director…
By Dave Gibson, Managing Partner Adirondack Wild. Is APA review the equivalent of an Environmental Impact Statement? No. Over the course of time, the Adirondack Park Agency’s permit practice has drifted too far away from what the 1973 Agency Act and the State Environmental Quality Review Act require. The State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR)…
By Dave Gibson, Managing Partner Adirondack Wild. The Voluntary Professionals Behind the Adirondack Research Library Many organizations introduce their work with the words “were it not for the volunteers, we could not…” That can be justifiably said of the Adirondack Research Library (ARL), formerly part of the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks (AfPA).…
By Dave Gibson, Managing Partner Adirondack Wild. 2022 Environment Budget Hearings As one who paused this week to testify and to listen to the Environmental Budget hearing in the State Legislature’s Ways and Means and Finance Committees, I could not help but notice the budget winners and losers. In a year when state revenues are…
By Dave Gibson, Managing Partner Adirondack Wild. The next APA executive director – a lot at stake for Kathy Hochul, John Ernst and the rest of us After a dozen years, Terry Martino is retiring as the executive director of the NYS Adirondack Park Agency. Terry is an admirable person who has had a difficult…
Remembering Wendy Hall By Ken Rimany, Partner Adirondack Wild. Wendy Hall, founder of the Adirondack Wildlife Refuge, which she ran alongside her husband Stephen Hall (who also is a long-time Almanack contributor), passed away on Sunday. Ken Rimany, a partner with Adirondack Wild, shared this recollection: Incomparable champions of all wildlife, big and small, Wendy and Steve…
By David Gibson, Managing Partner, Adirondack Wild In Adirondack Common Cause Adirondack Wild and I have been among those who heralded the NYS Court of Appeals ruling in May that the only way for the Department of Environmental Conservation to construct snowmobile community connector trails in the Adirondack and Catskill Forest Preserve was through a…
By David Gibson, Managing Partner, Adirondack Wild Follensby Pond – Protection, Public Access And Partnerships Needed In 2022 The question of how to prevent residential development at Follensby Pond, the remote, 1000-acre Adirondack lake made famous by The Philosopher’s Camp of 1858 and by the 1976 reintroduction of the bald eagle, was settled in 2008.…
By David Gibson, Managing Partner, Adirondack Wild Chad Dawson recently resigned from the NYS Adirondack Park Agency after four plus years of service because, despite much effort, he eventually felt he was a voice in the wilderness asking for higher standards in analysis of how best to manage our Adirondack Wilderness, Wild Forest, Primitive and…