COMMENTARY: DEC mobility device policy for state lands requires immediate oversight
In a letter, the nonprofit wilderness advocate Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve is asking the Adirondack Park Agency’s State Land Committee to immediately review and comment on the new Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) policy draft affecting the state’s wilderness areas and wild forest character protected as Forest Preserve by the New York State Constitution.
The draft DEC policy, which has been out for public comment, establishes guidance for the operation of power-driven mobility devices on all state lands throughout New York including the Adirondack and Catskill Forest Preserve. Powered wheelchairs are allowed anywhere in the Forest Preserve and in other public lands. However, other power-driven mobility devices are distinct from wheelchairs. Powered by battery or fuels, they range widely in weight, tread width, power and speed, and include motor vehicles.
While offering guidance for people with disabilities, the draft policy fails to clarify that operating heavy, powered mobility devices is incompatible with narrow, remote, rock-strewn wilderness trails. Wilderness trails are neither safe nor environmentally-responsible places to drive a power-driven device up to and including a motor vehicle. Furthermore, the State Land Master Plan defines a Motor Vehicle as a device incorporating an engine or motor of any type and prohibits such devices in all Adirondack and Catskill Wilderness areas.
Adirondack Wild’s comment letter says that by not explicitly deeming power-driven devices as incompatible in wilderness, the draft DEC policy violates the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan which has the force of law. “From both user safety and wilderness protection viewpoints, it cannot be good policy to introduce, for example, a 40-inch, 400-pound mobility device onto wilderness trails where many wilderness trail treads average three feet, or less,” writes Adirondack Wild’s David Gibson.
“The Adirondack Park Agency (APA) is responsible for our State Land Master Plan, but so far APA has remained silent about the likely non-compliance of this draft DEC policy with that plan. While DEC is reviewing hundreds of public comments, now would be the perfect opportunity for the APA’s State Land Committee to do its job and weigh in with its own questions and comments that would likely improve the policy, enhance public access for people with disabilities, while also ensuring that wilderness and wild forest areas in the Adirondack Park remain protected for all,” Gibson added.
Adirondack Wild also commented that a fair reading of federal mobility regulations ought to establish that use of a powered mobility device other than a wheelchair on wilderness trails would prove destructive of the trails, unsafe for the user, unsafe for passing hikers and unsafe for personnel involved in any emergency incident. Introducing such devices into wilderness areas would also do something the Americans with Disabilities Act regulations caution against: substantially alter DEC’s wilderness management program and services where public use of motors or engines of any type is disallowed.
“There are many state lands and conservation easements leading to beautiful natural areas throughout the state where DEC permits power-driven mobility devices to safely and legally operate,” Gibson added. “The draft policy offers good guidance here. However, operating such devices in Forest Preserve Wilderness immediately alters what people of all physical abilities appreciate and want protected now and for future generations: a wild, natural community where human influence is not apparent, to be accessed on its own terms without use of motors or engines.”