The huge land sales occurring across the Northern Forest haven't missed New York State. The Northern Forest's 26 million acres begin in Tug Hill, a 2,100-square mile plateau in western New York. Just to the east of Tug Hill is the Adirondack Park, which, at 6 million acres, is the largest in the contiguous U.S. The State of New York has a golden opportunity to protect, through acquisition or conservation easement, some 300,000 acres of important lands in both places.
Up For Sale
Across the Northern Forest, including New York, owners of industrial timberland have responded to global markets and domestic economics in recent years by putting huge tracts of land on the market. New York State now has a golden opportunity to protect important land in the Adirondack Park and Tug Hill regions where over 300,000 acres of land now are either for sale or held by owners interested in some sort of conservation arrangement.
The Wilderness Society is working with a strong coalition called the Northern Forest Alliance to ensure that these valuable conservation lands are not lost to development. Money, not surprisingly, is the key. Our Washington and regional staffs are working closely with other conservation groups to achieve full funding for the Conservation Trust Fund that provides federal money for land conservation projects here and elsewhere.
The Places
The Adirondack Park
The Adirondack Park and Tug Hill Plateau make up the western end of the 26-million-acre Northern Forest that stretches northeast through New Hampshire and Vermont and to Maine's St. Croix River. The Adirondack Park is the largest park in the lower 48 states. At six million acres, it is nearly the size of Vermont.
In 1894, the State protected 45 percent of the Park's area as a "Forever Wild" Forest Preserve. One million acres are Wilderness and another 1.3 million acres are in "Wild Forest" where motorized uses are permitted on designated waters, roads and trails but where no logging occurs.
The Park is a mosaic of ownerships and over half is in private hands. According to the Adirondack Council, the Park has 130,000 permanent residents, 110,000 seasonal residents and 10 million visitors every year. The Council also notes that the Park includes "the headwaters of five major drainage basins, more than 2,800 lakes and ponds, and more than 1,500 miles of rivers, fed by an estimated 30,000 miles of brooks and streams."
Tug Hill Plateau
Just to the west of the Adirondacks lies the large, and largely undeveloped, Tug Hill Plateau. Only around 100,000 people live in its 2,100 heavily forested square miles. The region boasts the heaviest snowfall in the eastern U.S. and forms the headwaters for several major rivers and streams.
Both the Park and the Tug Hill support a major regional forest products industry and a broad range of recreational opportunities. And both provide important habitat for wide-ranging and migratory species.
Threats
If both these places sound inviting, they are. Pressure on owners of forestland to sell parcels with lake or river frontage for subdivision and second home development is high and growing. That is what makes protection of the most environmentally sensitive of these lands so important and so urgent.
There is room for people in these places, but not for unmanaged sprawl and subdivision. There is room for a healthy wood products industry but not for liquidation clear-cutting. Both would irreversibly alter the character of these places and the lives of their people. Both are possible unless the State can protect these lands, some by outright purchase, others through permanent conservation easements and other devices.
The Top of the List
Wilderness Society conservation priorities in the Adirondacks and Tug Hill include 105,000 acres in the Domtar-Sable Highlands, 11,200 acres of National Lead-Tahawus, 1200 acres on Mt. Discovery and 5000 acres of the Cedarlands tract.
Despite Economic Stress, Success!
Even in these less-than-bountiful fiscal times, the Adirondack Park and the State of New York, with the strong support of many conservation organizations, have achieved some important conservation successes over the past five years.
A recent one involved a $9.1 million, 44,650-acre deal that protects an absolutely gorgeous, ecologically important area on the Tug Hill Plateau, between the Adirondacks and Lake Ontario. In June of 2002, the Nature Conservancy and the State announced an agreement with the Hancock Timber Resource Group to protect the most important ecological, economic and recreational values of the area. The deal, three years in the making, is New York's second largest land preservation pact since the 1980s and by far the largest outside Adirondack Park.
Water gives Tug Hill life and shapes its topography. Nearby Lake Ontario makes Tug Hill the snowiest place in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. The plateau averages 21 feet of snow every winter and heavy rains in warmer months. This moisture supports a rich diversity of life through the area's wetlands, forests and river systems.
Black bears, eagles, ospreys, bobcats, martens, beaver and even moose find refuge here. So does a range of migratory birds and waterfowl. Visitors flood the area in winter to snowshoe, cross-county ski and snowmobile. At other seasons, visitors bird-watch, hike, canoe and hunt and fish.
Under terms of the agreement, a timber company specializing in low-intensity sustainable forestry purchased 30,300 acres of the area. The State holds a conservation easement over the land that limits logging, protects public access and prohibits development. The Nature Conservancy and other conservation groups bought 13,000 acres that include the major wetlands and the headwaters of the East Branch of Fish Creek, the Mad River and the Salmon River, which drain into Lake Ontario. The State holds an easement on that property as well. Finally, the State bought 1,350 acres along the corridor of the East Branch of Fish Creek.
Assembling the pieces is complicated. And this deal is typical of those that have protected over 1.5 million acres in the Northern Forest since 1998: public-private partnerships that stretch limited resources to protect as much land as possible using a range of conservation tools.
Little Tupper Lake
Roughly 14,750 acres at Little Tupper Lake, bought from the Whitney family, are now part of the Adirondack forest preserve. Easements will protect the 18,950-acre Long Pond tract. Another 2,300 acres along the Lake Champlain Palisades and Blue Mountain Lake Islands have been bought. Through an innovative approach that put several river corridors into state ownership and protected working forest lands through conservation easements, the State has helped protect 140,000 acres of Champion International Lands in the Adirondack Park.
How You Can Help
Please urge your members of Congress to support full funding for the Conservation Trust Fund that provides money for conservation projects such as those now underway in New York. If you live in New York, please let your congressional representatives and the Governor know you support their efforts to protect the Adirondacks and Tug Hill.
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