By Roger Gray, Atlantic Chapter Adirondack Committee Chair
This past June, I was shocked to learn that a Texas real estate developer has plans to purchase the 36,000 acre Whitney Park, the last crown jewel parcel in the middle of the Adirondack Park Forest Preserve. This unique wild forest area has been a first priority purchase on the NYS Open Space Plan acquisition list for decades, but the State had apparently taken no action to acquire it.
New York’s Adirondack Park is a world-renowned treasure, visited by over 12 million people annually. It is world-renowned because it has some of the strongest land protections of any park in the world. In 1894 the people of New York enacted a new State constitution, which, in part, created the Adirondack Park, “to be forever kept as wild forest lands.” This was the Gilded Age, when fortunes were made on railroad construction, lumbering vast swaths of forest, mineral extraction for the steel industries. Yet even then, the people of New York had the vision to set aside a vast acreage of northern New York to be permanently protected as wild forest, not to be exploited for timber or mineral wealth.
The 36,000 acre Whitney lands are a tremendously unique habitat with 22 lakes and ponds, and over 100 miles of undeveloped shoreline. It is the middle of a historic 19th century canoe route. These lands are the lynchpin that would connect other State lands added to the Forest Preserve between the early 1900s and the 1990s, connecting a 600,000 acre contiguous wildland area, the largest east of the Mississippi.
These lands are also critical to the State’s ability to meet the carbon sequestration goals set out in the Climate Leadership 30x30 Plan to preserve 30% of New York as open space by 2030. This 600,000 acre forest has the potential to sequester 900,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually.
For the integrity of the Adirondack Forest Preserve, this remaining undeveloped crown jewel parcel must not be lost to a Texas developer who wants to lock it up with a hotel, mansion-like ‘camps’, exclusive golf courses, and private ski hills.
Connected, contiguous wildland corridors are critical for wildlife biodiversity as the climate warms. An astounding recent study by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology reported a cumulative population loss of nearly 3 billion birds in Canada and the U.S. since 1970. Equally troubling, Adirondack forests are becoming increasingly susceptible to tree blights as the climate warms, with blights already impacting stands of beech, ash, and hemlock.
The last thing our fragile Adirondacks needs now are more roads in exclusive estates, and manicured golf courses covered in pesticides and herbicides killing off our dwindling insect and bird populations. These lands must be kept as wild forest lands for all the people of New York.
In the 1990’s Governor George Pataki worked directly with Mary Lou Whitney to purchase a 15,000 acre portion of the Whitney Estate for addition to the Forest Preserve. Let’s hope Governor Hochul’s administration will have the vision of the members of the 1894 New York Constitutional Convention and recognize the importance of moving quickly and aggressively to protect these unique lands as Adirondack Forest Preserve. This is not a once in a lifetime opportunity, it is a once in forever opportunity. If these lands are developed, they are gone forever.
Updates from Protect The Adirondacks! as of October 11:
- If you didn’t see it yet, the Adirondack Explorer published an article stating that Governor Hochul contacted the Trustees of the Whitney Estate to purchase 32,000 acres. This is fantastic news and what we have been pushing the Governor to do for months, a year really. Read full article here: https://www.adirondackexplorer.org/community-news/government/state-seeks-to-buy-majority-of-whitney-estate/
- As we have been suspecting for some time, there do not appear to be any formal legal impediments (deed restrictions) against the State owning the land.
- While this isn’t all of the acreage it’s a significant move in the right direction
- Stay tuned for more information!