ADK Council celebrates 50 years of conservation impact

BOLTON LANDING | The Adirondack Council will celebrate 50 years of conservation impact alongside other Adirondack organizations on July 19 at the Silver Bay YMCA. Seven Adirondack Legacy Leaders will be recognized for their roles in shaping the Adirondack Park over the past half-century. "The Adirondack Council plays a critical role in connecting the needs of the Adirondack Park with the funding and public policy solutions available in Albany and Washington, D.C.," said Adirondack Council Executive Director Raul J. Aguirre. "And we recognize the spaces that others have occupied as integral to defining the Adirondack Park we have today. It takes many dedicated hands to protect and enhance this national treasure we call home." "We are proud of all that we have accomplished since 1975," Aguirre said. "We are also proud of what our friends, colleagues, and sometime adversaries have done to make this a better Adirondack Park. We are all doing what we think is best for the long-term future and health of the Park, we wanted to acknowledge those intentions even when there have been tensions or opposing perspectives over the years. The Adirondack Park would not be what it is today without the collective and lasting impact we all have made." Legacy Leader honorees include the Adirondack Land Trust, Adirondack Nature Conservancy, Adirondack Mountain Club, Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve, Lake George Association, and Protect the Adirondacks!, as well as Lyme Timber Company. The Council will present a Lifetime Achievement Award to founding board member and Bolton resident Robert J. Kafin, whose career as a leader among environmental attorneys includes nine years as an officer of the Adirondack Council's board, and 50 years as a trusted advisor. Tickets for the Council's 50th anniversary gathering are on sale through July 1 and can be purchased online at adirondackcouncil.org. The tented event will take place July 19 and offer time for connection and conversation on the shore of Lake George. At the Forever Wild Celebration, the following Adirondack Legacy Leaders will be recognized: Adirondack Land Trust The Adirondack Land Trust pioneered an approach in the 1980s to protect lands that make the Adirondack Park function not just as an intact ecosystem but as a landscape that supports healthy communities. This early work was a precursor to the type of landscape-level planning widely embraced by land trusts today. Many individuals deserve credit for establishing the Adirondack Land Trust, chief among them George Davis, a forester and planner who was also instrumental in creating the Adirondack Park Agency. Davis was then program director of the Adirondack Council, and Frances Beinecke was its board chair. The Adirondack Council conceived the land trust as an on-the-ground resource for communities and landowners – a role it continues to fill since being incorporated as an independent nonprofit in 1984. Since then, the Adirondack Land Trust, through innovation and partnerships, has helped to protect more than 460,000 acres across the Adirondacks. Adirondack Mountain Club ADK was founded in 1922 by a group of outdoor enthusiasts and conservationists who recognized the need for better trail access and stewardship in the Adirondack Park. ADK's mission is to protect New York's wild lands and waters by promoting responsible outdoor recreation and building a statewide constituency of land stewardship advocates. Through education, trail work, advocacy, and volunteerism, ADK has grown into a leading voice for the sustainable enjoyment and preservation of the Adirondacks. One of ADK's hallmark achievements is its long-standing trail stewardship program. For over a century, their professional and volunteer crews have built and maintained hundreds of miles of trails throughout the Adirondacks, including popular routes like Mount Marcy and Cascade. These efforts not only provide safe and sustainable access for millions of visitors but also mitigate erosion and habitat damage in sensitive alpine environments. Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve is on the Wild's Side. The mission of Adirondack Wild is to safeguard wildlands which connect public forest preserve and private land. Their roots date back 80 years to 1945 when founder, Paul Schaefer, earned a national reputation for protecting wilderness, wild rivers, and lakes in the Adirondack Park. Adirondack Wild carries on his legacy. Adirondack Wild is focused on Wildlands Advocacy for the interconnected public and private lands and waters of the Adirondack Park. Specifically, Adirondack Wild works to defend and mobilize public opinion for "Forever Wild" on the public's Forest Preserve; minimize recreational impacts and overuse through wilderness principle of restraint; apply conservation design to the largest private subdivisions; and, advocate for APA and DEC appointments who embrace resource protection. Lake George Association Founded in 1885 as the first lake conservation organization in the country, the Lake George Association (LGA) is the preeminent lake-protection entity dedicated to safeguarding The Queen of American Lakes, as Thomas Jefferson called it. Through the cutting-edge science of the Jefferson Project — a collaboration between the LGA, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and IBM — the LGA protects the largest lake in the Adirondack Park from five key threats: invasive species, road salt, nutrient pollution, harmful algal blooms (HABs) and climate change. LGA recently worked with the Town of Bolton to pioneer a wood-chip bioreactor system that reduced nitrates from the wastewater treatment system by 40% during the testing phase. Lyme Timber Company The Lyme Timber Company is an employee-owned timberland investment manager founded in 1976 and based in Hanover, NH. Soon after its founding, Lyme Timber made its very first purchase of 11,000 acres from the Moore Family in the Adirondacks. Their focus is on natural forests, conservation, and land protection, as well as improved forestry operations that have resulted in a long history of strong investment performance. Lyme's goal is to practice high-quality forest stewardship paying particular attention to conserving soil, water, and wildlife resources, while producing forest products in a manner that conserves the ecological health and biological diversity of the forest. Lyme strives to gradually improve overall forest conditions in a manner that will maintain or enhance both the financial and the ecological attributes of the forest over time. The Lyme Timber Company was the private equity partner that helped facilitate the conservation of the former Domtar timberlands in 2004 (104,000 acres) and the former International Paper Company timberlands in 2006 (276,000 acres). The Nature Conservancy The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has been working in the Adirondacks for 54 years and has protected more than 585,000 acres of forests, lakes, rivers, and critical wildlife habitat including the 161,000-acre Finch Pruyn/Heart of the Adirondacks acquisition -- TNC's largest land protection project to date in New York -- and the 14,700-acre Follensby Pond property. Now TNC is conserving the Adirondacks as one of nature's strongholds—a place with high natural resilience to climate change—and the linkages that connect it to the Catskills, Tug Hill Plateau, the Algonquin Park and the Green Mountains. TNC is studying freshwater systems by creating a Research Preserve at Follensby Pond that will serve as both a reference site and refuge for cold-water species in a climate-changing world. Protect the Adirondacks! Protect the Adirondacks! Inc. (PROTECT) is a non-profit, grassroots membership organization dedicated to the protection and stewardship of the public and private lands of the Adirondack Park, and to building the health and diversity of its natural and human communities for the benefit of current and future generations. PROTECT was formed in 2009 through the consolidation of two organizations: Residents' Committee to Protect the Adirondacks, founded in 1990, and The Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks, founded in 1901. PROTECT is led by a volunteer Board of Directors and a professional staff with headquarters in Johnsburg, in the central Adirondacks. PROTECT's work involves advocacy, education, research, legal action, and independent public oversight of the state and local agencies that govern the private lands within the Adirondack Park and the constitutionally protected state-owned Forest Preserve lands. In 2021, after a nearly 10-year legal battle, PROTECT won a lawsuit against the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and Adirondack Park Agency upholding the "forever wild" clause (Article 14 of the New York Constitution). The Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, ruled that DEC's planned network of miles of flattened, extra-wide snowmobile trails violated the State Constitution's Forever Wild clause. This decision reaffirms the importance of the constitutional protections for the Forest Preserve and shapes the future management of these lands by the State. Founded in 1975, the Adirondack Council is a privately funded, not-for-profit organization committed to protecting the ecological integrity and wild character of the Adirondack Park. The Park contains one of the largest intact temperate forests in the world and is home to approximately 130,000 New Yorkers. The Council advances its mission through research, education, advocacy, and legal action. It envisions an Adirondack Park with clean air and water, core wilderness areas, working farms and forests, and inclusive, thriving communities.

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ADK Council celebrates 50 years of conservation impact

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