GOV PATAKI DOOMS RARE
WILDLIFE HABITAT TO DESTRUCTION
WITH DECISION ALLOWING ATVs & TRUCKS IN ADIRONDACK FOREST
Boreal Habitat the Most Fragile in Adirondacks; Local Residents
Document
ATV-Caused Damage for Federal Regulatory Agency
For more information:
John F. Sheehan
518-432-1770 (ofc)
518-441-1340 (cell)
518-456-4512 (home)
Released: Tuesday, May 9, 2006
COLTON, N.Y. - The Adirondack
Park's largest environmental organization today criticized Gov.
George Pataki's decision to allow continued motorized traffic
in one of the Adirondack Park's rarest and most sensitive forests,
located about halfway between Tupper Lake and Potsdam, east of
the Carry Falls Reservoir.
"The Governor has ignored our plea to protect one of the
Adirondack Park's most rare and sensitive forests. His decision
jeopardizes habitat and places several endangered species at
further risk of disappearing entirely from New York State,"
said Adirondack Council Executive Director Brian L. Houseal.
"The low-elevation boreal forest in and around the Jordan
River Valley contains endangered spruce grouse, as well as black
bears, moose, fishers, pine martens, hawk-owls, boreal chickadees,
white-throated sparrows and a host of others that really don't
survive well around all-terrain vehicles and auto traffic.
"Rare plants include carnivorous insect-eaters such as sundews
and pitcher plants and species of wildflowers that grow nowhere
else in the state," he said. "Run them over with knobby
tires and they won't grow back.
"There is already well-documented and widespread damage
in this area from ATVs that gain access over an old logging road,"
Houseal said. "The Governor could have declared all new
public lands east of the Carry Falls Reservoir to be Wilderness.
That would have prevented any additional damage and would have
given the area a fighting chance at recovery. Boulders and other
barriers would keep all vehicles out.
"Instead, the Governor classified some of the area as Primitive
and some as Wild Forest, where state officials can designate
roads for use by cars, trucks and snowmobiles," Houseal
said. "That traffic, plus the inevitable ATV trespassers,
virtually guarantees further damage to this fragile forest and
its wildlife."
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) was pulled into
the issue of ATVs around the Carry Falls Reservoir recently,
when local residents complained that hydro-dam operator Brascan
Power New York wasn't doing enough to discourage damage to the
area's natural resources. Brascan has had to erect boulder barriers,
new signs, fences around the six-mile-long water impoundment
on the Raquette River to deal with ATV riders crossing nearby
public lands.
Brascan reported to FERC that barriers have lead to vandalism,
including broken windows, lights and gates. The March 24 letter
also notes that Brascan security personnel were threatened by
ATV riders who attempted to run them over, prompting them to
call the State Police.
Houseal noted that the area's remoteness from major highways
and communities is the only reason the forest and its wildlife
have survived this long. By signing a plan that allows permanent
motorized traffic across public lands there, the Governor is
further endangering their survival.
"It is nearly a miracle that these species can still find
a home anywhere in the Northeast," Houseal said. "Most
of the forests of this sort are in northern Canada and Siberia.
We live in the most heavily populated area of the United States,
but the Adirondack Park's isolation and wildness provide sanctuary
for wildlife that died out in other parts of the Northeast long
ago. We should nurture that isolation and protect this wildlife."
Houseal noted that the Governor's decision seems contrary to
the specific instructions of the Adirondack Park State Land Master
Plan -- the state's own blueprint for taking care of the forever
wild Forest Preserve. Page 14 of the Adirondack Park State Land
Master Plan requires the state to give special protection to
sensitive boreal forests:
"Biological considerations also play an important role in
the structuring of the classification system. Many of these are
associated with the physical limitations just described; for
instance many plants of the boreal, sub-alpine and alpine zones
are less able to withstand trampling than species (usually) associated
with lower elevation life zones."
State Forest Preserve lands are managed according to classification,
and are classified in one of seven categories, with most lands
falling into: Wild Forest, Primitive or Wilderness. Wild Forest
areas generally contain public roads and allow public motorized
access in designated areas. Wilderness Areas are off limits to
motorized traffic of any kind.
In 1988, the Adirondack Council proposed the creation of a Boreal
Wilderness on 73,000 acres of nearly roadless, lightly developed
land at the center of an 185,000 acre low-elevation boreal forest
in St. Lawrence, Franklin and northern Hamilton counties.
Since that time, several areas of new Forest Preserve have been
purchased by the state, totaling 12,500 acres in the Towns of
Colton and Hopkinton. The Governor's newly approved plan designated
everything east of the Lassiter logging road to be Wilderness,
and everything west of the road to be Wild Forest. That leaves
a large swath of Wild Forest east of Carry Fall Reservoir, in
the most remote section of the proposed Boreal Wilderness.
The Boreal Wilderness was first proposed by the Adirondack Council
in its 2020 VISION Volume 1, Biological Diversity:
Saving All the Pieces (1988), which is available online at
www.adirondackcouncil.org.
The Adirondack Council's mission is to ensure the ecological
integrity and wild character of the Adirondack Park. Founded
in 1975, the Council is an 18,000-member, privately funded, not-for-profit
organization with offices in Albany and Elizabethtown.
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