ADIRONDACK FOREST PRESERVE — Late in the year, when the campers are gone but
the hunters have not yet arrived, timber trucks rule Boreas Road in the heart of
the Adirondacks, barging through the morning mists with 70,000 pounds of
fresh-cut fir and spruce strapped to their backs.
“That’s one of ours,” said Michael T. Carr, a 44-year-old bear of a man
driving a green S.U.V. headed west on Boreas Road as one of the timber trucks
barreled eastward.
That is a jarring statement coming from Mr. Carr, who is not a lumber man, or
paper company executive, but executive director of the Adirondack chapter of the
Nature Conservancy, one of the world’s biggest
environmental groups and, since June, the owner of 161,000 acres of highly
prized Adirondack wild lands.
The conservancy entered the timber business when it purchased the land from
Finch, Pruyn & Company, which had held it since the Civil War. As part of
that $110 million deal, the conservancy agreed to continue logging to supply
wood to the Finch Paper mill in Glens Falls, N.Y., for the next 20 years.
The Finch, Pruyn (pronounced Prine) lands, considered the last remaining
large privately owned parcels in Adirondack Park, are an ecological marvel,
containing 144 miles of river, 70 lakes and ponds, more than 80 mountains and a
vast unbroken wilderness that only loggers and a few hunters have ever seen. The
property also contains unmatched natural features like the blue ledges of the
Hudson River Gorge, OK Slip Falls and Boreas Pond, with its stunning views of
the Adirondack high peaks, which naturalists have dreamed of protecting for
decades.
The Adirondack Explorer, a local newspaper, called the transaction “the deal
of the young century.” Peter Bauer, executive director of the Residents’
Committee to Protect the Adirondacks, said the conservancy’s handling of the
land “will have a huge impact on what kind of park we have in the future.”
Environmentalists cheered when the conservancy swooped in to buy the Finch
holdings, but a stark reality is now setting in. Not all 161,000 acres will be
preserved as public wilderness. The terms of the pulp supply agreement are
confidential, but foresters with knowledge of the deal said the conservancy
could cut at least 65,000 tons of pulpwood trees a year for the mill — which is
about 15 percent less than Finch cut in the Adirondacks last year. In addition,
maples and other hardwoods could be cut under strict certified forest management
guidelines.
The conservancy expects eventually to sell much of the land to the state. But
to pay the enormous debt it incurred and the $1 million in annual property
taxes, the group will, in the near term, have to sell some portion of the
property to private owners. While those buyers will not be allowed to build on
the land, they will be able to keep out the public. Some small parcels near
existing hamlets might even be sold for housing or commercial development, Mr.
Carr said.
Mr. Carr expects his decisions about which parcels to sell and to whom will
anger as many people as they excite.
“This is not a throw-the-gates-open-to-the-public kind of acquisition,” Mr.
Carr said. A team of scientists is now conducting a rapid ecological assessment
of the land. Final decisions will not be announced until next fall, Mr. Carr
said, and they will be driven not by concerns about recreational opportunities,
or economic development, but “by science.”
“We have no intention of making everyone happy,” he said.
He also said that he realizes that people might be confused by a conservation
organization being in the timber business.
“Right now, people are not sure if we’re going to cut trees or hug them,” Mr.
Carr said. He pointed out that in recent years wood supply deals have become
accepted aspects of land preservation efforts, and the economics of this deal
make logging — according to high standards of forest sustainability — absolutely
essential.
Overcoming the perception that the conservancy has no business cutting trees
is just one challenge Mr. Carr faces in managing one of the most complicated
land deals ever attempted in the Northeast. Dealing with close public scrutiny
is another. The conservancy came under criticism after The Washington Post
published a series of articles in 2003 that focused on the group’s transactions,
particularly a deal in Texas, where it drilled for natural gas on sensitive
lands it had purchased.
But the most intense pressure is coming from local communities, environmental
organizations and special interest groups, all clamoring to stake their interest
in the property. Mr. Carr’s list of petitioners is long: raft guides, float
plane pilots, hunting clubs, loggers, hikers, school superintendents, buffalo
ranchers and municipal golf course operators looking to expand. “Mike Carr has
created a five-year nightmare for himself in trying to decide how to unload this
property,” said John Sheehan, spokesman for the Adirondack Council, a nonprofit
environmental organization. The impact of those decisions on the Adirondacks and
the people who live, work and play there, he said, will be immeasurable.
But overlapping regulations and competing interests abound within the
Adirondack Park, the six million-acre Vermont-size slab of New York State that
is a century-old experiment in conservation.
Created by the State Legislature in the late 19th century, the park is an
unusual mix of public and private lands designed to preserve exquisite mountain
wilderness and a rugged way of life. As state purchases added up, the conflict
between conservation and economic development intensified, with some local
officials arguing that enough property had already been protected.
Over the last decade, many American paper companies in the Northeast changed
the way they operated. They sold off their forestlands, creating historic
opportunities for governments or conservation groups to acquire vast tracts of
woodlands. During the administration of Gov. George E. Pataki, more than 660,000 acres in the
Adirondacks were protected.
The Finch, Pruyn lands, while not the largest parcels to change hands, are in
some ways among the most important, said Michelle L. Brown, conservation
scientist for the conservancy, because they filled in many missing pieces of one
of the largest northern forests left in the world.
“What’s most impressive to me is the connectivity,” Ms. Brown said.
“Everything’s intact — the rivers, bogs, wetlands and forest all come
together.”
Seen from Tom Helms’s 30-year-old Cessna 206 seaplane, the Finch, Pruyn lands
are a mountain-size screen saver, with lines of softwood green surrounding
rainbow pixels of autumn-colored hardwoods. Although Finch has cut trees here
for 150 years, almost no signs of commercial timber operations are visible from
1,500 feet in the air.
“It’s the nicest piece of land in the Adirondacks that the state doesn’t
own,” Mr. Helms said.
Leonard J. Cronin, Adirondack forest manager for Finch, said the company cut
3,533 acres of woodlands in the Adirondacks last year. Of that, 66 acres were
clear-cut.
In other Adirondack land deals, the state has purchased easements restricting
new construction on timberland. State officials said they are studying the Finch
lands now for possible purchases, although some of the Adirondack towns are
expected to resist because state-owned land is removed from property tax rolls
and they feel the state already owns too much of the Adirondacks. Finch holdings
are spread across 31 towns, and money from the state’s Environmental Protection
Fund can be used for land acquisitions if local communities do not object.
Existing leases with private hunting clubs that cover 130,000 acres of the
161,000 in the tract are another big issue. One recent morning, Mr. Carr was out
surveying the lands when he ran into David Hubert of Queensbury, a member of the
Gooley Club, one of the oldest sportsmen’s groups in the Adirondacks. Mr.
Hubert, 67, said he was worried about the future of the 16,000 acres the club
has leased for the last 50 years.
“Obviously, we’d like to see it put to use in the same fashion as it is now,”
Mr. Hubert said. He had just come back from hunting woodcock with his Brittany
spaniel. “I’d hate to see it become non-game-producing state land.”
Mr. Carr has spent months listening to leaseholders and community leaders.
Both the Adirondack Council and the Adirondack Mountain Club have already made
their desires known: They want the state to buy about half of the 161,000 acres
for forest preserve, with most of the rest sold with conservation easements to
private buyers.
And those groups agree that woodland crews should continue cutting trees for
the conservancy. Mr. Carr said he hopes that shows there no longer needs to be a
choice between cutting and conservation.
“At this scale, and with this much land,” he said, “there’s room for
both.”
Additional commentary, background information and other items by
Times editorial writers.
