Defining Adirondack 3.0

The current issue of Adirondack Life features an article by NCPR reporter Brian Mann that argues we are in the midst of defining Adirondack 3.0, that third generation of big ideas shaping the future of the Great Experiment and forming the basis for the PBS film under development. In “rethinking the Adirondack Park Agency” Mann writes:

The APA’s original mandate was to make sure that developments on private land in the park not emerge as a major blight, eroding the beauty and richness of the Adirondack Forest Preserve. Surely there can be no blight uglier than towns falling into despair, their main streets boarded up, their grocery stores closed, their churches and schools abandoned, and the remaining people mired in poverty.

Noting the ongoing efforts of many groups to re-examine the Park’s purpose, management, and structure from the bottom-up, Mann concludes:

The idea of refocusing the park, revitalizing human communities and reinventing the Great Experiment may seem overambitious or even far-fetched. But a century ago, the Adirondacks was a ravaged landscape, the forests clear-cut, the peaks scoured by fires. Lakes and rivers were used as sewers and exploited by mining and logging. Human ingenuity and policy-making literally healed this land. We must now use those same strengths, that same visionary thinking, to heal Adirondack towns.

Embracing the lessons learned from Adirondack versions 1.0 and 2.0, it’s time to rally these voices and envision the next step in the Great Experiment … an Adirondack Park that reflects the realities of the 21st Century and can again be a leading example of striking the conservation and development balance.

New ADK documentary on acid rain

ADK is a documentary telling the story of acid rain and its impact on the Adirondack Park in Upstate New York. The film explores the history of this impact, how it has altered the parks ecosystem, and what people are doing to return this area back to its natural state.

ADK from Michael Williams on Vimeo.

Bill Weber’s Global Perspective on the Adirondack Park

In an interview by Lee Gross for the Adirondack Journal of Environmental Studies, renowned conservation scientist Bill Weber discusses lessons learned from the Adirondack experiment in a decidedly global context. Dr. Weber wrote the final chapter to The Great Experiment in Conservation with his wife Amy Vedder, concluding:

If there is a single lesson … to learn from the Adirondacks it is the role of the private sector in assuring a more diversified economic base, with a greater percentage of benefits staying in local hands within the regional economy.

During the AJES review, Dr. Weber reflects on his work with the Wildlife Conservation Society during a series of park-wide roundtable discussions in the 1990s:

When we started in the Adirondacks we had some people with incredibly strong convictions, including convictions on our side. In some of the first roundtables in the Adirondacks we sought to bring together conservation groups, logging interests, snowmobilers, hunters, fishermen, local politicians and people from agencies. We reviewed profiles of suggested participants to identify those most likely to engage in the spirit of give-and-take, and to weed out some who might be too contentious. There were some truly wonderful, committed people, particularly on the conservation side, that were just too passionate to have the kind of discussion you need to have. I can sit there and think whatever I want about what someone else is saying, but if we’re going to find common ground I can’t jump up on the table and shout and call people names.

If the first milestone of the Adirondack experiment was the establishment of the Forest Preserve, followed many decades later by the experiment in bioregional planning embodied in the Adirondack Park Agency Act, what will it take to envision and then purposely design what Brian Mann of North Country Public Radio calls “Adirondack 3.0″, the next stage of the Great Experiment? Let’s make a film, gather the voices, and find out!

Adirondack Futures

The Common Ground Alliance of the Adirondacks is hosting an interactive forum on the future of the Adirondacks. More than 100 attendees are expected to participate in a visioning exercise led by local businessmen and scenario experts Dave Mason and Jim Herman. The Adirondack Almanack reported:

Mason and Herman are the entrepreneurial team that brought affordable broadband telecommunications to Keene and Keene Valley. “We hope to stimulate people to think more strategically about the difficult and complex issues facing the Park”, Mason said. “We want people to think hard about what they want the Park to become in the future.” “Scenarios are a great way to expand the scope of ideas under consideration and improve the conversation” according to Jim Herman.

To read the full article, link to “Envisioning a Future for the Adirondack Park” in the Adirondack Almanack.

“Voices” is “an ambitious work”

Jerry McGovern of the Plattsburgh Press Republican wrote a review of The Great Experiment in Conservation in Volume 16 of the Adirondack Journal of Environmental Studies. Describing the book as “an ambitious work,” McGovern goes on to write:

That it was attempted is wonderful. That it succeeds is a gift to readers now and well into the future. Consider the problem facing editors putting together “Voices from the Adirondack Park”. That the voices should be experts is obvious, but experts in what? Environmental science? Legislative and political history? Public policy? Corporate stewardship? What should readers learn about conservation in the Adirondacks, and from whom should they learn?

He concludes his review with:

The Great Experiment provides many facets of a complex area: more than 100 peaks, 2800 lakes, a tangled legislative and public policy history, and about 130,000 year round residents. Experiment gathers those elements in a rich collection of intelligence and scholarship. The book is a tremendous contribution to Adirondack scholarship, intelligently describing the past and present, providing direction for the future.

Our challenge now is to produce a PBS documentary that lives up to this book review. The editors and executive producers — Jon Erickson, Bill Porter, and Ross Whaley — are teaming up with Mountain Lake PBS producer Colin Powers and multiple Emmy-award winning producer Vic Guadagno from Bright Blue EcoMedia to tell the Adirondack story through film … what is and what could be.

To read the full AJES review, link to:
http://www.ajes.org/v16/mcgovern2010.php

Development group asks: Is it time to end the Adirondack Park “Experiment”?

In a Feb. 26th article in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, Ernest Hohmeyer of the Adirondack Economic Development Corp. asks whether its time to end the Great Experiment. Hohmeyer starts the article with:

In the book “The Great Experiment in Conservation: Voices from the Adirondack Park” edited by William F. Porter, Ross Whaley and Jon D. Erickson, a compilation of various individuals provide their views on conservation history and land preservation in the Adirondack Park.

As recently as this past fall, Brian Mann on his NCPR blog entitled “Yes, Some Adirondack Park Agency Commissioners Should Be Elected” talks about how this strategy would provide the opportunity for groups to “articulate their own vision” and behind this debate of electing APA commissioners are “some good ideas for reforming the APA and making it even more ambitious and idealistic experiment in Park management.”

He goes on to ask:

Should we look at New Models? Is it time to end this rather long “experiment?” Is it time to go back and analyze the hypotheses (challenges, threats and opportunities) that brought about the “park” in the first place? Should we examine the data and review what has worked and what has not?

Great questions. Let’s ask these through the PBS film project. This is part 2 of a three part series in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. Links to the full articles: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

The Origins of the Adirondack Park: A Footnote

Tony Hall of the Lake George Mirror, son of Robert Hall who was on the original Temporary Study Commission on the Future of the Adirondacks, wrote a January 20th editorial that provides more illumination around the politics during the formative years of the Adirondack Park Agency Act. Building on one of the themes of The Great Experiment, he paraphrases Ross Whaley in stating the “alignment of political forces that created the Adirondack Park Agency was unprecedented and temporary.” The editorial goes on to say:

What follows might be described as a footnote to Whaley’s argument that the passage of the Adirondack Park Agency bill, far from being inevitable, was the product of a conjunction of power (abetted by the legal, intellectual and political skills of commission members Dick Lawrence, Peter Paine, Jr. and others ) unlikely to be found in one place at one time again.

To read Tony’s full editorial, link to the Lake George Mirror here.