wonderful... another 14,000 acres off the tax rolls.
Posted on 09/18/2008 3:21:07 PM PDT by neverdem
A 14,600-acre piece of the Adirondacks long prized by environmentalists for its forests and wetlands, including a pond where Ralph Waldo Emerson led a “philosophers’ camp,” was purchased on Thursday by a preservation group for $16 million, the group said.
The property, which had been owned by a Vermont family for 56 years, will not immediately be open to the public because of leases for recreational hunting and fishing that will last several more years. But the group, the Nature Conservancy, said the purchase meant that the land would be protected and ultimately added to the Adirondack Forest Preserve in Adirondack Park.
“This is one for the history books,” said Michael T. Carr, executive director of the Adirondack chapter of the Nature Conservancy. “We’re redrawing the conservation map of the Adirondacks.”
The property, southwest of Lake Placid and on the boundary of the High Peaks Wilderness Area, was until Thursday among more than 2.6 million acres of unprotected privately owned land in the six-million-acre Adirondack Park.
Roughly the size of Vermont, the park includes 103 towns and villages and has an estimated year-round population of 131,000 residents, said Keith McKeever, a spokesman for the Adirondack Park Agency.
The land bought on Thursday includes Follensby Pond, the site of a famous 1858 gathering known as the Philosophers’ Camp, where Emerson and other Boston-area intellectuals spent a month fishing, hunting, painting and writing. Among those joining Emerson were the painter William James Stillman, the poet James Russell Lowell and the scientist Louis Agassiz.
The gathering took place at a time when Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and others were redefining attitudes...
--snip--
“It’s so heartening to me that that momentum continues in New York State,” he said, “even while some of the rest of the country is back to chanting, ‘Drill, Baby, Drill.’”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Not everyone in this country can afford to keep every little bit of it a museum.
A new training camp for the Nazi thugs in EarthFirst.
Less than $1100 per acre? Sounds like a no bid sale.
I have donated to the Nature Conservancy for years. They tend to be the less aggressive of many “Earth First” groups. I like the idea of preserving land for varied uses. I’ve been to many of their preserves and they seem to be run with man’s use as part of the solution. Lately, it seems that they are slowly being taken over by earth zealots. I saw this with the Audubon Society and other organizations in the 70’s and eventually quit them. Do others have similar experiences?
“I have donated to the Nature Conservancy for years. They tend to be the less aggressive of many “Earth First” groups”
I used to donate to them also until I read some stories about the antics of the leadership.
wonderful... another 14,000 acres off the tax rolls.
What makes privately owned land "unprotected"? And what gives some bureaucrat desk jockey or environmentalist tree smoocher--well-meaning or not--the knowledge and interest to "protect" my land better than I will?
Some of the most desolate real estate this side of the Rockies.
Sandy trees and mice. I might have mentioned it before.
NC buys land with private donations (mine included).
It's still privately owned, and what NC choses to with the land is (mostly) not develop it.
AFAIK, they don't try to tell other land owners what to do with the land they own.
I live in Bush Alaska, talk about desolate, but have a home in Newcomb, NY, the geographic center of the Adirondack PARK. If I’m not mistaken, The Nature Conservancy also has the right to Finch Pruyn property, some 150,000 acres. Finch Pruyn is a paper company in Glens Falls, NY. If this land is taken off the tax rolls it would be catastrophic to the residents.
The Nature Conservancy, National Wildlife Foundation(I have a certified backyard and still conduct lectures on backyard habitats in the urban environment), Audobon...there is even a group out there that masquerades as a conservative environmental group. Everything sounds real good until you dig just slightly below the surface.
Then there are people like here. We respect nature in all its wonders, powers, and dangers. We realize wildlife is not about all nicey, nice. It is brutal, hostile, and is about survival. We believe in stewardship, not consensus hype. We look to provable causation of the observed.
There are many older environmental leaders that leave these organizations. Many because they too are fed up with the hype. I know I am strongly considering dropping my NWF stewardship responsibilities as a direct result of the Globull warming stance of the NWF. I still believe and think like I did when I endeavored in their original cause, but they have moved away from me. For now I simply have decided to drop “climate change” from my lecture position. I neither discuss it pro/con.
If NC or others want to buy land that’s fine. But referring to land as “unprotected” because neither the government nor an environmental group (such as NC) owns it is just using language to stack the deck against those who actually own the land.
I think the Nature Group bans hunting on their land.
I have donated to the Nature Conservancy for years. They tend to be the less aggressive of many “Earth First” groups. I like the idea of preserving land for varied uses. I’ve been to many of their preserves and they seem to be run with man’s use as part of the solution. Lately, it seems that they are slowly being taken over by earth zealots. I saw this with the Audubon Society and other organizations in the 70’s and eventually quit them. Do others have similar experiences?
Newcomb? Beautiful Essex County. I've spent some time at Indian Lake.
Me too; the Nature Conservancy, and groups like them, are a world of difference from Greenpeace and other thug-groups. They put their money where there mouth is and, by purchasing land to preserve, they are not forcing taxpayers and citizens to pay for and abide by onerous regulations. The Nature Conservancy is exactly the sort of entity that conservatives of the Teddy Roosevelt bent can be comfortable supporting.
Im pretty sure they just mean it was Federally unprotected land. As in, not a public park or nature reserve.
“It’s in the middle of nowhere.
Some of the most desolate real estate this side of the Rockies. “
***
Not so.
It abuts the principal east-west highway thru the Adirondacks
... and hosts part of the trail up Mt. Ampersand -
from which stretches one of the very loveliest all-around views.
Climb it and see!
Most residents loathe the state’s Adirondack Park Agency,
which wields Draconian powers over ALL property within the park’s perimeter -
not just the half that is state-owned.
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