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DEC Volunteer Sportsman Educators Have Banner Season

December 18th, 2012 · No Comments · Adirondack News

NYSDEC LogoSportsman Education Instructors had a successful year teaching more than 125 classes in the eight counties administered by New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Region 5, Regional Director Robert Stegemann announced today.

In response to an overwhelming demand for classes, the 263 volunteer instructors in DEC Region 5 held classes from spring through mid-October, providing training to more than 6,000 enrollees.

“Governor Cuomo recognizes that hunting and trapping are valuable recreational activities, wildlife management tools and important parts of the cultural heritage of New Yorkers,” said Director Stegemann. “These activities provide an important opportunity for many New Yorkers to connect with nature. DEC appreciates the efforts of all the instructors, apprentices, volunteers, sportsman organizations and schools that together helped thousands of young people.”

All first-time hunters, bow hunters and trappers must pass one or more sportsman education courses before they can obtain a hunting or trapping license in New York State. Sportsman Education Courses develop skills and attitudes which help students to be better hunters. They also learn to respect people, wildlife, and nature; respect public and private property; practice safe and ethical behavior; appreciate man as a part of nature; support conservation efforts and be examples of responsible hunting and trapping.

Instructors provided a total of eight weeks of hunter education classes and two weeks of bow hunter education classes at two DEC Environmental Education Camps: Colby and Pack Forest. In addition, instruction was provided at the Becoming an Outdoors Woman Program fall workshop held in Lake George.

Many area sportsman clubs hosts hunter education programs at their facilities free of charge and their members serve as instructors, apprentices and volunteers. They teach and demonstrate how to understand and appreciate the responsibilities of ethical hunting and trapping.

A number of area school districts allowed hunter education programs in their schools and some created after school programs based around the courses. DEC and hunter education instructors continue to seek out and work with additional schools that can host the classes or make them part of a school program.

DEC Environmental Conservation Officers (ECOs) participate in the majority of the classes, teaching the rules and regulations for hunting and trapping. Some of the officers teach entire classes when their schedules allow.

ECOs also provided a trapper education class for DEC staff from more than eight program that work with trappers in some aspect. DEC staff greatly benefited from this training and gained a better understanding of the sport, its laws and regulations and its importance to the ecology and economy of New York State.

Instructors in DEC Region 5 also assisted in recruiting and training new instructors. In 2012, 14 people became certified instructors, 32 apprentices continued to work towards their certification and 22 people applied to become instructors.

Another improvement to the program has been the increase in home study classes. The home study classes in both gun and bow hunting were designed to better reach military personnel on leave and students active in after-school programs. The classes allow students to complete part of the class online or in a workbook prior to receiving ‘hands on’ instruction in skills, equipment, responsibilities and ethics. This allows instructors to educate students in less time, while still ensuring the proper instruction of students.

DEC continues to seek more volunteer sportsman education instructors. Instructors must at be at least 18 years old, with a minimum of three years of experience in an outdoor-related field, be of good character, respected in their community, and communicate well with young people. Volunteers must commit to complete the training and apprenticeship, teach at least one class a year, and attend a refresher course every two years. Applications may be found on the DEC web site at: www.dec.ny.gov/docs/wildlife_pdf/sepia11.pdf

More information on the DEC Sportsman Education Program may be found at: http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/7860.html

If you are interested in signing up for a free sportsman education course, a list of the classes can be found at: http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/9191.html

Sportsman Education Facts

Hunter Education: Required before a person can obtain any hunting license (including hunting with a bow and arrow for small game). The course covers basic firearms handling and outdoor skills plus hunting techniques. The minimum course time is 10 hours. The minimum age for the course is 11 years. The minimum age for a hunting license is 12 years. All students under 16 years of age are required to bring a permission slip signed by a parent or legal guardian.

Bowhunter Education: Required to hunt deer and bear with a bow and arrow. The course teaches the things that make bow hunting a special challenge and helps to make a more successful hunter. The minimum course time is 8 hours and the minimum age for the course is 11 years. However, the minimum age for hunting big game with bow and arrow is 14 years.

Trapper Education: Required for all new trappers. Covers how to trap responsibly and catch target species, while avoiding unwanted species. Teaches students how to set traps, identify animals and habitats, and how to treat pelts to produce marketable furs. The minimum course time is 8 hours and there is no minimum age limit.

Waterfowl Education: This is a voluntary course that may be required for some special hunting areas. The course teaches the identification of ducks, geese, and other water birds on the wing. The minimum course time is 3 hours and there is no minimum age.

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Environmental Organizations Raise Alarm Over Plan to Allow Unlimited Clear-cutting Without Public Review

December 14th, 2012 · No Comments · Adirondack News

Park Agency Board & Public Would be Cut Out of Review of Clear-Cuts

Adirondack CouncilRAY BROOK, N.Y. – The Adirondack Park Agency is considering a plan to eliminate the requirement for a formal environmental review before the state grants permission to undertake major clear-cutting in the private forests of the Adirondack Park.

The damage done to the forests and waters of the Adirondack Park by widespread clear-cutting was the reason why the public voted to protect the park’s public forests via the NYS Constitution, declaring them to be “forever wild” in 1894. Private forests have been under the jurisdiction of the Adirondack Park Agency since 1971.

“The Adirondack Park is the first region of the United States where we learned what awful damage de-regulated clear-cutting can do,” said Diane W. Fish, Executive Director of the Adirondack Council. “Our forests, our water quality and wildlife all suffered. All of the park’s major rivers got muddy and slow. The Erie Canal and Hudson River were in danger of drying up.”

“Public notice of plans to clear-cut a forest would be eliminated under this proposal,” said Roger Downs, Director of Conservation for the Sierra Club, Atlantic Chapter. “That would make it impossible for the public to react before the trees start to fall. No one outside the agency will know until after the permit is issued. Once a staff member declares an application is „complete’ he or she will have only 10 days to issue a final clear-cutting permit. If the APA doesn’t act within 10 days, the applicant can demand automatic approval under the current rules.”(Section 809-6a)

“Worse yet, the new plan contains no restrictions on how many acres may be clear-cut under a fast-track permit,” Fish of the Council explained. “So it is possible that hundreds, or even thousands, of acres could be cut bare without public notice or participation.”

“If that were not bad enough, these permits would never expire,” she said. “Once a permit is issued, the landowner is free to clear-cut that parcel over and over again. There are no limits to allow for regrowth and no requirement for future site visits by agency staff.”

The Adirondack Park Agency Board of Commissioners is expected to vote on the fasttrack permit proposal at its January 10 meeting. The organizations urged the public to contact the agency and ask it to reject the plan.

Currently, timber companies and other landowners must get a permit from the Adirondack Park Agency for any clear-cut above 25 acres on non-wetlands. Clear-cutting is the practice of removing all of the trees from a parcel of land. An acre is about the size of a football field without the end zones.

In order to get that permit, current applicants must undergo a formal environmental review that includes public notice and public participation and approval by the Adirondack Park Agency’s Board of Commissioners. The new plan would eliminate those requirements by allowing agency staff to issue permits, without a vote by the board of commissioners.
This new fast-track approval process would apply even to lands where the state has purchased a conservation easement to ensure that the lands are managed responsibly and sustainably.

“Frankly, we are not persuaded that anyone really needs this expedited, general permit,” said Fish. “Over the past 20 years, timber companies have only requested permission for major clear-cuts from the park agency three times. All three permits were granted. All three resulted in numerous public complaints about abuse of the forest. People get mad about smaller ones too, much smaller than 25 acres.”

“If anything, that proves that the threshold for permits is too lax, and ought to be lower than 25 acres,” said Adrienne Esposito, Executive Director of Citizens’ Campaign for the Environment. “Large clear-cuts in the Adirondack Park tend to outrage the public. Issuing permits in secret won’t hide a landscape devoid of trees, covered only in stumps and mud and tire tracks. It won’t stop the mud and silt from drifting downstream, burying trout spawning beds along the way.”

“Perhaps clear-cutting is a tool that some timber companies favor to regenerate a certain species of tree,” said Fish. “But in places like the Adirondack Park, with such steep slopes and thin soils, it can do real damage when it is not tightly supervised. Going from a formal review to having staff issue fast-track permits is not tight supervision.”

Under the plan, park agency staff members could accept as adequate almost any forest management plan, including those overseen by the timber industry (Sustainable Forestry Initiative) rather than independent third parties (Forest Stewardship Council).

The Adirondack Council is a privately funded, not-for-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the wild character and ecological integrity of New York’s 9,300-square-mile Adirondack Park. Founded in 1975, the Council carries out its mission through research, education, advocacy and legal action. Council members live in all 50 United States.

Citizens Campaign for the Environment (CCE) was formed in 1985 by a small group of concerned citizens who recognized the need to provide public involvement to advance stronger environmental policy. Today, after 25 years as a not-for-profit, non-partisan advocacy organization, CCE has grown to an 80,000-member organization with offices in Farmingdale, NY, White Plains, NY, Albany, NY, Syracuse, NY, Buffalo, NY, and Hamden, CT. CCE continues to work to empower the public by providing members with opportunities to participate in the political process and thereby advance a strong environmental agenda.

The Sierra Club’s mission is to explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth; to practice and promote the responsible use of the earth’s ecosystems and resources; to educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment; and to use all lawful means to carry out these objectives.

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NY State Can Create a New Wilderness Area in Adirondack Park Spectacular as Grand Canyon, Yosemite & Minnesota Lakes

December 11th, 2012 · No Comments · Adirondack News

Proposed ‘Wild Rivers Wilderness’ is Last Location East of Rocky Mountains Where Dream of Wilderness w/More than 60 Miles of Wild Waterways Can be Realized

New Area Would Protect 72,000 Acres Rich in Wildlife, Wetlands & Whitewater Other Parcels Enlarge High Peaks Wilderness in North & Expand Snowmobiling in South NY State Can Create a New Wilderness Area in Adirondack Park Spectacular as Grand Canyon, Yosemite & Minnesota Lakes

Newcomb, NY – The Adirondack Park’s largest and most influential environmental organization is urging state officials to create a large, new Wild Rivers Wilderness Area here that would combine the grandeur and dramatic beauty of Yellowstone, with the waterfalls of Yosemite National Park and the interconnected lakes and ponds of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

Adirondack Council“This is an opportunity that will never come again,” said The Adirondack Council Acting Executive Director Diane W. Fish. “This land has been off-limits to the public since before the Civil War. It is located within a day’s drive of more than 70 million Americans and Canadians. It contains no homes and no communities. The roads on these parcels will revert to foot trails quite easily. We urge the state to protect these soon-to-be-acquired lands, lakes and rivers to safeguard wildlife habitat and water quality and from overuse and motorized traffic.”

Fish said the Adirondack Council sent a letter to state Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joe Martens, Thursday (December 6), calling for the creation of a vast, new Wild Rivers Wilderness Area, and a major expansion of the existing High Peaks Wilderness, when the state completes its purchase of 69,000 acres formerly owned by papermakers Finch, Pruyn & Co., of Glens Falls.

Wild Rivers Wilderness

“Our plan calls for a brand-new Wild Rivers Wilderness Area around the Essex Chain of Lakes, the Hudson River Gorge, Blue Ledges, and OK Slip Falls,” said Fish. “When purchased, these new parcels would be combined with existing sections of the Blue Mountain Lake Wild Forest and the Vanderwacker Mountain Wild Forest, as well as all of the existing Hudson Gorge Primitive Area, to create a stunningly beautiful paddlers paradise among the state’s tallest mountains. It would include 48 miles of wild rivers, plus nine interconnected lakes and ponds, as well as the Adirondack Park’s most majestic waterfall.

“More important are the rich variety of wildlife, the forests, wetlands, and fisheries this new Wilderness would protect,” Fish explained. “The foremost duty of the state, according to the State Land Master Plan, is to protect the rare natural resources on these lands from potential overuse, pollution, noise and invasive species that motorized traffic would bring. There are many ways to gain access to wild lands and waters without driving automobiles directly into the center of them. Creative solutions can be found.

“The Adirondack Park is the largest, intact deciduous forest in the world,” Fish said. “It is to oak, maple and beech forests what the Serengeti is to African grasslands, or what the Great Barrier Reef is to coral islands. We must be excellent stewards of these new public lands from the moment they come into our possession and plan carefully for their long-term health. They will return dividends in the future that we can barely comprehend today. There are seven billion people on this planet as of March 2012. Wild lands and waters are getting rarer every day.”

Ample Accommodation for Motorized Access & Community Development

Fish reminded the commissioner that more than 90,000 acres of former Finch lands had been protected from development by conservation agreements with new private owners, which allow motorized public access and sustainable harvesting. Those lands are near the lands being purchased for addition to the public Forest Preserve.

The Council is proposing that less than 50,000 acres of the former Finch lands become Wilderness. That would mean another 18,000-plus acres of former Finch lands being purchased for the Forest Preserve would be eligible for motorized access too. In addition, some former Finch lands were sold to the communities that hosted them. Some of those lands will be developed.

In sum, the Council’s proposal calls for only about one-third of Finch’s 161,000-acre former holdings to become Wilderness. Fish challenged Commissioner Martens to see this purchase as a part of a larger plan for the rational completion of the Adirondack Forest Preserve and sought to reassure him that designating an area as Wilderness will not prevent its use.

Keene and Lake Placid are surrounded by five major Wilderness areas (High Peaks, Sentinel Range, Dix Mountain, McKenzie Mountain and Giant Mountain), yet are among the park’s most prosperous communities.

Bringing the edge of the High Peaks Wilderness closer, and adding the Wild Rivers Wilderness nearby, will benefit the communities of Newcomb, North Hudson and Indian Lake for generations to come, she said.

High Peaks Wilderness Expansion

The Adirondack Council also proposed an expansion of the High Peaks Wilderness, which is by far the most popular and overused section of Forest Preserve in the Adirondack Park. The expansion would include the Boreas Ponds section of the Finch purchase, along with existing state lands not now managed as Wilderness.

Southern Parcels and Snowmobiles

In the southern Adirondacks, the Council is proposing an expansion of the Shaker Mountain Wild Forest in Benson by more than 2,000 acres, as well as an expansion of the existing Lake Desolation Wild Forest (Kayaderosseras Hills Wild Forest in 2020 VISION) east of Great Sacandaga Lake by adding the Thousand Acre Swamp. Both parcels are slated for state snowmobile trails on existing logging roads.

Other Finch Parcels

The Council’s letter to the commissioner contained recommendations on all 69,000 acres the state intends to acquire over the next five years from The Nature Conservancy. A copy of the letter and detailed maps of the areas described may be viewed at www.AdirondackCouncil.org.

Adirondack Park vs. Adirondack Forest Preserve

The Adirondack Park is a 9,300-square-mile (six-million-acre) preserve of public and private lands. Public lands make up about half of the park (2.7 million acres). Timberlands, private homes and 130 small communities make up the other half. Public and private lands are intermixed.

All state lands in the Adirondack Park are protected by a section of the State Constitution known as the Forever Wild Clause, which bans their lease, sale or development, as well as logging or destruction of public forests. These lands are known as Forest Preserve.

Not all public Forest Preserve is Wilderness. Less than half of the Forest Preserve – about one million acres – is managed as Wilderness, where no motorized or mechanized travel is allowed. These one million acres represent about 90 percent of all Wilderness areas remaining in the Northeast.

Council’s Plan Created in 1988

“We have been anticipating this opportunity for almost 25 years,” said Fish. “Back in 1988, we conducted the first comprehensive survey of the private Adirondack lands and recommended which lands the state should acquire (when they became available or from willing sellers) to complete the Adirondack Forest Preserve. The first three volumes of our 2020 VISION reports were completed by 1992, and became the backbone of the Adirondack portion of the NYS Open Space Conservation Plan. But our plans were sitting on a shelf until Finch, Pruyn & Co. sold its lands in 2007, and the Governor agreed to buy 69,000 acres of them in August.”

2020 VISION
The Wilderness protection plans collected in 2020 VISION: Volumes I & II are the work product of more than a decade of research by NYS Conservation Department Wildlife Biologist Greenleaf Chase; Plant Ecologist Dr. Edwin Ketchledge of the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry; Adirondack Park Agency Forest Preserve Specialist Clarence Petty; and, Harold A. Jerry, a State Senator and Executive Director of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s Temporary Study Commission on the Future of the Adirondack Park. This work was collected, illustrated and published by Adirondack Council Executive Director and professional planner George D. Davis, whose conservation planning efforts – including these – earned him the prestigious Genius Award from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Founded in 1975, the Adirondack Council is a privately funded, not-for-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the ecological integrity and wild character of the Adirondack Park. The Council carries out its mission through research, education, advocacy and legal action. Adirondack Council members live in all 50 United States.

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