Adirondack Wild

10/06/2026

The Trump Administration has proposed to eliminate the Roadless Rule protective of nearly 60 million acres of federal forests. Comments to the U.S. Forest Service must be received by Tuesday, October 6 at the following link: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/FS-2025-0001-223869

Use any or all of the following talking points, but please also speak in your own words about the importance of roadless areas.
• I oppose rescinding the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. It has helped protect roadless areas, and adjacent Wilderness areas, on national forests for 25 years.
• If anything is done with the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, it should be strengthened to eliminate logging and roadbuilding loopholes and provide better protection to roadless areas and adjacent Wilderness areas.
• Roads fragment wildlife habitat. Existing roadless areas provide habitat for many threatened and endangered native species. Roadless areas also provide important migration corridors.
• Roads threaten high-quality streams and rivers. Dirt and sediment that runs off roads impairs habitat for fish and aquatic wildlife, and roads in steep, rugged country increase the risk of landslides that suffocate streams and rivers with mounds of mud.
• More roads will result in more human-caused fires in the backcountry. Research shows that more than 60 percent of human-caused fires on national forests in the Lower 48 states are ignited within 1/8-mile of the nearest road, and 95 percent are ignited within 1/2-mile.
• Roadless areas provide for recreation, like camping, hiking and backpacking, hunting and angling, wildlife viewing and photography, and other activities. Large sections of the Continental Divide, Pacific Crest, and Appalachian National Scenic trails cross protected roadless areas.
The Forest Service already has a huge road system—stretching 380,000 miles, which is longer than the country’s highways—with an estimated maintenance backlog of over $8.6 billion.

10/04/2026

https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2026/10/paul-schaefer-francis-peace-prayer/

Like St. Francis Paul Schaefer believed that spirit inhabited all of us, all creatures, the world, sunsets, sunrises, woods, waters, and wildlife included.

09/27/2026

The DEC's Forest Preserve Advisory Committee was established in 1980 to advise DEC about Forest Preserve management challenges. The committee meets three times a year. We met this week at the Hudson River Recreation Area, 5500 acres running for miles along the Hudson River in towns of Luzerne and Warrensburg, including River Road. This is a complex area of Forest Preserve to manage because of multiple uses during warmer months involving motorized traffic on a narrow dirt road, tubers, canoers and kayakers coming off the river, and campers traveling in and setting up camp at designated camping sites. Bicycling and horse riding are also popular here. Parking areas are limited. The field visit usefully discussed DEC's public safety, access, and natural resource protection challenges on site, and ideas for better stewardship. Thank you, DEC resource managers and forest rangers, for sharing information and time with us.

09/23/2026

As friends and I climbed to the Mt. Adams firetower on a glorious Sept. day yesterday,and looked north at the serenity of Mts Marcy, Colden, and Algonquin, I thought of how Wilderness pioneers Bob Marshall and Paul Schaefer looked from Mt. Marcy's summit back towards Mt. Adams in 1932 and saw nothing but smoke - because the area around Mt Adams had been commercially clearcut (it was not in the Forest Preserve then) and all the dried out slash had ignited into a large wildfire. Thanks to all who have restored and maintain the Mt. Adams trail and firetower.

09/13/2026

It was fun and a great privilege to visit with Newcomb's Historical Museum (what a fine museum) and its many supporters during T.R. (Teddy Roosevelt) weekend. Thanks for the opportunity it gave me and Adirondack Wild to share some of our conservation heritage, stories, and their relevance today.

09/04/2026

https://www.timesunion.com/art/article/west-hill-community-center-murals-unveiled-22414746.php

In addition to their inspired Albany leadership roles, recognized on this mural, both Brother Yusuf Burgess (Abdul-Wasi) and Dr. Alice Green were also members of and devoted to the Adirondack community, helping young and elder to discuss and confront racial prejudices, unwind and unplug, write, and embrace ed (ucational)-ventures in Adirondack woods and on its waters. Below, Yusuf leads a camping and service "edventure" near the Hudson River in Luzerne

09/01/2026

And this life lesson from Wendell Berry touches each of us in our own way and place:

“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
Wendell Berry - from The Peace of Wild Things And Other Poems (Penguin, 2018).

09/01/2026

Someone most rooted to the American soil, regenerating, life-giving American farm, and to the lands and all communities of interdependent life and living, poet and farmer Wendell Berry, has died. But his call to all of us to care for the earth as if we intended to pass this earth on to generations we will never know does not die. Mysteriously, Wendell Berry lives on. His message of courageous care and love for the land and its people, and the larger community of life is the resistance.

08/25/2026

Thanks to Scott Ireland of the Adirondack Lakes Alliance for hosting a recent roundtable discussion at the lovely Schroon Lake Library. Among the topics, Scott introduced us to “Big Wakes, Small Impacts” a new, spread-the-word awareness and outreach effort to educate wake boat and other boat operators about negative impacts of large wakes on the physical, ecological, and recreational environments of Adk lakes - and guidelines for markedly reducing those impacts. Go to www.wsfpll.org for more information. Evidence on Schroon Lake suggests that the campaign has been successful. Thanks, Scott, and Schroon Lake Library for a fine meeting.