Breaking: Moratorium on land purchases for the Adirondack Forest Preserve; could affect Finch Pruyn and Follensby

Governor David Paterson’s budget would stop new spending on land purchases in the Adirondack Park for the next year.

According to the budget plan issued today, “moratorium on forest preserve and open space land acquisition” would continue through 2012.

Money from a sharply reduced environmental protection fund would instead be spent on stewardship, park revitalization, and farmland protection.

This is a move that local government leaders and the region’s Assembly and state Senate representatives have called for for years.

The news comes at a time when the Adirondack Nature Conservancy is trying to orchestrate the state’s purchase of tens of thousands of acres of former Finch, Pruyn land.

In the past, the Conservancy’s executive director, Mike Carr, has acknowledged that servicing their debt load on the project is prohibitive.

It’s unclear at this hour how this delay would affect that project, or the acquisition of Follsenby Pond near Tupper Lake.

We’ll update this story as more information becomes available.