The Architect: Nature Conservancy’s Mike Carr rewires Adirondack Park
Mike Carr (L) paddling with Brian Mann near Follensby Pond
Over the last century and a half, the Adirondack Park has seen a lot of outsized figures shaping its future, everyone from Teddy Roosevelt to Senator Ron Stafford.
But with the Park’s modern structure — the zoning map, the private land use plan, the Adirondack Park Agency — now arrived at a comfortable middle age, there had been a general sense that the era of big, history-making leaders was at an end.
Enter Mike Carr, executive director of the Adirondack Nature Conservancy. Under his guidance, a once obscure regional green group has moved to buy up and protect vast tracts of timberland once owned by major logging and paper companies.
Another big parcel, nearly 70,000 acres, will now be added to the forever wild forest preserve.
“Mike Carr was the brilliant architect of this plan, which stitched together the protection of a key resource in the Adirondacks, the heart of the Adirondacks,” said John Ernst, a conservationist who owns the Elk Lake property, which neighbors the Finch Pruyn lands, speaking at Sunday’s ceremony.
But the Finch, Pruyn deal, consummated over the weekend by Governor Andrew Cuomo to the tune of $47 million dollars, was only the latest installment in an effort that has literally redrawn the Park’s map, and rewired the debate over the Adirondacks’ future.
By permanently protecting vast acreages of timberland, lakes and shorelines, Carr’s group has gone a long way toward addressing the chief environmental risk that led to the formation of the APA: the vulnerability of the Park’s privately owned timberlands.
In launching the historic Finch Pruyn deal, Carr, who lives in Keene, convinced his organization to bite off a massive $100 loan.
He then led the organization as New York state descended into the Great Recession, and kept the project afloat during the Paterson years when interest in big North Country land deals evaporated.
It was more than risky. It was an effort which might have looked foolish if the stakes weren’t so high.
Even critics of these land deals — and there are many — have praised Carr for pioneering new ways of talking with community leaders, negotiating contracts that address community needs and provide important assets like snowmobile connector trails.
You might expect a massive preservation effort like this one to spark an equally massive backlash. Instead, it has co-existed with a new era of detente and dialogue.
Speaking on Sunday, Republican Assemblywoman Teresa Sayward gave the Nature Conservancy an 85% grade for its handling of the Finch Pruyn deal. Not bad coming from an elected official who would have preferred to see the project shelved.
One curious note in Sunday’s official signing ceremony was the fact that Carr himself didn’t speak, nor was his historic role acknowledged by Governor Cuomo, though two speakers described him as “the architect” of this deal.
It was a peculiar omission, but moments like that likely won’t matter much in the long history of the Park.
A century from now, when people talk about and debate the actions of the big players who shaped what happens inside the blue line in permanent ways, I suspect Carr’s name will be prominent on the list, up there with Bob Marshall and Verplanck Colvin.
Carr’s legacy isn’t complete. Indeed, he is still shepherding some big projects, one or two of them intensely controversial.
Tupper Lake is opposing his group’s effort to protect the Follensby Pond tract, which many environmentalists see as sacred ground, the place where Ralph Waldo Emerson went to set up his “philosopher’s camp.”
Will Mike Carr redraw that part of the Adirondack map too? Stay tuned.
Tags: adirondacks, economy, environment, land use
knuck, the larger loss for the town is the future tax base. It will be good for them in the short term but in the longer term this land will not appreciate like it would under other ownership and use. But that is what we have decided to do. So that burden will be pushed onto the rest of us that pay property tax in the Adirondacks. I can afford it since I have a good paying job outside the park but that is what is slowly changing the character of the park.
And the gain for the town is a wilderness that is likely to become increasingly rare in the future. According to the laws of supply and demand if the towns have an experience that is in low supply and there is some demand for it there is a chance to benefit from it.
Knuck, let’s hope that this is the case. For now they can just sit back and hope for the best because their options have expired.
Are the historical camps on Follensby Pond still standing? These buildings are very historically significant to our local history. Many prominent and famous people stayed at these camps. It would be nice to visit these places just like at John Browns Farm one day. This would make a great place for school field trips or any other kind educational types of visits for our youth and future generations.
Mike Carr is an exceptional leader. More, he is also a sensible man willing to listen to and work with a wide range of people, adjusting his and his organization’s goals as needed. Didn’t Carr and his excellent staff get agreement from all the contiguous local communities for this purchase Brian, before going ahead? That’s a big deal. And I imagine that, even at the national level of TNC there were some tense and terse times as they managed that debt load. Well done. Wonderful addition that will help protect countless species and give added strength to the health of the ecosystems we depend on for tourism and backcountry use. Thank you Mike and ALT TNC team.
Knuck, I think you summed up how I feel about this particular acquisition in a comment recently on the wetlands near Lake Champlain that were added to the FP. You were describing some other public lands in that area and you ended with “please don’t go there”. Here we are doing the opposite. Here is a comment from the DEC director recently where he is describing one of the more sensitive ecological parcels in the deal: ” “Martens said. “Also, it was a very attractive parcel from a public use point of view. So the quicker we can make that available for public use, the better.””
It is an interesting accident of history that the lands along the head of Lake Champlain are so “remote.” At one time route 87 was planned to go through Whitehall, Ticonderoga and north along Lake Champlain. As the story goes the millionaires along the western shore of Lake George connived to get the route moved further west to where it runs now. That stretch between Whitehall and Ti (and further north) is among my favorite drives anywhere. My comment was, of course, a bit tongue in cheek. People should take that drive if they’ve never done it.
Also of note, the Nature Conservancy bought some parcels in that wetland border area of Whitehall/Hampton/Benson VT many years ago and it is a great place to go float your boat, fish, or bird watch. It is a rich wildlife corridor between the north/south running lakes. Even Bigfoot has been seen over there.