The Adirondack Park Agency welcomed its newest board member at its latest meeting this week. The APA also heard updates on renewable energy goals and efforts to manage the increase in hiker traffic in the Adirondacks.
The APA board meeting on Thursday was historic. The board welcomed its newest member– Benita Law-Diao, the first Black person to serve on the APA board. Law-Diao thanked Governor Kathy Hochul for her appointment and said her goal is to protect and promote the park.
“We’re so lucky to have 6 million acres. Just to think our state set aside 6 million acres,” Law-Diao said. “I really want to take care of it and preserve and teach people about it and encourage other places to do the same thing.”
Law-Diao is a trained nutritionist, working for the state health department for decades. In a public comment, Aaron Mair from the Adirondack Council said her appointment to the board should be celebrated for a number of reasons.
“In a year where women are facing many challenges in our country, this is a significant point in history and this is a dot above an ‘i’ that needed to be dotted,” said Mair.
While there was no big action taken at Thursday’s APA meeting, the board was briefed on some ongoing efforts in the park.
The first was about renewable energy. Jen Manierre from NYSERDA, the New York Energy Research and Development Authority, briefed the board on the state’s renewable energy goals.
“70% renewable electricity by the year 2030 and 100% emissions-free grid by the year 2040,” Manierre said. “Those years are not very far away at this point. We have a lot of work to do, we’re getting there, though.”
NYSERDA is helping the state reach those goals by funding both large-scale and smaller, community solar projects. There’s a 1,700-acre solar farm in Fort Covington in Franklin County and another large-scale project in Canton. There are also smaller community solar farms in Saranac Lake and Ticonderoga.
The Adirondack Park Agency board was also briefed on Thursday about visitor management. Right now, the DEC is looking to hire an outside company to manage the large number of people to hike and camp in the High Peaks. The DEC’s Josh Clague said the state wants to understand what he described as the social carrying capacity of the region.
“We really do want to get a handle on just the numbers, really– like when, times of day, times of week, where they’re going, at all the trailheads and all the points of interest to get a very robust number there,” said Clague.
That request for proposals for a visitor use management plan in the Adirondack High Peaks is open until mid-August.
Meanwhile, agencies in the park have already been studying how visitors have been impacting the park and its ecosystem.
“So we know recreation is increasing, we know that there are going to be impacts to the ecosystem, so this drives the question– what’s actually going on in the system,” said Natasha Karniski-Keglovits, a researcher with SUNY ESF.
To answer that question, SUNY ESF has been collecting data from around the park for years. That data is then analyzed and used to inform its calls an ecological scorecard. SUNY ESF looks at factors like water quality, soil erosion, and the presence of animals like loons, earthworms and songbirds.
Karniski-Keglovits explained to the board that they collect data at a point of interest, like a lean-to and then also sample random spots around that point. That helps determine what, if anything, is impacting the area.
“Are we seeing impacts from recreation or is things like, we just had a dry year, or there’s deer that are just going crazy and eating all the vegetation," Karniski-Keglovits explained.
"So if you’re seeing a lot of impacts close to this point of interest, but not 100 meters away, then that tells you that there’s something’s driving it that’s at that point of interest, that could be recreation.”
Karniski-Keglovits described the ecological scorecard project as the link between monitoring and management in the park. It’s one of a number of data sets the APA uses to manage the 6 million-acre park.
