The New York state Department of Environmental Conservation held a public meeting this week to provide an overview of the creation of a Visitor Use Management Plan being developed for the High Peaks and the Kaaterskill Clove area of the Catskills.
The New York Department of Environmental Conservation is creating a Visitor Use Management plan to address impacts on the Forest Preserves due to “the proliferation and expansion of user-created, informal trails on formerly trailless” areas.
The DEC is working with Otak, Inc., which specializes in visitor use planning and management, to create a plan for the Adirondack High Peaks and Catskills.
The agency held a public meeting in Saranac Lake this week to provide foundational information and increase public understanding of the goals and timeline, and how the project will be applied in the High Peaks. Ross Strategic Senior Associate Susan Hayman is working with Otak on the DEC project.
“It's very easy and I would do it too in a place that I love to jump in and say fix this trail or put this new parking lot here or whatever that might be. And what you'll find tonight is we're going to be asking well why would that be? So what would that do? How would that enhance or change or improve the visitor experience or the visitor safety?”
DEC Forest Preserve Management Program Planning Section Chief and Adirondack Coordinator Josh Clague says the management plan will create sustainable management strategies for the Forest Preserve areas.
“We've been talking about Visitor Use Management or VUM for a long time, but this project is the first time we've actually launched one. And the High Peaks is the perfect place to do this. And we're actually running a concurrent project down in the Catskills too. This project is being funded by our Environmental Protection Fund. And the reason why we brought on Otak is because this is the first time DEC has attempted to do a true Visitor Use Management project and it's something different for us. It represents a little bit of a paradigm shift for our program for the department and we felt like it was really good to get outside help to help us navigate this process.”
Clague added that there are similar elements to the DEC’s Unit Management Plan process and public input will be critical to the development of the Visitor Use management Plan.
“It's a little bit different. You know, being our first time we're excited, I'm excited about doing this differently and about what it could mean for us and your participation in this process is critical to it. We're here to collect some foundational information that we'd like to call it. Your ideas about, and thoughts, on what exists on the ground today, but also about what your desired conditions are for the experience and the safety elements of recreation in the High Peaks wilderness, specifically the central area of the High Peaks wilderness.”
Otak consultant Abby Larkin explained that the Visitor Use Management plan will be based on a framework created by the Interagency Visitor Use Management Council, which represents federal agencies managing public lands.
“This framework is a tool and it is scalable and it can be tailored. So we are going to tailor this framework to be specific to this project area’s spatial extent, the types of visitor use levels and activities and project areas of focus, which are the character and quality of the visitor experience, the social conditions and public safety concerns. The first step is to establish desired conditions. What do we want this place to be like? What kind of experience do we want this place to provide? And then that is the foundation for everything else that will we'll do in this project and will inform future decisions that DEC will make.”
The DEC also held a meeting this week in Hunter, New York to provide an overview of the project for the Catskill region.
