Several environmental groups have submitted a formal request to the Adirondack Park Agency to measure and protect remoteness in the Adirondacks.
Adirondack Council spokesman John Sheehan says remoteness is basically the distance from the nearest road or snowmobile trail.
“Both of those have impacts on wildlife and ecology. But they also have impact on how a human being reacts to their surroundings and whether they can hear traffic and motors or whether they’re in a place where it is peaceful and remote. Distance, ability to be free from noise from other places, not seeing a lot of indications of human impact on the landscape, all have an impact on remoteness.”
Adirondack Wilderness Advocates initiated the remote measurement proposal, which was also submitted by Adirondack Wild, the Adirondack Council and the Rewilding Institute. Adirondack Wilderness Advocates Board Chair and co-founder Pete Nelson says data and objective information is needed to make the best decisions to protect the Adirondacks.
“Remoteness really has two pieces. There is a sense of remoteness referred to specifically in the management documents for the Park. But there’s a second part to remoteness: the actual physical remoteness which affects the biology, the ecology of wilderness actually being wild. So that second piece of remoteness, we want to see objective measures so that the state and stakeholders can make smarter decisions about the kinds of management actions that might affect remoteness.”
Nelson says his wilderness group used GIS, and within a couple hours created a map showing all the land that qualifies under a remoteness definition.
“The distance from a road, 3 miles, is something that’s been used in remoteness calculations at the federal level. And we know that wildlife are affected by distance from a road. We know that vectors for invasive species can be affected and measured by their relationship to a road. So distance from roads, distance from trails, that’s one thing. Another one is road density per acreage. Both of those things have been used in science and data across the country.”
Nelson notes that Adirondack Wilderness Advocates found, based on their GIS measurement, that less than 5% of Adirondack land is more than 3 miles from a road and could be considered remote.
“We can use effective management policies to protect those remote pieces and even expand them, depending on what management actions might be taken to reroute roads or close them or move trails.”
The environmental groups say their proposal is consistent with the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan’s definition of remoteness. Sheehan says they are trying to call attention to a responsibility the state has failed to act upon.
“Part of what we’re asking them to do is take a look at amendments to the state land master plan as they look at how they’re managing the forest preserve in the future, to take this into account. And as they’re deciding what to do to manage the most remote areas of the park to try and preserve the qualities of those places at least as they are now. The law already requires them to measure this, but they really haven’t been doing that.”
The Adirondack Park Agency has not yet responded to a request for comment.