This morning, the Adirondack Park Agency board approved Alternative 2B as the classification for the Boreas Ponds in the heart of the Adirondack Park. The vote was 8 to 1. More than 11,000 acres will be designated wilderness and over 9,000 acres as Wild Forest. New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Basil Seggos explains that his agency now begins the Unit Management Plans for the tracts.
“Once the APA makes the vote the package, the classification package itself, then goes to the governor for the governor’s signature. That’s how it works. It’s a nice process where APA makes its determination, the governor either agrees or disagrees with it, and then if he agrees with it then it comes back to us. That’s when we start the Unit Management Plan which is effectively we fit the appropriate recreation opportunities onto the project that are allowable by the classification. So that would begin, my target is to get the UMP process rolling this spring.”
New York State purchased the 20,543-acre Boreas Ponds tract from the Nature Conservancy in April 2016 for $14.5 million. The new classification creates a nearly 280,000-acre wilderness area in the Adirondack High Peaks, the third largest wilderness in the eastern U.S.
