After going to the APA/DEC presentation, couldn't get the question: "How much wilderness is enough?" out of my mind. After looking at the options for the Essex Chain Lakes classification, I was astounded that that entire area could have become wilderness. And, to be honest, the classification of primitive falls into this category for me for this argument as well since the limitations of wilderness are applied to the primitive classification.
It is not that I thought that there should be motor vehicle access and float planes or horses, but the idea that the area could become wilderness and it's usefulness as resource production disappear made me sad. I don't believe that resource sourcing is a "bad" thing that needs to be protected against. The expansion of wilderness areas in the park seems to be the result of a loss of resource related jobs that the park, which experiences high rates of poverty and a decline in permanent population. How much more wilderness land does the APA and DEC want? From the meeting, it seemed that they wanted wilderness classifications for the remaining tracts of land from the paper company.
And maybe this is why so many people in the park despise the two agencies. The agencies severely limit what people can do in the park and how they can do it, which chafes in a place that is supposed to be a place for adventure and for the people who live there, not the tourists. Why couldn't more of the park be wild forest and open to more types of human use? Snow mobiles, horses, overnight parties of 10, sustainable forestry, historic hunting camps, and summer camps should (I believe) be more easily accessed. I don't believe an area loses its beauty just because there are kids at camp on that lake. Nor does a horse or the winter use of snowmobiles offend my sense of what the outdoors should be. And these activities are being limited more and more.
You express a common opinion in the park very well--that land becoming wilderness ultimately has a negative effect on the economy, since it takes forests out of the lumber-harvesting business. It's worth noting, though, that it is largely the lumber companies themselves who are selling this land, knowing that it will no longer be available for lumber afterwards. It's not the state who is doing this on its own. What this seems to mean is that lumber and pulp production in the Adirondacks is no longer really economically viable. It's also a hugely debated point as to whether tourism or logging really provides more jobs and money for the park economy. The last data I saw on this (ADK Atlas) is that only 3% of the ADK economy has anything to do with logging.
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