Blue Line Tour, September 2008

PrimalNature.org

Blue Line Tour, September 2008 :

General Observations from a Bike Ride around Adirondack Park

John Davis

Conservation Director, Adirondack Council

Connections southeast, through the Southern Lake Champlain Valley, seem sturdiest in the Tongue Range to Black Range to Bald Mountain and South Bay to Poultney River area. Other SLCV routes are possible but present many obstacles. A bear trying to go west south of Lake George, for instance, would have to navigate the narrow green space between the cities of Lake George and Glens Falls (including skirting around increasingly developed Glen Lake) and cross both Interstate 87 and Route 9. Nature Conservancy studies here may soon point to the surest connections and tell us to what extent Lakes George and Champlain serve as barriers to the movement of wide-ranging species. Anecdotal reports do tell of large species crossing large water bodies (including Moose swimming Lake Champlain).

Split Rock Wildway, the start and end in this particular Blue Line tour, continues to stand out as a promising potential, if not actual, wildlife corridor linking Lake Champlain and its valley with the Adirondack foothills and mountains to the west. We have recorded most of the region’s charismatic wide-ranging species (including Black Bear, Bobcat, Fisher, River Otter, Mink, Gray Fox, Osprey, Bald Eagle, Wood Duck, Hooded Merganser, Timber Rattlesnake, Brook Trout, Monarch …) living in or traveling through the Wildway. Connections eastward into Vermont are more challenging. Lake Champlain is as little as a mile wide east of Split Rock Wild Forest, but the Vermont side of the Champlain Valley is heavily domesticated. Riparian forests along Otter, Little Otter, and Lewis Creeks might afford forest creatures safe passage from forested ridges of the foothills of the Green Mountains. Warming winters making lake ice less reliable is another concern for wildlife here.

For the most part, the proposed Park Expansion and Transition Zone boundaries presented in the state’s 1990 Adirondack Park Open Space Protection Plan Map – inspired by and drawing heavily from the Adirondack Council’s 2020 VISION reports – make good sense. George Davis, Peter Berle, and colleagues were well ahead of their time, anticipating the need for habitat connections extending from within the Adirondack Park to wild areas outside the Park. Davis et al. essentially began the delineation of wildlife habitat connectivity zones (wildlife corridors, or wildways) from the northwest Adirondacks toward Ontario’s Algonquin Park, from the western Adirondacks to Tug Hill Plateau, and from the southeast Adirondacks to Vermont’s Green Mountains. Their mapped expansions were very preliminary but sound. Much newer and more scientifically-grounded studies by Adirondack Nature Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Society, Wildlands Project, and Two Countries One Forest are confirming the importance of Black River Valley, Southern Lake Champlain Valley, Algonquin to Adirondack, and riparian connections.

From Essex to Dannemora, habitat connectivity from within to outside the Adirondack Park is badly compromised by roads, crops, logging, houses and other development. Some important connections remain, however, along waterways. Moreover, north of Plattsburgh, population density diminishes again and habitat values increase accordingly. Both the 1990 Open Space Protection Plan and the United Nations’ Biosphere Reserve program recognize this land east of the northernmost Park land as being important, and restoration opportunities should be explored here. At the very least, much of this land should help serve as a buffer for the Park.

The Highlands Forge (Warm Pond) area, west of Willsboro Bay, is lovely but the road has a regular smattering of houses, a few new, and forest to west is logged. Eastward to Lake Champlain, views are pretty but more pastoral than wild.

AuSable Chasm is sublime but sullied. This geological wonder really should be protected public land, not commercialized private land.

Peru area is dominated by apple orchards. It is surprising that the state’s 1990 Open Space Protection Plan proposed expanding the Blue Line here. Higher priority Park additions include State Forest and surrounds west of Schuyler Falls.

Sprawl near Peru is happening more in woods than in fields. Farmland here could buffer northeastern Park.

Saranac River near Saranac village looks floatable still now in early September, given all the rain earlier this summer. From Route 3 along the river near Saranac, the views south and east show well the wooded dome of the Adirondack landscape.

The excess of roads in the northeastern Adirondack Park not only badly fragments wildlife habitat but also makes navigation tricky. Rural roads here and throughout the Park get further developed for houses except where fronted by public land or land protected by easement. Where roads go, sprawl follows.

The Blue Line very roughly bounds the Adirondack uplift – the wooded dome – but some places the border is generous, more places it’s stingy. In some places suggested by the 1990 Open Space Protection Plan, in more places not, whole landscape protection really would require expanding the Park to take in more of the forested uplift.

The Chazy River seems intact along Alder Bend Road, which road is vulnerable to development because the limited Forest Preserve land here generally does not front the road. Rock through which the Chazy flows is very different from most of what we see in the Park; looks like water-sculpted sandstone. Adjacent woods seem healthy where not recently cut and appear to include River Elm.

Land along Rt.190, north of the Blue Line and east of Ellenburg, is largely agricultural, but a fair amount of forest remains. West of Ellenburg, the land is compromised by cows, corn, and turbines. Wind turbines now dominate many of the views along Route 54. Most of these are in agricultural settings, but some have been put into woods, where fragmentation concerns are greater.

Outside of the Park to the north, lands have generally been taken for agriculture and houses, with wind turbines a growing part of the infrastructure. The best chances for connectivity from inside the Park northward out of the Park are probably along river corridors, most of which do retain at least narrow bands of trees. Broadening these riparian buffers is a high priority.

Northwest out of the Park, Adirondack to Algonquin (A2A) connections seem promising, especially where Jadwin State Forest nearly links the Park with Fort Drum, which apparently retains much good habitat despite military operations. Jadwin is one of the many state forests not far outside the Blue Line that ideally would be added to an expanded Adirondack Park; but at this late date, Park expansions would be socially and politically difficult to achieve. Still, conservationists should try to ensure that management of Jadwin State Forest protects habitat connectivity and that expansion of Fort Drum does not jeopardize forested connections.

Connections westward to the Tug Hill Plateau offer great potential, given the Plateau’s expansive forests, ample waters, and relatively low human population; but active restoration may be needed in parts of the Black River Valley, which has been largely converted to agriculture and housing development. As the Open Space Protection Plan foresaw and Adirondack Nature Conservancy has confirmed, westward connections may be most promising west of the Oswegatchie River in the north (blending into the A2A connection) and west of the Upper Black River in the south. In both these areas, State Forests can serve as stepping stones for wildlife dispersal. Encouragingly, ANC’s recent modeling seems to find the most connectivity in a broad arc westward from the Oswegatchie back-country that the Council long ago proposed as a Bob Marshall Great Wilderness and into the northern Tug Hill Plateau.

South out of the Park, connections seem generally dubious due to heavy development in the Mohawk Valley. However, the southwest and south-central Adirondacks have some remote country, and Park protections might feasibly be extended south of the Blue Line in some places. Both the Champlain-Adirondack Biosphere Reserve and the OSPP’s proposed Transition Zone do include lands south of the Blue Line, to buffer the Park. Restoring connections between the Adirondack and Catskill Parks would require considerable time, resources, and political will, perhaps focusing on reforesting broad riparian areas (as along Schoharie Creek draining north into Mohawk River).

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