How much is enough?

[montcalm]

Public land, that is.


I set out to figure this out a few months back. Surprisingly difficult, actually. It's also a bit difficult to figure out given that some lands are not necessarily public, but protected in some way... so that perhaps asks the even bigger question, what is the goal of these lands?


My goal, I guess, was to figure out what the percentage is, by area. But really I was curious: what is the ideal amount?

I can tell you, I don't even think we're close... I'll also say that there are some sources on the internet that, as far as I can tell, are completely wrong. I found one that claims NY is up to 30% public. That's laughable - show me the math, because I can't find more than half of that land.

And beyond that, how much is "protected" land and how much is land that is managed in some way or another?

Turns out the New York Natural Heritage program has been tracking this, and they even have an interactive online map.

Using GIS software one can import the data and measure the area. I won't list the number just yet, but you might be surprised at how little it is. And many of these lands are not public access, many are easements, but those still have some level of protection against development, although many have some level of resource management.

That really sparked my thinking as to how much land should "preserved" and how much land should be managed? I think our calculus still shows it's very much skewed toward management.

I was thinking if we broke the land into 3 categories, we might ideally want to try to balance:

- Resource Management i.e. mining, forestry, ect.
- Agriculture
- Conservation

We could say an ideal model might equally divide area between the three - but I also left out housing and urban development, but I don't think that needs an equal amount of land area. Let's say 10% of NY for easy numbers. That gives us 30% of each of the others.

We were at once almost 80% deforested, but not all of that land was used for agriculture - I'd like to work some estimates but I think, at best, 30% of NY's land is really suitable for Ag.

About 60% of NY forested now, but not all of those lands are managed by the state or large timber companies, most are in the hand of small, private owners - which makes sense why the state has a program like the 480a Forest Tax Law to try to utilize resources effectively, and hopefully sustainable from small private owners.

But are these effective systems? It seems to me, by this method, we have far too much land in limbo that is either not being actively conserved or is not being managed properly for its resources.

We know some large clubs have lands that are conserved, but history has shown that these lands are often used for resource management - and there's no doubt, the state almost forces one into that position via taxes (and then rewards via 480a for timber management).

So my questions are: How much land should be conserved? Should all of that land be publically accessible, or is conservation really the main goal? How can we more efficiently conserve lands that are currently not and should be (see something like the Riparian Opportunity Assessment)? Can we shape more effectively what lands are used for resource management and agriculture to meet our needs as a state, and to fund our economy?

[Bunchberry]

I don't know the answer to your question. These days I think the more important and more difficult question is how can we conserve the towns and villages inside of the Blue Line. To enjoy the space between the Blue Line these towns and villages are needed. They provide the people to run the stores and motels and businesses and services to make the idea of the Adirondack Park viable. Some homes in parts of the park are going too high for the locals to afford while others parts the park are depopulating.

That whole snow mobile connector trail being shot down really upset me. Just as much as the Boreas Ponds having a road to it.

[St.Regis]

I think you mean the New York Natural Heritage Program, not "National"

[montcalm]

Yeah - that was a typo.

At any rate, I think this is an issue that extends beyond the blue line(s). That's why I linked the map itself - it's pretty clear that most of our protected lands are concentrated in the Adirondacks. And again, that includes conservation easements, most of which are used for resource management.

I don't want to get bogged down in the Adirondack economy. That's mostly a function of the APA, but I'd also argue the Adirondacks really never had a good economy. Even when there was more logging and mining, I don't think the populations were all that large. Also, as we know, most all small farms that were there at the turn of 19th to 20th century have been abandoned - probably because they were not very productive.


You might notice I didn't tell you how much land was public, or how much was protected - but there is more protected land than public. I did mention it was less than 30% and that was probably more than double what it is... so you might be able to infer. I could give you an exact number, but this is more rhetorical in the sense that I'm questioning how much there should be.

[montcalm]

https://adirondack.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/831381d39bf543c6a110446e627a976e

If you're interested in the distributions in the Adirondacks, that map above shows the statistics. I found a better summary on the DEC website at one point but I cannot find it again. That one had the exact acreage of conservation easements in the park. I think it's around 800k acres IIRC.

[montcalm]

A popular topic...


Ask yourself a question. Even if this state could develop all of its resources to the fullest and take itself back to a level of ecological destruction as it was 120 years ago, would it be profitable?

The answer, in my mind, is no. We simply will never be able to compete with the global market for timber, minerals or agriculture.

To me, the only way NY becomes sustainable is to try to incentivize localization, even if it is costly. And to do that requires very rigorous, wise management of natural resources.


It's funny - I see people complain about this all the time, but when I ask them where they buy their groceries, it seems to be Walmart who sells industrial food product. Or they buy wood products from Ikea. We had a store locally who tried to sell local product. It failed in a couple years. And it was constantly degrading the localization, because people won't buy it.

And then the answer to this is I hear... well "they" just need to figure out how to make it cheap. No. No, "they" already did. And that market forced you to it because you can't afford to buy it from your neighbor. Or your neighbor can't do it as well for the same price. Same thing really.


It's hard to expect people to want to support more conservation if they feel the economy is struggling due to it. But is that really the case? Isn't our economy terrible with or without it? It's just a red herring. It's a convenient scape goat for economic downturn. It's just the fact that we simply don't have the resources. And as I said, certainly not to compete on a global level.


It may seem off topic to my rant, but I find it quite sobering to think about how many people this area supported when it was populated by indigenous tribes. Granted, the technology they used compared to Europeans was limited (lack of draft animals, plows, steel tools, etc...) which makes it less efficient, but this part of the world was scarcely populated. I was reading an archeological paper on pre-European settlements along the Genesee and they were tiny. Most abandoned, but no more than 100 people per village, and quite spread out. And they were really resource limited. There simply weren't that many deer per acre - they couldn't clear and till land on a large scale effectively. It's really the land couldn't support many people. And they had to pay the ultimate price of sustainability - if they overused resources it meant death.

NY probably saw the height of its development in the late 1800s. That's using everything we could throw at it and causing damage that took half a century to recover. Some that will never. Perhaps there were some short term gains, but in the long run it hurt us. And our population was much less that it is now. How can we continue this trend?

[BillyGr]

Well, Alaska is 99% public lands, so I guess that is the top end of the scale - not that that could even work in a state like NY, but...

[montcalm]

That brings up another point which I've kind of been softballing out there but no one has brought up: Public <> no resource management.


A good portion of our State Forest is resource managed. The only true conservation lands are forest preserve, and they only exist within the blue lines.

As I've been finding, some land seems to be preserved by some management guideline for something else, but really I think we should have some understanding of what is resource managed public land, what is easement (resource managed private land with tax incentives based on state management) and what is conservation land.

And conservation <> recreation.


These are all important things to distinguish. And our recreational land becomes degraded and less of a conservation effort when it is diluted. Granted I'll be the first one to tell you that 99% of that recreational land is conserved, but still, we should understand the differences.