Adirondack Park Information

The Adirondack Park was created in 1892 by the State of New York amid concerns for the water and timber resources of the region. Today the Park is the largest publicly protected area in the contiguous United States, greater in size than Yellowstone, Everglades, Glacier, and Grand Canyon National Park combined. The boundary of the Park encompasses approximately 6 million acres, nearly half of which belongs to all the people of New York State and is constitutionally protected to remain “forever wild” forest preserve. The remaining half of the Park is private land which includes settlements, farms, timber lands, businesses, homes, and camps.

The Adirondack region boasts over 3,000 lakes, 30,000 miles of rivers and streams, and a wide variety of habitats, including globally unique wetland types and old growth forests. The heart of the Adirondack Park is the Forest Preserve, which was created by an act of the Legislature in 1885 which stated, “The lands now or hereafter constituting the Forest Preserve shall be forever kept as wild forest lands. They shall not be sold, nor shall they be leased or taken by any person or corporation, public or private.” The state of New York owns approximately 43 percent, or roughly 2.6 million acres of land within the Park’s boundaries. The remaining private lands are devoted principally to forestry, agriculture, and open space recreation. The Adirondack Park is unique in its intricate mixture of public and private lands. About 130,000 people live here year round in its 105 towns and villages. The harmonious blend of private and public lands give the Adirondacks a diversity found nowhere else – a diversity of open space and recreational lands, of wildlife and flora, of mountains and meadows, and people of all walks of life.

In order to identify and protect the natural resources of the Park, all parcels and lots of land, in both the private and public sectors, are classified in the Adirondack Park Land Use and Development Plan Map and State Land Map. The largest single category of land (totaling 1.3 million acres) is Wild Forest, where a variety of outdoor recreation activities are allowed. Other categories of State Lands are: Primitive and Canoe areas; Intensive Use areas (such as public camp grounds), and State Historic Sites. The Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan sets policy for the management of the state owned lands. Developed by the Adirondack Park Agency in cooperation with the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and approved by the Governor of New York State, the Master Plan was first adopted in 1972. The actual management of the State Lands is carried out by DEC forest rangers, foresters, environmental conservation officers, and other state personnel.

The Adirondack Park Land Use and Development Plan also applies to the remaining 3.4 million acres of private land in the Park. The Plan is designed to conserve the Park’s natural resources and open-space character by directing and clustering development so as to minimize its impact on the Park. Under the Plan, all private lands are mapped into six land use classifications: hamlet, moderate intensity use, low intensity use, rural use, resource management, and industrial use. Guidelines are specified for the intensity of development within each category, based on number of buildings per square mile. Projects of regional significance usually require a permit from the Adirondack Park Agency.


Geology of the Adirondack Park
The Adirondack Dome
The Adirondack Mountains are very different in shape and content from other mountain systems. Unlike elongated ranges like the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, the Adirondacks form a circular dome, 160 miles wide and 1 mile high. Although the Dome as we know it today is a relatively recent development, having emerged about 5 million years ago, it is made of ancient rocks more than a 1,000 million years old. Hence, the Adirondacks are "new mountains from old rocks."

Birth of a Glacier
A quarter of a million years ago, when the earth was a few degrees cooler, the snow which fell in the winter did not melt entirely in the cool summers. As it accumulated over millennia, its enormous weight compressed the lower layers of snow into ice, eventually becoming thousands of feet thick. The increased pressure softened the lower ice, causing it to flow like thick molasses. A glacier was born.

Shaping the Landscape
As the ice advanced southward into the Adirondack region, soil and rock was scraped from the land and embedded in the ice like sand in sandpaper. Alternately scratching and smoothing the earth's surface, the glacier pulverized boulders into pebbles, carrying the debris as it moved. As it thickened, the glacier crept over hills and, eventually, over the highest mountains, breaking and lifting rocks as it rounded their summits. When the ice sheet melted, these rocks, called erratics, were deposited throughout the Adirondacks, where they can be seen today in fields, along forest trails, and scattered on mountaintops.

Glacial Landforms
Alpine Glaciers, Cirques, and Horns
As the massive continental glacier grew to the north, small alpine glaciers were forming in the Adirondack Mountains. These alpine glaciers carved the upper slopes of the mountains for thousands of years. Gradually, they became buried by the advance of the continental ice sheet. The distinctive summit of Whiteface Mountain owes its shape to alpine glaciers. Bowl-shaped amphitheaters called cirques were carved from the rock on the north, east and west sides of the mountain by three separate alpine glaciers. Where the tops of the cirques joined, sharp ridges, called aretes, were formed. If this process had continued, the cirques would have ended up back-to-back, leaving a horn, and Whiteface Mountain would now look like the Matterhorn in Switzerland.

Kettle Holes & Kettle Ponds
As the glacier thawed, iceberg-sized chunks of ice broke off and were buried beneath accumulating sand and gravel washed from the ice. When these ice blocks melted, they left depressions - kettle holes - in the landscape. When a kettle hole went below the water table, a kettle pond was established as the steady supply of water remained in the basin. Many of the small, circular ponds and wetlands in the Adirondacks were created in this fashion.

Eskers and Kames
Meltwater streams, flowing under and within the glacier through tunnels in the ice, built their own stream beds from rock material embedded in the glacier. After the glacier melted, these riverbed sediments were deposited on the landscape as winding ridges called eskers. When sediment-laden water flowed over the glacier's surface, it filled depressions with sand and gravel. As the glacier melted, material from circular depressions was deposited on the landscape as mounds called kames.

Soil
Adirondack soils are young, having developed only since the glacial retreat about 10,000 years ago. Unglaciated areas in the rest of the United States have soils that have developed over millions of years. Soils in the Adirondacks are generally thin, sandy, acid, infertile, and subject to drought.

Forest Soil
Forest soils have a layer of leaves, needles, twigs and other plant and animal parts covering the mineral soil. This organic debris accumulated with every season and, as it slowly decomposed, it recycles nutrients back to the growing plants. The mineral soil provides plants with solid anchorage for their roots and a secondary source of nutrients. Tree roots will grow in all directions within the soil in search of water, nutrients and support. Root growth will continue as long as the soil temperature is greater then 40 degree F and roots are not limited by rock or compacted soil, or by soil so water-saturated that it contains no oxygen for the roots.

Outwash
The melting ice sheet created huge, sediment-laden rivers that roared across the Adirondacks, depositing sand and gravel outwash on giant, shifting floodplains. Coarse gravels and boulders settled on river bottoms; lighter sand particles, silts and clays were carried downstream. As the glacial rivers changed velocity and direction, layers of these various outwash materials built up on top of one another, forming the sedimentary strata normally found in valleys and lower elevations today.

Till
The debris that was deposited directly on the land by melting glaciers without being carried and stratified by meltwater streams contained unsorted rocks of all shapes and sizes. These are referred to as till. Because they have not been smoothed by the movement of the meltwater stream, till materials are often rough and jagged.

Four Basic Ingredients
Soil is made up of four components: mineral and rock particles, decayed organic matter, live organisms, and space for air and water.

Minerals and Rocks
The mineral component of soil ranges from fine clays to rocks. The upper mineral layer - topsoil - may have organic matter incorporated into it. The lower mineral layers, or horizons, are collectively called the subsoil.

Organic Matter
Dead plants and animals and their waste products, in varying stages of decomposition, provide the organic component of soil. These horizons exist near the top of most forest soils.

Live Organisms
From microorganisms - bacteria, fungi, and protozoa to earthworms, soil organisms may account for 5 tons of living tissue per acre. These organisms aid in the essential enrichment of soil by destroying plant residues, decomposing the dead bodies of all organisms, and mixing and granulation soil particles.

Pore Space
Healthy soil promotes the recycling of nutrients from mineral and organic material to live organisms. This transfer occurs in the voids between materials in the soil, in the spaces for air and water, often called, collectively, pore space. Typically, topsoil has 50 percent pore space in its mix of organic and mineral materials. Growing conditions are ideal when soil pore space holds equal parts of air and water, allowing room for root expansion, diffusion of nutrients, and movement of soil life.

Soil Horizons
Soils are formed by the action of plants and animals and the physical breakdown of minerals, called weathering. Plant and animal material which accumulated on the surface of the ground is decomposed by numerous micro-organisms. The by-products of the process are organic acids that are washed into the ground, making the soils acidic. These acids dissolve and transport organic matter, iron, and other elements into the soil, to a depth of one or two feet on the better drained sites. Organic matter accumulates to form blackened layers in the soil; below, iron accumulates to form red/rusty colored layers.

Formation of Water Systems
Melting ice, glacial debris, and changing glacial topography contributed to the continual disruption of the meltwater drainage system of the Adirondack region. Lakes and ponds were formed as ice debris dammed river valleys; as dams broke, sand and gravel were redistributed downstream. This process left glaciated regions like northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Adirondacks dotted with thousands of beautiful, natural lakes. Yet for all this reconfiguration of the landscape, the major drainage patterns of the Adirondack Dome were essentially unchanged by glaciation. Taking the path of least resistance, Adirondack waters drain from the central high country to the region's periphery. Water flows east from the mountains to Lake Champlain, northwest to the St. Lawrence River, west to Lake Ontario, and southward to the Hudson and the Mohawk rivers, as it did before the arrival of the glaciers.

Rivers and Streams
Water is both the workhorse of the sun and the lifeblood of the living world, flowing in an endless cycle through the landscape. Continually replenished in flakes of snow, drops of rain and dew, or moisture condensed into clouds and fog, water links all the plant and animal communities of the Adirondack Park. Wherever it falls to earth, water moves downhill in response to gravity. Rivulets and trickles join brooks, which combine to form streams and rivers. Nearly 30,000 miles of streams and brooks that emerge from the mountains and forests form the network from which 1,000 miles of powerful Adirondack rivers gather their volume and strength. These rivers and their networks are perhaps the greatest multiple-use natural resources in the Adirondacks. They provide habitat for fish and wildlife from the kingfisher to the salmon to the otter. In the past, they were the vessels of transport for pulp and provided power for sawing logs into lumber for market. They also were the trade and travel corridors that set the pattern of settlement of Adirondack hamlets that we still see.

Riffles and Pools
In their mountainous headwater reaches, most streams fall steeply through narrow v-shaped channels in the shallow soil and bedrock, developing swift-running riffles that alternate with deeper, more sluggish pools. Riffles, places of high energy where air and water freely mix, charge stream water with oxygen. Pools are quieter areas where organic materials tend to collect and decompose, consuming oxygen in the process. This allows the vital recycling of nutrients necessary for living organisms in the stream. One after another, watershed streams join force, forming rivers that link the mountains with the sea.
The river carries sediments eroded from the hills down to the flatland, where, as it slows and meanders, it deposits its bounty in the slack water of bends or along the floodplain. Lakes and Ponds Flowing and still water has always been an integral part of the Adirondack landscape. But the lakes and ponds we know today are relatively young, resulting from the retreat of the last glacier, the Wisconsin, only 10,000 years ago. Each lake and pond is a separate ecosystem composed of a community of plants, animals and microbes living together in a stillwater environment. Ponds are typically shallow enough for sunlight to reach across their entire bottom; lakes usually fall off into darkness, where rooted aquatic plants cannot grow. Coldwater lakes are often deep and clear, with steep sides and rocky or sandy bottoms. Because light does not penetrate all the way to the bottom, relatively little plant growth takes place. Warmwater ponds are typically shallower, with gently sloping sides and thicker, organic-rich sediments. Their shoreline offers a fertile environment for aquatic plant growth.


Natural Communities of the Adirondack Park
Plankton
Throughout the sunlit waters of lakes and ponds, a community of microscopic plants and animals called plankton float free. Phytoplankton are green plants composed of single cells or cluster of loosely organized colonies that are the primary link in the flow of energy from the sun to aquatic animals. Zooplankton are tiny animals which feed upon these plants or upon each other and thereby transfer energy along the food web that extends to fishes, aquatic insects, birds such as loons and osprey, and mammals like the otter and humans.

Decomposers
Organic debris from the upper levels, where energy is converted into living tissue and where organisms are consumed, rains slowly down upon the bottom sediments. In this world of cool darkness, decomposers like worms, fungi, and bacteria recycle the nutrients from above and foster the growth of plants that in turn provide food for new generation of animals.

Lake Overturn
Overturn waters move to internal rhythms determined by lake depth, surface area, temperature, elevation, and the time it takes for them to have a complete change of water ? that is, their flushing rate. Adirondack lakes normally cycle through two periods of stability separated by two "overturns."
In summer, an upper layer of warm, light water floats on a cooler, dense layer below. This is called summer stratification. Winds and waves aerate only the upper waters, which become oxygen-rich and nutrient-poor, since organic matter which falls into the depths is not recycled. In the fall, surface waters gradually cool until the entire lake is uniform in temperature and not stratified into upper and lower zones. When this happens, the energy of the wind alone is enough to churn the lake from top to bottom, mixing nutrients and oxygen throughout. This is called fall overturn.
As the lake continues to cool in the winter months, the denser water settles on the bottom and ice begins to form on the top. Once frozen, the lake is sealed from the wind and further mixing is prevented. Throughout the winter months, aquatic animals gradually use the oxygen supply that was replenished at fall overturn. Sometimes, however, with unusually heavy winter snows that block sunlight to plants that photosynthesize and produce oxygen below the ice, the oxygen supply will run out.
The result is a winter fishkill. Rising spring temperatures melt the ice and equalize water temperatures once more, thus breaking winter stratification. Again, during this critical time, wind energy will churn the lake waters from top to bottom, bringing oxygen to the bottom and nutrients to the top. This spring overturn completes the cycle of the seasons.

Aquatic Plants
The greatest variety of aquatic plant and animal life is found in the shallow water of lakes and ponds. This water can be divided into three regions: the emergent, floating, and submersed plant zones. The emergent zone, closest to shore, consists largely of grasses, sedges and rushes that grow stems and leaves above the water's surface.
Water movement between the dense growth of emergent plants is restricted, causing silt and decayed plant materials to accumulate on the bottom. The floating plant zone contains rooted plants with leaves and flowers that float on the surface, like water lilies. Submersed plants grow completely under water, wherever light reaches the bottom. The stems of these plants are flexible, enabling them to move with the motion of the water. Air spaces in their tissues help support them in an upright position, allowing their leaves to receive sunlight. Some plants, like bladderworts, have no roots and float free, just under the surface of the water.

Plant and Animal Communities
Like people, plants and animals tend to live together in recognizable communities, each composed of individuals adapted to life under similar conditions. Some plant species require deep, fertile soils, while others thrive in the relative austerity of droughty outwash sands. Amphibious communities straddle the line between uplands and the underwater world of fish. Others cling to life in acid bogs of on icy, windswept mountain summits.

Adirondack Wetlands
Whenever water is stopped, allowed to accumulate, or made to move slowly, a wetland will form. The many kinds of wetlands? marshes, bogs, swamps, or wet meadows - to name a few - can be identified by characteristic plants. All are aquatic, semi-aquatic, or at least, tolerant of flooded conditions. The depth and persistence of water are the most important factors determining wetland type. Wetlands range from deep-water marshes to emergent marshes to shrub swamps to wooded swamps and wet meadows. Seldom do these wetlands exist in an isolated state; many are part of larger wetland complexes that contain overlapping types of wetlands.
Fourteen percent of the land surface of the Adirondacks is wetland. This combination of large numbers of diverse wetland types set among verdant mountain forests is unique in the United States.

The Value of Wetlands
The role of wetlands in the balance of nature is a crucial one: they assist in modulating the flow of water, thereby reducing flooding and erosion; they filter out sediments and help purify drinking water; and, perhaps the most importantly in the Adirondacks, they provide desirable habitat for fish and wildlife.

Marshes
Marshes are the wettest of Adirondack wetlands. Varying in depth from a few inches to six or more feet, they are found along the margins of lakes, interspersed with other forms of wetlands, and within the backwater regions of rivers and streams. Because marshes are nutrient-rich from the residue of upland drainage and amply supplied with oxygenated, slowly moving water, they are highly productive environments, fostering the cycles of growth and decay necessary for plant and animal life.

Bogs
Bogs resemble other types of wetlands, but they are more isolated from the flow of groundwater and nutrients that links all other wetland communities. Bogs depend on rain for most of their water supply and on windblown dust for the bulk of essential mineral nutrients, like calcium and phosphorus. Highly acidic, with most of their nutrients locked up in decayed plant materials, bogs are difficult environments for plants and animals. Sphagnum moss, which is able to thrive under these conditions, forms a living mat across the open water of a bog pond.
In the process of withdrawing precious nutrients, the moss adds to the acidity of the water, making it difficult for decomposer organisms to function.
Growth, decay and nutrient-cycling are further inhibited as the soggy mat thickens and blocks out light and oxygen. Leatherleaf, bog laurel, cranberry, Labrador tea, and a few other bog species grow on the floating sphagnum mat, but remain largely undecayed. Slowly, their remains fill the pond, forming an organic deposit called peat. Made up of an accumulation of partially decomposed plant parts, peat is water-saturated year round, with a low oxygen level. This lack of oxygen and high acidity inhibits the bacteria necessary for plant and animal decay. As a result, nutrients that normally recycle from decaying material are locked up in undecayed plant remains and are unavailable to the next generation of life. Plant growth is virtually limited to the bog surface.

Unique Bog Species
Bogs are nutrient "deserts," and the nutrient that many plants have the most trouble obtaining is nitrogen. Pitcher plants and sundews have solved this problem by developing adaptation that provide a supplemental source from captured insects. The pitcher plant has a special funnel leaf that attracts and traps insects. Inside the funnel, hundreds of downward-pointing hairs make climbing out difficult, encouraging descent into the lower pitcher.
Rain water in the trap drowns the unfortunate intruder, and bacteria and enzymes perform the digestion process. Sundews capture prey with sticky jewel-like tentacles that attract and then curl around their victims. A forest of spruce and fir often forms in the shallows of old bogs, where evaporation dries the peaty soil enough to release stored nutrients and provide some stability for roots. This is a shaky, unstable environment, with wind and heavy snow often overturning trees before they can reach their full size. But growing conditions slowly improve as the bog fills and surface plants draw moisture from its depth.
Gradually, shrubs creep onto the mat and tamarack and black spruce become established, often growing in clumps or islands.

Swamps
Many Adirondack wetlands are wet only part of the year, in the spring. Swamps are areas where woody vegetation grows in soil that, while often waterlogged, is seldom flooded by more than a few inches. Shrub swamps are found along the banks and in the floodplain of streams and rivers. Here the scouring action of flooding and winter ice movements kill all but the most resilient vegetation, preventing development of a mature forest. Alders, willows, and sweet gale are common in such areas, as are wild raisin and mountain holly. Wetland shrubs also grow in poorly drained lowlands, particularly those with mucky, organic soils that offer little support to heavier trees.

Wooded Swamps
Where soil is more mineral in composition and flooding is less deep and of shorter duration, trees can grow to maturity. These wooded swamp communities vary with general climatic and topographic conditions. Conifers such as balsam fir, black spruce, tamarack, and white cedar tend to dominate interior and high-elevation wetlands, where peaty soils and severe winters prevail. Around the periphery of the Adirondack Dome, deciduous species such as red maple, black ash, and elm are more common. These broad-leaved swamps provide critical habitat for tree-nesting birds and migratory waterfowl during spring and fall flooding.

Pioneer Communities
Communities of pioneer species rush into forest openings caused by fire, blowdown, logging, agriculture, insects, or disease. Species such as aspen and birch have light seeds which are blown far from the mother tree, making them readily available to start new forests. Seeds of fire cherry are scattered by birds, which drop them in a ready-made bed of fertilizer. Some hardy seeds, including those of raspberries, may remain viable in the soil for decades, awaiting another disturbance to the forest. These pioneering plants, able to colonize sites that are nutrient-poor and exposed by disturbance to direct sunlight, are hardy individuals, adapted to the extremes of moisture and temperature that characterize forest openings. The shade they provide moderates soil temperatures and helps develop a seed bed suitable for shade-loving species.

Forest Succession
When their role of healing a disturbed landscape is fulfilled, pioneers cannot continue to reproduce and multiply. Another community, composed of more shade-tolerant species, such as sugar maple, yellow birch, American beech, hemlock, or red spruce, replaces them.
Succession is the process by which a series of plant communities replace one another. The particular sequence of communities depends upon prevailing environmental conditions such as soil moisture, length of growing season, and the severity of the ecological disturbance.
Prickly brambles follow heavy logging in a hardwood stand, mountain paper birch cloaks fire-scarred upper slopes, and aspens and white pine slowly fill in meadowland. All are examples of forest succession. As communities mature, they evolve and succeed each other more slowly. Although the original pioneers may prevail and vanish in the span of a human lifetime, several centuries may be required for a mature forest to return.

Climax Communities
Given time and barring catastrophes, most Adirondack landscapes evolve toward a stable forested condition. When this point of relative stability is reached, a climax community is said to have formed. Individuals may come and go, but the same groupings of species tend to dominate each level of the forest from its canopy to its floor. Minor changes take place as trees fall or cyclic waves of pestilence pass through, but a state of dynamic equilibrium prevails.

Pinelands
Extensive stands of pine trees are found on the gently rolling sand plains that stretch along the eastern edge of the Adirondack Park. Wildlife was once common here, sweeping through the drought-prone barrens every few years and killing most young hardwoods that had sprouted since the last blaze. Pitch pine is particularly adapted to cope with this phenomenon and often sprouts back after light burns. Its cones open with heat, releasing many seeds to grow in the openings left by fire.

Mixed Wood Forest
Mixed wood forests grow on soil derived from outwash, the sand and gravel deposited by glacial rivers. Because most nutrient-rich clays and silts were flushed away by this meltwater, outwash rarely develops into the fertile soil required by northern hardwoods. Mixed woods are aptly named, for the community is characterized by an assortment of conifers and certain hardwoods which vary in abundance according to subtle changes in soil fertility and height of the water table.
On moist sites, red spruce thrives alongside hemlock, red maple, black cherry, and the ubiquitous yellow birch. Water percolates quickly through outwash, causing upper soil layers, where tree roots are found, to lose moisture easily. White and red pine, species that tolerate droughty conditions, are commonly associated with drier outwash sites like eskers. Where a high water table keeps moisture near the surface, red spruce and balsam fir dominate. A carpet of greenery composed of ferns, mosses, wood sorrel, and Canada mayflower flows beneath the trees, contrasting with the bed of leaves that covers the hardwood forest floor.

Northern Hardwood Forest
The northern hardwood forest is the most extensive woodland in the Adirondacks, typically occupying the region's best soils and sites. Northern hardwoods grow on glacial till, which normally develops into a more fertile soil than outwash. Species adapted to this community produce a deep shade in which only shade-tolerant seedlings can grow to maturity. Barring such major catastrophes as fire or blowdown, this forest can maintain itself indefinitely once it has become established. Sugar maple and American beech can tolerate more shade than other hardwoods, and thrive on deep, fertile, well-drained till. Yellow birch, which requires more sun, does well on both till and outwash. The constant shade of northern hardwoods is home for an understory of striped maple and witch-hobble. And the forest floor nourishes various species of clubmoss, as well as spinulose woodfern, trilliums, wild sarsaparilla, and Solomon's Seal.

Rich-Site Hardwoods
White ash, basswood, elm and hop hornbeam are called rich site hardwoods because they grow on humus that has high ph and nutrient levels. These sites, predominantly in the Champlain Valley area of the Park, have their own common ground plants: Jack-in-the-Pulpit, foamflower, and Canada violets, among others.

Slopes of Spruce and Fir
Living conditions on mountains are harsher than in the valleys and flats below. The average daily temperature falls as altitude increases, shortening the growing season. Soils become thinner and more acidic. As the process of decay slows, organic matter accumulates and fertility levels drop. Exposure to drying winds stresses trees, especially in winter when roots cannot draw moisture from the frozen ground. Above approximately 2,500 feet, the northern hardwood community gives way to stands of red spruce and balsam fir, which are better adapted to life on the high mountain slopes.
Yellow birch is the last to drop out and dominates the transition zone at the upper limit of hardwood supremacy. From about 2,800 to 4,000 feet, spruce and fir hold sway. This is the boreal forest, named for Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind. Much of the Adirondack high country is still recovering from a plague of wildfires around the turn of the century and from a catastrophic blowdown caused by a severe windstorm that swept through the region in November 1950. On these disturbed sites, young coniferous forests now grow beneath an overstory of the mountain paper birch that originally clothed the scarred landscape. Linear stands of mountain ash mark the edges of old burns where smoldering fires cleared away the trees, but left enough organic matter in the soil to form a seedbed for the pioneers.

Sub-Alpine
Above 4000 feet, red spruce loses vigor and weakens, leaving the higher sub-alpine slopes to the domination of balsam fir.

"Krummholz"
Stands of balsam fir continue upward, gradually becoming shorter with altitude and exposure until, at treeline, they form a ragged line of shrubs. Twisted and stunted from their battle with wind and cold, these dwarf forests are known as krummholz, a German word meaning "crooked wood."

Adirondack Mountain Soils
Soils on Adirondack mountains are thin and infertile, especially at higher elevations. The mineral materials left by the last glacier washed off the steep slopes before vegetation was firmly established. The humus that is present today is decayed organic matter from the gradual revegetation of the exposed bedrock.

Alpine Communities
Arctic-alpine communities live on about a dozen of the highest Adirondack peaks. Here the mountain environment is similar to arctic tundra far to the north. The cold, wet, peaty conditions of mountain summits are surprisingly similar to those found in lowland bogs. Such species as Labrador tea and leatherleaf, common to both environments, can trace their origins directly to the first plants that colonized the Adirondacks when the glacier receded 10,000 years ago.
Cold, wind and ice are the dominant factors controlling life on our open summits. In places where bedrock or boulders jut upward into the full force of the wind, only mosses and lichens can colonize their surface. Pincushion-shaped clumps of diapensia grow in pockets where organic debris has collected, while mountain sandwort is common where thin, gravelly glacial soils fill shallow depressions in the bedrock.
Alpine bilberry, the most common member of the community, invades sphagnum mats and other sites where it can sink its shrubby roots into a moist, organic mat. Behind boulders and in deep bedrock fissures, one can find plants from the spruce-fir community. These survive only where they are assured of protection from desiccation by a protective blanket of snow. Mountain alder, bunchberry, false hellebore, mountain ash, and mountain paper birch are common here.


Wildlife of the Adirondack Park
Beaver Activity
Beavers and men share the unique ability to purposefully change the natural environment to suit their needs. By damming forest streams with mud, sticks and small stones, beavers create a pond or "flow." Within this pond they build a lodge of similar materials, in which they live. Like a castle within a moat, the lodge protects the beavers from their enemies and keeps them dry and warm in all seasons.
An underwater passage leads to the domed interior where they sleep and in winter, eat the bark from a cache of sticks imbedded in the soft sediments on the bottom of the pond. Through their activities, beavers bring a bounty of aquatic life to the interior of the forest. Nutrients from the bark of trees are recycled in their feces to nourish plankton, algae, wetland plants, and fish. Flood waters are held in check and rich sediments slowly fill the impoundment. Wood ducks nest in holes within the snags of trees drowned by the rising waters. When food becomes scarce and the beavers finally move on, the unrepaired dam weakens and eventually washes out, draining the pond. A wet meadow of sedges, grasses, alders and willows reclaims the soggy ground and begins the process of drying the soil while harvesting its richness.
For a time, wildflowers and herbs flourish, then slowly give way to shrubs and trees once more. The cycle is complete when a new generation of beavers takes up residence on the woodland stream.

Moose and Deer
The demise of moose was a result of hunting and the changing nature of Adirondack forests. Once the mountains were opened up by lumbering and agriculture, deer, preferring to browse on young trees and shrubs in areas recently cleared, invaded the region in much greater numbers, and the moose were in trouble. Deer harbor a nematode parasite called brainworm, which is comparatively harmless to them. But moose pick up the parasite from snails and slugs (which act as its host during part of the worm's life cycle), with disastrous consequences. The nematode settles in their brains, inducing the "blind staggers" and eventually, death. Deer followed the European settlers to find all the browse they needed in clearings made by the settlers. Game laws were few and seldom enforced.

"One mid-century hunter told of killing as many as 150 deer in certain years in upstate New York ... Market gunners were sent into the mountains to kill all the "mountain mutton" they could find, not only to feed the lumberjacks in the many woodland camps and the guests in the thriving hotels, but also for shipment to game dealers who sold them to hotels and restaurants in large cities."
-- Frank Graham,The Adirondack Park, 1978

Restoration of Species
Beaver, Fisher, Pine Marten
A few pairs of beaver, stocked in the backcountry in 1902, did so well that by 1940 an open season on beaver was permitted. Fishers recovered enough to permit an open season in 1949. Pine marten took longer to rebuild. Confined to the higher mountain ranges, they finally began to increase; a season for their taking was allowed in 1978, ending a period of 42 years of closed seasons.

Peregrine Falcon
The recovery of the peregrine falcon from extinction is a remarkable success story. Like the osprey, peregrines were ravaged by pesticides; by the mid-20th century they were extirpated from the Adirondacks.
Then, in the 1970s, Dr. Tom Cade of Cornell University developed techniques to produce large numbers of young falcons by captive breeding and a process called "hacking," whereby young peregrines were reintroduced back into the wild. In 1981 ten young captive-produced birds were hacked from two carefully selected eyries in the eastern Adirondacks; well-hidden attendants fed and monitored the growing birds. Soon, the birds learned to hunt by themselves; all of the young peregrines survived. In subsequent years, more peregrines were released and in July 1988, four active Adirondack eyries were producing young peregrines.

Moose
Beginning in 1981, several moose have wandered into the Adirondacks from Canada and Vermont. A few are still here; some even have produced young. A number of the new arrivals are being collared with radio monitors, and studies are being made to determine whether a large, self-sustaining moose population can survive in the Adirondacks.

Lynx
Lynx, which vanished from the Adirondack scene in the mid-1800s, may well return again. It is theorized that they disappeared when the more aggressive bobcats expanded into the Adirondack lynx range as wholesale logging activities increased the population of deer, a primary food source for bobcats. A declining bobcat population in recent decades, along with evidence that bobcats tend to live below elevations of 2,500 feet, make the Adirondack "high country" a zone potentially hospitable to a lynx population. Two "plantings" are planned. Eight to twelve cats will be released initially; a second release will follow a year later. The goal is to build a population of approximately 70 lynxes.

Osprey
The ban on the pesticide DDT has helped the osprey, whose average production of young in the whole Adirondack region was eight birds per year for the years 1970 through 1976. In 1977, 13 of 25 active nests were successful, producing a total of 20 young. An upward trend continues today.

State Policy on Habitat
State policy and regulatory programs aid in maintaining a diversity of fish and wildlife habitats. The state's Freshwater Wetlands Act, administered by the Adirondack Park Agency, strives to limit the draining and developing of bogs, swamps, and marshes, which are important feeding, nesting, rearing and cover areas for many species. The APA's Private Land Use and Development Plan protects critical wildlife habitat such as deer wintering grounds and habitat of endangered species. The Department of Environmental Conservation also contributes to the protection of fish and wildlife habitat by its environmental review of development projects and by its air, land and water quality regulatory programs. State acquisition of key wildlife habitat is a continuing program within the Department.

Game Laws
Realizing that wildlife was an important part of its colony's economy, the Crown adopted the first game law in 1705, establishing a season for deer hunting (August 1 to January 1). Laws restricting the use of nets in fishing were enacted in 1813, and in 1828 a fine of $5 was imposed for illegal fishing. In 1880, the state of New York appointed its first game protectors: a total of eight, statewide. They were to enforce laws for the preservation of moose, deer, birds, and fish. But they were ineffective, partly because they were too few and also because most people were reluctant to give information to game protectors.

Teddy's "Men of Courage"
In 1899, Governor Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt became concerned about the laxity of the enforcement of game laws and "the inefficiency of the game wardens and game protectors." He urged that the men who worked as protectors in the Adirondacks be appointed form the locality itself, and should in all cases be thorough woodsmen: "I want as game protectors men of courage, resolution and hardihood who can handle the rifle, axe and paddle; who can camp out in summer or winter; who can go on snowshoes, if necessary; who can go through the woods by day or by night without regard to trails."

New York Natural Heritage Program
The New York Natural Heritage Program is a joint endeavor of the state's Department of Environmental Conservancy. Since 1983, field searches have been conducted to locate plant and animal species considered to be rare globally or within New York State. The information collected forms an inventory of New York's most important planning and research. With preservation of habitat the objective, priorities are set for the protection of these sites and various safeguards considered: preservation through gifts of land, bargain sales, outright acquisitions, or land management agreements. Species that have been identified for special protection in the Adirondack Park include: peregrine falcon, bald eagle, spruce grouse, bog turtle, Indiana bat, and timber rattlesnake.

Gifts for Wildlife
New Yorkers can assist in the protection and restoration of endangered species with voluntary contributions by checking the Gifts for Wildlife category on the New York State income tax form. These funds also support programs to improve fish and wildlife, including game species.

Easements
Large tracts of land, held by timber companies or preserved as wild, private parks, are being broken up for development. Habitat disruption can be anticipated. Thorough identification of critical wildlife habitats in the Park's private lands is essential. Methods of protection available are negotiating cooperative agreements with landowners and working to acquire land or development rights (easements). New Yorkers approved an Environmental Quality Bond Act in 1986, establishing funds for such acquisitions, but pressures for development promise to intensify. Widespread and enduring public support will be essential to adequately protect wildlife habitats in the long term.


History of the Adirondack Park
Exploiting the Wilderness
The first harvesting of the Adirondack forests began shortly after the English replaced the Dutch as the landlords of New Netherlands and changed its name to New York. Logging operations generated wealth, opened up land for farming, and removed the cover that provided a haven for Indians.
After the Revolutionary War, the Crown lands passed to the people of New York State. Needing money to discharge war debts, the new government sold nearly all the original public acreage - some 7 million acres - for pennies an acre. Lumbermen were welcomed to the interior, with few restraints: "You have no conception of the quantity of lumber that is taken every winter... A great deal of land is bought of government solely for the pine on it, and after that is cut down, it is allowed to revert back to the State to pay its taxes." -- Joel T. Headley, The Adirondack: or Life in the Woods, 1849

This destruction of Adirondack forests became a growing concern after 1850, as the continued depletion of watershed woodlands reduced the soil's ability to hold water, hastening topsoil erosion and exaggerating periods of flooding. Lumbering was not alone in impoverishing the forest: the tanning industry depleted the hemlock; the paper industry consumed spruce and fir; and the charcoal industry devoured wood of all sizes and shapes. 1885: The Forest Preserve "Had I my way, I would mark out a circle of a hundred miles in diameter, and throw around it the protecting aegis of the constitution. I would make it a forest forever. It would be a misdemeanor to chop down a tree and a felony to clear an acre within its boundaries."
-- S.H. Hammond Wild Northern Scenes; or Sporting Adventures With the Rifle and the Rod, 1857

Hammond sowed seeds that germinated in the efforts of others, perhaps most importantly in the writings of Verplanck Colvin. For almost thirty years, beginning in 1872, Colvin crisscrossed the Adirondack wilderness, supervising a state survey of the region. He used his annual reports to the legislature to call for the creation of an Adirondack Forest Preserve: "Unless the region be preserved essentially in its present wilderness condition, the ruthless burning and destruction of the forest will slowly, year after year, creep onward ... and vast areas of naked rock, arid sand and gravel will alone remain to receive the bounty of the clouds, unable to retain it."
-- Verplanck Colvin 1874 Annual Report to the Legislature

Persuaded by such testimony, the legislature established a Forest Preserve in 1885, stating that the Preserve "shall be forever kept as wild forest lands."

1892: The Adirondack Park
Colvin dreamed of even greater protection for his beloved Adirondacks than by that provided by the Forest Preserve legislation: the creation of an Adirondack Park. By 1892, a bill establishing the Park passed the legislature, indicating with a blue line the parts of the region where state acquisition of private in-holdings was to be concentrated. The law was a mixed blessing: while it created the Park "to be forever reserved for the free use of all the people," it weakened earlier protections, allowing the Forest Commission to sell state lands anywhere in the Adirondacks and to lease state lands within the Park to private individuals for camps and cottages.
"At the time one did not have to be an arm-waving tree hugger to understand that the Adirondack forest could ill afford any loss of protection. The forest was a mess ... Forest commissioners came under suspicion. There was talk of official skullduggery. How could a place be forever reserved for the people as wild forest land if the people allowed the forest commissioners to sell off the timber?"
-- John Mitchell, Audubon Magazine

1895 Constitutional Protection: "Forever Wild"
At the 1894 Constitutional Convention, a new covenant to achieve meaningful protection of the Forest Preserve was included in the new Constitution. Henceforth, the Adirondack Forest Preserve would be "forever wild."

"For years the State had been acquiring and holding lands, often denuded, to be sure, which lumber interests did not pay the taxes on. It was this nucleus of property that gave the idea for the Park. Curiously enough, in this way, avarice was its own undoing ... In 1885 the Forest Preserve was created, and the popular vote in 1894 set it aside for the use of all the people forever."
-- T. Morris Longstreth, The Adirondacks, 1917

Any relaxation of the total protection offered to today's 2.5-million-acre Forest Preserve requires the approval of a majority of the state's voters and two successive legislatures. It is rarely given. Voters and their representatives have continually resisted major changes, approving only narrowly drafted altercations: the cutting of ski trails on Whiteface Mountain (1940) and construction of the Northway, I-87 (1958) are among the most prominent.

20th-Century Development
Early in this century, recreational use of the Forest Preserve increased dramatically. As more people came, demanding conveniences, the State Conservation Department (now the Department of Environmental Conservation) responded by building more facilities in the state woods: boat docks, tent platforms, lean-tos, fire towers, and telephone and electrical lines, among others. With the opening of the Northway in the mid-1960s, private lands came under great pressure as well, for there was hardly a land-use control on the books in all of the Adirondacks. A proposal to save the region by establishing an Adirondack Mountain National Park spurred heated debate, forcing all sides to acknowledge the reality of development pressures. A study commission was appointed by Governor Rockefeller in 1968 to assess the future of both state and private lands within the Park.
The Commission's report recommended the creation of the Adirondack Park Agency and the preparation by the Agency of a master plan for state holdings and a land use and development plan for private land. The Adirondack Park Agency The Adirondack Park Agency was created in 1971 to develop long-range land-use plans for both the public and private lands within the Blue Line.
The State Land Master Plan was adopted by the Agency and first signed by the Governor in 1972. State Land Master Plan In consultation with the Department of Environmental Conservation, the Park Agency formulated the State Land Master Plan to accommodate outdoor recreation without diluting the intent of the "forever wild" protection of the Preserve. The State Land Master Plan classifies public lands in the Park in five major categories: Wilderness, Primitive, Canoe, Wild Forest, and Intensive Use.

Land Use and Development Plan
In 1973 the legislature adopted into law the Adirondack Park Land Use and Development Plan, covering the Park's private lands. In its simplest terms, the Plan is designed to channel much of the future growth in the Park around existing communities, where roads, utilities, services, and supplies already exist. Under the Act, all private lands in the Park are classified into one of six categories: Hamlet, Moderate Intensity, Low Intensity, Rural Use, Industrial Use, and Resource Management.

Depleting the Resources "No area in America has had a more miserable story of ruthless squandering of natural resources ... based on the supposition that the stock of fish and game, as well as trees, was infinite."
-- William Chapman White, Adirondack Country, 1954