The Department of Environmental Conservation has issued a comprehensive
draft snowmobile plan for the Adirondack Park. It involves revisions
to the State’ master plan for the Forest Preserve in order
to continue to accommodate snowmobiles. The original master plan
was drawn up by Norm Van Valkenburgh, who recently joked, in the
environmentalist Adirondack Explorer, about putting taught
cables across snowmobile trails and mining them. DEC’s important
new 283-page draft document deserves a great amount of reasonable
public comment to outweigh the extreme comments of the environmentalists.
Although they will not admit it, the environmental extremists
are worried that they might not be able to stop the comprehensive
plan for designated snowmobile trails on the State-owned Forest
Preserve lands in the Adirondacks. Believe it or not, blazing,
or marking, of trees so that people can keep on snowmobile trails
is an issue. The Adirondack Council’s Executive Director
said recently, according to the Adirondack Journal, that
snowmobile trails will ruin the wilderness to create “a speedway
for snowmobiles.”
In the northern and western reaches of the Adirondacks, some of
the towns rely on the tourism traffic generated by snowmobiling
as the basis of their winter economy. If the environmentalists
can shut down any snowmobiling, they will have made another step
in their unrelenting goal to depopulate these areas.
It is extremely important that all snowmobile advocates, ATV users,
sportsmen and women, and everyone who believes in property rights
and maintaining the rural economy come to these hearings
and speak.
Sometimes people come to a hearing, sign up to speak, and then
do not walk up to the microphone when their name is called. This
is a mistake! People who believe in freedom and the ability to
use the millions of acres of forest land owned by the State of
New York should take time out from their normal activities and
come to these hearings. Sign up at the registration desk on the
form where people register their desire to speak.
When your name is called, walk right up to the front no matter
how reserved you may be. Give your name and the general location
where you live, and say that you support the plan for snowmobile
trails in the Adirondacks. The rest of what you say depends on
how you think that you can help the cause of stopping the environmentalists—who
are against any use of State-owned lands by anybody except hikers
and canoers—from being successful in standing in the way
of this much-needed comprehensive plan.
Public comment dates and locations:
Feb. 9: Guilderland Town Hall, 5 to 8 p.m.
Feb. 11: Rochester Museum and Science Center Planetarium 5 to
8 p.m.
Feb. 24: Harbor Hill School, Greenvale (Nassau Co.), 7 to 9 p.m.
Feb. 25: 1115 47th Ave., Long Island City, 5 to 8 p.m.
March 2: Tupper Lake High School gym, 5 to 8 p.m.
March 3: Queensbury Town Hall, Glens Falls, 5 to 8 p.m.
March 10: Town of Webb Park Avenue Offices, 5 to 8 p.m.
March 11: Utica State office Building, conference rooms A &
B, 5 to 8 p.m.
The public comment period will end March 31
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