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Solid road report is needed for Boreas

For now, biking is allowed on former logging roads to Boreas Ponds in the Adirondack Park's newest state land tract, as seen in October. (Enterprise photo — Chris Knight)

A network of logging roads winds through the 20,758-acre Boreas Ponds tract, which the state bought this year from The Nature Conservancy. Now that the Adirondack Park Agency is working to classify the land, those roads are at the heart of many of the debates being hashed out in public.

How should the roads be used, or not? Some have been proposed for car and truck access, others for mountain biking, snowmobiling and/or horse trekking.

These are big questions. Many of these logging roads are wide and strong with thick, hard-packed gravel — built for tractor-trailers hauling logs. Mountain bikes couldn’t possibly tear up these roads they way they tear up dirt trails, so what would the environmental impact be?

Also, the state probably wouldn’t have to cut trees to create snowmobile trails here. Tree cutting for a trail nearby is the subject of a current lawsuit.

The thing is, not all of the roads are the same. Some were used more frequently than others, some just in winter when the ground was frozen. Some, if left wild, might grow back to a wooded state in 20 years, while others might take 100 or more.

Amid the background of APA hearings for Boreas, we’ve sat down with town supervisors pushing for more recreational access and with environmentalists pushing for less. We’ve also talked about it with other people who have been in to visit the Boreas tract, including several mountain bikers.

All of them say what kind of activity is allowed on each road depends on its condition, and each shared firsthand anecdotes about the condition of various roads. Access advocates say a a loop around the ponds is well equipped for mountain bikers and maybe snowmobilers, but Adirondack Council staff said they’ve observed that the loop gets pretty soft and wet on the west side, which means the state would have to haul in gravel to make it suitable for biking.

With such mixed reports, the debate would be easier to resolve if the APA put out a well-researched assessment of the roads. We ask the agency staff to do that, distinguishing between which sections would suitable for biking and snowmobiling as is, with no work, and which might need fill or tree cutting.

Also, we think it would be good to have an educated estimate of how long it would take for each section of road to grow back to a wooded state if mechanized use was banned.

The Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan’s introduction says, “If there is a unifying theme to the master plan, it is that the protection and preservation of the natural resources of the state lands within the Park must be paramount. Human use and enjoyment of those lands should be permitted and encouraged, so long as the resources in their physical and biological context as well as their social or psychological aspects are not degraded.” In fact, the Adirondack Park has a long history of going beyond “preservation” of land in the condition in which it was purchased; much of the state Forest Preserve was allowed to grow back after clearcutting and fires to be wilder than it was in the past. But that doesn’t mean every new piece of state land must become wilderness, the strictest classification where mechanized use (including mountain bikes) and man-made structures are supposed to be banned. Some places are more suitable for recreational use that would not significantly “degrade” its natural qualities.

The staunchest environmentalists say the entire Boreas tract should be wilderness, but while their ranks have been growing lately, most people still want some mix of wilderness to the north, up against and possibly part of the High Peaks Wilderness, and less-restrictive wild forest to the south. The real question for the APA is how to clossify the stuff in the middle, around the ponds themselves with their scenic views of the rocky Dix and Great ranges.

We don’t think Boreas is the kind of place where the state should carve out recreational venues by hauling in gravel fill for trails and the like, but in places where robust roads exist, mountain biking and snowmobiling might be suitable — or maybe not, considering the environmental impact of snowmobiles’ noise and fumes, and the unfortunate fact that there is no classification that allows mechanized use (bikes) but not motorized use.

First, however, we need solid knowledge of what these roads can withstand.

We’ll write about other aspects of the Boreas tract classification in upcoming editorials.

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