To the editor:

Thank you for your editorial position is support of a wilderness classification for the Boreas Ponds, with lands north, west and east of the ponds being included in the expanded High Peaks Wilderness Area. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to expand the High Peaks Wilderness to nearly 275,000 acres — larger than Rocky Mountain National Park.

We and a coalition of state and national groups representing millions of people also advocated for a wilderness buffer to the south. We are disappointed that the governor’s Adirondack Park Agency didn’t include this in its compromise. Management of this corridor will be critical.

A Feb. 28 guest essay expressed support for biking beyond the Boreas Ponds. Public motorized and mechanized uses are prohibited in wilderness but are allowed on many other state lands. As the Adirondack Council’s detailed physical inventory of existing and former logging roads on the Boreas tract proved, there was not a loop of hardened logging around the Boreas Ponds. The Park Agency made the right decision closing that area to public use of bikes.

As the former DEC regional director for the Catskills and Hudson Valley, I am very familiar with the short bike corridor classification linkages included in the Catskill Park State Land Master Plan. I do not support a new biking classification for the Adirondacks that would undermine the Park’s unique wilderness protections. There are thousands of miles of roads and trails where biking is allowed already. More are in development. Your position on the Boreas tract is right.

William C. Janeway

Elizabethtown