RAY BROOK - More than 200 hunting and fishing camps in the northwestern Adirondacks that were supposed to be removed would be allowed to stay under a plan approved by a key state Adirondack Park Agency committee Thursday.
The agency's Regulatory Programs Committee voted 4-1 to let North Carolina-based Heartwood Forestland Fund, which now owns the former Champion easement lands, keep up to 220 hunting and fishing cabins on the property. A final vote is expected today by the full agency board.
The plan dates to 1999, when Gov. George Pataki signed what was then the largest land conservation agreement in state history - a $29.4 million deal to preserve 144,000 acres of lands held by Champion International in Franklin, St. Lawrence and Lewis counties. More than 29,000 acres of the timber company's lands were eventually added to the state Forest Preserve. The state secured conservation easements on another 110,000 acres.
It was one of the state's first big easement deals in the Adirondacks, and in subsequent ones the state has been more willing to let hunting and fishing camps remain. APA staff say the current proposal would bring the Champion deal in line with current guidelines.
As part of this agreement, roughly 300 camps and cabins leased by hunting and fishing clubs on the easement lands had to be removed by 2014. Over several years, dozens of cabins were relocated or torn down. There are currently 208 camps on the easement lands, most of them, 174, in what's known as the Santa Clara tract, between Paul Smiths and St. Regis Falls.
The camps' razing prompted anger from some outdoorsmen at the time. Two bridges into the Santa Clara tract were mysteriously destroyed - one burned, one demolished - in 2005 after the state Department of Environmental Conservation removed some of the cabins.
In 2006, Heartwood began a dialogue with the DEC about modifying the easement terms to let the camps remain. After years of discussion, in December of last year the DEC agreed to modify the agreement.
Under the plan outlined Thursday by APA Deputy Director Rick Weber, the 208 camps would be allowed to stay and 12 new camps could be built. In return, a 2,100-acre tract of what is now easement land near the Deer River Flow would be transferred to the state and added to the Forest Preserve.
A 1-acre public-exclusion zone would be created around each hunting camp, but Weber noted that the vast majority of the 110,000 acres of easement lands would remain open to public recreation, as well as timber harvesting.
"It's important to recognize there's public benefit in the continuation of the traditional hunting and fishing camps," Weber said. "It also is important to the land manager because it allows for added economic assistance, a revenue source, that makes it easier for them to maintain the lands and pay taxes on it."
Weber said agency staff didn't find any significant issues that would require the APA to conduct a legislative hearing on the proposal. He also said letting the cabins remain "is not considered a precedent-setting policy direction but rather is bringing this easement in line with the terms that have been more recently applied in other state-held easements, subsequent to this easement."
But APA Commissioner Cecil Wray questioned whether changing the terms of the 1999 agreement was the right move.
"Somebody X years ago made a policy decision that the public good is better off removing all these cabins, and somebody has now made a policy decision to reverse that 180 degrees," he said.
APA Chairman Curt Stiles argued that it isn't the agency's role to second-guess the negotiations between DEC and the property owner.
"The question we have as an agency is, 'Is there any undue adverse impact to that negotiation?'" he said.
"There's no undue adverse impact," said Commissioner Frank Mezzano. "There's no change in policy. These are compatible uses."
But Commissioner Richard Booth said a legislative hearing should have been held.
"If you're a member of the public who cares about these remaining, pretty wild lands, this is a process that's all behind closed doors. The public has not seen this process," Booth said. "There is a policy change regarding this easement."
Booth also raised concerns about the hunting camps "morphing into single-family homes."
But APA attorney John Banta said any proposal to convert a camp to a single-family home would have to come back to the agency. He cautioned against making "a broad statement and a condition that purports to lock something into one thing or another when we have absolutely unambiguous jurisdiction to any conversion to a dwelling."
The committee ultimately approved the project with Booth casting the lone dissenting vote.
After the meeting, environmentalists said they believe a public hearing should be held on the proposal, citing the precedent that could be set with other pending easement deals.
"If you're looking forward to the IP (International Paper) easement, the Finch, Pruyn easement, and go on down the list, there are all going to be future modifications of easements," said David Gibson of Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve. "Some could be of this scale, some smaller.
"We should have a legislative hearing to clarify why the change is important and why the change is in the public interest."
Representatives of Heartwood said Thursday that they'd rather wait until after today's final agency vote to speak to the media.
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Contact Chris Knight at 518-891-2600 ext. 24 or cknight@adirondackdailyenterprise.com.
