Trail promise melts
Brian E. Wells, Indian Lake’s supervisor, tenses when he talks about what he envisioned after private talks with state officials nine years ago. He thought that the state would help create a system of wildland snowmobile trails connecting Adirondack communities like his.
Asked about local government leaders and their discussions with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation back in 2012, when the DEC planned a major acquisition for the state’s forest preserve, Wells won’t say much—at least not to the Adirondack Explorer.
“That meeting was done in good faith by local government,” he said. “The parties know what was agreed on. I can look at myself in the mirror.”
He suggests others involved in those discussions might not be able to do the same, but he won’t elaborate.
The meeting in question, over the prospect of state ownership and public use of the former Finch, Pruyn & Co. timberlands in the central Adirondacks, led to a plan to create a network of “community connector” trails for snowmobilers riding from town to town. Though the state would go on to buy the land and begin construction, New York’s top court this spring ruled that continuing to build the system would violate the state constitution’s protection of the public forest preserve as “forever wild.”
Wells vents at leaders of environmental groups that he complains get to frame the narratives on land use in the Adirondacks. One such leader, Peter Bauer of Protect the Adirondacks, sued the state over the
