Coming April 2027
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Welcome to Adirondack Green!
Adirondack Green is about what happened after the events of A Wild Idea. It’s even wilder.
New York’s Adirondack Park is bigger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, Grand Canyon, and Great Smokies National Parks combined. Most of it is privately owned. It also might be the world’s best protected wilderness, even though 85 million people live within a day’s drive and 130,000 people live inside park boundaries. How did that happen?
This site shares stories from the people who waged a 50-year struggle to protect their Adirondacks. Environmental leaders fought to protect wild land. Landowners fought to protect the rights of private property. Public officials struggled to keep up with change and prevent public anger from exploding. Everyone was ready to shed blood, sweat and tears for the places they loved.
It’s a project 25 years in the making. A Wild Idea was released in 2021 (scroll down for details). Adirondack Green is scheduled for the spring of 2027. This site, now under construction, will re-tell the story online. Read more about the project here, and click on these links for profiles of influential Adirondackers.
A Wild Idea is the first complete account of a twenty-year citizens’ campaign that either saved a vast wilderness or ruined a local economy, depending on who’s talking. It is based on in-depth interviews with more than five dozen insiders who were central to passage and amendment of the Adirondack Park Agency Act in 1971 and 1973. It’s a rich, exciting narrative about state power and how it was imposed on rural residents, full of surprising and shocking revelations.
