Many bills passed by the Legislature are of momentary importance, but the creation of the forever wild Forest Preserve 100 years ago this month was an act by visionary lawmakers that continually grows in significance.
If things rare, fragile and irreplaceable have value, then the Forest Preserve in the Adirondack and Catskill Mountains has become a priceless state treasure that cannot be too diligently safeguarded.
The preserve’s natural balance remains precarious, but its improbable survival for a century now is cause for optimism that current and future threats can be fended off.
The justification for the Legislature’s creation of the preserve in 1885 had practical aspects. Voracious logging and numerous forest fires in the Adirondacks were drying up mountain rivers and streams, threatening the woods’ value as a watershed and timber source for New Yorkers.
But management of the forest for utilitarian purposes was not the only consideration in creating the preserve. The best indication of that is the “forever wild” section of the 1885 law, which read, “the lands now or hereafter constituting the forest preserve shall be forever kept as wild forest lands.”
These words were an early signal of a developing wilderness ethic in this country — the notion that wild nature has an intrinsic value worthy of preservation rather than exploitation.
Today the preserve has the protection of the voter-approved constitution as well as law and its trees cannot be destroyed or removed. After a century of recovery and growth — the Adirondack section has nearly quadrupled in size to 2.5 million acres — the preserve is wilder than it was when it was created, and perhaps can be cited as a rare exception to the maxim that wilderness cannot be created, only destroyed.
Many species of the native wildlife have been wiped out, many forest paths have been worn into muddy trenches by too many hikers, and acid rain persists as an insidious threat, but re-introducing animals, limiting backcountry use and reducing air pollution are not impossibilities. The bickering between preservationists and sportsmen over how man should use the preserve continues, but the fact that they have such a resource to argue about is the important point, and one ignored by shortsighted developers who want to make the Adirondacks and Catskills like everywhere else.
And the preserve has an able group of dedicated guardians, including the Adirondack Mountain Club, to keep the vigil. “‘Forever wild’ can be as little as two years,” notes club president David Newhouse, referring to the time it takes to amend the state constitution. But as long as the public values the preserve, it should endure. Even Gov. Mario Cuomo counts himself a convert to the cause. “I feel a growing reverence for our natural beauty,” he said. “When we fight for the preservation, we are really fighting for people who don’t even exist now. That’s the definition of morality.”
In 1870, Verplanck Colvin of Albany, a surveyor and the man perhaps most responsible for the creation of the Forest Preserve, stood atop Mt. Seward in the Adirondack high peaks and saw a vista free of man’s stamp.
“Wilderness everywhere,” Colvin noted, “lake on lake, river on river, mountain on mountain, numberless.””
The fact that New Yorkers strained by society’s feverish pace still have the grand opportunity within their own borders to slip into nature’s timelessness — to pause silently on a lonely mountain summit, and be stirred by wild open space as Colvin was 115 years ago — is cause for celebration.
Published in May 1985