A Slippery Slope

The fate of the Adirondacks, especially since the beginning of it's semi-industrialization, has been somewhat scary. Logging and clear-cutting for farmland have threatened to strip the land of certain healthy varieties of trees, as well as getting rid of animal habitats. Mining has destroyed parts of the land, many of which will never fully recover. Hunting has essentially destroyed the Adirondacks' wolf populations. One of the scariest things about human intervention in the Adirondacks, however, is our inability to be consistent, and to stick to our own rules and regulations. Schneider, for example, describes these inconsistencies in terms of logging regulations over a period of almost 100 years. In the first big sweeps of the land, "loggers could afford to be selective," (Schneider, 202) because there were an overwhelming amount of trees at their fingertips. There were directed to only take trees that were 12 inches or more in diameter. The next time through however, they "harvested down to ten inches." (Schneider, 216) Already, the loggers had ran out of trees that fit their original standards, causing them to have to rethink their original instructions and regulations. Finally, in the 1880s, the loggers were sent back into the forests and told they could harvest trees that were only five inches in diameter. The trees they were originally looking for were "getting hard to find." (Schneider, 217)

As human need increased, and therefore no longer fit the previous regulations, the logging companies had no problem changing their original plan. The same applies to many other aspects of the human treatment of the Adirondacks. Since we create the rules, what's stopping us (well, maybe not those of us in this class) from molding them to fit our, often economic, plans? This ties back to to the Forever Wild land swap that we discussed briefly in class the other day. Yes, the amount of Forever Wild land increased with this swap, but it has made the rules, and therefore the protection of the park, a little less stable. How can Forever Wild land actually be wild forever, if it can be swapped with another "identical" plot of land as soon as it is convenient for us? In my opinion, this land swap gives mining companies, and other economic endeavors on Adirondack lands, way too much power. It shows that their monetary needs can outweigh the needs and protection of the land. This is, as Phil Terrie says in his article "'Forever Wild' Isn't Forever", a "slippery slope."

(Terrie's article --http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2014/01/phil-terrie-forever-wild-isnt-forever.html)