Sustainability after Sustainability

When judging the projects proposed in wilderness areas, in particular the Big Tupper Resort, the tourism industry first looks to the impact of operating their establishment. They hold sustainability as their standard and defend their right to exist by the efficiency of their machines, their care in avoiding waterways and wildlife, and the direct impact of clearing the required lands. They’re made to maintain certain standards across these criteria, but their assessments would be more accurate and practical if they included their impact in a situation in which the project would have to be abandoned or closed in the analysis. Large budget projects are fickle, and can be easily halted, even after completion, and in such a situation, the uninhabited remains become the only environmental hazard, and continue as such for longer than the original project was in operation. This situation effectively articulates the ecological gap between a resort such as the proposed Big Tupper, a ski-driven operation and hiking/backcountry ski trails. If the state no longer had the funds to maintain trails in the high peak, the high peaks ecosystem would not struggle with their presence in the following years. Within five years, it is likely only an expert would be able to identify where the tails used to lie. But a resort of the magnitude of Big Tupper would endure for centuries after its closing as a near permanent scar on the Adirondack wilderness. Gore Mountain, in contrast, to Big Tupper, consists mostly of trail development, and though wider and more intrusive than hiking trails, would dissipate faster than the lodge at the resort, or the substantially more developed Big Tupper Resort.