This Land is My Land

I think that the land acquisition of the Adirondacks has been very interesting.  When reading Terrie, it was very evident that the park was very negligent in its ownership at first, not promoting any sort of information on the land it owned and largely ignoring it.  There was a distinct turning point to this however, and this instigated the start of buying additional land at or near the park, through use of purchases and occasionally eminent domain.  Essentially, the state viewed itself as the preferred owner of the land as opposed to private stewards, and this necessitated acquisition.

The park has grown around twice the size between the 1900 and 2000, but the amount of state owned property has remained roughly the same, around 40% of the total area at the time.  This ownership really isn't projected to increase too much, as there's been pretty heavy push against increasing the amount of state ownership.  With additional ownership comes less logging and industry to the region under the established regime of forever wild, which in turn could harm the Adirondacks economically. (This is what instigated the legislation by Sn. Little about being able to log on additional state purchases) But this begs the question, who is the appropriate owner of the land in the Park? Should the state continue to buy land, or perhaps back off on acquisiton?  The answer to this is clearly related to whatever party is answering. Though it feels like a cop out answer, I view the current dynamic (~40% state, 60% privately owned) to be a really interesting setup, and that the patchwork of "state owned vs. privately owned" really compliments one another.