Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
[T]here is but one Adirondack Wilderness on the face of the earth. And, if the
great state of New York fails to see and preserve its glorious gifts, future
generations will have cause to curse and despise the petty, narrow greed that
converts into saw-logs and mill-dams the best gifts of wood and water, forest
and stream, mountains and crystal springs in deep wooded valleys.
(Sears in Brenan 1962:16)
The Romantic period in the US was, by this time, in full swing and the artistic
products that emerged from the region at this time were of undeniable consequence
to the region's eventual protection. By the turn of the century, conservation had
prevailed with the establishment of the Adirondack State Park in 1892 and the
Adirondack Forest Preserve three years later.
With the legal establishment of the Adirondack State Park, the
de facto
ideological changes in landscape meaning that had been slowly accumulating over
the past several years were codified
de jure
by state legislation. The Adirondacks
were no longer recognised by the dominant ideology as an 'untamed' landscape of
work, one with which the 'locals' had struggled for decades (Fosburgh in
Adirondack Museum 1959:15; Northern Forest Lands Council 1994:18; White
1967:37). Instead, as a park, the Adirondacks were now legally a landscape of
leisure, health and recreation. The dominant and more powerful urban-based
ideology had succeeded in protecting its 'playground' from local 'threats'. The
historic economic activities of the local Adirondacker were also defined as heretical
to the new meaning of place, their traditional means of livelihood now considered
'out of place'. Unlike their native predecessors, they certainly were not eliminated
nor excluded from the area; yet the locals saw their livelihoods, activities, landscape
meanings, in effect, their identities, go the way of the wolf and the Native American
before them.
Affected were local farmers, miners, loggers and their families who found
themselves faced with the unattractive choice between leaving the area entirely in
search for work elsewhere or seasonal low-wage labour within the growing tourist
industry. Mill and mining jobs quickly gave way to employment in the many hotels,
lodges and sporting outfits that had sprung up in the region. Indeed, as Nixon
(1992:28) indicates, to this day the region remains 'a land of [minimum wage] jobs
and seasonal employment'. The ideological and legal sequestration of the
Adirondack landscape from local economic activities continues to be the source of
unending bitterness and distrust by the local communities towards the state and the
gaze of its urban vacationers (DuPuis 1996; Heiman 1988:192-237). As Heiman
(1988:196) posits, '[T]he bitterness felt by local residents at the imposition of
extraregional demand for wilderness as leisure space continues to this day. It is
particularly intense where preservation is seen as interfering with local livelihood.'
This is the context within which wolf restoration to the Adirondacks is currently
being considered and debated and, as one writer puts it, the 'battle' between pro-
and anti-wolf interests is currently 'simmering' (Thompson 1998).
