Forever Wild


Book Description

In this work Terrie offers an assessment of the roles that the Adirondacks have played in American history. He brings to life the scientists and scholars, the travellers and sportsmen, the publicists and bureaucrats, who together have contributed to the wilderness aesthetic.




An Adirondack Passage


Book Description

The author follows a trip through the Adirondack Park taken a century earlier by George Washington Sears.




A Wild Idea


Book Description

A Wild Idea shares the complete story of the difficult birth of the Adirondack Park Agency (APA). The Adirondack region of New York's rural North Country forms the nation's largest State Park, with a territory as large as Vermont. Planning experts view the APA as a triumph of sustainability that balances human activity with the preservation of wild ecosystems. The truth isn't as pretty. The story of the APA, told here for the first time, is a complex, troubled tale of political dueling and communities pushed to the brink of violence. The North Country's environmental movement started among a small group of hunters and hikers, rose on a huge wave of public concern about pollution that crested in the early 1970s, and overcame multiple obstacles to "save" the Adirondacks. Edmondson shows how the movement's leaders persuaded a powerful Governor to recruit planners, naturalists, and advisors and assign a task that had never been attempted before. The team and the politicians who supported them worked around the clock to draft two visionary land-use plans and turn them into law. But they also made mistakes, and their strict regulations were met with determined opposition from local landowners who insisted that private property is private. A Wild Idea is based on in-depth interviews with five dozen insiders who are central to the story. Their observations contain many surprising and shocking revelations. This is a rich, exciting narrative about state power and how it was imposed on rural residents. It shows how the Adirondacks were "saved," and also why that campaign sparked a passionate rebellion.




Suburban Howls


Book Description

This book is about the experiences and findings of a biologist studying eastern coyote ecology and behavior in urbanized eastern Massachusetts. It is written in layman's language and weaves in research results with personal experiences to give a fuller picture understand canid ecology and behavior while making it easy to read




The Adirondack Kids


Book Description

Justin Robert is ten years old and likes computers, biking and peanut butter cups. But his passion is animals. When an uncommon pair of common loons takes up residence on Fourth Lake near the family camp, he will do anything he can to protect them.




Living with the Adirondack Forest


Book Description

Attitudes about land use, Catherine Henshaw Knott suggests, may reflect profound differences in class, religion, and life experience, pitting urban Americans who see nature at risk against rural Americans whose lives are dominated by nature's forces. She documents the thoughts and feelings of people whose lives are intimately connected to the forest, including loggers, trappers, craftspeople, and guides, as well as tree farmers and maple syrup producers. After describing the key players in the conflict and chronicling battles and bridge-building between stake-holders, Knott concludes that the participation of local people in decision making is the only process that can shift an increasingly hostile cycle toward resolution.




Adirondack


Book Description

Winner of the 2015 Adirondack Literary Award for Best Memoir presented by the Adirondack Center for Writing Born just north of New York City, Edward Kanze traveled as far as the wilds of Australia and New Zealand, working as a naturalist, park ranger, and nature writer, before finally settling in New York's Adirondacks for the riskiest of all life's adventures: marriage and children. Adirondack tells the story of how he and his wife, Debbie, bought a tumbledown house, rescued it from ruin, started a family, and planted themselves deep in Adirondack soil. Along the way, he brings the unique history of this area to life by sharing stories of his ancestors, who have lived there for generations, and by offering captivating descriptions of the world around him. A keen observer, Kanze will charm readers with his tales of bears, birds, and fluorescent mice.




Defending the Wilderness


Book Description

Essays written and pictures taken by the author over the last fifty years represent an anthology of his wilderness philosophy. No index. No bibliography. Cloth edition (unseen), $29.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Murder in the Adirondacks


Book Description

"Murder in the Adirondacks is the true story of the Chester Gillette - Grace Brown murder case, which was the basis for Theodore Dreiser's classic novel An American Tragedy and the movie "A Place in the Sun" with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. Although the trial in Herkimer, New York was front page news throughout the nation in 1906 and millions of words have been written about Dreiser's novel, this book is the first complete account of the fascinating facts behind the fiction. Gillette, a former prep school student and railroad brakeman, was the nephew of the owner of a skirt factory in Cortland, New York, where he met Grace Brown, the daughter of a Chenango County farmer. Soon after Grace discovered she was pregnant with Gillette's child in 1906, they left on a trip to the Adirondacks. Grace thought it was to be a wedding trip, but Gillette was planning murder, not matrimony. At Big Moose Lake in Herkimer County, Gillette rented a boat and took Grace to a deserted section of the lake called Punky Bay. She ended up at the bottom of the lake and Gillette escaped to Inlet, where he was arrested three days later. The spectators at Gillette's trial sobbed when the district attorney read Grace's letters, but Gillette sat quietly and chewed gum until it was his turn to testify. Then he said Grace jumped out of the boat and committed suicide. The jury didn't believe him and he was sentenced to die in the electric chair in Auburn. Gillette's mother waged a campaign that led all the way to the governor's mansion in Albany and a last minute attempt to save her son's life. By the 1980s, the fiction had overpowered the facts and many people accepted Dreiser's novel as the true story. This book sets the record straight. Meticulously researched, it relies on the original courtroom testimony and the 1906-1908 newspaper articles. It contains letters, documents and photographs that have never before been made public. Facts about Gillette's early life and his family are revealed here for the first time anywhere. After 80 years, readers can finally find out what really happened at Big Moose Lake in 1906. The true story of Upstate New York's most famous murder case can finally be told."--Back cover




Rewilding North America


Book Description

In Rewilding North America, Dave Foreman takes on arguably the biggest ecological threat of our time: the global extinction crisis. He not only explains the problem in clear and powerful terms, but also offers a bold, hopeful, scientifically credible, and practically achievable solution. Foreman begins by setting out the specific evidence that a mass extinction is happening and analyzes how humans are causing it. Adapting Aldo Leopold's idea of ecological wounds, he details human impacts on species survival in seven categories, including direct killing, habitat loss and fragmentation, exotic species, and climate change. Foreman describes recent discoveries in conservation biology that call for wildlands networks instead of isolated protected areas, and, reviewing the history of protected areas, shows how wildlands networks are a logical next step for the conservation movement. The final section describes specific approaches for designing such networks (based on the work of the Wildlands Project, an organization Foreman helped to found) and offers concrete and workable reforms for establishing them. The author closes with an inspiring and empowering call to action for scientists and activists alike. Rewilding North America offers both a vision and a strategy for reconnecting, restoring, and rewilding the North American continent, and is an essential guidebook for anyone concerned with the future of life on earth.