The Adirondack Council yesterday called on the Adirondack Park Agency to declare 12,500 acres east of Carry Falls Reservoir in St. Lawrence County to be state-protected wilderness where motorized traffic would eventually be banned.

“The northern slopes of the Adirondack Park, along north-flowing rivers, contain a rare, low-elevation evergreen forest that is otherwise found only in the sub-arctic spruce and fir forests of the Canadian and Siberian taiga,” said Adirondack Council Executive Director Brian Houseal. “It is home to a host of rare plant and animal species that have no other homes in New York State and whose survival will depend on how we manage these lands. Many of them are already carved up by logging roads and unofficial snowmobile trails. Unless this entire area is classified as a Wilderness or a Primitive Area, the damage to this habitat will only get worse.”

The Adirondack Park Agency will hold public hearings later this month to gather public input on how the lands should be managed. The hearings will include dozens of new state land classifications, most of which the Adirondack Council supports.

“Our greatest concern in this round of reclassifications is that local government officials in St. Lawrence County have expressed a desire to build a snowmobile bridge across the Carry Falls Reservoir into the heart of the proposed Boreal Wilderness Area,” Houseal said. “It appears that the county plans to use a federal grant inappropriately to complete this bridge project – a grant which should only be used to improve recreation along existing highways, not this bridge to nowhere. The Park Agency should not encourage that effort by making motorized access possible across the southern portion of the Carry Falls Reservoir.”

Houseal said the Council had written a letter to the Park Agency, reminding the agency that page 14 of the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan requires the commissioners to give special protection to sensitive boreal forests: