Protect the Adirondacks has identified a potential new 12,000-acre Wilderness area in the southern Adirondack Park. The new West Stony Creek Wilderness consists of 3,300 acres of lands recently purchased by the State of New York from The Nature Conservancy and over 8,925 acres of existing Forest Preserve lands in the towns of Benson (Hamilton County) and Mayfield, Northampton, and Bleecker (Fulton County). This new wilderness connects to the existing Silver Lake Wilderness and provides a wilderness gateway to the southern Adirondack Park.
Some 8,925 acres are currently classified as Wild Forest in five different tracts in the Shaker Mountain Wild Forest. The newly purchased lands, part of the former Finch Paper holdings, will allow these Wild Forest tracts to be consolidated into a new, cohesive 12,850-acre Wilderness area that will protect a large intact landscape. This is an “accessible wilderness” opening up Wilderness within an hour of nearly a million people from Albany to Utica, just north of the Thruway. Most Wilderness areas are in the central Adirondacks.
Show your support for this new Wilderness Area by signing our new online petition.
Read more about this new proposal here.
Read a letter to state leaders advocating for this new Wilderness area.
See a map of the new West Stony Creek Wilderness Area below.
