The people of Lake George are concerned about their water quality. How do they protect their water? I mean that is a huge lake. Notice the forests surrounding the lake? That is how they assure themselves of a healthy lake because the forest, the contiguous forest provides SERVICES to the lake that cannot be duplicated. Below are their words, not mine.
Forests create an absorptive sponge (click here) that reduces the amount of runoff and pollutants entering the Lake. When forest areas are fragmented by buildings, driveways, roads, lawns, and other land use activities, the nature of the forest changes and its ability to absorb rainfall is reduced. Increased light along fragmented edges increases the opportunity for vines and invasive species to grow. Long thin areas of forest, with more edge conditions (as exist along many driveways), are less healthy and less capable of absorbing and intercepting rainfall than the same area with fewer edge conditions. Continued fragmentation ultimately leads to deforestation as isolated areas of trees decline and eventually convert to lawn. Contiguous forest areas create wildlife corridors and habitat....
In the early days the area was logged heavily, but, the area was not densely populated by people.
...However, (click here) the quick growth of the logging industry in the state resulted in a decimated landscape. In the 1860s during the peak of New York’s logging industry, environmentalist George Perkins Marsh understood the danger of deforestation, writing that,
We have now felled forest enough everywhere, in many districts far too much. Let us restore this one element of material life to its normal proportions, and devise means for maintaining the permanence of its relations to the fields, the meadows and the pastures, to the rain and the dews of heaven, to the springs and rivulets with which it waters down the earth.
Surveyor Verplanck Colvin became an advocate for the preservation of the Adirondack region following trips there in the 1860s. After climbing Mt. Seward in October 1870, he submitted a report to the New York State Board of Regents. As Superintendent of the Adirondack Survey, Colvin urged the creation of an Adirondack Park, for “the interests of commerce and navigation demand that these forests should be preserved; and for posterity should be set aside, this Adirondack region, as a park for New York, as is the Yosemite in California and the Pacific States.”
Since the Adirondacks contained the headwaters of several important state waterways including the Hudson River, the state government began the process of setting aside land for public use and protection. In 1872 the State Park Commission was established. Legislation passed eleven years later truly began the preservation and conservation of the Adirondacks. An 1883 law prohibited sale of state lands in Adirondack counties. Also that year, the state repossessed over 600,000 acres of land for non-payment of taxes. The combination of these actions signaled the momentum for protecting the Adirondack region....
...Log driving ended on the Hudson River in 1924 and on the Moose River in 1948. The last boom for sorting logs, the Big Boom on the Hudson at Glen Falls, closed in 1952
Adirondack Park became a popular destination for outdoor recreationalists in the early twentieth century. The New Deal programs implemented during the Great Depression, specifically the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), repaired and improved the infrastructure in state and national parks across the country. Four CCC camps were built in the Adirondacks in 1933—Fish Creek Pond in Franklin County, Bolton Landing in Warren County, Eighth Lake in Fulton County, and Speculator in Hamilton County. Work included improvement and development of campsites and trails, stream improvement, and reforestation. By 1935 the number of CCC camps in the state increased to 106, up from 69 the previous year. In order to comply with the state constitution, which required the camps be temporary structures and not require clearance of timber. All CCC camps in the park closed in 1942....
