Adirondack Park - Eagle Lake Property Owner's Inc.

The economic justification for ANS management is clear. The economic backbone of the
Adirondack Park is supported by tourism, with visitors expending over $1.2 billion dollars
annually and providing employment for over 26,000 people. According to Bill Osborne from
Hamilton County, over 85 percent of visitors desire waterside lodging and about 70 percent want
to swim, fish, or boat while visiting the Adirondacks. Water is a main ingredient of the tourism
package that attracts visitors to the Adirondacks, and thus clean water is a main ingredient of
jobs. Water also affects the quality of life of Adirondack residents in several important ways,
including property values, drinking water quality, and ecosystem health. The proliferation of
invasive species may be the greatest regional threat to water quality, with the negative effects
already having been demonstrated through reductions in shoreline property values (and taxes)
along heavily infested waters.
Impacts of ANS in the Adirondack Park will continue to increase if current populations of ANS
are left unchecked and new species of ANS enter the Park. If action is taken quickly, it may be
possible to limit the spread of ANS and protect the ecologic and socioeconomic vitality of the
Adirondacks. The Adirondack Park Aquatic Nuisance Species Management Plan provides
guidance on management actions to prevent, control, and limit the impacts of ANS that have
invaded or may invade the Adirondack Park.
Plan Development
The Plan represents a grass roots effort that has been very much in the public domain with
multiple opportunities for individuals and groups to provide input. The document was written by
a team of three persons: Dan Kelting (Adirondack Watershed Institute), Mark Malchoff (Lake
Champlain Sea Grant/ SUNY Plattsburgh), and Hilary Oles (Adirondack Park Invasive Plant
Program) with additional guidance from the New York State Department of Environmental
Conservation (NYSDEC), Adirondack Park Agency (APA), Lake Champlain Basin Program
(LCBP), Adirondack Association of Towns and Villages (AATV), Cornell Cooperative
Extension, the Adirondack Council, the Residents’ Committee to Protect the Adirondacks
(RCPA), the Upper Saranac Lake Foundation (USLF), and the Lake George Association (LGA).
After initial revisions following the guidance provided by the above organizations, the Plan was
circulated to a Review Committee consisting of lake and river associations, state and local
government, and the research community. The Plan was revised again following the
recommendations of the Review Committee and then made available to the participants in the 3 rd
Annual Adirondack Water Quality Conference, who provided input on the Plan at the conference
on August 16 th , 2005.
An Adirondack Park ANS Management Plan Steering Committee was formed immediately
following the conference, with the main charge of completing the Plan document. Members of
the Steering Committee are listed in Appendix B. This version of the Plan reflects the comments
provided at the conference (see Appendix A) with additional due attention paid to the guidance
provided by the New York State Invasive Species Task Force Report, which was released for
public comment in August 2005. The Plan was posted for public comment via the World Wide
Web at http://www.paulsmiths.edu/PAGE=1685/page.pl through December 2005. Public
comments sent to committee members through December were incorporated into a fourth draft
of the Plan.
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