In June 2021, former Sierra Club president Aaron Mair was hired by the Adirondack Council to spearhead a project called ‘Forever Adirondacks’. The intent of the program was to broaden awareness about issues and challenges in the Adirondacks and promote opportunities for diversity and youth within the Blue Line.
Mair tells WAMC North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley that as the three-year project concludes and he leaves the Council, the campaign has successfully met its goals:
You have a three-year contract to really lift up the Adirondack Council, its programming. its efforts with regards to protecting wilderness. And it's a multi-faceted campaign, meeting a number of key stakeholders, stakeholder audiences, but also broadening that. And it was a wonderful run. Very, very, very successful and it has been very impactful. Case in point, we were able to, through the networking of my connections, to bring the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, Asian Legislative Task Force to the Adirondacks for the first time in its history. And it was quite impactful. You know, we were able to ground them into the local history, their history, with regards to the black suffrage settlements of the early 19th century. The back story behind John Brown's farm, why John Brown came to the Adirondacks in support of these suffrage communities. But what's really critical is that unknown history is what connected a lot of the legislators outside of the politics of New York City versus upstate. But really, I say, significantly stitched together downstate with upstate in a way that's intimate, personal and permanent. But it was through this campaign that we really made significant inroads in breaking that political ice and behind that becomes the economic investment and other opportunities and the wilderness protection opportunities that we want to lift as part of our portfolio, protecting the wilderness, protecting the water and creating jobs in the Adirondacks. Those are the three legs of the campaign. And then we created the Timbuctoo Summer Science Program that connects youth from the inner city of Manhattan, from all five boroughs. The investments, the multi-million dollar investment in the Adirondack survey lakes corps, as well as protecting some of the data collection centers that deal with the atmospheric data and particulate data throughout the Adirondacks. So, we have been busy.
What kind of challenges will the Adirondack Council and other groups that you've worked with over the past three years, what kind of challenges do they face moving forward, particularly as it pertains to a lot of the diversity issues that you've tried to focus on and really uplift as you've been working with the Forever Adirondack program?
At the end of the day, at the core, it's the wilderness, stupid. The wilderness doesn't care about your politics. It doesn't care about your race. But it needs the love and it's all hands on deck. You know, we have to enlist everybody. We have to enlist all New Yorkers. This is not a partisan issue. This is a protective issue of a natural resource asset that we need to battle climate change. You know you are talking about building long term sustainable relationships. And so one of the things that I leave behind is tools, the relationships that you know will continue to grow. So again, the campaign not only builds and boosts the brand, the capacity and the action of the organization, it builds and boosts the relationships and the networks. And it built trust and folks got a chance to see a very important side and collaborative side of the Adirondack Council and the wilderness Forever Adirondacks campaign, if anything, it was collaboration on steroids.
Aaron Mair, one of the things that I think has really progressed as you've been working with the Adirondack Council and the Forever Adirondacks is the diversity and working to bring more people of color not only into the Adirondacks but their awareness of the Adirondacks and environmental issues in general. Why is diversity so important to the environmental movement in general and particularly to the Adirondacks?
Well, two things. You know, beyond the diversity, it's the issue of what does it take to support a place and space? It's the taxpayers. People protect and invest in spaces that they are connected with and if they can see it and experience it and develop a unique relation, or if there's a historic relationship and connection, they want to protect it. They want to protect it. There are those who want to protect wilderness for wilderness sakes. Then there are those who want to protect it because this is a special place. Something historic happened here. There's a lot of reasons why we come to the outdoors. And the unique thing about the Adirondack Park and the public lands within it is that everybody who's a New Yorker that lives and pays taxes within the state, they are shareholder to that park. And if we can absolutely on that level connect them and have them understand the relationship on why it is theirs, it's critical and key. But it's not only just for those on the outside, diverse audiences on the outside, but also educating folks who live there. Because a lot of folks, they've lost sight of how come and why the Adirondack Park exists and why they, as land holders within the park, are unique. What New York State did that was different was the walk away from the National Park model, which some of the very wealthiest New Yorkers, Rockefeller and others that wanted to do, creating the Blue Line and then creating the land use models for basically having this weird hybrid, which is unique and the unique model for the entire nation. So you want to educate people on all sides, inside the park and outside the park, about these unique restrictions. And they're not stepping on anybody's freedoms, but they're in place to protect one of the nation's largest wilderness ecosystems in the lower 48 states. And we're creating the next generation of New Yorkers who are going to be in love and embracing wilderness. You know, we have over, you know, a couple 100 kids that we bring up every year. And they are first generation, almost to a person, experiencing the Adirondacks and totally transformed by their experience. I can't tell you how many kids that came up and through the Timbuctoo program with Medgar Evers (College in Brooklyn) and SUNY ESF now want to be park rangers. Now thinking about how can I become a conservationist? How can I become a scientist working up here at Mount Marcy, you know, collecting data. This is really cool. It's opening new horizons and experience. And this is all one of the blossoming outcomes of this wonderful program that not only did it bring the exposure for downstaters, but it also youth of color. Youth of color who now have new horizons and possibilities that they saw and experienced through the Forever Adirondacks campaign. Yes, we're bringing in diversity, but it is part of the overall work where your whole work is inclusive. You're dealing with all New Yorkers and bringing that experience. And so diversity actually becomes part of that secret sauce and seasoning and you're just exposing the Park with new people, new relationships, and creating new love and a new special place in people's lives that never would have existed without this program. This is what my passion is and what I love. You have a campaign. It has an objective. You're pushing it not only into the Adirondacks but to all of New York and building a case of awareness to all of New York. It's the Forever Adirondacks campaign through the Adirondack Council that actually physically brought them into the Adirondack Park so they can bear witness to the beauty and majesty of this wonderful park and asset that the state created and that it belongs to all New Yorkers and now it's been exposed to thousands of New Yorkers and it is in the minds and hearts of our legislators and policymakers that they can now seriously debate and talk about protecting this place, not only for the love of nature, but for the love of New Yorkers and that is an asset that their constituents now are enjoying and are connected to.
What happens to the Forever Adirondacks campaign? Is it morphing into something new?
The Adirondack Council has historically been doing this work for over 50 years. They’re going to their 50th anniversary of the love and the work that they've done in this Adirondack Park and their stewardship of it. So what this does is that now each of the respective programs within the Adirondack Council, who I basically been poaching stuff from, now they have the model, the methodology and the connections. Now they get to roll this effort into their regular business plans and just continue to move forward.
So, Aaron Mair, what's next for you?
Well, I've had so much fun that I've actually created a not-for-profit, because, you know, I'm also impacted by the work and I see that there's also gaps in opportunities that Council may not be able to fulfill but that diversity outreach work I want to continue or expand on. So I created something called the Timbuctoo Mountain Club. What that will do is try to catch like some of the excellent things that I did with regards to youth, university partnerships, mentorships and etc., in getting people of color to the Adirondacks. I want to try to continue not just the Adirondacks, but the Catskills and other areas. So I've created an organization that would really try to get New Yorkers to all its green assets and build environmental awareness within other underserved communities. And so it's basically now taking the program that I've done work exclusively within the Council but expanding it basically statewide and New York wide in leveraging that expertise and knowledge and fun that I've been having exclusively in the Adirondacks, but taking it to the Finger Lakes, taking it to the Alleghenies, taking it to, you know, the Catskills and other parts, ah, eastern Long Island. You know, we've got some very cool, ecologically sensitive areas that New Yorkers should know about but also, more importantly, protect. And you've got to do that by getting people there and having expert conservationists and wilderness lovers and advocates like me out there doing this work. So there's a niche area that I see an opportunity and need right now. Especially right now, because now we have a change at the national government. So we're facing an EPA and the National Park Service that’s not going to love the environment so much under the incoming administration. That's okay. Right now there are activists and leaders like me that will, you know, try to generate and build that demand, even though there may not be federal investment in that space, but I can now work with state investment and private investment in that space to keep that work going forward. The other thing too. I'm also going to be helping with the Revolutionary War 250 as an advisor to the Albany County Commission, as well as being on the chair on the Guilderland commission with regards to Rev 250 because a lot of folks don't realize there's a lot of fascinating, diverse history of people of color during the Revolutionary War within the capital region. In fact, here's a little good one. Did you know that there was only one Revolutionary War battle in Albany County during the American Revolution? And it's the call the Battle of Normans Kill and it was a black continental regiment that was actually their part of it. So I'm going to be looking up that story as part of the Revolutionary War planning committee. So I'll be quite busy.
Aaron Mair plans to take a working break through the spring while he applies for grants for his new Timbuctoo Mountain Club initiative.
