OVERVIEW

The Adirondack Park is the largest park in the continental United States, but it is not a wilderness set apart. Since its creation in 1892, the Park has been a peopled wilderness; 130,000 inhabitants in 102 towns and villages currently live within the Park’s boundaries. Since its formation, the Adirondack Park has sought to sustain people and wilderness together.

The Adirondack Museum opens a new dialogue about the history and future of the Park and its communities. Steeped in it’s own history, the museum has fostered an active collecting and interpretation of the regional history with a focus on the stories of people-living and working, playing and traveling in the Adirondack Mountains. This public symposium brings six prominent environmental history scholars and their most current research projects to the region to explore the complex connections between human culture and the natural world. A diverse group of eight regional authorities will react to the historian’s papers, and the audience will be invited to participate in the discussion.

Living with Wilderness; Community and Nature in the Adirondacks offers participants the opportunity to bring historical perspective to the issues the Park faces today and addresses the question: Can people live where nature lives?

SCHEDULE

Friday, September 29, 2006

7:30-8:30 a.m. Registration

8:30-8:45 a.m. David Pamperin, Director -The Adirondack Museum – Welcome

8:45-9:15 a.m. Philip Terrie, Bowling Green State University --The Adirondacks and the Invention of American Wilderness

9:15-9:45 a.m. David Foster, Harvard Forest - Wildlands and Woodlands - A Vision for the New England Forest

9:45-10:00 a.m. Break

10:00-10:30 a.m. Brian Donahue, Brandeis University - Farms & Forests: New England Environmental History and the Future of Conservation

10:30-12:00 noon: Panelists’ Response, Questions & Answers

Panelists:

John Dillon, retired Chairman & CEO, International Paper Company
Bill McKibben, Author
Frederick Monroe, Director, Adirondack Park Local,Government Review Board
Ross Whaley, Chairman, Adirondack Park Agency

12:00-1:45 p.m. Lunch & Keynote address:
William Cronon, University of Wisconsin at Madison – At Home in the Wild: Conserving Not Just Land But Community Too

2:00-2:30 p.m. Karl Jacoby, Brown University - Both being beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape": Animals, Indians, and the Discourses of Extermination, Extinction, and Reintroduction

2:30-3:00 p.m. Richard Judd, University of Maine - The Untilled Garden: Natural History and the Origins of Conservation in America, 1730-1850

3:00:3:15 p.m. Break

3:15-3:45 p.m. Paul Sutter, University of Georgia - Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies: Georgia’s little Grand Canyon and Conservation in the South

3:45-5:15 p.m.: Panelists’ Response, Questions & Answers

Panelists:

Jim Dawson, Department of Earth & Environmental Science, SUNY Plattsburgh

Jerry Jenkins, Adirondack Communities and Conservation Program, Wildlife Conservation Society

Martha Foley, North Country Public Radio

Curt Stager, Sciences, Liberal Arts & Business Division, Paul Smith’s College

6:00 p.m. Reception

7:00 p.m. Dinner

Speakers

William J. Cronon Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. His publications include: Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, and Uncommon Ground: Reinventing Nature.

Brian Donahue Associate Professor of American Environmental Studies of the Jack Meyerhoff Foundation; Director, Environmental Studies Program Department of American Studies at Brandeis University. His publications include: The Great Meadow: The Nature of Husbandry in Concord, Massachusetts, and Reclaiming the Commons: Community, Farming and Forestry in a New England Town.

David Foster Director of the Harvard Forest; Professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. His publications include: Thoreau’s Country: Journey Through a Transformed Landscape, Forest Landscape Dynamics in Southern New England, and Scenes from the Harvard Forest Diorama: Insights into the History, Ecology and Management of New England Forests.

Karl Jacoby Associate Professor of History at Brown University. His publications include: Crimes Against Nature: Squatters Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation.

Richard Judd Professor of History at University of Maine at Orono. His publications include: Common Lands, Common People: The Origins of Conservation in Northern New England, Maine: The Pine Tree State from Prehistory to the Present, and Aroostook: A Century of Logging in Northern New England.

Paul Sutter Associate Professor of History at the University of Georgia. His publications include: Driven Wild: How the Fight Against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement.

Philip Terrie Professor of American Culture Studies and English at Bowling Green State University. His publications include: Contested Terrain: A New History of Nature and People in the Adirondacks, Wildlife and Wilderness: A History of Adirondack Mammals, and Forever Wild: A Cultural History of Wilderness.