To the Editor:
At the Guilderland Planning Board hearing regarding the proposed Apex at Crossgates apartment complex, one of the speakers stated that the town of Guilderland Planning Board should follow the recommendations of the scientists at the Albany Pine Bush Preserve Commission [“New owners seek to tweak plan for 222-unit Apex at Crossgates,” The Altamont Enterprise, July 15, 2022].

I agree that the scientists employed by the commission are very knowledgeable about the Pine Bush and have often dedicated their professional lives to its protection.

However, I believe that, while the speaker praised the commission in his comments, he was really heavily implying is that the board should listen to the commission’s recommendations, and not to that riff-raff bunch of environmentalists from Save the Pine Bush who had just spoken passionately about the need to protect the Pine Bush ecosystem.

The apartment development is proposed to be built on land located in the Pine Bush ecosystem that the commission recommends to be “partially protected.” In the commission’s Pine Bush Management Plan, a partial protection designation is generally assumed to protect at least 50 percent of the parcel.

This proposed development will require bulldozing nearly the entire 20-acre site and leaving a few hundred feet of buffer adjacent to the preserve as “forever wild.” This is not partial protection. It is obvious that destroying acres of forested Pine Bush for parking lots and apartments decreases the size of the Pine Bush ecosystem and does not in any way protect it.

Should the planning board listen to Save the Pine Bush’s recommendation to protect the land from bulldozers? After all, what does Save the Pine Bush know? Let’s look at some history.

Why do we have a Pine Bush Commission? The New York State Legislature established the Albany Pine Bush Preserve Commission in 1988, in response to 10 years of successful litigation by Save the Pine Bush over proposed developments in the Pine Bush.

When the commission’s first management plan was published in 1994, Save the Pine Bush sued the commission because the plan was completely inadequate to protect the Pine Bush. In response to our litigation, the commission created a supplemental plan in 1996 that instituted a scientific method to categorize protection priorities for all of the parcels in the study area.

This method was based largely on an affidavit written by a Save the Pine Bush volunteer scientist. A brief reference to this litigation can be found on page 3 of the current 2017 management plan.

We should also look into the Altamont Enterprise’s own archive. In the Jan. 11, 2001 edition, on the front page in an article titled “Hawver in the Pine Bush hot seat,” The Enterprise quotes Albany Pine Bush Preserve Commission Executive Director Christopher Hawver as saying, “Without Save the Pine Bush, there would probably be no Pine Bush Preserve. Without somebody carrying that flag, it probably would have been developed.”

Save the Pine Bush believes that, to protect the Pine Bush ecosystem in perpetuity, all of the remaining privately-owned Pine Bush ecosystem should be purchased and added to the Preserve.

The commission does very good science. Its members can recommend certain plantings and use of native species and they can even suggest better road or pavement configurations. But, the commission only has the power to make recommendations about privately-owned land proposed for development; no matter what the science says, it cannot advocate for the complete preservation of land.

Save the Pine Bush, being an all-volunteer group, can advocate for doing the right thing — which is to fully protect all of the remaining Pine Bush ecosystem. Within the town of Guilderland, there are approximately 3,001 acres of privately-owned unprotected Pine Bush ecosystem and restorable lands remaining that are in need of preservation.

Guilderland needs to step up and find a way to buy this land in order to protect this beautiful resource.

Lynne Jackson

Volunteer 

Save the Pine Bush

Editor’s note: see related story.