The nonprofit advocate Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve will present their annual awards during the organization’s meeting on Friday, October 10, 2025, at View Arts Center in Old Forge. The public is invited.
This year’s Champion of the Forest Preserve award goes to Chad Dawson whose wilderness recreation research has guided Adirondack Forest Preserve stewardship for decades.
As recreational pressures on the Preserve grew, so did Chad Dawson’s recreational surveys, carrying capacity assessments, and visitor use management studies.
His premise is that the Forest Preserve degrades if there is inadequate information, analysis, planning, and management steps taken to guide our recreational impulses in ways protective of the wilderness. Dawson’s work has critically informed wildland protection decisions of resource professionals, citizen advocates, and the world.
He is Professor Emeritus of Recreation Resources Management and former Chair of the faculty of Forest and Natural Resources Management at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, former Member of the Adirondack Park Agency, Managing Editor of the International Journal of Wilderness and co-editor of Wilderness Management: Stewardship and Protection of Resources and Values celebrating its 5th Edition in 2025.
This year’s Wild Stewardship Award goes to Adirondack Park ecologist, Sunita Halasz, a former natural resource analyst with the Adirondack Park Agency and lately the Climate Strategy Advisor for the Adirondack Research Consortium and coordinator of the Adirondack Climate Outreach and Resilience Network, or ACORN.
Halasz has turned ACORN into a coordinated, Park-wide effort to identify common concerns and prioritize community-driven, proactive solutions in response to a changed Adirondack climate.
Halasz’s organizing has resulted in over a dozen community workshops which have planted seeds to grow conversations, increase connections and social cohesion, and inspire fresh climate leadership around the Adirondack Park.
Thanks to Halasz and her team, ACORN has identified shared projects and climate response and resilience funding opportunities across twelve Adirondack counties. In her spare time, she mentors future generations of climate leaders.
After listening to young neighbors despair over the decline of melting glaciers, Halasz organized a club in Saranac Lake focused on climate change action. Now, a group of mostly home-schooled students are working on local projects to make their world healthier.
In recent days, the Adirondack Council has recognized her many skills and hired Halasz to be their Clean Water Community Advocate.
The Paul Schaefer Wilderness Award goes to Aaron Mair, a voice for environmental justice, wilderness protection, and recruitment of young people of color to enter environmental fields.
After 15 years of working for environmental justice at the grassroots level with the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter, Mair became the first African American board president of the national Sierra Club. For his work, the Library of Congress accepted Mair’s professional papers to serve as a foundation for its environmental justice library.
While directing the Adirondack Council’s Forever Adirondacks Campaign, Mair’s recruitment of leaders of color in Albany and New York City has helped to address and to fund climate change research in Adirondack lakes, protect wilderness, and prepare urban youth for environmental careers at the Timbuctoo Climate and Careers Institute hosted by the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
Adirondack Wild will celebrate these honorees and to learn more in a talk, “Wilderness Management: Stewardship of Resources and Values,” during Adirondack Wild’s annual meeting at View Arts in Old Forge.
The meeting runs from 11 am until 3:30 pm and is free and open to the public. Please bring a bag lunch. Light refreshments will be available.
Advance Registration is appreciated by emailing krimany@adirondackwild.org, or visiting their website at adirondackwild.org/events.
Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve is a not for profit, membership organization devoted to the protection and stewardship of wilderness and other wild lands through advocacy and education.
The organization protects wild lands from threats, holds officials accountable and proposes policy reforms.
Recent Comments