Consolidation of The Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks (AFPA) and the Residents’ Committee to Protect the Adirondacks (RCPA) would create a vigorous, highly effective new Adirondack environmental organization
Since 1901, the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks (AFPA) has on behalf of its statewide membership amassed a strong and distinguished record of effective statewide influence on Adirondack and wilderness policies. The Residents’ Committee to Protect the Adirondacks (RCPA) has since its founding in 1990 acted as a strong voice among full-time Park residents for the sound stewardship of the Park’s public and private lands. Combined, the two organizations will demonstrate stronger local as well as statewide capacity and influence.

AFPA has faced and overcome many unparalleled challenges to its Adirondack conservation efforts over the past century, ranging from devastating forest fires and the exigencies of two world wars to proposals for mega-dams, rampant motorized use of the Forest Preserve, and massive developments that would undermine the character and integrity of the Park for all time. With each new challenge, AFPA has risen to the occasion and persevered by adjusting our thinking, our tactics, and at times our very structure.

A confluence of many challenges – environmental, economic, energy, climatic, demographic, and more - now faces the natural and human communities of the Adirondack Park. In response, we are taking a set of bold, deliberative steps to seize the moment and turn adversity to advantage.

Representatives from AFPA and the RCPA began exploratory discussions in December 2008 to assess the feasibility of combining the two organizations. As these discussions matured during 2009, both groups have come to believe that a new, combined organization may be the most effective, efficient way of pursuing our shared goals of protecting the Adirondack Park and enhancing the lives of its residents.

The two organizations have shared purposes and goals; a mix of programs that are both compatible and complementary; staffing arrangements that would be enhanced by consolidation; and organizational cultures that, while different, have complementary strengths. In short, we believe that the two organizations combined may be able to do far more to advance Adirondack conservation than can be done under the status quo.

In our view, consolidation would:

• Provide us with a much more visible, effective presence in the Park, as well as our Center for the Forest Preserve in Niskayuna, and a larger staff, board, and volunteer presence throughout the region.
  
• Encourage and promote sustainable stewardship of private lands, as our strategic plan calls for.
  
• Maintain our unalterable commitments to defend and affirm Article XIV, the forever wild clause, as fundamental policy for the Adirondack and Catskill Forest Preserve, and high standard for all State agencies.
  
• Strengthen staff and board expertise in forestry, private land stewardship, and create interrelated programs in energy efficiency and renewable energy production, forest certification, and water quality.
  
• Promote greater excellence in the management of our wilderness and wild forest lands, enhancing the Park’s ecological integrity.
  
• Connect with our youth to help them become directly involved in environmental work in the Park and in their communities.
  
• Grow the new organization by several thousand additional members— more than half of them full, or part time residents of the Park.
  
• Streamline our two administrative and fundraising efforts to provide efficiency and cost effectiveness.
  
  

In sum, melding the Boards, staffs, and our combined memberships in a new organization would create an unsurpassed pool of knowledge and expertise within and outside the Park that can be tapped to ensure the efficient, effective implementation of all Park monitoring, planning, policy development, advocacy, lobbying, legal, educational, and member services functions.

A plan of merger is being developed, and we invite you to join us in this exciting venture. There is still much work to be done if we decide to move forward with consolidation, and no final decisions have been made. Many challenges remain. Legally, we can not merge or consolidate without the approval of the members of both organizations.

We are convinced that now, well before final decisions are made, is the right time to reach out to invite your views, thoughts, questions, insights, and support. From this web site, www.protectadks.org. click on “Contact us,” and either send us an email, send a letter, or give us a phone call. We look forward to hearing from you.