NEWS Forever Adirondacks Campaign Draws to Successful Close, Aaron Mair Moves to New Challenges
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tuesday, December 17, 2024
ALBANY, N.Y. – With his Forever Adirondacks Campaign due to conclude at the end of December, the Adirondack Council today thanked Aaron Mair for his leadership and said it looked forward to continuing partnerships on behalf of the Adirondacks, wilderness, climate change and environmental/social justice issues.
“It has been powerful to have Aaron lead such a successful campaign to further the Council’s goals of wilderness protection, green jobs and infrastructure, clean water, and building pathways to the Adirondacks for communities of color, especially for youth,” said Adirondack Council Executive Director Raul J. Aguirre. “Aaron is a tremendous force and environmental and social justice pioneer. I am grateful for the three years he has spent with us, sharing his talents with younger advocates and leaving a legacy of hope, both inside the park and farther away. On a personal level, as a person of color leading a wilderness advocacy organization, I have a deep appreciation for the impact he has had and his ability to communicate about issues that are challenging but essential to making the Adirondacks relevant, safe, and welcoming for all.”
Mair has been a volunteer advocate on behalf of the Adirondacks for more than 30 years as a member of the Sierra Club’s Atlantic Chapter and national board of directors. In 2015, he was elected president of the international organization’s board of directors. He was the first African American to hold that office.
“Aaron also achieved many firsts in his work on the Adirondack Council team,” said John F. Sheehan, the Council’s Director of Communications, who has worked with Mair on various campaigns over the past 35 years. “This was his first paid position as an environmental advocate, after decades as an epidemiological cartographer for the New York State Department of Health. He was our first staff member honored by the West Harlem Environmental Action Inc. (WE ACT); the first staff member to participate in a United Global Council of Parties; and, the first staff member to have his professional papers collected for preservation by the Library of Congress, which is using them as the foundation of its new Environmental Justice collection.”
New Program Helps Students Work toward Green Future
While building an Adirondacks-focused Green Jobs coalition, engaging the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislative Caucus, working on wilderness carbon sinks at an international level, Mair also worked with the Council’s government relations team to secure funding for a signature program focused on providing opportunities for urban students to explore career paths in green jobs and conservation. The Timbuctoo Climate and Careers Institute, which paired high school students from the greater New York City metropolitan area with the City University of NY Medgar Evers College (Brooklyn) and State University of NY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (Newcomb wilderness campus). Students spend two weeks learning how to get the training and credentials needed for careers in environmental science, climate science, ecosystem/wilderness management and conservation advocacy.
Scaling Up
Mair also played a key role in elevating the importance of the Survey of Climate and Adirondack Lake Ecosystems program, which will measure the impacts of air pollution and climate change on key Adirondack waters. The research will be carried out by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Cornell University, the Ausable Freshwater Center and other academic partners. It will provide guidance to state and federal policymakers on how to protect those ecosystems, which have been shown to be extremely sensitive to air pollution and to warming temperatures. The survey received crucial support from members of the NY Legislature’s Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Caucus after they toured some of the research facilities with Mair in Ray Brook and Wilmington.
Early Career in Albany’s Old North End
Mair’s early career as a volunteer advocate in Albany, he built a new wing within the Sierra Club, matching advocates for urban environmental justice issues, who were mostly people of color, with the nation’s largest grassroots environmental organization, which was not.
“Aaron was instrumental in leading the Sierra Club’s campaign against a downtown Albany trash incinerator in the 1980s,” Sheehan said. “Convincing the Sierra Club that this was a necessary environmental fight was not easy, but it marked his first major success in merging environmental action with environmental justice. Environmental Justice is now a primary element of the Sierra Club’s agenda. Many other conservation organizations have moved in the same direction.”
Poverty, Pollution Not Just Urban
Mair also reminded officials in Albany and Washington, D.C. that you don’t have to be a person of color, or a city resident, to live in an underserved and disadvantaged community.
In December of 2022, Mair worked with a coalition of local town, county and state officials who called on Gov. Kathy Hochul to preserve and re-use the idle Moriah Shock Incarceration Facility. The minimum-security campus looks more like a college dormitory than a prison. Mair noted that it could be used for training state conservation personnel, or to house a Civilian Climate Corps funded with federal grants, if those personnel were employed in protecting and managing the Forest Preserve.
Just as Mair had done for the low-income, inner-city neighborhood of Arbor Hill in Albany, Mair called for state and federal programs to address poverty, pollution and public health issues affecting disadvantaged rural areas in the Adirondack Park, which face high energy costs, poor public health outcomes, and low-income levels. Those communities include Southern Essex County, east of Schroon Lake and around Paradox; Southern Lewis County and Southern St. Lawrence County, near Cranberry Lake; Western St. Lawrence County, including Russell, Fowler, and Pitcairn; and, Southern Hamilton County, in Hope and Wells.
Next Chapters: History and The Future
Aaron said his plans for the near future include the creation of two not-for-profit efforts. One would celebrate and erect a monument to the Revolutionary War soldiers who prevented the reinforcement of British forces at Saratoga by winning the only battle of the war fought in Albany County, in August of 1777, at Normanskill Creek in what is now the Town of Guilderland. Forty of those soldiers were members of the First Rhode Island regiment and were African Americans.
“The Rev250 Celebration in 2026 will give us a chance to commission a bronze monument to honor those who served in that battle,” he said. “It was an important chapter in the creation of this nation, but it’s a story that doesn’t get told enough. A monument will tell the story in an unmistakable, visual way.”
Timbuctoo Mountain Club
Mair is also in the process of creating the Timbuctoo Mountain Club, named in honor of the one of more than a dozen Suffrage Settlements in the Adirondacks, where African American men could gain the right to vote by acquiring a farm worth $250 or more, in the early 1800s. Mair worked with local research scientists to identify the boundaries of Timbuctoo settlement near Lake Placid, erecting an historic marker at its former entrance on Military Road, north of John Brown’s Farm State Historic Site. The club will expand on the work of the Timbuctoo Climate and Careers Institute by bringing young people of color to the Adirondacks for outdoor recreation, as well as an introduction to environmental career choices, Mair said.
“As one chapter ends, so begins the next one, or two,” said Mair. “I have enjoyed working with the Adirondack Council these past three years. I hope to continue in the years ahead to bring new people and new ideas to the park and to continually refresh the conservation effort. The Council has been willing to invest in building stronger, more diverse support for the Adirondacks. That’s good for water, wilderness and jobs in the park’s small, rural towns.”
Established in 1975, the Adirondack Council is a privately funded, not-for-profit environmental advocacy organization dedicated to ensuring the ecological integrity and wild character of the Adirondack Park. The 9,300-square-mile Adirondack Park is one of the largest intact temperate deciduous forest ecosystems left in the world. The Adirondacks are home to about 130,000 New York residents in 130 rural communities.
The Council carries out its mission through research, education, advocacy and legal action. The Council envisions a Park with clean water and clean air, core wilderness areas, farms and working forests, and vibrant, diverse, welcoming, safe communities.
For more information: John Sheehan, Director of Communications, 518-441-1340
