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Groups want to keep open space open
By JANE MCMANUS
THE JOURNAL NEWS
December 21, 2005

Each year, Marty Molitoris leads people to the famous climbing cliffs of the Shawangunk Ridge. About an hour north of Rockland County, this mountain range attracts serious climbers from all over the world. As the founder of the climbing guide service Alpine Endeavors, Molitoris gets to see the look in their eyes when they get a load of the cliffs.

"You get to introduce people to this great area," Molitoris said. "It changes people, and a lot actually end up getting into conservation."

For the very reason climbers flock to Minnewaska Preserve each summer, developers are eyeing the large parcels of pristine land now that real-estate prices have pushed many out of the Lower Hudson Valley.

"A lot of people want to buy and have a house on the cliff or at the base of the cliff," Molitoris said.

But the days of environmentalists being a small, sign-waving contingent outside of the halls of power are over. Conservationists have been fighting back with checkbooks.

The Open Space Institute and the Trust for Public Land are two groups that recently partnered with the state to bid for the Awosting Preserve, a 2,518-acre parcel adjacent to the Minnewaska State Park Preserve.

"The price of land has been going up a great deal," said Keith LaBudde, the president of the Friends of the Shawangunks. "It's now or never; once this land is developed, it's lost."

The ability of preservationists to buy pristine land has been a boon for outdoor enthusiasts, and has increased the number of legal rock-climbing areas as well as the size of local parks like Clarence Fahnestock Memorial State Park in Carmel. It means greater access to the Hudson River, land for fishing, and habitats for some threatened species of birds.

The Open Space Institute was able to put down a chunk of the winning $17 million bid for Awosting thanks to an endowment from the estate of Lila Acheson and DeWitt Wallace, Westchester residents and the founders of Reader's Digest. If all goes as planned, OSI and TPL will convey the land to the state for the purpose of preservation - and possible rock-climbing routes.

"We have a mission of preserving what we feel are the best places," OSI general counsel Bob Anderberg said.

The small, tax-exempt charities can move more quickly than the state to try to purchase a property, which is what happened here. The bid beat out a development coalition looking to build 350 homes and a golf course, as well as a $20 million offer from actor Robert De Niro, because it was the one that didn't need to get special zoning or permits, called contingencies.

This is something the OSI has been doing for years. It has negotiated with private-property owners to more than double the size of Fahnestock, adding 8,000 acres to its total. The institute has added parcels to the Hudson Highlands State Park, which stretches from Peekskill to Beacon, and also for Ossining's Teatown Lake Preserve.

"The goal has been to create a greenway of protected land from the Hudson River to Fahnestock and then on to Connecticut," said Tildy LaFarge, the OSI communication director who lives in Kent and cross-country skis in the Putnam park.

For those who use those open spaces for hiking, cycling, snowshoeing or any other other recreational purpose, these open spaces are a treasure. Open spaces everywhere are becoming more valued.

The rails-to-trails movement, which brought the North and South County Trailways to Westchester, and a greenway planned for both sides of the river, are similar in spirit to what is happening in the Shawangunks.

"In general, this is a very good time for land conservation in the Shawangunks," Anderberg said. "In 1968 there wasn't a single preserved acre."

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