By Emily Chase
Most visitors to the Adirondack Park’s vast outdoor spaces are white, and two counties in the park have populations nearly all white.
Skidmore College professor A.J. Schneller and his students are studying just why that is and are looking for ways that people of all colors might feel more comfortable inside the blue line, the color of the park’s boundary as traditionally drawn on maps.
Emily Chase, working with the Saratoga Journalism Collaborative, has included their work on this issue as part of the Collaboratives’ Open Space Initiative.
Chase writes:
The students hope their research, which they will present to the public in May at Skidmore's Academic Festival, will help bolster the work of the Adirondack Diversity Initiative (ADI), a regional group dedicated to enhancing educational initiatives about racial and social equity within the Adirondack Park. Through their communication with ADI Executive Director, Nicky Hylton-Patterson, they learned the importance of some of ADI's current projects, such as the exchange program between students from New York City and students from minority communities in the park.
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Schneller says, recreational programs in the park can remove barriers that allow young people to have transformative experiences in the park. "What you're doing is creating lifelong stewards of the environment, advocates for public land, people who are going to be pro-environmental voters, people who on a daily basis are going to be making pro-environmental behavior decisions."
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