“Immigrants are disposable”, This is what mining recruiters used to think when mining was a huge industry in the Adirondacks. Immigrants were taken advantage of in the early days of the Adirondack mining industry, and deserve more recognition for how much they contributed to the history of the land. People today only see the Adirondacks as a place of beauty, failing to realize the history behind the landscape which they admire so much.

The mining that was done in the Adirondacks did a great job of employing people while also introducing a very diverse group of people to the region. While this sounds good at the surface, there was actually a darker side to the story of mining in the Adirondacks. There were recruiters for the mines that would take immigrants directly from the docks of New York and give them an opportunity to work. While innocent at first, the jobs given to these immigrants were inherently dangerous and they weren’t treated well.

What was done in these small mining towns located in the Adirondacks was cold and calculated. Some towns were “ethnically segregated…exacerbating tensions between old and new immigrant groups – which served to reduce the chances of miners finding common cause and striking, or, worse, unionizing” (Mining in the Adirondacks). Unfortunately, the way that these mines were run, their only purpose was to increase profits and production by exploiting workers. A clear example of this exploitation is when Italian mine workers “had to pay for their own tools and…pew rents in the local parish that new immigrant workers could not afford”(Mining in the Adirondacks). It is a shame to see what was done to these people, but all of this grueling work didn’t go to waste.

New discoveries today show that some of the mining waste and tailings that were left over from the past work done in the area still have ample amounts of rare earth metals that can be valuable to us today. These rare earth metals are essential to certain types of production, so if the effort is taken to extract these materials from the tailings and waste, what was once just pollution will become useful. It is truly unfortunate how these mines were run in the past, but there certainly have been good things to come of it. Not only was mining a great way of making money back during the Adirondacks’ early years of exploration, but benefits still might be seen today.

Immigrant mine workers were essentially the backbone of the region. Mining used to make up a huge part of the economy. Although this may not be the case today, the history of the land should at least be recognized to some extent. Not only has mining been pushed out of a lot of people’s view of the Adirondacks, almost no one would know about the immigrant workers that actually worked in the mines. People want to have this false vision of what the Adirondacks were, but the true history should not be hidden from the public no matter how dark it may be. What these workers did was essential to the development of the land, so they should hold their place in history when the Adirondacks come to mind.

Works Cited

“Mine Waste in the Eastern Adirondacks May Be Untapped, Accessible Source of Rare Earth Element Minerals.” Mine Waste in the Eastern Adirondacks May Be Untapped, Accessible Source of Rare Earth Element Minerals, 22 Dec. 2020, https://www.usgs.gov/news/mine-waste-eastern-adirondacks-may-be-untapped-accessible-source-rare-earth-element-minerals.

 “Mining in the Adirondacks.” Adirondack Experience, 9 Apr. 2021, https://www.theadkx.org/mining-in-the-adirondacks/.

You are guilty and I know it. I don’t have to know where you come from or anything about you, we are all guilty of something, rule breaking. There have been times in everyone’s life where they have been under circumstances where they feel they can break rules imposed upon them. Although experiences are different, the reasoning for breaking those rules may be more similar than you think. People have very common thought processes when it comes to breaking the law, and this can be applied to all types of situations, including the Adirondacks.

Why are rules broken? Most people try to follow rules to the best of their ability. We are taught to obey laws. Supposedly, laws make things better for everyone and provide order to a world of chaos. The answer is simple and intuitive. They can be hard to follow. It may seem obvious but it is the truth, and there is evidence to back this claim up. What makes them so hard to follow? Complexity. 

Harvard Business Review did research on hygiene rules in Los Angeles County and came to this conclusion. They measured the complexity of rules in two ways. One way was how many components there were in the rule, and the other one was the number of connections for each rule, meaning how much they related to each other. You could have a rule that stood alone, or one that had connections to 5 other regulations.

The findings were that the harder and more complex rules were much more likely to be broken “Because organizations rely on routines for following rules, complex rules would require complex routines, which would be harder to execute reliably” (Lehman, Cooil, and Ramanujam, Harvard Business Review). This makes sense because everyone wants things to be easy, and when you have a complex set of rules, it creates a difficult process to follow them.

To put this into terms of the Adirondacks, we must think of what we have going for ourselves. The constitution is supposed to keep the land “forever wild”, yet we have all of these additions that create complexity within this rule. What does this lead us to? Rules will be broken. When you have additions to the constitution, it creates more complex processes that must be put into place to keep the integrity of a forever wild land. How can we hope to cure this problem? It is a great question, and there is no easy answer. Our instinct may be to cut back on the laws, but then what is the point of them in the first place? The issue of complex rules is not only an headache for the people who have to follow them, but for the enforcers of the laws themselves. We see cases where rules are being bent and people aren’t sure how to handle them. Sometimes, rules can be complex and vague, which makes for a lot of controversy. In my opinion, this is the case in the Adirondacks, the complex rules are a problem for everyone, and it is hard to see the direction that needs to be taken to ease this moshpit of problems.

Works Cited“Why Some Rules Are More Likely to Be Broken.” Harvard Business Review, 7 Oct. 2019, https://hbr.org/2019/10/why-some-rules-are-more-likely-to-be-broken.

You are guilty and I know it. I don’t have to know where you come from or anything about you, we are all guilty of something, rule breaking. There have been times in everyone’s life where they have been under circumstances where they feel they can break rules imposed upon them. Although experiences are different, the reasoning for breaking those rules may be more similar than you think. People have very common thought processes when it comes to breaking the law, and this can be applied to all types of situations, including the Adirondacks.

The first order of business is to contemplate why rules are even broken. Most people try to follow rules to the best of their ability. This is no surprise. We are taught to obey laws. Supposedly, laws make things better for everyone and provide order to a world of chaos. If people have this basic understanding of laws and how they are good for us, why do they get broken. The answer is very simple and intuitive. They can be hard to follow. It may seem obvious but it is the truth, and there is evidence to back this claim up.

We know that rules can be hard to follow, but what makes them so hard to follow? Complexity. Harvard Business Review did research on hygiene rules in Los Angeles County and came to this conclusion. They measured the complexity of the rules in two ways. One way was how many components there were in the rule, and the other one was the number of connections for each rule, meaning how much they related to each other. You could have a rule that stood alone, or one that had connections to 5 other regulations.

The findings of this research was what I explained before. The harder and more complex rules were much more likely to be broken “Because organizations rely on routines for following rules, complex rules would require complex routines, which would be harder to execute reliably” (Lehman, Cooil, and Ramanujam). These findings just make sense because everyone wants things to be easy, and when you have a complex set of rules, it creates a difficult process to follow them.

To put this into terms of the Adirondacks, we must think of what we have going for ourselves. The constitution is supposed to keep the land “forever wild”, yet we have all of these additions that create complexity within this rule. What does this lead us to? Rules will be broken. When you have additions to the constitution, it creates more complex processes that must be put into place to keep the integrity of a forever wild land. How can we hope to cure this problem? It is a great question, and there is no easy answer. Our instinct may be to cut back on the laws, but then what is the point of them in the first place?

Works Cited

“Why Some Rules Are More Likely to Be Broken.” Harvard Business Review, 7 Oct. 2019, https://hbr.org/2019/10/why-some-rules-are-more-likely-to-be-broken. 

When hunting comes to mind. Most people think of a person roaming the woods looking for an animal to shoot. In Vermont, there is a different style of hunting known as hound hunting. This style of killing animals is one that is less popular, but the impact it has is devastating. Hound hunting is a cruel and inhumane way of killing animals when hunting, and laws should be changed with regards to what is allowed.

To talk about why these regulations should be changed, we must have a fundamental understanding of what hounding is. Hounding is the legal training of hounds, and using those hounds to track down a specific kind of animal. They will chase the animal until it is tired, scared, or trying to hide somewhere. In the worst case, the hounds will attack the other animal head on until it is killed.

The reasons why this type of hunting is unethical are a mix of obvious and not so obvious. To start with the easy ones, this is essentially legalized animal cruelty. Training one animal to fight and kill another seems to be a small issue when arguing the morality of this practice. It is extremely violent, and not only does it put the animals being hunted at risk, it is a huge risk for the hounds as well. There seems to be no pretty way to get the job done when you are controlling animals and training them to find and kill prey. Another issue that may possibly get overlooked when examining the issue of hounding is the lack of control these hounders have over their animals. Most of the time, these people are simply following the hounds with their trucks. They are able to do this because they have GPS coordinates of their hounds. What ends up happening sometimes is these animals may go off track, and since they aren’t directly being controlled in their actions, they interfere with peoples land. Below you can see a link to a video which displays an incident of hounding destroying personal property and having an emotional impact on a family.

It is evident that there are clear negative impacts that hounding has on the community. If you don’t think the effect on the community is an important one, think of the animals and what cruelty they must endure. No matter how it comes about, there needs to be some type of reform with regards to hounding regulations that force hounders to gain more control over their animals.

Works Cited

“Hunting with Hounds/Hounding.” Protectourwildlifevt, https://www.protectourwildlifevt.org/hunting-with-hounds. 

Necn. “Animal Advocates Push for VT.. Coyote Hunting Regulations.” NECN, NECN, 26 Feb. 2019, https://www.necn.com/news/local/vermont/animal-advocates-push-for-vt-coyote-hunting-regulations/1619/. 

When it comes to the environment, there are many different philosophies on how the land should be treated, and how to get the most out of the land. It is a battle of morals, and it seems nearly impossible to come to a concrete conclusion on how things should be dealt with. I will argue how a utilitarian approach to the treatment of nature is one that is destructive in the long run, and shouldn’t be embraced by the community of the Adirondacks.

For starters, utilitarianism is a moral theory that focuses on how people should approach decisions. The approach that is taken is one that concerns the consequences of one’s actions, which is why some people refer to it as consequentialism. One popular way to determine what makes the most desirable outcome from a decision is to make choices based on what produces the most happiness for everyone.

If we are to take everything that was just said and apply it to the adirondacks, we would see that a lot of decisions are made this way. People are constantly thinking in terms of the future. They want economic stability, and they act on this desire by taking risks for greater wealth as they believe it will produce the most happiness. Although this may seem like a great idea, there is one key part to the equation that I have left out up until this point. One of the major critiques of utilitarianism is how people use the philosophy, “the ends justify the means”. This is an extremely controversial statement, and when speaking in terms of nature, things get even more tricky.

To break it down even further, we must understand what we mean by this statement. The “ends” are literally just the result of everything. Very simple to understand. The “means” is whatever had to be done in order to get to the ends. To put this into perspective, let’s pretend our end is 0% unemployment in the adirondacks. This sounds amazing, who wouldn’t want everyone to be working and have a form of income? But the means would be an increase in logging jobs, leading to the further destruction of the landscape. This is the main weakness of the utilitarian approach. If you truly believe that happiness is the most important factor in what makes an action morally correct, it seems that you have to sacrifice a lot of other things in order to reach that point. Who is to say that the decimation of the forest is justifiable by lower unemployment rates and happier people?

The truth is, in the case of the Adirondacks, the means to the goal of happiness most of the time is going to interfere with the integrity of the forest. It isn’t worth the sacrifice of the land for greater happiness. Utilitarianism isn’t the answer to how we should approach things, as things aren’t as good as they may seem when you dig below the surface.

At first glance, there may not be that obvious of a connection between them, but when you closely examine climate change, tourism, and the economy of the Adirondacks, things become a little more clear. Each of these factors affects the other in ways you’ve never thought of before.

To start, we must understand how climate change and tourism are connected. Climate change, if you didn’t know already, is causing a rise in sea level. This rise in sea level actually makes for more severe storms. A specific example of this rise in sea level causing more severe storms is how “the rainfall from Hurricane Harvey was 15 percent more intense and three times as likely to occur due to human-induced climate change” (Extreme weather gets a boost from climate change). How does this relate to tourists? Tourists are definitely the ones contributing to climate change, but of course it’s not just tourists in the Adirondacks, but everyone worldwide. The connection that goes below the surface is how this bad weather affects the flow of tourists into the region.

During hurricane Irene, in the Adirondacks, “damage forced the closure of many popular hiking trails, washed out foot bridges and dams and essentially cut off some mountain areas just before the normally busy Labor Day weekend” (Carola). This is the result of a storm, and to think how climate change is making them worse, who knows what could happen in the future. If these storms continue to worsen, trails could close for longer periods of time. The worst case scenario would be if these storms got to a point where large masses of trees and other parts of the landscape were destroyed. Imagine what things would be like then. Tourists would have no reason to enter the park anymore, as the whole point of making a trip to the Adirondacks is to appreciate the beauty of the land.

(This image illustrates the destruction of Hurricane Irene in the Adirondacks)

Now that we understand the relationship between climate change and tourism, the connection from these two to the economy of the land is simple. As we all know, there is always a large influx of tourists coming into the park and stimulating the economy. This is great in the way of money being made and keeping the area alive from an economic standpoint. Now, if the previous situations were to occur, and the land doesn’t attract as many tourists as it once did from the storms that are worsening, what would this mean for the people of the Adirondacks? It would be hard to say that they would be fine as the tourism industry is so big when it comes to a place like the Adirondacks.

When you examine the effects of climate change, and what it does to a place that seems important, things become scary and a little more real to you. Hopefully it will never get to the point where the integrity of the land is ruined, but the path we are on doesn’t seem like a bright one.

Works Cited

Carola, Chris. “Storms Deliver Blow to Adirondacks, Catskills Tourism.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 16 Sept. 2011, https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna44549677. 

“Extreme Weather Gets a Boost from Climate Change.” Environmental Defense Fund, https://www.edf.org/climate/climate-change-and-extreme-weather. 

“Remembering Irene, 10 Years Later: The Flooding of Styles Brook.” The Adirondack Almanack, 2 Aug. 2021, https://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2021/08/remembering-irene-10-years-later-the-flooding-of-styles-brook.html. 

No matter how you look at it, mining is a huge industry. It is able to provide us with rare earth metals that are essential to our society in this day and age. Some notable things that utilize rare earth metals are cell phones, computers, and certain medical equipment. You may have known this already, but what you probably didn’t know is that the Adirondacks used to have a large influx of people coming to the region to look for a career in mining.

The mining that was done in the Adirondacks did a great job of employing people while also introducing a very diverse group of people to the region. While this sounds good at the surface, there was actually a darker side to the story of mining in the Adirondacks. There were recruiters for the mines that would take immigrants directly from the docks of New York and give them an opportunity to work. While innocent at first, the jobs given to these immigrants were inherently dangerous and they weren’t treated well.

What was done in these small mining towns located in the Adirondacks was cold and calculated. Some towns were “ethnically segregated…exacerbating tensions between old and new immigrant groups – which served to reduce the chances of miners finding common cause and striking, or, worse, unionizing” (Mining in the Adirondacks). Unfortunately, the way that these mines were run, their only purpose was to increase profits and production by exploiting workers. A clear example of this exploitation is when Italian mine workers “had to pay for their own tools and…pew rents in the local parish that new immigrant workers could not afford”(Mining in the Adirondacks). It is a shame to see what was done to these people, but all of this grueling work didn’t go to waste.

New discoveries today show that some of the mining waste and tailings that were left over from the past work done in the area still have ample amounts of rare earth metals that can be valuable to us today. As mentioned before, these rare earth metals are essential to certain types of production, so if the effort is taken to extract these materials from the tailings and waste, what was once just pollution will become useful. It is truly unfortunate how these mines were run in the past, but there certainly have been good things to come of it. Not only was mining a great way of making money back during the Adirondacks’ early years of exploration, but benefits still might be seen today.

The immigrant mine workers surely don’t get enough recognition for what they had to go through and how poorly they were treated. Through time, both the mines and the people who put their lives into the work that they did have been forgotten. It is possible with the rising popularity of harvesting tailings and waste that their story will make a comeback and show people the true history of the land.

Works Cited

“Mine Waste in the Eastern Adirondacks May Be Untapped, Accessible Source of Rare Earth Element Minerals.” Mine Waste in the Eastern Adirondacks May Be Untapped, Accessible Source of Rare Earth Element Minerals, 22 Dec. 2020, https://www.usgs.gov/news/mine-waste-eastern-adirondacks-may-be-untapped-accessible-source-rare-earth-element-minerals. 

“Mining in the Adirondacks.” Adirondack Experience, 9 Apr. 2021, https://www.theadkx.org/mining-in-the-adirondacks/.

The Adirondacks are beautiful. Most people who visit them come to the same conclusion. Who wouldn’t be absolutely mesmerized by all that it has to offer? I’m sure that a lot of people think to themselves that they would take any opportunity that they can to visit again. That is the greatest strength about the region, along with the biggest problem. 

Tragedy of the commons, one of the biggest problems that humanity faces. It plagues almost everything known, but what is it? “The tragedy of the commons refers to a situation in which individuals with access to a shared resource (also called a common) act in their own interest and, in doing so, ultimately deplete the resource” (Spiliakos, 2019). A fun example of this could be seen on halloween. You know the houses that leave out a bowl full of candy and have instructions stating to take 1 piece per person? Well, as I’m sure you’ve seen before, things don’t always work out that way, people act selfishly and almost always end up taking more than they’re supposed to, which is the same problem that we see at a large scale in the real world. The only issue is that the problems are much more serious than some kid not getting a piece of candy. The problems we see are extreme damage to the environment and the destruction of natural resources.

I have reason to believe that the Adirondacks are on a dark path to seeing a similar fate. We are already seeing examples of overuse today. The Adirondack council states that “In 2018, an analysis by Adirondack Park trail professionals found that over 130 miles of trails in the High Peaks need significant redesign and annual maintenance to ensure the integrity of the resource” (Overuse in the Adirondack Park, 2021). This information is very troubling, because as you and I both know, humans don’t always put much thought into the impact they have on the environment. Problems like this take a large team to construct an in depth plan, but it’s a really hard task, and no one has a great idea of how to reverse this destruction quickly and efficiently. It would take both large organizations AND the public to fix something like this.

If an issue like this isn’t addressed as soon as possible, things will take a turn for the worse. Not only will the trail itself take a hit, the problem can leak into other areas like the water quality of the surrounding area, which becomes a serious issue. At that point, tourists will be affecting people who live in the region.

As a community, we need to recognize the negative impact we have on the environment, and educate ourselves on the dangers that we not only inflict on ourselves, but others around us. The last thing we want is for it to be too late to make a change, so the time is now to get to the bottom of the problem and start anew.

Works Cited

Council, Adirondack. “Overuse in the Adirondack Park.” Adirondack Council, 2021, www.adirondackcouncil.org/page/overuse-in-the-adirondack-park-298.html. 

“The Tragedy of the Commons Explained in One Minute.” YouTube, YouTube, 23 July 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSuETYEgY68. 

“Tragedy of the Commons: What It Is & 5 Examples: HBS Online.” Business Insights – Blog, 6 Feb. 2019, online.hbs.edu/blog/post/tragedy-of-the-commons-impact-on-sustainability-issues.