Bear Pond Forest

New York’s Adirondack Park is the largest protected area in the Lower 48, and one of the wildest parts of the Northeast. The 130,000-acre Five Ponds/Pepperbox Wilderness complex is one of the most remote parts of the Adirondack Park, anchoring the southern end of the Algonquin to Adirondacks (A2A) wildlife corridor. At the heart of this wild country is Bear Pond Forest, a 1,056-acre private property whose owners had long used it for logging and recreation.

Through the years, various conservation groups tried to acquire Bear Pond.

In 2022, the landowners put the property up for sale, marketing it for high-end waterfront development. Such construction would have locked in private roads and motorized recreation. It would have also precluded public access and integration with the surrounding wilderness.

Seizing the chance to put Bear Pond on a rewilding path and align its future with the surrounding landscape, Northeast Wilderness Trust worked quickly to negotiate a complex deal with the land’s multiple owners, raise the necessary funds, and close the transaction by year end.

Bear Pond’s protection as forever-wild is a victory for the wild creatures at home there, and incrementally advances the prospects for large carnivores such as wolves and cougars naturally reinhabiting their native range via the A2A.

Webb, New York

1,056 acres

109 acres of wetlands

3.4 miles of streams