Catskill Roundtable at Mtn Top Aboretum (May 2025)

[mike]

The Catskill Roundtable meeting was at the Mountain Top Aboretum near Tannersville, NY. The Roundtable was organized by the Catskill Mountain Club. The guest speaker was Katharine Petronis, Deputy Commissioner of Natural Resources for New York State Deptment of Environmental Conservation. She has been in this position since 2020. She is very knowledgeable on everything happening to State land and it's resources.

Here are a couple of the highlights about the Catskill Roundtable:

1. The DEC is going to start a buying more properties. They want to increase the 22% of the land owned by the state to 30%. The DEC is now getting more money so they can do more projects and purchase more land. You can read more about the Open Space Plan here: https://dec.ny.gov/nature/open-space

2. There is a project the DEC and the Catskill Center is working in at Platte Clove. The Catskill Center owns a large parcel of land by the clove. There is also a plan to add another parking area across the street from the existing Steenburg Road Parking Area. This should help reduce the amount of congestion in this area.

3. The final plan for the trail-less peaks is nearing it's planning stage. It will go out for comments soon. You can read about the Trail-less Peak problem and the solution to fixing it: Catskill Trail-less Peaks over 3,500' 2022

5. The new PA in Peekamoose is almost done. Most hikers could care less. Most of the local people and hikers think that the Peekamoose Valley is ruined. Many of the great resources are no longer available to them.

6. The Kaaterskill VUM is almost done.

7. There was a good discussion about Fire Towers. The DEC is dedicated to adding more fire towers. Which is nice. Just have to find the old structures.

8. The Tannersville Shuttle is closing. It was privately run, even though they got a gov grant.

9. Talked about adding more AFR to some of the trailheads and summits.

Other Resources:

Advisory Group Report 2022
Catskill Master Plan 2014
Catskill Region Comprehensive Recreation Plan 2020