IT appears that Governor Pataki has been unable to keep his promise of protecting critical lands and protecting natural resources when New York State abandoned thousands of acres that had been used by big game hunters.
The land in question, it was recently reported, is the Ten Mile River Cooperative Hunting Area – a 15,000-acre parcel in Sullivan County that has been managed by the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) since 1969. The land is owned by the Boy Scouts of America.
This isn’t the first large tract of land hunters have lost under Pataki’s watch. Several years ago the DEC abandoned the 5,000-acre Orange and Rockland Co-op Area under the pretext that it wasn’t being used.
At the time the DEC said that hunters who used Orange/Rockland could utilize the nearby Ten-Mile River Co-op Area, which many of them did. The question now is, where do they go frm here?
Each year hunters are finding it harder and harder to find open land in which to pursue game. It appears that New York State is contributing to the problem, and with an election just days away, some hunters may not be too happy that the land they’ve hunted on for years is now gone.