Peter Bauer stepped down as the executive director of the Johnsburg-based nonprofit known for its wilderness conservation advocacy and watchdog status for state agencies. Environmental attorney Claudia Braymer has taken on the position, bringing years of courtroom experience to the role.

Bauer spent 22 years as the leader of Protect’s and has had 35 years in the environmental conservation field, being involved in scores of major public issues around the Adirondacks. He’ll still be working part-time with the organization. His Jan. 1 email to media and Protect donors ended with a new email signature: Peter Bauer/“No Longer The Executive Director, Now Fundraising Coordinator.”

Braymer was hired as Protect’s deputy director in February 2023 as part of the organization’s planned succession strategy. There was never a set date for the leadership change, but Bauer said the timing was right now.

“When I worked for the Commission on the Adirondacks in the late 1980s, I was often the youngest person in the room,” Bauer said. “I’m now one of the oldest people in the room. … It’s time to move over and make room for the next generation of leaders in Adirondack conservation.”

Peter Bauer (Provided photo)

Braymer spent the past two years learning the ropes of environmental advocacy and gathering Bauer’s institutional knowledge. Knowing she was essentially auditioning for the executive director the entire time was a bit nerve-wracking, she said.

As executive director, Braymer will lead the organization’s advocacy efforts, education programs, public oversight of state and local agencies, legal action and be generally engaged with others about the future of the park.

Braymer has worked on environmental cases across the state, including several in the Adirondacks. She was co-counsel on Protect’s nearly 10-year-long lawsuit with the state, which it won in 2023.

“(Protect is) an organization that plays a crucial role in advocating for the protection and stewardship of the public and private lands in the Adirondacks,” Braymer said in a statement. “I hold a strong belief in protecting the Adirondacks from overdevelopment and mismanagement, ensuring that its natural resources are preserved for current and future generations. At the same time, I am committed to making its human communities vibrant, supporting those who live, work and play here.”

Braymer is looking forward to lobbying with legislators in Albany on issues that impact the Adirondacks. She’s interested in politics and said the lobbying side of the job is less formal than the law side of it.

Claudia Braymer (Provided photo)

Bauer’s new role will be change for him, too. It’s hard to step back, he said, but he won’t be putting as many miles on his car.

Protect was formed in 2009 and conducts advocacy, grassroots organizing, independent public oversight, research, water quality monitoring, education and legal action.

Bauer helped form the Residents’ Committee to Protect the Adirondacks in 1990, which eventually merged with the century-old Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks to become Protect. He also was the executive director of the FUND for Lake George, now merged with the Lake George Association,

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Past and future

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Braymer has been interested in environmental protection her whole life. After college, she had a job with an environmental consultant in Virgina. Her supervisor was an attorney looking at how case law impacted their job interpreting regulations for the Environmental Protection Agency.

“I just thought that was so cool and such a neat talent that she had, that I wanted to go to law school, too, so that I could do what she was doing,” Braymer said.

After she got her degree from Albany Law School, she worked with Protect on their 10-year case against the state.

This decade-long legal challenge was a highlight of Bauer’s time leading Protect. It took lots of field work, with him personally measuring more than 12,000 trees by hand. The lawsuit was over the state’s intention to build a network of snowmobile trails in the Adirondacks.

Bauer saw this as the greatest expansion of motor vehicle use in the forest preserve.

This would have required cutting thousands of trees to widen paths. Protect contested the state’s definition of a tree. This was important because the “forever wild” clause of the state constitution bans the “destruction of timber.”

Bauer said the courts had never really defined the broad meaning of the forever wild clause.

Protect argued successfully that timber applies to all trees, not just those at least 3 inches in diameter at breast height. Following the judgment, the DEC amended its tree-cutting policy.

While Bauer was glad the courts made the decision they did, he also said it was a “tragic moment” as the two lead state environmental agencies — the Adirondack Park Agency and the state Department of Environmental Conservation — were found to be violating the state constitution.

It took a decade and a lot of time and money to get there.

“It’s the American legal system,” Bauer said of the length.

The case had lots of phases, appeals and was even held up by the coronavirus pandemic.

Issues like this 10-year lawsuit took lots of work and effort. Bauer said he put in all these years of long hours because Protect is supported by member donations.

“I always felt like, if a member walked through the door and said, ‘Hey, I gave you $50. What did you do in the last two hours with my $50?’ I wanted to be able to tell them what I had done,” Bauer said.

He also said the work was “a real privilege” to do. He felt it is both incredibly important and rare to have a platform like he did.

“I felt that I really had to bust my *ss to fulfill the opportunity that was given to me,” Bauer said.

He said he’s always felt “incredibly lucky” to have done this work for so long and “worked like hell” to honor it.

“All of my work has been accomplished as part of the Adirondack Park’s long conservation tradition, while standing on the shoulders, and honoring their work, of all who gave their time, talents and passion for the last 175 years to create and build and manage and care for and protect the forever wild Forest Preserve and the Adirondack Park, and I know that many others will continue this work in the decades ahead,” Bauer said in a statement.

Bauer got into environmental advocacy “by mistake.” He moved to the Tri-Lakes in the mid-1980s, was writing for Adirondack Life and otherwise “goofing around” enjoying the wilderness. He wrote a large piece on the state of park as around 1 million acres of timber company land were going on the market. In researching this article, he interviewed George Davis, a preservationist who helped state set up the first conservation easement program

When Davis directed the state Commission on the Adirondacks in the Twenty-First Century in 1989, the group needed people to work on it and Bauer joined. This got him into law, politics and advocacy. He remembers it as a time of conflict, as anti-APA sentiment was high in the park.

Bauer said he’s always aware that residents of the park and people in state leadership did not always agree with Protect’s positions. The Adirondacks have always been a competition of visions and the debate is not a two-sided one. It has many, many passionate sides, he said.

He advocates for what he believes in — viable wilderness, viable communities, abundant wildlife habitat and abundant recreation opportunities. Bauer calls the park a “bold experiment in conservation,” a protected area of wilderness just a couple hours drive away from one of the most dense parts of U.S.

“The Adirondacks has always been a work in progress,” he said.

Braymer said working with stakeholders with differing viewpoints is critical. Disagreement on what the Adirondacks should be is expected, but she said that shouldn’t get in the way of conversation with the intention of understanding other positions better.

“I think sometimes that disagreements are misunderstandings,” Braymer said.

Bauer’s vision for the park when he got into environmental conservation 35 years ago was informed by the vision stated in the state Commission on the Adirondacks in the Twenty-First Century’s report.

A lot of what it called for has happened — mainly, a huge amount of land protection. But while there were some local successes, globally, action has not happened fast enough. Bauer did not anticipate in the 1980s how quickly climate change would change things in the Adirondacks, impacting the water quality, creating anemic winters and intensifying weather.

Braymer said climate change is concerning. While there’s not much to be done here to fix it, she said the Adirondacks need to adapt bridges, culverts and trails to become resilient.

Bauer said, sometimes, this was heartbreaking work for him. Looking back, he sees lots of missed opportunities — lands that could have been protected that have been developed, public policy that could have been improved.

“Why are our trails in such terrible condition?” Bauer asked.

He said it makes no sense to him why the state hasn’t invested more in trails in the Forest Preserve.

Braymer said the APA is looking at opening some areas of the Forest Preserve to motor vehicles for accessibility purposes. She said giving more people more access to the Adirondacks is a good thing, but it poses challenges putting motor vehicles in protected lands. She is hopeful for collaboration.

“(It) doesn’t need to be as at-odds as it seems to be right now,” Braymer said.

She also wants to see updates to the Adirondack Park Agency Act. The act is more than 50 years old and has not had many significant updates since, she said. Chiefly, she wants to update it to address climate change and housing affordability. Braymer said climate change should be considered in private land development decisions made by the APA. She also thinks housing and conservation can go hand-in-hand.

“I think the Adirondack Park is a good example of having vibrant communities in smaller hamlet areas where you can really have dense housing and then protect our wilderness and backcountry areas,” Braymer said.