CRANBERRY LAKE — The state Department of Environmental Conservation announced Wednesday that it purchased 965.8 acres of land in southern St. Lawrence County.

The land, which is located in the town of Clifton, borders the Cranberry Lake Wild Forest, an approximately 25,671-acre preserve that surrounds much of the lake’s shore, extending north to around and in spots beyond state Route 3. The recently purchased land forms a triangle, with the existing preserve on its west and state Route 3 and Tooley Pond Road forming its other two borders.

The parcel includes 2.3 miles of the Oswegatchie River, which originates in Hamilton County and flows north — through Cranberry Lake — to the St. Lawrence River.

The property was purchased for $870,000, or $901.55 per acre. It was previously owned by the Conservation Fund — a land trust and non-profit organization that owns and manages working forests and other lands across the country with the eventual goal of re-selling them to public or private conservation groups for permanent protection, according to its website.

The DEC purchased the land with funds from the Environmental Protection Fund, a trust established by the state legislature in 1993 and primarily funded by the real estate transfer tax. In her recently announced executive budget, Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed $400 million in EPF funding for the upcoming fiscal year.

The EPF supports state land purchases for preservation, as well as a range of capital projects related to environmental protection, climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts, among other stated uses.

In a statement announcing the purchase, DEC Interim Commissioner Sean Mahar said the purchase will provide new paddling and fishing opportunities along that corridor of the river, which the DEC stocks with brook and brown trout.

“DEC prioritizes land acquisition as a critical strategy for protecting New York state’s ecological assets and wildlife populations and achieving our climate goals,” he stated. “Connecting the Cranberry Lake Wild Forest and its recreational and ecological resources is an essential component of DEC’s sustained conservation efforts and will help draw more visitors to the region’s abundant year-round recreational offerings.”

The statement added the purchase consolidates portions of the Cranberry Lake Wild Forest, connecting the Buck Mountain and Webster Tracts of the wild forest to the Cranberry Forest and Conifer-Emporium Conservation Easements. The DEC stated that it also preserves the open space character of approximately 3 miles of other classified trout streams on the property — in addition to the Oswegatchie River.

These smaller streams include the Peavine Creek and Thomas Brook. According to the DEC, visitors can access the property through the 4.5 miles of road frontage along state Route 3 and Tooley Pond Road. Established car-top boat launches provide access to the river from Tooley Pond Road.

Clifton Town Councilman William Griffin encouraged the state to make the land usable and accessible for outdoor recreation.

“Open it up for the people to use, the people of the state,” he said. “Any property that the state picks up, it limits any type of private use of the land, but it’s good for fishing, canoeing anybody who wants to do outdoors stuff, it’s good for that.”

He added that while he was unfamiliar with the land’s condition in detail or any specific factors that would affect its value, he felt the state got a good deal on the land.

“That’s probably a steal,” he said. “Most of it is going to be remote with no road access (and) no utilities, but $900 an acre, $1,000 an acre, even — that’s a pretty good price.”

John Sheehan, the communications director for the Adirondack Council, a conservation advocacy group, said the group was happy to see the state expanding its land preservation in the Adirondack Park’s northwest quadrant.

“We’re very pleased to see that happen,” he said. “We’re pleased to see that stuff is happening at the northern end of the park when a lot of it tends to be focused closer to the High Peaks and Lake George areas.”

He lauded the purchase as wise, from both an environmental and financial point of view.

“Definitely a prudent use of the EPF,” he said. “The investment will pay dividends for many, many generations to come and that is a very good price for land just about anywhere in New York. … The state is required to essentially work with assessors to determine what the fair price is for property and do its best to protect the taxpayers that way. It looks like they got a very good deal.”

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The land’s future

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The state now has to draft a unit management plan for the land, which Sheehan said is not done until after it has been purchased by the state. He said the plans take into account surrounding land classifications, which in this case would point toward eventual classification as wild forest.

The DEC defines a wild forest as: “an area where the resources permit a somewhat higher degree of human use than in wilderness, primitive or canoe areas, while retaining an essentially wild character. A wild forest area is further defined as an area that frequently lacks the sense of remoteness of wilderness, primitive or canoe areas and that permits a wide variety of outdoor recreation.”

Wild forests receive the same “forever wild” state constitutional protections as wilderness zones — the most stringent level of forest preserve classification — but are meant to allow for a higher degree of recreational use, and associated infrastructure.

The Cranberry Lake Wild Forest currently includes four parcels to the west, northwest and east of Cranberry Lake. Those combined lands have 6.2 miles of administrative roads, 26.9 miles of foot trails, 9.3 miles of snowmobile trails, 12.6 miles of ski trails, a 0.4-mile canoe carry, and three Adirondack lean-tos, according to the DEC’s statement announcing the recent acquisition.

The DEC’s Region 6 — which includes St. Lawrence County — Director Randall Young said in that statement it was important for the department to balance the preservation of natural ecosystems with recreational use of the land.

“Securing the river corridor is imperative for the long-term conservation of vital aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems,” he said. “Additionally, as with all DEC land acquisitions, the expansion will broaden recreational opportunities for residents and visitors to the North Country.”

Sheehan added that wildland contiguousness was a critical aspect of this acquisition, as it directly connects previously private land to the wild forest preserve around Cranberry Lake, which is in turn connected to Five Ponds, Pepperbox, Rond Lake and William C. Whitney wilderness areas to the south. Connecting the preserved spaces — as opposed to having a patchwork of preserved areas broken up by private land that lacks the same degree of protection — leads to a more sustainable habitat for wildlife.

“A concern long-term is to keep the park connected to other wild spaces as much possible for wildlife to be able to migrate from one place to another as the climate changes,” he said.

The Conservation Fund Vice President and Northeast Representative Tom Duffus said in the announcement this purchase is part of an ongoing collaboration between his group and the DEC to protect land and economic interests in that area of the Adirondacks.

“The purchase by the state is part of a very large complex of lands TCF and DEC prioritized for conservation in the Cranberry Lake and Newton Falls area,” he said. “Together with DEC, our work will continue to conserve important resources, grow public access and support local jobs through sustainable forest management, guiding services and historic hunt clubs valued by the community.”

The statement added that Hochul will work to advance several measures to make land conservation partnerships and negotiations more streamlined. These include modernizing the use of title insurance to expedite land acquisitions, granting DEC the authority to independently acquire conservation easements and reducing the financial hurdles faced by not-for-profit organizations in their land conservation efforts.

The acquisition complements a recent 7,000-acre working forest conservation easement north of Cranberry Lake Village, according to the DEC, which added the property is owned by a local family business. Future working forest conservation easements are expected to be finalized nearby.