Pharaoh Mountain is reflected in a beaver pond on the trail to Pharaoh Lake in the Adirondacks.

It’s a funny thing about wilderness: Introduce motor vehicles into places like Siamese Ponds or Pharaoh Lake in the Adirondacks, and it becomes inaccessible. Why? For the simple reason that once motors are introduced, it is not “wilderness” anymore.

Wilderness areas are defined as places where natural conditions, not our machines, predominate. Once we introduce ATVs into the Adirondacks’ 20 wilderness areas, which comprise just .3% of all land in the state, wilderness conditions vanish.

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Since 1972, the Adirondack Park’s State Land Master Plan has made the preservation of the natural resources of the constitutionally protected, forever wild Forest Preserve the paramount responsibility of the Adirondack Park Agency. The master plan’s 53-year-old prohibition on the use of motor........

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