LAKE PLACID -- Any sustainable Adirondack future will gauge biomass consumption against forest preservation, water quality by threats to fish, healthy trees by soil composition and roots.

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While ecoscience is a huge part of regulating the Adirondack landscape, said Adirondack Park Agency Chairman Curt Stiles, a healthy debate is the way to sustain the future.

"We (APA staff) probably say yes more than we say no," he told a meeting of scientists recently as they discussed Adirondack Park research and policy.

"But working to get to that yes is the difficult part."

Stiles said the future of the Adirondack Park lies in an approach that brings people together, not separates them.

He said challenges go beyond issues of preservation and affordable housing to convening a healthy dialogue where controversy and dissent are vetted in public debate.

"We have to be more open, more transparent than other agencies are," Stiles said. "Our meetings are now Webcast so (people can see) ideas put to debate bringing different views to the table. It's not uncommon to see dissent, it is healthy to air these decisions in public forum."

But navigating through debate to regulatory reform, he said, may require revising the APA process.

"Parts of the State Land Master Plan can be modernized," Stiles said, "vetted by science, not popular opinion, not popular point of view."

APA often works under time constraints Stiles called "severe" governed by a time clock that "keeps (APA) centered on the urgent, not the policy."

"We need to return to a more robust set of planning versus regulatory process," Stiles said, naming the top planning priorities as cluster policy, energy-friendly construction and cooperation between APA and the Department of Environmental Conservation.

"The controversy, as long as it's not personal, is a healthy thing," Stiles said, "where the tendency to fight rather than win' isn't really healthy."

The future holds a "huge opportunity for collaboration," Stiles said. "Which doesn't mean you can't regulate in a more enlightened way."

Stiles remarks capped two days of scientific discourse meant to inform and advise a sustainable future.