The Adirondack Research Consortium pooled scientists last week and presented 15 papers from subjects as diverse as the effect of PCBs on song systems in birds to the importance of art in stressed economic times.

Panelists debated how to bring "Forever Wild" to the 21st Century, how to design regional conservation programs, how to adjust regulation to address a changing climate.

As ideas jumped from one scientific discipline to another, the roughly 140 members of the research consortium recombined their work in some new and different ways.

Among presentations, Naj Wikoff brought a panel of experts from the cultural centers in the Adirondack Park.

Theirs was a small audience compared to the raging scientific debate.

But, Wikoff said, despite dire predictions in the numbers of people leaving the park, beyond shrinking schools and growing economic strife, "the arts are growing."

"They are the robins of a new spring, a cultural spring," he said.

The discussion offered a kind of human introspection of it's own predictors.

In the past two years alone, Wikoff said, two new art galleries have sprung up along the AuSable River along with three theatres, a performance space, a dance center and a new museum.

"These are people reinvesting in their own community," Wikoff said, introducing Caroline Welsh from the Adirondack Museum, Nadine Duhaime from Lake Placid Center for the Arts, and Scott Renderer from Upper Jay Arts Council and the Recovery Lounge.

Welsh itemized the arts inventory inside the Blue Line counting 14 art centers, six community theatres, 17 music or dance companies, 45 libraries and 48 historical societies.

"Art has a very special relationship with nature."

Duhaime said the arts are an essential measure of the human condition.

"They deserve to be viewed an essential part of the economy."

kdedam@pressrepublican.com