About the North Country

The 14-county North Country Region encompasses nearly 40% of New York State and is characterized by its rural nature, expansive open space, and the watersheds of 11 rivers. It is home to about 1.24 million people living in 255 small towns and 14 small cities as well as the Akwesasne St. Regis Mohawk Reservation. 

Small communities are predominant across the Adirondack-North Country region, emphasizing the need for regional collaboration, creative problem-solving on limited municipal budgets, and rural-oriented climate solutions.

The region is within a day’s drive of at least 90 million people from New England, the Mid-Atlantic States and Canada, receiving approximately 10 million visitors annually. New York State is the largest employer in jobs with state agencies, corrections, and education. Large private employers include regional hospitals. Agriculture, including dairy farming, is an economic driver in the North Country region, especially in fertile valleys of the St. Lawrence and Champlain basins and the Tug Hill Plateau. The region's forests contribute to the maple syrup and wood products industries, and outdoor recreation tourism provides an important source of income year-round. The Fort Drum military installation provides defense-related economic activity and employment opportunities to the area. At the center of the region sits the Adirondack Park, a 6-million acre patchwork of public and private lands with large tracts of contiguous forests, thousands of lakes and ponds, and small towns with limited infrastructure. 

Despite being rich in natural resources and nature-based recreation, the rural population faces economic challenges marked by lower income and education levels, limited job opportunities, and reduced access to essential services such as healthcare, broadband, transportation, and education, and this contributes to high poverty rates and overall socioeconomic hardship. Climate-related impacts add to the hardship.

The North Country’s changing climate follows the same statewide trends in increasing temperature and precipitation. Nonetheless, in relation to other parts of the state and nation, the region's cooler climate and diverse landscapes offer respite to urban migrants escaping intensifying heatwaves and extreme weather events that plague nearby cities, further testing the local aging and fragile physical infrastructure, the limited availability of affordable housing, and the protection of water quality, wetlands, and other natural resources.

In the summers of 2023 and 2024 the region experienced increasingly extreme climate change-related impacts from torrential rainstorms and hurricane remnants that damaged infrastructure, homes, and left communities isolated, from the Tug Hill and St. Lawrence Valley to the Central Adirondacks and the Champlain Valley. Extreme flooding and major damage also occurred in 2011 from Hurricane Irene and in 2017 from Hurricane Nate. Like other areas of the country, the region also suffered weeks of unhealthy air quality in 2023 due to smoke from wildfires in nearby Québec, Canada. 

Local municipalities are unable to plan or budget for these devastating events, which destroy homes, businesses, and public infrastructure, disrupt weather-dependent economic sectors that form a major part of the regional economy, and cause communities to suffer power outages and be cut off from emergency services and supplies.