Catskill Park

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Catskill Park
View to central Catskills from Twin Mountain
Catskill Park within New York state
Location	Delaware, Greene, Sullivan, Ulster, Catskill Mountains, New York, United States
Area	1,120 sq mi (2,900 km2)
Established	1885
Visitors	553,000 (in 2002)

The Catskill Park is in the Catskill Mountains in the U.S. state of New York. It consists of 700,000 acres (280,000 ha; 2,800 km²) of land inside a Blue Line in four counties: Delaware, Greene, Sullivan, and Ulster. As of 2005, 287,500 acres (116,300 ha)^[1] or 41 percent of the land within, is owned by the state as part of the Forest Preserve; it is managed by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). Another 5% is owned by New York City to protect four of the city's reservoirs in the region that lie partially within the park and their respective watersheds.

There are bobcats, minks and fishers in the preserve, and coyotes are often heard. There are some 400 black bears living in the region. The state operates numerous campgrounds and there are over 300 miles (500 km) of multi-use trails. Hunting is permitted, in season, in much of the park. It has approximately 50,000 permanent residents, bolstered somewhat by second-home ownership on weekends and in the summer, and attracts about half a million visitors every year.

The park is governed by Article 14 of the state constitution, which stipulates that all land owned or acquired by the state within cannot be sold or otherwise transferred (absent amending the constitution, which has been done on several occasions), may not be used for logging and must remain "forever wild."