Conservation Groups Partnering With Wildlife Officials And Logging Industry
Wildlife Conference Workshop Openly Reveals The Logging Game Plan
Beware Of Fake “Partnerships”
RGS is now coordinating the development of partnerships with conservation partners, consulting foresters, forest product companies to recruit and assist nearby private landowners. Our partnerships are based on the opportunity to write and implement good forest management plans on the basis of demand for low-grade pulpwood and other products.
[Update below]
I’ve often criticized NJ Audubon, NJ DEP, forestry consultants, and wealthy landowners for working together to promote logging of public lands, all for self serving interests and contrary to the public interest.
Typically, those logging plans misleadingly claim that NJ’s forest are old “single age class” and lack “diversity”. The logging plans are alleged to promote creation of “young forests” that provide critical habitat and conservation of an endangered bird species. These sham plans have justified logging private lands in NJ for decades (to qualify for tax breaks) and now threaten public lands.
These are cynical political schemes that mislead the public, manipulate or misrepresent science, or promote narrow single species management to the detriment of ecosystems and the public interest.
In NJ, NJ Audubon and NJ DEP have used golden wing warbler and ruffed grouse species as a pretext for logging (which they parade under the Orwellian slogans “active management” or “treatments”).
Most recently, I warned that NJ Audubon was organizing this politically powerful group to promote logging in the currently ongoing work of the legislative Forestry Taskforce. NJ Audubon openly deployed a political threat to “activate their supporters” – and they did so today in a blast email to their members (email provided upon request).
But you don’t have to take my word for that.
Here’s the Audubon/DEP game plan, presented today in Long Branch at a workshop of the
The 77th Hybrid Annual Northeast Fish & Wildlife Conference is hosted by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Fish and Wildlife and will be held on Sunday, April 3 – Tuesday, April 5, 2022
Note that the speaker’s title is Director of Forest Market Strategy: (Note: yes, I understand that this is in Pennsylvania, it involves National Audubon, and is by the Ruffed Grouse Society):
Expanding Habitat Work on Private Lands by Partnering with Industry and Consulting Foresters
Description
Authors: Ben Larson, Ruffed Grouse Society & American Woodcock Society
RGS & AWS is working with other conservation organizations, agency partners, consulting foresters, and forest product companies to expand forest habitat work on private lands in key areas of PA.
Since 2017, The PA Game Commission, American Bird Conservancy, Indiana University of PA, RGS, and other partners have improved forest habitat quality on over 177K acres of state game lands, particularly by implementing “Dynamic Forest Restoration Blocks” (‘DFRBs’) that balance age classes, improve structural diversity, and address threats at biologically meaningful scales (2,500-25K acres).
To expand upon these established or ongoing DFRBs on state game lands, RGS is now coordinating the development of partnerships with conservation partners, consulting foresters, forest product companies to recruit and assist nearby private landowners. Our partnerships are based on the opportunity to write and implement good forest management plans on the basis of demand for low-grade pulpwood and other products.
In December, RGS, ABC, Audubon Mid-Atlantic, and Domtar announced a partnership that will focus in NW and central PA. RGS is also working with Pixelle, which operates a paper plant in SE PA. Both our private lands partnerships will involve targeted landowner outreach and connecting interested landowners with excellent consulting foresters.
Speaker
Ben Larson(Speaker)Ruffed Grouse Society, Forest Conservation Director/Director of Forest Market Strategy
In case you missed it, let’s repeat that – which confirms, in their own words, my accusations:
RGS is now coordinating the development of partnerships with conservation partners, consulting foresters, forest product companies to recruit and assist nearby private landowners. Our partnerships are based on the opportunity to write and implement good forest management plans on the basis of demand for low-grade pulpwood and other products.
This is exactly what NJ Audubon has been doing for over a decade with DEP and what they are now doing with Senator Smith Forestry Task Force. Don’t let them get away with this sham.
(We exposed similar symbiotic self dealing between DEP, conservation groups, and wealthy land owners, see:
That workshop is just one of several at the Conference that expose the money and special interests who are colluding to form “Partnerships” to log forests under the guise of protecting wildlife – here are several others:
Effects of Forest Management on the Conservation of Bird Communities
Expanding Habitat Work on Private Lands by Partnering with Industry and Consulting Foresters
Best Management Practices for the Conservation of Rare Bee Species in Forest Openings
Beware of fake “Partnerships”.
[Update – a NJ friend just sent me a news clip on the Conference from the Asbury Park Press. Of course, they drank the Kool-aid and printed the press releases of conservation groups.
Still, ironically the story absolutely confirms my point – these people are self interested and only lobby for government money that their organizations benefit from.
They long ago abandoned advocacy of the third leg – government regulation – of what they used to call the “3 legged stool of conservation” (i.e. private stewardship, preservation, and government regulation).