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Debate Turns Ugly – The Masks And The Gloves Are Off!

One Big Happy Family – NJ Audubon, Environment NJ, NJ Chapter of Sierra Club and DEP!

In the end, the injury to the carbon sequestering ability of this forest was my primary objection to this project. I don’t believe that the work that the Forest Service proposes to do is either warranted by the circumstances, nor healthy for the flora and fauna of this forest. I opposed it, and I hope that there still remains some opportunity to prevent the Forest Service from moving forward with this now permitted, yet ill-planned project.  ~~~ NJ Pinelands Commissioner Lohbauer (full comments below)

As the debate expands and pressure mounts on Gov. Murphy to intervene and block the DEP plan, behind the scenes – in emails, social media, reader comments, and conversations with reporters – NJ conservation group leaders are aggressively defending and seeking to silence and intimidate critics of the Murphy DEP’s wildfire logging plan.

As I stated in testimony to the Pinelands Commission, Emile DeVito of NJCF – a group with forestry interests in the Pinelands and multiple conflicting relationships with the Pinelands Commission and cozy relations with DEP – gave me bad information about the plan and downplayed the scope and magnitude of impacts. He even called a 50 foot wide clearcut for a 13 mile long firebreak the creation of a “meadow”!:

“Hi Bill. This is not a terrible as it sounds. The logging is nearly all “thinning from the ground up” to remove lower levels of fuel load, and leaving all the mulch in the forest to decompose, very little wood removal,  and the firebreak is 30 feet of clearing  for meadow on each side of the narrow sand road. Pinelands Commission got some improvements regarding herbicides and also vernal pond and rare snake considerations. Way bigger things to fight about In the Pines, for example the unresolved Wetlands violation at Whitesbog and the proposal by JJ White company to create more modernized cranberry bags (sic) in the historic district.”

That’ incredible, because Emile has been an expert leader on protecting rare snakes, he supported the campaign to stop DEP Highlands logging, and helped me block another DEP insane clearcut logging plan – tiny in comparison – of less than 100 trees on Bulls Island:

Interestingly, one of Emile’s strongest criticisms at Bulls Island was DEP’s failure to consult with relevant experts in forest ecology (see below for exactly the same DEP failure to consult experts on this DEP plan). (Equally revealing of how bad a compromise the “modified” DEP plan DeVito touts: 1) DEP reduced herbicide treatments on about 200 acres, but will still apply on over 1,000 acres; 2) wetlands, vernal ponds, and T&E are only provided 100 foot buffers [Update: DEP plan says 80], when regulatory buffers range from 300 – 1,000 feet, and 3) the proposed 60 foot wide firebreak clearcuts were slightly reduced to 50 feet, with another 75 feet of “feathering” logging DEP claims will “create a more visually appealing aesthetic”).

So, after DeVito’ spin seeking to dissuade my criticism, I was not surprised that a reader sent me the following email, from an un-named NJ conservationist, seeking to silence critics – which amazingly repeats DEP’s lies about “no change to the canopy” – claims proven false by the Pinelands Commission’s approval document I’ve cited previously . The “conservationist” wrote (emphases mine):

“Please do not oppose this. This is not a logging plan. This is thinning from the ground up and a firebreak that will help with ecological fire management. There is virtually no change to the canopy. The canopy won’t be opened, and there is virtually no removal of wood. It is basically a mowing of the tiny, scraggly ladder fuels of suppressed pitch pines. I have been working on small concerns about this for 2 years and the Pinelands Commission got the NJDEP to add conditions that improve habitats for snakes and rare wetlands, and drastically reduce the need for future herbicide treatments. Thereis no need to spend time on this. It is approved and there is no need to litigate. The Pinelands Commission staff worked hard to get some important modifications to this proposal – modifications that PPA and NJCF have been recommending. This is a perfect example of why we need forestry regulations in the rest of NJ on public land. Without the Pinelands Commission regulations, there would be no way for the public to learn of these proposals in time to point out shortcomings, and no agency “outside” of the inner workings of the NJDEP to effectuate revisions. We have had forestry regulations on both public and private land in the Pinelands for over 40 years, and they were improved significantly in about 2006. The Pinelands are the only place in NJ where there are significant forestry regulations, other than the token and rather useless requirements regarding archaic BMPs in the freshwater wetlands and flood hazard rules for the rest of NJ. That is why the Task Force must get significant improvements to public land forestry via actual regulations for the rest of NJ.”

The bullshit about the public given opportunity to point out shortcomings is truly galling, as this DEP scheme was kept under the radar by PPA and NJCF – and the Pinelands Commission even went so far as to deny my OPRA public records request, claiming they had “no responsive records” on the DEP plan!

Thankfully, Pinelands Commissioner Lohbauer, who opposed the DEP plan and voted NO, is playing a leadership role in the behind the scenes debate.

Similar to how Lohbauer explained his controversial vote in opposition to the South Jersey Gas Pinelands pipeline, below Lohbauer explains his NO vote on the DEP logging plan.

This excerpt was sent to me as Lohbauer’s damning remarks – I don’t have the original email. But it echoes many of the criticisms he made prior to his vote at the Pinelands Commission, so I have no reason to doubt its authenticity.

[Update – Lohbauer confirmed personally that these are his words. I posted his complete critique here.]

Here’s an excerpt (and Emile should be particularly ashamed of defending the DEP’s snake mitigation, given Lohbauer’s remarks on that):

In this case I don’t believe there was a good basis to approve the Forest Service’s application. This is the same one that I had opposed last December, and Emile is right—the Service did modify their proposed application of herbicides in the project. However, they did not agree to eliminate them, nor did they agree to avoid the use of glyphosate (“RoundUp”) which I consider unsafe at any application. Moreover, the restrained use of herbicides was conditioned upon“if practical,” meaning that were they to decide that the mechanical approach were not working, they could revert to the use of herbicides without further review by the Pinelands Commission. Yet this was not my primary objection.

The application contained two projects: 13 miles of firebreak along Allen and Oswego Roads, and a separate project of thinning over 1,300 acres of forest in Bass River State park. The firebreak was occurring in a broad swath that included the most productive snake dens in the State—possibly the northeast region—for T&E snake species. These snake dens have been the subject of continuous study by Rutgers herpetologists as well as our own science staff at PC for 30 years. Last December I asked for the Rutgers herpetologists to be consulted by the Forest Service on their firebreak plan, because they had not been. It is not apparent to me that Rutgers was given the opportunity to participate in the revised firebreak plan that was before us last Friday. Nor did the revised plan include a specific protection for the snake dens, other than the Service would consult with the PC Executive Director in the event of contact with the dens. That seemed inadequate to me. Yet this was not my primary objection to the application.

Both the firebreak and the thinning projects were proposed as wildfire control measures, yet—as Commissioner Doug Wallner pointed out on Friday—there is no population center, housing development, or commercial area near the sites of the project activity. Wallner, who spent his career at the National Park Service working with local agencies like the NJ Forest Service on wildfire control, argued that there was no reason to pursue these projects since there was no population at risk of wildfire harm that could be protected by this project. Rather than vote for it, he abstained. I certainly agreed with him on that point, yet this was not my primary objection.

The thinning project was proposed to be performed over more than 1,300 acres in Bass River State Forest. For 1,100 acres they proposed to remove 90% of the trees. For the remainder they proposed to remove 96% of them. Ed Lloyd calculated that this would be over 2.4 million trees. This thinning was intended as a wildfire protection measure, yet we learned at the Pinelands Climate Committee last year that thinning has not proven to be a useful wildfire control measure; if anything, it causes wildfires to burn hotter and more destructively. Leslie Sauer shared a paper by ecologist Chad Hanson on this subject ( https://grist.org/fix/opinion/forest-thinning-logging-makes-wildfires-worse/  ) and argued persuasively that pro forestation is a much better approach to wildfire management. I find it difficult to support thinning as a wildfire management practice generally, but particularly so in this case where: 

A number of T&E bird species including barred owl, would be impacted negatively by the tree cutting;

The plan called not only for cutting the trees, but for harvesting them as well, which is contrary to the good forestry practice of cutting and leaving trees in place;

At the Pinelands Commission, we are in the process of deliberating a “no net loss” policy for trees which, although not yet in place, would be completely contradicted by this project. 

In the end, the injury to the carbon sequestering ability of this forest was my primary objection to this project. I don’t believe that the work that the Forest Service proposes to do is either warranted by the circumstances, nor healthy for the flora and fauna of this forest. I opposed it, and I hope that there still remains some opportunity to prevent the Forest Service from moving forward with this now permitted, yet ill-planned project.

NJCF and PPA should be deeply ashamed on themselves.