In what they called a violation of the public trust, conservationists yesterday railed about a pending bill that would open up state-owned forests to logging, a step they argued would pose a threat to hundreds of rare plant species and worsen New Jersey’s deer management problem
The bill (S-1954), expected to come up in the lame duck legislature, pits the environmental community in a rare public dispute against two of its biggest friends in the Statehouse, Sen. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex), the chairman of the Senate Environment and Energy Committee, and Assemblyman John McKeon (D-Essex), the chairman of the Assembly Environment and Solid Waste Committee. They are sponsoring the bill in each house.
“If you go to the doctor with a pain in your chest, you don’t expect your leg to be amputated! That’s how this bill treats restoration issues facing our forests, said Emile DeVito, manager of science for the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. “Overabundant deer and alien plants, animals, and pathogens threaten our forests; logging makes these problems worse. We need careful restoration work, with baseline data and monitoring, species surveys, and deer reduction, not logging plans based foremost on timber value.’’
Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, called the bill part of an effort underway to privatize public lands. The logging of public lands will deny access to the public of those forests and threaten environmentally sensitive areas, Tittel said.
Smith, who has held seven meeting with environmentalists over the past two years in an effort to reach a compromise, said the bill tries to rectify a situation that has allowed more than 800,000 acres of state-owned forests to deteriorate in the past few years.
“You’ve got to clear out the undergrowth and every once in a while, you’ve got to cut down a tree,’’ Smith said, a fact some environmental groups are unwilling to communicate to their members. Otherwise forest conditions will continue to degrade increasing the potential of forest fires and a lack of habitat diversity will occur, he said.
http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/11/1222/0114/
The bill (S-1954), expected to come up in the lame duck legislature, pits the environmental community in a rare public dispute against two of its biggest friends in the Statehouse, Sen. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex), the chairman of the Senate Environment and Energy Committee, and Assemblyman John McKeon (D-Essex), the chairman of the Assembly Environment and Solid Waste Committee. They are sponsoring the bill in each house.
“If you go to the doctor with a pain in your chest, you don’t expect your leg to be amputated! That’s how this bill treats restoration issues facing our forests, said Emile DeVito, manager of science for the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. “Overabundant deer and alien plants, animals, and pathogens threaten our forests; logging makes these problems worse. We need careful restoration work, with baseline data and monitoring, species surveys, and deer reduction, not logging plans based foremost on timber value.’’
Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, called the bill part of an effort underway to privatize public lands. The logging of public lands will deny access to the public of those forests and threaten environmentally sensitive areas, Tittel said.
Smith, who has held seven meeting with environmentalists over the past two years in an effort to reach a compromise, said the bill tries to rectify a situation that has allowed more than 800,000 acres of state-owned forests to deteriorate in the past few years.
“You’ve got to clear out the undergrowth and every once in a while, you’ve got to cut down a tree,’’ Smith said, a fact some environmental groups are unwilling to communicate to their members. Otherwise forest conditions will continue to degrade increasing the potential of forest fires and a lack of habitat diversity will occur, he said.
http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/11/1222/0114/
