Saturday, August 28, 2021

Logging Inappropriate for Roaring Rock Park

Have you heard about the current logging underway at Roaring Rock Park, the beautiful, 400-acre wooded preserve in Washington Township, Warren County, NJ? Much has been said lately about severe environmental damage that would result if the Township’s “Forest Management Plan” (FMP) is enacted. Without stakeholder input, residents and environmental groups only recently heard about the FMP, although the project had been in development by the Township for at least five years. I initially thought it might be an opportunity to improve this woodlot. As a former Assistant Director of the NJDEP Division of Parks & Forestry and an experienced and nationally-certified parks & recreation professional serving as land manager and agency head on municipal, county and state levels for 42 years, however, I found this FMP sorely lacking.

NJ Highlands Coalition representatives and I advised the Township to limit their logging to winter months to minimize erosion and soil compaction when the soil is frozen and the vegetation is dormant. They said they would reassess the situation and wouldn’t proceed without further study. We recommended the following FMP amendments:

  1. Develop a forest restoration plan to replicate the existing eastern deciduous forest ecosystem.
  2. Develop a strategy for addressing invasive plant species, which spread to fill in the holes after the trees fall. 
  3. Develop a deer management plan, as deer will decimate any native seedlings that manage to grow in those opened areas.

A robust, fully funded restoration plan that includes invasive plant and deer management is absent from the FMP.

With experience operating deer management programs, I offered to assist the Township in developing a no-cost and effective deer management plan. In addition, highly qualified experts from the NJ Highlands Coalition had offered to conduct - also at no charge - surveys of rare plants and wildlife species of special concern.

June 2021 logging activity Roaring Rock Park close to Brass Castle Creek
Logging activity
close to Brass Castle Creek

We warned the Township that 10’ wide corridors would have to be cleared to accommodate the “skid steer” machinery used to drag out heavy tree trunks. The weight of the machinery and trees would compact the root systems of the flanking tress, and eventually cause their death. We reminded them that Brass Castle Creek is a Category 1 stream, worthy of the standard DEP 300’ activity-free buffer. It’s also one of only 36 exceptional waterways statewide designated with special regulations as Wild Trout Streams by the DEP Division of Fish & Wildlife, who rated Brass Castle Creek as “excellent” and “optimal” to support the habitat of sensitive species like Brook Trout and Northern Two-lined Salamander, after inspections conducted in 2016 and 2018.

I was shocked to see “Phase I” logging begin on June 21st, the worst possible time of the year because spring and early summer is songbird nesting season. Trees with dozens, if not, hundreds of nests were toppled. It’s also when amphibians, reptiles and sensitive aquatic species emerge. Now, conditions due to logging are horrendous. Multiple haul roads were cut, but no remediation was done to restore muddy road conditions. With heavy summer rain events, mud and silt will run unchecked into Brass Castle Creek. The logger seems to care only about taking marketable logs off site, as all of the tree crowns are piled deeply on site, crushing forest floor habitat. Those piles of drying branches and leaves will add to the forest floor fuel load, compounding the risk of wildfire.

The evidence of critical destruction is apparent on the forest floor. My question to the Washington Township Committee, and indeed, the public who elected them is will you allow this tragedy to continue, or will you do the right thing by promoting reforestation and stopping further logging? What will it be?


John G. Trontis, CPRP
Certified Professional Recreation and Parks

Before his retirement, Trontis was the Assistant Director of the New Jersey DEP Division of Parks and Forestry. Prior to that role, he was Director of Parks and Recreation for Hunterdon County.  Despite being a retired full time public servant, he keeps himself busy as a Trustee of the Warren County Parks Foundation and a District Firewarden for the NJ Forest Fire Service.  He currently resides in Washington Township, Warren County, New Jersey.

BE ADVISED: The NJDEP neither endorses nor opposes the views expressed in this article or the activities of saveroaringrockpark.org in this matter.

Thursday, August 26, 2021

Project outcomes are not always according to plan

tree crowns discarded on RRP forest floor increasing fire load and hazard
Discarded tree crowns which increases fire load
Roaring Rock Park, Warren County, NJ

This is especially true with the Forest Management Plan (FMP) now being executed at Roaring Rock Park, by the Washington Township Warren County NJ municipal government and its logging contractor.

How it started...

If you talk to proponents of forest management, you often hear that managed tree harvesting is a means to reduce the risk of

  1. forest fire hazards, and   
  2. legal liability stemming from potential lawsuits raised by victims harmed by falling dead trees.    

To achieve this goal at Roaring Rock Park, one would think the logging contractor, hired by the municipal government, would need to remove diseased and dead trees from the forest.

How is it going?

The municipal government, through its hired logging contractor, has started to log the park in June 2021, kicking off ten years of tree harvesting.   So will the recent logging activity lead to reduced risks? 

The "reduce forest fire risks" "benefit"

This is a large debate now, as you see forest fires raging in places such as California, Australia and even the Pinelands in southern New Jersey.   You hear that removing trees will reduce the fire load within the forest.

Aside from this ongoing debate, did the outcome of recent logging at Roaring Rock Park, decrease the fire load?

What occurred: the Township's logging contractor cut down mature healthy trees.  As they did this, they lopped off the tree crowns (tree tops) and discarded them on the forest floor.     

As these discarded tree crowns die and rot, they will increase the risk of forest fire by increasing the fire load of the park.   

The "dead trees falling on people" threat

If you observed the tree extraction by the loggers, you will notice that the logs taken were not diseased or dead.   They came from mature healthy trees that were not "ready to fall on residents."


Off to a bad start, let's get back on track

Our group urges Washington Township to:
  1. stop the current logging activity which not only harms the ecology of the park, but runs counter to the benefits its touts, and 
  2. inform the public through regular public meetings that state, on public record, the outcome of recent logging activities and plans for the future phases over the ten year FMP period. 
  3. meet regularly with the New Jersey Highlands Coalition to design a more ecologically responsible FMP that reduces the harm to the forest ecology and wildlife that lives within it.
  4. monitor future logging activity to minimize deviations from the plan.

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