Concerns regarding the commercial logging plan:
The following is an open letter, which was read into the public record during the March 16th 2021 Washington Township committee meeting.
The open letter is signed by environmental organizations, Township residents and concerned citizens. The letter calls on Washington Township to halt the planned commercial logging activities on the public forest in 2021 until points, outlined in the letter, are addressed with full public oversight.
By Laura Oltman
The March 5, 2021 article regarding logging of Roaring Rock Park in Washington Township accurately portrayed some key points made during the special meeting on the logging plan held by the township committee. The forester who created the park logging plan spoke at length about it. A forest ecology professor from Drew University debated the alleged ecological benefit of logging a forest. I am not an expert in biology or forestry and won’t speak to these topics, but I have read the forestry plan and I know what it says. In the public record of discussion about the park and in the forestry plan itself, the clearly stated goal of logging is to sell wood products. The forestry firm will earn 20% plus fees from the harvest and a logging company will be paid to carry out logging.
The most important topic concerning Roaring Rock Park is government turning over public trust resources of the park to private interests for financial gain without conducting a stakeholder process or otherwise notifying the public in advance of a plan to significantly damage the character and natural resources of this woodland park. The park was purchased with taxpayer dollars through the New Jersey Green Acres program. It belongs to every resident of New Jersey. Commercial logging in publicly owned parks is a perfect example of privatizing gains while socializing losses. As an expert taxpayer, I can say this is a raw deal.
Volunteers in Washington Township built a network of woodland hiking trails in the park. The Warren Highlands Trail, a 52-mile long spur of the long-distance Highlands Trail extending from New York to Pennsylvania, traverses Roaring Rock Park. Brass Castle Creek, which runs through the park, is designated by New Jersey Fish and Wildlife as a Wild Trout Stream due to its naturally reproducing brook trout population. Brook trout is the only native New Jersey trout species.
How much will people enjoy hiking on rutted logging roads while listening to chainsaws and trucks in the woods? Will it be safe for kids to be in the park when logging is going on? Will there be any native brook trout able to survive in Brass Castle Creek after it is silted from vehicles driving through it and erosion from logged hillsides pouring into it? What will happen to neighboring properties when stormwater is no longer absorbed by tree roots and cascades unimpeded down steep slopes onto their property?
The forestry plan describes these and other problems likely to require remediation but there is no specific plan or cost estimate for accomplishing it. There is no guarantee that reforestation would work because of deer browse and invasion of non-native plants. It is extremely difficult and expensive to battle deer browse and weeds, as any homeowner can tell you. The forest as it is now took 100 years or more to develop. Park users will not see this forest again in their lifetimes.
Who will fix things after logging? There is no “after”. Forestry is a long game. The current logging plan lasts 10 years, but the goal is creating an ideally stocked forest of the largest and most valuable trees for continual harvest.
This is not what New Jersey taxpayers wanted or paid for with Green Acres funding. It is wrong and needs to stop now.
Laura Oltman is a member of the New Jersey Highlands Coalition Natural Heritage Committee. She lives in Phillipsburg.
Source: LehighValleyLive.com Opinion
The following two audio recordings were taken at WRNJ radio station, Hackettstown NJ. In the recordings Julia M. Somers, Executive Director, New Jersey Highlands Coalition, outlines the impacts of the proposed logging plan for Roaring Rock Park, Washington Township, Warren County NJ. The original airing was Thursday morning February 18 2021.
Roaring Rock Park, Washington Township’s beautiful natural public park in Warren County New Jersey, reflects a local story about the loud roar that can be heard as the water of Brass Castle Creek rushes past certain boulders during periods of very high water. The land for this park, which covers a few hundred acres, is set aside for passive use, including hiking and picnicking. Fishing is allowed in the creek, which is stocked with trout.
In 2020, the Township government passed a resolution #2020-110 which called for a “Forest Management Plan” to be developed. The resolution signaled the intent of the Township government to hire a professional logging firm to selectively harvest the trees within the public park over a ten year period. The resolution also indicated the Township would share in the revenue of the timber harvest. Note that this park was acquired by the Township in the 1999 for preservation using New Jersey Green Acre Funding. This is noted on the Township government’s web site.
The New Jersey Highlands Coalition reviewed the Forest Management Plan, and has stated their concerns about the environmental impacts to the public forest.
Sara Webb, Ph. D., Professor emeritus of Biology, Drew University, has reviewed the Plan and identified impacts to the ecology of the public forest.
Sara Webb, Ph.D., Forest Ecologist
Professor emeritus of Biology, Drew University
swebb@drew.edu
February 21, 2021
The proposed Forest Management Plan for Roaring Rock Park would damage the region’s quality of life, wildlife, and the environment. The plan provides a comprehensive description of the Park’s forests, but it is a logging-focused plan with negative consequences. It proposes to log 260 acres of forest (40% of a square mile), counting both large timber trees and cords of mid-sized firewood. This plan of action carries costs that might well offset any gains from timber sales. It thus should not be implemented.
The plan does not detail what sort of revenue might be possible, and serious questions must be asked about this, particularly because of expenses that the Township will face after logging: to plant trees, control invasive species, restore trails, and the losses of key ecosystems services.
All should recognize, however, that this plan is a simply a logging plan. Thousands of large trees will be lost. The wood will be hauled away, with its lost value as habitat, carbon sequestration, and soil replenishment. The impacts will be enormous. Damage from logging will be considerable and costly to repair.
Often today such plans are presented as “management” or “stewardship” plans, because as foresters tell me that “logging” sounds so negative. Often these plans assume incorrectly that New Jersey’s forests must be managed to be healthy: to be thinned and cut down for maintenance. We often hear incorrectly that all our trees are the same age, unhealthy, or low in diversity. These assumptions are true at Roaring Rock Park. However, all should recognize that tree harvest and log removal is at the heart of this plan. If our goals were biodiversity and forest health, we should instead manage deer and invasive species, not extract living healthy mature trees.
Another reason to reject this plan is that climate resilience is greatly harmed when the largest marketable trees are lost. The latest science shows our oldest trees and most intact maturing forests both store and take up the greatest amount of carbon from the air.
After logging, there will be major expenses for the Township. We must recognize the limited role of foresters. It is not the role of the Forest Management Plan to take care of or pay for problems that logging will cause; to its credit, this Plan does explain most of the post-logging work that must be done (by others).
It is expensive to replace lost trees and keep the land forested. Even with great effort and investment, it can be impossible to restore forests, because of deer and invasive species. Costs include the purchase and the planting of new trees of sufficient size to survive, the challenge of watering them, and the cost of somehow protecting new trees from deer and invasive plants. Effective deer fencing [10’] and its maintenance as well as herbicides are extremely expensive.
To restore trails from widened logging roadways is also costly and will require extra effort to control invasive plants.
It is also costly and difficult to manage increased storm water runoff, to minimize erosion of bared and disturbed soil, to plan for greater flooding and to grapple with more widely fluctuating water supplies.
The ecologists of the state agree that forest management by logging is not appropriate for northern New Jersey’s natural parks and conservation lands, because of all of these challenges and because intact maturing forests are quite uncommon. Such established forests like those of Roaring Rock provide ecosystem services of many types that should not be squandered lightly. This logging-focused forest management plan is not appropriate.
