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forest management

Ecological Forestry at Sparta Mountain Wildlife Management Area

By
January 11, 2012
ecological restoration, forest management

Here are two articles that are part of the excellent “Grassroots” series by the Daily Record about conservation issues in New Jersey:

Saving songbirds: Sparta Mountain project an effort to lure golden-winged warblers

GRASSROOTS INTERVIEW: New Jersey forests once a crowded stage for crooning golden wings


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What NJ Audubon and the Division of Fish and Wildlife have done is use ecological forestry concepts to create habitat for the imperiled golden winged warbler at Sparta Mountain Wildlife Management Area.  Although this type of active stewardship activity has the potential to be controversial in New Jersey, collaborating with partners can make all the difference.  Kudos to NJ Audubon and the Division of Fish and Wildlife for this excellent project!

Excellent Opinion Article about New Forest Stewardship Bill

By
January 2, 2012
ecological restoration, forest management, land stewardship policy
Forest in the NJ Highlands affected by hemlock wooly adelgid

Forest in the NJ Highlands affected by hemlock wooly adelgid

For those interested in the new Forest Stewardship Bill and why I believe land stewards should support it, check out Anthony Mauro’s excellent piece in New Jersey Newsroom.  He writes:

The bills provide a means to facilitate natural processes through forestry practices. These intentional, human-induced activities can initiate the recovery of ecosystem health, integrity, and sustainability. If we are going to continue to prevent Mother Nature from freely using her methods to manage forests it is our obligation to safely and responsibly replicate her formulas.

This article nicely gets at an underlying question that is rarely articulated or discussed among the land conservation community at the policy level – how active of a role should we play in addressing conservation threats and opportunities on state lands? and should one of the tools we use be forestry?

Click here to read the entire article.

The New Forest Stewardship Bill

By
December 29, 2011
ecological restoration, forest management
8 Comments

As land stewards and land managers, we should support the new Forest Stewardship bill, S1954/A4538. If passed, this bill would be a huge step to better management of our state-owned lands.   It dovetails well with both the recommendations of the Pinelands Forestry Advisory Committee, which I helped to draft, and the new Forest Stewardship Assessment Law for private lands.

For over 10 years, I have been trying to demonstrate how the science of Forestry can help us address our land management challenges in New Jersey.  In the early 2000s, when I was working for New Jersey Conservation Foundation (NJCF), we did one of the first ecological forestry demonstration projects in New Jersey at the Dorothy Preserve in Estell Manor.  We created open woodland habitat for state threatened red-headed woodpeckers and restored an Atlantic white cedar swamp  We thinned (logged) about 40 acres of forest to actually create the woodpecker habitat and then used the proceeds from the woodships produced by the thinning to help pay for this habitat creation.  Logging (or more correctly, the practice  of Siviculture) is an essential tool in the land stewardship toolbox, especially where the landscape is too fragmented for natural disturbance, such as hot wildfires, to be safely utilized.

For several years after the thinning at Dorothy Preserve, we planned to conduct a series of prescribed burns to reduce the woody shrub layer – essentially converting it from a woody shrub layer to more of a herbaceous layer ideal for rare Pine Barrens Plants.  The final part of this innovative plan was to selectively herbicide about 10 acres of what had been a degraded Atlantic white cedar swamp and enclose it with an electric deer fence to promote Atlantic white cedar regeneration.  Atlantic white cedar is a critical habitat type that has been declining throughout its range for decades.  

All of this activity was part of scientifically-based Forest Stewardship Plan developed by NJCF and a forestry consultant, so I was excited to learn that the state was going to try to do the same exact thing – write Forest Stewardship Plans that would create habitat and pay for themselves through the proceeds of implementing the plan.  This was the exact model we were promoting at NJCF and the very definition of ecological forestry – being able to create critical habitat and produce a sustainable forest product.  By the way, the pine chips that we harvested went into making high-quality paper for self-adhesive postage stamps.

Ecological Forestry in the Pine Barrens

Since that time, demonstration projects have been done by other conservation organizations, notably NJ Audubon at their Hovnaniain Sanctuary in the Pine Barrens. Among other goals, New Jersey Audubon’s Forest Stewardship Plan focuses on using Silvculture to create habitat for rare snakes.   Another example, this time in the Highlands, was an excellent Forest Stewardship Plan developed for a large portion of the Newark Watershed lands.  One of the main recommendations in the Newark plan was to create additional golden winged warbler habitat through Silvicultural treatments.  Golden winged warbler populations have seriously declined in New Jersey and throughout their range.  The plan was developed by a forestry consultant in partnership with NJ Audubon and Conservation Resources.  It involved significant community and scientific input.  Flowing from all of these forest stewardship initiatives, The Forest Guild held a workshop in 2010 in New Jersey for land managers promoting the concept and science behind ecological forestry.

As you know, my on-the-ground land management activities now take place on a smaller scale in the Highlands at Schiff Nature Preserve.  Forest Stewardship Plans are a great way to determine conservation threats and opportunities and present best practices as to how to address these.

For example, using our Forest Stewardship Plan as a guide, Schiff Natural Lands Trust is actively addressing the issues of overabundant deer through an aggressive deer management program; we have one of the most active prescribed burning programs on non-profit properties in the state; and we are addressing the threat of emerging non-native invasive species through work with the New Jersey Invasive Species Strike Team.  Our Forest Stewardship Plan also focuses on maintenance of critical habitat we have for a state threatened plant (S1) and animal species and as well as species of special concern.

I believe our state lands should have Forest Stewardship Plans.  These plans would help us to determine what natural resources we actually have, what the conservation threats are to these resources, and help us to figure out creative ways to address these threats.  S1954 / A4538 would create some of the first Forest Stewardship Plans on state land.

However, there are several things about the bill that some environmental groups are finding problematic.  After reading the bill, I very respectfully disagree with them on several key points.  You can read the bill here if you are interested in having a look yourself.

  1. The bill protects ecologically sensitive areas:  The bill states:
    …that forest harvesting activities are not conducted in Natural Heritage Priority Sites, natural areas, or sensitive ecological areas unless the department determines that the site would benefit from forest harvesting activities.  Furthermore, the bill requires that forest harvesting activities be conducted in accordance with the New Jersey Forestry Wetlands Best Management Practices.

  2. Forest Stewardship Plans address rare species:  The bill also references the Forest Stewardship Assessment Law as to specifically what should be contained in a Forest Stewardship Plan.  Those of us who have written Forest Stewardship Plans understand that the fine details are where many additional ecological issues are considered including the presence of rare plants or wildlife and how management activities will affect these species.  The point of a Forest Stewardship Plan is to identify and address prevalent conservation threats including non native invasive species and white tailed deer. The plans aren’t about harvesting timber, although that could be a by-product of Siviculture.   Like at the Dorothy Preserve, Hovnanian Sanctuary, and the Newark Watershed, Forest Stewardship Plans can apply the practice of Siviculutre to actually enhance habitat for rare species.
  1. The program would fund itself, not the operations of the State Park Service:  Money generated through this program won’t be used to generally fund the State Park Service, but rather would be used to write and implement Forest Stewardship Plans.  Any additional revenues would be given to the State Natural Lands Trust, to be used for restoration projects “to increase biodiversity, or to enhance habitat for rare, threatened or endangered flora on lands” held or managed by the state. There is even a “poison pill” provision that ensures that revenue generated from the program is used only for this purpose, thereby helping to prevent the focus of the program to generating significant amounts of revenue for State Parks operations.
  1. Forest Stewardship Plans would require Public Input:  The bill also requires public input into the actual Forest Stewardship Plans.  Forest Stewardship Plans are necessarily site specific, so conservation threats and opportunities are going to be unique.  It is impossible to say that a particular management activity, including Silviculture, is appropriate until a plan is developed. The bill is explicit that plans be developed through a public process including public notice, public hearing, and comment period.
  1. Current state of land management on state lands:  The state has the authority to conduct land management activities already, including logging, but they are not required to use Forest Stewardship Plans to guide these activities.  As we know, the DEP doesn’t have the resources to write Forest Stewardship Plans themselves.  Critically, this bill address this funding issue by calling for a project manager to write and implement the Forest Stewardship Plans with DEP and use the revenue from Silviculture to pay for them.  In an ideal world, the DEP would have the funding and staff to write plans themselves, but given the current fiscal climate in Trenton it is doubtful we will see an increase in DEP staffing anytime soon.  Other state agencies, such as the Department of Transportation, hire outside consultants to do planning and implementation work.  DEP should also be able to hire outside consultants to do this work with proper controls.
  1. A Project Manager would work with DEP:  It should also be noted that the bill doesn’t explicitly state that the project manager be a for-profit entity, so non-profit conservation groups with adequate qualifications could conceivably become the project manager.   I am also certain that there are a set of land management professionals at DEP that would be involved in both writing the administrative rules related to this bill and overseeing the Forest Stewardship Program.   Even given the limited budgets and staffing cutbacks, many of these land management professionals have been quietly doing extremely impressive land management projects on a small scale and I trust them to look out for the public interest.

I believe that this is our best chance yet to begin to responsibly manage our preserved landscape.  The alternative to this bill is to continue to do nothing to address conservation threats on preserved lands and watch many of the living natural resources we paid to permanently protect from development continue to disappear.

Overview of the New Jersey Forest Stewardship Law

By
February 19, 2010
forest management, Forest Stewardship Assessment
3 Comments

Tree in winter, Schiff Nature Preserve

As land stewards, we have recognized for years the severe ecological threats to New Jersey’s forests.  These include overabundant white-tailed deer, non-native invasive plants, new and novel forest pests, severe forest fragmentation due to development, and global warming.  It is widely acknowledged that these ecological threats have made sustainable, commodity-based forest management more and more difficult.  There were many factors conspiring to exacerbate these threats to our forest, including New Jersey’s version of the agricultural and forestry use assessment, what is commonly referred to as Farmland or Woodland Assessment.  Woodland Assessment required landowners to show an economic return through harvest and sale of forest products.  In many cases, this meant harvesting trees in an unsustainable manner, which led to forest degradation.

The newly-enacted Forest Stewardship Law addresses these problems head-on by incentivizing a broad, sustainable approach to forest management.  It eliminates the requirement of landowners to derive an income from sale of forest products to qualify for the differential assessment, provided they follow an approved Forest Stewardship Plan.  The new law directs the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to create a new forest stewardship program, authorizes funding to create forest stewardship plans, as well as funding to implement the practices outlined in the program, and prohibits local governments from enacting laws that would interfere with implementing a Forest Stewardship Plan.   It also directs the State, to the extent possible, to purchase wood products derived from lands that have a Forest Stewardship Plan.  I have tried to summarize many of the important aspects of this the Forest Stewardship Law as well as provide a few suggestions how land stewards can become involved in its implementation.

Official Recognition of Broad Suite of Forest Values

The findings and declarations of the Legislature  in this new law recognize that the value of forests to the State goes beyond traditional commodities such as firewood and lumber.  The Forest Stewardship Law says:

a. The Legislature finds and declares that forest lands are critical to the environmental welfare of the State; that forest lands help clean and refresh the air by filtering dust and particulates; that forest lands absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen, helping to reduce global warming; that forest lands help clean and protect the waters of the State, promote replenishment of aquifers, stabilize soils, provide shade, and provide habitat essential to sustaining New Jersey’s native biodiversity, including habitat critical for endangered and threatened species and species of special concern; and that it is proper to consider the management of forests  in a sustainable manner as an agricultural or horticultural use which yields public benefits.

b. The Legislature further finds and declares that forest lands are critical to the social welfare of the State; that forest lands are a necessary and important part of community and urban environments, and are essential to the maintenance of quality of life in the State; that forest lands afford outdoor recreational opportunities and irreplaceable aesthetic benefits; and that forest lands promote the health of the citizenry by contributing to the availability of clean air and water.

Forest Stewardship Program

The law directs the Department of Environmental Protection to establish a new Forest Stewardship Program.   As many of you are probably aware, there is an existing Forest Stewardship Program that was established by the USDA Forest Service in 1991 and is administered by the NJDEP Forest Service.  The new Forest Stewardship law directs DEP to establish a Forest Stewardship advisory committee that is consistent with the federal requirements, which I take to mean that the existing Forest Stewardship Committee will be subsumed by this new Forest Stewardship advisory committee.  Although former versions of the bill outlined the make-up of this committee, the version that passed is silent on what organizations, types of professionals, or interested citizens will be on the committee.  Here is the language from the law:

….establishing a forest stewardship advisory committee, consistent with the federal requirements for the establishment of a State Forest Stewardship Coordinating Committee pursuant to 16 U.S.C. s.2113, to advise the department (1) on issues related to forest stewardship and recommend programs, actions and standards, including rules and regulations, policies, guidelines and best management practices, for the conservation and stewardship of forest lands…

The law does not change the minimum acreage of land that can qualify for the program – 5 acres or greater, but it does briefly address what information should be contained in a Forest Stewardship Plan .  Development of the Forest Stewardship Plan is essential in that an approved Forest Stewardship Plan allows a landowner to apply for Forest Stewardship Assessment (see below).  The law states that a Forest Stewardship Plan should conform to rules that will be developed by DEP that will set forth:

policies, guidelines and best management practices that establish standards designed to ensure the sustainability of forest lands, which may be applicable to any  publicly and privately owned forest land;

The law also outlines what qualifications are needed to write a forest stewardship plan.  Most significantly, it broadens the professional qualifications necessary to be permitted to write forest stewardship plans.  It allows plans to be written by:

a forester or other professional selected by the owner from a list of foresters approved by the department, or from a list of other professionals authorized by the department in consultation with the forest stewardship advisory committee

Forest Stewardship Incentive Fund

The law establishes a Forest Stewardship Incentive fund that will provide grants to develop and implement Forest Stewardship Plans.  The law authorizes individual grants up to $2,500 to fund development of Forest Stewardship Plans by nonprofit organizations, local governments and private landowners.

Cost share funding for forest stewardship practices identified in a Forest Stewardship Plan will also be eligible for funding.  The cost-share portion of this program is meant to be modeled upon the forest land enhancement program (FLEP).  This is good news because as of the end of 2009, FLEP is out of funding.  The money for the Forest Stewardship Incentive fund will come from the Global Warming Solutions Fund.

Right to Forest Stewardship

The law has language similar to the intent of right-to-farm.  Specifically it prohibits local governments from:

enact[ing],…. any ordinance, rule, or resolution, as appropriate, that conflicts with, prevents or impedes the  implementation of a forest stewardship plan approved pursuant to [The Forest Stewardship Law] or impose a fee in excess of $100 in any calendar year for the cutting of trees on any land that is the subject of an approved forest stewardship plan.

Development of Forest Sustainability Criteria

The law directs the DEP, in consultation with the Forest Stewardship Advisory Committee, the USDA Forest Service, the Forest Stewardship advisory committee, and the public, to develop forest sustainability criteria.  These criteria and indicators could be incredibly important in developing Forest Stewardship Plan guidelines and measuring and informing the legislature and the public about the conservation threats to our forest over time.  More specifically, DEP must:

develop and establish forest sustainability criteria and indicators appropriate to the circumstances encountered in New Jersey, as a basis for monitoring,  recording, and assessing the  extent, condition, and sustainability of all New Jersey forests, whether publicly or privately owned. The department shall prepare a report setting forth the findings and assessments based on these forest sustainability criteria and indicators by February 1 of the third year after the date of enactment of …… and every seven years thereafter, which report shall include any recommendations for legislative or administrative action.

The department shall consider the findings and assessments set forth in the forest sustainability criteria and indicators report prepared pursuant to ….. this section to determine how to adapt the rules and regulations adopted pursuant to section …..to ensure the sustainability of forest lands, to set priorities for the management of State-owned forest lands, and to assist in establishing priorities for the use of State funds for the acquisition of forest lands.

From Farmland Assessment to Forest Stewardship Assessment

The change in the Farmland Assessment law to include Forest Stewardship Assessment is by far the most important part of the law.  If a landowner is implementing a Forest Stewardship Plan, they will be able to qualify for the differential tax assessment without having to harvest trees in order to derive income.  Here is the magic language that amended the existing Farmland Assessment Act:

b. The gross sales, payments, imputed income, and fees received requirements of this section shall not apply to land that (1) is the subject of a forest stewardship plan approved by the Department of Environmental Protection pursuant to [The Forest Stewardship Law] which is fully implemented, and (2) otherwise qualifies under the “Farmland Assessment Act of 1964,” P.L.1964, c.48 (C.54:4-23.1 et seq.), for valuation, assessment and taxation as land in agricultural or horticultural use pursuant to section 3 of P.L.1964, c.48 (C.54:4-38 23.3).

How land stewards can help shape the Forest Stewardship Law

The New Jersey Forest Stewardship Law will take effect one year from the date it was enacted.  This means that the DEP will be writing the regulations for this law in 2010.  It is important that land stewards are at the table commenting on development of these new rules.  Specifically, we should advocate for:

  • A strong representation of land stewards on the Forest Stewardship Advisory Committee, whose success will be important for the program to work effectively.  This will ensure that we help guide the forest sustainability criteria over time, help shape the Forest Stewardship Incentive Fund, and determine the eligibility criteria for professionals outside the traditional forestry profession to write Forest Stewardship Plans.
  • Forest sustainability and Forest Stewardship Plan criteria that address the broader threats to forest systems such as overabundant white-tailed deer, non-native invasive plants and animals.  Land Stewards have been at the cutting edge of developing effective strategies to deal with these problems and our input and experience will be vital to the program being a success.

Let me know in the comments what you think of the new Forest Stewardship Law!

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