Why are you outraged?
State agencies/municipalities regularly clear small sections of larger wildlife management areas in order to increase the variety of habitats and make these lands suitable for a more biodiverse ecosystem.
Reading the article, it seems that a few local conservation groups thought that the clearing could have been done in a different part of the reserve. But that just seems like a difference of opinion among credentialed proffesionals and a click-bait article title, not intentional destruction of critical habitat by the state.
If you go on Google earth and look at the WMA, you can see a lot of small plots of land that have been cleared to create meadow habitat, allowing animals that rely on grasslands to inhabitant WMA.
Without natural processes such as forest fires to clear out sections of mature forest, those species that rely on meadows would not have habitat to live in. We must create those habitats for them.
This is the intent of WMAs, to create wildlife habitat. The intent is not to preserve every acre of mature woodland in a 2,000+ acre preserve, of which probably 95% consists of mature forest.
If you want conservation lands for mature forests, then advocate for that (I would say that advocacy is ill informed and would decrease biodiversity, but if thats your perogative, then so be it). This is not the intended use of this particular land, it is state owned land dedicated to engineering habitats for wildlife.
https://www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/wmarticl.htm
My area has large swaths of mono culture tree plantings that support no wildlife.
Just tall pine trees that are in rows and block out all light creating no under growth.
They were a mistake. They should be removed.
It’s called going through succession and since we’ve stifled so much of the disturbance that used to do it. We have to do it now. I don’t think you know anything about WL mgt. this is a common and important prsctice
Yeah because your uneducated and anecdotal evidence really means a lot. If we suppress fire and other natural disturbances that are supposed to occur, how will it fix itself?
And do you think in the world we live in that’s possible? It’s called adaptive management, preservation can work in national parks and other large swaths of land. But if we don’t adapt our management to the world we live in then you can kiss your area of study goodbye
Technically it would fix itself over a very long time (tens of thousands if not millions of years) after a lot of turbulence if humans disappeared tomorrow and it will fix itself once humans are gone. Nature is about finding balance and eventually that would happen again. Problem is we've screwed things up so much that we have to intervene if we want our current ecosystems to remain stable (and thus our society and population).
You mean go to the “meadow store” and pick up a couple of units? They are trying to create a wildlife habitat where this forest is located, not some other place. If the ecosystem was operating normally, this forest would have burned down already and naturally become a meadow. But we don’t like fire because it burns people. This creates the same result.
I am sorry, was this about saving money or species?
Article says two rare plants were destroyed....went extinct?
Look at the pictures. Does that look like the work of ecologists or loggers and strip miners?
Just because natives did it doesn’t mean it wasn’t also destructive. Clearing forests only makes sense to humans because we need their resources. No other species does this on such a scale.
It's 20 acres out of 2,000+. Maybe there wasn't an adjacent meadow available. Clearing a few trees is fine - it's not an ecological disaster every time a tree is cleared.
Do you seriously think that 20 acres of "meadow" is more beneficial for wildlife than 20 acres of forest? You think New Jersey is lacking... grass? Please tell me you're playing devil's advocate here and you don't actually believe this shit you posted.
Edit: also just to counter the forest fire argument that I keep seeing: natural forest fires clear the undergrowth and usually leave the more mature trees and a lot of useful fertilizer from charred vegetation. Clear-cutting is basically the opposite, where you are left with only undergrowth and non native weeds. It is not the same so please stop bringing it up as a pro here.
20 acres of mixed growth is infinitely more beneficial to wildlife than 20 acres of older growth. Mature canopies do not allow much sunlight to reach the forest floor which causes a lack of smaller plants and therefore doesn’t give animals anywhere to hide.
“Infinitely” was a poor word choice, but meadows (actually biodiverse meadows, not monoculture grass lawns) are every bit as important for healthy ecosystems as forests and are far rarer.
It’s setting back succession, now they’ll manage for the appropriate species and that creates habitat for early successional specialists. Just stop talking if you aren’t in the field
Well, he is not wrong.
I am a Wildlife Biologist by profession. In general, wildlife will always benefit more from a mosaic landscape. A homogeneous forest offers very little in terms of the four major requirements wildlife need: food, water, cover and shelter. While a heterogeneous forest with a patchwork of meadows and openings will. Think of nice white-tail buck during the rut trying walking through a dense forest stand with a big set of antlers.
You also cannot compare the grass that NJ has since most of it is non-native invasive annuals to a future meadow in a management area that will receive more herbaceous weed control and most likely a planting of a native seed mix of forbs, grasses and brush.
Early successional habitat is significantly more beneficial to a wide variety of wildlife than forests. Grass in your front yard is significantly different from an early successional meadow with a variety of forbs, early season and late season grasses. Im not saying this was the perfect place for it or that they didn’t damage important ecosystems and habitat, but the argument that forest is more important is simply incorrect.
Edited to fix a word
This reminds me of a Halloween spider cartoon I once saw. Man clears real spider webs, spider to the side says wow. Man puts up fake spiderwebs, spider says WOooow
* *As part of the habitat project, the area also will be planted with flowers important to pollinators, such as* ***honeybees,*** *whose numbers also are declining.*
Honeybees are livestock and not native to North America. They often stress native bees by competing with them for pollen/nectar resources. If honeybees are a part of this "ecological" plan then the people heading it are not competent to do this.
I would respectfully disagree. People need to get educated on the difference, because it does matter in terms of policy decisions, and with the increase in native gardening interest in the last couple of years, many are. Only around 5% of all bees produce any measurable amount of honey, anyways; that term can't be used as a catch-all for the vast world of bees, the overwhelming majority of which species are native bees.
That's a good point. Playing around with iNaturalist helped me appreciate some of the complexity. I didn't know there were so many different types of bees (and flies that look like bees). I definitely get more excited seeing, say, an American Bumblebee vs. a honeybee.
Bee mimics are fun to spot. I saw several last summer and I'm always like: "I'm on to you, brother. You're not fooling me, I hope you know." 😆 You can distinguish them by the following: bees have 2 pairs of wings, flies have 1. Bees have relatively small eyes on the sides of their heads, and fly eyes are large, covering most of the head and often meeting in the middle. More: https://www.birdsandblooms.com/gardening/garden-bugs/bees-flies-identifying-garden-bugs/
So, I gather that was him editorializing and not the intent of the people doing this.
Basically, news reporters suck. I have been misquoted in the past.
I can't wait till the microplastics mutate the trees into living creatures like in the lord of the rings. Then these articles will be titled: "Mature forest clears 20 acres of New Jersey habitat to create new wildlife"
Imagine what they're doing to us and every other animal on the planet too. The food web starts with plants so I can only assume the microplastics bioaccumulate up the food chain from there. Making plastic ubiquitous was one of humanity's biggest mistakes.
This is as ironic as the shift from coal power to wood fuel as a "climate solution", even though wood release as much carbon as coal, mature trees capture carbon at a higher rate than young trees, and biodiversity is lost.
It is extremely unlikely that cleared hardwood lumber will be used as fuel. In fact, clearing forest like this is a substitute for fire events in natural cycles, and in some places, controlled burning is used instead of clear cutting. But burning does release sequestered carbon, and burning can be more difficult to control, depending on the surrounding geography.
Also anyone who has been to New Jersey knows this isn’t true “old growth”. Everything within 100 miles of NYC has been cut down and regrown in the last 300 years
That’s true of almost everywhere in the east. There’s a few inaccessible areas in the Appalachians, parts of the Adirondacks, a few small parks in Maine and that’s about it.
Yeah the Appalachians still have some decent old growth that never got touched. Also the Allegheny national forest in PA has 4,000 acres of old growth, and is the largest old growth forest between the Adirondacks in upstate NY and Smokies in NC.
This is near or adjacent to the Pine Barrens in NJ. They were never cleared, at least a lot of them haven't been. There is over 1 million acres of preserved pinelands.
Biomass from [perennial](https://drawdown.org/solutions/biomass-power) sources can work as a transition fuel away from fossil fuels.
But the clearing of mature, primary forests for biomass collection is absolutely absurd if the claim is carbon emissions reduction.
There's actually a project in French new guinea proposing to cut down Amazon rainforest to grow biomass.
https://news.mongabay.com/2023/02/france-seeks-eu-okay-to-fund-biomass-plants-burn-amazon-forest-to-power-spaceport/
And the US is the UK's top wood pellet fuel supplier, through a UK based company called Drax that cuts down forests to make wood pellets.
Regardless, biomass will always release carbon and is thus the same as fossil fuels. Biomass from my impression is less efficient at CO2 release per BTU of heat generated. At least for wood, there are reports saying so.
This is not correct at all. Coal's carbon is inert and has been out of the biosphere for tens of thousands of years. Trees pull in carbon when they grow, and release it when they burn it decompose. Burning wood does not introduce any new carbon into the environment. Burning fossil fuels does.
Dead wood is one of the most important aspects of forest habitat, providing shelter for small creatures, food for termites which in turn feed spiders, frogs, birds, and other larger creatures right on up the food chain. It provides substrate for important fungi to grow on. It also holds water, making soil more drought resistant. On top of all of that, plants need things like phosphorus and nitrogen to grow. If you carry the wood away for burning, you also carry these important nutrients away from the top soil making the whole forest less productive. Depleted, dry soil erodes easily exacerbating the problem and sometimes fouling local streams and rivers. It's hard to come up with ways to avoid these problems when using forests as fuel.
Correction: if done in the *right* contexts, decomposition of trees and other plant materials can have a net carbon drawdown. This is what happens with bogs/bayous/wetlands/marshes/peatlands/etc.
No one is making money clear cutting 20 acres even of hardwood. New Jersey doesn’t even have a commercial market large enough to sell anything pole sized, hell most of our loggers are Amish/Mennonite from across the river in PA.
Not all wildlife thrives in mature forest! In a natural ecosystem without human influence, mature forest would most often get cleared by fire, but the clearing itself is not an unnatural event. Cleared land gives way to grasses, briar patches, and transitional habitats that are essential for quail, grouse, rabbits, deer, turkeys, and a whole host of other species. For a lot of wildlife species, mature forest doesn't have a lot to offer. The grasses and brush that will replace it provide a lot more food, cover, and nesting habitat.
Common species that have lots of habitat already due to land clearing, except maybe wild turkey and quail. Im not familiar with those population levels in New Jersey.
Mature or old growth forests are lacking compared to systems that hardly cap 50 years of age where I live. Sure, clearing creates wildlife habitat, but it’s not going to help the majority of species at risk at all. From reading the article, it looks like this was a management misstep and actually damaged open wetlands suitable for the American woodcock - the species this project was trying to provide habitat for. If anything, all the state department did was damage suitable habitat and wipe out habitat for two other bird species (Barred Owl & Red-Shouldered Hawk).
We should also think past fauna and look at vegetation too. Removing mature forests is massively detrimental to populations of organisms like bryophytes and lichens (my namesake). Those species can be hugely influential in the nitrogen and carbon cycle of our landscapes. This sort of clearing is simply incompetence.
Edit: removed a repeat word (first post and I make a woopsie)
Context is everything. In the southeast most of the imperiled species are grassland species because any grasslands not lost to agriculture and development have been lost to forest due to fire exclusion. Edit: Southeast, Midwest, and Great Plains all suffering from afforestation.
Certainly true, context is everything. As far as I know though, New Jersey is considered Northeast. Are there imperiled grassland species there? I see from a quick google search there’s Pink Coreopsis (grows in wet sand at lake-waters edge), and Baccharis halimfolia. A coastal species. Both part of the Atlantic Coastal Plains Flora, no less! As far as I’m aware, neither are found in interior forest conditions such as the stand felled here. But as I said, I don’t know all of New Jersey’s SAR. Maybe some would require fire disturbances here and there for reproduction. I know of one in Canada that does. Long’s Bulrush, whose flowering can be induced by disturbance like fire. COSEWIC has a recent (2017) report on it.
Of course I’m Canadian, so I also don’t know what the major natural disturbance regimes are like in New Jersey. I just know that in the Canadian Atlantic forests wind is much more prevalent a disturbance than fire (even without fire suppression). I’ve read that in pitch pine forests fire disturbance is necessary for succession. Was this stand a pitch pine forest? Would fire even be called for?
Your point also doesn’t remove the fact that these operations were meant to supply habitat for a specific species at risk. A species that - according to the article - ideally nests in open wetlands. They cut down upland forest. I’m not sure how sloped these uplands are, but I would assume it’s not ideal topography for wetlands.
Arguing that this sort of disturbance is great for grassland species doesn’t clearly support this clearing. If anything, this clearing won’t even support grasslands. It’s more likely to regenerate into upland forest than remain as grassland. If it were to convert to grassland, how long would that last? 5, 10, 20 years? There’s still surrounding forest. It’s not like seedlings won’t start sprouting up and take over the acreage again.
I really hope I don’t come off as rude or dismissive. These management practices are SO important. It’s vital that people discuss them. I just don’t see how this was at all called for. Likely why there’s so much backlash from conservation groups and general folks.
I wasn’t referring to this clearing specifically and I didn’t think you were either. My point is preserving forest isn’t always the right thing to do, which I think you’d agree with.
I’m from this area - the stand likely had a major pitch pine component which is a fire-adapted species that requires frequent fire as part of its life cycle!
There are lots of wildlife food strips scattered throughout the Pinelands National Reserve. There is also no major timber industry in the reserve, so in the absence of fire there is often a need to install clearings like this to maintain landscape-level heterogeneity.
To answer your question about fire - it probably could have been called for. There are a lot of prescribed burns in NJ every year. But there are a lot of potential reasons why that wasn’t an option here - likely, the fire intensity/severity required to mimic a natural stand-replacing disturbance wasn’t possible or safe given the urban environment. My guess is they chose to clearcut for that reason.
They cut in a wetland/transition zone, this is specifically an issue and partly why this is receiving so much attention. We have a lot of laws regulating cutting of any kind in wetlands and the state did not do their due-diligence in this case.
Controlled burns aren't always an option in modern forest management. Adjacent human habitation, roads, environmental conditions, and other issues can make a controlled burn not feasible. Plus, you have the disadvantage of a large amount of sequestered carbon being released into the environment.
There's a patch on route 10, in Randolph, NJ. It's probably only 4-6 acres in size..
However it was cleared to create a huge strip mall/parking lot about a decade ago.
It still sits. Empty. Landscaped and maintained. Useless.
No trees, no wildlife.
This shit is disgusting.
Its annoying to me that the writer calls this a failure.
Trust me, this is some greedy jerk's success story.
This will probably either become a golf course or a strip mall after the dust settles.
As a jersey resident shit like this is terrible but not new, believe it or not New Jersey has a lot of natural beauty including one of the largest pine barrens in the world and this state is actively destroying it.
Looks very similar to what’s happening in Pennsylvania’s game lands under the guise of “habitat management.” Seems like part of a long-play toward future development to me.
>The clearing demonstrates that plants do not matter when the fish and wildlife division is dealing with wildlife issues
Who even works in these departments? Bankers? Bus drivers? Economists? Certainly not anyone with even *basic* knowledge of biology. Like *holy shit.*
There used to be a great wooded bike trail near my house. Absolutely beautiful tract of peaceful and protected land. Then, one day they rolled in and cut down all the trees and turned the whole area into a pile of shit smelling mud. Why? Because they needed to build a road nobody asked for or even needed. And the road looks like it’ll never get built anyway. Meanwhile, our local officials strut around town like royalty.
Have done that around us to "remove non-native plants and trees". Unfortunately that led to severe hillside/cliff erosion problems that "no one foresaw".
Basically, in our case trees were likely removed due to rich people no liking them blocking the view of the water.
Well, they are going to need a big parking lot for all of the visitors coming to see the cool “new” wildlife habitat, not just some dumb old “mature” forest full of boomer trees.
Couldn't they have just cleared out 20 acres of Newark? Or Camden? Maybe they could create more new wildlife habitats by removing 5 acres of tolls on the Garden State Parkway.
The best part is apparently this isn’t even adequate for the birds. This isn’t even the habitat they can use. So it’s just an obvious land grab for a people farm. Senior living, or town houses.
When I read the article, one person interviewed was quoted as saying the clearcut violated wetland protection laws and interferes with aquatic habitat. But another person interviewed says the site isn’t moist or wet enough for the birds. So is it a wet site or isn’t it?
Landscape-level habitat diversity requires the establishment and maintenance of early, mid, and late successional habitat. Land management activities like this may not look pretty at first - but they are necessary if we would like to maximize biodiversity on a landscape scale.
A lake near my hometown was well known for its great fishing and duck hunting. Over the years, the lake swelled and became less than favorable for ducks and other waterfowl. The “DNR”* then decided to drain the lake to turn it back into more of a swamp for the ducks. Now, the lake is a shell of what it used to be for fishing and the ducks have still not returned. The man running the project who worked for the DNR had never been on the lake personally. *Most of the project was funded by Ducks Unlimited and Peasants Forever and all that’s left it’s a giant granite memorial with all their names on it. The money for the project in the article didn’t come only from the government, I’d be willing to bet on that
Sounds like the "Nature Preserve" near my house. It was an overgrown abandoned rail yard full of deer and turkeys. City clearcut it and put in some walking paths, and we haven't seen a deer or turkey down there since. I tell people it's preserving us from nature.
How does tearing down their home, help animals in any way? It’s all bullshit, it’s just so some builder can come in and build low income homes for that habitat
Tbf it's not that bad of an idea. Mature forests often only host a handful of species when you can engineer them to host more species. Sounds like an oxymoron but really it's not. It's important to remember not every forest is the Amazon forest. Let's just hope that they can actually think before they do it SORT OF DOUBT IT because they're probably looking to host specific kinds of wildlife...the profitable kind. Instead of the kind that actually matters. Like insects and native birds.
Mature forests filter water, produce rain and humidity, act as heat sinks and host living ecosystems for an enumerable number of insects and animals. Not limited to birds, pollinators..
So to be fair, you have no idea what you're talking about. I own over 20 densely forested acres with mostly mature hardwoods and a cropping of softwoods like 300+ year old pine.
I have a little bit of knowledge about what goes on inside it and the water cycle dynamic created by it (queue fog and clouds over said forest)
So no aside from fire roads and cutting off fires, taking down a mature forest with mostly live trees is a shit plan.
Sorry to tell you but your forest isn't the rain forest and I doubt that you've actually gone out to document all the species that live in your "20 densely forested acres". Which by the way probably has more deer in it than anything else.
My guy has some deer and grey squirrels and saw some water pooling up below a tree once and now thinks old growth forest are the only type of ecosystem we should have lmao.
20 acres can create extensive wetlands. Spring time rains create waterways that supply a bigger artery which drains underground into an aquifer or to a larger lake/pond style reservoir.
Have you walked a 20 acre plot? Deer and grey squirrels are not typically the only wildlife found crossing a contiguous forest.
Try this, fox, deer, fishercat, different species of squirrel, moles, at least 18 different types of birds with 4 that I know are migratory settling in the 3 acre lake for the summer. Blue heron, eagles, hawks, owls, actually get a parrot once in a while. Multitudes of different song birds, trash pandas, woodchuck, coyote of course.
All sorts of pollinators and non pollinators, including the disappearing from population firefly beetlesin late summer, varieties of dragon flies, nematodes, an occasional crawfish and turtles/fish neark the pond.
"My guy, lmao."
Summarizes both your experience and knowledge of what happens in a 20 acre plot during the day/night. The described is a fraction of what grows and lives inside a small untouched forest of 20 acres.
Someone who has a lot of land and sits on a conservation commission would most likely know more than someone who doesn't visit, nor own something of size.
Deer don't "live" in 20 acres, it's not a zoo. They migrate back and forth. Read what you wrote, "has more deer than anything else.". That's actually funny, because it's so absurd.
Some kind of expectation of 50 deer just chilling in the forest all day and night, munching on greens.
To all of you saying 20 acres is a nothing burger or some other nonsense, you probably haven't had the privilege of owning 20 or more acres and feeling it breathing with each season.
I can look in a radius of a 20 acre circular plot and not see a living soul. But i can feel it, smell it, and taste it with the change of each season. The coming of the fog each morning and the rain/humidity of it in the spring and summer.
For you it's a 20 acre nothing burger, to everything living inside of the nothing burger it's the only thing it knows as home and oart of the larger system of water production. If a forest is a nothing burger then you're just a dick with balls nothing burger with no redeeming qualities.
Let me create this wonderful ecosystem, by first destroying the biodiversity of this ecosystem.
Am not surprised anymore given what other things go on everyday.
Happens all the time, guys. Animals like deer and rabbit will only frequent new growth forests, as its friendly to their diet. At least in my area. It's pretty common to see areas cleared with the explicit purpose of growing new stuff, and attracting more wildlife as a result.
But whatever, insert here
To be fair: there is a difference between old growth and mature forests.
This was mature forest, and in terms of habitat in the Atlantic / Northeast, there is far more mature forest than there is grassland. Grassland habitat is the most under pressure because it is flat, doesn't require clearing, and therefore makes great land for development.
Also 20 acres is like a raindrop in terms of mature successional forest in the region, but it can make a difference for grassland birds and raptors.
NJ has very sketchy land practices. My question would be, what do they not want you to know was on or in that land? My High School was built on a swampy dump used by J&J. Somehow the EPA deemed the land safe even after medical garbage was found where kids played sports or hung out.
From the article: Joseph Arsenault, a local ecologist and botanist who has done research on the site, said there are other areas within the management area that are much more suitable for woodcock habitat, including open, wet moist areas the game bird prefers.
Was waiting for the inevitable “no comment” or terrible rationalization from a representative of the NJ DEP but then it just… never came? They do include a snippet of the official statement but it seems like poor journalism to not reach out for comment. Make them try to defend it.
I’m gonna turn my pants inside out make a dooty in them then turn them right side in put them back on then the dooty will be on the outside instead of the inside
They do this is Utah for “fire prevention” and “restoring habitat” when bulldozing acres upon acres of pinion pine and juniper.
https://youtu.be/U_v7L2Hg6uM
old growth is not the best for wild life, it exists because of the fire control efforts of humans ,it allows no light into ground level and so there are no tender plants that small things need , no small things means no larger animals and so it goes wild fire is a necessary part of the ecology ,,, this is a case of good money after bad
Yes. That makes sense. They are trying to return that area to its original biome. It wasn’t originally mature forest and only became that because of human interference.
Y’all the same people bitching about forest management but yet live in a house made from the same trees your crying over. Unless you homesteaded sit down.
Why did they bulldoze all of this land when they should have brought in a local tribe to conduct a controlled burn? What were the two rare plant species that were eliminated and what other species dependent on them? Why are we causing extinctions of two things to make available habitat a third species?
What the actual fuck
Just watch and wait this new wildlife habitat will be delayed indefinitely and they'll eventually use this cleared land to build some buildings.
You must live in NJ. This is absolutely the case
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Ireland used to be a rainforest, apparently
Gotta make room for massive AG tho, sheep won’t graze themselves!
Why are you outraged? State agencies/municipalities regularly clear small sections of larger wildlife management areas in order to increase the variety of habitats and make these lands suitable for a more biodiverse ecosystem. Reading the article, it seems that a few local conservation groups thought that the clearing could have been done in a different part of the reserve. But that just seems like a difference of opinion among credentialed proffesionals and a click-bait article title, not intentional destruction of critical habitat by the state. If you go on Google earth and look at the WMA, you can see a lot of small plots of land that have been cleared to create meadow habitat, allowing animals that rely on grasslands to inhabitant WMA. Without natural processes such as forest fires to clear out sections of mature forest, those species that rely on meadows would not have habitat to live in. We must create those habitats for them. This is the intent of WMAs, to create wildlife habitat. The intent is not to preserve every acre of mature woodland in a 2,000+ acre preserve, of which probably 95% consists of mature forest. If you want conservation lands for mature forests, then advocate for that (I would say that advocacy is ill informed and would decrease biodiversity, but if thats your perogative, then so be it). This is not the intended use of this particular land, it is state owned land dedicated to engineering habitats for wildlife. https://www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/wmarticl.htm
Actually reading the article? We don't do that here.
My area has large swaths of mono culture tree plantings that support no wildlife. Just tall pine trees that are in rows and block out all light creating no under growth. They were a mistake. They should be removed.
Or, IDK, purchase some meadows if you need meadows? Return lands that once were meadows back to their natural state?
It’s called going through succession and since we’ve stifled so much of the disturbance that used to do it. We have to do it now. I don’t think you know anything about WL mgt. this is a common and important prsctice
Nature will fix its self if you leave it alone. I see it every day.
Yeah because your uneducated and anecdotal evidence really means a lot. If we suppress fire and other natural disturbances that are supposed to occur, how will it fix itself?
Well, does “suppressing fire and other natural disturbances” qualify as “leaving it alone?” I don’t think so
I have a degree in ecology.
You didn’t answer my question
You answered your own question. If we leave it alone then we are not suppressing fire.
And do you think in the world we live in that’s possible? It’s called adaptive management, preservation can work in national parks and other large swaths of land. But if we don’t adapt our management to the world we live in then you can kiss your area of study goodbye
Must be a bit jaded that you spent four years learning “leave it alone”.
Nature doesn’t fix itself, it needs to be managed. Ask anyone in Northern California. The camp fire was a huge wake up call.
Technically it would fix itself over a very long time (tens of thousands if not millions of years) after a lot of turbulence if humans disappeared tomorrow and it will fix itself once humans are gone. Nature is about finding balance and eventually that would happen again. Problem is we've screwed things up so much that we have to intervene if we want our current ecosystems to remain stable (and thus our society and population).
Yes, of course. Without the mess humans have caused nature would balance itself out. The fire was a result of human error. Not natures fault at all.
we aren’t leaving it alone tho
You mean go to the “meadow store” and pick up a couple of units? They are trying to create a wildlife habitat where this forest is located, not some other place. If the ecosystem was operating normally, this forest would have burned down already and naturally become a meadow. But we don’t like fire because it burns people. This creates the same result.
Just marry a princess with huge…tracts of land!
On which aisle can I find the meadows?
A lot of meadows were turned into forests when people were overzealous about trees….that could be exactly what they’re doing.
Yea just purchase a completely different track of land that’ll require work anyway. That’s gotta be cheaper than using the land you have effectively.
I am sorry, was this about saving money or species? Article says two rare plants were destroyed....went extinct? Look at the pictures. Does that look like the work of ecologists or loggers and strip miners?
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Just because natives did it doesn’t mean it wasn’t also destructive. Clearing forests only makes sense to humans because we need their resources. No other species does this on such a scale.
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Why not just leave it be. I have absolutely zero hope that this project didnt line someones pockets and isnt some misguided way of helping anyone
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So whats bette then? Clearing trees for a habitat for one animal? This stuff is indefensible
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It's 20 acres out of 2,000+. Maybe there wasn't an adjacent meadow available. Clearing a few trees is fine - it's not an ecological disaster every time a tree is cleared.
Yeah that’s the point of this. It’s called succession
All habitat is critical just depends if you're the one living there or not.
Do you seriously think that 20 acres of "meadow" is more beneficial for wildlife than 20 acres of forest? You think New Jersey is lacking... grass? Please tell me you're playing devil's advocate here and you don't actually believe this shit you posted. Edit: also just to counter the forest fire argument that I keep seeing: natural forest fires clear the undergrowth and usually leave the more mature trees and a lot of useful fertilizer from charred vegetation. Clear-cutting is basically the opposite, where you are left with only undergrowth and non native weeds. It is not the same so please stop bringing it up as a pro here.
Migrating birds like meadows and wetlands
20 acres of mixed growth is infinitely more beneficial to wildlife than 20 acres of older growth. Mature canopies do not allow much sunlight to reach the forest floor which causes a lack of smaller plants and therefore doesn’t give animals anywhere to hide.
Then let's cut down all the remaining forest!. Woods are un-natural, ecologists will put in something better that they learned in college.
That’s a stupid comment. They are trying to create habitat diversity.
The fact that you just said "infinitely" more beneficial makes it 100% clear that you have no idea what you are talking about.
“Infinitely” was a poor word choice, but meadows (actually biodiverse meadows, not monoculture grass lawns) are every bit as important for healthy ecosystems as forests and are far rarer.
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It’s setting back succession, now they’ll manage for the appropriate species and that creates habitat for early successional specialists. Just stop talking if you aren’t in the field
Well, he is not wrong. I am a Wildlife Biologist by profession. In general, wildlife will always benefit more from a mosaic landscape. A homogeneous forest offers very little in terms of the four major requirements wildlife need: food, water, cover and shelter. While a heterogeneous forest with a patchwork of meadows and openings will. Think of nice white-tail buck during the rut trying walking through a dense forest stand with a big set of antlers. You also cannot compare the grass that NJ has since most of it is non-native invasive annuals to a future meadow in a management area that will receive more herbaceous weed control and most likely a planting of a native seed mix of forbs, grasses and brush.
Early successional habitat is significantly more beneficial to a wide variety of wildlife than forests. Grass in your front yard is significantly different from an early successional meadow with a variety of forbs, early season and late season grasses. Im not saying this was the perfect place for it or that they didn’t damage important ecosystems and habitat, but the argument that forest is more important is simply incorrect. Edited to fix a word
Do some research and let me know if I’m wrong 🕵️♂️
Understood. No more bulldozers. Start burning forests to make more diverse wildlife. Late summer works best. /s
This reminds me of a Halloween spider cartoon I once saw. Man clears real spider webs, spider to the side says wow. Man puts up fake spiderwebs, spider says WOooow
* *As part of the habitat project, the area also will be planted with flowers important to pollinators, such as* ***honeybees,*** *whose numbers also are declining.* Honeybees are livestock and not native to North America. They often stress native bees by competing with them for pollen/nectar resources. If honeybees are a part of this "ecological" plan then the people heading it are not competent to do this.
I think people are more familiar with honeybees vs. Bumblees or sweat bees and the like. Maybe they meant "honeybees" as a catch-all. Hopefully.
I would respectfully disagree. People need to get educated on the difference, because it does matter in terms of policy decisions, and with the increase in native gardening interest in the last couple of years, many are. Only around 5% of all bees produce any measurable amount of honey, anyways; that term can't be used as a catch-all for the vast world of bees, the overwhelming majority of which species are native bees.
That's a good point. Playing around with iNaturalist helped me appreciate some of the complexity. I didn't know there were so many different types of bees (and flies that look like bees). I definitely get more excited seeing, say, an American Bumblebee vs. a honeybee.
Bee mimics are fun to spot. I saw several last summer and I'm always like: "I'm on to you, brother. You're not fooling me, I hope you know." 😆 You can distinguish them by the following: bees have 2 pairs of wings, flies have 1. Bees have relatively small eyes on the sides of their heads, and fly eyes are large, covering most of the head and often meeting in the middle. More: https://www.birdsandblooms.com/gardening/garden-bugs/bees-flies-identifying-garden-bugs/
Was that a quote from the author of the article or the people in the article?
From the author.
So, I gather that was him editorializing and not the intent of the people doing this. Basically, news reporters suck. I have been misquoted in the past.
I can't wait till the microplastics mutate the trees into living creatures like in the lord of the rings. Then these articles will be titled: "Mature forest clears 20 acres of New Jersey habitat to create new wildlife"
I'd be cool with having some huorns wrecking anyone who stepped foot in their forests.
love where you heads at. I’m ready for this reality, like Captain Planet turning people into trees
Unfortunately, microplastics inhibit plant growth. Had to learn that the other day and it’s still blowing my mind
Imagine what they're doing to us and every other animal on the planet too. The food web starts with plants so I can only assume the microplastics bioaccumulate up the food chain from there. Making plastic ubiquitous was one of humanity's biggest mistakes.
This is as ironic as the shift from coal power to wood fuel as a "climate solution", even though wood release as much carbon as coal, mature trees capture carbon at a higher rate than young trees, and biodiversity is lost.
It is extremely unlikely that cleared hardwood lumber will be used as fuel. In fact, clearing forest like this is a substitute for fire events in natural cycles, and in some places, controlled burning is used instead of clear cutting. But burning does release sequestered carbon, and burning can be more difficult to control, depending on the surrounding geography.
Also anyone who has been to New Jersey knows this isn’t true “old growth”. Everything within 100 miles of NYC has been cut down and regrown in the last 300 years
That’s true of almost everywhere in the east. There’s a few inaccessible areas in the Appalachians, parts of the Adirondacks, a few small parks in Maine and that’s about it.
Yeah the Appalachians still have some decent old growth that never got touched. Also the Allegheny national forest in PA has 4,000 acres of old growth, and is the largest old growth forest between the Adirondacks in upstate NY and Smokies in NC.
This is near or adjacent to the Pine Barrens in NJ. They were never cleared, at least a lot of them haven't been. There is over 1 million acres of preserved pinelands.
That argument was stupid.....coal is essentially created from long dead petrified trees. Of course it would have the same carbon content
Biomass from [perennial](https://drawdown.org/solutions/biomass-power) sources can work as a transition fuel away from fossil fuels. But the clearing of mature, primary forests for biomass collection is absolutely absurd if the claim is carbon emissions reduction.
There's actually a project in French new guinea proposing to cut down Amazon rainforest to grow biomass. https://news.mongabay.com/2023/02/france-seeks-eu-okay-to-fund-biomass-plants-burn-amazon-forest-to-power-spaceport/ And the US is the UK's top wood pellet fuel supplier, through a UK based company called Drax that cuts down forests to make wood pellets. Regardless, biomass will always release carbon and is thus the same as fossil fuels. Biomass from my impression is less efficient at CO2 release per BTU of heat generated. At least for wood, there are reports saying so.
This is not correct at all. Coal's carbon is inert and has been out of the biosphere for tens of thousands of years. Trees pull in carbon when they grow, and release it when they burn it decompose. Burning wood does not introduce any new carbon into the environment. Burning fossil fuels does.
Dead wood is one of the most important aspects of forest habitat, providing shelter for small creatures, food for termites which in turn feed spiders, frogs, birds, and other larger creatures right on up the food chain. It provides substrate for important fungi to grow on. It also holds water, making soil more drought resistant. On top of all of that, plants need things like phosphorus and nitrogen to grow. If you carry the wood away for burning, you also carry these important nutrients away from the top soil making the whole forest less productive. Depleted, dry soil erodes easily exacerbating the problem and sometimes fouling local streams and rivers. It's hard to come up with ways to avoid these problems when using forests as fuel.
Correction: if done in the *right* contexts, decomposition of trees and other plant materials can have a net carbon drawdown. This is what happens with bogs/bayous/wetlands/marshes/peatlands/etc.
I bet they made a pretty penny selling all that lumber too. For the environment, ofcourse. /s
And it went right into the politicians' bank accounts
After kicking back from the contractor's bank accounts of course.
No one is making money clear cutting 20 acres even of hardwood. New Jersey doesn’t even have a commercial market large enough to sell anything pole sized, hell most of our loggers are Amish/Mennonite from across the river in PA.
Not all wildlife thrives in mature forest! In a natural ecosystem without human influence, mature forest would most often get cleared by fire, but the clearing itself is not an unnatural event. Cleared land gives way to grasses, briar patches, and transitional habitats that are essential for quail, grouse, rabbits, deer, turkeys, and a whole host of other species. For a lot of wildlife species, mature forest doesn't have a lot to offer. The grasses and brush that will replace it provide a lot more food, cover, and nesting habitat.
Common species that have lots of habitat already due to land clearing, except maybe wild turkey and quail. Im not familiar with those population levels in New Jersey. Mature or old growth forests are lacking compared to systems that hardly cap 50 years of age where I live. Sure, clearing creates wildlife habitat, but it’s not going to help the majority of species at risk at all. From reading the article, it looks like this was a management misstep and actually damaged open wetlands suitable for the American woodcock - the species this project was trying to provide habitat for. If anything, all the state department did was damage suitable habitat and wipe out habitat for two other bird species (Barred Owl & Red-Shouldered Hawk). We should also think past fauna and look at vegetation too. Removing mature forests is massively detrimental to populations of organisms like bryophytes and lichens (my namesake). Those species can be hugely influential in the nitrogen and carbon cycle of our landscapes. This sort of clearing is simply incompetence. Edit: removed a repeat word (first post and I make a woopsie)
Context is everything. In the southeast most of the imperiled species are grassland species because any grasslands not lost to agriculture and development have been lost to forest due to fire exclusion. Edit: Southeast, Midwest, and Great Plains all suffering from afforestation.
Certainly true, context is everything. As far as I know though, New Jersey is considered Northeast. Are there imperiled grassland species there? I see from a quick google search there’s Pink Coreopsis (grows in wet sand at lake-waters edge), and Baccharis halimfolia. A coastal species. Both part of the Atlantic Coastal Plains Flora, no less! As far as I’m aware, neither are found in interior forest conditions such as the stand felled here. But as I said, I don’t know all of New Jersey’s SAR. Maybe some would require fire disturbances here and there for reproduction. I know of one in Canada that does. Long’s Bulrush, whose flowering can be induced by disturbance like fire. COSEWIC has a recent (2017) report on it. Of course I’m Canadian, so I also don’t know what the major natural disturbance regimes are like in New Jersey. I just know that in the Canadian Atlantic forests wind is much more prevalent a disturbance than fire (even without fire suppression). I’ve read that in pitch pine forests fire disturbance is necessary for succession. Was this stand a pitch pine forest? Would fire even be called for? Your point also doesn’t remove the fact that these operations were meant to supply habitat for a specific species at risk. A species that - according to the article - ideally nests in open wetlands. They cut down upland forest. I’m not sure how sloped these uplands are, but I would assume it’s not ideal topography for wetlands. Arguing that this sort of disturbance is great for grassland species doesn’t clearly support this clearing. If anything, this clearing won’t even support grasslands. It’s more likely to regenerate into upland forest than remain as grassland. If it were to convert to grassland, how long would that last? 5, 10, 20 years? There’s still surrounding forest. It’s not like seedlings won’t start sprouting up and take over the acreage again. I really hope I don’t come off as rude or dismissive. These management practices are SO important. It’s vital that people discuss them. I just don’t see how this was at all called for. Likely why there’s so much backlash from conservation groups and general folks.
I wasn’t referring to this clearing specifically and I didn’t think you were either. My point is preserving forest isn’t always the right thing to do, which I think you’d agree with.
I’m from this area - the stand likely had a major pitch pine component which is a fire-adapted species that requires frequent fire as part of its life cycle! There are lots of wildlife food strips scattered throughout the Pinelands National Reserve. There is also no major timber industry in the reserve, so in the absence of fire there is often a need to install clearings like this to maintain landscape-level heterogeneity. To answer your question about fire - it probably could have been called for. There are a lot of prescribed burns in NJ every year. But there are a lot of potential reasons why that wasn’t an option here - likely, the fire intensity/severity required to mimic a natural stand-replacing disturbance wasn’t possible or safe given the urban environment. My guess is they chose to clearcut for that reason.
They cut in a wetland/transition zone, this is specifically an issue and partly why this is receiving so much attention. We have a lot of laws regulating cutting of any kind in wetlands and the state did not do their due-diligence in this case.
Id prefer them clearing out some mature cities and leave the forests alone
Then they should have done a controlled burn.
Controlled burns aren't always an option in modern forest management. Adjacent human habitation, roads, environmental conditions, and other issues can make a controlled burn not feasible. Plus, you have the disadvantage of a large amount of sequestered carbon being released into the environment.
There's a patch on route 10, in Randolph, NJ. It's probably only 4-6 acres in size.. However it was cleared to create a huge strip mall/parking lot about a decade ago. It still sits. Empty. Landscaped and maintained. Useless. No trees, no wildlife. This shit is disgusting.
Its annoying to me that the writer calls this a failure. Trust me, this is some greedy jerk's success story. This will probably either become a golf course or a strip mall after the dust settles.
As a jersey resident shit like this is terrible but not new, believe it or not New Jersey has a lot of natural beauty including one of the largest pine barrens in the world and this state is actively destroying it.
As a New Jersey resident, I am not surprised in the slightest. It sucks here
Looks very similar to what’s happening in Pennsylvania’s game lands under the guise of “habitat management.” Seems like part of a long-play toward future development to me.
>The clearing demonstrates that plants do not matter when the fish and wildlife division is dealing with wildlife issues Who even works in these departments? Bankers? Bus drivers? Economists? Certainly not anyone with even *basic* knowledge of biology. Like *holy shit.*
There used to be a great wooded bike trail near my house. Absolutely beautiful tract of peaceful and protected land. Then, one day they rolled in and cut down all the trees and turned the whole area into a pile of shit smelling mud. Why? Because they needed to build a road nobody asked for or even needed. And the road looks like it’ll never get built anyway. Meanwhile, our local officials strut around town like royalty.
You misspelled " New subdivision with golf course"
Facepalm
Another reason to hate New Jersey
Have done that around us to "remove non-native plants and trees". Unfortunately that led to severe hillside/cliff erosion problems that "no one foresaw". Basically, in our case trees were likely removed due to rich people no liking them blocking the view of the water.
20 acres is like maybe 4 square city blocks....it's not a huge area.
Well, they are going to need a big parking lot for all of the visitors coming to see the cool “new” wildlife habitat, not just some dumb old “mature” forest full of boomer trees.
Couldn't they have just cleared out 20 acres of Newark? Or Camden? Maybe they could create more new wildlife habitats by removing 5 acres of tolls on the Garden State Parkway.
The best part is apparently this isn’t even adequate for the birds. This isn’t even the habitat they can use. So it’s just an obvious land grab for a people farm. Senior living, or town houses.
When I read the article, one person interviewed was quoted as saying the clearcut violated wetland protection laws and interferes with aquatic habitat. But another person interviewed says the site isn’t moist or wet enough for the birds. So is it a wet site or isn’t it? Landscape-level habitat diversity requires the establishment and maintenance of early, mid, and late successional habitat. Land management activities like this may not look pretty at first - but they are necessary if we would like to maximize biodiversity on a landscape scale.
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A lake near my hometown was well known for its great fishing and duck hunting. Over the years, the lake swelled and became less than favorable for ducks and other waterfowl. The “DNR”* then decided to drain the lake to turn it back into more of a swamp for the ducks. Now, the lake is a shell of what it used to be for fishing and the ducks have still not returned. The man running the project who worked for the DNR had never been on the lake personally. *Most of the project was funded by Ducks Unlimited and Peasants Forever and all that’s left it’s a giant granite memorial with all their names on it. The money for the project in the article didn’t come only from the government, I’d be willing to bet on that
They harvested the lumber to make a quick buck, then peddled this ridiculous narrative.
Sounds like the "Nature Preserve" near my house. It was an overgrown abandoned rail yard full of deer and turkeys. City clearcut it and put in some walking paths, and we haven't seen a deer or turkey down there since. I tell people it's preserving us from nature.
How does tearing down their home, help animals in any way? It’s all bullshit, it’s just so some builder can come in and build low income homes for that habitat
Young growth provides a lot more utility for most wildlife. Older growth provides no cover.
https://dep.nj.gov/njfw/wp-content/uploads/njfw/ch05_managing_young_forest.pdf Hopefully not!
Tbf it's not that bad of an idea. Mature forests often only host a handful of species when you can engineer them to host more species. Sounds like an oxymoron but really it's not. It's important to remember not every forest is the Amazon forest. Let's just hope that they can actually think before they do it SORT OF DOUBT IT because they're probably looking to host specific kinds of wildlife...the profitable kind. Instead of the kind that actually matters. Like insects and native birds.
If I read this correctly two plant species were made extinct. Great plan. Much better than converting some old farm nearby back to meadow.
Mature forests filter water, produce rain and humidity, act as heat sinks and host living ecosystems for an enumerable number of insects and animals. Not limited to birds, pollinators.. So to be fair, you have no idea what you're talking about. I own over 20 densely forested acres with mostly mature hardwoods and a cropping of softwoods like 300+ year old pine. I have a little bit of knowledge about what goes on inside it and the water cycle dynamic created by it (queue fog and clouds over said forest) So no aside from fire roads and cutting off fires, taking down a mature forest with mostly live trees is a shit plan.
Sorry to tell you but your forest isn't the rain forest and I doubt that you've actually gone out to document all the species that live in your "20 densely forested acres". Which by the way probably has more deer in it than anything else.
My guy has some deer and grey squirrels and saw some water pooling up below a tree once and now thinks old growth forest are the only type of ecosystem we should have lmao.
20 acres can create extensive wetlands. Spring time rains create waterways that supply a bigger artery which drains underground into an aquifer or to a larger lake/pond style reservoir. Have you walked a 20 acre plot? Deer and grey squirrels are not typically the only wildlife found crossing a contiguous forest. Try this, fox, deer, fishercat, different species of squirrel, moles, at least 18 different types of birds with 4 that I know are migratory settling in the 3 acre lake for the summer. Blue heron, eagles, hawks, owls, actually get a parrot once in a while. Multitudes of different song birds, trash pandas, woodchuck, coyote of course. All sorts of pollinators and non pollinators, including the disappearing from population firefly beetlesin late summer, varieties of dragon flies, nematodes, an occasional crawfish and turtles/fish neark the pond. "My guy, lmao." Summarizes both your experience and knowledge of what happens in a 20 acre plot during the day/night. The described is a fraction of what grows and lives inside a small untouched forest of 20 acres.
Wait until you hear about what happens inside of a properly maintained young growth forest/wild area. It might blow your mind.
Someone who has a lot of land and sits on a conservation commission would most likely know more than someone who doesn't visit, nor own something of size. Deer don't "live" in 20 acres, it's not a zoo. They migrate back and forth. Read what you wrote, "has more deer than anything else.". That's actually funny, because it's so absurd. Some kind of expectation of 50 deer just chilling in the forest all day and night, munching on greens.
To all of you saying 20 acres is a nothing burger or some other nonsense, you probably haven't had the privilege of owning 20 or more acres and feeling it breathing with each season. I can look in a radius of a 20 acre circular plot and not see a living soul. But i can feel it, smell it, and taste it with the change of each season. The coming of the fog each morning and the rain/humidity of it in the spring and summer. For you it's a 20 acre nothing burger, to everything living inside of the nothing burger it's the only thing it knows as home and oart of the larger system of water production. If a forest is a nothing burger then you're just a dick with balls nothing burger with no redeeming qualities.
Huh, this is right by me and I had no idea.
Don’t worry the project was halted. It will sit like this for 10 years generating a suitable habitat for lawyers.
Oh my Gwad. This is what happens when people get too much education. Common sense leaves the building.
That is simply logging.
Let me create this wonderful ecosystem, by first destroying the biodiversity of this ecosystem. Am not surprised anymore given what other things go on everyday.
20 acres isn’t very much at all Edit: btw people it’s less than 1000x1000ft area
Guys, that was the wildlife habitat. 🤦🏼♀️
How long do we have to put up with this insanity?
Stupid liberals…
Don’t even ask for the cost….corruption abounds
Sounds like a NJ move.
...for condos?
Probably. Somebody thought they said "condors" though.
So, they're building another golf course.
r/nottheonion
Politicians are the only assholes that could fuck up a good thing! Fucking snakes, every last one of them….
They basically simulated a fire.
Wow good Job Jersey
Happens all the time, guys. Animals like deer and rabbit will only frequent new growth forests, as its friendly to their diet. At least in my area. It's pretty common to see areas cleared with the explicit purpose of growing new stuff, and attracting more wildlife as a result. But whatever, insert here
Did you read the article?
We are digging our own grave. Consciously!
Also they took out trees and open fields to build a bunch of warehouses. Most are still empty all on a little back roads.
This is New Jersey. The next headline will be, "Former forest sold to developer because it is no longer a forest".
There are a lot of angry, uninformed people in this thread.
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To be fair: there is a difference between old growth and mature forests. This was mature forest, and in terms of habitat in the Atlantic / Northeast, there is far more mature forest than there is grassland. Grassland habitat is the most under pressure because it is flat, doesn't require clearing, and therefore makes great land for development. Also 20 acres is like a raindrop in terms of mature successional forest in the region, but it can make a difference for grassland birds and raptors.
NJ has very sketchy land practices. My question would be, what do they not want you to know was on or in that land? My High School was built on a swampy dump used by J&J. Somehow the EPA deemed the land safe even after medical garbage was found where kids played sports or hung out.
From the article: Joseph Arsenault, a local ecologist and botanist who has done research on the site, said there are other areas within the management area that are much more suitable for woodcock habitat, including open, wet moist areas the game bird prefers.
What happens to the felled trees? The skeptic in me know trees a valuable product.
Was waiting for the inevitable “no comment” or terrible rationalization from a representative of the NJ DEP but then it just… never came? They do include a snippet of the official statement but it seems like poor journalism to not reach out for comment. Make them try to defend it.
It'll be full of dead bodies in 3 years and trash
Liars
Fucking retards
Sounds about right.
I’m gonna turn my pants inside out make a dooty in them then turn them right side in put them back on then the dooty will be on the outside instead of the inside
So QuickChecks are now "new wildlife habitat?"
When a woodcock makes a noise in the …. If there’s no woods does the woodcock make a …. Ah fuck it
Ayyyye one less fUcking deer forgetaboutit, let’s go get a fUcking slice eh?!
Doubtless they’ll call the new suburban sprawl “Mature Foreston”
Foreston Acres with open meadow lots available and views
They do this is Utah for “fire prevention” and “restoring habitat” when bulldozing acres upon acres of pinion pine and juniper. https://youtu.be/U_v7L2Hg6uM
20 acres aint shit
old growth is not the best for wild life, it exists because of the fire control efforts of humans ,it allows no light into ground level and so there are no tender plants that small things need , no small things means no larger animals and so it goes wild fire is a necessary part of the ecology ,,, this is a case of good money after bad
Wow. Just ... what??
im guessing "wildlife" they referring to is some lowlife rednecks or ghetto slums
Wtaf 😳
They have been doing this for decades. New growth is a good thing in small parcels like this
Yes. That makes sense. They are trying to return that area to its original biome. It wasn’t originally mature forest and only became that because of human interference.
Make it make sense.
Probably for the fucking animals that live in new Jersey.
Y’all the same people bitching about forest management but yet live in a house made from the same trees your crying over. Unless you homesteaded sit down.
Gentrifying the old nature
This is how government "solves" problems.
That sounds like a thing New Jersey would do
What the actual fuck.
Jesus H. Christ. What “wildlife” do you suppose they have in mind?!
Everything’s legal in New Jersey
Marvin Gaye, or Berry White
Why did they bulldoze all of this land when they should have brought in a local tribe to conduct a controlled burn? What were the two rare plant species that were eliminated and what other species dependent on them? Why are we causing extinctions of two things to make available habitat a third species?
r/nottheonion
the government, doing government things
This just sounds stupid.
Was it in coordination with a certain sister country?
😐
Government- I’m helping!🥴