Up to 2.4 million trees would be cut down as part of a project to prevent major wildfires in a federally protected New Jersey forest heralded as a unique environmental treasure.
“In order to save the forest, they have to cut down the forest,” said Jeff Tittel, the retired former director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, calling the plan “shameful” and “Orwellian.”
The plan involves about 1,300 acres , a miniscule percentage of the 1.1-million-acre Pinelands preserve, which enjoys federal and state protection, and has been named a unique biosphere by the United Nations. “This is like liquid gasoline in the Pinelands,” said Todd Wyckoff, chief of the New Jersey Forest Service, as he touched a scrawny pine tree of the type that will most often be cut during the project. “I see a forest at risk from fire. I look at this as restoring the forest to more of what it should be.
And scrawny trees aren’t the only ones that will be cut: Many thick, tall trees on either side of some roads will be cut down to create more of a fire break, where firefighters can defend against a spreading blaze.The affected area has about 2,000 trees per acre — four times the normal density in the Pinelands, according to the state.
“I’m opposed to the removal of any of that material,” Lohbauer said. “That material belongs in the forest where it will support habitat and eventually be recycled” into the soil. “Even if they use it for wood pellets, which are popular for burning in wood stoves, that releases the carbon.”
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