As comment period ends, environmentalists, residents ‘troubled’ over Sparta Mountain plan

BY ERIKA NORTON
SPARTA — Environmental groups, along with concerned residents, submitted their comments regarding the Sparta Mountain Wildlife Management Area Forest Stewardship Plan to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection last week. The comment period ended March 31, after being extended multiple times due to widespread public outcry.
In a teleconference on Friday, environmentalists from across the state discussed their reasons for opposing the controversial plan, which calls for the selective logging of at least 700 acres of old forest in order to create "young forest habitat.” The plan proposed by the NJDEP and the New Jersey Audubon Society encompasses land within the townships of Sparta, Ogdensburg, and Hardyston in Sussex County, and Jefferson Township in Morris County, with the intent of creating habitat for the endangered Golden-winged warbler.
“Today is the close of comments, and we know that thousands of people have commented on this proposal and plan,” Jeff Tittle, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, said on Friday. “We know that hundreds of Sierra Club members and other groups throughout the Highlands region, and individuals, have sent in comments because we’re very concerned and troubled by the plan.”
According to Tittle, the NJDEP is using the “phony excuse” of creating “so-called bird habitat” in order to clear-cut environmentally sensitive forest. The New Jersey Sierra Club opposes this plan because Sparta Mountain is part of an important forested greenway whose canopy protects wildlife and clean water, he said.
Tittle also said that in 1994, he was New Jersey Audubon’s Conservationist of the Year, and worked with the NJ Audubon for decades on the need to protect canopy forest and contiguous forest. For some reason, within the last five years, he added, the New Jersey Audubon Society has changed from being critical of opening up these forests and writing important papers on the need for large-scale contiguous forest canopies, to now supporting "turning the Highlands into the Meadowlands."
“We all worked together to save the Highlands for generations, to preserve the canopy forest up there, to help protect water supply, and to protect threatened and endangered species,” Tittle said. “We’ve all worked for many decades saving open space in the Highlands, and getting Green Acres to buy that land, and to hold it in the public trust for future generations. This is our backyard where we get to recreate, and to hike, and to bird, and to hunt and fish, and to breathe.”
Emile DeVito, manager of science and stewardship for the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, discussed his group's reasons for opposing the plan. According to DeVito, the New Jersey Audubon and the NJDEP have been doing small-scale projects to try and help the endangered Golden-winged warbler already, but they haven’t been very successful.
It is only recently that the proposals for Sparta Mountain have become much larger proposals, DeVito said. According to the foundation, the risks outweigh the benefits of the plan.
“The project has morphed from a Golden-winged warbler project into ‘let’s try everything on Sparta Mountain,’ and we don’t think it's the right place for that,” DeVito said. “Sparta Mountain is laced with rare species and animals that don’t need habitat manipulation, that do perfectly well — in fact thrive — and need a closed canopy. Once you start trying to do too many projects for too many species in one place, you start to run into conflict.”
Julie Somers, executive director of the New Jersey Highlands Coalition, questioned the goal of protecting the Golden-winged warbler. According to Somers, the Highlands Coalition wants to know who made a decision to manage Sparta Mountain for the Golden-winged warbler.
“Yes, there are maybe a few pairs of Golden-winged warblers still present in Sparta Mountain. But for the most part, the DEP has made it very clear in their scientific presentations that the Golden-winged warbler has moved north thanks to climate change and is not likely to return,” Somers said. “The public did not spend millions of dollars to preserve Sparta Mountain for the Golden-winged warbler.”
Somers and Elliott Ruga, policy director for the New Jersey Highlands Coalition, stressed the need to preserve Sparta Mountain to protect New Jersey’s water supply. According to Somers, the New Jersey Geological Society recently restated how many people depend on the New Jersey Highlands for their water supply: 6.2 million, up from 5.4 million, Somers said, which is 70 percent of the state's residents.
Ruga said that the water supply for more than six million people is located in the more densely populated northern half of the most densely populated state in the nation. That water supply is secured by the natural processes of the contiguous core forest of the Highlands, resulting in New Jersey having the fourth lowest cost of water in the entire nation.
“The Sparta Mountain Wildlife Management Area is an integral part of the New Jersey Highlands forest,” Ruga said. “The focus of any plan for managing these forests must be to maintain the ecological integrity of the forest, not to maintain or manage a single species or to extract a resource for its commercial value.”
Diane Wexler, a Vernon resident and co-founder of the advocacy group North Jersey Pipeline Walkers, talked about her experience when Tennessee Gas used similar logging techniques in Vernon. According to Wexler, the forest area is now a “moonscape,” and the forest that was supposed to regenerate itself has not.
Instead, there is nothing but invasive species, she said. There is no animal life where the trees are gone and, in her mind, the Sparta Mountain plan is a plan for deforestation.
“These are our natural resources,” Wexler said. “I don’t think they’re entitled to them. We didn’t go ahead and put money into Green Acres in our taxes so that someone else could come and take our natural resources, and make profit from them.”
The NJDEP has promised to hold a public hearing on the Sparta Mountain plan, but no date has yet been set. For more information, visit http://www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/spartamt_plan.htm