Sierra Club: State, NJ Audubon lied so they could log Sparta Mt.

BY JOSEPH PICARD
SPARTA — The New Jersey Audubon Society, in collusion with the state Department of Environmental Protection, secretly changed the designation of Sparta Mountain’s conservation value to allow the forest to be logged, according to the New Jersey Sierra Club.
“We caught the Audubon Society in a lie,” said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. “And we caught the DEP in a lie.”
The Audubon Society and the DEP, however, hurled the allegation of playing false right back at the environmental group.
“That charge is absolutely not true,” said John Cecil, vice president of Stewardship at NJ Audubon. “Unfortunately, the Sierra Club is twisting things to suit its own agenda.”
Bob Considine, spokesman for the DEP, concurred.
“The Sierra Club is once again cherry-picking a report to bolster a construed narrative that is miles from the truth,” he said.
This latest contention regarding Sparta Mountain and its new Forest Stewardship Plan, currently in its last stages of development, revolves around the yearly audit of NJ Audubon issued by the Forest Stewardship Council. The council is an international, nonprofit, multi-stakeholder organization that promotes responsible management of the world’s forests and, to that end, develops standards and issues certifications. NJ Audubon was audited on 190 “indicators” and found wanting on three.
One of those three “non-conformances,” according to the audit, said that NJ Audubon had not included an altered High Conservation Value Forest assessment in the draft Forest Stewardship Plan that the society and the DEP presented to the public earlier this year.
According to Tittel, altering the forest’s classification allows the area to be logged, which is why, he contends, it was done and why it was kept from the public.
“This audit is saying NJ Audubon had a faulty stakeholder process when they changed their original assessment of Sparta Mountain’s conservation value,” Tittel said. “The Forest Stewardship plan will bring commercial forestry to Sparta Mountain and remove the forested canopy that is critical for our water supply. What is worse is that NJ Audubon is playing games behind closed doors and now they are being caught.”
Cecil strongly disagreed.
“That is wildly inaccurate,” he said.
Cecil pointed out that NJ Audubon voluntarily belongs to the Forest Stewardship Council and is the only conservation group in the state that does belong. It invites the FSC’s scrutiny in the interest of public transparency and regularly passes its audit’s with flying colors, he said.
“We re-classify parts of the Forest Stewardship Plan from time to time, in the interest of keeping pace with the latest science,” Cecil said. “We recently re-classified the Sparta Mountain plan, but it is absolutely not true that we did so to allow for commercial logging. The truth is that logging could have been done under the former High Conservation Value Forest classification. This isn’t about making money. It is about conserving wildlife. This plan will do no damage to the forest.”
The Sierra Club and other environmental groups and allies say the new Forest Stewardship Plan is a logging plan under the guise of stewardship, and will open the forest up to invasive species and impact soil and water qualities.
NJ Audubon and DEP, on the other hand, say the plan will help diversify forest wildlife species and create young forest habitat by selectively cutting down old trees.
“We’ve taken the water supply question and other objections into account in forming this plan,” DEP’s Considine said. “It is a responsible forest management plan and we stand by it.”
When it was pointed out to NJ Audubon that it had neglected to inform stakeholders of the alteration in the forest’s classification, the proposed new plan was accordingly changed to include the re-classification and made public in March of this year — three weeks before the end of the public comment period on the proposal.
Although the timing of the presentation of this corrected proposal fell within the legal limits of public comment periods, opponents of the new plan still contend that DEP and NJ Audubon tried to sneak one pass stakeholders and the public.
“NJ Audubon absolutely changed the designation behind closed doors,” Tittel said.
DEP and NJ Audubon said the new Forest Stewardship plan for Sparta Mountain is undergoing its final adjustments and will be presented to the public in the near future. They also emphasized that the public comment period is over and what the public will be shown is the plan that will be adopted.
“We are not expecting further public input,” Cecil said.
Tittel, however, said the fight is not over.
“It’s not only that they have acted behind closed doors, but they have also ignored the large public outcry against their proposal,” he said. “If they go ahead and adopt this plan without listening to the public, there will be ramifications. We will certainly consider taking them to court.”
NJ Audubon and the state said the new complete plan will likely be presented before year’s end.