The DEP Considers Virtually The Entire NJ Pinelands As A “Military Influence Area”

DEP Logging Plan Only The Beginning – A Model For Fake Climate & Wildfire Solutions

Pinelands Commission Caves To Military Priorities Over Pinelands Forest Preservation

Military And DEP Funded So Called “Preservation” Groups Lack The Integrity To Fight

For anyone who cares about preserving the Pinelands, the map above should scare the hell out of you.

The DEP considers huge portions of the Pinelands – a designated World Biosphere Reserve due to its unique ecology – as a “Military Influence Area”.

The US military’s objectives – particularly in managing wildfires that impede its military training mission – appear to over-ride all other considerations, including the Pinelands Comprehensive Management Plan (CMP) and its protections of forests and the plants and animals that live there.

The US military has unlimited funds and political power to advance that mission.

The recent experience with a military “REPI” Program funded DEP “Wildfire” and “Carbon Defense” and “Habitat” “Forestry” plan should absolutely terrify you. The negative implications are stunning in scope and severity in terms of the integrity of the Pinelands region.

That experience – as my 5 part series has demonstrated – reveals deeply troubling facts:

1) The Pinelands Commission can not stand up to the military and DEP to enforce the CMP and block extremely damaging military funded DEP “forestry” plans.

2) The so called “conservation” groups (i.e. NJCF, Sierra Club) and “preservation” (PPA) groups that are supposed to watch out for the Pinelands and rally the public to defend and preserve the Pinelands are corrupted by military and DEP funding and/or lack the spine to oppose the military and DEP.

In fact, they all SUPPORTED this REPI DEP “forestry” plan.

3) The DEP is totally captured and corrupted by their funding sources, in this case the military. They literally will do anything for money to fund their programs and well paid staff.

In fact, in the DoD REPI grant application documents, DEP defined the eligible military funded land area as 1.3 MILLION ACRES, a land area larger than the entire Pinelands.

4) This particular military REPI DEP “forestry” plan was sold to the Pinelands Commission and the public under obviously false pretexts and rationales, while it’s true purpose was hidden.

Yet the NJ media, like the cowards in the conservation groups, refused to tell the public the truth; refused to skeptically interrogate DEP spin and lies; and refused to print the facts, even when they were given those facts in writing in government documents and could see them in the forest with their own eyes (e.g. the DEP lies that all the cut trees were 2 inches or less in diameter and the DEP lies about maintaining the existing canopy cover).

5) The DEP manufactured a deeply cynical and false justification of this military REPI logging project as advancing climate goals via a “carbon defense” strategy. The essence of that strategy is the absurd contradiction that recalls the Vietnam War’s “we must burn the village to save the village”.

This DEP “carbon defense” lie says that we must log the forest to prevent wildfire from releasing even more carbon than the logging creates.

This lie must not become the model for forest management for climate carbon sequestration and storage.

It is even MORE dangerous and destructive than the “young forest” sham DEP uses to log forests under the pretext of forest health or the creation of habitat for endangered species.

6) DEP also used manufactured fear of wildfire to promote this scam. Again, no one will call that out.

No one even mentioned the fact that – by the military’s own statements – the military accidentally starts a wildfire “once every 10 – 14 days”!

7) The public was kept in the dark and completely shut out of this entire process. The public was blatantly lied to and misled by all institutions involved: the military, the DEP, the Pinelands Commission, the conservation groups and the media.

This means that the military and military objectives are shaping and even actually dictating the management of our public lands – not the Pinelands CMP, or DEP program plans and regulations, or public preferences – and the military is doing this with absolutely no resistance, transparency, or public participation. That alone is terrifying and totally unacceptable.

With all these destructive dynamics illustrated by the recent REPI DEP Pinelands logging fiasco – and the unlimited money, political power, and complete institutional failures (i.e. by the Pinelands Commission, the DEP, the conservation groups and the media) to stand up to the military – the Pinelands forests and ecology are highly at risk.

Word.