ICYMI: Murphy DEP “Natural And Working Lands Strategy” Targets Logging On 200,000 Acres Of Forests

DEP Plan Calls For “Thinning” (Logging) 1,500 Acres Per Year, Forever

“Ecological Forest Management” Is The Latest Slogan For Logging 200,000 Acres

In my previous post, I highlighted the obfuscatory shell game and delay strategy behind the Murphy DEP’s most recent bureaucratic process called the “Natural and Working Lands Strategy”.

But there are numerical targets in that strategy that DEP is likely to implement.

Unfortunately, you won’t read about this in the press or in critical press releases and “action alerts” by environmental groups, but buried in the weeds of the DEP’s various documents, strategies and plans are hard targets for logging state forests under various guises, slogans, and pretexts, including “forestry management”, “ecological restoration”, “carbon defense”, “habitat creation”, “young forests”, and “wildfire prevention”.

In contrast to the new “good” forestry programs in the DEP strategy (e.g. afforestation, reforestation, proforestation) which all lack models and existing DEP programs and experienced staff and dedicated funding sources, the “bad” forestry programs all have existing programs, supportive staff and funding and are now being implemented aggressively.

Worse, all the “good” programs are actively opposed by existing DEP forestry professionals. For example, Assistant Commissioner Cecil made formal presentations that criticized “proforestation” as a “political movement” that lacked any scientific justification:

So, it is obvious which ones will be implemented (the “bad” ones) and that the “good” ones are only presented as window dressing to mask the bad ones.

We’ve seen numerous examples of how DEP envisions such “bad” programs in the recent controversy over DEP’s 1,400 acre Pinelands logging Plan (wildfire prevention, “carbon defense”), the Sparta Mountain logging plan (T&E species protection) and the Glassboro Wildlife Management Area (game habitat creation).

They all amount to logging.

So, ICYMI, check out DEP “forest thinning” target (they call it “avoided emissions”) 1,500 acres per year. That would be 1 Pinelands logging plan every year, or 75 Glassboro WMA projects every year.

And check out the target for “ecological forest management” – DEP is targeting 200,000 acres for logging