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Friends,
The League of Conservation Voters' Winter 2004
newsletter has just hit the newsstands and there is an article
about our efforts to stop the NYS DEC from logging the Highlands
here in Putnam County. It can be found at:
http://www.nylcv.org/ecopolitics/winter2004/articles/06.htm
Also, NYC DEP Commissioner Christopher Ward,
has written a letter to the DEC in support of the model forest
project *ON* Mount Nimham even though efforts are now being made
to move the project to DEP property or private lands in this area
- efforts we fully support.
There was so little new in the letter and it
could easily have been written by DEC and simply signed by Commissioner
Ward but, yet again, it contained misinformation about our opposition
to the project that has been repeated by DEC and their supporters
time and time again.
In the letter Commissioner Ward claims that we
are looking for a "hands off" solution to land management
on DEC lands and I do not know how many times that has been rebuffed
by myself and others on our side in this issue. So once again
I will state what we have been asking for:
Over the past year we have consistently offered
the DEC viable
alternatives to their plans. A few examples;
We have repeatedly asked the DEC, in face to
face meetings, to work with
the community to remove invasive species on the Nimham property.
This will help the forest recover - naturally - from past human
attempts at forest management, reforestation projects gone awry
and the agricultural uses of several generations ago;
We have asked the DEC to use the base-line research
they have done for
their logging program to study what happens to eco-systems as
the forest
matures and regains its natural balance rather than what happens
to it when
they "thin" the forest of it's biodiversity and life;
This year, the 1994 Unit Management Plan that
lays out the altering of
Mount Nimham from a natural environment into a tree plantation
is open for
review. We have asked the DEC to tell us what process is involved
for
working with them so that we can arrive at a revised plan we can
all agree
with; and,
We have asked the DEC to help us propose a 480-a
style tax plan to put
private lands in preservation especially in the Croton watershed
where the
MOA clearly seeks a reduction in logging activities, a reduction
the DEP Commissioner has overlooked.
To each request the response has been the same
- absolute silence - and none of it seems like "hands off"
management to me.
All my best,
Jeff Green
PlanPutnam
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