By John Miraglia • Raritan Valley Group
Old-growth forests (trees 150-plus years old) store double the carbon of younger, “even-growth” forests (trees mostly 40-90 years old). Unfortunately, as the NJ State Forest Action Plan 2020 (SFAP) notes, less than 1% of New Jersey’s remaining forests are old-growth.
The good news is that even-growth forests dominate the forested portions of New Jersey and, if protected from development and properly managed, will sequester carbon at a high rate and may eventually become high-capacity carbon vaults.
One forest management technique is to take a passive “let nature take its course” approach. This might work for existing old-growth forests. However, attacks on our even-growth forests from commercial development, “…climate change, invasive species, white-tailed deer herbivory, fire suppression, insects, and disease” make a passive approach unlikely to succeed.
What’s Being Done Now
Job No. 1 is to preserve the forests that we do have. New Jersey loses thousands of acres of forest to urbanization, infrastructure development, wildfires, and logging. Another challenge to preserving forests is that 48% of forests in New Jersey are held in private hands. The SFAP does not control how private property is managed, but it does have voluntary programs.
• The Farmland Assessment Act offers tax breaks in return for active forest management.
• Allowing forests to grow uninterrupted (proforestation) helps achieve carbon sequestration and other ecological goals.
• Expanding conservation easements can place more forests on a permanent no-development status
On state-owned land, the No Net Loss Compensation Reforestration Act (1993) helps by ensuring that state development projects do not reduce forest cover.
Another strategy is prescribed burns—controlled fires that forestall damaging wildfires and help develop new old-growth forests. Most take place in the Pine Barrens to help protect pitch pines.
Where prescribed burns are not practical, clear-cutting of 1-5 acre plots can open the forest canopy and stimulate new growth. Eliminating invasive species with herbicides or manually removing them is also helpful.
One of the most significant roadblocks to managing our forests in New Jersey is our large deer population. Deer browse trees and other plants through several forest stages. They eat seedlings during the regeneration stage, eat saplings before they grow above the browse line, and selectively eat trees such as oak, maple, and white pine, while ignoring invasive species.
Deer hunting accounts for almost all deer control efforts in New Jersey. Trapping, euthanization, and fertility control also are employed when hunting is not feasible.
What We Can Do
The Sierra Club in New Jersey actively advocates for forest management. You can get your group involved in a local forest management issue or join a Chapter-level team.
As individuals, we can speak at township meetings when development projects are being discussed, write letters to the editor, and support pro-forest political candidates.
We can also get involved in hands-on projects for removing invasive plant species or for other types of proforestation.
While restoring old-growth forests is not a focus of the SFAP 10-year plan, the actions noted above can help achieve that end. However, doing so is a decades- or century-long process. What we do today to preserve forests, eliminate invasive species, and control deer populations will serve to keep our current forests healthy and restore old-growth forests.
Resources
NJ Forest Action Plan: https://shorturl.at/TFwhj
Old Growth: https://shorturl.at/l9gwJ