“What were we going to do? Ask them to replant the trees?”
So replied Brookhaven Town supervisor and former county legislator Ed Romaine when asked last week why the town took no action against the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which it suspected of violating state law by clearing a half-acre of trees in one of Long Island’s most protected areas. READ
In June 2015, Brookhaven Town officials and the leader of an environmental nonprofit suggested that the state entity in charge of protecting the environment had actually violated its own rules by clearing nearly a half acre of trees in an area that is highly restricted by New York State.
Richard Amper, executive director of the Pine Barrens Society, once again lived up to his true form last Wednesday in his latest bid to stop the rebuild of Kent Animal Shelter. His arguments disintegrated in several instances because some of his statements were dead wrong.
The conflict over the expansion of Kent Animal Shelter in the Core Preservation Area of the Pine Barrens is getting personal. What’s worse, it’s unnecessary. READ
Southern pine beetles have been confirmed in the above locations so far, officials say. (Eric Hod illustration)
The southern pine beetle, as it turns out, isn’t all that southern anymore.
The voracious and highly destructive insect — which decimates millions of cubic feet of timber across the country each year — has been making a slow expansion north over the past couple of decades. The beetle arrived in New Jersey in 2001, crossed the Great Egg Harbor River south of Atlantic City in 2008 and arrived on Long Island this past fall.
Now, authorities are trying to figure out how to contain the spread of the pest in the Pine Barrens and beyond. So far, it has infected trees at least a dozen state and county parks across Suffolk County (see map, above), not to mention on private land.
“We assume that all in all, we’ve lost a good thousand acres,” said John Wernet, regional forester with the Department of Environmental Conservation. The DEC, in conjunction with other agencies, is conducting aerial and ground surveys to determine the full extent of the damage. Results are expected in the next couple of months.
THE THREE STAGES OF A SOUTHERN PINE BEETLE INFESTATION
The levels of infestation are bound to affect the health of the Pine Barrens for years to come.
“It’s not possible to eliminate,” said Kevin Dodds, an entomologist with the U.S. Forest Service. “I hear a lot of people use the word ‘control,’ but ‘control’ implies you have the ability to knock things back. It’s better to look at this as managing it.”
CLIMBING NORTH
A few years ago, Rob Corcory, who had retired from a 37-year career with the New Jersey State Forestry Services Department, was asked to return as the state’s southern pine beetle project manager.
By then, however, scientists estimated that it was just too late to stymie the insect’s northward march.
“We tried to keep it in the southern half of the state, but it started creeping north. Everything was below the Mullica River [in New Jersey] until a year or two,” Mr. Corcory said.
Scientists have attributed the beetle’s northern migration to climate change. The coldest night of winter in New Jersey is now seven to eight degrees warmer, on average, than it was 50 years ago, said Matthew Ayres, professor of biological sciences at Dartmouth College. And warmer temperatures at night have allowed the beetle to survive the farther north it goes.
On Long Island, temperatures recorded this past winter at the National Weather Service in Upton dropped to -4 degrees on three nights in February, which helped suppress the beetle’s spread this spring and “bought us some time” to fight this year’s infestation, said Mr. Wernet of the DEC.
It remains unclear exactly how the beetle arrived on Long Island, but its presence has now been confirmed as far north as Hartford, Conn.
It’s been speculated the beetles washed ashore on Long Island during Superstorm Sandy, Mr. Dodds said. Or it “could have just spread in smaller infestations,” he said.
What is clear is that they’re here.
Caption: Researchers from Dartmouth College and the New Jersey Forest Service discuss southern pine beetle management in the New Jersey Pinelands. (Courtesy: Matt Ayres/Dartmouth College)
Trees attacked by southern pine beetles go through three stages before the beetles move on:
Fresh attacks: Females initiate the attack on the tree, releasing pheremones once a suitable host is found. Pine trees release extra resin as a defense mechanism against the beetles, though male and female beetles work together to clear away the resin and enter the bark — usually through the crevices. After southern pine beetles bore into the trees, reddish-white dust can be found on and around the tree.
Faders: S-shaped galleries are formed inside the tree, where more beetles later hatch and create new tubes. The beetle also transmits a fungus that stops water from circulating within the tree. Foliage starts to fade in color.
Vacated: Beetles born inside the tree create exit holes, allowing a mass emergence from the tree. The browning of foliage continues and bark becomes loose and peels away easily. Abundant white sawdust from the entrance and exit holes often accumulates at the base of vacated trees.
Source: Department of Environmental Conservation
COURTESY DRAWING | A rendering from 2013 of what the new Kent Animal Shelter will look like.
Like the pets we’ve helped all these years, we now find ourselves facing an uncertain future. No one wants to live in a cold house constructed of cement that’s falling apart, not even animals.
Over 55,000 animals have been spayed or neutered and over 40,000 have been rescued and placed in new homes since Kent Animal Shelter in Calverton was built in 1968. How ironic, is it then, that the organization that made that happen may soon face its own untimely demise?
It’s the very thing that we have fought against for our homeless animals for the past 47 years. (more…)
Kent Animal Shelter executive director Pam Green addresses the Pine Barrens Commission during a public hearing Wednesday. (Credit: Paul Squire)
The facilities at Kent Animal Shelter aren’t enough to meet their needs, representatives of the nonprofit said at a public hearing before the Pine Barrens Commission last week.
Plans for a new facility, they said, would not only expand their operations but also help the environment by removing outdated and “archaic” septic systems.
But whether that’s enough for the commission to allow the group to build remains to be seen. (more…)