Parks and Forests Need Your Voice. 

The Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), as part of the Forest Future Visioning Process (FFVP), is proposing to change the criteria for selecting and manageing state forests and parks. Make sure you understand what's at stake and pspeak up for forests and parks!

Landscape Designations Selection Criteria and Management Guidelines Draft comments are due Fri., January 21. Email DCR, or mail your comments to: Landscape Designation Comments, 251 Causeway St, Suite 600, Boston, MA 02114

Here are a few points to consider as you write your comments:

1) How much is enough?
Did the FFVP protect enough of our public forests from commercial timber harvesting? If you look at the Department of Fish and Wildlife BioMap2, you’ll see hash marks for “protected land”. The land may be protected from development, but it is not necessarily protected from commercial timber harvesting. The FFVP will allow commercial timber harvesting on 63% of state public forests. Look at the map and imagine 63% of the hash-marked areas harvested for timber or biomass fuel over the next 20 years. Is that what you want for MA forests?

2) Why are DWSP lands left out?
The FFVP does not apply to the Division of Water Supply Protection (DWSP) watershed land, which include the Quabbin Reservoir, Ware River and Wachusett Reservoir watersheds, even though the DWSP falls under the administration of the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR). These lands are subject to commercial timber harvesting, as is going on in the Quabbin Reservoir now. Does the omission of state watershed land seem right to you?

3) Parklands
We have concerns about some of the public lands that may fall under the proposed Parklands criteria. Properties containing “unique natural features” that are located in high population areas and under heavy recreational use require greater protection than the Parklands designation provides. Citizens who know these special places should be able to nominate them as Patch Reserves, whether they fall inside designated Woodlands or Parklands or encompass an entire smaller property. Do you agree?
 
4) Woodlands
Many people don’t realize that commercial timber harvesting takes place on MA  Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) lands. During the recent Forest Future Visioning Process (FFVP), it became clear that there is an interest in maintaining public lands for providing wood products. A compromise reached during the FFVP conceded that some wood products will come from public lands.

Because these are conservation and recreation lands, the consensus reached by the FFVP Advisory Group of Stakeholders, was to employ uneven-aged silviculture with aesthetics as the top goal. Also, even-aged silviculture (clear-cutting) of forests is to be the exception, requiring public input. We need to make sure that the intent of the compromise—limited clear-cuts, aesthetics and uneven-aged management—is upheld in the implementation in the criteria for Woodlands. Review of uneven vs even-aged silviculture here.

4) Reserves
Reserves are special places with unique features. Shouldn’t Reserves be selected first, before the Woodlands? What a shame if we allow a forest to be decimated by timber harvesting, only to discover afterwards that the same forest was an important link in sustaining biodiversity or in creating a wildlife corridor (Quabbin, for example?)

Shouldn’t the criteria for forest Reserves give priority to forests with streams, lakes, ponds and vernal pools, as found in the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs (EOEA) Sustainable Forest Management guidelines?

5) Why no Patch Reserves now?
The EOEA guidelines call for two types of forest reserves—large (matrix) and small (patch) Reserves:

“Forest Reserves are portions of state lands where commercial harvesting of wood products is excluded in order to capture elements of biodiversity that can be missing from sustainably harvested sites. Small (patch) Reserves will conserve sensitive, localized resources such as steep slopes, fragile soils, and habitat for certain rare species that benefit from intact forest canopies. Large (matrix) Reserves will represent the diversity of relatively un-fragmented forest landscapes remaining in Massachusetts today. Matrix Reserves will ultimately support a wider diversity of tree sizes and ages than typically occurs on sustainably harvested sites, and will also support structures and processes associated with extensive accumulations of large woody debris that are typically absent from harvested sites.”

The Designations Draft mentions “patch reserves” on page 5. But DCR has decided to defer the selection of the smaller special areas to whenever a Resource Management Plan (RMP) or a district-level Forest Resource Management (timber harvesting) Plan is developed. Is that prudent? Shouldn’t Patch Reserves be given the same priority as Matrix Reserves and be selected through the same process?

6) Resource Management Plans (RMP) for all Forests and Parks!
The Friends Network has long advocated for RMPs (which inventory the natural, cultural, historical and recreational aspects of a particular forest or park) for all forests and parks. Lately, DCR is stepping up its efforts to complete RMPS. However, it will take years to complete RMPs for every forest and park and the timber interests don’t want to wait. We fear DCR will try to substitute district-level Forest Resource Management Plans in place of the site-specific RMPs required by law. Is that OK with you? Don’t you agree that a Forest Resource Management Plan, must happen only after a thorough RMP has been approved?

7) Wilderness Areas
DCR is not proposing any lands for wilderness areas, due to a lack of acreage large enough to qualify as wilderness under the Federal Wilderness Act of 1964, see page 8 of the Landscape Designations Draft. However, the FFVP Technical Steering Committee (TSC) recommended adapting the Federal guidelines to Massachusetts and identifying potential wilderness areas. Rather than reassessing Reserves five years from now, as DCR wants to do, shouldn’t we follow the recommendations of the TSC and plan for Wilderness Areas now?

8) Demonstration Forests? What for?
UMass Extension already uses the Harvard Demonstration Forest to teach about forestryt. In fact, now is the time to apply for the Keystone Program training. DCR already has to sign off on all forest cutting plans. Wouldn't it be better for DCR to worry less about demonstration sites and use the resources they were going to allocate to woodland demonstration projects toward better outreach in high volume state parks where a real stewardship message would reach a greater number of the public?

Please forward this message to a friend of forests and parks