NJAS Opinion: Summer, 1995

What is New Jersey Audubon's green vision for the state of New Jersey? The time is ripe for some thoughts on the subject. Not only is the public open space deficit large, some 271,000 acres at last count, according to the 1994 New Jersey Open Space and Outdoor Recreation Plan. But the effort to green New Jersey isn't as easy to do as it used to be, and the threats to our natural heritage are greater in the current climate of defunding, deauthorizing, and deregulating conservation initiatives.

Needless to say, the NJAS estimate of the open space deficit is greater than the state's. Audubon could probably use the 271,000-acre deficit figure in the Highlands alone, when we are talking about permanently-protected public open space. Then we could add the Hackensack Meadowlands and our threatened urban habitats, or the Delaware Bayshore region, or the additional acreage in the Pinelands (something on the order of 26,000 acres needing permanent protection there). The Audubon green-print for New Jersey would certainly include all of these.

Having started with the Highlands, let us sketch out the details of our vision for that region. We would see a National Forest as being the right rubric to fit some of the conservation imperatives there. A National Forest designation, which included within it the nation's first Neotropical bird reserve in the key contiguous forest area, would be a good first footprint to begin to fill out the vision. By itself it isn't enough, but it would be a good start. Ideally the designation of a reserve in the key area would need to be part of a comprehensive regional-planning effort, based on good bioinformation and mapping (which should already have been begun by the moribund Highlands Trust Advisory Board created by former Governor Jim Florio and not reconstituted by Governor Christine Todd Whitman). This region is outstanding for its dense raptor populations; its diversity of breeding birds (over 145 species); its populations of forest interior, long-distance migrants like scarlet tanager and other Neotropicals; populations of bear and otter and trout; outstanding water resources and forests; recreational opportunities and scenic beauty.

The regional growth management plan would overlap the Highlands areas of New York and New Jersey, and maybe the adjacent pieces of Connecticut and Pennsylvania, defined by the geology, not political boundaries. Streams, watersheds, and contiguous forests then become the unit of management and conservation. Water and contiguous forests cross municipal, county, and state boundaries. The rate of forest loss and the rate of subdivision in recent decades in the Highlands are indicators that compel consideration of a regional plan. Hearings held by the U.S. Forest Service indicated support for both a National Forest and regional growth management. Regional management is entrenched in New Jersey in the Hackensack Meadowlands, Delaware and Raritan Canal District, and Pinelands National Reserve, with varying degrees of regulatory protection and success. It could also work well, with the right mix of local and bistate representatives, on a regional management entity in the Highlands. One analogous national model is the metropolitan plan for the Columbia River Gorge in the Far West. Local economies that are resource compatible need to be encouraged by such a plan in order for it to work. Ecotourism, with its ancillary services like bed and breakfasts, is one key component of such a plan for the Highlands, as it is for the Delaware Bayshore region.

The Delaware Bayshore - with its combination of hardwood swamp, varied marshes, its complex of tributaries to the bay and its rich coastline - has been aptly nicknamed "The Biodiversity Triangle." The vision for the "Green Coast" on the bayshore is quite different from that for the "Gold Coast," New Jersey's Atlantic shore. On the "Green Coast," land is less expensive, wetlands still abound, and there is a good core of both public and private land in conservation stewardship, a higher percentage than on the Atlantic Coast. The recent lift given to ecotourism in Cumberland County's plan is a good regional building block along with the national reputation that Cape May has. A resource-compatible economy is crucial to conservation efforts here. The efforts of land trusts, such as the Nature Conservancy, to acquire bio-valuable tracts in this region has matched good private stewardship with successful state and federal acquisitions under the Duck Stamp program, the Cape May National Wildlife Refuge, and the Maurice and Salem river projects. NJAS's new research-education center soon to be built on the bayshore is a part of that stewardship effort.

But even in this relatively unpaved region, the specter of cumulative impacts is on the horizon along some of the tributaries that feed the bay. Some of our most important wetlands on Raccoon and Oldman's creeks and the Maurice and Salem rivers can be impacted by what happens upstream. A wildlife habitat inventory in this area, done by NJAS with the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, found over seventy sites with conservation value that lacked protection. The imperatives are. protection of the headwaters and stream-corridor forests (often the only forest in the region); the maintenance of farming as a resource-compatible economy and wildlife habitat for waterfowl, grassland and raptor species; and protection of the creek mouths. The Delaware Estuary Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan needs to take these things into account. This region has globally significant stopover populations of red-throated loon, northern pintail, red knot, ruddy turnstone, sanderling, semipalmated and least sandpipers, Caspian tern, and sora; vast numbers of feeding raptors, waterfowl and herons; as well as wetlands of flyway and international significance. The quarter million snow geese that winter on the bayshore represent another jewel in the crown.

The Pinelands probably represents the nation's best effort to preserve, protect, and enhance natural resources by combining all the available tools in a regional comprehensive management plan. The plan has worked and has proved the wisdom of regional growth management by controlling growth in areas suitable for development and keeping destructive land uses out of the most sensitive areas. Such wise land management can only be done on a regional basis because the area is not homogeneous. Because of land constraints such as headwaters, wetlands, contiguous forests, fire vulnerability, and aquifer, some places can take development and others can't. Every place can not look like every place else, as far as growth and development are concerned. That is also true in regions other than the Pinelands, like the Highlands, but so far the Pinelands is the only large region that has all the tools in place. Even there, though, there remains a deficit of permanently protected open space in the neighborhood of 26,000+ acres. Needed are additions in the Southern Forest Area, linkages to connect the southern area with the portion of the Pinelands north of Route 30, and add-ons to existing public properties already in permanent protection.

Other smaller regions with growth management plans have had varying degrees of success in controlling growth and protecting open space and habitat. The Hackensack Meadowlands District, administered by the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission, has a master plan and regional zoning. But the commission's triple mandate of development, environmental protection, and garbage disposal has conflicts between mandates and with laws passed after the commission came to be, such as the Clean Water Act. The Special Area Management Plan (SAMP) had as one of its goals resolving such conflicts through interagency cooperation among the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission (HMDC). The SAMP has moved toward a conclusion that "balances" the remaining 7,000 wetland acres between development and conservation by earmarking nearly 900 acres for development.

In our vision, balance was struck long ago in the district since 13,000 acres had already gone to development and land-fills, and the remaining wetlands need to be protected so the estuary doesn't get too small. If every ten or twenty years, the players "balance" the remaining wetland acres, there will soon be no estuary. These wetlands harbor important populations of marsh birds, muskrats, shorebirds, raptors, and waterfowl; are of flyway significance; and are of vital importance for the North American Waterfowl Plan. The region takes on even more importance because it is in an urban area. It is available as a source of recreation and enjoyment to millions of people. Its economy needs to be compatible with valuable wetlands, with outdoor recreation, with the nature of a river that needs to flood periodically, and with rising sea level. The long-term trend is an increase in salt marsh which will make the wetlands an even more important resource.

Other areas can stand some regional management too, in the green vision. The Delaware and Raritan Canal Commission has had some success in controlling land use within its district borders. Maybe their experience, and that of the other regional management entities, can be translated into some new areas, particularly urbanized areas that have wildlife resources very much worth protecting. Raritan Bay has valuable habitats that might be protected by a regional authority or even a regional, planning board, as permitted by the Municipal Land Use Law. Some of the bay's key remaining habitats span municipal boundaries. Our recent NJAS wildlife habitat inventories of Raritan Bay and the Arthur Kill tributaries have convinced us of the value of these remaining urban habitats and the urgency of a regional approach. The experience of the Great Swamp Watershed Advisory Committee was that regional watershed management would guard the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge against degradation from the secondary impacts of development like silt, runoff, erosion, and forest loss. That conclusion led eventually to proposed legislation advocating a regional watershed management plan administered by a locally appointed commission with cross-acceptance by the constituent municipalities. In the Audubon greenview, that leads to better watershed and habitat protection, and protects the public investment in the Great Swamp downstream.

For the Audubon greenprint to be complete, certain things have to happen. We will need land and water conservation monies for federal refuge additions and a national forest. That is not new money; it is existing money. And Congress is authorized to release up to $900 million for conservation. We will also need Green Acres bond issues greater in amount than our citizens have voted in the past, to protect our immediately threatened critical lands that can't wait for regional growth management. We need those bond issues even though we are extending the debt on the Transportation Trust Fund. The critical lands can't wait on our finding a stable source of funding (which we also need); they may not be there later. We need to hold out for the regional approach even though it is not politically popular in the current mood of green bashing; the politicians are clearly out of sync with the people on green regulation. Every state and national poll we have seen reports that the folks want green land, the Endangered Species and Clean Water Acts strengthened, and the Pinelands protected. The recent election was not about environment or conservation; these issues weren't even mentioned.

In New Jersey we have the tools for the greenprint; regional regulation that works; acquisition programs; and private stewardship by nonprofits. We have a state plan that needs to be tied into our regulatory framework so that it has teeth and prevents the loss of sensitive lands such as the Alpha Grasslands. We have a Fifth Amendment that protects property rights, and we also have a need for regulation in the public interest to protect clean air, clean water, wildlife and the neighbor's property. Some thirty-seven states attorneys general have write the federal government saying there is no need for takings legislation. Let's go on with the greenprint, with the tried and true tools to protect the outstanding state resources that belong to the people. We are only temporary stewards; others come after us and will want the same thing. That is the long-term view that endures against the vision of short-term gain.