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Protectors of Pine Oak Woods • Current Issues |
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Current Issues Protectors hopes you enjoy the Reforestation Reports submitted by Naturalist and Protectors Board Member, Don Recklies. Please click on Forest Restoration to view the monthly reports. William
H. Pouch Boy Scout Camp in Peril Protectors of Pine
Oak Woods actively supports preservation of Camp Pouch whose sale has been
proposed by the Greater New York Council of the Boy Scouts of America. We are aiding the efforts of environmental
groups and local scouts to persuade our legislators and the Greater New York
Council that this jewel in the center of the Greenbelt must not be lost. Goodhue Woods Must Find Funding The Children’s Aid Society has agreed
in principle to sell a large part of its 42 acre North Shore woodlands to be
used as city parkland, but sources of funding in this extremely difficult
financial environment are uncertain.
Protectors of Pine Oak Woods has been actively canvassing our
legislators to secure support for that purchase. Efforts Continue to Protect the Amundsen
Trailway and Parkway Right-of-Ways The unbuilt Richmond and Willowbrook
Parkways, long considered an integral part of the Staten Island Greenbelt,
remain mapped highway right-of-ways.
Our legislative committee continues to encourage legislation
introduced in Albany to demap these unbuilt roadways to prevent their use in
ways that are inimical to the health of the Greenbelt. In a
sleight-of-hand trick worthy of Robert Moses,
federal funding was shifted away from a bikeway planned for the
Amundsen Trailway, and plans persist to incompetently carve another in the
middle of the Greenbelt. We will
scrutinize and protest any new proposals that improperly deviate from the Greenbelt Master Plan. Protectors
Supported Funding In 2007,
Protectors of Pine Oak Woods, co-operating with The Trust for Public
Land, sent testimony supporting
appropriating $3 million from the National Oceanic & Atmospheric
Administration Coastal and Estuarine Land conservation Program for the
preservation of Long Pond/Butler Woods in New York. The 20 acre Butler Woods was purchased in
2007 and added to the NYSDEC Mount Loretto Unique Area, and in 2008 the
Archdiocese of New York transferred 75 acres south of Amboy Road to the New
York State Department of Environmental Conservation which now manages that property as Northern
Mount Loretto State Forest. These two
properties have been preserved to ensure the protection of important coastal
wetlands and the availability of open space, recreational opportunity, and
public access to the shore of Raritan Bay. Sharrotts Road Shorelands to a Small Degree Protected Protectors of Pine Oak Woods has
heartily endorsed efforts to preserve as open space the areas of the
Sharrotts Road Shorelands and Port Mobile Swamp Forest and Tidal Wetlands
that were nominated by The Trust for Public Land for open space
preservation. Following our observation
that parcels of that site had reverted to city ownership, the New York State Department of Environmental
Conservation, through the intermediation of The Trust for Public land and
with funding from the Jamaica Bay Damages Account, secured a small portion of
those lands adjacent to the Arthur Kill in 2008. The majority of these shorelands are still
held by private owners, sheltered by real estate conglomerates. Since these properties are or are adjacent
to restricted wetlands, their development is problematic, yet efforts to
purchase them for conservation have not prevailed. Rapid development of surrounding higher
ground continues to place environmental stress of this outflow area between
Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve and the Arthur Kill. NASCAR Defeat was a No-Brainer, What Happens Next? In 2006 Protectors
of Pine Oak Woods voted to oppose a wrong-headed International Speedway
project for Staten Island for all the good reasons you had already come up
with, and then some. Spearheaded by The
Nature Conservancy, a year long campaign to halt this development succeeded
in persuading ISC to abandon this disastrous proposal, and they spent several
years trying to divest themselves of their $100 million investment. We had advocated the land be secured as a wetland buffer, but it has been
sold to a Texas company organized to purchase land for port facilities. We await further developments. Charleston Woods/Kreischer Hill Falls to Development Efforts by Protectors to prevent the major development of a shopping mall and bus depot in a unique 130-acre ecosystem sheltering a globally rare plant and other endangered species did not succeed. As a nod to environmental and open space concerns, the location of the rare Torrey’s Mountain Mint was narrowly contained in what is now a fenced and sometimes trash-strewn enclosure, a small part of the area has been designated as a “park and nature preserve” - the nature of the “preserve” uncertain - and some rare trees were transplanted from the site. A lawsuit filed by WildMetro, Sweetbay Magnolia Bioreserve Conservancy, and the Natural Resources Defense Council in 2004 achieved a small reduction in the scope of the development, but the bulk of this unique sandy, scrub-oak environment has been irretrievably lost. Mid-Island
Bluebelt Advisory Committee The following invitation was
sent to Protectors from the NYC Environmental Protection Department
regarding the Mid-Island Bluebelt. At the meeting DEP will be
conducting a Public Scoping Session for the Mid-Island Bluebelt Environmental
Impact Statement. The EIS will assess the potential
environmental impacts of the new drainage plans for the Oakwood Beach,
New Creek and South Beach watersheds. This meeting was held: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:30 P.M. Community Board #2 Offices Lou Carravone Building 460 Brielle Avenue on the grounds of Seaview Hospital Comments from Dr. Alan Benimoff are forthcoming. |
©2006 PPOW