That was a very nice suggestion. You don't have to. Why not? Should we change your name, please? They're the redheaded. Change them. I started. Oh, the name tag.
We're not going to change the name. Okay. We can. This is sponsored by We'll get started in one moment. We're just rearranging chairs a little bit. Some members couldn't attend tonight.
So you can post it. There you go. Perfect. Very good. Thank you. All right. Ready, Christine? Welcome everybody to the Township of Sparta Environmental Commission meeting
of Thursday, July 10th, 2025. Meeting is called to order at 7:07. We are live in the council chambers at the municipal building as well as live streaming at uh www.youtube.com. but back slash at Sparta TWWP streams.
Um, adequate notice of this meeting was provided to the public and the press on January 10th, 2025 by delivering to the press and posting on the township website a copy of this notice. Would everybody please join me in the salute to the flag? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the
United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you everyone for joining us tonight. Um, can we have roll call?
Emily, Deputy Mayor Marjorie Murphy, Chair Kimberly Null here. Vice Chair Neil Sourine here. Christine Dunar here. Ted Gaul. Christine Rogers here. Barbara Kazulka.
Landon Teneri. Robert Otto here. John Grath here. Thank you. Thank you. Um approval of the minutes of June 26, 2025. I didn't have any changes. Did anybody
else have any changes or updates? Yes, I I had one that I sent to uh Emily. Um under presentation, Ridge and Valley Conservancy. Um Renee ran for the second sentence. Renee ran for Township Committee. I thought it
would be more clear if it said Renee ran for Nolton Township Committee. Um So, that was just the only thing I had. Any other updates or changes? Do I have a motion to approve the
minutes with that change? I'll make the motion. Second motion. Thanks, Rob. Thank you, Christine. All in favor? I. Minutes approved. All right, moving on to our presentation tonight. Um, I'd
like to welcome Brian Schum. Is that how you say it? Shom. From uh D regarding the deer management um and strategies to uh rectify too many deer around. All right. Um do we want to join the audience just
so that we don't hurt our neck? Yeah. That way Brian can talk to everybody that way. Stand. All right, bear with me. uh mic check while we're here. Thank you. Um I'll just start with an introduction since we have a couple
minutes maybe. Uh I'm Brian Shum. I'm with New Jersey uh D um Fish and Wildlife and I'm a deer outreach biologist. So I specialize in coming out to communities and helping them usually with overabundant deer. Um this is Megan
Mills. She's the northern region deer biologist. So she more so specializes in the local um management programs and she handles much of the uh harvest database for the northern region as as well as disease sampling.
Um anything else you wanted to add? Okay. So today uh the goal of the presentation is essentially to try to get everyone uh a small foundational sort of education on deer biology. Basically, um, what I
feel is much of the disconnect between us as the state wildlife management agency and the public is that there often, um, you know, we went to school for it. We know a lot of the background um, and not everyone has that privilege. I'm in that camp for 99% of all the
other things that require some amount of expertise. So, I'm going to try to um basically provide a little bit of background information so that one, we could come to a consensus on whether or not there is a deer problem. Um, can we identify that? Is it clear that there
are too many deer? Can we define what too many deer looks like? Um, and can we, you know, build a consensus around that? And then if there are too many deer, is there something logically that we should as humans do about it? Um and
so um we'll be covering some of the you know fundamental um as brief as we can um background biology of the animal. So reproductive um rates and and things of that nature and then we'll get into you know the management options um that uh
usually gets a little bit more um I'd say like a little bit more political starts with the facts and then it gets into things that like you know people have really valid uh opinions about because it gets into you know these are this is your town this is your backyard and you want to have ownership over
what's occurring in it. So, um, you know, very, um, validly. So, all right, it froze. Hang on. Okay, I'm trying to get it full screen, but it it froze on me. I can see if I can really quick make a
smaller version. Um, that maybe would run better. They said they were unable to do that. We'll be um the way the presentation's built, it would be um you'll be missing information. All right. So, let's try uh
do I have the uh keyboard over here? You go. Should be good. You're welcome. Oh, goodness. Sorry. Right. The moment of truth. I have it pretty well memorized, but I usually like to look at it to see where
I'm at. So, be awesome if it worked. First test is not Oh, okay. Let's take a look and see if the animations are working. Okay, we are live. Let me catch up myself over here and then we'll properly
begin. I'm going to click twice every time. Okay. So, um, in New Jersey specifically and around the nation, what informs deer management decisions? So, um, as we're going to discuss, this is an extremely
human conversation. We're looking at this system from the perspective of people. So, we have, um, these various groups of, uh, indices that we can look at to assess, you know, are we comfortable with the number of deer? So,
um, one big category is human health. The second uh big category, ecosystem health. Um and then finally, just general public feedback because there is more of a nuance desire or opposition to the species.
So for human health, um and mine didn't go. Sorry, I'm working two computers right now. Okay. So, um this is a picture that was taken out in Bergen County. Um it was I think it was a couple years ago, I
believe, or perhaps this one's from South Jersey. Either way, this happens more than we would like it to. And obviously, deer vehicle collisions present a really obvious human health risk. Tickboard diseases are a little bit more challenging to observe. So, um,
we can get into it with the with, you know, a question period. Um, but a really fundamental takeaway is that, um, while ticks contract limes disease, the primary one we're usually thinking about, though there's others, um, while
they contract that from mice, um, they their, uh, populations, the population of ticks is heavily, um, related to, uh, deer populations. So um study many studies have found that if you reduce
deer populations that reduces tick populations and therefore you would expect a reduced rate of limes disease um you know uh people encountering uh ticks with limes disease
and we'll kind of skip other deer diseases. Um so then ecosystem health. Um, previously we're going to have a really nice presentation talking about ecosystem health things. Um, but fundamentally deer are herbivores. So
that means that they browse on plants. And so the um the rate at which our forests can grow can be impacted by too many deer. And so um you know ideally we have in a healthy forest um plants are
able to equally compete at kind of unencumbered or at least with minimal selection. What can happen with too many deer is that deer preferentially browse some things like our oaks perhaps and they don't browse as much some of these
invasive species and that um creates this loss of biodiversity that a healthy biodiversity and the spread of invasive diseases. And then public feedback. So, this is kind of a tough one. Um, that image is where a farmer in a soybean field put a
um a small barrier to deer. And you can because of that little barrier, you can see just the browsing rate of the rest of his crops. Um, so it can be extremely significant. Um, and without that little explosure present, it would be really challenging for us to see. Um, but then
of course we have a really significant desire for what we'll call the resource. So people love deer. Um, myself included. Um, they're beautiful animals and we like to see them. So um, for as many problems as we have with them, hitting them with our vehicles, uh, tickborn diseases, you name it. Um, they
still um, kind of enthral people with their natural beauty. So that is certainly incorporated into this. Still moving along. So this kind of brings up these are all um things that we've identified as um you know essentially
social constraints to the number of deer. And so that's our definition for the social carrying capacity. Whereas what um we would currently the state that we would currently be in without human management is simply the essentially the ecological carrying
capacity or just the number of animals that the habitat can support. We can say from a theoretical basis right now that while there there is um human intervention in the system um we could say that for the most part we're um at you know uh some sort of stable carrying
capacity with the current system and so we're subtracting deer vehicle collisions we're subtracting some human uh hunter harvest perhaps in this area. Um but otherwise without a concentrated um you know effort um we're going to be just looking at the maximum number of
deer that um the habitat can support and so we'll look into this a little bit more. So um kind of discussed it a little bit but what factors limit deer population size? So um got a trying a new new graphic for for today. You guys
are the test audience for this one. So, um, you could think of, um, essentially our deer population, the number of deer on the landscape as the amount of water in a bucket. And so, at the bottom of the bucket, there's a leak. And that's the amount of, uh, deaths every year and immigration from the area. And then
entering flowing into the bucket is um, new deer being born and then deer uh, immigrating to um, whatever we we'll say Sparta Township. Um, now if you increase that birth rate, you're going to fill up the bucket a little bit more because the death rate hasn't increased. Now, if the
death rate increased or deer leave, then that um that fill line is going to go down and you're going to see less deer. So, these essentially um birth rate, immigration, death rate, immigration are essentially the four things that we
could plausibly um control um with um in terms of what a deer population might look like. And so if we were to take those four things and we were going to throw some ideas at the wall, these are the top four ideas that get thrown at the wall. So this is what we're going to
try to work through and see what makes sense out of these four things. Um what can we learn about these four things? So more or less we're going to be operating um in what my professional opinion is the order from uh least sensible option
to most sensible option. um if we are going to try to change the deer population um in an area. So um animal predators, this is a um a fun one. Um I particularly like that we're in Sparta Township where you guys
do have um abundant predator populations. Um, and I'm often presenting a lot of my presentations are in like coastal towns and in uh Bergen County a lot recently um where not all
of New Jersey's um uh predator diversity is present. So this is kind of an interesting um uh deviation from that. So the the perception um I'd say is twofold for animal predators. one is that the perception is that if we could
just release like let's say mountain lines or wolves then there's no human intervention at that point. It's handsoff. All we did was put something that used to be here back and then that's a hands-off approach. Um and it comes with that second sort of factor which is that historical factor which is
that you know naturally New Jersey did have mountain lines. Naturally New Jersey did have wolves. And so we messed up that balance. And so that's the solution um to to fix it. So it comes with increased wildlife diversity. Um
certainly we would have more animals if we um in this case uh reintroduced wolves or mountain lions which are the two ones we hear the most. Um and um you know theoretically after you release all these animals it's um it's self-
sustaining. Um, so now we'll get into a little bit more realistic of what it looks like, which is that it certainly is going to complicate the wildlife conflicts, which is why we're in the room. We're having wildlife conflicts and adding these species um will
complicate that. The um we have farms in the area. We have people with livestock in the area. Um and um I would say that um the third point with complex habitat requirements is probably the most important is that simply they would not
do well here. We had a mountain lion skirt by New Jersey and make it all the way from I believe it was North Dakota to Connecticut a number of years ago. It made it that far before it finally got hit by a car and died. So these large predators tend to be, especially cats,
large cats tend to be really bad with roads. They get excited. They see that squirrel on the other side of the road. They see that deer on the other side of the road, and they just can't resist. So um these large predators also just require very very large uh space, uh
home ranges, uh territories, um in this case. And so we can't really support that anymore. as much as it may seem nice to have them back, we really cannot support them anymore. So, um it's essentially off the table. It's obviously costly upfront, but it's more
so from uh really a humane um perspective that we would not want those animals back. And I will say we yes we lost mountain lions, we lost wolves, but now we have coyotes um which and we have um by um all of the available research
we have the densest black bear population um in um the world. So um in that northwest corridor that we are in so um so which they predate on the fawns. So, while we don't have that uh large predator that's consistently
hunting the adults, which would be mountain lions and wolves, we do have a lot of predators that uh will prey on the fawns or sick um adults. Okay. So, oh, and I forgot to mention if there's uh clarifying questions, I'm happy to
get interrupted, but if there's broad questions I like, I disagree with what you said or that just doesn't make sense with my worldview or something like that, um we'll take all those questions at the end. So trapping and relocating. This is another one that kind of feels good
because um it it often can feel good to have the least amount of human intervention. Um in this case it would be human intervention as in we don't see them die or we didn't kill them ourselves. Um but um and when I say high control, I
really mean that um the more money you throw at it, the more results you'll get. If you keep trapping deer and you put a lot of effort and money into that, you will continue to capture deer. And if you put them somewhere else that's far enough away, they'll have a hard time getting back. So that's what I mean
by control is that um you know, humans are capable of doing this if we wanted to. Um so the cons for this one are pretty big. One, we need the destination which is unavailable. Um the state outright and no state will outright allow the movement of these species. Um
we have a a disease cause called called chronic wasting disease. It's essentially mad cow disease for deer servid species. And so the movement of deer already is a huge issue for that. Um and then also there's not like within our state we can't move it across state
lines but within our state even there's there's nowhere that needs more deer. Um we are um we get deer complaints statewide. There's not a place that we don't get deer complaints. Um so unintended mortalities. This is a
little thematic for this um uh uh this subject trapping and relocating and as well as the birth control. Um because uh anytime you capture an animal, which we'll discuss why birth control involves capturing animals. Um
anytime you capture an animal, these animals are uh very high stress animals, deer are. And so um typically um depending on the method of capture um if they are in a high stress situation for any extended period of time, we're
talking you know past 5 minutes even. Um then we're looking at something called capture myopathy. And so um once they're released for up to 30 days, are we still okay? We're ahead. Apologies. See if we can back it up.
Okay, we're in the Oh, we have a little floater down there. That's all right. See? Well, okay. Sorry about that. Okay. So, we're still in the bottom right here for trapping and relocating capture myopathy. Deer can die up for up to 30 days after you
capture them and release them. So, um that also makes it difficult to study. Um we've seen rates do uh literature has cited 5 to 10% um at the high end for the unintended mortalities associated with capturing these high stress animals. Um disease transmission I kind
of just mentioned that and um of course it's costly. Um, so, uh, also with the unintended mortalities, um, it is an ethical question if you're moving an animal that lives in a certain home range, is familiar with where the food is, where the threats are, um, and
you're moving into an area that is unfamiliar with. Um, so that that's an ethical question. Um, again, it's it's not that there's not a decent chance that they'll die, it's just that you're not actively doing it. So, that's kind
of the distinguishing uh factor there. Okay. Yeah, I was very ahead on that. Okay. Sorry about that. Okay. So, birth control, very similar to trap and relocate. Um like the very
popular ideas if the goal is to not um actively kill the animal uh kill a deer. So, it's perceived as humane. Um, and again, if you throw money at it, you can get results out of it. Um, I will say
though, um, reduced with birth control in terms of the results that you can expect to see than trapping and relocating because the deer that you've performed the birth control on uh, remain there. So, and I'm still ahead a little bit. Okay. So, uh, birth control
generally can be categorized as management through attrition. So, um you are still waiting for the existing deer to die. You're just waiting for them to um get killed in some other way. So, it's um it could be old age, it could be disease, it could
get be getting hit by a car um in in this area. There there is legal hunting that occurs in the surrounding area. So, maybe they they get um you know harvested by a hunter. But if you want to reduce that population rate, you one
you are reducing the birth rate into the population, but you haven't actually touched the current population. So there is implicit lethality um with uh birth control. So um the the cost is pretty
high. I'll say as a comparison, um, when we're looking at like a highly managed lethal program, we're talking in the ballpark of like at most about $300 per animal. Um and so um that first one this
is a good study um if anyone um wants to research fertility control further. Uh the first study in the bottom right DNCola 2021 that's essentially the only authority on um the only literature available on the efficacy of fertility
control um that would have any relevance. So that's a good paper to become familiar with if you're serious about this methodology. Um it requires a very high annual treatment rate again because you are going to have um animals
immigrating into the population that weren't treated. Um and uh essentially modeling has shown that if you do not have um about 90% um of the females sterilized, you should
not expect um a uh any significant decline in the population within 10 years. So um as you approach that 90 to 95% of the females sterilized, um you will see slightly better results. But
again, this is much longer time scales because you're no longer removing the animal. Um, you are releasing the animal back out um and waiting for them to die. Um, and you're hoping that more deer in the surrounding area don't immigrate in. So, that's what really requires that
high annual treatment rate. So, let's see if I'm still tied up here. Um, so obviously, um, for those reasons, it takes high commitment. Um, and just, uh, real quick, um, so that we're all talking about the same thing, I just
want everyone to understand that essentially we're we're not talking about chemical fertility control whatsoever. Um, I'm behind on this one. Hopefully, I didn't double jump again. I don't know what that means.
Okay. Oh, okay. It will do what it wants to do. Um so um chemical fertility control we just talked about those issues where it's it's uh management through attrition. So you're waiting long time periods for the existing animals to
expire. Um you're fighting those immigration rates and you need to have a high a very high treatment rate about they they shoot for the contractors that do this um shoot for that 95% of the females sterilized. Now if you factor in
that it's a chemical doing it and not a surgical sterilization now you also are working with the efficacy rate of the drug. So um if even if you did treat all 95% of those dos with the um with the
drug each of them would be need to need to be treated twice and that's just to reduce their pregnancy rate below 50%. So really challenging odds to get chemical fertility control to work. And even then, you're still um it still would require you to capture the deer
and not just shoot it with a dart that falls out that administers the drug because you're putting a drug that could um really affect someone's life in an animal if they were to consume it and not know about it. So all these animals need to be tagged. Um, so there are a
lot of people um in New Jersey. Um, lately it's been about 40,000 deer annually um that are um hunted and consumed by people. Um, and so uh all these animals would need to be tagged so that they're sure
every year. No, it's it gets you um um it's a good question and I and I cannot claim to be an absolute expert on all of the different chemicals. We're not just talking about one when we're talking about this. This is like the best one.
Um, and I' I'd also clarify that I'm not an expert because nobody's doing this actively because it's not been found to be as effective as this surgical. That being said, my understanding from the literature that I've read is that it gets you a few years of whatever efficacy those two doses get you. Um, so
that's that's my understanding. It it probably Yeah. Yeah. Just like people uh our our hormones react differently to different drugs. Sure. I know you're trying to wait, but so that's probably drug.
You have to tag them. Yes. Yeah. Chronic wasting disease. Yeah, certainly. I will say uh New Jersey has been chronic wasting disease. Uh Megan Mills and um our staff uh hardly me I don't do much of this but um we test about uh what is it about uh
1100 deer? 1,200 deer we test a year um for chronic wasting disease. Um it's in Pennsylvania. It was in New York, they got rid of it. Um, but it's uh it's spreading um exponentially in Pennsylvania. So, currently we feel
strongly we don't have it. Um, but it would be um I I I would say it's going to change a lot probably um when when we do have chronic wasting disease in New Jersey. Um good question. Complicated question. Um so um everyone on board for
just what the the basics of why we're recommending against if you're interested in birth birth control, we're recommending against chemical fertility control. Okay, so just that reduced rate makes something that's already really tough even tougher. Um and I was just
describing that that's just a summary sentence. Um this is um I added that though um with that citation for that um surgical sterilization study um number one at the bottom where um like I mentioned the contractors themselves um
in their own papers they are advocating for surgical sterilization. So it's not just me as a you know state biologist who you know you might have a perception that I have bias about the information I'm sharing with you. This is the people that are advocating for this work as
well. Um, prefer the surgical sterilization if you're going to do fertility control. So, um, currently it's overctomies. Um, like I mentioned, it has those unintended consequences. A big one that's been getting better, I would say,
but still um in inconclusive if it's fully resolved, is there's been observed um in different types of surgical sterilization um uh an increase in deer vehicle collisions. And it's theorized that that's because um the deer are
still looking to mate. They just can't find mates that are interested with mating with them. And so there's increased mate searching behavior. And so that um increases those negative um you know the most likely time to hit a deer with your car is in the fall when
they're breeding. And this has been shown in various different ways to um potentially increase those rates. So um this is essentially just a word of caution about um see if we get it up um about where you get your information and
why it can be hard to get uh solid information about this. So, um, the simplest way I could say it is that, um, the government or entities that back a project of any sort, um,
have an incentive to make the public believe that they did a good job. So, um, they made the right decision. So, um, Staten Island has this really interesting, really complicated, um, surgical sterilization program that's been going on since, um, 2016 was the
first year, I believe. Um, and they're actually sterilizing males, not females. And there's no biologist that would recommend doing that, but they're doing it. Um, they made this claim in a press release that deer vehicle collisions have gone down because of those sterilizations, but they just the graph
that they made publicly available was just not easy to read. And so if you convert that graph that they made into something that's easy to read, you would find that um after they started their activities in that prior year um in 2016
they began the deer vehicle collisions actually went up 160%. um from that prior year. Um and it wasn't until they made that posting in um 20 uh 2020 um mind you that's uh
right before the rut starts when these activities increase as well the mate searching activities and that's when they were able to claim that they had this decrease in deer vehicle collisions. But if you look at the longer time scale it's misleading. So I'm not claiming that it's it's an inevitability. I don't think the
literature suggests that if you do birth control, it's an inevitability that more deer will get hit by cars. Um, I'm suggesting it's something to consider and that the literature is um not clear and there's reasons to um be cautious of
that. Again, sure. Sure. It's a great question. So, yeah. So they're born at 50% but then uh bucks have a harsher lifestyle. Um they're chasing the girls and they're fighting each other. So they have a higher death rate. So um the birth rate is the same
for males and females. But then the the males, they'll die at a faster rate because of sparring. They'll break their antlers. It'll give them a brain abscess. Um they'll get by a car chasing a dough. Um so um for that reason uh the
sex ratio is skewed typically towards females. Yeah, great question. Um I'll tackle as quick as I can. One the simplest answer, we could talk about a lot of different answers, but the simplest answer is that one buck will mate with many females.
And so if you have a handful remaining, so we already targeting that 95% if it were females, but that one male can breed with a lot of females during that long rut. So the rut extends from in New Jersey, it's midocctober um through um
there's a main rut that goes through November, most of November, and then there's a second um ruting period um in December. And so it gives them a lot of time to find a lot of doese's to breed with. So that's the biggest challenge. There's other challenges, but that's the biggest challenge if you were going to
pursue this with bucks. And that's why because once a dough is bred or if a dough can't be bred, she can't be bred. She's not having, you know, if she had an overacttomy, she's not having um fawns. Um it doesn't matter how many bucks try to mate with her. So that's essentially the principle. Does that
make sense? Okay. Yeah. So just um a buck will continue to breed and breed and breed. It does not matter how many does he already bred. if he um smells the hormones of a fertile um a deer and estrus um a dough and estrus, he will
continue to breed and breed and breed. So um you need to get every single dough or every single buck um in that area. Um and bucks will also travel um you know there's bucks that cross the Mississippi River and go 20 miles every year just to
breed and then go back. So, um, we're not in the Mississippi River, uh, basin or anything, but that's an example that I had on the top of my head. So, you're also dealing with the bucks that travel miles to breed in your area. Sure. So, is the effect of
sterilization, they're not smelling that, but that's the belief. Yes. Increased mate searching because they're not finding what they're looking for most in life, which is to breed. we we get jobs and stuff, but for them it's like, you know,
that time of year, they actually don't eat um the bucks um they've done studies uh on captive deer, and you could put the nicest best food in their pen um with a buck during the rut, and he will not touch the food. All he the biology
is strictly breeding during that period. So, we we can't really understand a lot of their stress levels, their um breeding drive. Um these are difficult things for us to relate to as people. Um so sorry I am going a little bit over. I
apologize for that. Um yeah sure yeah there's a lot Yeah. There's a lot of things to fulfill a person um in life. Um yeah it's a valid point.
It's a very valid point. If that's the most wrong thing I say, then I'm happy. Um, so then, you know, summarized some of the things that we already just discussed answering those questions. Um, it requires the capture of the deer. Um,
the long time scales, um, because you're waiting for that attrition to occur. You're waiting for the animals that you just released back out, they still have to die. Um, and then immigration becomes a real issue. So, um, again, it's complicated, but, um, we'll we'll just
simply say that, um, deer have been found to exhibit density dependent immigration. That just basically means that a deer will go, um, usually it's the in the first year of their life, they will go looking for a new place to live. Mother kicks them out and they go
on what's called foray and they go looking for a new place to live. And the doe's specifically, they're just looking for the least amount of deer competition. A buck, it seems to be very random how they distribute. Either way, when you slowly slowly reduce the deer
population with birth control, if the surrounding areas have a higher deer density than you do, then you're going to have that sink effect. That's what we would call it in the business. Um, does that make sense? just I know some some of it's a little um a lot to explain in
a short period of time but um so the implied lethality the attrition we covered um and uh for these reasons it's inefficient and um you can imagine how costly this is it involves veterinarians um there was a program in Ohio that had
a veterinarian volunteer to do the overcies so that cut down on the cost a little bit but it's still the first couple years still um it was $150,000 or so for that uh town. Um if anyone's interested in some of these citations, I
could share them with you. Um but I think they might have been on that previous slide. So that kind of leads us to the last option, some form of lethal management. Um and we're going to stay pretty vague about what type of lethal management we're actually talking about. Um we're
just going to discuss it as a a general alternative to the stuff we just discussed. So, um, a majority of the public does have a frame of reference for humans eating animals. That's where I can make this statement that has
general public support. Um, polling has shown that the general public is comfortable with sustenance hunting. Um, if it gets um, if you start talking about trophy hunting, it loses support. Obviously, we don't it's it's not something that's um, easy to understand.
Um, we want people to be utilizing that meat. So, if they're utilizing the meat, it has general public support. It's more efficient. Again, um, you don't have to capture it. Um, you essentially, as soon as a person makes contact with that animal, they're able to remove it. So,
that's what I mean by efficient. Um, high control, again, it's people doing it, so we have control over it. Um, sustainable, um, and inexpens inexpensive. Um, in some cases, some towns have management programs where they require a fee and they can actually
generate a little revenue on the program. In some cases, um, they will invest a lot back into the program. Um, and so perhaps that's where I get that like $300 top figure. It really rarely ever costs more than $300. And that's
when the town is paying for each deer to be donated. Um, usually they have a contractor doing the work for whatever reason. But in Sparta Township, I'd be pretty surprised if we started talking about contractors doing this. Um it's u um you know, there's there's open space.
There's larger properties. Um and the general public in this area is pretty familiar with hunting. Hopefully I'm still on the same I might have. No. Yep. I'm off. Um I'll just read it. Um maybe people read it
while I was talking. Um it requires uh land management coordination. So as do any of these um you you need buyin from your local land managers. So if there's like a preserve somewhere that doesn't want to do this um there will be a spot where um there's more deer breeding um
without um any human intervention. So that's just what I mean by requires some land management coordination. In a lot of cases private properties um are really important if there's a number of larger priv private properties that function as holdouts. um then it can
make it challenging for um the town to meet deer manage management goals strictly on open space properties because of all those other deer that are breeding um without human intervention. And obviously it lacks um animal rights
group support because you know that's that's kind of a a deal breaker for um some people that the uh Sure. Just want to mention 30 years ago started doing reservation and also when Mars started
doing its United States. Oh, the lethal management. Okay, that Yeah, it's very good. Okay, I'll I'll modify that to make it less generalizing. Nina Austin.
Yeah. Yeah. And it is worth uh discussing that. Um so and you're right that that's a that is a vague generalization that I should be more careful of. Um some animal rights groups are strictly like the humane society is is most strictly
looking for if there is lethal management that is done humanely. Um and so um hunting has been found to be um has has been um ruled to be if you want to say it that way by the humane society
as a humane way to euthanize an animal. So um so yes it not everyone who would consider themselves animal activists um would disagree with lethal management. Um thank you.
So, I think I just went significantly ahead. I'm not sure. Let me see. Okay, so we're going to breeze through this because I'm a little ahead. Um or behind. Um so, this is a study that just um looked at ways to reduce the deer
vehicle collisions. Um and without doing, this might become a problem on this screen. We'll see what happens. Um they looked at uh reducing deer vehicle collisions um and the different ways to do that. And long story short, we'll
just look at the top one. The other ones are worth for your town to consider to mitigate deer vehicle collisions. Um sorry, the lag is going to affect my flow on this slide. So you can see as we go down the list,
these are uh uh methods that have been found to be uh decreasingly effective or less less effective as we go down. So fencing being the most important, but really I have um one main point to get out of this once they
all load. So little thought experiment. If all we did was reduce deer vehicle collisions and we did nothing else to change the system system, what can we expect to also change? It's the population size would likely
increase. So, it is important for public safety reasons to consider all those options. Are there corridors that we can put a bridge over or a tunnel under um to reduce those conflicts? That's important. That could act that could help people. But if all you're doing is
saving deer's lives, you're going to have more deer and that could actually end up complicating things the next year when now there's a a higher number of deer. Um so it's important to consider especially for these areas where um deer vehicle collisions are occurring at high
rates and that's a very significant portion of the deer management that's occurring in an area. So something to consider. Let's see what Oh, goes on its own. Um, it's still going. Amazing.
Um, wonderful. Okay, so this is that underlying bullet. We'll see when this stops. The underlying bullet um is essentially my other um you know big thing to consider is that if you are excluding deer from
an important portion of their range with a fencing exposure. So let's say you have a preserve um that has um native plants that are really sensitive to deer browsing and the only management you do is to cut them off from that res from that area. Well, effectively you've
increased the deer density of the area surrounding that. So what you can expect is that all of those neighboring properties to experience increased browsing rates. So um so essentially the point is not that you shouldn't do that in small really sensitive areas that
have rare plants that you know require protection um immediate protection from the deer. That's a good idea. But if you're not reducing the deer population in some other way, you can expect those negative interactions just to be occurring in the area around it. And perhaps if you do it at any scale, it's
going to be happening at increased rates because you've cut them off from a portion of their range. That's amazing. We're still going. Um I haven't touched anything. Um and repellent, um essentially for the
most part, if you're talking about any significant deer population, it's usually not effective. Um it can be effective for some uh homeowners that are experiencing some level of uh deer issues in their garden. Um something to
consider but at scale not something we find to be effective. So hopefully it stays at that slide because I have backup slides after this. Um but that's my email. Sorry about some of the uh the technical difficulty. Um it did throw me off a little bit. Um but um you know that's the presentation. If anyone has
any questions, um it's really up to your um you know uh council and uh committee for as as long as you want to discuss. We'll be happy to discuss if there's any questions. Can you talk into the mic? Yeah. Just so it can be
heard. Yeah. Gotcha. Apologies for that. Um if anyone um do you think there's any of those questions from earlier that were my answers might be unclear without context. So I did have a question. Do we because
you said that you do keep track of how much deer there are and what our population of deer up here looks like. Do we have a deer problem? Like what are those stats? like how many deer are we talking in Sparta Township or Sussex County?
Yeah. So, we actually um we do not have a reliable like municipality by municipality model. Um Megan's going to bring up what your harvest is, correct? Um for the municipality. So, we'll get you a number of how many deer were harvested and we could make some really
vague interpretations off of that uh harvest. Um, but essentially what I would say is that unless you do something like a a deer a drone survey to count locally, um, it's a big question mark. So, a little bit more
detail beyond that is that our statewide model, it relies on hunter harvest data. Um, essentially we take those deer that were harvested, we know the age, roughly um the sex of the animal, we plop that back into the population, and it's called a a reconstruction model. um a
population reconstruction model and then we can get an idea of what it looked like before the hunting season started. But that's only the hunted population. So if you have significant areas in your town, which I'm here so it sounds like you do, our model actually can't handle that. So there's a few organizations um
that perform those drone surveys. Um and I can share them with your uh town's leadership afterwards. And we actually just um finished up a second grant cycle where we provided some funding um for towns to do that. So potentially next year there'll be another opportunity.
But um usually it's for a town this size. I would be pretty surprised if some of these groups that do it like uh universities or nonprofits if it would cost more than a few thousand dollars to do a one-time drone survey. So in total,
oh here, in total in Sparta this year, 83 antlerless deer were taken. So antlerless is your doe's, button bucks, anything with antlers less than 3 in or anything with antlers that were broken
off. So it's not specifically just females, but that's the pot like that's the number that the the doe's do get lumped into. And then 78 um antler males. So that's any buck that has at least one side that's three inches or or
larger. So it was a total of 161 deer. In total for Sussex County this year, um 3,735 deer were taken. So then how does that compare to like is
is that a lot of deer? No, that's a good question. It's a very good question. Um, do you do you happen to know off the top of your head uh what the square mileage of the uh municipality is? Sorry. Something that I I could have looked up prior. Yeah. 10 miles by 13 miles, I believe.
Interesting. Okay. So, you know, roughly then, um, forgive my in front of a crowd math, which is supposed to be forbidden. Um, that sounds like you're harvesting about 20 uh, if I did my math right, about 20 deer per square mile or so. No.
Oh, okay. Okay. So, it's about two deer per square mile. Yeah. So, okay. Thank you. Missing a digit. Thank you. Was not never never supposed to be doing math in front of a crowd. Um the uh Yeah. So then that would be a fairly low removal rate because in in areas of New Jersey
um which New Jersey has very good deer habitat, very productive deer habitat. Um it's not uncommon for northern central New Jersey to have deer densities between 60 to 100 deer per square mile. So, uh, an important rate
for land managers to remember is that deer have a reproductive capability annually, um, minus the death rate, but potential growth rate of 30% about if we were just going to throw a ballpark. So if you're only removing 2% or uh two
deer per square mile um and we pretend like you know you might have that 70 deer per square mile which is not uncommon in North Jersey then you would not be meeting that 30% threshold to start reducing the population. So those
are um not things that you could take to the bank. you know, but you just saw me get the math wrong, but um that's a ballpark estimate that I would say that um if you wanted to see a reduction, you'd probably I my professional opinion would be that you'd probably need to be
harvesting more than that. So, Sussex County was also the second highest harvesting county in the entire state. Um the only one that passed it was um and always like the top of
the five. So, but that's the second highest county this year. So, it'll only take 161 deer when the rest of the county is taking way more. I just um double check that's not the square miles. Okay,
it's 38 square miles. Okay, so we're at a more reasonable level. Again, this is fun exercise for everybody here. Um I'm along for the ride with you. Um but um yeah, my professional opinion would be that we
are at the lower end of what you would probably want for um that might suffice for maintenance depending on where we are in the expected range which it's unmeasured so we can't know. Um but um that's why I would recommend that in the
next few years if you're serious about the deer population um it would be a good idea to do that density survey. That being said, um I I think what you have going for you is that you do have not an insignificant amount of deer being harvested in your township. Most
of our presentations are to these towns that have nothing. They banned hunting. Um it's not occurring on private property. And so you are already are in a better situation because we can add that to the deer vehicle collisions, which isn't a good thing, but those are
removing deer as well. So um you know it things could be worse. um based on that rate that we know about currently. Um but again, I'm I'm simply speculating based on what I know for surrounding areas. I think the other important thing to take considering into consideration when
answering that question as a whole, it doesn't matter like whether it's, you know, Sussex County, whether it's Ocean County, answering that question really comes down to what are you and your constituents happy with? If like we have some there's a 55 and over community in
South Jersey that comes up all the time because there's so many people who live there that love to garden and they can't have a garden because it's constantly being demolished. So that comes into that cultural caring capacity versus a natural carrying capacity. Nature can handle way more because if there you
know everybody keeps planting their hostas year after year you're just planting deer salad at that point. But if your gardens are happen but driving up here, I can tell you like I started paying attention the closer I got. The deer browse is crazy up here. Some of the spots I'm like, okay. So like that's
a problem just because landscaping is expensive. We have people who live in HOAs who are like you need to get rid of the deer. I keep getting fined by my HOA because my landscaping isn't up to par, but they can't keep their landscaping nice when the deer are constantly taking it out.
But if you're not having those problems, then maybe you can handle a few more deer. But I mean, once you have a program up and going, it's a little bit easier to have a program where you're just maintaining versus trying to have a program where you're starting to reduce
the population and then you're trying to maintain it. if you can start it now when you're at a level where you're happy and it's a maintenance thing versus trying to get everybody on board to reduce the population. I don't think everybody is happy which
is why we reached out. We did have folks saying so. So then then I would say the cultural caring capacity is probably reaching its max. So you're going to want to bring it down a little bit. And it's easier to start when there's less deer than when there's more deer. and with more development and everything and
losing property and it's just forcing everybody in together. So, it does seem here also that we have a specific part of town that has a lot more deer than other parts of town. So, I was really kind of curious about your immigrating and immigrating thing.
I could I could speak to that. So, I was actually thinking of that when when she was talking is that so you have areas of the of the town that are being hunted. We know that. Um, but on a theor theoretical level at least, we can imagine that that would not be occurring
evenly across your township. So, there's probably more suburban areas with smaller property sizes that the deer are doing just fine. Um, and that there's less um access for um for hunters to get to them. So the um and also a
confounding issue with that is that deer um in suburbia can have extremely small home ranges which helps to increase that density. So in suburbia studies have found that they have a home range of just a tenth of a square mile. So
whereas out in um you know let's let's say like Stoke State Forest or something like that they might have a home range of a couple miles or something like that. So, um, the deer in suburbia don't even necessarily ever encounter a hunter throughout the entire year or or cross
onto a property that they could be harvested on. So, that confounds that localized issue where some people would experience um very different numbers of deer than others even within your municipality. Yeah. So, I was going to uh say that
there's a a homeowners association with about 2,700 homes and it's got a bunch of waterways and uh a lot of boarded uh forested common areas in between very
small lots which are well gardened. Um and I think that's kind of what we're talking about these high concentration so it's not an even distribution. But I wanted to ask um in regards to deer,
like we see with other species like goats, maybe they can be, this is going to sound bad, they can be put to work, right? Uh goats can graze areas. Aside from looking pretty um and just kind of being something that maybe we grew up
with, is there is there like a way to retask deer through greenways into more beneficial uses within communities? Yeah. Um that it's a it's a great question. Um they are at the end of the
day wild animals and they will do what they want to do. So you could develop a complex network of fencing and force them into those areas, but all of you know I I imagine there's people in this
room that um were also here for like the Sparta Mountain discussions. Um you have a lot of open green space that in a lot of cases is doing really well. Some places that Megan saw maybe not doing as well because of deer. Um but some places
are probably doing quite well. Um, and concentrating those deer elsewhere, um, is going to one, I would I would argue just right off the bat, it doesn't sound humane to me. Um, but, uh, it would probably, you know, really concentrate,
um, uh, the the negative consequences because in those areas that you moved them from, you have a deer density of zero, but you just doubled it for or whatever it is for the for the other areas of the town. So, um, that that sounds essentially impossible to me as a
deer biologist. Yeah. The fencing to do Sorry, the fencing to do that would also cost an astronomical amount of money because it had like at a minimum it would need to be 8 feet tall. I was I don't think I said fencing. I was just No, but like if if there's if there
isn't fencing, like that's pretty much going to be the only thing that's going to keep them from going where they want to go because if there's food, they're going to go there. It's not like you can really they're they're very like they're home buddies. They're home
bodies and they have a small range. Yeah. So, I was simply, you've already touched on uh that we can't cross state lines with them and they're they're less than a tenth of a mile range. And I can speak to, you know, 12 to 15 deer every single
night in a/4 acre, halfacre parcel. And because there's a lake, there's a forest, there's a lake, a forest, and there's a bunch of plantings in between. So, I was simply asking uh their natural food source. Is there something that we
would, you know, kind of remind them, hey, this is something other than the hostas or whatever to entice them over to those areas, not not fence them, not out west some, sorry, out west, like there are some places
that have um like ranches that are the sizes of counties in New Jersey. So for them, they plant what what we call food plots because that pulls them away from like their agricult. It's like basically a farm field that's planted specifically for the deer. So if you guys wanted to
invest in that, like you you could probably try it. I I don't know you'll pro. So all you're going to do is offer more. It's it's you're never going to you're never going to distract them so much. Um, at best you will, uh, increase the
food availability and instead of having two do two fawns per year, you're going to see three fawns per year. Um, and there's just going to be more deer. And those deer are going to continue that competition cycle and without intervention on the population scale. It's the same thing as just reducing the
number of deer vehicle collisions. You know, that bucket needs to be balanced somehow. The other if we're talking about like repurposing the deer, we have we work with a um group called Hunters Helping the Hungry. So like if
you guys started a lethal management, you could feed people in your community a very lean, very high protein meat essentially for the cost of whatever you know it took for the hunter to get involved. And then if you guys decided
to do like a permit fee, like that could cover those things. So it's kind of on the the lethal like the legal the lethal side of things, but it's also giving back to your community and by feeding people who don't have access to food and
hunter helping the hungry. I don't remember how many. It's we donate so much venison at least a thou at least a thousand deer every year um in the ballpark um are donated. So we have that um some of those come from
special permits that we issue as well. Um so it's not just from that like 40,000 number that I gave you previously. Um but I I would say um a thousand deer per year being donated statewide is a rough ballpark to walk away with.
um what would you say the next step would be now that we've got our options laid out and could start those discussions. Right. So um well I I'll say that um simply your next step is to start talking specifics because like before
Megan and I just heard like a couple minutes ago, we didn't even realize that it's a specific um homeowners association um part of the town. So those are those types of questions. Um where are the deer problems? Where are
our deer not problems? Um those types of questions are integral to creating a deer management plan. And so we would provide as much consultation as you guys would need in developing a deer management plan. Um, and that would include that if you went against what
should be fairly obvious is not a recommendation to do some fertility control, we would still work with you to try to come up with the best possible plan. We just might not back it. Um, but we and we would be telling you why it's not a good idea. Um, but um, essentially
what I'm trying to convey is that we're here to help with that and it's just going to be talking specifics. What are the areas that um, require management? What are the areas that don't require more management? Um and um what is the municipality looking to invest if anything? Um because a lot of cases you
don't have to. Um and what is the like um what is the homeowner association uh what is their interest in actually participating in this? Because if you don't have participation from the homeowners association leadership um and community, then it's going to be like
that 55 plus community that we speak at every year. Um, and half the half of them rightfully so, they love the deer. Um, and the other half of them then but don't want them touched and the other half of them want to be able to walk outside without stepping in deer poop, etc. So, um, so I'd say that's an
important process. So, um, we'll come back and and speak again for the homeowners association. um you know whatever you need have uh meetings with you guys to help show you this is what this similar municipality does in this case um and what has worked um so you
know we can provide essentially consultation for you Absolutely. Continuing stick. See if there's questions. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I thought um from here.
I'm just gonna introduce him, but maybe you guys would like to come in. Make sure you speak into the mic. You're being I can introduce him from here, right? Yeah. Already started.
Well, we'll dispel that notion pretty quickly. I'm doing introductions. Speaking come and sit down, please. Okay. Is there an actual video of this then? Yes, this is live streaming.
Where's the camera? It's right up there. Oh, yeah. So, we live stream all our meetings. Um, sorry I mentioned that at the beginning. Um we uh post it on YouTube so you can watch yourself later and we actually do have a lot of folks
who um watch it afterwards. I mean average like at least 50 sometimes more sometime. I know fact a lot of people we're going to watch afterwards for this and we do we've done a lot of presentations this year in particular and folks really do enjoy it and watch
them afterwards. Um, so now I'm just going to briefly say we're going on to the agenda item ecological and wildlife impacts of the DP's forest stewardship plan. We have Sharon and Emil here and Julia, you're going to introduce them. All right. Thank you so much.
Good evening. I'm Julia Summers. I'm the executive director of the New Jersey Highlands Coalition and I just wanted to remind everybody how this came about. Um Sharon Pinger and Dave Golden were here I think back in April and made a presentation about Sparta Mountain.
There wasn't an opportunity for anybody else to speak at the time and so the council invited us to come and uh I know the mayor can represent everybody all by himself but I do hope that other members of the council take the opportunity to listen to this evening because there is
a lot of information to share and we believe there's was a lot of misinformation shared back in April. Um I have provided a little packet of some information for each of you. Um, I just wanted to I'm you've no well maybe you do have an idea how much information
there is out there, but there is a ton of information out there and I just wanted to direct you to some of it before we go I introduce the guest speakers. Um, if you go to the New Jersey Highlands Coalition's website, there is a section on forestry where
there is a huge collection of peer-reviewed scientific papers on the issue of healthy forests and it is a one of them is going to be talked about by Sylvia later on. Um, but which is on that website. Um, but it's uh a
fantastic resource for any of you who can't sleep at night and want to read more about healthy forests. Um, there is also on the uh on this the second uh blue highlighted link is to YouTube
where there is a 10-minute video made by uh Elliot Ruger highlighting Sylvia Salon and Sharon Wander visiting um a recent cut two year ago cut on Sparta Mountain. Um there have been cuts going
on each year now since about 2017. Uh is it 2017? That's this plan. There's cuts from 20. Yes. But uh it's really startling what the video shows. Um it shows tremendous
deer brows. Um because the the forest has been opened up. Deer are edge dwellers and uh we've been creating edge wherever we cut punch holes in in Sparta Mountain. not just in the area where the cut has taken place but in getting
access to the cut as well because we have widened old trails and made them into u wide enough for the trucks to get in and out. Um so these actually are not 10 10 acre cuts. They're huge cuts um and holes that we're punching in the
forest. But you will see um on that the vi the video um and uh there was in fact a suggestion that there was video taken from elsewhere that the video uh was not an accurate representation of what has
happened at that one particular cut on Sparta Mountain. In order to prove that that was inaccurate, we were able to show exactly where all the footage was taken and map it because GoPros do that. um GoPros Go GoPros map where you
videotape and we were able to show that it was all done right there. Um the view video has 39 3,967 views at this time. Um so there's a lot of interest in it and uh we do recommend
you take it. Um and then with it there is a link to something called before and after timber stand improvement which is astonishingly similar to what is happening on Sparta Mountain. Um but before and after treatment timber stand
improvement was done by a company that wanted to create deer habitat. Um so uh I don't think that's what we're supposed to be doing on Spiderman. The other thing that I gave you in that packet um is there was a suggestion that or a
claim that the Highlands Council supports what is going on on Sparta Mountain. So I have given you the most recent comments from the Highlands Council which very clearly state they do not support the logging that is going on right now on Sparta by the Division of
Fish and Wildlife. Um, so, uh, that said, the real highlight of today is to introduce you to two ecologists who are both members of the New Jersey Highlands Coalition's Natural Heritage Committee. Dr. Sharon Wander, who is going to speak
first, and then Dr. Amil DeVito. Um, they are both highly respected in the state of New Jersey for their areas of expertise. Um but they will introduce themselves to you and we are thrilled to have them. Um they are great experts. So
take advantage and ask all the questions of the that you you can think of. Wonderful. Thank you so much Sharon. Okay. Can you hear me? Go ahead and we can pull it closer a little bit. Yeah. There you go. That better little bit more. Sorry. Better.
I can hear. Okay. Okay. Is it showing up on the lower? Is it on? I don't know. Go ahead. How's that? Yep. Better. Okay. Thank you. Okay. I am Sharon Wanderer. Um I have a
PhD in ecology from Rutgers University. I study the breeding biology of the oven bird, which is one of our common forest breeding bird species. Uh, and I've been a self-employed environmental consultant um, since 1985
and for decades beyond a very active observer of New Jersey wildlife, particularly birds and butterflies. Um, we're really pleased to be able to be here tonight to present an alternative viewpoint uh to the information you received from Sharon
Pettinger and uh David Golden regarding the forest management on Sparta Mountain. Um, we really feel that their program is misguided, is unnecessary,
and that the information they've provided to support it is misleading and incomplete. And I'll elaborate on that. Now, many people recently have become aware of the Cornell study, perhaps. I hope some of you are aware that
documented a catastrophic decline in the number of North American birds of some 30 billion birds since 1970. Definitely a shocking number that should alarm us all. and Division of Fish and
Wildlife has been involved in habitat management for wildlife and birds since long before that and we support their efforts to uh provide habitat for birds. We just feel that the particular program on Sparta Mountain and in some other
wildlife management areas involving logging to provide certain habitat is um improper. Um why do we feel that it's unnecessary to log on Sparta Mountain? First of all,
the um uh the logging is being done for a particular suite of birds, namely what are called young forest species. Uh these are birds that breed in areas uh with saffling size trees, not a closed
canopy, usually a dense shrub layer, some openings with um herbaceous plants. Uh so they do not need a uh a forest canopy and in the past uh abandoned farmland provided such habitat forest
edges hedge etc uh and various kinds of natural disturbances like fires and storms. Well, the division is now claiming that there's just not enough disturbance anymore to provide the openings and edge habitat that these
species need and therefore they have to provide it by logging 10 and 20 acre plots on Sparta Mountain. We feel this is not true. Our forests are experiencing extensive wildfires. Uh I never remember hearing
about fires in the highlands, but we've had several in the past few years. Uh there are storms like Sandy, which did extensive damage in the highlands. We now have new pathogens and and insect um outbreaks like emerald ashbor and uh
beach leaf disease. So our forests have plenty of disturbance going on. Uh and we feel in fact we visited a burned area this past uh spring. The members of the natural heritage committee uh a
burned area in the New York watershed and we uh encountered many young forest bird species apparently um happily using these naturally provided openings from a fire. you didn't and and that
disturbance did not include uh the various soil disturbances and um uh access roads and all kinds of disturbances that logging inevitably brings. So natural disturbance is doing
just a fine job in the highlands. uh another reason that this kind of management is unnecessary uh is that they are f as I mentioned they're focusing on young forest bird species concerned about the decline of
these species well it's important to note that the decline they're talking about started it has a baseline from about the 1960s there really weren't any bird populations studies before that. Uh but
in th in those years um in particular the the US breeding bird survey started and that's a longunning program of the federal government um that does provide bird population information. So that's
that's the timeline for when the decline has been measured. But at that time New Jersey had a lot more young forest habitat. uh and basically derived from the fact that we had a lot of abandoned
farmland. Um in the primeval state before human beings got here, New Jersey was almost entirely covered with mature forest. Um and there were of course still natural disturbances. Uh when human beings got
here, particularly European colonists, they started cutting down the forest for agricultural land and for settlements. And New Jersey ended up with a huge amount of open space uh I nonforested space. So at that time um when it was
forested populations of these young forest species were very very low compared to what they would have been in the 1960s when we had a maximum amount amount of open space. So we don't feel that it's necessary to log Sparta
Mountain uh to try and achieve the population the artificially high population numbers of these birds from say the 1960s. It's kind of a a drastic um approach for
a problem and it may not exist. Another issue is that why is the division cutting forest on public land when they could be growing young forest on the thousands of acres of wildlife
management area open fields that they already own. They could grow young forest on these fields. They could cut it regularly to keep the same amount of area in young forest over and over again. Um so we've
never gotten an answer to that question. Uh instead they prefer to cut mature forest that provides habitat for equally deserving suite of forest breeding bird species including endangered and threatened species like um red
shouldered hawk and bred owl for example. So we don't believe that um this cutting is necessary. We furthermore believe that the information they're providing to support ongoing support for these
programs is incomplete and it's misleading. Why so? Well, they like to um emphasize the number of young forest bird species that they're seeing on
their managed plots. Now, it sounds very impressive, the number of species. However, um we don't know how this we don't know the methodology by which they're observing these birds. Um
are they going out and just a typical way to census birds is to listen for singing males. However, that and that may be what they're doing. We don't know because they won't tell us. Um, but the problem with that is if you go out on a forest
plot or a logged plot and you hear a towi singing, um, that doesn't tell you very much. Birds are very mobile uh, critters and he could be just passing through. He may have come in there, he's singing for a day or two trying to find a mate and if
he doesn't find a mate, he moves on. So his presence there is biologically meaningless. um they the by implication uh they seem to be reporting um breeding birds, but we don't know that. It takes
a lot of work to confirm breeding by birds. You have to be out there looking for nests, looking for adults carrying food for young, looking for recently fledged young. There's a whole suite of uh criteria by which uh
breeding can be confirmed that was for example used by the New Jersey breeding bird survey that was run by New Jersey Ottabbon many decades ago. Um we have no idea whether they're following those
protocols. So we definitely feel that the information they're providing, the documentation is incomplete and is potentially misleading as to whether their logging program is actually effective.
Uh even if it were true, should Sparta Mountain be managed in this way for just for a particular suite of bird species? Sparta Mountain has its own suite of bird species. equally deserving, equally declining that as I mentioned includes
threatened and endangered species. Uh and yet we are sacrificing all the benefits of the closed canopy forest with the wildlife habitat, water resource protection, um biodiversity,
um carbon storage, uh for a program of logging that we feel is unnecessary and does not have proven results. And I will let Emil take it from there. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Sharon. Hi, my name is Devito.
Emil, I'm gonna ask Thank you. Thank you, doctor. Hi, my name is Amile Dvito. I'm a uh an ecologist also. I uh walked in these forests in the 1970s when I was an
undergraduate at Ruckers University uh on our field courses, measuring the trees, measuring the shrubs, measuring the understory. I actually remember what a forest looked like 45 years ago and they look nothing like that today. Um,
and the reason is the deer. I'll get back to the deer in a little while. There's no place in New Jersey that's not being impacted by deer. There are cedar swamps in the middle of the densest far part of the pine baronss that can't regrow because the deer eat every Atlantic white cedar that tries to grow. In fact, I can show you
photographs where an Atlantic white cedar swamp was cut down in the 1980s and the only place that a cedar tree has regrown is inside the fence that was put up as an ecological experiment and nowhere else. Um, there similar
experiments all over the state of New Jersey that have been running for 30 or 40 years. There's been data collected by Jay Kelly from Raron Valley College going back and using the same methodology as Rutgers University scientists did in the 1940s and 50s and
60s going back to the same forest plots here in Sussex County in central New Jersey and and in northern and central New Jersey and showing that beyond the shadow of a doubt there aren't enough seedlings and saplings surviving into
this age class of four and five and 10 foot call sapling trees in order to replace the next generation of trees as these disturbances occur that Sharon was Sharon was all alluding to natural and unnatural disturbances.
Um the trees that are replacing uh in the light gaps and even in the forest understory are the trees that deer don't eat, birches and maples. And um it's really unfortunate that the science of ecology is being ignored by
the forestry community. The forestry community has come up with the idea that we have to chop down the oak forest to regenerate oak forests. And the reason is because of the deer. If there were light gap these light gaps are
happening, insects, storms, fires, you name it. um the disturbances are happening and the oaks and the hickories can't grow because the deer eat them and that's happening everywhere in New Jersey. There's a lack of seedlings and
saplings of the next generation of of our uh forest species that are preferred by deer and there's volumes of publications and research and data that proves that. So, but we're not really here to talk about deer. I mean, the deer are a problem everywhere. They need
to be reduced. There are a whole bunch of things that could be done. Deer could actually be made a commodity so that they actually farmers could get depradation permits and actually sell that venison instead of having to bury it and destroy it. Um all sorts of
things that could be done in order to help uh take off the pressure on our forests and and because we're living in the dark ages when it comes to deer management. Um but I don't want to talk about that anymore. What what I want to talk about are the forests. So Sparta
Mountain is a forest that has never been agriculture. That's really important. We have two kinds of forests in northern New Jersey. We have post agricultural forests and those are about half of the forests. Farms that were farms in the 17 and 1800s, even into the 1900s, and then
they were abandoned with the industrial revolution. People flocking back to the cities and those farms grew up into forests. All those soils have been altered and altered in a very terrible way in that the forests that are on post agricultural soils have very low
biodiversity in the understory. They lack native shrubs. They lack native herbaceous plants. The first generation of trees that came up when all those agricultural lands were abandoned were oaks and hickories and maples and sassifras and sun-loving species that
that did just fine. when those farms were abandoned. But unfortunately, those disturbed soils don't support a far healthy forest understory with a diversity of shrubs and herbaceous plants and and those postaggricultural forests have are the ones that are the
most heavily invaded by invasive species because of the soil that has been changed because of past agriculture. On the other hand, places like Sparta Mountain on the more rocky slopes and hilltops and places that were never plowed, maybe only grazed. I mean, don't
get me wrong, all the forests were cut over many times, right? But but in and on the hillsides, on the on the ridgetops, on certain slopes, the forests, although they were cut over many times, they were never plowed. The soil was never disturbed. They may have
been extensively grazed, but the soils were never turned over. And so those soils still exhibit the same soil structure that they had for thousands of years and they support native species. They're more nutrient poor. Um they have uh more a they're a lower pH which means
they're more acidic and and they um and they support native species. So it's, you know, people think that you have to enrich soil if you want to restore a forest. Well, actually that's the worst thing you can do because all you do is you invite invasive species.
Agricultural soil is an enemy of the forest. Forest soils are not rich. They have a low pH and and uh they support our native species and they support the fungi that allow all the native species to capture nutrients and trade nutrients
back and forth underneath the soil. Right? the microisal fungi that stretch for hundreds of feet, sometimes miles, trade all the nutrients and allow the trees to communicate with one another and those are in those undisturbed soils. So, it's really really uh playing
with f not I don't want to say playing with fire because fire can be a good thing. It's uh it's playing roulette to be going in and logging these forests with dirty equipment that's carrying invasive species from one place to another that's carrying pathogens from
one place to another. You know, we have species coming from all over the world and we have people transporting those species and their trucks and equipment and and we could even be transporting pathogens that would wipe out amphibians
or reptiles or or causing untold damage by going to these forests with logging projects. We just because we can't you can't see these things. You can't see these passengers. You don't know if you have them on your vehicles. and we just never know when we're going to uh cause an event. Just like we don't want to see
chronic wasting disease come to the deer in New Jersey, we also don't want to see loggers transporting pathogens into our forest that have never been agriculture. So, we have all these problems that we have to worry about. And here we are uh getting subsidies from the National
Forest Service and from other government agencies that are simply jobs creation programs. They're not trying to manage for natural resources. They're simply jobs creation programs so that people can write forestry plans, enact forestry plans, get timber to the to the lumber
mills, get firewood, and provide these people benefits, which is not what we need on these highly the most they're they're not pristine. There's nothing pristine anymore. But these are the most pristine forests that we have. and we shouldn't play be playing Russian roulette with them, making logging
roads, letting invasive species move in and and causing untold damage that we will never be able to reverse. Um, now Sharon mentioned uh fires. So, you know, Native Americans managed with fires. They created all sorts of habitat by
managing judiciously with fires to increase food supplies or create certain situations. And and excuse me and we're seeing that when and we see this in the New Jersey pine barons that fires can be incredibly beneficial in
creating these young early successional habitats that these pioneer species can go to. And we saw it in the Newark wershed with the fire that happened a couple years ago up above Route 23. And we visited that site and many of the target species are in that place that
burned. So with with careful planning and prescribed burning and and habitat management with fire, we can accomplish these same goals for these same species, these target species of young fire species without having to do any damage.
Um and and so we would actually support any kind of a plan which would manage habitat without removing wood. There's no reason to be removing wood from our forest. The even when there's a forest fire or if we were to go in and
judiciously girdle some trees to to uh allow for some sunlight to come in to create these habitats for rare species like bog turtles and wood turtles and some of these early successional birds. That wood takes decades to rot and be
turned into uh carbon dioxide, you know, through fungal activity and go up into the atmosphere. It it stays on the site for a tremendously long time. And also u you're not uh removing the often the foresters will tell you that oh if we do
logging projects we take the tree and it gets put into a building. Well, that's just ridiculous. The trees in New Jersey, a few of them get put into something that is a long-term storage. Most of them are burned for firewood. All the roots die, all the branches die and are chipped and and and by Christmas
time, they're already up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. So, the numbers are not there, right? We need to sequester our carbon in these forests. We need to do judicious habitat management without rem removing the wood. that's the lifeblood of all of the
species and all of the biodiversity in the forest. And there are uh there's a paper uh which is very important. Um and you have in your package a a a u a summary of that paper. It's by Kelllet
and it's a 2023 paper and the title of it is forest clearing to create early successional habitats questionable benefits significant costs and it goes through many of the reasons that Sharon and I also spoke of but but a a bunch of others and this summary is five pages
long. It's been put together by one of the folks in the audience tonight. Uh Ken, what's your last name? It just slipped out of my head. Ken Ken Dolski. And it's a spectacular summary of that paper and you should read it and become familiar with the
with what's in it. Um, so let me see. I think I've said everything I want. Oh, I've got a couple more things I want to say. So, we could be managing for these early successional species on these abandoned farm fields that are owned by the Department of Environmental
Protection. Now, uh, the some of the species that would be could be we could be managing for, it's not easy. I'm not saying it's easy. And the people of New Jersey, you know, should be willing to pay for some of these things. Taking old abandoned farm fields that are coming up in Russian olive and getting rid of the Russian
olive with with forestry equipment and planting native species. uh making sure that we can control the deer through fencing or through targeted uh hunting programs and getting the food to the people who need protein. And we could be
creating early successional habitats on these thousands of acres owned by the D that are right now leased to farmers. And what those farmers are doing are planting Roundup Ready soybeans and corn, basically poisonous fields where nothing can live. Right now, I will say
the Division of Fish and Wildlife has tried to actually enlist some organic farmers or at least low chemical farmers on some of these places. It's hard to get people to find people who want to do that because uh, you know, the farming community in New Jersey is still
hellbent on all the typical Roundup Ready, chemical laden uh uh practices, but that should not be allowed on public land, right? We should not be poisoning our public land that was paid for with Greenacres money with all of these horrible chemical practices. You and
everybody in this room paid to buy those public lands with Greenacres money and here they are being used for Roundup Ready crops. It's it's abominable. It's the only word for it. Um, now we actually had the the uh Senator
Smith try to revise the leases, the farmland leases on state lands and say, "Okay, let's give them a couple of years to get different seed sources and plant different crops and by 2025, let's have the farmers on our state lands not be able to use neonicotenomides, which are
killing all the insects, and Roundup Ready crops." And they actually approved that at the state house commission. And then without a public meeting, that approval was overturned when somebody in the farm lobby heard about it. And
without a public meeting, that that clause that Senator Smith wanted in the leases was removed, which is probably illegal. I mean, I'm not a lawyer and I didn't have the money to, you know, sue the state house commission, but those are the kind of things that happen and that's what's happening on our public
lands. bad decisions, unjustifiable, abominable things that need to stop and they need to stop soon. So, that's just one example of that. Um, we talked about carbon sequestration. Oh, one last thing I want to mention.
Um, many of the birds that are being managed for on Sparta Mountain, what I like to say is they're the birds that I go see when I bring my leaves to the South Planefield dump. Okay? Because when I go to the South Planefield dump, it's edge habitat on the edge of the dismal swamp. There are ball fields and
scattered uh willow trees and ditches uh that drain into the bound brook and piles of uh compost and scattered hedros. And I see many of the species that are supposedly target species at
Sparta Mountain because they're edge species, right? They're species that have uh uh fairly generalized habitat requirements and they don't need to be managed for in the middle of a gigantic closed canopy forest. We can be managing
for those species at the edges of farm fields on all of our other public lands with some judicious and wellthoughtout habitat management plans. And yes, they might be a little bit costly, but it's, you know, that's why in New Jersey, we
have greenacres funding and greenacres stewardship funding and open space trust funding to do the right thing, not to make silly decisions because of expediency and because federal agencies are trying to shove those practices down our throat. Thank you. Are you willing to take some questions?
Absolutely. Okay. Um I Does anybody else want to start? Oh, I don't need to start. I was I can go with I have a list. Okay, go ahead. Oh, so I just want to read back kind of what I heard. Um because I like I like a
lot of what you two said. I appreciate it. Um so it sounds like uh the management is again kind of humans dabbling in what nature can do all by itself and what it has been successfully doing for eons.
Um, it sounds like I I will disagree that the land has never been plowed because glaciation, but say that that some of these areas are kind of post-glacial um archives of soil horizons, mic
representing all this micological diversity. Um, perfect habitat for native species, oaks, hickories, low pH. Um, and that, you know, maybe we're focused too much on uh looking up here and listening to the
birds and we need to be looking at the subsurface, the foundational um processes, the the micological again diversity. Um, you hit the carbon sequestering. I had a question about, you know, why can't we just let the
trees fall? You've pointed out emerald ashbors, uh, fires. We don't want to talk about those, but um you know these provide already limited light gaps. They provide these habitats for important species like bog turtles, barn owls. Um we know
how very important our water supplies are and and this provides for that. Um it sounds like we're trying to avoid what is being created, which is ed edge habitats for deer proliferation and reduce diversity uh with native species.
Um, and I would disagree also that all farmers are Roundup Ready. Uh, I I know some farmers in New Jersey who would love to uh practice to get a little bit of support to practice no roundup, very
labor intensive farming practices. They just don't have the opportunities. Maybe they're not in the immediate local area, but if if we could provide them those opportunities, they would jump. Um, and uh, yeah, I I Anyway, I just want to
kind of go through what I heard, which wasn't there's more, but um, I appreciate you guys bring it up because I think it's a great counterpoint and um, I yeah, I kind of don't know.
I guess I can't say but I it sounds like there's there's a case to be made for uh managing through not managing as well as managing through more uh effective variable kind of smaller
scale managing in certain pockets. And I guess I just since the mayor is here, I would I would ask I don't know if it's appropriate if the governing body might entertain um because what I heard um also was that
uh it seems like there's frustration in the documentation that you've been provided um for this wildlife management uh area and the practices going on specifically in Sparta Mountain. And I think it would be helpful for those of us in Sparta who are concerned about
this to request, you know, maybe again through our governing body, can we get a very detailed uh kind of processes and procedures of what exactly they're doing, how they are arriving at these censuses, and you
know, maybe we can still work with them, you know, keep those jobs, but kind of retask them into more thoughtful approaches. is does that sound okay? I I just want to uh uh emphasize that we would support any kind of habitat
management projects that don't involve removal of wood from the forest. There are lots of things that can be done to tweak habitats to provide microhabitats for the different rare species that are really at at risk and we would support that. We just don't feel it's necessary
to assume that the only way to manage a habitat is with the use of logging. Well, yeah, and I want Sorry, last thing, but and I agree with that. Uh, and I appreciate that. And one thing that you said too that I hadn't even thought about was that the logging
trucks are basically um we're rolling the dice. They're acting as these active vectors for bringing in things on their tires and the trucks. aside from the hazardous materials that are leaking out the oils um out of the trucks while they're
sitting there. Um because it's something that we deal with with our many lakes and waterways around here is you know anytime you put a boat on the water is this the year that we get harmful algaal blooms from um invasive or um invasive
aquatic species that come off the hull of the ship. So you know part of that processes and procedures is what kind of cleaning procedures are they doing and you know is it adequate and I know we heard about kind of gravel paths and but beyond that anyway
thanks any additional questions I had a question um so I know that they you talked about um the bird species that they're trying to build habitat for. Um, one of the things that I have
not heard mentioned is the power lines. And it seems like the miles of power lines that we have are exactly the and we already have a lot of that right in the middle of all these forests. So, how much space do these this particular
bird that they're trying to how much space do they actually need? There's plenty of room on all those power lines. They there is a problem uh in that um I think it's the Federal Emergency
Regulatory Commission. They used to be able to manage the sides of the power lines as young forest. They did what they call a stadium cut and you would have these nice saplings. They can't do that anymore. They can't allow tree growth in the power lines. And the young
forest bird species do need young trees. So, another thing we asked them to do was, okay, if you must cut, can't you cut adjacent to the power line? Just expand the opening of the power line into the forest so that you're not putting a a big 20 acre hole out in the
middle of the forest. Uh, we got nowhere with that request. Um there, you know, there are some young edge species that do breed in the power lines, but the division apparently feels that's not enough and they still feel
they have to cut the forest. So like if a single large oak falls down in the middle of the forest, that's not enough space. It needs like is it like a 20 by 20? Like what's the minimum amount they would need to consider it edge forest? I guess what I'm trying to
understand if if it's known, it may not be something that's even I'm not sure that it's known, but you can um many birds will come into probably, you know, smaller than three acre areas um that are that are caused
by not a single oak coming down, but you know, Sandy brought down multiple areas. You know, you need you need a reasonable area. The fires have covered, you know, hundreds of acres. Um but to do what Emil was talking about, you did it on
tranquility, right? You did small area management. Yeah, we we did a we worked with the division of fish and wildlife about 10 years, maybe 12 years ago to to up in uh P County Park land
um to do a no wood removal project for golden wing warbler. and just by girdling trees and creating openings in the forest. And it and it worked. Of course, uh that was when we still had golden wing warblers
that they're moving north because of climate change and getting genetically swamped by blue-wing warblers. And so there's really no hope for the golden wing warbler anymore because of climate change. We're we're just too far south. Um and and that's actually, you know, the
management plans at Sparta Mountain. Initially, there were golden wing worblers living in all the power lines in many spots on Sparta Mountain. And the first management plan, I think it was as early as 2005 or 2007, was to just do exactly what Sharon just said,
was because of the way that the power companies had to start cutting down the saplings just to widen the power lines like a string of pearls, make little little blips along the edge of the power lines where you could have sapling trees for the golden wing warblers. and that
was tried but at the same time the golden wing warblers were declining and so you know there there may there may be a couple left on Sparta Mountain I think Sharon's husband has evidence that even the ones that look like golden wing warblers sing like bluewing warblers now
but you know so genetically they're really not there anymore but anyway um you know many of these birds did live in the power lines before the power lines couldn't be managed properly anymore more and so it's unfortunate. A lot of
them are managed now with herbicides uh which is also a problem I think for water supply concerns. But at any rate uh you know it's it's a problem because because you you just can't put two pounds of baloney in a one pound sack and there are forest interior birds. uh
that the the the the whole thing has switched from let's manage for golden wing warblers to let's let's manage for young forest species and also that these deepest species need to trapes their young through the early successional habitat in order for them
to be successful which um I'm getting over complicated now but just just bear with me uh a couple of radio transmitters were put on baby birds that are from forest interior species and those birds and and and that was done in
places where big logging projects occurred in other parts of the eastern forest. And so when the wood thrushes fledged, the ones with the radio transmitters did spend some time in the logged over areas, but they didn't do the control study of
what do wood thrushes do in a forest that doesn't have any logged over areas. Right? So if you go to a forest that has no logged over areas, maybe those same baby wood thrushes, if they had radio transmitters on them, you'd find them going to where one oak tree fell down, where there's a little bit of extra
sunlight. These are all tropical birds. These are all long-distance migratory birds that evolved from tropical species. And in the tropical rainforest, it's well known that the canopy the the the forest interior species go to the
canopy gaps during certain stages of their life cycle and you just need one tree to fall down to serve that purpose. So the idea that forest interior birds need 20 acre clearcuts is completely ridiculous. The studies have not been done with proper controls and I don't
know how they got published frankly. Um, so that's that's the can't use forest interior birds as an excuse to create 20 acre logging patches. That's just bad science. Um, now there are these early successional species that need these
young trees. We agree and we want to make that habitat without removing wood and doing so much damage to the future forest and hurting so much with the carbon sequestration. Um, the the other thing that's happening, which I just want to get back to the
deer for one minute, some of the first cuts on Sparta Mountain blew right through the phase of the habitat that they wanted it to be. In other words, they they wanted to do the cut and then have young trees come up and some shrubs come up and have that successional stage
last for 10, 15 years. Well, because the deer don't eat the birches and the maples, those gaps immediately got filled with fast growing pioneer species that blew right past that stage that they wanted and they never got the habitat that they wanted for more than a
year or two. So all that work for a tiny little blip on the radar screen, it's not worth it. Now also one last thing I want to mention. If you go to Weldenbrook and Berkshire Valley, there were cuts done in Bergkshire Valley in the 90s for rough grouse. The same kind
of cuts. And every one of those cuts, the oaks have not regenerated. It's mostly nothing but birch and maple and a few other pioneer species. And the understory is mostly invasive species or the most common weedy understory native
species. all and if you go into the surrounding forest, you have all these beautiful herbaceous plants and things that belong there. So the the and and it's because of the deer. Those projects are not working. If you look 20, 30 years after the project was done, you're they're not getting the results. And
nobody ever goes and talks about the projects that are 30 years old that have failed. And that's statewide in the Pine Baronss every place. You can go look at the projects that are 30 years old and they're a mess. So, and I've been to all of them for the last 45 years.
So, you highlighted the fact about the invasive species coming in. Can you just reiterate for the public some of the benefits of leaving the trees standing and girdling them that you've seen on your other projects?
Well, if you if you do that, you you don't have to have a 20 acre gap where, you know, the edges of it still have some shade during the course of the day and they don't have too much wind, but out in the middle of a 20 acre clearcut,
you basically have completely different non-forest conditions. And those the results that you get out in the middle away from the edge are generally not what you want. Whereas if you do no wood product removal, you don't need to fill up a certain number of trucks to make
the thing cost-effective, right? You just do small patches, do some girdling, let a little bit of light in, and create the habitat conditions that many of these species will still use without having to go through all the trouble of the of the roulette game of what's going
to happen 20 years down the road. Okay. Um, all right. I want to open it up. Any other questions from the public or anyone else in the room? Hi, Neil Clark and I will be talking on
behalf of um as mayor of Sparta Township. Um, this was originally intended to be uh with town council. We did have the um folks from New Jersey Fish and Wildlife to come out and and I
want to explain the genesis of this which was um I had spoken with Julia Summers a while ago who had talked to me about the forest stewardship plan um and that you know what the D was doing and I think I want to applaud this
environmental commission as well as the township which is yes the township ship does not own the land in Sparta Mountain. D owns it, but D is doing it in Sparta Township. And I think we're doing a very valuable thing tonight,
which is it is that we are holding the D accountable. If you say it's going to do certain things, then you need to come in and prove it and tell us it's doing what you know and justifying what you're doing. I think that was our original
intent to have them there. Um but also knowing from Julia that there was also a counterveiling that you know what the D is saying may or may not be true or not. Um and so u I'm very happy that we were able to have uh you
know subject matter experts here tonight um who live and breathe and have devoted their professional lives uh to these issues. I think you do a very valuable service. I will make sure that uh our my fellow council members see this. Uh
there's written documentation. They will I will make sure that they look at it. But I do want to point out one thing um that that bothers me. Not that what you said, but um during the presentation uh on March 25th, there was a gentleman
from I think it was the New Jersey Forest Service. Was that who it was? Who said he was vice president? Oh, Richard Kowsky. Yes. Um he stood up and he That's probably not the New Jersey Forest Service. That might be the Forestry Association. Forestry.
Yeah, the Forestry. Yeah, the Forestry Association. He came up and he um read off I guess you know the Highlands Council had done some type of finding that he wanted to make the impression that the Highlands Council endorsed
the forest stewardship program. That was and I just that what you heard when I was listening to that was I wanted to go back and see if that's what he actually said and that was the impression he wanted to leave the council was that the Highlands Council supported that. Um but
I was given tonight a letter by the Highlands Council dated July 10th. No, that date is incorrect. I hate autocorrect pointed it out. It's March 31st. Okay. March 31st, 2025. So this is um
the presentation was done March 25th. Um this was a letter was March 301st March 31st and so it had this letter is after the presentation the one where the person made the representation that the Highlands Council um supported and I'll
just read from it because when I read it um it it bothered me. It says, "The Highlands Council finds that the Sparta Mountain Forest Stewardship Plan is not consistent with the Highlands Regional Master Plan and does not satisfy the legal obligations required per the
Forest Stewardship Rules citation to the relevant statute. The Highlands Council recommends that all forest stewardship work related to the Sparta Mountain WMA FSP be immediately suspended until an assessment of all completed work has been done, a further review of impacted
resources, a phase one archaeological survey completed, consultation with another acronym that I won't repeat be done, and documentation provided, and the proper capital project review and GP1 permits are obtained. And so in light of this letter, um I feel and I
will speak on my behalf myself and I know how maybe my fellow council members, um that was misleading for that gentleman to stand up and give the impression to this council that the Highlands Council supported this. And um
I would recommend um you know I don't know if he knew that the you know the Fish and Wildlife Service was there or they coordinated each other to be there but that should have been corrected and um if you're going to come before this council we're
going to expect you to not misre misrepresent particularly another agency. Um, so I'm particularly bothered um by that. And just my general comments, I couldn't help but as I sat there um I'm an antitrust lawyer by trade and we have this analysis in
antitrust law about um it's called the least restrictive alternative, right? When because a lot of time a monopouist will say I want to I have to do this anti-competitive act because that's the only way I can make the market competitive. And what you do is you say there's other least restrictive ways
that you could have done this. And so when I hear what's going on, when I hear uh Dr. Boove speak, there's more least restrictive ways that you can allow this early habitat species to exist without clearcutting our old growth forests. And
that's and then um and another analysis that we do a lot of the times is you you have to look at all the benefits, the prompetitive benefits that can happen if you take this action. And here I think what the Highlands Council seems to be conveying in its letter is like, wait a minute, you haven't looked at the
negative impact this may have on the Highlands region. You're focusing on one little narrow aspect, the birds, but you're not looking at these other the vernal pools, everything else. And so to me, it's it's been very eye opening. Um,
and I think that, you know, what our council will will will need to consider is what further followup that we want to have with the D and and and in particular the statement that was made that appears to me to be a misrepresentation of the Highlands Council's position. So again, I want to
thank the environmental commission for this opportunity. Uh, I want to thank Julia for bringing this to my attention. Um, I think we've done a valuable public service tonight and it it really is our duty to hold our state agencies accountable because if our townships
won't do that, I don't know who else will. So, tonight you did a very good service and and I want to thank you and I want to thank uh, you know, the folks here who have, you know, devoted a lot of their time and energy to this and I want to give them an opportunity to speak. So, thank you.
Speak now instead of Yeah. No, I' I've opened it up to whoever else would like to speak. C can I just say one thing before everybody else speaks because the mayor helped remind me that I want to make something clear when I was talking about all the chemicals being used on Green
Acres lands. I was only talking about Greenacres lands. What a farmer does on his private land or her private land, if they're within the law and they're using stuff according to the label and legal stuff, that's, you know, that's what they want to do. that's what they're going to do.
Um, I'm talking about on land that we own, right? And whether or not anybody should be using those dangerous chemicals on land that was bought with Green Acres money. And my opinion is it should not be allowed. Thanks. Thank you. Hi, I'm Sylvia Salone, executive
director of New Jersey Forest Watch. I am also a member of the Natural Heritage Committee with the Highlands Coalition. And I just want to thank the mayor. Um, I also am a Sparta resident. So, when the logging started happening on Sparta
Mountain, this was something that I never thought in a million years that I'd be fighting, if you will, deforestation in the most densely populated state of New Jersey, but here we are. Um, and so I just want to again
thank the committee as well as our council members because this is an important issue. As you heard tonight, there are a lot of issues, the negative, if you will, impacts that what's been happening on Sparta Mountain. We can't
turn the clock now. And so, I'm going to go over a couple of things because, for example, since the introduction of our group, we've been documenting a lot of the soil degradation, um, the increase in invasives. You heard about the video that the Highlands
Coalition was able to publish with Sharon and myself. You also there's an increase in OV activity. This is something that the D doesn't want to talk about, but it is a huge problem, a huge issue with all the
logging and the new creation of roads. Now you have ATVs and other vehicles coming in further destroying and degrading Sparta Mountain which by the way is a high conservation value forest. When the first plan was written in 2017
or the current plan I should say in 2017 Sparta Mountain was deemed a high conservation value forest. And why is it that we have an organization who's degrading this forest? Um, the young forest initiative is truly
a sham. Uh, you will see in this peer-reviewed journal article by Kelllet at all that it is a well orchestrated story, if you will, and platform. In fact, I'm just going to read a little
bit of the um summary. And it says, "A campaign is underway to clear established forest and expand early secessional habitats, also called young forest, preforest, early suro or open habitats with the
intention of benefiting specific species coordinated by the federal and state wildlife agencies and funded with public money. Yes, we are being asked to fund logging after we have set aside these lands. This is wrong. It continues and
says uh coordinated with federal state wildlife agencies funded with public money, public land managers work closely with hunting and forest interest, conservation organization, land trust, and even private land owners towards this goal.
Now, what's interesting is that what you heard tonight is testimony. None of us receive any type of financial incentive for wanting to create habitat on forests. And so, what's interesting you
will find is those that typically, you know, uh want to see these type of projects also have a financial motive. And that's another thing that um Jennifer Derks at the last meeting was very careful in asking some very specific questions about the funding
element to the young forest initiative. But as we know we are in a climate crisis and what's interesting is that this document the summary will say that heron we provide a discussion of early secessional habitat programs and
policies in terms of their origins in context of historical baselines with respect to species ranges and abundance and as they relate to carbon accumulation and ecosystem integrity taken together in the face of the urgent global crisis and climate biodiversity.
diversity and human health. We conclude that public land, forest, and wildlife management programs must be re-evaluated to balance the prioritization and funding of early secessional habitat with strong and lasting protection for
old growth and mature forest. Going forward, we must ensure far more robust, unbiased, and ongoing monitoring and evaluation. After all, our highlands forest also is where 70% of the state
acquires their water. And so, you may not know this, but our group has OPRA documents. There is now a new plan earmarked for Sparta Mountain where they're accepting bids, looking again at going through this, you know, um, Swiss
cheese approach. And so, one of the things we'd like to encourage, you heard from Dr. Emil DeVito and from Dr. Sharon Wander today is why doesn't the department go back to the areas that were logged previously? Do not go to new
areas and punch holes in these areas and create more invasive species and create more new roads and more soil degradation. The microisal fungal kingdom has been destroyed in these areas where the logging equipment has been. The current plan for
next year, 2025, 2026, is in an area that originally the D told us they were not going to touch. And it is way beyond. It's an it's called 18B, but it is an area that is in a steep slope
ravine area with incredible species like the red shouldered hawk that need an you know the intact forest canopy, the state threatened Bardowl and yet they're picking this area. It is the wrong place
to go. The next area which is the last area for um the 2027 year is such a I can't even think of the word maybe abomination. I think that might be it is
off again the Edison Monument Trail. And for those of you who live in Sparta, if you haven't been on that Edison monument trail and seen that devastation, by the way, the video that the Highlands Coalition was able to record is off that
was recorded off the Edison Monument Trail. And you'll see now all of these invasive species coming in. And now what the department wants to do is go into the beautiful intact forest that's immediately, you know, sort of to the
left of that Edison monument trail. No, you know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. And that is exactly what is been happening on Sparta Mountain. We as Spartans, we need to
hold true and not give up and really encourage the DP to do a better job and to work with us in coming up with some of these other ideas and solutions that we have because the future is we're
already you know affecting it. Uh the one thing I also want to share with you in your packet, you've received the total acreage disturbed and early secessional habitat analysis on Sparta Mountain.
Just in case you haven't known, about 139 acres have been cut on Sparta Mountain. You'll see it. Um our group has been able to tell you what type of cut. Basically, when you see clearcut, it's a clearcut. They call it a modified
sea tree. There's nothing modified about it. It's a clearcut. Shelterwood is where they leave a little bit more tree canopy. Okay? And so those have been all the cuts and that is the equivalent of 105
football fields. So think about that visually. We have now 105 football fields on Sparta Mountain in a high conservation value forest in the highlands. Now think someone mentioned
the rights of way. Our original documentation in the first in this plan the 2017 plan on Spartan Mountain Sparta Mountain talked that the rights of way is about 140 acres. In this new bid proposal that our group was able to
Oprah, it says 150 acres. So I may have to adjust my sheet here. But if you take the 138.55 acres that have already been cut plus the 140 or 150 in this case,
you have already over 278 acres of quote early successional habitat on Sparta Mountain. So my goal and hopefully all of us today will see that we need to encourage the D
to not continue logging to look for other solutions and to go to those areas that have already been disturbed and perhaps do some of the things that Dr. Emil Devito mentioned as well as Dr.
Wander. Okay. And I'm going to let my colleague now Ken speak. So, thank you. If you have any questions, um, does anybody have any questions before I go? Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. I've I've seen the invasives.
Yes. Yeah. Okay. Good evening. I'm Ken Dolski and I'm the vice president of New Jersey Forest Watch. And after you heard all about the problems, I'm going to tell you what you can do to to fix this mess. Uh but before that, I just want to
diverge for a second and I want to respond to something that the mayor brought up uh which was that when the D looks at these projects, they don't consider the harms. Um it's not a hidden issue. It's not something that they
avoid uh describing. They have a process and they've explained the process to us and the process is basically to show me one good thing that would come out of your proposal and they don't look beyond that. They
don't make up a scorecard to say what are all the pros and cons of these projects. If they get one positive and they agree that that's that's worth pursuing, they do it. So it is an extremely flawed decision process. Um
and that's you know they don't want to hear bad bad bad uh they don't want to get negative inputs you know they're like living in a cloud and uh that's why we're living with problems like this. So let me get back to my original subject
and let me explain what's going on because the path that we think uh could solve this is through the legislature. probably no nobody ever said that before with a smile on their face, but uh I think that given where we are, that's about it. So, Senator Bob Smith has
introduced a bill S2424 in the legislature ostensibly to address the issues uh raised by the New Jersey Highlands Coalition, New Jersey Forest Watch, Jersey Conservation Foundation, and others regarding D's logging program
in our public forest. and also to address the issue that in fact there are no state regulations for management of public forests and we never talked about that. That's an finding that came out of the uh task force that Senator Smith had in 2022. But there are actually no regul
there are regulations for private land. There are no regulations for managing public land. So the D is just doing whatever they want and nobody is challenging them. uh and there are no not even regulations we can point to that say that you're violating your own regulations. So I say ostensibly because
this is a extreme ostensibly this is a a bill to fix the problems. It is a very bad bill that does not fix anything. and we're going to ask you um both the uh environmental commission and the uh town council
uh to communicate your views to Senator Smith on the need for changes in the bill. And I'll explain this a bit further. So basically what I'm saying is the path to fixing this is going to be to influence the senator to fix the bill. This bill as currently written supports the status quo of unlimited
forest cutting which is intolerable. and allows logging to continue under the guise of the creation of forest stewardship plans that are approved by the D. Of course, without passage of a bill, the status quo will also continue and there will not be any regulations for
management of public forests. So, we do need passage of the bill if we're going to address the problems caused by logging. We just need a good bill, not a bad bill. So, we are asking for two major changes in the bill. first and I'm
rehashing some ground that uh you know especially Emil has already covered. The bill first should require a pause in the use of forage stewardship plans for logging until the new rules and regulations for management of public lands are developed the way the bill currently states um that once it's
passed you can still use FSPs and still log u until the regulations are written. However, this could take a year or two after the bill has passed. So, a pause is very significant. Without such a requirement, the D will have no
incentive to create new regulations, which is exactly what has happened in the past. So, in the past, the bill the D was instructed by the state to write regulations for public lands and they just didn't do it and nobody followed up. And so unless you have a bill that
says they cannot log until they write regulations, they just they'll just probably ignore it and not write the regulations. Second, uh we covered this already. We're asking that the bill prohibit the removal of wood from public lands other than for reasons of health and safety.
This would eliminate the current D locking program because he uses the wood removal to fund the cutting. Right? So they that the reason they cut 20 acres or 10 acres is because they have to uh bring in a logger and the logger isn't going to find it worth
their while to take less than 10 acres worth of wood and that's the reason they don't go back to any of the existing areas that they've cut because the there's no valuable timber there and the D doesn't have any money to go back and re you know and fix those areas to become you know early successional
habitat. So if you tell say you can't remove the wood, there goes all the revenue that the DP needs in order to log. Wood removal itself worsens climate, seriously degrades habitat. Wood retention on site maximizes carbon
storage, habitat creation, and soil formation. Currently, the bill allows for wood cutting and removal in support of the false science arguments, including climate health that previous speakers have debunked. There are simply no valid reasons for removing wood,
especially related to climate change. These two changes would fix most if not all of the issues of climate and environmental harms, including damages to water and soil quality from the current DP practices. If the D can demonstrate that it is still important to create additional edge habitat for
certain song birds, they can do it by girdling uh for a few trees in a few areas, creating those small areas. uh there's absolutely no reason to remove 10 acre swats of forest when girdling can accomplish the same goals in a much less destructive manner. And the D could
probably afford to go out and have somebody girdle a few trees. Now, Senator Smith's bill uh and this gets, you know, a little wonky, uh has not been before any committees, and Senator Smith has not himself indicated that he plans to move his own bill.
Uh when we originally spoke to him about it in late winter, he said he was going to do it in the spring and um we bombarded him with a lot of these science arguments that you're here to heard tonight. We bombarded him with the kelllet piece. Um and then he kind of
changed his mind and he said, "I'm not sure what I'm going to do and basically maybe I'll do nothing." So we don't know what for for certain that he's going to do. But one of the risks is that he might decide to to push this bill during
lame duck session after the election. That's a period, as we all know, when the worst things happen in the legislature because they have a ton of legislation to pass and they have minimal oversight. Um, so assuming that he might be thinking of something like that, what we
need to do is put as much influence influence him as much as we can and put as much leverage on him to change the bill with those two changes and pass a bill that'll make us happy and will fix the the problem about the ongoing annual
logging. If we pass the current bill, it will be an absolute tragedy. Its bad policies will be virtually irreversible. We need a good bill with the two changes I described and we need it this year. So what we do, we welcome the opportunity to So what we would like you to do and
we'll be happy to speak to members of the council or anybody else is to have you send one letter or maybe two letters to Senator Smith stating your position on the bill asking him for those two changes and saying with those changes you would support it. and we'd be very
happy to draft letters for you uh to make that statement to uh Senator Smith. So, we'd like to work with you on that and hopefully he will he will pass a bill uh with at least one of the one of with with those changes in it, maybe one
or maybe both of them and uh and we'll fix the problem. Because if we don't do that, the status quo says despite all the science, nothing's going to change. DP I mean DP is going to continue to log uh we've heard them say if they get you
know if they have this opportunity uh uh they are not going to change their policies and so there's and talking to the D is probably just like talking to the wall is not going to fix anything. So that's our suggestion is that uh we'll try to leverage Senator Smith and
we'll be back in touch. Questions, comments, thoughts? I just have a question about um your your the bill itself. I see a lot of highlighted areas in this, but you're just suggesting we focus on the pause and restricting wood
removal. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what highlighted areas you're talking about, but um Well, there's there's it's there's a lot of important highlights. Oh, you have the you have the bill itself there. It's the one that whatever we were given. No, it's not the bill. It's the
dear senator letter. Okay. The draft of it. Yeah, I wrote that. Um, so yeah, we tried to impress upon him that there's a lot of problems. But almost all those problems go away if you um can't log. So, for example, one
of the issues was that it gave the D tremendous autonomy over the logging program. Well, if they can't log, it's not great, but you know, we can live with a bad D leadership as long as they can't go, you know, go into the forest and do what they're doing now. Um then
there were other issues in terms of how they looked at carbon uh storage and the fact that they ignored the whole issue of quantifying the uh carbon storage issue uh in the bill and just said well you know we'll leave some areas as uh
you know carbon carbon protected areas without any measurement of you know how much carbon was was going to be saved um how much the global warming response act said that the carbon see the land sources of carbon needed to be increased. Um so it was very bad ma you
know there was no math u very bad policy if you can't log then I don't care what their math is because then we will maximize uh carbon sequestration so the fact so when you say stopping the removal of wood it fixes a whole host of other sins that that are currently going
on. Okay, thank you. Okay, let let me just bring you uh one bit of information about sequestration. There's some really good people in the DP's Bureau of Forestry. They're really good scientists and they're on top of a
lot of things. And um one of the really interesting things is that the state of Maine, right, which you think of as this vast forested state, their net carbon gain each year is zero because they cut
and remove as much as what they don't cut. The trees growing. Trees growing adds carbon. Well, they as much as grows every year they cut and remove. So they have a net carbon gain of nothing in the state of Maine because of their intensive management. New Jersey is 7
to1. New in New Jersey if you count all of our forests and all of our suburban areas and now it's it's probably changed a little bit because of all the storms and because of emerald ashbor and things. But New Jersey is not an
emitter. New Jersey is sequestering seven times more carbon than it's releasing. Now, that's probably dropped a bit in the last 5 years since that analysis was done because of some of the problems of ash trees rotting and storms
blowing trees down and they're all getting wood chipped. Where I live, you know, I I live in South Planefield. The city of Planefield got racked on the night before July 4th and all these giant trees came down and they're all turned into mulch mulch already. So, they're going to be gone by Christmas. That's all going to be carbon, right?
Um, in the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So, we're we're not as well off as we were before CO, but with all these storms and and fires and things, we you're probably not as good as, you know, we're not 7 to1 anymore probably,
but we're still way better than Maine in terms of sequestering carbon even though we're a tiny little tiny little New Jersey. So, it just goes to show you what we can do with the right policy, right? We can sequester or a lot of carbon. We can take all these fields
that are not agriculture anymore that are public land and we can turn them back into we can a forest right we can turn them back into carbon sequestering places. They won't have lots of biodiversity because they're on post agricultural soil and they're never going to have all those beautiful wild
flowers and all the incredible shrubs and native plants. But they can sequester a ton of carbon, right? If we if we started managing those areas instead of ignoring the problem areas and focusing on, you know, um
perpetuating this 1930s idea that the only way to fix anything is through logging. I think we're getting to the end of this. This is Julia Summers. If Ben Spanelli was here, he is the executive director of the New Jersey Highlands Council. he would talk about the
importance of the forest to protect our water supply. So just a couple of facts factoids to remember 840 million gallons of water every single
day of the year gets exported from the New Jersey Highlands to the rest of the state. That's 6.5 million people. more than 70% of the state's population gets some or all of its water from the New Jersey Highlands. These comments
which the mayor referred to is explaining why the damage which you've also heard from Dr. Dvito and Dr. Wanda the damage that this kind of logging does to the soils and to um and to our water supply. But the comments provided
by the council is about protecting our water supply and why this shouldn't happen. Um, and I know that the council would be happy to come and talk to you if you were to invite them and tell it to you. So, if you have questions, they can answer that. But it's a another
whole other reason why we shouldn't be doing what we're doing. So, I really thank you very much for listening to us this evening. This is the first time we've had an opportunity to be heard and it really feels good. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for coming. I do want to make one comment to hold myself accountable. Um which is this. Um I will um just on behalf of me as a council person. Um I would like to work with you. Um, I think what I would like
to do in lie of a letter is actually have and I'll have to convince my fellow council people that it's the thing to do is a resolution passed by council to um uh recommend that the changes that you
want to S 2424 be adopted. And so in lie of a letter it would be this would be on behalf of the council. This is done. You know, normally I'm not a big fan of resolutions for certain bills that really don't have any impact in Sparta.
This bill has an impact in Sparta. And so I'll also make sure that whatever that resolution we come up with, I will we will vet it with you, the environmental commission. Yes. Um and then I think that would be the mechanism um that we could use. Um, I
think we might before we do that, um, Julia had alluded that the Highlands Council would, um, I think, you know, I will try to get I'll talk to Ben and see if he would come because I think, you know, as we talked about, what is being ignored by the DP apparently is the
effect that this has on, you know, our our water, you know, the Highlands area in general. you know, if we're just focusing on a particular type of bird, maybe that works, but that's I mean, that's putting blinders on in my opinion. Um, and we need to look at the
entirety here. And um you know this doesn't seem at least in my estimation this far forest stewardship plan from if you look at it from a pro-ecological perspective generally speaking broadly
it's it it seems that it's not advancing that. Now if we're only focusing on one narrow part of it maybe it is but to me why would you focus on one thing if it's going to have a bunch of detriments on the other side. You have to look at it
in toto. And when you do that, the forest stewardship plan, in my estimation, not speaking for my other council members, doesn't seem to be advancing a general ecological purpose. Um, and it's and the detriments outweigh the benefits. That's my opinion. Thank
you. Thank you. Have an opinion. All right. Um, that ends the presentations that we had. Can I this? Yeah, go ahead. So, no, I'm just wondering if
environmental could kind of consider a memo. I mean, like when we talk about develop development, the standard I think working theory is you should develop a brown field. You should
instead of pristine land, right? You should redevelop a brown field. What I'm hearing is we're cutting down, removing, destroying subsurface, pristine subsurface, primeval subsurface to create um
early secessional habitat. So it's kind of another thing like brownfield to development um agricultural to agriculture agricultural or early uh secessional and then our
forest should just be untouched. I don't. And then I don't understand if we've cut all these holes in the forest, we should be remedying because I saw several holes that didn't develop into what was promised. So, they should go
back and develop those. We shouldn't just be scraping more up and losing more of that uh hard one um diverse 11,000y old history. We shouldn't just
be giving up on it so quickly. So, I don't know if there's anything that we can do on environmental. I know we're just advisory, but I know um but I think Neil mentioned we'll talk about working on a resolution together and I think we can think on before the next meeting what we what
else we could do and go from there. Okay. All right. Um I do want to move on though because we are definitely getting late. All right. So the next thing is public comment, but I think most folks in this room have already asked their questions or made a public comment. So I
think we'll move on from that one. I'm going to skip reports tonight if that's okay. Um or maybe just touch on anything that's super urgent. Anything? Planning board didn't have their meeting list.
Okay. No planning board meeting. Uh the master plan subcommittee. Um we the environmental commission itself is one of the stakeholder groups and I'm tasked with uh running a a focus group
meeting which will I'll be reaching out and we'll try to get a meeting scheduled for uh sometime after July 20th. I believe that's the date. Okay. So sounds good. Yep. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Of course.
We're dismissed. Nope. We're good. Thank you so much. Yep. Thanks. Of course. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Putting up with us. Sorry about the confusion. No, no problem.
Yeah, it came together very nicely, I thought. Yeah, we do need to do both those things. All right. um unfinished business sustainable New Jersey certification. Any highlights at this point? Uh we're still at the 155
points that I mentioned last time and then the final deadline is July 31st. So we're putting in our our um final actions, but we're going to be in the bronze level just higher than we were last time.
Very nice. Thank you. Still, it's good. Okay. Um, the next ones are packaging and paper product stewardship act resolution. The three resolutions that we've been talking about. I don't know what happened last time. I'm sorry.
Uh, Margie's not here, so we don't don't know. Yeah, we don't know. She was taken to the town council and we haven't heard yet. Okay, got it. Um, student the new student lazison, we have not gotten any applications yet. John, you you have a friend?
Not that I know of that has an interest in um Okay. like this field, but I'll keep looking. All right. Thank you so much. We'll let's send it out again, Emily, to to everybody. I know like we sent it out right as school was ending. Yeah, that's true. And so people were probably doing end of
year stuff. Um so let's just give them a little reminder. I did get one inquiry. Um but actually the person that in uh was interested was above 18 and we have an open position and so I suggested they just apply as a regular member.
So um yeah um finally annual report. So the annual report is through June 30th, 2025. So it's not actually late. Um you should have a copy of it. I think
everybody saw it um via email already. Did anybody have any additional changes or updates? Anything that we missed that we did this year that we want to call out? Did you make the change that Barbara had
requested about the tree ordinance update? Um, I don't remember what that was. She sent an email back maybe. I think I did. Yeah, everybody I responded to and I changes. Yeah, it looks like double check though, but I'm pretty sure I did.
Okay. Um, and then the only other thing I see is and I know this is like I couldn't fix the um the formatting either to make when you list what they're under the current members to make it in line. for instance for
Christine Dunbar planning board. I couldn't make I couldn't make it go in. I don't know if you could. I'll I'll try to fix it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And same thing with like um Dan Charello um he was replaced in January is out of line too. Okay. So I don't know if we can make it's just
formatting. Um, so if nobody sees anybody anything else, um, I'd like to formally say that we're going to approve it for being, um, sent. It's not really formal approval, but approve that it's ready to be sent
to the town council. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Okay. All right. Great. So, let's those two things. double check that you made Barbara's changes to the town or tree ordinance update and then see what you can do with the formatting and then we
can go ahead and submit it. I just want to know when it's on the agenda so that I can attend that meeting and I'll do some highlights about it. Okay, perfect. Okay. All right. again. Sure.
Yeah. Oh, do we have more? Ken, you wanted to make another comment. The impression council meeting that was the case might be helpful. Okay. All right. Yeah. Unfortunately, I
um the one two of the council members have COVID or one has CO and one's sick. So So they they missed out tonight. That's why we're late. Oh dear. Yeah. Um okay.
Uh, any new business? All right. Hearing no new business. Do I have a motion to I'll make the motion to adjurnn. Thank you, Rob. Do I have a second? I'll second. Thanks, Christine. All in favor? I
Thank you, everyone. Thank you. It was a