Dan's Papers - June 29, 2007 - Take a Hike with Ken Kindler

Walk the trails on Long Island and you'll see the impact that others have on them and the surrounding environment. There is garbage absently dropped or actively dumped. Motorized vehicles have ripped up wheelchair accessible hiking, mountain biking and equestrian trails. People have cut down trees and have built forts and foxholes for paintball "wargames." Long Island's natural heritage is being "nibbled away" by many people who aren't thinking about what they are doing. If we want the beauty we have preserved to be here for future generations, then we have to be "gentle users." When we reduce the level of destruction of the trails and surrounding lands, there will be more resources available for stewarding them.

The State legislation that led to the Pine Barren's Protection Act of 1995, led to the Central Pine Barrens Joint Planning and Policy Commission (CPBC) which was formed for the stewardship of the protected lands of the Pine Barrens. The Commission oversees the protection of the largest section of Pine Barrens and created a Comprehensive Land Use Plan for the Central Pine Barrens. An Advisory Committee created by the Pine Barrens Act currently aids the Commission.

Sitting on the edge of thousands of acres of contiguous, publicly owned, natural open space, there is a 2,000 acre area defined by lines on a map. This is the trial area for a program that will actively work to protect our precious public land from being damaged. This is a natural concern for the CPBC Protected Lands Council (PLC) - a collaboration of land managers and interested citizens who meet regularly to coordinate stewardship of protected lands. This is an interesting piece of land that the PLC chose to protect; it borders a busy road on one side, a residential neighborhood on another side, a maple swamp and oak/pine woods. It is on or bordering Town, County, State, Water Authority, LIPA ROW properties, "paper roads," informal woods roads and a formal trail system. Part of this irregular polygon of public land is also part of a prescribed burn program. This program is an effort to safely decrease the fire fuel load in the woods in residential interface areas. Since fire has been historically part of the Pine Barrens ecology, the NYSDEC, the CPBC, the Wildfire Task Force (WFTF) and the Nature Conservancy are researching how to restore this dynamic component to the ecology.

On June 21, the work party split into three groups, constructing 24 barriers and erecting new "Restoration Area" signs where necessary. We installed several different types of barriers to block access for illegal use to public land. Now we will monitor the results and modify our tactics appropriately. There were a lot of County Park staff participating, NYSDEC staff, Commission staff, Sgt. Pendzick Chair of the CPBC LEC and his teenage son Ryan were there, and Suffolk County Park's Environmental Crew. It took the combined efforts of all the members of this PLC sub-committee a year to unscramble enough of the ambiguities related to monitoring, construction materials and access, to enable us to implement the project. This project could never have been accomplished without the venue provided by this multilateral State Agency and the active support of its expert staff.

The Paumanok Path (PP) blazes have been restored once again. This is the third time the blazes for two of the paths accessed from the CR 104 DEC parking area have been repainted in the last year. A vandal first hid the blazes with colored spray paint, and then on two separate occasions changed the colors of the blazes. As of Thursday June 21, 2007 the Paumanok Path follows the DEC access trail (yellow plastic blazes) west from the parking area, and is marked with white rectangular blazes.

The Shrub Oak and blueberry bushes need to be cut back from the trails in the Sarnoff Preserve. There is a high risk of picking up numerous ticks while walking the trails. The public must be warned not to walk them until they are better maintained. There remains a mile of trail that has to be re-painted yellow. This well engineered trail will be marked with yellow rectangular painted blazes. It runs up a ridge, then around a very pretty kettlehole. The trail connects with the PP. When these trails are maintained, they will furnish an excellent 2-mile loop trail in the Pine Barrens, accessible from the NYSDEC CR 104 parking area.