Walk the trails on Long Island; see the impact that others have on them and the surrounding environment.  There are pieces of garbage absently dropped or actively dumped.  Motorized vehicles have ripped up wheelchair accessible, hiking, mountain biking, and equestrian trails.  People cut down trees, build forts and foxholes for paintball “wargames.” Anything you can think to do to the woods, and more is being done by someone.  Long Island’s natural heritage is being “nibbled away” by many “not bad people” who just 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 all work to be “gentle users.”  When we bring down the level of destruction of the trails and surrounding lands, there will be more resources available for stewarding them. 

As a result of the State legislation that led to the Pine Barren’s Protection Act of 1995, the Central Pine Barrens Joint Planning and Policy Commission (CPBC) was formed for stewardship of the protected lands of the Pine Barrens. The Commission oversees protection of the largest section of Pine Barrens.  It created a Comprehensive Land Use Plan for the Central Pine Barrens. The Commission is aided by an Advisory Committee, created by the Pine Barrens Act. There are three other committees of volunteers that work on Pine Barrens matters; they are: the Protected Lands Council (PLC), Law Enforcement Council (LEC) and the Wildfire Task Force (WFTF).

Sitting on the edge of thousands of acres of contiguous publicly owned natural open space, there is a 2000 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 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, using controlled burns, 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 WFTF, and the Nature Conservancy are looking at how to restore this dynamic component to the ecology.                

The work party on June 21 split into three groups, and in 6 hours constructed 24 barriers, 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.  Peter A. Scully Chairman of the Commission visited the work sites, talked to the crews and took special note of large piles of dumped construction debris on public land. 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 comprised of representatives of 11 agencies and groups approximately a year to unscramble enough of the ambiguities relating to monitoring, construction materials, and access, to enable us to implement the project.  A second project is already in the planning stages, this time it will be easier.  This project could never have been accomplished without the venue provided by this multilateral State agency and the active support of its expert staff.