The Central Pine Barrens Commission (CPBC) is a NY State agency with the responsibility of stewarding the Pine Barrens.  Following the catastrophic fires in 1995, the CPBC formed a Wildfire Task Force to address the ecological and public concerns surrounding wildfire management.  The Wildfire Task Force is a diverse group of 41 organizations with responsibility for pre-fire planning of wildfire suppression.  The NYS DEC and the Nature Conservancy, two CPBC members, have taken the lead to reintroduce fire into the ecology of the Pine Barrens, through prescribed fires.  Historically, wildfires burned freely throughout the Barrens.  Many of its plants and animals have adapted to periodic fires and are dependent upon them to survive.  The pine needles and oak leaves are woody and acidic, so they don’t readily breakdown.  The nutrient-poor, sandy soil doesn’t allow for surface water accumulation. This also inhibits the decomposition of organic matter.  Nutrients that growing plants need is trapped in the dead plant material accumulated on the forest floor.  This buildup of dead needles, leaves, and branches is called duff.  The deeper the duff, the more fuel load there is for a fire.  Uncontrolled fires are a threat to human lives and property and so are aggressively suppressed.  This causes extensive damage to the ecology, is costly, and jeopardizes public safety.  The prescribed fires will keep the fuel load low so as to protect against large uncontrolled fires.  A prescribed fire is a controlled application of fire, confined to a predetermined area to reduce the risk of a wildfire. We have been suppressing fires for decades, so there is a need to reduce the fuel load in woods near populated areas.

The flammable resins in the leaves of many Barrens plants, and the buildup of duff have set the stage for fire.  Fire triggers the release of seeds from the cones of fire-dependent pines, and releases nutrients into the soil. It depresses the spread of invasive non-fire dependent species, and exposes soil for seed growth.  When there is too much build up of fuel, the fire burns too hot, damaging mature trees, destroying seeds, and threatening creatures who live under the duff.

I knew what I was looking at last week when I entered the Forest Fuel Reduction and Ecological Restoration Demonstration Site, I had attended planning meetings for the controlled burns, but I was unprepared for the transformation of the trails into 15’ wide, straight, raked, fire control lines.  One side of the “path” has large areas where the understory has been mechanically treated.  This process involves chopping up brush and low trees to eliminate fuels that could “ladder” the fire up to the tree canopy where it spreads quickly. It will be interesting to monitor this demonstration area to see what effect this treatment has on the aesthetics of the trail corridor and the health of the surrounding ecosystem.

The demonstration area is 2 miles south of the Riverhead Circle on the east side of CR 104, opposite the NYS DEC parking area.  In anticipation of the need to restrict access to the trails on the east side of CR 104, the DEC recently re-blazed the Red Loop trail on the west side of CR 104, furnishing an alternative hiking area.