My Turn: DCR’s careful management exemplary

By RICK MARBLE

Published: 02-04-2025 4:57 PM

As a private landowner in Franklin County, I have had the good fortune to work with the Department of Conservation and Recreation, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and both private and state foresters.

Based on personal experience, I do not support the contention that the DCR has an “appetite for logging which continues to outweigh climate or water quality concerns” [My Turn, “DCR should scrap Shutesbury cutting plans,” Jan. 17].

In alignment with the DCR and for our property, a comprehensive conservation plan was prepared and submitted. Accordingly, a Forest Cutting Plan was approved and contracted. Both the conservation plan and the harvest plan were prepared and facilitated by experienced, licensed and learned subject matter experts.

During planning, I was directed to carefully consider the impact to site, terrain and stream, and I was further encouraged to ensure that all activities complied with the Forest Cutting Practice Act. DCR offered tutorials and literature regarding the forest and the environment, and I was regularly encouraged to consider an environmentally sound, future state.

Foresters assessed the variation, age and quality of the wood lot, offered advice, approved early successional habitat and fostered a landscape of age and species variety. They also partnered in an effort to eradicate invasive species.

Like Lot NS-25-02, the subject property included white pine, hemlock, red oak, red maple and black birch. White oak was not identified.

All logging operations have an impact, but in my experience, the DCR plan included operational stipulation, oversight and review. The photograph accompanying the Jan. 17 opinion piece was troublesome. If the photograph is meant to suggest that the finished “product” from every DCR approved forest plan resembles this, that was not my experience.

The determination to manage woodlands intelligently and in compliance with approved forest practices is one that should be made carefully and with an understanding of what might be accomplished. To that end, the reference to the Quabbin is appropriate.

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The column notes that “Mature old growth forests, such as those found in the Quabbin, Ware and Wachusett watershed areas are the most valuable for carbon sequestration and storage” and more. It should be noted then that the Quabbin is most definitely a managed property.

While varied in composition, the Quabbin is not technically an “old growth forest.” The Quabbin itself was first filled in 1946, and the Quabbin’s management practices selectively log and or regenerate some 400 acres of forest a year. This is a carefully managed property.

Passive management practices may be suitable for select sites, but to cast the discussion in Shutesbury as a choice between a somehow self-serving DCR and partners only interested in “a short-term economic benefit” against a benign, passive approach that is some sort of natural panacea is unfair, misleading and inappropriate.

An acquaintance of mine once opined: “It is difficult to articulate a stand on managed forest plans as everybody likes trees.”

Here’s hoping that both sides earn a fair hearing.

While I don’t have the gravitas of “MA Sierra Club,” I do have practical experience with the DCR and it has been positive, for “me” and for the environment that we are looking to intelligently support.

Rick Marble lives in North Orange.