Conservation groups nearing deals for 150,000 acres in Ohio

Forests across southeast part of state would come under plan

By Steve Bennish  Dayton Daily News

 

A coalition of three national conservation groups and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources are closing in on potential deals to buy up to 150,000 acres of forest scattered throughout southeast Ohio.  "This is an opportunity that won't come our way again in our lifetimes," said Randall Edwards, spokesman for the Nature Conservancy. "It's a watershed time for the state."

 

State forests, parks and wildlife areas adjoin many of the parcels, so acquisitions could expand state-controlled or private lands for forest conservation, wildlife restoration and recreation. Representatives from ODNR, the Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land and the Conservation Fund are developing a priority list, said Scott Zody, ODNR's deputy director for Recreation and Resource Management.

 

Read full article here:

http://www.daytondailynews.com/localnews/content/localnews/daily/0221remafront.html

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Goal is to keep woodlands open to public

Groups pursue 150,000 acres across southwest Ohio

By Steve Bennish  Dayton Daily News

 

Maintaining public access to large woodland tracts is an important priority, one that could be lost if forest land is in time divvied up and fragmented, the director of the Trust for Public Land's Ohio office said.  Keeping the lands as productive working forests for the benefit of local economies while promoting conservation is key, the director, Christopher Knopf, said.

 

That's one reason the prospect of the sale of 150,000 acres of forest scattered throughout southeast Ohio is drawing attention as interest from conservation groups and the state is intensifying over the chance to buy the land once owned by MeadWestvaco.  Scioto Land Co. purchased the tracts in December, and a coalition of three national conservation groups and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources are closing in on purchase deals.

 

Read full article here:

http://www.daytondailynews.com/localnews/content/localnews/daily/0221remapursuit.html

Wayne National Forest receives 670 acres from The Nature Conservancy

By Mark Shaffer/The Ironton Tribune Wednesday, September 13, 2006

 

Wayne National Forest got a little bit bigger this week after a donation from a conservation group.  Nearly 670 acres of forest and grassland were added to Ohio’s only national forest Monday when The Nature Conservancy transferred the land to the U.S. Forest Service.

 

The tract, in Washington Township west of State Route 93 and north of Telegraph Hill Road, is now part of the Ironton Ranger District of the Wayne National Forest.  Richard Jones, the lands program manager for the Wayne National Forest, said it was a lengthy, worthwhile process. 

 

Read full article here:

http://www.irontontribune.com/articles/2006/09/13/news/news052.txt

There's been little commentary on this, but this is all great news. Southeast Ohio is quite beautiful, and since we as a state seem unwilling to restrict development via legislation, conservancies are our only tool for preserving land. Cool stuff.

HOCKING STATE FOREST

Timber-sale opponents fail to stop state’s plans

Monday, November 06, 2006  Mary Beth Lane

 

The state forestry land manager and the local biologist walked the same woods and stared up at the same trees, but they remained divided over the timber’s fate.  At issue is a proposed timber sale in the Hocking State Forest. About 1,500 trees standing on 133 acres are to be cut down after the end of the fall-color season. The high bidder, Glatfelter Inc. of York, Pa., a paper-making company that has operations in Chillicothe, has bought the logging rights from the state for $172,722.

 

The trunks of the trees to be felled are marked with orange paint.  Don’t do it, begged local biologist Gary Coovert. "Once it’s cut, it’s gone, and it’s not going to be the same. We think this is a particularly nice chunk of forest, and we would like to see this little bit preserved."

 

Read full article here:

http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/11/06/20061106-C1-03.html

State preserving tracts of forest

Deal blocks development of 20,000 acres in southern Ohio

Tuesday, December 19, 2006  Catherine Candisky

 

State officials are making sure that Ohio’s largest tract of privately owned forest stays a forest.  The 15,849-acre Raccoon Ecological Management Area in Vinton County is among more than 20,000 acres of woodlands being protected by the state.  State officials say the unprecedented opportunity was too good to pass.

 

"There aren’t a lot of blocks (of forest) this large and it’s also significant from an ecological standard," said Scott A. Zody, assistant director for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. "Many endangered and rare species need (large woodland areas) to thrive."  The area is home to Ohio’s largest population of bobcats and black bears, he said.

 

Read full article here:

http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/12/19/20061219-D1-00.html

Deal shields Ohio's biggest private tract of forest land

ODNR will operate Vinton County's Raccoon Ecological Management Area and provide recreational access.

By Steve Bennish Monday, February 12, 2007

 

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources has finalized agreements that will permanently protect from development 15,896 acres of forest land in Vinton County.  The landscape-size tract will remain a working forest where timber is harvested and the public will be given access for fishing, hunting and other recreation, ODNR said.

 

The deal, which was more than a year in the making, is the upshot of an ODNR-led effort that also involved The Conservation Fund, a nonprofit environmental organization, and The Forestland Group, a North Carolina-based timberland investment management company that manages 2.1 million acres in 17 states.

 

Read full article here:

http://www.daytondailynews.com/localnews/content/oh/story/news/local/2007/02/12/ddn021207rema.html

Funding OK'd for purchase of forestland

KRISTIN HEINICHEN Messenger staff writer

 

The final piece of funding has been granted to allow a local organization to permanently protect 1,205 acres in Trimble Twp.  Appalachia Ohio Alliance was granted $300,000 for the purchase of the forestland through an Ohio Department of Natural Resources grant.

 

Sen. Joy Padgett announced Tuesday that the State Controlling Board approved the release of funds -- which, coupled with a Clean Ohio grant, will allow the alliance to purchase the land for $1.2 million.  "One thing that makes our region so special is the wealth and diversity of our natural resources, and we must work to protect these areas for future generations," Padgett said. "They not only offer Ohioans tremendous recreational opportunity, pumping thousands of dollars into the local economy each year, but these areas have excellent research potential as well."

 

Read full article here:

http://athensmessenger.com/Main.asp?SectionID=1&ArticleID=3152

Deal gives forest 1,268 more acres

Saturday,  September 15, 2007 By Mary Beth Lane

 

The Wayne National Forest, the only national forest in Ohio, now has 1,268 more acres of grassland and woods. The U.S. Forest Service and the Nature Conservancy in Ohio teamed up on the land acquisition deal. The extra land takes the southeastern Ohio forest to a total of 238,796 acres.

 

"We are happy to have more acreage for public lands," forest spokesman Gary Chancey said yesterday.  The land is located in Washington Township in northern Lawrence County. The forest service bought the land yesterday from the Nature Conservancy for $982,240.

 

Read full article here:

http://dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2007/09/15/wayneadd.ART_ART_09-15-07_B5_3N7TKU1.html

:clap: :clap: :clap:

Ohio's forests are expanding, and it could pay off

Posted by Michael Scott January 17, 2008 04:38AM

Categories: Environment, Impact

 

The state's green mantle has more than doubled in acreage -- from about 15 percent of the state's area to about 31 percent since the 1940s, according to the state Division of Forestry.

 

And we might even get some economic bounce from that environmental rebound: There are increasing efforts to get Ohio's forests and logging operations -- both public and private -- certified as "sustainable."

 

That could make the state's timber and paper products more desirable to increasingly green-minded consumers.

 

Read More...

This is some nice news...you don't happen to have a link for that story do you?

This is some nice news...you don't happen to have a link for that story do you?

 

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/01/ohios_forests_are_expanding_an.html

a positive news story from the PD?!  <rubbing eyes in disbelief>

It is great news, but it doesn't really expand on the rebound of the wildlife over the last century.     

 

I hear stories from people saying how there were very few to no deer anywhere in the state as recently as the 60's an early 70's.    Now we have too many, which can cause disease and wipe out entire herds.

 

Eagles, bobcats, pheasant, coyotes and many other animals have come back from some pretty devastating effects from the early 20th century.

a positive news story from the PD?!  <rubbing eyes in disbelief>

 

It's not about Cleveland.

Another reason for mass deforestation especially along the Ohio River banks was that wood was a primary source for fuel in the boilers of early steamships that ran up and down the river. My  late Grandfather said that he remembered a time when the hillsides along the river were basically void of any trees. Now look at them, it is very rare to see any clearings in the hills especially as you drive east away from Cincinnati towards Ripley, Ohio and Maysville Kentucky.

Wayne National Forest now ‘greener’

252 new solar panels installed on headquarters building

The Tribune, August 27, 2009

 

NELSONVILLE — Thanks to funding from the American Recovery Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the Wayne National Forest has reached a new milestone with its three-year-old solar energy program.

 

On Aug. 3, 2009, construction crews finished installing 252 new solar panels on the roof of the Forest’s headquarters building near Nelsonville — a direct result of federal stimulus money.

 

The expanded system with a total of 302 solar panels is expected to generate about 30 to 34 percent of the building’s electricity during peak production months.

 

An estimated 15 to 20 percent of the facilities energy needs will be provided by the sun annually.

 

See the article for the remainder.

AWESOME news, we need as many protected areas as possible.  Not only are forest theraputic and, naturally, good for the environment but they encourage more urban development. (less land for sprawl)

^ You're absolutely correct, and Ohio needs more of this big time. See www.highlandssanctuary.org  where they have a wonderful occurrence of "WOODLAND-sprawl!"

I'm not as sold on it as an anti-sprawl measure (think of how far Columbus would have to sprawl to actually bump up against Highlands), but I don't care about that; it's a good thing in itself to have some areas like this.  (Even were they twenty times their current sizes in this state, though, they wouldn't really hem in sprawl.  People forget just how land-rich this country is.  Even a medium-small state in area like Ohio is larger than many European countries.  We're #34/51 in the U.S. and would be #16/49 in Europe, smaller than Greece but larger than Bulgaria.)

^ Ohio is not land rich these days, contrary to popular chamber driven beliefs....sprawl is happening in every community, practically...large and small  This (Highlands) and parts of Shawnee State park are the only two areas Ohio has what is technically deemed 'true wilderness' in the professional view.

 

 

Our state ranks near the bottom in available open space and public lands for largely nature preserved buffer areas like state parks, forests...But near the top in demand for such. It cracks me up when people from Cleveland, or Columbus, move onto 2 or three acres and think it is 'countryside' , 'natural', or even 'wilderness' If they saw places that are really constituted as wilderness through the eyes of the wildlife professionals...they would see the obvious difference. On farm land, I think the last stat I received from the Ohio Farm Bureau was that Ohio loses some 2 or 3 hundred acres per day to sprawl, statewide average. Don't hold me on that...But if anyone looks it up, I am sure it would come pretty close..and this is just farm land.

 

The problem Highlands fears right now, IS the fact that Columbus sprawl is beginning to bump into them. They never used to see city lights/glow in the sky years ago from there...Now they are.. and with Chillocothe adding their own sprawl..and Circleville, etc...  Well, it is just a matter of time, which is why they are trying to buy up all the land they can.

I've been to Highlands, and I drove through Circleville and Chillicothe to get there.  I think you have a pretty extreme view of what constitutes sprawl if you think the sprawl from either of those two minor cities, let alone from Columbus itself, is actually bumping up against Highlands.  The land is all but empty long before you get to Highlands.

 

I'd want to know how the amount of land we "lose" to sprawl is measured before accepting that statistic.  Annexation to a corporation limit?  Subdivision plats recorded in the county recorder's office?  Acres sold by farmers to developers for any purpose?

^ Go discuss this with Larry Henry...and Nance at Highlands....    They will give you all the stats you want...and will tell you how Columbus/Chil. and Cir. pose a 'bumping into' for Highlands.  To the trained eye, it is clear.

Thought I would share this e-news letter from The Arc Of Appalachia

 

Woodland Sprawl

E-Magazine for the Arc of Appalachia  Preserve System

    www.arcofappalachia.org   

Responses are welcome, write Nancy at [email protected]

To subscribe or unsubscribe write Crystal at [email protected]

 

Why do we need parks and reserves?? It’s essential that each country keep part of its natural heritage untouched, as a record for the future, a baseline to measure change, so people can see the splendor of their past, before the land was degraded. And if we ever want to rehabilitate habitat, we need to see how things used to be.

    ---by George Schaller, Oct 2006 National Geographic, interview by John G.Mitchell

 

 

 

Thought for the Day: Restoring large blocks of old-growth forests back to the Appalachian heartland is the single most important thing we can do on behalf of native biodiversity. Doing such work is of critical global significance. Here at the Arc, this is work that we do.

 

Contained Within:

 

·        A Holiday Greeting to our Friends--in words

 

·      A Holiday Greeting to our Friends--in pictures.

 

·        Irony: The same economy that is bringing us bargain properties & prices--

    is making the funds to buy them tragically hard to find.

 

·        Donations Desperately Needed for our Land Campaign, and you know we don't use that word lightly!

 

·        Standing Tall: An Essay on Eastern Old-Growth ~ A Primer for Eastern Forest Citizens

 

·        CRAZY BUSY? If you don't have time to read this now, please tuck it aside until you can. Important News within.

 

 

 

 

A Holiday Greeting...in pictures. www.highlandssanctuary.org/photo.essay.4.winterforest/photo.essay.htm

 

Even winter has its sublime beauty. We bring to you a selection of inspiring photos--all taken in the Arc of Appalachia region of southern Ohio. Happy Solstice!

 

 

Bringing Old-Growth Back to the Heartland -- 500 acres at stake

    Irony: The same economy that is bringing us bargain properties & prices--is making the funds to buy them tragically hard to find.

    Please help! Donation Form at www.highlandssanctuary.org/Donations/donations.htm

 

There is such a thing as being too late. You can make a world of difference for the Eastern Forest.

Here's a chance to help protect the planet’s most disturbed biome, and still work in your own backyard.

 

 

    We are in the middle of one of the largest land acquisition campaigns in the history of the Arc of Appalachia Preserve System. If successful, we will add 500  acres of forest land to our south-central Ohio holdings. We are spurred forward on this quest with the award a successful Clean Ohio grant which. for several of our campaign properties, will match every dollar raised with a total of four. With the help of Clean Ohio funds, a $500 donation can buy one acre or more of land, and $10,000 can buy twenty! That's like turning back the clock of time.

    The belly side of this good fortune is the state of our economy, which is bringing tough times to all non-profits, and we are no exception. Although there is no better time to invest in land preservation, the sobering reality is that we are running 30% below last year's fund-raising efforts. As we approach the holidays, the bulk of the work to fund our current land campaign still lies ahead of us, putting some of our projects at high risk.

 

    Our current land campaign package includes the following critical projects, many of which would never have hit the market if it weren't for the economy driving them there. Time will tell if we will be strong enough to divert all of them from the realm of resource development to resource preservation.

 

    *

      Expansion of Highlands Nature Sanctuary --  100 acre corridor along the Rocky Fork Gorge, connecting HNS to Rocky Fork State Park

    *

      New road access to Rock Run Wilderness Preserve -- 90 acres of forest, providing our first hiking access

    *

      Kamama Prairie Preserve expansion -- 7 acres and several state-listed plant species

    *

      Spruce Hill Preserve -- quarter mile of road frontage and a contiguous 30 acre woods

    *

      120 acres at the road entrance to Fort Hill -- protecting a half mile of Baker Fork Creek corridor, slated for development

    *

      100 acre Hope Springs Woods -- the creation of the Arc's 14th preserve 

 

    We would be so very grateful to receive your support at this time. There is no donation too small to help, and obviously, none too big. We will need gifts from two to five digits in size to succeed, and even small gifts are pivotal, so please don't think your gift can't make a difference.  www.highlandssanctuary.org/Donations/donations.htm.

 

    In the next e-magazine issue we will publish maps of the campaign's land projects, showing you where they lie in the Arc's big picture.

 

 

   

 

Standing Tall – An Essay on Eastern Old-Growth

 

 

 

    Since the Arc began buying land back in 1995, we have sat around the closing table with pens in hand, signing our name on deeds a stunning, exhausting, and exhilarating 70 times. Our smallest acquisitions were a few rods in size; our largest at 310 acres, but altogether the Arc now owns or manages nearly 5000 acres of natural areas. Each and every acquisition has been a living metaphor for the missions we all hold so dear: taking down fences, re-uniting the forest canopy, and coaxing back the once-magnificent old-growth forest that once flourished on this land.

 

 

 

    Whoa, did you just say, “old growth?” Shhhhh!  Don’t you know this isn’t the sixties anymore? Today the word is as politically incorrect, is as certain to be a conversation stopper, as dropping the words "spotted owl" at a backwoods bar in northern California!  If you must say something, say old forest, mature forest, or undisturbed forest, but never, never say the words old-growth!!!

 

 

 

    But you know, sometimes you just want to say what you mean. And we mean old-growth. It’s an important word with a definition that we think we need to preserve. Why old growth indeed?

 

 

 

    If you are a citizen of America’s Eastern Forest, here are some important concepts about old-growth you should know:

 

1)    A forest is more than the sum of its trees. A functioning temperate broadleaf forest, our home biome, is made up of tens of thousands of species—only a small fraction of which are trees. Even highly degraded forests on the edge of a freeway or an abandoned farm field can have plenty of trees, but that doesn't make the woodlands ecologically functional. MAXIM: The existence of mere trees is not the measure of a forest’s health or its biological wealth.

 

2)  For millions of years, the heartland Appalachian forests have been largely and dependably old-growth. The temperate forest biome of Eastern North America is at least an astounding thirty five million years old.  The central heartland of the Eastern forest, running from southern Ohio along the western spine of the mountains into Tennessee, has been largely protected from the frequent devastations of fire and hurricane winds that diminish the age of the forest elsewhere. Barring the effects of a wildly fluctuating climate, such as the forces of drought and glaciation, the heartland Appalachian forests have been largely old-growth throughout their long history. The oldest members of  this forest community– the hemlocks and white oaks – frequently topped 450-650 years in age.

 

 

 

3)  In the heartland of Appalachia, old-growth boasts a stunning bio-diversity. Old-growth forests in the heartland can host a peak of an astounding 100,000 species, including insects, salamanders, mychorrhizal fungi, salamanders, ferns, lichens, shrubs and wildflowers.

 

 

 

4)  In the heartland, biodiversity plummets after a severe disturbance. Researchers have documented that as soon as a heartland forest is highly disturbed, such as after a deep timber harvest, the species count drops roughly in half. After a natural disturbance in primeval times, a disrupted forest would slowly recover its peak biodiversity over time.  In the forest’s present fragmented condition, however, a disrupted forest may never completely recover what it lost, but species diversity nevertheless appreciates over time.

 

 

 

5)  When it comes to biodiversity, all forests are not alike. Correlating old-growth and biodiversity in the Appalachian heartland is contrary to what may be true in more peripheral deciduous forests, where fire and hurricane have been guiding factors in evolution. In such places, such as the boreal north, the coast, the far south, and the  drought-stricken west, disturbed forests with open canopies often have higher biodiversity than undisturbed forests, whether they are old-growth or not. A lesson learned, therefore, in the Ozarks or southern Georgia, may run counter to the lessons learned in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina. We must be careful what principles we apply to the Eastern Forest’s bio-geography.

 

 

 

6)  Today, our forests are highly disturbed. With the rare exception of the rare old-growth forests of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, over 99% the the Appalachian heartland forests can be classified as either disturbed or completely vanished. The oldest trees in many of our existing forests are only 40-60 years old.

 

7)  Old-Growth in the heartland, once the dominant landscape feature, is now the rarest. Old-growth forest, representing the pinnacle of potential biodiversity and for eons the most common landscape feature in the region, is now almost non-existent in the modern landscape of Eastern North America, and all other temperate forest centers of the world. In much of the Appalachian heartland, less than one half of one percent of old growth forest remain. Compare that with 10% of the Pacific Northwest rainforest that still remain as old-growth.

 

 

8)  We live in the most disturbed biome in the world. Of the world’s fourteen terrestrial biomes, the temperate broadleaf forest biome (mid-latitude forests with deciduous leaves) is the most disturbed biome on the planet.

 

9)  Trees are more than science. So far in this essay we have been discussing the merits of old-growth from the viewpoint of scientific thinking. If we study old-growth from the the additional viewpoints of inspiration, beauty, and poetry, then the merits of an old-growth forest expand beyond the space limitations of this current essay. We therefore leave such productive musings to you, to ponder in the long dark winter nights that beckon fruitfully ahead. We would love to hear what old-growth means to you in these more subjective realms. Write us and share!

 

Conclusion?

 

We repeat: Restoring large blocks of old-growth forests back to the Appalachian heartland is the single most important thing we can do on behalf of biodiversity protection and restoration. Doing such work is of critical global significance. Here at the Arc, this is work that we do!

 

        The Arc is proud to be one of the non-profits working toward the mission of old-growth restoration in the East. Part of our challenge is to accept the imperfection of our work. We can’t turn back the clock. We can’t bring back all the missing components – the likes of the now extinct passenger pigeons and Carolina parakeets. We can’t send the emerald ash borer or the hemlock adelgid back to China, nor the garlic mustard back to England. But we can do this: we can return a small percent of our tired, young working forests back to best functioning old-growth forest that our current environment allows.

 

    We think this work is environmentally worthy, scientifically sound, and in terms of earth stewardship -- absolutely morally responsible. We hope you will partner with us in this noble effort.

 

Happy Holidays to you all. On behalf of the One Forest, our home, that connects us all....from Maine to Florida, from Virginia to the Ozarks....

 

Nancy Stranahan and the good folks at the

The Arc of Appalachia Preserve System

Headquarters: Highlands Nature Sanctuary

7629 Cave Road, Bainbridge, OH 45612

937-365-0101

www.arcofappalachia.org

[email protected]

 

-----Inline Attachment Follows-----

 

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Linkup mailing list

[email protected]

http://lists.highlandssanctuary.org/mailman/listinfo/linkup

Sprawling Wayne National Forest turns 75

Friday, November 12, 2010

By Frank Thomas, The Columbus Dispatch

 

Ohio's only national forest will start its yearlong 75th birthday celebration today.  On Nov. 12, 1935, the federal government bought about 43 acres in Lawrence County - the first plot of what is now the 241,000-acre Wayne National Forest.  Spread across 12 counties in southeastern Ohio, the forest is a patchwork of lands reclaimed after logging, mining, agriculture or other uses.

 

MAP OF WAYNE NATIONAL FOREST

 

MORE: http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/11/12/sprawling-wayne-forest-turns-75.html

I'm glad something is being done to protect the woodlands. Ohio already has enough fields and useless sprawl.

Deficit might open up state parks to drilling

Lease payments on wells could offer Ohio much-needed cash

 

Monday, January 17, 2011  02:52 AM

By Spencer Hunt

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

 

Ohio's oil and gas industry has unsuccessfully pushed for years to drill in the state's parks, forests and preserves.

 

But its prospects could change.

 

Faced with a projected $8 billion budget deficit and an estimated $560 million backlog of overdue repairs at state parks, the new director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources says he's "open" to the idea of drilling on 600,000 acres many thought were protected from exploitation.

 

"It's something we would consider and review," David Mustine said. "At this point, we don't want to close out any option."

 

More at: http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/01/17/copy/deficit-might-open-up-drilling.html?adsec=politics&sid=101