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Protectors of Pine Oak Woods • Current Issues |
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Current Issues Community Board 3 Awards Protectors On November 22, 2011, Community Board 3 presented a Certificate of Appreciation to Protectors of Pine Oak Woods. The certificate read: “In grateful recognition of your continuing effort for maintaining and cleaning the beaches on Staten Island, we hereby present Protectors of Pine Oak Woods with this certificate of appreciation.” Chuck Perry accepted the award for Protectors Click on the link above to read the latest news about Crooke’s Point DEC
Summer Camp Scholarship Winners Click on the link above to read the SILive
article under CONSERVATION
CAMPS, the third article on this link. Protectors hopes you enjoy the Workshop Reports submitted by Naturalist and Protectors Board Member, Don Recklies. Please click on Forest Restoration to view the monthly reports. Click on the link above to read Don Recklies’ final thoughts of Winter 2011. William
H. Pouch Boy Scout Camp in Peril Protectors
of Pine Oak Woods actively supports preservation of Camp Pouch whose sale has been proposed by the
Greater New York Council of the Boy Scouts of America. We are aiding the efforts of environmental
groups and local scouts to persuade our legislators and the Greater New York
Council that this jewel in the center of the Greenbelt must not be lost. Goodhue Woods Lost for This Year Have you heard that the City’s purchase of 38 acres at Goodhue Center has not gotten any funding from the Office of Management and the Budget (i.e. Mayor Bloomberg’s office) this budget cycle? And have you heard that $8 million put aside years ago to begin the acquisition has ‘disappeared?’ This is outrageous; unfair to We knew this crisis was coming, but we were told to keep quiet about it. Nothing could be done. The City’s Capital Budget has been cut 35-40% this year due to the recession. Protectors has been told that the money to purchase one of three parcels of Goodhue will come through next year, only if we urge the Mayor and Parks Commissioner Adrian Benape to fund the first part purchase in 2011. We are angry but hopeful for next year. We can start urging now! We will need many letters. Right now we need you to write to editor siadvance.com , and to Mayor Bloomberg, City Hall, N.Y., N.Y. 10007, expressing your support for the purchase of Goodhue (see SIA editorial of 7/28/10) and your disappointment that no funding was allocated this year. If you have questions, call Ellen Pratt at 718-948-2662. Please write_two letters and include your address and telephone number in the Advance letter or e-mail. The Children’s Aid Society has agreed
in principle to sell a large part of its 42 acre North Shore woodlands to be
used as city parkland, but sources of funding in this extremely difficult
financial environment are uncertain. Protectors of Pine Oak Woods has been actively canvassing
our legislators to secure support for that purchase. Efforts Continue to Protect the Amundsen Trailway and Parkway Right-of-Ways The unbuilt
Richmond and Willowbrook Parkways, long considered
an integral part of the Staten Island Greenbelt, remain mapped highway
right-of-ways. Our legislative
committee continues to encourage legislation introduced in Albany to demap these unbuilt roadways to
prevent their use in ways that are inimical to the health of the
Greenbelt. In a sleight-of-hand
trick worthy of Robert Moses, federal funding was shifted away
from a bikeway planned for the Amundsen Trailway,
and plans persist to incompetently carve another in the middle of the
Greenbelt. We will scrutinize and
protest any new proposals that improperly deviate from the Greenbelt Master
Plan. Protectors
Supported Funding In 2007,
Protectors of Pine Oak Woods, co-operating with The Trust for Public Land, sent testimony
supporting appropriating $3 million from the National Oceanic &
Atmospheric Administration Coastal and Estuarine Land conservation Program
for the preservation of Long Pond/Butler Woods in New York. The 20 acre Butler Woods was purchased in
2007 and added to the NYSDEC Mount Loretto Unique
Area, and in 2008 the Archdiocese of New York transferred 75 acres south of
Amboy Road to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation which
now manages that property as Northern Mount Loretto
State Forest. These two properties
have been preserved to ensure the protection of important coastal wetlands
and the availability of open space, recreational opportunity, and public
access to the shore of Raritan Bay. Sharrotts Road Shorelands to a Small Degree Protected Protectors of Pine Oak Woods has
heartily endorsed efforts to preserve as open space the areas of the Sharrotts Road Shorelands and
Port Mobile Swamp Forest and Tidal Wetlands that were nominated by The Trust
for Public Land for open space preservation.
Following our observation that parcels of that site had reverted to
city ownership, the
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation,
through the intermediation of The Trust for Public land and with funding from
the Jamaica Bay Damages Account, secured a small portion of those lands
adjacent to the Arthur Kill in 2008.
The majority of these shorelands are still
held by private owners, sheltered by real estate conglomerates. Since these properties are or are adjacent
to restricted wetlands, their development is problematic, yet efforts to
purchase them for conservation have not prevailed. Rapid development of surrounding higher
ground continues to place environmental stress of this outflow area between
Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve and the Arthur Kill. NASCAR Defeat was a No-Brainer, What Happens Next? In 2006 Protectors
of Pine Oak Woods voted to oppose a wrong-headed International Speedway
project for Staten Island for all the good reasons you had already come up
with, and then some. Spearheaded by
The Nature Conservancy, a year long campaign to
halt this development succeeded in persuading ISC to abandon this disastrous
proposal, and they spent several years trying to divest themselves of their
$100 million investment. We had
advocated the land be
secured as a wetland buffer, but it has been sold to a Texas
company organized to purchase land for port facilities. We await further developments. Charleston Woods/Kreischer Hill Falls to Development Efforts by Protectors to prevent the major development of a shopping mall and bus depot in a unique 130-acre ecosystem sheltering a globally rare plant and other endangered species did not succeed. As a nod to environmental and open space concerns, the location of the rare Torrey’s Mountain Mint was narrowly contained in what is now a fenced and sometimes trash-strewn enclosure, a small part of the area has been designated as a “park and nature preserve” - the nature of the “preserve” uncertain - and some rare trees were transplanted from the site. A lawsuit filed by WildMetro, Sweetbay Magnolia Bioreserve Conservancy, and the Natural Resources Defense Council in 2004 achieved a small reduction in the scope of the development, but the bulk of this unique sandy, scrub-oak environment has been irretrievably lost. Mid-Island
Bluebelt Advisory Committee The following invitation was
sent to Protectors from the NYC Environmental Protection Department
regarding the Mid-Island Bluebelt. At the
meeting DEP will be conducting a Public Scoping Session for the Mid-Island Bluebelt Environmental Impact Statement. The
EIS will assess the potential environmental impacts of the new drainage
plans for the Oakwood Beach, New Creek and South Beach watersheds. This meeting was held: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:30 P.M. Community Board #2 Offices Lou Carravone Building 460 Brielle Avenue on the grounds of Seaview
Hospital Comments from Dr. Alan Benimoff
are forthcoming. |
©2012 PPOW