Protectors of Pine Oak Woods • Current Issues

 


 

                       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

Latest on Crooke’s Point

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.

Forest Restoration

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.

Winter 2011

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 Staten Island and to the scores of youngsters and dozens of teams which may no longer be able to use Goodhue’s fields, pond and woodland trails!

 

Goodhue Center is the missing link in the North Shore Greenbelt. It is the watershed for Allison’s Pond and the Snug Harbor Ponds; it just cannot be turned into housing!

 

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
for Long Pond/Butler Woods Preservation

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.

 

Graniteville Photo Long Pond Paths


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