When David Vanderhoop, elder of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), heard about a plan to clear out acres of trees in the State Forest, specifically white pitch pines and scrub oaks, as part of a plantation removal and habitat restoration project, he thought the idea was absurd.
“They’re going to destroy that many healthy white pine trees just because they can,” Vanderhoop, co-founder of the Indigenous nonprofit Sassafras Earth Education, said.
Vanderhoop said that there has been an ecocide and genocide over the last 500 years to the plants and Indigenous people of the land.
“It would be best for people to come together and use some common sense in this case about how we really want to give some understanding to the trees and the plants,” he added.
The Manuel Correllus State Forest is one of the state’s most important properties for rare species, and in an attempt to cultivate a suitable native environment, officials want to remove non-native species planted over the last hundred years. But there is a healthy Island resistance, including by a new unnamed group that met last week, from those that think that rather than alter the landscape in such a large way, nature should be allowed to take its course.
The goal of the plantation removal project, managed by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) with guidance from the Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program (NHESP), is to restore a native natural landscape that supports rare species and reduces wildfire threats, by removing the pines that were planted as part of the lumber industry between the 1930s and 1990.
But even with the proposed benefits, some Islanders worry that modification of nature does more harm than good.
James ‘Jim’ Athearn, a frequent patron of State Forest trails and founder of Morning Glory Farm, said the 5,300-acre parcel of land is his safe haven, and he worries about the impact of the plan.
“The feeling you get there is mystical,” he said, and as one of the only places on the Island that has these tall trees, he doesn’t like the idea of their removal.
Last Friday, Athearn was part of an unnamed group that met at the West Tisbury Library to review events and latest communication between public servants about the project. The group of both young and old Islanders met for 50 minutes, and the general tone of participants was in opposition to the project, Athearn said, though some were also there to just gather information.
Among the attendees was David Foster, director emeritus of Harvard Forest and an ecologist who leads a regional movement to conserve farms and woodlands called Wildlands and Woodlands, Athearn said. Foster told The Times that his chief concerns are two-fold.
Foster worries that the plan would reverse the State Forest back to a colonial landscape, a land that was heavily logged and cleared for agriculture and burned. While that type of landscape supports rare species, they aren’t necessarily the same species of a pre-European contact. They’re cutting down a forest they created 100 years ago, he said.
Foster, who co-authored a study on implications of land management that seeks to emulate pre-contact environments, said that the landscape wants to be a forest and will grow to be a big majestic forest if we just leave it alone.
His other issue with the project is that DCR hasn’t put a lot of resources into the State Forest in a consistent way in a long time. Now, they’re coming with this one project, and it’s the most intensive, he added.
He said they could do less intensive work around the forest that would accomplish a lot more, including thinning some vegetation. It’s “an endless operation” of huge restoration and continued maintenance that he’s not sure the state plans to step in to do.
Other Islanders agree that the scope of the project is too large.
“We can take a few out and not have a giant impact,” Vanderhoop said. “As an Indigenous elder, I think it’s absolutely absurd that this would go ahead in these times when our friends, the trees and other plants, are having trouble existing with all the other diseases and funguses.”
Prudy Burt, who wrote a letter to the project’s task force, said: “Our (European) tenure here is short, and fraught with missteps, misuse, and massive alteration and destruction of this landscape. We have developed and altered this Island to within an inch of its life.”
“I am tired of us,” she added in her letter that asked for a pause on the project.
On a tour by the state in November, environmentalists also expressed concern about the carbon footprint from the project, which wasn’t calculated by the state. There are efforts, however, to gauge interest from local bandsaw mill operators and builders to keep the resource on the Island, according to minutes from a force meeting on Dec. 10.
Some, however, see the renewed push for management as positive.
The Island is notorious for being reactive instead of proactive, Andrew Jacobs, manager and environmental technician for the Aquinnah tribe’s laboratory, said.
For Jacobs, the plan reads in two different ways. On the one hand, he can see how the project disrupts nature, but on the other hand, this can be seen as proactive management.
“It could be a great opportunity to get ahead of something,” he said.
There hasn’t been reasonable management in a really long time in the State Forest, Jacobs added.
Dan Doyle, special projects planner for the Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC), agrees. “For several years we had no communication with DCR regarding forest issues. The fact that DCR is sharing proposals and communicating consistently with us is very encouraging. We hope to learn more about their plans and continue the dialogue so future projects can be strengthened. Again, we thank them for working with us and considering our local perspectives,” he said.
And wildfire concerns are paramount. Alex Schaeffer, Edgartown fire chief, said that decreasing the risk is important because Island fire departments have no tactical response capability if a crown fire, one that spreads from treetop to treetop, were to occur in the plantations, according to minutes from the task force meeting on Dec. 10.
The project is part of a conservation permit issued in 2001 by the Natural Heritage Endangered Species Program. DCR was required to remove conifer plantations and restore the areas to sandplain heath or pitch pine, oaks, or scrub oaks, a DCR spokesperson said. It was only after 25 miles of unpermitted trails were constructed by the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation in 2018 that the state department noted the permit was never acted on.
It involves the removal and restoration of 175 acres, though initial stages by the state department concentrate on 79 acres, a DCR spokesperson said.
“Nobody likes seeing trees come down,” Doyle said, but they pose a risk to the Island.
The hope is to lower wildfire risk made worse by climate change, increase public safety, and provide safe access for firefighters and equipment as well as strengthen wildlife corridors to improve connectivity and allow species migration from one part to another. The plantations currently present barriers to some species, Doyle said.
The plantation removal should restore the ecosystem and protect the biodiversity of the forest, Jeremy Houser, director of science and policy for Vineyard Conservation Society (VCS), said. The Island environmental organization is part of the Manuel Correllus State Forest task force organized by the MVC.
The white pines and other non-native plantations aren’t necessarily bad trees, but they crowd out the native ecosystem, Houser said.
“Elsewhere, on Island and off, a lot of this habitat is being lost, or already lost, to development. In the State Forest, it’s protected from that threat, but instead the habitat is being lost to the spread of these conifer plantations,” he said.
This type of climate adaptation project isn’t unique to the Island. In fact, there are other forest management projects proposed across the state, though Foster said some have halted or been rejected because of local conservation concerns.
Regardless of the suggested benefits, local resistance remains.
“There’s a lot of wood out there,” Foster said. It’s possible that many thousands of trees will be clear cut, he added.
The project is expected to start in fall 2025, a DCR spokesperson said. DCR still has to file a Forest Cutting Plan and solicit bids for the contract.
