The state Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) has filed an official forest cutting plan to begin removing white pine plantations in the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest that could begin at the end of the year, despite criticism from some Islanders.
While the proposal still needs approval, state officials have shrunk down the area to be cleared in the first phase and have added buffers along the edges of the forest to minimize the visual and physical impact — a major complaint from Islanders.
“I can see that it has evolved from what we first discussed as we’ve been having these conversations over the past few months,” Dan Doyle, special projects planner for MVC, said to state employees during a task force meeting this week. “I wanted to thank you for taking some of those concerns into account, and it’s exciting we have a start date now as well.”
DCR employees walked through the plan for the first phase of the project at a Manuel Correllus State Forest Task Force meeting in the Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC) offices Tuesday afternoon. The plan still needs approval from a state service forester and MassWildlife’s Natural Heritage Endangered Species Program (NHESP), with review expected to begin within the next few weeks.
But despite potential approval, questions, like the capacity of local milling, remain from the public.
The project is part of a conservation permit issued in 2001 and amended in 2021 to remove non-native species planted a century ago for the lumber industry and restore a native landscape that supports rare species and reduces wildfire threats. The plan is to remove 175 acres of white pine plantations by 2035.
Phase one includes the cutting of 52 acres of white pine that will be used as a test to determine best methods for the remainder of the project. That includes production of 201,000 board feet of white pine and 2,613 tons of chips from two separate areas.
In the southeast corner of the forest, 40 acres are slated to be cut. Further northwest, four patch cuts — each three acres — are marked to be removed to test regeneration of the forest in a “small-scale experiment”, DCR forester Paul Gregory said.
The expectation is to remove the remaining pitch pines in the rest of the northern area in the future, Gregory said.
In earlier versions of the proposal, the state hoped to remove 79 acres of white pine in the initial phase, but the addition of buffers from trails, bike paths, and roads that range from 30 to 75 feet reduced the initial acreage.
The estimated start date is December 1, according to the plan.
The desired outcome five years from harvest, also indicated in the plan, is a “sparse woodland dominated by tree oak and highly scattered pitch pine, with an understory of scrub oak, low bush blueberry, and black huckleberry with regeneration of oak and pitch pine trees.”
Still, some Islanders, most of whom would rather leave nature alone, are upset that there wasn’t enough public engagement.
“The public process has been deficient to nonexistent, and consequently the plan is half-baked. The DCR has thus missed out on the genuine benefits of public scrutiny of many aspects of their plan,” Katherine Scott, an Islander against the plan, said in an email to The Times.
“I don’t know what we can do at this point,” Michael Blanchard, photographer and gallery owner in favor of keeping the white pines, said. Blanchard also raised the point that phase one includes the “epicenter” of what most of those in opposition consider to be the most valuable part of the forest. He said he’d previously suggested the initial cutting occur in a less frequented area.
Despite criticism, the state department is required to do this, Doyle said. They have a decade to cut 175 acres in the forest, and they’re starting small, Doyle added.
The state service forester has 10 business days from last Friday to review and approve the plan. Then, he will forward the plan to NHESP, which will have 10 days to review and provide comments, a DCR spokesperson said.
NHESP will give a time frame when operations can take place once approved, which Gregory said is typically December through April, but cutting plans are valid for two years. The first of December is a best guess start date.
The cutting plan is subject to changes pending comments from the approving authority, a representative from DCR said.
Tuesday’s task force meeting came days after a local group called White Pine Friendly organized a walk led by David Foster, director emeritus of Harvard Forest and an ecologist who leads a regional movement to conserve farms and woodlands called Wildlands and Woodlands. A group of around 20 walked the proposed cutting areas, many expressing concern over the lack of public interface and vague plans.
Chief among remaining concerns of the plan is how the department will fund future phases of the project and management.
DCR representatives said that they have the money to complete phase one of the plan, which they estimate is $50,000 based on previous work, though they won’t know exactly how much until the first contract is awarded for the work. The cutting plan must be approved before the state department can solicit bids.
The budget for the entirety of the project is unknown. Doyle said future phases aren’t yet on the table, and bids for phase one will inform subsequent budgets. Later phases will also need new cutting plans in the future.
Plans for management after removal of the 52 acres are to be determined, Peter Church, director of forest stewardship for DCR, said. “One of the things that we do in all of our management activities is we do post-management monitoring, see what comes up, whether it’s native vegetation or not,” he said.
Members of the public expressed unease about the regenerative success of the native landscape as well as the Island’s capacity to process 201,000 board feet of white pine and chips, asking whether cutting could be organized at a rate that the Island could handle.
“The forest cutting plan doesn’t dictate how much is removed at once. It just dictates what you plan to do over that two-year period, and there’s always extensions that can be asked for up to an additional two more years,” Gregory said. “Overall, it would depend on DCR’s financial budget. Obviously, doing it all at once would be the least cost.”
Blanchard also brought up a question about the remainder of the hundreds of acres of conifer plantations in the State Forest, but DCR representatives said removal past 175 acres isn’t in current planning.
“I’m not sure what happens 20 years from now or 30 years from now, but it’s not in our current planning,” Church said.
The cutting plan is on the agenda at the Edgartown Conservation Commission today at 4:30 pm. They have a chance to provide comments, but approval from the commission isn’t a required milestone for the project.
There will also be a meeting on June 23 at the State Forest for those in the lumber industry who are interested in leveraging the harvest. Contact Dan Doyle at doyle@mvcommission.org for more details.
If, IF! you could get 20 tons of wood chips on a truck, that’s about 130 truckloads. Where is that going? 210,00 board feet of rough sawn lumber? Can the mills here on island handle that volume? And if they can, who will want all that rough sawn stuff? And if they can’t, where does it go? A preliminary estimate of about $1000 per acre in costs won’t hold up. And here is what they hope to have in 5 years: ‘A sparse woodland dominated by tree oak and highly scattered pitch pine, with an understory of scrub oak, low bush blueberry, and black huckleberry with regeneration of oak and pitch pine trees.’ Too many questions, not enough answers and cutting 52 acres to get ‘a sparse woodlands’…with, by the way, a higher fire risk as they acknowledge…no thanks. Stop and rethink please.
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