Threats to the Ridge Actions that should be taken to save the Ridge About the Shawangunk Ridge Coalition Media coverage about the Shawangunk Ridge Learn more about the environment of the Shawangunk Ridge Conservation efforts on the Shawangunk Ridge Recreation on the Shawangunk Ridge Maps of the Shawangunk Ridge Links to supporters and affiliated sites Search this site for information Contact information for the Shawangunk Ridge Coalition Return to our home page

Letter to the editor of the New Paltz Times


Tuesday, December 03, 2002

A recent article describes a large-scale housing project to be
located at the very heart of the protected portion of the Northern
Shawangunk Ridge. This letter is a truncated and feeble attempt to provide citizens with a short list of what we stand to lose ecologically with this sort of project in this sort of place. The Northern Shawangunks are a fragile wild landscape and maybe half of the wild land is protected in an approximately 25,000 acre core with some kind of forever wild status. This core includes Minnewaska State Park Preserve, Mohonk Preserve, Sam's Point Preserve, and a few other parcels. All the rest of the wooded land adjacent to the ridge and visible from those spectacular views is privately owned.
This core of protected land is much too isolated; both by geographic
features like cliffs and rivers and much more by human features like roads, lawns and subdivisions. Small developments constantly nibble at this protected area. A project on the proposed scale, even with some of the land "protected" is more the equivalent of losing a limb.

Studies have shown that many small animals, vertebrate and arthropod will not travel across an opening in the canopy. You know, like the one that occurs when you arrive at a road, the long one that acts as a wall for these species. Roads also act as execution grounds for small animals, particularly reptiles and amphibians. This causes fragmentation of the habitat for these species and isolates their populations. The more isolated a population, as you will remember from high school biology, the weaker the genome and so the weaker that population. Populations are left vulnerable because of this and species start to disappear in a process called ecosystem decay. Why should we care about these small creatures? If the argument that everything has a place in nature is not adequate, then note that these small animals are an important part in the daily lives of the big stuff, trees, and other plants, larger animals... Just as you can't digest your food without the symbiotic bacteria that lines your gut these are the pollinators, the pest eaters and the seed dispersers. Our forests are already in a weakened state because of
this decay, every tree species faces some disease or insect pest, some are so far winning the battle and some, like the American Elm and Beech, are vanishing.

The wetlands of the Palmaghatt Ravine are incredibly unique because they are relatively undisturbed. There is no monoculture of Phragmites or purple loosestrife there as in so many of our wetlands. Even if these wealthy "environmentally concerned" homebuilders choose to landscape with native plants the very roads they use for access will introduce invasive species. The recent ice storm toppled many trees and wrenched large limbs from them. This creates openings in the forest with opportunities for new plants to grow. This is a natural forest process. Today, most of the species
around to colonize these openings are native species. But the buffer that protects this place is tiny. A housing development in the heart of the Shawangunks will introduce exotic species simply because of the road building that must accompany it. Not to mention the exotic plants that people are likely to plant in their yards there.

Bird feeders in such a place are likely to attract things other than
birds. Feeders spread disease among wild living birds. Black bears love bird seed. Our small population of resident bears, like the pair that I saw during a school program a few weeks ago, is wild. They are not nuisance bears that associate people with food. A great way to create a nuisance bear is with a bird feeder, garbage or human occupation of their space. Of course such homeowners will not tolerate these "problem" animals in their yards even if they did create them. And so they will be shot, legally in any season by a homeowner who has the right to do so.

The pets people keep are a huge problem for wildlife. I would not
like to see our last breeding pair of hooded warblers disappear down the gullet of some pampered house cat. Or our bobcats run off by someone's terrier.

A fragmented woodland is an anemic shadow of a red full-blooded
wilderness. Our eastern forests are not true wilderness but they are
recovered from the last episode a hundred years ago of major disturbance and there is a continuum of wildness depending upon the level of disturbance. What happens with fragmentation is that you get these smaller and smaller islands and you lose large wildlife. We have no moose, no elk, no mountain lions, no wolves. In the Shawangunks we have many species such as a deer and
coyote that are not dependent on high quality, intact forest, that is
diverse and mainly comprised of native species. The Shawangunks do harbor species that are dependent on intact forest like fishers, porcupines and bobcats. Will we lose these?

Despite a recent uninformed diatribe in this column regarding the
role of SEQRA in local governmental process what we need to know is that with a project adjacent to state land as this one is, we all have standing under SEQRA. That state land belongs to all of us, it is held in our trust and so it is as if we are all adjacent landowners. This project will definitely impact the view from Minnewaska State Park Preserve. It will be clearly visible from Millbrook Mountain, Castle Point and Hamilton Point and their adjacent carriageways.
These are the spectacular views that have inspired thousands of people.

The owners of such properties should be people who recognize what they have. People who recognize more than dollar signs when they enjoy their properties. They cannot replace what we lose; they cannot create what nature has made. These places should be left as havens for fishers, bobcats and mountain ash trees. Please leave space for nature to do its work. Please be a very great human being and leave this place free of human dwellings and big machines.

Hatti Langsford
Gardiner, NY