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Controlled blazes planned in 'Gunks
Fires to help preserve natural vegetation
By Dan Shapley
Poughkeepsie Journal
Sunday, November 13, 2005

Conservationists will set fire to parts of the Shawangunk Ridge this week, as part of a broad effort to protect its ecology.

The Shawangunk Ridge Biodiversity Partnership, made up of New York state and the private groups that own large tracts on the ridge, was formed in 1994. After an extensive study, it identified the top three threats to the ridge as over-development, fire suppression and over-use for recreation.

A coalition of land trusts are working to protect another 10,000 to 15,000 acres of the ridgeline to counteract the first threat.

This week, the partnership will coordinate a "prescribed burn" at three fields at the Mohonk Preserve. The fields were once farms, and fire will take the place of routine mowing to keep them open for grassland wildlife like northern harriers and bobolinks.

Future fires will take place at Sam's Point Preserve near Ellenville, owned by the Open Space Institute and managed by the Nature Conservancy. The 2,000 acres of pitch pine forest - a shoulder-high expanse of old twisted pine trees - is the ecosystem that would most benefit from fire.

"It's a very unusual vegetation type, and it's dependent on fire to be sustained," said Cara Lee, director of the Nature Conservancy's Shawangunk Ridge program. "At this point, it's at some risk because the process of fire has been suppressed for 50 years."

Species to be aided

Periodic fires would burn up competing species, add a burst of nutrients to the thin ridgetop soil, and burn off the resin that locks seeds in the pitch pine cones. Blueberry pickers used to set fires on the ridge to enhance the berry crops for decades until the 1950s - and hikers could expect a bumper crop after a fire.

Unlike wildfire, prescribed burns are set intentionally when weather conditions are appropriate, and then carefully monitored. The National Fire Plan has given the Nature Conservancy about $500,000 to burn pitch pine forests on the Shawangunk Ridge and the Albany Pine Bush.

The Shawangunk Ridge Biodiversity Partnership has spent several years talking about its ideas and convincing people it can be done safely.

There is still some concern, primarily in the Cragsmoor area of Ellenville, where wildfires in the past caused damage, Lee said. Prescribed burns can actually reduce the chance of catastrophic fire by burning up dead wood in a controlled manner, she said.

Overuse cited

Tackling the third-biggest threat to the ridge's ecology may prove more difficult.

The partnership identified overuse of the ridge by the estimated 500,000 hikers, bikers and rock climbers who visit the ridge each year as an important issue. That can lead to erosion, which is of particular concern on the ridge where soil is very thin and some of the only plant life is lichen that takes decades to grow, Lee said.

Even as the preserved land open to the public expands, the population is increasing, and more people are using the same trails. It also could put more demands on volunteers, because government budgets for park management are unlikely to increase dramatically, said Ed Goodell, executive director of the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference.

"The one thing that's true is the amount of undeveloped land, relative to the number of people, is going to decrease," Goodell said. "They're all getting squeezed. It's all, 'Do more with less.'