Ever wandered through the Pine Barrens and marveled at its serene beauty? Russell Juelg of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation joins us to navigate the past, present, and future of this ecological treasure.
The debate over motorized routes within the forest sets the stage for a deeper exploration into the balancing act of accessibility and environmental stewardship. We dissect the history etched into the paths crisscrossing the Pine Barrens and the Pinelands Preservation Alliance's advocacy for responsible use. The conversation shifts gears towards the encroaching threat of illegal off-roading, revealing the intricate dance between preservation and the increasing visitation.
Our episode culminates with a hard look at the issue of law enforcement in state parks, zeroing in on the complications of curtailing off-road vehicle misuse. We unpack the constraints that shackle park police, the contrasting approaches of conservation officers, and the educational gaps that leave our natural sanctuaries vulnerable. Russell and I dissect the interplay between rules and their enforcement, proposing a path forward that could strengthen protections for Wharton State Forest
Ever wandered through the Pine Barrens and marveled at its serene beauty? Russell Juelg of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation joins us to navigate the past, present, and future of this ecological treasure.
The debate over motorized routes within the forest sets the stage for a deeper exploration into the balancing act of accessibility and environmental stewardship. We dissect the history etched into the paths crisscrossing the Pine Barrens and the Pinelands Preservation Alliance's advocacy for responsible use. The conversation shifts gears towards the encroaching threat of illegal off-roading, revealing the intricate dance between preservation and the increasing visitation.
Our episode culminates with a hard look at the issue of law enforcement in state parks, zeroing in on the complications of curtailing off-road vehicle misuse. We unpack the constraints that shackle park police, the contrasting approaches of conservation officers, and the educational gaps that leave our natural sanctuaries vulnerable. Russell and I dissect the interplay between rules and their enforcement, proposing a path forward that could strengthen protections for Wharton State Forest
Welcome to the Pine Barrens Podcast. Today's guest is Russell Juelg. Russell is Senior Land Steward with the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, and today we'll be discussing the Wharton State Forest Visitor Use Plan Draft that is being proposed by the New Jersey State Park Service. So, Russell, who are you?
Russell Juelg:My name is Russell Juelg and I work for New Jersey Conservation Foundation. I'm the Senior Land Steward.
Jason Howell:And so today we're going to be discussing the upcoming Wharton State Forest Visitor Use Plan. What has been your experience in Wharton and let's say, when was the first time you were there?
Russell Juelg:Gosh, it's got to be 25, maybe 30 years ago that I first started visiting Wharton State Forest. When I first was volunteering at the Woodford Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge, one of the things that we wanted to do at the refuge was revive some of the expeditions out into Wharton State Forest hikes and canoeing and things like that and so I started going out in Wharton State Forest, initially just exploring and trying to get acquainted with the ecosystem and going out and trying to learn about the land and animals.
Jason Howell:So what did things look like then? Was there a lot of visitation at that time? Did you have a lot of people going out hiking, biking, canoeing? What was the big recreational draw?
Russell Juelg:Well, wharton State Forest at that time really didn't have a whole lot of visitation. I mean, on weekends of course there would be more than on weekdays, but a lot of times you could go out there and drive around and maybe cross one or two other vehicles. You could hike on the trails and not see much evidence that other people had been on Some of the trails. You could get in a canoe and go down the Batstow or the Malika River or the Whading River and you might not even run into another person or see another person the whole time that you're out there. We did the Betona Trail as a three-day backpacking trip and that would be like a Friday, saturday and Sunday or Saturday, sunday, monday. We'd make it a three-day weekend and you hardly ran across another person the whole time you were out there on a three-day hike.
Jason Howell:Yeah, that's pretty amazing. So for people that don't know how big is Wharton State Forest, what's the general acreage?
Russell Juelg:Somebody would have to tell me, because I don't remember. They add on to it a little bit at a time, it seems, and it must be close to 120,000 acres.
Jason Howell:Yeah, I think that's right. I think 96,000 acres that they bought from the Wharton estate in 1954. And then since then, yeah, there's been a lot of additions. So 30,000 acres give or take. And just geographically, for people that may not know where is Wharton State Forest, what geography does it include?
Russell Juelg:Well, most of Wharton State Forest is in the heart of the pine lands. It's situated in some of the most characteristic areas of the pine barrens in New Jersey that there are and it stretches in its peripheral areas in areas that are closer to development. But most of it is very much characteristic pine barrens with, relatively speaking, little degradation to the ecosystem.
Jason Howell:So how does that work? How was that such a big forest area preserved over colonization and even up to the modern day? How are we so lucky that this place continues to exist essentially in its pre-colonial form as far as the ecosystem goes?
Russell Juelg:Yeah, well, it's always good to remember that the Pine Barrens went through an industrial period and extensive logging, and during the iron making period, these areas were logged out repeatedly in order to provide fuel for the iron industry. So it was very, very heavily impacted and everything has been cut over many, many times. But after the industrial period, the Pine Barrens began to recover and we don't know exactly what it was like before the settlers came in, but what it resulted in was an ecosystem that is relatively undisturbed from typical human impacts. In other words, we don't have the typical development, the sprawl development, that you see in so many other portions of the state. So there's large, large tracts of uninhabited land and just wild, forested or swampy land all over in Warren State Forest.
Jason Howell:What are some of the places that you like to go most in Warren?
Russell Juelg:Well, I got into the habit of going down the Batstow River and the Malico River leading canoe trips, so those are two of my favorite places the Botanic Camp site, which is very much in the heart of the Pine Barrens very wild and scenic area of the Pine Barrens, and just any of the roads that you can cruise around on and just go sightseeing. It's always fun to drive those little sandy roads and just look around and enjoy the scenery. But I like places where you have access to water. I like the landscapes that you see close to old Cranberry reservoirs, places where you can go fishing. There are lots of areas where you have little ponds situated in the forest areas, these coastal plain intermittent ponds, which are always interesting in terms of plants and the wildlife that inhabit them.
Jason Howell:You mentioned, when you first started visiting public visitation was relatively sparse. How has that changed over the 30 years that you've been going there?
Russell Juelg:Well, the amount of human activity in water state forest has just really exploded. Many, many more people out there now, especially on weekends, than we used to ever see decades ago. I remember when I first got involved in conservation in the Pine Lands, one of the people that I was talking to said what she was worried about was that we could love the Pine Barrens to death. She was actually afraid that the Pine Barrens would get too much visitation and would suffer from the result of too many people going out. At that time I thought that was an unwarranted concern, because whenever I would go out I wouldn't hardly see anybody. It turns out that we've succeeded in popularizing the Pine Barrens as a destination.
Russell Juelg:Law enforcement officers are often inclined to say 10% of the people cause 90% of the problems. I think that's pretty much true in the Pine Barrens today is that the vast majority of the visitors respect the ecology of the region. They don't do anything to harm. They're very happy to comply with this general idea of take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints and all that sort of ethic. Of course, as the total number of people increases, then that number of the trouble-making portion of the public also increases, even though they're in the minority, they cause an outsize amount of trouble.
Jason Howell:I have a few numbers that might be useful to reference Ocean County, which is just to the east of Orton State Forest, north and east. In 1950, the population was 68,000. Today it's almost 10 times that. When Wharton was acquired and the people were actually designing what would be in Wharton State Forest, you had a population adjacent to the forest of only 68,000 in Ocean County. Today it's somewhere around 660,000 people in Ocean County. That's just about a 10-fold increase. There In Egg Harbor Township, which is to the south and east, the population in that time was about 5,000. Whereas today it's 50,000 and some of the council persons suggest they'll see 100,000 in their lifetime. There You're talking almost a 20-fold increase within just a few generations of population. If you take 150-mile radius from Chatsworth, which is essentially the middle of Wharton so 150 miles out from Chatsworth and Ehradius, you have approximately 42 million people within that New York, pennsylvania, delaware, maryland 150 miles out from Chatsworth 42 million people that could potentially look at Wharton as a recreational destination.
Russell Juelg:Yeah, that's an enormous number of people. Obviously, you have to evaluate how that much visitation, or potential visitation, is going to impact the ecosystem.
Jason Howell:My thought is that before the widespread use of GPS and cell phone navigation, that the Pine Barrens really was a mysterious and almost an unknown place outside of a few locals or a few people that had guided trips and somebody to really show them in. But now, if you type in, say Apple Pie Hill on your cell phone, on Google Maps, it'll take you right there.
Russell Juelg:Yeah, it's so easy now with technology to go to places where just lots of places that wouldn't be visited hardly at all except, like you say, by locals who have always known the Pine Barrens and have always traveled around in the Pine Barrens. They know it well, but now it's really really easy for just about anybody to figure out how to get into the interior portions of the Pine Barrens.
Jason Howell:From my point of view, that's both a double-edged sword, because I think, as advocates, we want people to go out and learn to love the place, but at the same time, how do we manage that use so that those really important places like the dunes, the ponds, the savannas, the wetlands, those really special habitats aren't degraded? So, from my point of view, a new plan that takes new account All of these millions of people that could potentially be coming here in the come, in the next I mean only the next few years, as word spreads it seems really important to me. What do you, what do you think about that?
Russell Juelg:Well, it's absolutely essential. I mean, if you anybody who owns a piece of property or manages a piece of property Soon realizes that you know they have to manage it and Deal with the fact that there are gonna be people, there's gonna be people who will Be wanting to visit that property, go exploring or whatever, and whether it's a private piece of property or a piece of public land, there has to be some control. You can't have totally unregulated motorized access to a valuable piece of of the geography of New Jersey and, just you know, let people go help their skelter wherever they want. You look at national parks and look at other state parks and other Wild areas, places that are valuable because of the ecology, places that have unique assemblages of plants and animals. Obviously you have to have some kind of reasonable limitation on. You know how people access and use that property.
Jason Howell:Yeah, I mean that just makes all the sense in the world to me. Yeah, especially going to places like Yellowstone, yosemite, you can see where it's it's really. You know, when people are on foot you can't bring Trash, you can't bring that much. You know axes, saws, but. But when people are able to get in with a, with a vehicle, to even the most sensitive habitat types, it really does seem to invite just all kinds of all kinds of trouble. Now, that being said, sometimes there are Exceptions. You know we want people to come in that may not have, you know, all that much mobility. So making sure that we were having accessible trail heads, more accessible trails, accessible docks and that kind of thing, and making sure that we can still accommodate people that may not be that Physically capable to get out into the deep back country without some Mechanized assistance of some kind, or even just simple, simple, you know, facilities that'll that'll allow people without that great physical ability still to enjoy the natural places and the scenic resource.
Russell Juelg:Yeah, I think it's. You know, I think most of us agree that. You know we want to make Places like this reasonably accessible to people, including those who have accessibility issues, and so you know it's just part and parcel of managing a piece of property like this to have to figure out how to strike a balance and Try to serve the needs of everybody that you want to serve, but also find a way to rein in reckless conduct that Accompanies, you know, just general public access.
Jason Howell:So One of the big points of Contention, at least locally, I think this is really a non issue for the general public but for for for locally, probably the most contentious issue With the visitor use plan is how motorized Routes will be designated and which routes would be designated for motorized use, for hiking, for biking, for horseback riding, and how that that all gets divvied out. Now, as far as pylons preservation Alliance goes, we generally support the historic Topographic mapped routes that you could get on the old topographic maps available from USGS so you should be able to pick these up at Batstow visitor center and other places. We generally support maintaining those old topographic routes as Motorized routes. It predates the pine lens act and as long as they don't go through really sensitive habitat, it seems like in most cases those old routes Generally won't do that much impact. You know, even if we get, you know, substantial increases of Visitation, most of these, these lanes of travel, these routes within the pine lens, within the pine marines, are Old sand wagon trails, most of them, if they haven't been created more recently by the forest fire service and they're bulldozing in in attempts to get around a wildfire, for example.
Jason Howell:So so really what we're talking about is our paths that were hand hand, created by hand, some of which may have been old, even even old Lenny Lenape Indian trails at one time, but the vast majority probably was created by industry iron industry, logging industry and they were created by hand.
Jason Howell:Never intention for public lanes of travel, but they're the width of a motor vehicle because they fit wagons, they fit Logging trucks at one time, they fit these things. So, people, because of a lack of Planning, I think in the 1950s people had adopted these old wagon trails for motor vehicles and Even though there's no surfacing, there's no maintenance in most cases. So I think a really big Aspect that should be prioritized with this visitor use plan is designating. Okay, what are the appropriate motor vehicle routes as Compared to hiking, biking, horseback riding, and can we actually maintain these things so we can invite the public in and and they would have some Reliable sense that they could actually go out on these paths and not get stuck in a big mud pit or or trapped in sand or or what? What have you?
Russell Juelg:Yeah, I think that's true and that's one of the other things that a that a manager of a piece of property like that has to take into consideration. If you create a map saying that this is a road that people can travel down, then you have to also take into account the possibility that the an average person in an average car, you know, is liable to try to drive that route and it's likely to get stuck, whereas people who have been driving it with you know, say, four-wheel drive trucks, jeeps and things like that, they might be able to use it with no problem. But if you make it part of the regular motorized access plan, then you're sometimes leading people into sort of a trap.
Jason Howell:So to pivot a little bit, in your experience and I know I've seen a lot of this in recent years when did you first see real damage in terms of off-road vehicle use unregulated, illegal off-road vehicle use in the pine lens and the pine barons?
Russell Juelg:Gosh, I guess you know I started going in the pine barons 30 years ago. Maybe it was closer to 20 years ago that I began to see some of the problem areas. One of the first things that came up was somebody called me and asked me if a Pine Lens Preservation Alliance would like to get involved in this issue of illegitimate, sometimes illegal, motorized traffic on, for example, the Batona Trail. And what he was concerned about was that he was seeing he was very active as a hiker and he was seeing every year more and more evidence of dirt bikes and ATVs on the Batona Trail, on footpath only portions of the Batona Trail. So these are just maybe in some cases people who don't realize it, but in other cases, people who know full well that they're not supposed to be on a hiking trail with a dirt bike or an ATV. And that's when you know PPA really started getting involved in this issue and but ever since then it's just has continued to get worse and worse.
Russell Juelg:Every year, more and more people are getting these vehicles, more and more people are creating vehicles that can go where the ordinary vehicle cannot go, and it's a popular pastime just to go out and cruise around and find challenging places. Sometimes, for some people it's the sport of being able to drive off into a pond or drive off into a stream, drive off into some kind of vegetated wetland and spin around, spin your tires. That is just sort of a sport for some people, and I have to believe that they know that what they're doing is a violation of the regulations. It's hard to know whether they understand that when they drive off into a pond, they're sometimes almost completely destroying an entire little ecosystem. You know, a pond is a very, very complicated little ecosystem and you can't drive around in a motor vehicle without introducing some really, really adverse impacts.
Jason Howell:And you know that's something that the original planners, the people who actually helped purchase the Wharton tract in the 1950s, really could not have even imagined.
Jason Howell:In 1954, most of these vehicles did not exist.
Jason Howell:There were changes in technology that really brought ATVs, dirt bikes, into existence in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and they really started to explode in 90s and even the early 2000s.
Jason Howell:And we already mentioned GPS technology. So people from out of the area who acquired these machines because of marketing proliferation of these machines, they are always looking for a place to go and with GPS, well, you could find the most sensitive habitats in Wharton State Forest and say, well, look at that, that looks like a great place for me to go and do donuts in my quad, atv, dirt bike. And the technology now is such that even big wetlands, deep wetlands, are not necessarily a barrier to some of these vehicles. So the technology has advanced to a point that the original planners could never have imagined and I believe if they could have foreseen the technological changes, they would have been a lot more strict in where they originally would have set out allowing for motor vehicles. And they really didn't do that planning because they couldn't have envisioned the impacts that we see today, with millions of people surrounding the pylons, huge marketing campaigns to sell these vehicles and literally millions of these vehicles being sold within the Tri-State area, all looking for a place to go and use them.
Russell Juelg:Yeah, and I think also it's important not to paint everybody with the same brush. There are a lot of people who own vehicles that are capable of going through deep puddles. They don't necessarily leave the road surface. They're respectful of other drivers, they don't drive in vegetation, they don't drive in the ponds. That's not the group of people that are causing the problems. The people that are causing the problems are the people who create new unauthorized routes through the forest, drive in wetlands, people who are creating new dirt bike trails, zigzagging all through the forest. It's totally unauthorized and that's where we need to bear down and get better law enforcement and also make it absolutely clear where you may and may not take a motorized vehicle.
Jason Howell:So you bring up the law enforcement aspect, which I think a lot of people will be curious about and just to set the tone a little bit. So in a national park say you're in Yellowstone National Park Superintendent of that park has a direct control, direct command over the law enforcement rangers. So the national park, you have interpretive rangers which do more education, and you have law enforcement rangers which they were responsible for enforcing the law on national parks. Unfortunately, there was a decision made in New Jersey some 20 years ago to take the command structure of the law enforcement rangers, which here we call park police, out of the supervision of the park superintendent. So the park superintendent, who understands the natural resources best, has no command and control over the park police, who actually have the authority to go and enforce the law. So that disconnect it I think, has become a problem. Have you noticed anything change in the last 20 or 30 years in regards to enforcement, or what is the enforcement picture? What are the law enforcement rangers, the park police in this case?
Jason Howell:doing in response to these issues.
Russell Juelg:Well, part of the problem, as you emphasized earlier, is just that we have a greatly expanded number of people using the State Force. Just the total volume of users would make it difficult for any law enforcement agency or officer to deal with it. The resources would have to be stepped up, but also the structure of enforcement. Like you say, the fact that we now have park police rather than park rangers seems to be having a negative effect on enforcement against some of these activities. And also it's true that no matter what kind of law enforcement officer you are, there are really really big challenges in figuring out how to enforce against a lot of this illegal activity. And part of that is because of the way the laws and regulations are structured, such that an offender can flee from the police and the police aren't allowed to chase the offender because presumably that creates a hazard.
Russell Juelg:The fleeing culprit might have an accident and then they would blame the police on that. It's the mentality that is applied to this situation, and as long as that is the way police have to deal with it, then of course they're going to be reluctant to pursue. Why should they even try to stop somebody when most of the time somebody is just going to flee from them, and they can't even pursue that person. So that's a problem. There are still opportunities to enforce, though, that it seems, you know, park police are reluctant to engage in, and so what we need is either for park police to develop the same kind of approach to this problem as park rangers in the past had, or maybe we need to rethink whether or not we can enforce state park regulations with state park police. Maybe we need to go back to a state ranger situation.
Jason Howell:Yeah, and in my experience, the conservation officers, which work mostly in the wildlife management areas. So there's two departments in New Jersey that manage land Well, there's more, but let's stick with the two for now and that's the state parks and forestry division, and then there's the Fish and Wildlife division. The Fish and Wildlife division has conservation officers, whereas the Parks and Forestry division have park police and in my experience the conservation officers have been much more aggressive and much more effective on their off-road vehicle issue. And I think that's borne out in the data, because we've done a lot of open requests on citation data and the conservation officers have issued many, many, many, many more times the citation regulations that I've seen be issued from park police in equivalent areas. So maybe there's something that could be learned from the conservation officers and transfer some of those tactics, maybe even some of those hiring protocols, to the park police or a new park ranger.
Russell Juelg:Yeah, there's definitely a difference there in the approach to enforcement between conservation officers and park police. Park police could adopt the same approach, but they would have to be trained to do so, they would have to be motivated to do so. And also, the other thing you touched on is that the state park police don't answer to the superintendent of the state forest, so his priorities can diverge from theirs, and that's a real problem. That's a structural problem that needs to be fixed.
Jason Howell:So we've talked about some of the issues. What about some of the opportunities? What do you think would be a really useful opportunity for this visitor use plan and how it could benefit the public and visitation and recreation, and even more than that?
Russell Juelg:Well, hopefully it'll be accompanied by a strong educational program, because a lot of the people who are abusing the resources out there are probably doing so in ignorance. They just think they're having fun. They just think, oh, I'm just riding around in the woods, I'm not hurting anything. We hear that a lot from a lot of writers and of course, that runs contrary to what we know. Ecologists and biologists have thoroughly documented the fact that motorized traffic in any wild area has a detrimental effect on a wide variety of different types of processes and different kinds of creatures out there, because, in addition to the fact that you can run over and kill something in a motorized vehicle, sometimes without even realizing it, the visual impact of roads and the noise impact of roads and traffic have negative effects, often times fragmenting portions of a wildlife habitat in ways that you wouldn't realize. But it has been thoroughly studied and thoroughly documented and the impacts of roads and motorized traffic are generally just really, really bad.
Jason Howell:So what about for right now, if you wanted to get a map of Wharton State Forest and be able to explore trails, paddling routes, motorized routes, is that available or is that elusive?
Russell Juelg:I mean to my knowledge, there has not yet been published on the official Access Plan for Wharton State Forest. You can use a wide variety of different types of mapping tools or even hard copy maps to navigate in the state forest, and so we desperately need an authorized diversion.
Jason Howell:If you went to any national park, any big state park, there would be an official map saying where you can go, what you can do and what you can't do. I mean, if you go anywhere, even somewhere like Forsyth National Wildlife Refuge, there's a map. If you go to, you know. If you go to Gettysburg National Park in Pennsylvania, there's a map. If you go, if you go out to the Smoky Mountains, if you go to any any big park in the country, there's a map saying what you can do, where you can go, what's available, what's what's off limits. It's just the most common sense thing in the world.
Russell Juelg:It is. It's mind-boggling to think of the fact that we have this huge state force Right in the heart of one of the most important ecosystems, not only for the state but for the country, unique on the planet. The map is is a very important thing and a very important tool that we can use to help people understand where they can go, where they can't go. But you're always going to have that, as we said before, that 10% of the visitors who Are going to try to get away with things that they shouldn't be trying to get away with. So the law enforcement has to be there too, and that we need a plan to get law enforcement effective law enforcement In Wharton State Forest and a lot of our other lands as well.
Jason Howell:So I think we covered this pretty well. Is there anything else you want to add or or discuss? I mean one thing, one thing I know. I'm interested in your point of view on pine barrens lore and and and why it's even possible to have pine barrens lore even today, and you know, whereas you know, if you have a developed area, there's really very little lore or possible. You know, like in central Jersey, I don't think there's that. There's much. There's much much mythology or lore. So so why can there, why can that exist here but not in, you know, heavily developed areas? And what are some of those stories that you've talked about?
Russell Juelg:Well, the legends and lore the pine barrens are, you know, very well documented and there's so many old stories about the way people used to live in the pine barrens, used to make a living in the pine barrens, and the fact that it's been, you know, preserved to some extent in In a wild state, you know, allows people to go out there and feel like that they can be part of that and kind of relive some of those old legends. You go out in the pine barrens at night and, you know, in a remote area and and you can find yourself wondering About some of those stories, like the Jersey Devil stories, and you can imagine the way people lived back in the old days when they were running forges and furnaces and and you know, harvesting, you know the Svagnum, and you can go out and see those things and imagine what the people who lived in in the pine lands hundreds of years ago actually went through. So you get a firsthand look at a wild area and you know that's one of them.
Russell Juelg:One of the nice things about wild areas is that they give us, you know, a different point of view. They allow us to see a world that you know we're. We have a clonkered, so to speak. Something that's still wild is beautiful, just for that fact. And Then you know you can see things that you don't see in the cities and in developed areas, and there's a lot of mystique about the plants and the animals are so much out there that we don't understand and we don't know about. And Just being out there and exploring and you get that sense of wonder that you get from the natural world. And we need that, we need to, we need to make sure that we don't lose that.
Jason Howell:All right. Well, I think that's a. That's a pretty good note to end on. Thanks for for joining on the on the Pine Bears podcast and We'll look forward to see what what we get out of the park service. On the visitor use plan.
Russell Juelg:We'll keep open for progress. Oh you.