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Archive 2014 · sigh (no nothing really, EDIT: photos added)

  
 
Michael Rucci
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p.3 #1 · p.3 #1 · sigh (no nothing really, EDIT: photos added)


Doug C wrote:
I would seriously be rude to those ignorant asses every opportunity I got. Sounds like you may have a neighbor or two who would be allies against them.


Sorry to hear all about this terrible situation skibum.Trees of this age and type when lost are gone for generations .I live in south eastern Pa. and have 4 acres that was once farmland.Now i did not plant any of the trees on the property but in 1985 when the house was built the previous owner did .He planted Tulup poplars 35 of them and many of them are 5 to 6 feet in dia.they grow fast and in the spring actully have a flower .He also planted lots of spruce and firs you know christmas trees they also have grown to heights of 30 to 40 feet I am lucky and have wonderful neighbors and cannot fathom what i would do in your situation but it would more than likely end with me either in jail or the hospital I would bide my time these people will need something in the near future and i would make sure that they know that what ever it is they wont get it from you.God im starting to sound like a bitter old man



Aug 26, 2014 at 06:58 AM
skibum5
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p.3 #2 · p.3 #2 · sigh (no nothing really, EDIT: photos added)


Alistair1 wrote:
Wow, what a terrible thing to do to the neighbourhood. What a thoughtless prI@k.
Are you in the US? Are there not resource consent laws to protect the environment against this sort of BS. My blood pressure rises when I hear of this.


Sadly only a few towns have such laws. There are no national or state laws against it. It's town by town and, at least in this region, from what I can see most don't have such laws, I think part of Morris Plains declared them selves City of Maples USA and they have such laws, the other few towns they seem to have such laws in NJ and CT are just a few towns that have lots of professors, doctors, tv stars and such where you had enough like-minded people with tons of money I guess to influence town council and force in protection laws (and I saw force because are always yahoos who go nuts over any such things).

Even with the new highlands law in NJ, for properties with a pre-existing single family home you are apparently exempt from all resource protection laws until the property is of a certain acreage or larger, any property under that size is exempt. On the non-exempt properties they are still, so long as a pre-existing single family home exists, to clearcut 1 acre of anything, doesn't matter if the trees were part of the edge of and creating a critical wind buffer zone to one of the more significant and oldest forest patches in the state or 300 years old or on top of the drinking water aquifer.

We do have the nationally endangered species Indiana Bat here in the general area, if maybe not roosting in the specific trees cut (? I do know some were roosting for sure far deeper into the woods that these backyards and contiguously attached too, since some biologists found them at the U.S. Arsenal and on the public lands near there, which are the far northwestern end of the woods out out back). I don't know if there would have been a way to bring that into play and remove their exemption from clear cutting, probably not. The Endangered Species act has lots of loopholes all over and unless there was an active roost on a tree the exact day it was cut I doubt it would have helped any.




Aug 26, 2014 at 02:51 PM
skibum5
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p.3 #3 · p.3 #3 · sigh (no nothing really, EDIT: photos added)


Michael Rucci wrote:
Sorry to hear all about this terrible situation skibum.Trees of this age and type when lost are gone for generations


Yeah that's the sad thing, even they moved and someone came in and replanted and had kids tomorrow it would take until their great grand children were in there 40s to have it begin to look the same and it would take for their great, great grandchildren to be very, very old to see it truly close to what it was.

If it were all replanted it could sort of fill in to a degree in 30 years if you got some fast growing trees.

I found an old report on the forests of NJ a couple years ago that had been written by a major 19th century botanist and I actually found the tracts of land right here mentioned. It said they were covered in a good timber of 50 years old (and the report was written in, I forget I think it was 1895-1910 range). The little patch right behind us and the one neighbor to the left and four to the right, seems even a bit older, since when Sandy took down one huge one and it got cut near the base, I got over 180 rings on it and there are so many sugar maples I wonder if it had not been a protected "sugar bush" (not sure if you know that term in the UK, probably not, it's a patch of sugar maples rich woods that are left uncut so you get a climax sugar maple rich forest to harvest sugar maple sap from to boil down and concentrate into maple syrup).

It's an interesting forest, it had zero evidence of any cut stumps and it was varied age some of the largest trees were at least 180s old and some were 100 and some 125 and then there were much younger ones mixed in so it had some old-growth forest type characteristics, all it was missing was a scattering of the super old 250-400 year old class trees).



Aug 26, 2014 at 03:03 PM
BeeBalm
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p.3 #4 · p.3 #4 · sigh (no nothing really, EDIT: photos added)


Sorry to hear this... That's such a shame :-(
BeeBalm



Aug 26, 2014 at 03:12 PM
skibum5
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p.3 #5 · p.3 #5 · sigh (no nothing really, EDIT: photos added)


What I'm very nervous about now is the fools have now exposed all of our old backyard trees and the rest of the western edge of the forest to direct west winds and that is actually the direction we get our bad winds from, the trees grew used to that buffer, now they get direct brunt of the winds.

The stupid thing is other than from the freak Sandy storm which is the only hurriane now to have taken a 90 degree direct face on hit to the NJ in recorded history, all of the other trees that have ever fallen here (in the last 50 years from what I'm told and for the shorter period of time Ive witnessed) all, all fall in directions away from their house and property. So they had like no danger whatsoever just about. But the channel they cut opens the remaining trees up to the dangerous wind direction here and the fools decided it was the Sandy direction that was dangerous. How about living here for few months and learning which way the winds actually blow before getting all crazy? Asking a neighbor??

Not to mention Sandy had the worst winds we have had here since at least 1938 for sure and perhaps for hundreds of years and Sandy blew from a unique direction against which the trees were not well prepared for at all since we never, ever get strong winds from that direction, so anything that survived Sandy is likely about as rock solid as could have been had they left things alone. Ironically, digging out a channel to allow for direct west wind exposure they have no actually made a potential danger. I just pray, pray, pray the edge can hold up. I hope we can get a hybrid poplar windscreen grow to 60' in a few years and that that is enough....

The tricky thing is the way the property boundaries are they are right, right up to the edge there so there is barely any room to put in a new barrier and ring of trees.

And they started cutting logs again at crack of dawn so even more frazzled from lack of sleep from upset and noise and I'm probably not even typin coherently.



Aug 26, 2014 at 03:12 PM
skibum5
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p.3 #6 · p.3 #6 · sigh (no nothing really, EDIT: photos added)


It's likely the forest patch hadn't be seriously touched by any loggers since about the time Abraham Lincoln was born.


Aug 26, 2014 at 03:15 PM
skibum5
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p.3 #7 · p.3 #7 · sigh (no nothing really, EDIT: photos added)


apparently these are the laws for this region in NJ:

sadly barely any rules on the books yet in my county

people are becoming up and arms and more and more are getting passed each year, but sadly not quickly enough

i will see if I can get something started for my town, it's too late for this , but plenty more might potentially get saved

http://admin.newjerseymls.com/library/treeord.htm



Aug 26, 2014 at 06:19 PM
skibum5
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p.3 #8 · p.3 #8 · sigh (no nothing really, EDIT: photos added)


http://www.northjersey.com/news/local-issue-balancing-homeowner-rights-with-nature-towns-protecting-trees-1.532112?page=all


Aug 26, 2014 at 06:36 PM
skibum5
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p.3 #9 · p.3 #9 · sigh (no nothing really, EDIT: photos added)


it's very tough to get laws like this in the U.S. due to the whole don't tread on me attitude vs. the common good:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/nyregion/29tree.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0


And the unfortunate thing is the neighbor who moved in clearly as some close connection to the tree removal people, I even saw one cutter visit before. Nobody could move in this area and afford day after day of teams of workers morning to night, after another day of full service and clearly it will be a least another week to cut up all the giant logs, at full service pricing it would probably be a $25,000 job with ease, so many hours, so many men, so many days, so many very tall and healthy tricky trees to take down, nobody but nobody would ever pay that to make this conversion, so we got the one person who connected in some special way to tree removal people to get a tens of thousand of dollar job done, somehow or other, for barely any cost. Man it's a shame the original neighbor hadn't moved six months earlier or later, no other buyer would've ever destroyed it to this point. The literally cut it right up within the last inch of wildlife preserve forest (which is begins behind our property).

I guess that is life, a month here, a foot there, if our properties had been even just 100' shorter in one direction, the biggest of all the trees cut aside from one (the biggest of all) would've been in the wildlife forest preserve. If it had been sold a few months earlier or later it would've gone to someone else who no way would've ever removed more than maybe 3 trees at most. Unfortunately, this time a maybe 1 in 50,000 scenario happened the wrong way. You needed someone who hates woods who moves into a wooded lot and had rare connections of some odd sort that allow a 20k job to be carried out for nearly free. Maybe it was a 1 in a million scenario.

I just need to read up on laws to see if there is a way to insure the one remaining patch outside of the wildlife management forest preserve can be kept safe, there is a half acre of 180 year old forest still in private hands (and not just logged) on the other side of us. Maybe can get a conservation easement or have the double lot converted converted to our lot and buy it out or something. Or maybe I can get the town to make some tree removal ordinance. They are tough to get passed, but if it was limited to properties with trees say 100 or 125 years or older maybe since that covers so little land it would be doable.


http://www.wolfenotes.com/2011/03/turnpike-authority-illegally-clearcuts-30-miles-of-trees-and-lies-about-it-wheres-christie/

(also note NJ Audubon at the end, NJ is so corrupt that the Audubon society in our state has been totally bought out and paid for, they have supported every logging bill or tree removal in NJ for the last few years, they are even for opening up all NJ parklands to targeted logging down of all mature trees in all widlife areas and parks in order to "allow for places for trees to grow" ? so you want to cut down all the 75+ year old trees to make room for trees to grow?? oh of course there is the little tidbit that under the NJ logging bill, which would benefit barely anyone since logging makes up about 0.00000000001% of the economy in the state, NJ Audubon officials would be paid thousand and thousands of dollars for each logging plan they create for each park and preserve, nice)




Researchers at the USDA Center for Urban Forest Research at the University of California–Davis say that a large tree can save homeowners and taxpayers as much as $160 a year. "A shade tree can reduce air-conditioning costs by up to 30 percent," says center director Greg McPherson. In fact, according to the San Francisco Tree Council, urban neighborhoods with mature trees can be up to 11 degrees cooler in summer than neighborhoods without trees.

In winter, trees can serve as windbreaks and reduce heating costs. The U.S. Bureau of Statistics reports that a line of evergreens can reduce cold-season fuel bills by up to 20 percent.

Trees are also important because they can intercept thousands of gallons of storm water a year--preventing flooding, filtering impurities and renewing groundwater. "It's possible for a 40-year-old ash tree in California to intercept more than 4,800 gallons of storm water and remove six pounds of air pollutants a year," says McPherson.

Further research indicates that an acre of mature trees can absorb enough carbon dioxide each year to offset the pollution of a car driven 26,000 miles.

But perhaps most significant to the homeowner is that mature trees increase the property value of a home, sometimes by as much as 10 percent.

It's sound proof that money does grow on trees.



Aug 26, 2014 at 06:43 PM
skibum5
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p.3 #10 · p.3 #10 · sigh (no nothing really, EDIT: photos added)


http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5559/15046514081_224a12d8fa_c.jpg

a shot showing one of the large ones in their near backyard, they cut to give a sense of scale, they cut about a dozen in that class



Aug 26, 2014 at 10:39 PM
skibum5
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p.3 #11 · p.3 #11 · sigh (no nothing really, EDIT: photos added)


another shot showing the scale of trees taken down, here a Sugar Maple (note that this was NOT a field grown tree, this was a very tall, forest grown trunk that had no branches until many feet up, so this thick for a forest grown tree is a much different story than for an open lawn tree where trunks tend to get fat quickly)

http://sunsetbayphotography4.zenfolio.com/img/s6/v134/p687913854-5.jpg



Aug 27, 2014 at 04:06 PM
IPTAK
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p.3 #12 · p.3 #12 · sigh (no nothing really, EDIT: photos added)


I'm sorry to hear about you're plight. I didn't read it all but can relate at least on some level. One of the main reasons I bought my house was because you couldn't see anyone else's from my property. Nice thick spruce and birch all around. One day I'm looking in my back yard and all of a sudden i see my neighbor, and his house! Then I realized he'd cut all the limbs off the spruce from about 7' on down (arrrg).

When I asked him why he said so there would less bears. What, seriously? He's lived there for 17 years and all of a sudden he thinks clearing a more open space for bears to travel will discourage them? Ugh, I still complain about it to my wife. She just rolls her eyes since it's been about 4 or 5 years but I totally feel for you.

This guy already has the whole manicured lawn going on too. I'm more like you, the more wild it is the better. That's why I moved up into the mountains! Oh well, sorry about your situation, that's not cool at all .



Sep 07, 2014 at 08:57 PM
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