By Brian T. Murray
The Star-Ledger
Copyright 2007 Newark Morning Ledger Co.
All Rights Reserved
NEWARK, N.J. — New Jersey’s sandy Pinelands are naturally prone to forest fires, and people have been triggering blazes there since Native Americans first walked the land.
The phenomenon is rooted in the dry nature of the soil and the plant life that thrives as a result - the scrub oaks and the pitch pines that give the region its name.
The cycle of fire and regeneration has been going on so long that rare snakes, frogs and plants found there actually depend on the devastation of forest fires to thrive, according to wildlife biologists.
But with more development around the million state-protected acres formally called the Pine Barrens, the benefits from fires are clashing with the great risks posed to human life. In turn, the increasing human presence raises the risk of fires, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service.
“It’s all about the soil conditions. It’s important for people, especially with all the new development going on, to hear it over and over again so they understand just how easily this area burns,” said Steve Maurer, an assistant fire warden with the Forest Fire Service.
Sand is the predominant soil south of Route 195 and east of the New Jersey Turnpike, he said. Even after last month’s nor’easter, the area rapidly dried up.
“Rainwater just percolates down into the earth and doesn’t collect in pools or stay around. It leaves the leafy litter on the ground very dry,” said Andrew Windisch, an ecologist with the state Office of Natural Land Management.
Dry, rotting leaves and pine needles are especially volatile during periods of drought, causing a condition in which fires can burn deep under the forest layers and spread without detection. Pitch pine sap can act as an accelerant once a tree is ablaze.
The spring season, when leaves are not fully grown on the standing oaks, leaving the dry ground exposed to the sun, is a typical time for forest fires.
“Fires in the Pine Barrens go back to the end of the Ice Age,” Windisch said. From the time they stepped into the area, humans played a part as well. “Even before the settlers, Native Americans would cause areas to be burned.”
Often it was deliberate, to create areas for berry production. Other times it was accidental, or natural - lightning would strike.
And life there coped.
“A lot of species of wildlife have adapted to the fires,” Windisch said.
Pitch pines became the dominant vegetation. The pine thrives in sandy soil - and its fruit, the cone, depends on fire.
“It is one of the few things that grow in the soil there,” Windisch said of the tree, “and it has a tightly closed cone, and it requires fires to open the cone, releasing the seeds.”
Pitch pine needles dry easily, so the trees offer kindling for the fires that will release future generations.
Historically, the fires clear the ground for rare, low-lying plants like broom crowberry and Pickering’s morning glory, and the open spaces are preferred by timber rattlers, corn snakes and pine snakes.
With Pinelands acreage protected from development, Windisch contends there is enough forest to ensure survival of the sensitive ecosystem, even if encroachment promises more man-made blazes.
But Bob Williams, a private forester who spent 12 years with the U.S. Forest Service, said suppressing fires to save humans and human habitat has left the Pinelands forest floor piled with “fuel.”
The Forest Fire Service tries to light controlled burns to lessen the debris, but it is not always enough. With heavy rains this year, the service was able to burn only half the 20,000 acres it targets each spring.
“So when we do have a fire, it blows up, and firefighters are forced to go in and bulldoze areas to cut fire lines - which can’t be helping any of the rare species down there,” Williams said.
Jeff Tittel of the New Jersey Sierra Club sees a worsening situation.
“Stafford Township, where we have the fire this week, is supposed to become a growth area. There is already a massive senior housing complex proposed,” he said. “When the smoke finally clears down there, the state better take a new look at the planning for that area.”