On Wednesday this week, the 4 co-chairs of the NJ Forest Stewardship Task Force  presented their findings to a joint committee hearing of the Senate Environment and Energy Committee and the Assembly Environment and Solid Waste Committee. The report makes 16 recommendations that the committee feels should be taken as a whole and not cherrypicked to have the most success in helping to improve the health and sustainability of the state’s publicly-held forest lands. The first 9 of the recommendations focus on how NJDEP can better inventory and plan for forest health and climate adaptation. The remaining 7 policy recommendations focus on management and implementation. These include maintaining important fire management strategies, aggressive reductions in deer populations to match environmental carrying capacity and funding the department and to make sure the programs outlined can be implemented.

Click here to read the report.