Robert R. Williams
For decades, urban society and its “illusion of safety” have continued to impede and stifle our rural communities and their use of land and natural resources. Nowadays, we are witnessing the destruction of our cultural heritage.
In southern New Jersey, 1.2 million acres of landscape are reserved and protected by state law in what is designated as the Pinelands National Preserve. This reserve includes all aspects of land ownership, both public and private.
The two main reasons for declaring the Pine Deserts protected were to preserve and preserve the unique ecological natural heritage and the local cultural heritage of the indigenous population.
We understand the fundamental need to maintain and preserve the ecological integrity of the earth and the natural systems it supports.
Our city politicians have little understanding of the need to preserve our cultural heritage, which is both tangible and intangible heritage that local residents have inherited from past generations.
For subscribers:The word “Piney” once consisted of four letters. Today, many in the Pinelands embrace the former slur
Intentionally or not, this policy of priority environmental approach has virtually eliminated one aspect of our cultural heritage, which is forestry. In this region, there was a tradition of local people using the forest to support themselves and a local traditional use of wood products produced on local land.
For decades, the importance of maintaining our historical cultural human resources has never been considered or discussed.
In the early 1980s, the government emphasized the need to maintain and preserve the cultural heritage of the Pine Deserts. This concern was so important that social contractors were hired to interview and record pine wilderness locals to explain what specifically they did to support themselves and their desire to maintain a sense of “place” in the forest.
But when I touch on this subject, I am asked what does cultural heritage have to do with forestry regulations? My answer: everything.
Interviews with local residents included many cedar landowners, loggers, and sawmillers. They all owned their own land, cut down their trees, and had their own sawmills to sell culturally connected forest products to boat builders, wagon makers, fishermen, and historic home restorers. As these efforts to document and develop policies to preserve the region’s cultural and natural history continued, it became clear how important a role these foresters play in preserving the region’s unique character and ecology. Forest management played an important role in creating the Pine Desert environment itself.
It was so important that in 1987 the New Jersey State Museum, the State Council on the Arts and the State Historical Commission opened the largest exhibition ever mounted in a museum, dedicated to four men who were totally committed to the traditions and environment of the Pine Desert. However, the future of these traditions is still a source of concern.
The original forestry practice rules and regulations subjected forestry efforts to onerous land planning regulations similar to housing. By the early 1990s, many families simply went bankrupt, and some tried to supply their mills with wood imported from Canada or New England. The acquisition of large tracts of forest by federal, state, county, and local governments, as well as numerous land conservation trusts, all of which do not support active timber harvesting, simply deprived local mills of needed timber resources, and the decline continues today. .
The lumberjack and vigilante culture in southern New Jersey has all but disappeared. At the beginning of the creation of the Pinelands Preserve, the state documented more than 50 sawmills and businesses throughout the Pine Desert. I have watched our forest infrastructure with its 300-year history simply fade into the “illusion of preservation”.
The original planners of the Pinelands Preserve were right—there had to be a balance between human use of the forest and the unique biodiversity that resulted from their three hundred years of activity. However, I see little hope for the survival of any of the few remaining pylars. How are things going in your area?
Robert R. Williams is a certified forester from Laurel Springs, New Jersey.
