Woodlands Management Committee Meeting Minutes
Attendees: Martha Dwyer-Bergman, Phil Notestine, Cliff
Miles, Jerry Uhrig
Guests: Andy
Kohler, Josh Bingham, Sam Kohler
Administrative
Minutes from the December
meeting are on the website.
The
Scouts’ attended to observe a meeting and the process of communications. They
were encouraged to go to the Woodlands section of the Mountain Lakes Borough
website to get a better understanding of the depth of information that the
Woodlands has gathered on the list of concerns.
For example, there are color photographs of the invasive plants that we
are concerned about.
General
Cliff
mentioned that he has seen gray foxes in town this winter.
Audubon Christmas Bird Count: The grouse reported the past
two years (the first in a number of years) was observed in the Green Pond
section of Denville near Wildcat Ridge. A new bird added this year was a golden
eagle.
The
American chestnut tree in Valhalla Glen has died. This tree was remarkable in
that it actually lived long enough to bear chestnuts. It is very rare that any
American chestnut tree lives this long without succumbing to the blight. It was
over 30 feet tall.
Phil
mentioned that he has seen robins in the past month.
There
was a cougar reportedly spotted in Roxbury.
Coyotes
seem to have moved away from our area.
Deer
Phil
said that he had no new numbers as to the past month's culling so the number
taken by the bow hunters so far this season still stands at 11, 3 bucks and 8
does. Bow hunters are using baiting
stations.
Jerry
handed out a letter from the Morris County Park Commission informing that they
will be culling deer in
Beavers
The
beaver activity reported in the two previous months continues. A large beech
tree has been completely girdled and will die. All of the sapling root sprouts
(about 10 of them) around the tree have been chewed off and removed. Most of
the saplings were fairly substantial trees themselves, 20 to 30 feet tall. They
have all been removed without a trace. This was definitely not done by a single
beaver working alone. The trees would be too heavy, and there is not enough
open water to float them. Cliff said that it is likely that there could be
between 6-8 beavers in the area. It is expected that when we find the saplings
we will find the beaver lodge.
We
walked the site on December 21 with a trapper who has a permit to trap beavers
in this area. The trapping season is from December 26th – Feb. 9th. Gary Webb will be contacting the trapper on
Friday Jan. 19th. The trapper
wanted to wait for a freeze to enable him to walk the area more easily. Jerry
hasn’t seen any traps yet.
If
the volunteer licensed trapper is not successful, then there are professional
trappers we can call. Contact information was provided to us by a state
biologist, courtesy of Phil Notestine.
Aside
from damage to the woodlands, beavers can be quite destructive to lakeshore
property if they become established. There have been sightings in our lakes and
ponds, the most recent being a beaver spotted in
Eagle Scout Projects
Jerry
explained that one of our projects is to build several exclosures of about ¼
acre for observation of how the site might recover from deer browsing. Benner
Fencing, which is 7 feet high, will cost $2,000. So far we have about half the
funds needed to complete this project so we are looking for additional funding.
A
member of the New Jersey Native Plant Society at the January 9 meeting reported
using a different approach. She has built a deer exclosure consisting of 3
concentric rings 3 feet high. She said that the deer do not cross over it to
enter into her relatively small native plant garden. This is very interesting, and Jerry will be
doing a site visit to see how it is built. The major question is whether this
type of exclosure would be effective for a larger plot. If it can be scaled to
a reasonably sized area or if we could reduce the size of our control areas, it
would simplify maintenance and very like reduce the expense by quite a bit.
The
Scouts explained that they need community service hours as well as larger
projects that they can scope, manage, and find support funding. Two projects under consideration are benches
at the tennis courts and clean up at
As
for volunteers, the scouts explained that the high school US Government class
requires that all students work 20 hours as part of the course
requirements. Also, that most churches
require their youths to do community service.
Girl scouts also do community service projects. In
It is very likely that both the Girl Scouts and the
Boy Scouts could find some very worthwhile projects helping with control of
invasive vegetation throughout our Borough. Restoration of native plants would
be an important aspect of such a project.
Invasives
A
suggestion was made that the landscaping companies should become educated about
invasive plant problems. Jerry said that Woodlands had an agreement with the
Environmental Commission that they would take care of invasives on private
property. Working with landscapers would be part of it.
January’s
Woodlands article in the Home and School Bulletin stated that there would be a
series of Saturday workshops to educate the public as to the most common
invasives that we have in our woodlands and how to control them.
Our
first Invasives Control Task Group Project will take place on Saturday, March
24 from