The Department of Environmental Management's Division of
Forests and Parks has begun to implement a new management plan
for the 5,000-acre Manuel F. Correllus State Forest.
Concerned about the risk of forest fires, DEM, the state
agency responsible for managing the forest, has focused its
energies on clearing firebreaks or "safe zones" on the land's
perimeter and interior, a plan discussed for several years.
Work began on the fire breaks in the Manuel F. Corellus State Forest
this week, with the blessing of the state attorney general but over the
protests of a watchdog group which promises to seek a court injunction
today.
An evolving plan to manage and restore the Manuel F. Correllus State
Forest is set for its first public airing tomorrow, when state
environmental officials will come to the Vineyard to discuss efforts to
alleviate fire danger in the forest and to undertake the largest
ecological restoration project in the history of New England.
A Cape Cod man was accidentally shot in the neck on the first day of shotgun deer season on Monday in the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest. Dr. Joseph Asiaf, 73, of Centerville, caught a single piece of buckshot in the neck; police believe he was shot by a member of his own hunting party.
His injuries are not life-threatening.
Although the Massachusetts state police continue to investigate, the incident is being called a hunting accident and no criminal charges are expected.
The red pine plantations of the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest have been described as recently as 1998 by this paper as a “pine cathedral,” with evenly spaced rows of the northern evergreen towering above a forest floor nearly barren except for a carpet of needles. Now that cathedral has been all but sacked by fungal barbarians known as diplodia pinea which infect the trees from the shoots and rot them to the core.
The Department of Conservation and Recreation will hold a public meeting on Saturday, Sept. 18, in the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest to discuss ways to reduce wildfire risks and other public safety hazards while also restoring plantings of native trees.
The work scheduled to begin this fall is part of a three-year, 237-acre “emergency ecological restoration project” at the forest. The project involves removing the large number of red pines that have died there recently and creating new stands of native pitch pine and scrub oak.
State foresters and Nature Conservancy fire ecology experts will draft a fire management plan for Manuel Correllus State Forest on Martha’s Vineyard, to guide ongoing fire work, thanks to recent funding from the U.S. Forest Service.
The $374,000 also will cover the partnership to restore 925 acres in Massachusetts with prescribed fire over the next year, to manage ecosystems and improve public safety.
On Monday crews from R.J. Cobb Land Clearing moved into the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest to begin clearing some 90 acres of dead red pine trees that have been blighted in recent decades by the fungus diplodia pinea. The work is part of a larger three-year effort to remove 237 acres of timber that was originally planted as early as 1925 in the forest.
