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.
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.
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.
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.
The state's fire control plans for the 5,200-acre Manuel F.
Corellus State Forest have come under attack by the scientific community
and the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a
watchdog organization. The advocacy group threatens possible legal
action to block state forest teams from clearing hundreds of acres of
woodland along strategic fire lines.
The Department of Environmental Management's Division of Forests and Parks won permission Tuesday to move forward with new efforts to manage the 5,200-acre Manuel F. Correllus State Forest.
The high risk of forest fires poses a danger for residents abutting the state property. In June, Bob Durand, secretary of the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, arrived on the Vineyard with news of an initiative to address that danger.
State Forest Gets Help
By JOSHUA SABATINI
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.
A conservation army, numbering 219 men, will arrive on the Island today to take up the work of reforestation in the state reservation under the federal plan for relieving unemployment. This army is one that has been through the preliminary course of training at Camp Devens, and will be in charge of a captain and two lieutenants of the regular army, besides a detail of military police.