Wildfire in the Pinelands

Burned Pinelands forest near Warren Grove, Ocean County, New Jersey

I closed up the house in Ocean City early on a recent Sunday to allow time to scope out a potential project in New Jersey’s Pinelands on my way home. It had been a lovely spring weekend – sunny, warm, filled with daffodils and forsythia. Our winter had been mild this year, with little snow and temperatures seldom below freezing. The spring continued the trend, surprising us with blossoming trees in March. Even though no rain had fallen for several weeks, my shore garden seemed to be surviving quite well. I congratulated myself for having selected specimens that could withstand my benign neglect.

However, this was not the case elsewhere. April’s warmth had not yet transformed the drab winter palette of the salt marshes. Instead of the fresh green shoots that usually have sprouted up through last summer’s dry stalks by now, the egrets still picked their way through stubbornly grey-brown wetlands. Could it be that the dryness of the past six months has delayed the first surge of growth, even here in the marshes?

Salt marshes near Tuckerton, NJ (April 2012).

I traveled a few miles up the Parkway to the Tuckerton exit, where I turned onto County Route 539. The project site was located another 10 miles north. I passed through the Stafford Forge Wildlife Management Area, 11,529 acres of parkland managed by the State of New Jersey, Division of Fish and Wildlife. Signs noted that the New Jersey Air National Guard's Warren Grove Bombing Range occupies the south side of Route 539 along much of its length between Route 72 and the GSP.

The forest on both sides of the road was scorched for mile after mile as I traveled north. The trunks of the trees – stunted pines as well as the taller deciduous trees -- were completely black. All that was left of some trees were just sticks where the crown should be. Underbrush that had been cleared out by the fire had begun to regenerate, but a passing glance could still penetrate deep into the woods across the top of the young growth. The fire seemed quite recent, perhaps just a few years ago. Although the pines sported branches of green needles, the deciduous trees showed little signs of life.

The site I was checking into was a timber frame house from the late 1700s, located in a clearing along a sandy road in the midst of the Pinelands. Not surprisingly, one of the items to be included in the requested Preservation Plan document was an analysis of the landscaping around the building, “with special attention to the threat of fires.”

Cedar Bridge Tavern (ca. 1780), Barnegat Township, Ocean County, NJ

The Pinelands – once called the “Pine Barrens” – occupies 1.1 million acres of the Pinelands National Reserve, which ranges from northern Ocean County south and west, and occupies 22% of New Jersey's land area. The sands of the Pinelands cover several important aquifers of sweet, clear water, of which the Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer is the most significant. The sandy soil is the perfect filtration system for rainwater. It captures some 30% of the water that falls to earth, creating an underground storage area that not only feeds all the lakes and streams of the region, but is shallow enough to support all of the plants and trees that sit atop its reservoir. In 1973, the Pinelands Protection Act was passed to protect the pristine water supply and the ecology of this unique natural area from over-development. 

Pond near Cedar Bridge Road, Barnegat Twp, NJ

Fire here is a bizarre counterpoint to that purest, shallowest, and largest of aquifers in the United States.  Wildfires are a natural phenomena in the Pinelands and are integral to its ecology. The sandy soil that filters the waters of the aquifer also soaks up the surface water so efficiently that the leaves and pine needles that drop to the forest floor quickly dry out, leaving the perfect fuel for fires – naturally occurring or man-made. Without the fires that take advantage of the very combustible debris on the forest floor, the deciduous trees would overtake the characteristic pitch pines. If they burn hot enough, the fires kill everything in their path. But oaks, which have thinner bark, are more vulnerable to fire  than the more resilient pitch and shortleaf pines, which need much greater heat to kill their basal cambium layer. Even if their crowns, buds, and branches are burned away, their dormant buds quickly spring to life after a fire.  Fires carry with them benefits for the forest, too. They release the seeds from the pine cones, allowing them to grow unfettered by competition from larger trees. 

Chamaecyparis thyoides (Atlantic White Cypress or Atlantic White cedar)

Innumerable wildfires have swept through the Pinelands over the centuries.  April 1963 is known as one of the worst in recent memory, but just since I established my foothold in South Jersey, I am aware of two major fires that took place in 2002 and 2007. Fire towers throughout the region keep constant vigil. The State of New Jersey, taking a page from the Native Americans who used controlled burns in the Pine Barrens to make it easier to hunt game, creates fire breaks near populated areas and manages controlled burns rather than trying to suppress the fires that naturally occur. However, according to John McPhee in his 1967 book The Pine Barrens, only about 7,000 of the Wharton State Forest’s 96,000 acres are protected by controlled burns each year, due to manpower constraints. 

The fire in early June 2002 was my only experience with a wildfire, albeit indirect. I had just acquired the house in Ocean City. It was the end of another dry spring, like the one we are now experiencing. My son, daughter-in-law, and I had worked all weekend to put the house to rights. We were tired; we left early to avoid the Sunday rush up the Garden State Parkway. Not yet familiar with the rhythms of the summer shore traffic, I was not particularly distressed by the long line of traffic exiting the northbound Parkway lanes at the Atlantic City Expressway. It seemed pretty natural, considering that Philadelphia was a major source of visitors to the shore towns of South Jersey. What we didn’t know was that a wildfire had engulfed some 1,000 acres near Toms River and was burning on both sides of the highway. We continued north.

By the time we reached the Tuckerton exit, it became clear that something other than a normal traffic pattern was taking shape. Our car inched along, covering only a few feet every 15 minutes. At the first available exit, all the cars were diverted off the Parkway onto a road that provided the only means of escape from the conflagration up ahead.  The entire vehicular contents of the Parkway was disgorged onto a small, two-lane road that angles northwest across the wilds of the Pinelands. It had no gas stations, no restaurants, no pull-offs, not many houses, and few signs of civilization. We were on that one road for four hours. I think we only traveled 20 miles, if that. By the time we found a detour that would ultimately take us to the New Jersey Turnpike on the western side of the state, we were starving and in desperate need of rest room facilities. We stopped at the first place we could find – a little hole in the wall with picnic tables and fake palm trees in front that was closing up for the night. We pleaded with the owners to buy something, anything, they had leftover from the day's menu. The owners took pity on us and quickly cooked up some of the best crab cakes I have ever tasted. Such was my first up-close introduction to the Pinelands. 

Stand of scorched trees from an earlier fire in Stafford Forge Wildlife Management Area, NJ

The fire in 2007 that scorched the acres I saw along Route 539 resulted from miscommunication at several levels. A fighter pilot on a low training mission, unaware of the severe fire hazard conditions, dropped a survival flare in the bombing range. It ignited the tinderbox of pine resin and dry leaves, made all the more more flammable by the dry spring. The wildfire affected some 18,000 acres of pine forest, destroyed four homes and damaged thirty-seven more, as well as five boats, three vehicles and four trailers.

Egret in pond near Old Forge Road, Stafford Forge Wildlife Management Area.

When traveling through the volcano and earthquake zone of the northern Cascades two summers ago, I often longed for nature's relative serenity in my home state of New Jersey. Those who live in the Pinelands, however, live in the borderland between peaceful solitude and catastrophe. In this beautiful place, it is only a matter of time before fire will strike again. One would think that this would dissuade all but the heartiest of souls from settling there. 

And yet there, in the middle of the forest, was that wooden house from the late 1700s that, through some quirk of fate, had been spared from the fires that have consumed hundreds – thousands – of acres of wilderness all around it. Our team ultimately decided to pass on this project, but I am hopeful that a successful preservation strategy can be developed for it.  Its survival over more than two hundred years is indeed a remarkable story, here in this land of water and wildfires.

 

Resources

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“Controlled burns play important role in Pinelands ecology, forest fire prevention.” The Associated Press (February 28, 2012). URL accessed April 28, 2012: http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/02/controlled_burns_play_importan.html 

Di Ionno, Mark. “After extremely dry spring, fire in Pine Barrens is inevitable truth.” Star Ledger (April 22, 2012). Online edition. URL accessed April 28, 2012: http://blog.nj.com/njv_mark_diionno/2012/04/di_ionno_after_a_curiously_dry.html 

“Forest fire closes N.J.'s Garden State Parkway.” Pocono Record (June 03, 2002). URL: http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20020603/NEWS/306039994&cid=sitesearch  accessed April 28, 2012). 

Forestry Images. Website. URL: http://www.forestryimages.org accessed April 28, 2012. Forestry Images is a joint project of the Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health, USDA Forest Service and International Society of Arboriculture, The University of Georgia - Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources and College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

Forman, Richard T. T. Pine Barrens: Ecosystem and Landscape. 1979. Rpt. Rutgers University Press, 1989. Courtesy Google Books. URL: http://books.google.com/books?id=b-scntoSJ7QC&dq=pine+barrens+forest+fire+pitch+pine+serotinous+pine+cone&source=gbs_navlinks_s accessed April 28, 2012. 

Little, Silas. “Fire Effects in New Jersey's Pine Barrens.” Frontiers (Winter 1978).  Reprinted with permission granted from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in Pinelands Guide, Burlington County Library System website. URL: http://www.bcls.lib.nj.us/pinelands/fire.shtml  accessed April 28, 2012.

McPhee, John. The Pine Barrens. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967, 1968.

Moore, Kirk and Nicholas Huba. “Fire breaks are set up in N.J. Pinelands to help battle blazes.” Asbury Park Press. Courtesy of Star-Ledger Wire Services (May 18, 2011).  URL accessed April 30, 2012: http://blog.nj.com/ledgerupdates_impact/print.html?entry=/2011/05/fire_breaks_are_set_up_in_pine.html. 

“1,000-acre fire closes Garden State Parkway N.J. blaze engulfs 1 house, threatens hundreds more.” Baltimore Sun (June 03, 2002), by New York Times News Service. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2002-06-03/news/0206030204_1_garden-state-parkway-toms-river-jersey-shore  
 

Peterson, Iver. "Fire in the Pine Barrens: Keeping the Oak at Bay.” The New York Times (May 29, 1992). URL http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/29/nyregion/fire-in-the-pine-barrens-keeping-the-oak-at-bay.html, accessed April 28, 2012.

Pinelands Preservation Alliance. Website. URL: http://www.pinelandsalliance.org/  
 

Pineypower: General Information about the Pinelands. Website: URL accessed April 30, 2012: http://www.pineypower.com/geninfopbpg10.html 

Stansfield, Charles A. A Geography of New Jersey: the City in the Garden. 1988. Rpt. 2004, Rutgers University Press. Courtesy of Google Books. URL accessed April 28, 2012: http://books.google.com/books?id=FTXwgHg89W8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=geography+of+new+jersey&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bv-bT8rCEYe16AHF9ez8Dg&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=geography%20of%20new%20jersey&f=false.

TheArgus [Tuckerton, NJ]. “May 15 New Jersey Pinelands Fire Blamed on Pilot Error.” Now Public: CrowdPowered Media (July 30, 2007). URL accessed April 30, 2012: http://www.nowpublic.com/may_15_new_jersey_pinelands_fire_blamed_pilot_error

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