A N.J. wildlife agency razed protected wetlands. Then it penalized itself.

New Jersey department penalizes itself for clearing protected wetlands - The Washington Post

Environmentalists were shocked in early March when they discovered construction vehicles leveling a stretch of protected wetlands in southern New Jersey.

“They did it by picking pretty much the worst location they could have done,” said Joe Arsenault, an ecologist and environmental consultant who inspected the damaged wetlands with members of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation.

The foundation and three other organizations decried the Department of Environmental Protection’s development in a March 6 open letter to the body responsible for enforcing New Jersey’s wetland protections — the Department of Environmental Protection.

On April 6, the department’s bureau in charge of land use enforcement agreed that the project broke state law and issued a notice of violation to the department’s own fish and wildlife division.

The division must submit a plan within 30 days to restore the wetlands and could face further punishment pending an assessment, the department said.

Advocates said they’re still pressing for answers on how the clearing of a cherished New Jersey preserve was ever approved — though they said they’re glad, if a little bemused, that the department is holding itself accountable for the miscue.

“You would think that the division that was responsible for [wetlands] would have understood,” Arsenault said. “But the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand’s doing.”

The project centered on the Glassboro Wildlife Management Area, a 2,300-acre stretch of dense, swampy forest between Philadelphia and Atlantic City that’s popular with birdwatchers, hunters and hikers.

The site carries a unique history, Arsenault said. Unlike most of southern New Jersey, the Glassboro forest had never been cleared or tilled for agriculture.

That changed after the fish and wildlife division announced a habitat construction project in February. The division planned to create 21 acres of meadowland in Glassboro to support the American woodcock and the planting of flowers to attract pollinators.

The announcement said the habitat would provide needed support for the American woodcock, which is declining in population along the Eastern Seaboard. Arsenault and his peers questioned the decision to create that habitat in the middle of a protected forest.

“It was a failure,” said Tom Gilbert, co-director of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. “If they had really done their homework, they would have understood what was on the site.”

Environmentalists discovered in March that the creation of the habitat entailed the destruction of acres of wetland. Those who visited found trees cut down — their stumps bulldozed — and hills and ponds leveled by heavy equipment, according to the letter later sent to the department.

“It was complete decimation of the land,” said Jaclyn Rhoads, assistant executive director of the Pinelands Preservation Alliance, a New Jersey nonprofit that co-signed the letter.

More alarming, advocates added, was the department’s seeming ignorance of the Freshwater Wetlands Protection Act, a 1987 state law that forbids most development on New Jersey wetlands — and tasks the Department of Environmental Protection with shielding them.

“People are honestly scratching their heads and wondering how this could have happened,” Gilbert said. “It’s really hard to fathom.”

The Department of Environmental Protection suspended the project on March 10, a spokesperson said. On April 6, the department reprimanded itself.

The department’s land use enforcement bureau issued a violation to the fish and wildlife division for clearing roughly 14 acres of wetlands classified as having “exceptional resource value.” The cleared wetlands included the habitat of two birds, the barred owl and red-shouldered hawk, that are deemed threatened or endangered in the state.

The fish and wildlife division will also wait to see whether it faces further punishment. Fines for violating the Freshwater Wetlands Protection Act can exceed hundreds of thousands of dollars, Arsenault said — though it’s unclear how the Department of Environmental Protection would impose the penalty on itself.

“How do you fine yourself?” Arsenault said. “Reach in one pocket, go to the other?”