Some environmental groups have cautiously praised the creation of two new state forests in Morgan and Brown counties because they hope it’s just a first step.
Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb established Ravinia and Mountain Tea state forests from land that was already part of state forests. They are the first state forests to be established in 67 years, Department of Natural Resources director Dan Bortner previously told IndyStar.
Environmentalists say the initiative is a good first step, but they hope it’s not the last. Some would like the state to put limits on logging in Ravinia and Mountain Tea. And some would like the state to acquire more public land.
“I was disappointed that it wasn’t new forest land being secured for our state,” said Julia Lowe, executive committee chair for the Hoosier Chapter of the Sierra Club. “Because I would like to have more forested land and public land in the state of Indiana.”
Tim Maloney, senior policy director for the Hoosier Environmental Council, said this is generally a “positive development” because creating new properties from state land will raise the profile of the forests and probably increase the public's interest in them.
Maloney said a lot of people don’t know about the Mountain Tea property, which was formerly part of Yellowwood State Forest and was “pretty remote.” He said more people know about Ravinia Woods, though, which was part of Morgan-Monroe State Forest.
John Seifert, director of the Department of Natural Resources Division of Forestry, said in an email that the creation of Ravinia and Mountain Tea state forests generates new opportunities for these areas to be enjoyed by Hoosiers and others. He said the forests were geographically separated from the state forests that they were formerly part of by about 20 miles.
"Giving them their own separate identity allows the Division of Forestry to better focus attention and promote these important areas to Hoosiers and guests who may not live in the immediate area and most likely did not know about these precious state treasures," Seifert said.
Maloney says Indiana needs more outdoor lands and outdoor recreation opportunities. He said the Hoosier Environmental Council and other organizations have been advocating for years for the state to invest more money in protecting outdoor lands, including by buying more state parks and forests and by building more trails.
“At the federal level, Congress just passed a landmark bill to do that for the federal lands — the Great American Outdoors Act,” he noted. “And we need something similar in Indiana. We need a vision and a commitment to doing better at expanding these public spaces.”
Seifert said that the state will evaluate land that becomes available, examine the natural resources there and expand properties "when it makes sense to do so." He also noted that state forests are more than just recreation areas.
"Protecting forests from development is important to maintaining viable working ecosystems," he said. "Species dependent on these areas will become endangered due to the loss of habitat if lands get subdivided and fragmented."
Cutting down trees is another concern for some environmentalists. Jeff Stant, the executive director of the Indiana Forest Alliance, said there is too much logging in state forests. He would like logging to not be allowed in portions of Ravinia and Mountain Tea. He wants at least 10% of the two forests to be logging-free, though he’d prefer that the state protect more than that amount.
Seifert said that more than 50% of the DNR forested lands are already set aside as areas where logging is not allowed. He noted that foresters are planting trees at Mountain Tea State Forest and Ravinia State Forest as part of the DNR's program to plant one million trees by 2025. Seifert also said that the DNR will be hosting open houses in the future to seek public input on how the forests can "best serve Hoosiers and our guests."
Stant said that before the state logs on any more acres in the forests, it should conduct wildlife inventories, which would find out which animals reside there.
“We have all kinds of amphibians that live in these forests,” he said, “on the ground and in the rock, in the wood.”
Lowe of the Sierra Club is opposed to logging on public land. She is concerned about climate change and said that trees, farmlands and wetlands are a way to take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it.
“Every time they cut forests down, all that carbon is released and then all those trees that could have been storing carbon are not,” she said.
However, Allen Pursell, director of forest conservation for The Nature Conservancy in Indiana, said a variety of animals benefit from some of the logging in forests.
“They like woods that are say younger in age or they’re more sparse in their understory or more open,” he said.
Now that Ravinia and Mountain Tea have a new designation, Pursell hopes that lands like the forests might expand in size over time.
“It’s exciting to think … though that in this day and age,” he said, “we can start to think about building new state forests or new public areas that can belong to the people of Indiana and be used for different purposes.”
Contact IndyStar Pulliam Fellow Anne Snabes at asnabes@indystar.com and follow her on Twitter at @a_snabes.
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Environmental groups respond to the creation of two new state forests - IndyStar
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