Promoting The Cause Of Sound Forestry Management And Conservation

By Andrew Gorosko

A local man has become a “coverts project cooperator,” serving as an intermediary between state environmental agencies and area property owners who want to pursue sound forest management and land conservation practices.

Rob Sibley of Berkshire Road, Sandy Hook, recently completed a training seminar at the remote Yale Forestry Camp in Norfolk in northwestern Connecticut with about 30 other environmentally concerned people. Participants learned how sound forest management can result in healthier, more diverse, and abundant wildlife. The forestry camp is in the 6,800-acre Great Mountain Forest.

The annual training seminar is a key part of The Coverts Project, a forestry and wildlife education program sponsored by the University of Connecticut Cooperative Extension System and The Ruffed Grouse Society. The state Department of Environmental Protection and the Great Mountain Forest Corporation, Inc, also participate in the coverts program.

In his year-long capacity as a coverts project cooperator, Mr Sibley will provide free advice to the general public concerning forest management topics. A covert is a thicket or underbrush, which provides sheltering cover for wildlife.

In exchange for the forestry and wildlife training, which they receive at the coverts seminar and at ensuing workshops, coverts project cooperators develop a forest and wildlife management plan for their own woodland or for woodland they manage. They also answer questions from landowners about forestry and wildlife, and they seek to motivate woodland owners to use sound forest management practices.

Mr Sibley, 33, is studying for college degrees in environmental science and biology. He manages the 120-acre Glacier Ridge Trail nature area at the Chase Parkway campus of Naugatuck Valley Community College in Waterbury. He works as the college’s coordinator for outdoor adventure, involving kayaking, rock climbing, orienteering, hiking, and boating safety.

A former Easton resident, Mr Sibley moved to Newtown two years ago. He is a member of the town’s open space task force, an ad hoc panel that serves as the open space arm of the Conservation Commission.

The Sandy Hook resident works as an environmental technician for Willow Environmental, a local firm that performs various environmental tests. A former media manager for a Madison Avenue advertising firm, Mr Sibley was involved with the Up With People organization in the past.

“The time is coming to manage what wild spaces we have left,” Mr Sibley said in an interview at Lower Paugussett State Forest in Sandy Hook.

“I’m not a hunter. I’m not a logger. But I do enjoy a log fire,” he said, noting “This [wood] is a renewable resource.”

Connecticut was not always as heavily forested as it is today, he said, pointing out that during past periods the state was essentially deforested during heavily agricultural times, and during the Iron Age, when vast amounts of wood were burned for the charcoal needed in the metal-making process.

Because the vast majority of forested properties in the state are privately owned, it is important that forest stewardship plans be formulated for forests’ wise management, he said. More than 100,000 woodland owners privately hold 90 percent of the state’s forested land.

Rapid land development and the fragmentation of forested land, coupled with poor woodcutting practices, pose continuing threats to Connecticut’s forest and wildlife resources, according to the state cooperative extension system. People who are coverts project cooperators work to break that cycle of forest destruction.

As a cooperator, Mr Sibley will answer area woodland owners’ questions about forest management and provide reference material. He can put woodland owners in touch with public agencies, private foresters, and associations that work toward woodland preservation and enhancement. Mr Sibley’s telephone number is 270-0657.