For Immediate Release
Contact: Jeff Tittel, Director, NJ Sierra Club, (609) 558-9100
The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has dropped their plans to turn a portion of the former Warner Bros. safari park Jungle Habitat into a pay-to-play mountain bike park. Their original idea included privatizing Green Acres open space by leasing out part of Norvin Green State Forest for a mountain bike park in West Milford. The site is an 800-acre former piece of Jungle Habitat property, acquired and preserved by the state in 1998. This park is in the northern section Norvin Green State Forest and is important because it helps protect headwater areas in an environmentally sensitive Highlands Forest.
“We are happy to see the DEP drop their plans to turn this important piece of land into a mountain bike park. Now we can see it be restored to its natural state. This is critical for the habitat and ecology of the region, especially the streams that will no longer be disturbed. This victory shows us that public outcry works. The DEP listened to the people and pulled out of their plan. We opposed this because we know it was bad for the environment and a misuse of public land. I worked 25 years ago to save this property and I’m glad to see the DEP pack away from this proposal,” said Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.
Parks have been the one thing that government has done right and that people have enjoyed for years being above politics and commercialization. Any new vendors should keep the mission of the park, be affordable to the public and not interfere with the park or limit public access.
“Mountain biking would have been a threat to the environmentally sensitive area. The property would have been subject to more erosion and run-off that will impact the Highlands. It has been close to 40 years since the old Jungle Habitat property closed. Now the fields that were clear-cut can continue restoring themselves into young forests again. The surrounding category one trout streams like Burnt Meadow Brook and Hewitt Brook can remain undisturbed. The threatened and endangered species such as trout, Swamp Pink and Timber Rattlesnake will no longer be threatened by mountain biking and other recreational disturbance,” said Tittel.
We are still concerned with the state giving away our parks like Norvin Green State Forest to private owners. This is the same type of proposal we have seen with Liberty State Park, Sparta Mountain, and Traders Cove in Brick. We believe this is unfair to New Jersey taxpayers because privatization often means higher costs for less service.
“While we are happy at this victory, we are still concerned that the Christie Administration is trying to break the public trust and give away our public lands to private corporations and developers. The result of privatization leads to higher rates worse quality for services, payments for access that was once free, and the proliferation of pay to play contracts. Instead of taking using the fees to go back to the park, it can be used for anything, including park maintenance and salaries, or even non-park purposes. We are happy to see this plan rejected and instead the Green Acres Bond Acts, the New Jersey Constitution, various Green Acres statutes, and the Green Acres regulations are being upheld,” said Jeff Tittel.
The DEP is also moving forward with its plan to privatize Sparta Mountain. This will turn the Mountain into a field for vaguely defined “stewardship” practices and commercial logging. Their plan to log the forest is a sellout of public lands that threatens biodiversity under the disguise of creating bird habitat. It will destroy critical natural resources, threaten our water supply, while violating the objectives and goals of the Highlands Act.
“Now that the DEP has dropped this plan for a mountain bike park, they should consider creating Golden Winged Warbler habitat here instead of on Sparta Mountain. It may make more sense to create the habitat here because the trees are younger and there are already more areas clear-cut,” said Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. “Instead of harming an environmentally sensitive forest in the Highlands, it makes more sense to create bird habitat near parking lots and already disturbed areas. They could do this at the old Jungle Habitat property because there is land previously clear-cut and the DEP wouldn’t be doing more environmental damage to surrounding streams and wildlife.”