my name is not tasha sherman and i am your host and my guests today are from the summer land conservancy first i'd like to welcome caroline catman she is the executive director of the starlight conservancy welcome thank you and cliff wilson who is the vice president but also chair of the advocacy committee did i get that right you did welcome class thanks so up until recently i didn't know what the sorry one conservancy was and i suspect a lot of people don't so i'm going to start with you caroline maybe you can tell us what it is the sound of conservancy its mission is to protect the ecology and the history and the special character of the saarland mountain region where a five a one c three nonprofit environmental organization and where is the sour land the saudi arabia the saarland mountain region is approximately ninety square miles of forest wetland and grassland habitat in the western part of central new jersey ok so you know people really talk a lot about the environment and being you know concerned about it what is the threat because it seems that there are media threats all the time lately what is the immediate threat here well because the saarland region is critical stopover point for migratory birds it provides habitat for a variety of threatened endangered plants and animals it also provides a wonderful area for human recreation because of all that and also because of its historic  begun in the area you know i'm going to interrupt you here because you know it sounds lovely but what we don't get is as nature disappears our lives start to be impacted dramatically and we think oh just another little piece just another little piece and it's not the case that we could suddenly find ourselves with nothing out there and with you know species disappearing and the whole environment impacted so this is really vital and key so cliff i'm going to ask you about penn east pipelining proposed ok so tell us what that is and what's happening with that well penny's there's a consortium of energy companies including a public service or drink a gas and they're proposing to build a pipeline that runs from carbon county pennsylvania down across the delaware river and ending near pennington and it would their path through our part of the state is cutting through mostly through preserved lands ironically these lands that we spent a lot of energy and money and sweat to preserve are now the path of least resistance for companies like penn build their pipelines because they don't have to build around anything they don't have to fight an existing businesses or landowners they just use their power of eminent domain to claim the right to plow right through these preserved land so the so on forest which is the largest remaining contiguous forest in central new jersey it's like sixty square miles of forest between lambertville and hillsboro and princeton  part of this whole thing about preserving the land so preserve means it's supposed to be on touchable yes you'd think yeah so what are the laws that or are there any that can be utilized to continue that well in the case of natural gas pipelines the decision as to whether or not to approve their construction is solely in the hands of the federal energy regulatory commission and penn east has to prove it there's a public need for that gas and if determines that they have proof that then they can approve the pipeline now also in the case of the east pipeline the new jersey department of environmental protection needs to issue a certain permits as well before it can be built right so are they do they have your back you know it seems like they do not too long ago they issued a statement to penn east saying that you cannot apply for these permits until you submit a complete application has not been able to submit a complete application because seventy percent of new jersey landowners along the route have denied them access to survey their land and so without that survey data they had not submitted a complete application njt and so far angie d p is saying don't even bother submitting without that information so we are really encouraging landowners as difficult as it must be for them to continue to deny access or to rescind access if they've already granted answers and that's good to know so we want everybody listening to do that absolutely but the pipeline is almost universally opposed to new jersey every municipality and county along the path of the pipeline has voted to oppose its construction so people new jersey do not want it there is no benefit to the people of new jersey whatsoever penney's does trying to make a case that the the natural gas is needed  but doesn't seem to be a shortage now and there are already other pipelines being installed to bring more natural gas to new jersey so it seems pretty clear that the actual intent is to move through new jersey and get this to port for export really scary actually it's just a clear case of the using eminent domain powers for corporate profit there's no public benefit certainly not in new jersey and there is a widespread opposition in pennsylvania as well so it's a misuse of public domain of eminent domain in our opinion that's what i wanted to ask you so in order to claim something under the guise of eminent domain what does one have to prove i think if approved the construction of the pen east pipeline then east can use eminent domain to get onto the property that they need to survey so it's really the federal government that react they would have to take the landowners to court wow so i want to talk more about that because you're saying that a it will disrupt the environment be people's homes will be taken away from them under you know an eminent domain are forced to sell well i don't know that there are any actual homes that would be destroyed but the pipeline would come through their properties in my say one of their  e considering i believe the the if you are within a quarter mile of the pipeline in there it's an explosion you can pretty much count on being incinerated ok so but under your property no problem right i'm thinking that all of the reasons not to build the penny's pipeline can be put into three categories but i think it's it's wildly destructive to the in arment that's one too there is no need for it and three rather than facilitating the use of renewable resources to meet our energy needs it's it's continuing our dependence on dirty nonrenewable fossil fuels so to me those are the three main categories not so casual tutoring that there's a lot of attention being given to the idea of finding other sources of energy what would be the the compelling reason to do this other than that corporations want to make money well we think it's pretty clear that new jersey is basically in the in the way of getting this out of two ports where it can be exported converted into liquid natural gas and exported to europe or asia where they can get a lot more money for export plant in maryland and there's another one being planned for maine and you know four point seven million homes in new jersey already use natural gas and i think the amount of gas that can go through pennies can probably supply another five million so they would need to double the number of natural gas customers to justify all that gas and that's just not going to happen because it make you sad and disheartened yes many of us have sleepless nights it's hard to stay positive but if the opposition is so united and so strong that that's that's what gives everybody the hope and inspiration to keep going so besides not giving access to your property what else can people in new jersey do that's a great question right now penny's has filed its application with the federal energy regulatory commission so at this point  register and then you have to apply to file a motion to intervene if you have trouble which you probably will because it is not a user friendly website i encourage you to visit the  citizens website they have a great page there that will help you navigate that it's age t c p p dot org dot org thank you yeah so that's really great east the right permit and so you know again besides cutting through the path of least resistance destroying natural habitat s potentially running pipelines under your property and not benefiting new jersey in any way whatsoever and then perpetuating the dependency on fossil fuels and all of this it's really not something you want to ignore no not at all it's a huge threat to the saarland and all the other regions that it will be going through so let's talk more about the sirens because and end i read something about pain is bad for your health ok because humans and animals are being adversely impacted by fracking and associated infrastructure from normal day to day operations so let's talk a little bit bad they say the existence of a pipeline not only would exacerbate arsenic levels in groundwater but the construction process is extremely harmful that's something to really pay attention to apparently there are ar senic hotspots under the ground in hundred in mercer counties and there is a doctor on scott who's a geologist in princeton who has commented to for many many sensitive creeks and streams streams in the state i'm going to ask you an unanswerable question these are a lot of science to prove that a lot of things that we're doing are destructive every one of us is impacted nobody goes scot free world breathing the same air we're all drinking water from somewhere that has been somewhat contaminated probably the people who are making these decisions are also going to be impacted physically their families i don't understand do you understand why people would continue to do something like this well the corporate profit motive is clear as for the with the regulators are concerned it seems the system is just stacked in favor of the corporations it's like it's almost like you have to prove we have to prove everything that's bad about it and unless we can you know meet every criteria and the thing gets approved the most likely outcome is first has never turned down anything other i don't think they've ever denied to turn down a permit they've requested modifications to mitigate some of the impact but in this case we think the no build option is the only one that makes any sense at all cried i think you somewhat answered the question for me it's a it's really in support of an existing system that nobody's really examining and it's so heav weighted perhaps at some point we did need this infrastructure but we don't anymore and we're still operating in a totally outdated unnecessary way i interviewed a woman who is an industrial  genest she talks about how in order to put something on the market toxic whatever else you do you don't need to prove anything to it if it harms your you think it harms you in this country in europe it's different it's up to you to prove that it did damage it's not up to them to prove that it's ok so it's a little bizarre and this kind of falls into line  so then let's talk about the good news let's talk about the sour lands and who why what people can do and take advantage of it with they should be going it's so treasure in the middle of new jersey between the highlands region and the pine barrens it's we feel it's a real new jersey treasure as i said you can hike there on back roads or on trails there's the somerset county not too distant future going to be posting a trail map of the sarah lands we get asked about that very very often so that will be available there is hiking and birding and fishing horseback riding photography there are many historic sites like the lindbergh mansion historic churches and bridges and homes and as i said the ecological value should not be  underestimated especially here in the most highly developed state country yeah so it sounds like really sealed with all kinds of treasures and all i'm going to ask you cliff we didn't start with anything personal but i want to ask you why you were involved in this what what had you jump on board well until earlier this year i lived right in the heart of the  right up on the mountain in skillman and boy ten years ago or so friend of mine who worked with the organization so they needed help with some technical things that i knew how to do and so i volunteered and just got reeled in and got more and more interested in the cause and i became president of the organization for a few years and still heavily involved even though it's now moved out of the area it's still a very important regional resource so people in princeton if they want to go hiking or biking the most beautiful close by place is just up the road in in the sounds and what about you caroline what brought you to it and what has you stayed with it because it sounds like an uphill battle well i live i moved to the sound region i think about nine years ago and didn't know i was in the sound region just knew that it was a really pretty place then started attending some sauerland sound conservative was called the sauerland planning council at the time i started attending some of their board meetings and started learning about what a treasure it is and that it's a lot more than just a pretty place to cycle or ron or hike and i started out as a volunteer for the organization and then became the executive director three years ago so if i gave you i wish list what is it that you want from the community well we need support for the things we're advocating for which number one right now on the list is stopping the pennies pipeline and i think second on the list is to control the population of white tail deer which are threatening the long term viability of the forest itself i mean it's actually worse than that if the deer population is not brought down dramatically there will be no forest in fifty years the  so oversized that they consume the entire understory of the forest which means the little baby trees that would be the next generation of trees there are none you can walk for miles and not see any three or four foot saplings they just do not exist sometimes one will get lucky and survive the first year and then get eaten the second year but you know they don't stick it in the whole thing they just have to nip the buds and enough to to kill the little tree so  people hate it when i use this analogy but i'm going to use it anyway if you had a society where none of the children were up surviving until they reached the first great you could see what would happen to that society in the long term jersey was almost gone the other almost extinct from overhunting on regulated commercial hunting then some strict wildlife preservation laws for an acted they worked really and now the pendulum has swung entirely in the other direction so the there are there the deer are protected so much that they are destroying their own habitat and the habitat of countless still in the end it will kill them anyway yes but in the meantime you want to stop them from killing we were we would like the forest to survive yes and we need to work toward a balanced ecosystem where there are some deer but also the understory that's necessary for the migratory birds and all of the other species that exist in a balance ecosystem in the sauerland so that's really interesting because that's not a problem you typically hear about and we all go to deer they're beautiful may be useful animals just so out of balance and yeah right and they there are no natural predators right there in the air but we got rid of the natural predators around the same time we're not to the press preservation laws so what do you suggest well the reintroduction of predators is probably impractical i mean if you put had some wolves up here then you know the probably would go away pretty quickly and in fact where they were able to reintroduce predators such as encourage hunting and there is a lot of hunting that goes on but recreational hunting alone has proven not up to the task of controlling the deer population and in fact recreational hunting is on the decline in new jersey so the problem is just getting worse we already have pretty much the most liberal possible rules for for recreational hunting so well and it's not enough just to control the prop population so what we need one of the things we're advocating for now is they really allow reintroduction of commercial hunting some form of commercial deer hunting license to right now it's illegal for a hunter to sell the venison  than that they you know it's technically illegal for for me to go hunting in to bring you some of the venison i can't give it to you we tried to say we tried to set up a we tried to set up a program which would give hunters a way to do you know give away their yes yes or no it's not by just going out and killing willy nilly it's making use of the meat right so you know the the prohibition on commercial hunting is one of the the core principles of the wildlife preservation in north american model of wildlife preservation almost all the preservation statutes around the country are based the first in the number one tenets of that is no commercial markets however i think those were enacted in a time when they couldn't envision that an over population of deer would be the problem  like with the eminent domain thing it's a it's a law that was it's been on the books forever and it really no longer fits the current circumstance what is a birth control not practical and very expensive you couldn't do it on the scale needed to control the population so do you think there's any chance that this will change i mean if anybody advocating for this we are you know we are there's actually a bill in the assembly right now that's going to probably die at the end of the year because it hasn't moved through the committees right thing which would allow commercial deer hunting so we're hoping to work with people in the assembly in the state senate to write a new bill for the next legislature that would lot maybe just even a pilot project in the or somewhere else to just buyable but we have to get over this you know everybody learns about deer hunting through the movie bambi and it's perhaps the most damaging thing to our cause that's out there and i think maybe just from the point of view even if you use the venison strictly to feed the hungry you know it would have some validity and maybe shift t thinking we also have a web site w w w dot hunter connection dot org and we're encouraging hunters to register there and encouraging landowners to visit that website to almost shop for a hunter but that's a great it's a way for them to write in addition to commercial hunting one approach the problem is to open up more lands to hunting so you know right now the hunters can only wow well we're almost at the end of our time and so you've got your work cut out for you when i have the i got a chance to find out about this because you know you can now share it with the community  and hopefully people will want to take action and participate in some way so we hope that they'll fit our website to learn more about this absolutely and your web site is going to be on the screen through and keep doing the work you're doing  very much my name is that asha sherman thank you for joining us