EDITORIAL Be careful with Zoar Valley. Biodiversity and tree canopy preservation are both paramount environmental goals on a global level. On a local level, though, conservation of old-growth forests that contain treasured 80or 90-year-old trees can be just as important.
Acting with Audubon Connecticut and New York, the New York State Department of Conservation is planning a 92-acre clear-cutting project in Zoar Valley, along Wickham Road in Cattaraugus County. It's located in the DEC-managed Zoar Valley Multiple Use Area, which, unlike the Unique Area, is not protected against logging. The clear-cutting is intended to create habitat that will help struggling bird species.
That some Zoar advocates are readying themselves to fight the state's logging plan should come as no surprise. Those trees are not only beautiful and old enough to command respect, but they help to clean the air of carbon. Conservation-minded groups like Friends of Zoar Valley have worked for decades to protect as much as they could of Zoar, which contains some of the largest remaining intact forests in the Great Lakes region as well as some of the tallest, oldest trees in the northeastern United States.
Indeed, the protected Unique Area came about after the state DEC attempted to log sections of old-growth forest in 1996. In 2007, those 1,492 acres were designated "forever wild" by the New York State Legislature and then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
It is to the DEC's credit that it continues efforts to make Zoar s.
