By RICK MILLER
Olean Star
BUFFALO — Nearly 30 members of the Zoar Valley Coalition demonstrated outside the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s regional headquarters in Buffalo Tuesday in protest to plans to log in Zoar Valley.
The group also provided copies of a letter the coalition sent to Gov. Kathy Hochul asking for a meeting with her representatives to detail concerns over the plan by DEC and the CT/NY Chapter of the Audubon Society to create more bird habitat by clear-cutting next to the Zoar Valley Unique Area.
The group is asking for additional input including public hearings on the DEC’s 2021 Niagara Frontier Unit Management Plan which includes a 92-acre clear cut surrounded by a 10-foot wall of trees and other debris to keep out deer.
“We want conservation, not deforestation,” the demonstrators chanted outside the Michigan Avenue DEC offices.
“The DEC has marked trees and scheduled timber sales of hundreds of acres of public land in Zoar Valley,” wrote Terry Belke, a coalition spokesman.
“In 2006, the DEC issued a preservation plan for Zoar Valley after overwhelming public support was expressed for Zoar Valley to be a protected wilderness. For the DEC to now reverse the plan for Zoar Valley to a logging plan is a grievous breach of the public trust,” Belke said.
In the letter to the governor, the coalition also raises a possible conflict of interest with Interim DEC Commissioner Sean Mahar, who before being appointed to the DEC had been director of Government Relations and Communications for Audubon New York.
“Gov. George Pataki was instrumental in stewarding Zoar Valley towards permanent protections as part of the Forest Preserve, and in 2007 Gov. Eliot Spitzer signed the legislation into law that dedicated the Zoar Valley Unique Area to the State Nature & Historic PreserveTrust/Forest Preserve,” the letter to Hochul states.
“Gov. David Paterson signed the Bruce S. Kershner Old-Growth Forest Preservation and Protection Act in 2008, which afforded additional protections to the Old-Growth Forested ecosystems in Zoar Valley,” the letter adds.
