Chapter 9 of Protecting New Jersey’s Environment, called The Woodlands, was another more positive chapter of the book. While I was reading this chapter there were a few things that I found really interesting that I am going to highlight in this post. The first idea that was talked about over the span of the chapter was nature adapting to changes that were happening. I though that some of the adaptions that were being talked about were very interesting. This included the information on page 156 that talked about how the pitch pines seemed to have adapted to the fires. Specifically how the seed cones only opened under high heat and how the tree itself will grow new shoots from the base even if the trunk had been burned (Belton). I thought this was really cool because this means that the pitch pines have adapted to the increase in wildfires that are happening. Another adaption that was talked about on page 168 was related to forest fragmentation and how some animals have become acclimated to living near and interacting with humans. Unfortunately, both wildfires and forest fragmentation are horrible things but I think it is interesting how nature is able to adapt to these events to survive.
Another interesting fact that I read was that in 1999 The Forest Service stated that forest constitutes 45 percent of the New Jersey (Belton 152). I was interested to see if this fact was still true because it is nearly 19 years old, however when I was looking on the Forest Service website there was not an updated version of this statistic that I could find. However, in the book it was stated that the 45% equalled over 2 million acres of land and while I was reading online it said that there is 2 million acres of forest land in New Jersey. I think that this means that the totally acres of forests may have decreased slightly but overall it remained the same. This idea corresponded with what was said in the book when Belton talked about how in the future “New Jersey’s forests are healthy and resilient, and they will continue to mature” (168). To me, this was a positive thing to hear because it means that as long as we continue to take care and preserve the forests we have they will continue to grow. As the book pointed out we still need to watch out for forest fragmentation and how that can still effect the forests we have. It is well known that it is up to us to protect what we have and I think protecting the forests that make up NJ is a big part of that.