The Highlands Core Forest is the largest, most mature, and least fragmented forest in the northern half of New Jersey.

At roughly 340 square miles, it is not recognized by most people as a single forest because it is seen

only by its component sections and governed by a variety of jurisdictions: State Forests, State Parks, Wildlife Management Areas, County Parks, Municipal Parks, Water Supply Management Areas, Non-Profit Owned Open Space and thousands of privately owned parcels.

But the plants and animals that inhabit this forest- including the many threatened, endangered, imperiled and rare ones that thrive here, but not elsewhere in the state because of the forest’s size-have no concept of the jurisdictional boundaries, seeing it rather as a single forest.

The only way for us to appreciate such a view is to fly over it in a small plane, when in the late spring, summer or early fall, miles and miles of pristine green forest interspersed with swamps stretch to the horizon.

This forest maintains a wide range of biodiversity because its deer population is much lower than the more fragmented forests in the state.

It is also the least invaded by aggressive, non-native plant species. Elsewhere, forests fragmented by development and crisscrossed by roads provide more boundaries between development and forest-forest edges-that are ideal habitat for deer.

Fragmentation of forests offer more pathways for invasive species to encroach into the forest.

The forested parks in the southeastern portion of the Highlands-Lewis Morris County Park and the Jockey Hollow section of Morristown National Historic Park, are so overabundant with deer and non-native plant species that they are on the verge of ecological collapse.

The deer eat all of the native tree seedlings. The only plants they don’t eat are the low-lying invasive plants such as mugwort, stilt grass, multiflora rose and barberry. The native trees don’t regenerate.

The diverse habitat that once lived in the forest canopy and in the native shrubs of the forest floor, are gone.

The state Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Fish and Wildlife receives funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Young Forest Initiative to create new forest edges deep into the Highland Core Forest, which purports to attract declining species of songbirds by nearly clear-cutting 10-acre forest stands in locations throughout the 3,500-acre Sparta Mountain Wildlife Management Area.

In a video investigation we made, “Two Years After the Cut: Assessing the Regeneration of the Forest at Stand 9 on Sparta Mountain,” available on the NJ Highlands Coalition’s You Tube Channel, we surveyed a near clearcut two years after the logging operation.

We found no evidence that any of the targeted songbirds were present. What we did find were newly emergent invasive species along the access road leading to the site and within the site and conditions so favorable to deer that it is certain their numbers would increase.

If unchecked, the results of such an operation could negatively impact large parts of the surrounding forest, setting them on a trajectory that could ultimately lead to the ecological collapse of the forest as seen in Lewis Morris Park and Jockey Hollow.

These cuts were components of a 10-year Forest Stewardship Plan written and implemented by the Division of Fish and Wildlife.

What is truly frightening is that four years ago a bill was introduced into the New Jersey Legislature that would have required similar Forest Stewardship Plans on all publicly owned forests in New Jersey. Because of a strong outcry by us and other concerned organizations the bill never progressed.

But we fear the bill’s intention remains very much alive-and practiced today deep in the Highlands Core Forest on Sparta Mountain.

The Highlands Core Forest provides all of New Jersey with a multitude of natural resource values: a clean water supply that 70 percent of New Jersey enjoys; a reservoir of biodiversity, plentiful, accessible recreational options, flood moderation, air filtration, climate resilience, aesthetic and spiritual inspiration and more.

Operations such as these will degrade the forest and its ability to provide these services. The Young Forest Initiative must stop.