Mature Atlantic White Cedar trees are shown in Brendan Byrne State Forest in New Jersey
By The Associated Press
WOODLAND TOWNSHIP, N.J. — New Jersey plans to restore vast tracts of a coastal tree species threatened by climate change and will pay for it with money from polluters of groundwater.
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection said Thursday its plan to restore 10,000 acres of Atlantic white cedar would be the largest restoration effort involving the species in U.S. history.
The $20 million project will span 10 years and will be paid for from court settlements with manufacturers and distributors of a now-banned gasoline additive that has polluted groundwater throughout the country.
“Through this project, we will reestablish once-dominant stands of Atlantic white cedar, but at higher elevations less vulnerable to rising seas and saltwater intrusion, and provide habitat for globally rare plants and wildlife, while capturing and storing carbon and absorbing floodwaters,” said Shawn LaTourette, New Jersey’s environmental protection commissioner.
An estimated 500,000 acres of Atlantic white cedar forests once stretched from Maine to northern Florida and along parts of the Gulf of Mexico coast, with 115,000 acres in New Jersey alone. Today, fewer than 125,000 acres remain nationally, 25,000 of them in New Jersey, the state environmental department said.
The trees were heavily logged for their desirability as a disease- and pest-resistant wood source.
But they also have been falling prey to saltwater intrusion as sea levels rise and more frequent storms push saltwater into the freshwater areas in which the cedars grow. Superstorm Sandy in 2012 also downed many of the trees.
Stands of dead cedars haunt New Jersey and other spots along the Atlantic coast, where the bleached-white trees have become known as “ghost forests.”
