By Richard Cowen | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
Some West Milford, NJ, residents are outraged that the township sent a crew into a wooded area on Earth Day last month to chop down trees and block the trails that ATV riders have been carving out for generations.
There is no public land anywhere in New Jersey where riding an ATV, quad, or dirt bike is legal. West Milford, with 87 square miles of mostly watershed, is cut with trails — and a favored spot for off-roading has long been a patch of municipally-owned forest off Macopin Road and behind the Camelot Estates.
Residents of Camelot Estates say they’ve shared the trails with dirt bikers for generations. But that share-the-road relationship ended on April 22, when, without warning, the township sent a crew with chainsaws into the forest to cut down the trees and lay them across the trails.
“I came home from work, took a walk in the woods, and I wanted to throw up,” said Dave Mussina, who lives on King Arthur’s Court at the edge of the woods. Mussina’s wife works from home and she heard the whirr of the chainsaws as they ripped through the natural playground where the couple’s six boys all play.
“I stopped counting at 85 the number of trees they took down,” Mussina said. “It’s completely absurd that these trees were cut down. It’s sick. And they did on Earth Day, no less.”
Don’t miss environmental news like this Click for free updates
