By: Ryan Wolf 

   Like so many of the world’s natural wonders, the Long Island Pine Barrens is a major source of inspiration for professional and amateur photographers alike.  As the Pine Barrens is a rare and diverse ecosystem, however, the methods to best capture the Pine Barrens by lens are equally as diverse and unique.  The next time you explore the Pine Barrens with camera in hand; take these helpful tips and accompanying examples into consideration to fully realize the photogenic nature of the Long Island Pine Barrens:    

Great South Bay by KCelella

1. Take Photos During the “Golden Hour” or “Blue Hour”
Taking photos during the height of the day can cause glare and overblown final products. For the best results, try to capture nature in the few minutes after sunrise or before sunset (Golden Hour) or when the sun is directly below the horizon (Blue Hour).  This method will not only improve your photos by reducing exposure problems, but by creating a stunning hue in the background of your photo. Both the “gold” and “blue” hues that these times create help produce longer shadows of the landscape’s features and enhance the landscape. To find out the “Golden” and “Blue” hours for Long Island at specific points in the year, try one of the various calculators available online. For “Golden Hour” photographers, please visit: http://www.golden-hour.com/. “Blue Hour” photographers may try http://www.bluehoursite.com/.

Pine Barrens in the Snow by Katie Muether

2. Take Advantage of the Sky as Background
     A nature photographer has one benefit that no other photographer has at his/her disposal: an ever present background. The sky is a perfect candidate for those looking for a good background to their photograph.  Not only do sky photographs look dramatic, but a clear sky allows one to emphasize a photographer’s intended subject matter. To produce the best sky photographs, always keep the “exposure triangle” – shutter speed, ISO and aperture – in mind. Depending on the type of photograph you wish to shoot, consider the location of the sun in the sky. If you want a well exposed photograph, consider shooting with the sun directly behind you.

Ray Corwin Taking a Picture

3. Ground Level is your Friend 
Capture nature from a different perspective by kneeling down and taking photographs from ground level. These low angles will allow your photographs to reach “new heights” in terms of variety and allure. For those wishing to invest in low angle photography, the best option is the use of a “ground pod”, which allows one to place their camera directly on the ground while providing stability to the shot. For ease of use, it is also recommended that one purchases an angled viewfinder that allows photographers to be perfectly aligned at the lowest angles.

4. Look for the Smallest Things
     A creature’s a creature no matter how small.  Related to finding low angles – nature photographers mustn’t forget about the smallest of creatures. These creatures may often times be unknown to the general public and, therefore, subject to a great deal of interest. Nature photography, after all, is not only an art form, but a way to document our environment for the present public and for posterity .  

Eastern Hognose Snake by Bob McGrath

5. Don’t Just Take Pictures for the Sake of It
     Rule number one in nature photography: be patient. Nature will not adjust for your photograph, so you must adjust to it. You never know when you are going to get a great picture. Photographers who go out into nature for the sole reason of taking photographs will not fully enjoy their time. Your first and foremost priority in nature photography must be to experience and enjoy nature. If you find some great photo opportunities along the way, then you should celebrate. In the end, there is no right or wrong way of taking nature photographs as long as the photos capture the essence of the subject landscape or ecosystem.  Just have a great time, and don’t forget to wear appropriate hiking boots and weather-appropriate clothing!

 New Year’s resolutions are an annual tradition and, yet, often difficult to maintain. In 2019, kick off a new resolution right away with the nationwide trend known as “First Day Hikes”. Dedicate yourself to hiking more in the New Year by starting on Day #1. The “First Day Hike” movement was created by the America’s State Parks organization in order to raise awareness of the benefits of being outside, even in the winter! On January 1^st, 2018, more than 55,000 people participated in this New Year’s hike and we hope you are one of these people this year! Hiking is not only fun, but has major health benefits. These include lowering the risk of heart disease, strengthening one’s core, improving blood pressure and weight loss. Perhaps, most importantly, however, hiking offers the chance for friendship! On Long Island, a number of guided group hikes are scheduled for January 1^st, 2019 for those in Nassau and Suffolk Counties.

Scheduled First Day Hikes

Ridge Conservation Area, Suffolk County: Starting at 1 pm, the 2.25 mile hike around the Ridge Conservation Area will give hikers a great collective experience of Eastern Suffolk County’s environment. The hike features 14 interpretive posts describing forest, grassland and pond habitats. The interpretive trail hike will provide scenic viewing locations and be completely guided. For more information, reach out to the hike’s guide, David Pomeranz, at david.pomeranz@dec.ny.gov. The conservation area is located at 484 Randall Rd, Ridge, NY 11961. 

Connetquot River State Park Preserve, Suffolk County: Starting at 1:30pm at the park’s Main House, this hike will offer great scenic views along a 2.5 mile trail. Guided by the State Parks Department, participants will a knowledgeable and relaxing walk near the beautiful Connetquot River. Registration can be made at 631-581-1072. The park is located at 3525 Sunrise Hwy, Oakdale, NY 11769.

Bethpage State Park, Nassau County: Starting at 10 am, Nassau County residents can welcome the New Year at Bethpage State Park. A 5 mile hike will offer the opportunity for hikers to see signs of rabbits, hawks, fox and owls along the trail. The group meet-up will be at the park’s Picnic area parking lot by rest rooms. For more information about this hike, feel free to contact 516-249-3560. The park is located at 99 Quaker Meeting House Rd, Farmingdale, NY 11735.

Hiking on your Own?

     For those wishing to hike on their own for the day or throughout 2019, the Long Island Pine Barrens is a great site for hiking. With more than two dozen preserves within its jurisdiction alone, the Long Island Pine Barrens has a plethora of hiking trails. And with no bears or poisonous snakes on Long Island, the Long Island Pine Barrens is a hiking haven! However, with some many hiking options, we, at the Pine Barrens Society, thought you might need some tips for your First Day Hike on January 1^st.  

Hiking Locations 

Some of the best hiking locations in the State of New York are right here in the Long Island Pine Barrens:  

1. The Paumanok Path:
   No hiking list would be complete without mentioning the 125 mile Paumanok Path. While “First Day Hike” strives to include everyone – expert hiker and first time hiker alike – in the joys of hiking, the Paumanok Path should only be completed by the most prepared of hikers. Spanning from Rocky Point to Montauk, the Paumanok Path is nicknamed “Long Island’s Appalachian Trail”. In fact, only one person has ever been able to complete the entirety of the Paumanok Path…and it took six days! However, those not willing to invest six days into the hike can still enjoy the Paumanok Path as many of the Pine Barrens’ trails follow the Paumanok Path
2. Rocky Point Preserve:
   For those interested in a soothing day-long hike, the Rocky Point Preserve is a perfect candidate.  At eleven miles, the Rocky Point Preserve offers a scenic view of an essential part of the Pine Barrens. At 5,000 acres, the Rocky Point Preserve is a large home for an abundant supply of wildlife so don’t be surprised if you have spectators while hiking. The other added benefit – your dog is allowed to join you on this hike.
   Directions – The parking area for the preserve and the western terminus of the Paumanok Path lies on the south side of NY 25A in Rocky Point, 0.6 mile east of the junction with NY 25A and North Country/ County Road 20 and 0.4 mile west of Rocky Point– Yaphank Road/County Route 21.
3.  Hubbard County Park:
   Hubbard County Park is the perfect place for learning about human and geological history while hiking. At 2.6 miles, the Hubbard County Park hiking trail provides a short trip through the Pine Barrens, a trip that is decorated by Flanders Bay, a historic building known as the Black Duck Lodge and a “Ghost Forest”. The Ghost Forest refers to a series of sunken stumps that were once Atlantic White Cedars when sea levels were lower – a perfect photo opportunity. Black Duck Lodge, on the other hand, is a 19^th century farmstead that was later converted to a hunting lodge for wealthy financier E.F. Hutton. If you get tired during your hike, don’t forget to relax near the scenic Owl Pond, ringed with sweet gale, leatherleaf, swamp azalea and other wetlands shrubs
   Directions – From NY 27 Exit 65, go north about two miles on NY 24 to Red Creek Road. Park alongside RC Road in one of the many pull-off spots and walk the 1/5 of a mile in to the Black Duck Lodge.4. Westhampton Dwarf Pine Plains:
   If you are hiking on the first day of the year, why not see a global rarity? The Dwarf Pine Plains is only one of three such areas, the other two being found in the New Jersey Pine Barrens and Ulster County’s Shawangunk Mountains. Characterized by trees of no more than six feet and the poor soil that stunt their growth, Dwarf Pine Plains are an ecological marvel. It is Long Islanders’ good fortune to have this marvel accessible year round to explore. For hikers, the Dwarf Pine Plains offers two trails to try – one trail on the west side of County Route 31 and an interpretive loop on the east side.
   Directions – Take Route 27 (Sunrise Highway) to Exit 63. At the southwest corner of the interchange, pull off immediately into an unpaved clearing just beyond the shoulder. Alternately, parking is available across the road at a Suffolk County Water Authority building adjacent to the interpretive loop. For the west-side loop, locate an unmarked trail at the south end of the dirt parking area and heading south parallel to C.R. 31. The path extends a quarter mile to the side yard of a small commercial building. Turn right, and at the rear of the property a wide, straight trail heading northwest lures hikers into the heart of the Dwarf Pines.

With these great examples of hiking on Long Island, we hope you can go out and take full advantage of the Long Island Pine Barrens’ offerings. Exercise, fresh air and relaxation. Start your New Year’s with all three by going hiking on January 1^st. Overall, all of us at the Pine Barrens Society wishes you a Happy and safe holiday season, New Year’s and hiking outing!

By John Cryan, Pine Barrens Society Co-Founder

We’re about to lose the peace, in two interrelated ways.  First, the Pine Barrens is not being fire-managed, but fire-suppressed in most places.  Whole vital ecosystems, like the Dwarf Pine Plains, are in great danger of being lost through plant succession – takeover by other species.  Second, rapidly accelerating global warming (RAGW) threatens the whole world, and the Pine Barrens as well, with complete destruction.  I’ll discuss the local fire issue first.

We need to do a lot of burning fast.  If we don’t we will experience another 1995-scale fire, or, more likely in the global warming era, multiple ones when the next big drought hits, as it inevitably will soon.  That one was so hot it actually killed many of the Pine Barrens plants and animals outright.  These are species adapted to fire.  But if we don’t burn, we will lose our entire Pine Barrens biota.

So what happened?  The area that burned had not had a fire in over 50 years, way too long a period to go fireless in a fire-climax ecosystem.  The average Pine Barrens acre used to burn every ten to twenty-five years.  Most of the original fires were fairly light and cool by California chaparral standards, but they burned large acreages, sometimes all the way across the entire Pine Barrens.  They renewed the Pine Barrens flora and fauna in their wakes; fresh resprouts often sprang up the same year.  And they kept out many other species that would, and have, easily taken over  and killed the endemic Pine Barrens species.  The irony here is many of the invaders burn hotter than the native Pine Barrens plants. 

John Cryan in the Pine Barrens by John Burnley, 1980 (Left). John Burnley in the same spot as Cryan in 2018 (Right)

How do we catch up?  We need to get smart, learn from others, and forge our own path.  Another public education campaign will also be required to gain support.  In the Jersey Pine Barrens, up to thousand-acre tracts are burned; that would be hard to duplicate here except in the largest preserves like Sarnoff/RCA.  In the Albany Pine Bush, far smaller areas are burned, and that’s combined with intensive mechanical removal of invaders like aspen and locust.  In the Centre County Barrens just west of State College, PA, one of the longest-running management programs uses multiple techniques for cutting and burning, including special management of reserve edges bordering settled areas.

All the active programs first started off by establishing excellent relationships with the communities involved, and especially their fire departments and other agencies involved with fire and disaster response and recovery.  The relationships actually benefited the communities and departments by bringing in additional financing, resources, and communications, as well as know-how transferable to many other situations.  Some of this groundwork has already been done on Long Island.

The next thing is to do simulations and small controlled burns, while exploring Long Island-centric solutions.  We are essentially a spread out suburban city surrounding a central preserve district.  There are many areas, not just edges, that will require special techniques, which we will have to pioneer.  One is mechanical cutting and harvest of various species at various heights, conversion of that vegetation to the oxidized equivalent of fire ash through a modern pyrolysis digester, then re-spreading those nutrients back onto the harvested areas to support regrowth.  Another is the use of frequent, light, skim burns to remove pesky invading vegetation where Pine Barrens meets civilization.  Finally, we should look to undevelop and connect  preserves separated by tongues of development at high risk in wildfires.

But mostly what needs to be done for the next ten years are large restoration burns, to bring the Pine Barrens back to something resembling its original vegetation structure and composition.  And here’s where our contribution to the worldwide struggle to stop and reverse global warming comes in.

There is an enormous inherent conflict between halting carbon emissions and keeping a fire climax ecosystem going by correctly burning it! But we can leverage this for a dual solution to both Pine Barrens survival and  our contribution to global warming reversal.  Call it Pine Barrens offsets. 

If we want to pull our weight in the climate war, we will have to come from behind.  LI is a wealthy region and can afford to do this.  We should estimate what the total CO2 production will be from ramping up our fire management efforts to, say, an average of 5,000 burned acres per year, and seek public support for offsets.  These could be in the form of  conversions to non-fossil energy in transportation, residential, or business activities.  Pine Barrens Credits would be issued to participants.  Though they’d have only moral value for now, that would ultimately build into infrastructure and habits.  The momentum and experience generated would enable our island’s people to get out in front of the coming push to transform our energy and transportation sectors, including aviation and maritime, where we have deep history.  We could become the East Coast cradle for the new business models required to conquer global warming, and thereby secure our future once more.

Failure to stop and reverse rapidly accelerating global warming will have dire consequences for us.  If it progresses to runaway global warming we can expect most of the island to disappear in a few hundred years.  Before that, almost all the current biota will first be scrambled by newcomers, then extirpated.  The lucky species will escape north.  Before it ultimately drowns, our Pine Barrens will end as an impoverished echo of long-gone Florida, with hard pines, turkey oaks, and sawtooth palmettos instead of Pitch Pine, Scrub Oak and blueberries.  A sad fate, and one we must avoid.