Open Space and Land Use

Support urban and community forests and shade trees and parks, playgrounds or green spaces in environmental justice communities by prioritizing Green Acres, Natural Resource Damages, environmental settlements, and other state and federal funding for these projects in a transparent manner. Set a timeline towards the goal of ensuring that every person living in an environmental justice area has access to well-designed, well-funded, well-maintained, well-programmed parks, playgrounds, or green spaces within a 10-minute walk from home or workplace.

Set aside sufficient “migration zones” inland from the marsh edge to protect the opportunity to sustain tidal wetlands. Look at adapting Green/Blue Acres and RGGI funding to accomplish this.

Ensure adequate capacity and resources for Blue Acres program to rapidly spend allocated funding to purchase flood-prone properties.

Revise Fish & Wildlife strategy to address deer overbrowsing and its impacts on forests. Explore expanding and supporting organizations that create an incentive program that culls the deer herd while providing sources of protein to underserved populations.

Proposed NJ PACT rules that Department of Environmental Protection enforce and enhance protection of coastal wetlands.

Create an Outdoor Recreation Council, with the following goals:
1. Launch a recreation hub marketing campaign to raise public awareness and organizes New Jersey’s outdoor products, services, and places to increase visitation
2. Investigates innovative financing for the outdoor recreation economy
3. Establishes a statewide platform for outdoor workforce development

Propose amendments to Green Acres rules that:
1. Increases preservation and stewardship of natural lands through the Green Acres program, focusing on restoring and enhancing connectivity between larger preserved parcels
2. Integrate the NJ Conservation Blueprint and Connecting Habitat Across NJ (CHANJ) in the rules, to assist in increasing connectivity between parcels and identifying priority lands for protection, including those critical to endangered and threatened wildlife and shorebirds
3. Institutes landscape-planning for State lands and protects a range of natural resource values across any State agencies that hold land
4. Make it harder to divert all publicly preserved land for private commercial uses

Revitalize and expand the Natural Lands Trust Board of Trustees.

Release a carbon sequestration strategy that includes defending and enhancing carbon stored in forests and wetlands.
1. Capitalize on the carbon benefits of allowing intact forests that weren’t cleared for agriculture during the 1930s or before, including those in the Highlands, to continue to mature.
2. Carbon gains should be verified and not used to facilitate continued pollution in environmental justice communities.
3. Implement reforestation projects with proper deer management.
4. Research and develop techniques to transform drowned coastal forests lost to sea level rise into carbon-sequestering habitats.

Ensure that forest stewardship plans address all components of forest ecology including soils, native species, carbon sequestration, wetland communities, water resource protection and compatible recreational values.

Prevent conversion of forested lands to development in all areas of the state using open space acquisition, local ordinances and other tools.

Promote climate-friendly practices by creating additional incentives and technical assistance to help farmers implement practices that improve soil health, sequester carbon and increase organic matter, such as:
1. Adding funding to the State Agriculture Development Commission stewardship program (stewardship practices include adding compost, implementing meaningful soil protection standards for preserved farmland, promoting the use of untreated and organic seed, transition to less chemically-dependent farmland, adoption of no-till and reduced-tillage practices, incorporating regenerative agriculture practices and implementing manure management practices to decrease emissions)
2. Developing a program where farmers can get free technical support from the Rodale Institute to implement positive agricultural practices

Implement salt marsh restoration and preservation techniques in coastal areas by increasing marsh platform elevations and protecting marsh fringes to prevent the loss of thousands of acres of tidal marsh.

Continue and increase funding for the State’s Hazardous Discharge Site Remediation Fund for brownfield cleanup, including its use for brownfield to greenfield park development projects and preparatory work for solar fields

Establish State support for open schoolyards and assist school districts to find ways to address concerns about public safety and maintenance in order to support this effective way to increase close-to-home access to park and recreational resources for many residents of New Jerseys’ urban neighborhoods.

Release report, based on ongoing listening sessions (including in environmental justice communities), provide guidance and implement relevant administrative actions to identify appropriate locations for warehouses and other goods movement facilities.
1. Building up, rather than out (“high cube” warehouses)
2. Require warehouses to be solar- and green-roof ready
3. Enabling more goods to be shipped by rail
4. Prioritize heavy- and medium-duty trucks and port equipment for vehicle electrification and establish “zero-emission zones” in port areas
5. Prohibiting the siting of warehousings on prime agricultural land

Institute long-term landscape planning for stewardship at all publicly owned parks, wildlife management areas, natural areas, and forests that include aggressive deer management.

Establish and fully fund implementation of the State Forest Action Plan and State Wildlife Action Plan, and meet federal matching requirements for State Wildlife Grants to steward wildlife.

Develop new trails and maintain existing trails through:
1. Enhance staffing and capacity to accelerate trails projects to ensure coordination and capacity across state agencies for recreational and circuit trails
2. Support of DEP’s Statewide Mapping Initiative and using the data to create a statewide network of trails
3. Increasing use of federal transportation funds for multi-use trails
4. Provide planning, design, and construction support to environmental justice communities to ensure the success of trail projects
5. Condition use of state funding for trails to ensure design and accessibility for people of all ages and abilities
6. Partner with and fund nonprofit organizations and community-based organizations to assist with maintenance, repair and construction of trails around the State
7. Update and implement the New Jersey Trails Plan in cooperation with the New Jersey Trails Council, including priority trail gaps and how to close them
8. Increase award size under the Recreational Trail Program grants in order to facilitate completion of major projects
9. Showcase Governor remarks during the 2022 Trails Summit that speak to the tremendous mental and physical health benefits, as well as tourism and economic benefits of trails
10. Convene stakeholder process to review permitting process for trail construction to identify obstacles that result in environmental degradation and threats to visitor safety

Develop and finalize a diversity and inclusion plan that ensures that people of all ages, ethnicities, abilities and income levels enjoy our State parks, wildlife management areas and other open spaces.

Ensure “Jersey Fresh” programs assists with marketing new farm products, including organic grains.

Support sustainable shellfish aquaculture through the coordinated activities of the Delaware Bay Aquaculture Development Zone and ongoing stakeholder groups that bring industry and conservation organizations together to resolve issues of concern.

Revitalize and significantly expand lands in New Jersey’s Natural Areas System.

Report out on restoration of Atlantic White Cedar swamp forests, including monitoring results and carbon sequestration.

Replant and restore degraded post-agricultural forests suffering vast mortality due to emerald ash borer and other pathogens and alien species invasion.

Establish a Safe Routes to Parks program, similar to Safe Routes to Schools, where neighborhoods are reviewed as a whole and parks are accessible and welcoming.

Create and fund a new urban state park comprising Petty’s Island and nearby Camden waterfront open space and restoration parcels.

Permanently protect additional lands in the Highlands and Pinelands regions, which provide clean drinking water to more than 75 percent of the state.

Preserve approximately 315,000 acres of additional farmland and promote sustainable agricultural business practices to ensure a sustainable agricultural industry, including utilizing federal funding from the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program and other Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Protect New Jersey’s cultural heritage by ensuring that full Corporate Business Tax (CBT) funding continues to be spent on this program.

Inventory, map, record, monitor and enforce conservation easements to ensure natural resources are permanently protected.

Uphold policies that limit non-agricultural commercial development on preserved farms and limit buildings and other impervious surfaces to ensure minimal impact on farming activities and soil health.

Continue to robustly and consistently fund farmland preservation through federal, state and local programs, with a focus on access and ownership of land for minority, young and beginning farmers, and indigenous tribes. Grow and promote LandLink program to include minority farmers, as well as new farmers, interested in selling or leasing land for agriculture.