After Dog Park Protests, Roosevelt Forest Chairman Explains Clearing

The chairman of the Roosevelt Forest Commission (RFC) says a recently bulldozed clearing is part of a long-term management plan meant to make the town-owned forest healthier.

The commission approved the work about 18 months ago, says Robert David, though he adds on the clearing, “I was unaware they were going to do that right away.”

Earlier this week, Stratford Patch reported on how a Stratford couple working to bring a dog park to town had last June requested to use the space recently bulldozed.

“We were told (by the RFC) the forest is too young at that spot (and might be an) American box turtle habitat,” Matt DeBernardo said.

“They told us we couldn’t do so much as minimal clearing – it was against their forestry plan with Yale,” added Carissa DeBernardo.

The couple protested the bulldozing, expressing shock that a town commission could in their opinion level an area of the forest without input from residents or, at the very least, a vote that would be recorded in meeting minutes.

“It’s outrageous,” said Matt DeBernardo. “They are using the forest for their own pet projects.”

David rejects that accusation.

“I don’t like people trying to start a war for their own good,” he says. “There’s no self-serving interest on this board.”

The chairman, who says he's not against a dog park in general, told Patch that the clearing is needed “to harvest different types of botanical growth.”

He explained that most of the forest is the same age, so if a disease swooped in swaths of trees and undergrowth could potentially be wiped out. New plants limit the damage.

“You have to clear a little bit to get new growth,” says David, adding that the new growth will be mostly grass. “We’re not doing clear-cutting. We’re making the forest healthier.”

Although David says the commission knew about the bulldozing, at least one member says it left him scratching his head.

“The decision to do the clearing in the forest was not run through the commission and left us wondering what was going on,” commission member Bob Ford wrote in the comments section of our original report on the clearing.

He continued, “This issue was raised at the last RFC meeting and should be in the minutes of the May meeting. Several of us expressed concern that we should have been consulted.”

In a phone interview this week, David, the chairman, maintained that the bulldozing is part of a long-term forest management plan that the commission approved about 18 months ago.

However, he concedes, the clearing was not a prominent piece of the plan.

"The devil’s in the details," he says.