LUCAS — Eric Miller has fought for a quarter of a century to preserve an idyllic and undisturbed natural treasure: Malabar Farm’s old growth forest, something extremely rare in modern-day Ohio.
“It’s increasingly rare in our area to have old-growth woods,” Miller said. “Most of the land around it is privately owned and it gets timbered every 30 to 40 years. There’s very little land left that has this quality of old growth trees.”
Portions of the woods at Malabar Farm State Park have trees that are likely 200 hundred years old, Miller said.
Until recently, there was no legal guarantee that these trees would remain undisturbed, but new provisions in the state budget officially names the forest area and prevents timbering there.
One provision designates 120 contiguous acres of Malabar State Park’s most mature hardwood forest, located between Bromfield Road and State Route 95, as the “Doris Duke Woods.”
A second provision specifies that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources “may not remove or allow any person or governmental entity to remove timber from the Woods, except for normal maintenance purposes.”
Senator Mark Romanchuk advocated for the provisions upon the urging of constituents and the North Central Ohio Land Conservancy (NCOLC).
“The state has been doing logging in other state forests for a while and I just wanted to make sure that there was no logging happening in the Malabar State Farm forest,” Romanchuk said. “I’m not against logging; I just don’t think we should be doing it in mature forests in state parks.”
Although ODNR had no plans to timber the land, advocates for the provision felt it was important to enshrine legal protections for the forest for future generations.
“Many individuals have been trying for years to convince the state to formally protect this land,” said Miller, an amateur naturalist and NCOLC trustee. “There are individuals who would lobby for this going back 40 years.
“It’s with a tremendous sense of relief that I see this occurring,” he added. “While I’ve put a good bit of time into it, I’m just grateful to all the others who set the stage — some of those friends who’ve died without seeing it occur.”
Former Richland County Commissioner Dan Hardwick served as a primary spokesperson for the most recent push to protect the land.
Hardwick grew up in the area surrounding Malabar Farm and land owned by the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District. He sees the land as a precious glimpse into ancient Ohio.
“If you cut everything down, you’re never going to know what it once looked like all over the place around here,” Hardwick said. “We have a heritage that has been passed down to us that I believe is ours to continue that says we need to protect this place.”
Old-growth forests like the one at Malabar have a uniquely rich understory that’s home to a variety of native plants. Most grow on the forest floor, but some sprout on the slump rocks — chunks of sandstone cliffs that have fallen to the ground.
“When you have these big chunks of sandstone sticking out with a thin bit of soil on it, it supports plants that can’t typically survive in the forest,” Miller explained.
“This Malabar land has a number of rocky features that not only look beautiful, but then to the amateur naturalist like me, Holy schmoly! Because there’s a lot of things growing there that we don’t typically get to see.”
When forests are timbered, the native flora and fauna become more vulnerable to the threat of invasive species.
“One of the key reasons why these places need protection is the threat of invasive species that are threatening the entire ecosystem,” Hardwick said. “The native plants, the botany, are the basis of the animals being able to live and these invasive plants come in and they choke out the natural botany.”
Invasive species like garlic mustard — which Hardwick nicknamed “the coronavirus of the plant world” — thrive in timbered areas because soil disturbances spread the seeds.
“Every time these places are timbered and the sun hits the ground, the invasive species explode,” Hardwick said. “People aren’t going to go in and do all this hard work to clean a woods that’s just going to be timbered in a few years.”
Proper invasive species removal requires a fine skillset, Miller said. Workers must be able to distinguish between native and invasive plant species. They must “walk like a ninja” to avoid stepping on and killing native plants. There are even different ways to remove plants and minimize soil disturbance that vary based on the plant type.
Miller hopes the NCOLC can build on the initial protection by advocating for a larger swath of protected land at Malabar and as well as specialized removal of invasive species.
“Invasive species will eventually ruin this forest unless they’re pulled out of the ground,” Miller said. “We have a lot to do, a lot of work ahead of us. We’re going to follow up on it with steady efforts to secure (ODNR’s) voluntary expansion and improved protection of this land.”
The naming of the forest pays homage to a Louie Bromfield’s close friend and fellow conservationist Doris Duke.
Duke was an heiress and philanthropist who inherited most of her father’s American Tobacco Co. fortune at the age of 12. According to the Malabar Farm Foundation, Duke used her position as one of the world’s richest women to benefit Duke University, AIDS research, animal rights, environmental and ecological causes and historic preservation.
When Bromfield sold timber rights to a tract of land on Malabar Farm to pay for his growing medical bills, Duke intervened by purchasing the timber rights so the land could be preserved. The tract is now a part of the Malabar Farm State Park.
