Pine Barrens commission

Kent Animal Shelter is finally moving forward with plans for the construction of new kennel and quarantine facilities along with improvements to other buildings at its campus in Calverton.

Suffolk Police and the Central Pine Barrens Commission are seeking the public’s help to identify and locate two people they say dumped eight barrels of toxic liquids in a wooded area in Manorville May 20.

Kent Animal Shelter is looking at property across the road from its current facility as a site for the new, expanded kennel facility it needs — a site outside the Pine Barrens core preservation area, where land use restrictions have stalled plans to expand on its current site.

Kent Animal Shelter outgrew its cramped, deteriorating facilities at the edge of the Pine Barrens many years ago, but its plans for expansion are no closer to approval today than they were in 2012, when Kent first proposed them.

Op-ed by George Goode: Richard Amper's hyperbole about the Kent Animal Shelter is the kind of spectacle that's made people lose respect for our political system, where a special interest group can tie our government in knots. Here's why he's wrong, point by point.

The Calverton animal shelter's application drew support from dozens of speakers and only a few detractors at yesterday's public hearing before the pine barrens commission — but one opponent, L.I. Pine Barrens Society executive director Richard Amper, has complained to the attorney general and is threatening a lawsuit if the commission approves the shelter's plans for a new facility.

Wildfire mitigation plans advanced by the pine barrens commission don't prioritize an area of preserved woodlands that firefighters say pose the most serious threat to life and property, drawing criticism from firefighters and residents at a community meeting last night in Flanders.

The forum, hosted by the state pine barrens commission, will discuss controversial plans aimed at reducing wildfire risk in Flanders-area pine barrens region.

Environmentalist Richard Amper says firefighters' access to woodlands is "fine" and worries about impacts of proposed clearing on the pine barrens ecology.