N.Y. Environmental Conservation Law § 45-0105: Definitions

§ 45-0105. Definitions.

As used or referred to in this article unless a different meaning

clearly appears from the context:

1. The term "trust" shall mean the state nature and historical

preserve trust continued by section 45-0107 of this article.

2. The term "trustee" shall mean the commissioner of environmental

conservation.

3. The term "real property" shall mean lands and waters, including

improvements thereon, structures, and hereditaments, title to which may

be in fee simple absolute or any lesser interest, including but not

limited to, easements, rights of way, uses, leases, licenses and every

estate, interest or right, legal or equitable.

4. The term "preserve" shall mean the state nature and historical

preserve, as referred to in section 4 of article XIV of the State

Constitution.

5. The term "lands of ecological significance" shall mean state-owned

lands and waters that harbor plants, animals or ecological communities

that are rare in New York state or exemplary occurrences of more common

ecological communities. For the purposes of this article, the term

"exemplary occurrences of an ecological community" means a

representative, high quality example of a given ecological community

type, characterized by a distinctive assemblage of interacting plant and

animal populations, including old-growth forests.

6. The term "old-growth forest" shall mean a parcel of at least ten

acres which includes all of the following: an abundance of late

successional tree species, at least one hundred eighty to two hundred

years of age in a contiguous forested landscape that has evolved and

reproduced itself naturally, with the capacity for self perpetuation,

arranged in a stratified forest structure consisting of multiple growth

layers throughout the canopy and forest floor, featuring canopy gaps

formed by natural disturbances creating an uneven canopy and a

conspicuous absence of multiple stemmed trees and coppices. Typically,

old-growth forest sites also are characterized by an irregular forest

floor containing an abundance of coarse woody materials which are often

covered by mosses and lichens, show limited signs of human disturbance

since European settlement, have distinct soil horizons that include

definite organic, mineral, alluvial accumulation, and unconsolidated

layers, and have an understory that displays well developed and diverse

surface herbaceous layers.