Summer 2011 Green Acres… Land Preservation Update E Are Fortunate to Have the Own Formation
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SAVING NEW JERsey’s GREEN ACRES Newsletter of D&R Greenway Land Trust, Inc. Volume 19, Number 2 GREENWAYS Summer 2011 Green Acres… Land Preservation Update e are fortunate to have the own formation. Former Green Acres very first open space program Administrator Dennis Davidson was one Now Over 15,000 Acres! W established in America right of our founders, encouraging a private Since our founding in 1989, D&R here in New Jersey. organization for central New Jersey that Greenway Land Trust has preserved This year, the New Jersey Green Acres could leverage the role of the State into big- 237 properties valued at $328,794,211. Program celebrates its 50th year. Since ger partnerships. In 1992, D&R Greenway These properties encompass 14,968 1961, the State of New Jersey, through was the first nonprofit organization in the acres—the equivalent of 23.4 square the people who work for Green Acres, has State to complete an acquisition with a been hard at work ensuring protection of Green Acres nonprofit grant—establish- miles. By the end of June, we will the fields, forests, stream valleys and park- ing the heart of what is now our Sourlands close on our 238th property, adding 89 lands that make this a great place to live. Ecosystem Preserve. Today we continue to acres of permanently preserved land. This edition of Greenways celebrates protect thousands of green acres every year D&R Greenway is responsible for the the foresight of those early pioneers who through our partnership with the State. perpetual stewardship and manage- started the Green Acres Program and the Saving green acres is D&R Greenway’s ment of the 54 properties we own many people whose hard work has contin- mission and passion. Thanks to our and for monitoring 53 properties we ued to accomplish great things. partners and supporters for joining with protect by conservation and farmland D&R Greenway’s partnership us to make sure this continues another 50 easements. with Green Acres goes back to our years—and beyond. ❧ Inside D&R Greenway’s Sourlands Ecosystem • Green Acres Celebrates 50 Years of Preserve: New Jersey’s ’ Central Park’ Land Preservation • 1,900 acre Princeton Nurseries orests are made of trees, but trees managed by D&R Greenway. Together Land to be Permanently Preserved F don’t make a forest. The forest teaches with connected land that has been pro- • Announcing the Charles Evans us that the big picture is composed not tected by public and nonprofit entities, Children’s Discovery Trail of small pieces but of the connections thousands of contiguous acres of forest • Donors Making a Difference: between the pieces. are preserved. Alex and Laura Hanson D&R Greenway Land Trust recently The Sourlands Ecosystem Preserve is • Leslie Davis Potter and announced the renaming of its very first the result of 20 years of patient, piece- Randy Pease, Esq. join D&R preserve to the Sourlands Ecosystem by-piece acquisitions that add up to a Greenway staff Preserve. Having grown from D&R continuous whole. It was accomplished • Still Time to join our Business Greenway’s first acquisition, the Preserve through a vital partnership between D&R Partners in Preservation now encompasses nearly 1,000 acres of Greenway and New Jersey Department of • Upcoming Art Exhibits in our contiguous forest in Hunterdon, Mercer Environmental Protection’s Green Acres Marie L. Matthews Gallery and Somerset Counties—all owned and Continued on page 2 A view into the vast forest of the Sourland Mountains in central New Jersey. Photo credit: © Philip Moylan D&R GREENWAY LAND TRUST NEWSLETTER ❧ SUMMER 2011 1 of plants and animals flourish despite the This property (known also as Sourlands Preserve loss of most of their former range. “Toothwort Woods,” for the delicate Continued from page 1 Each spring, songbirds undertake the spring wildflower growing abundantly on arduous journey from their winter homes the site) is the heart of the new Sourlands program that has preserved not just land in the neotropical forests of Central Ecosystem Preserve. The vast area is now but large-scale landscapes. America, to the woodlands of New Jersey. protected from development as a result “The Sourlands Ecosystem Preserve They’ve been flying north to breed for of an ambitious vision and a long-range is New Jersey’s ’ Central Park’,” observes millions of years. Only in the last hundred preservation cooperative to implement the Linda Mead, D&R Greenway’s President years have they encountered fragmenta- vision. & CEO. “This landscape could have tion, a phenomenon that threatens their In 2003, Green Acres created a looked like everywhere else. Sprawling existence. Continuous forests have large Sourlands initiative to focus on the development would have destroyed a interior areas, multi-layered with diverse region. “From 2003 to 2007 we provided precious natural resource. Instead, we’ve plants from the ground to the tree canopy financial assistance to a large number of permanently preserved a huge, old-growth that provide food, shelter and cover. cooperative projects, to expand the pro- forest that supports critical wildlife habi- When forests are disturbed by develop- tected area,” notes Catherine Drake, who tat, protects water quality and provides ment, clearing, or road-building, “edge” recently retired as a Green Acres project more than 8 miles of trails for the public habitat increases along with the popula- manager. “In most of these projects D&R to enjoy a unique natural area.” tion of predator species. Deer, thriving on Greenway was instrumental, either by Rich Boornazian, Green Acres suburban gardens, deplete the forests of acquiring sites directly, using Green Acres Administrator for NJDEP, comments, native groundcover and shrubs creating funding, or referring project partners to “The Sourland Mountain ecosystem is simplified ecosystems that don’t support Green Acres. D&R Greenway worked home to a wide diversity of plant and viable populations of forest wildlife such to link properties together to create pre- wildlife species. We are happy to partner as the migrant songbirds. served habitat.” with D&R Greenway, which has long rec- With development marching relentlessly Jim Amon, D&R Greenway’s Director ognized the Sourlands as an area worthy across New Jersey in the 1980s and 90s, of Stewardship, notes, “From every of preservation.” even the resistant terrain of the Sourlands standpoint—ecological, recreational, Ecological Importance appeared vulnerable to loss. Without visual—an unbroken tract of forest is preservation, the cohesive Sourlands land- better than a bunch of little fragments of The Earth itself was the silent but es- scape would disappear. D&R Greenway, forest.” Viewing the multiple preserved sential partner in the preservation of the in partnership with the New Jersey Green pieces as an entire Preserve enabled D&R Sourlands Ecosystem Preserve. Acres Program, took on the challenge. Greenway to begin managing the land as a New Jersey’s Sourland Mountains are coherent whole landscape: to see the for- a unique habitat of global significance. est as the connections between the trees. Extending 20 miles northeastward from Lambertville into the heart of central Experience the Sourlands for Yourself New Jersey, the Sourlands cover 90 square To walk the trails in the Sourlands miles and include 20,000 forested acres. Ecosystem Preserve is to journey into a The mountains, while not approach- forest past that, now, is also the forest of ing Alpine height, rise sharply, several the future. hundred feet higher than the valleys. They Here the forest teaches us what it can are composed of dense unyielding rock: be. It is dense and dynamic. Mature trees magma that flowed from ancient volca- tower overhead, to be sure, but young and noes into fissures in shale and sandstone, middle-aged trees abound too; they are then hardened into diabase and argillite. of diverse species, including oak, hickory, These hard volcanic rocks were highly re- beech, and maple. The forest floor is sistant to weathering. Over millennia, the littered with boulders, some as large as a softer surrounding rock eroded away, leav- car. Water meanders among rocks, here ing high ridges. Ice fractured the ridges Kentucky warbler, one of the neotropical pooling into a swamp, there carving a new into giant boulders that tumbled down migrant birds that depend on the Sourlands stream, to join the myriad tributaries of the slopes. Covered with large blocks of for survival. Photo credit: Sharyn Magee the Stony Brook that originate here. The impenetrable rock, the steep ridges held volcanic rocks not only affect the water water, nourishing deep forests. table; their minerals also change the soil Just as they had resisted erosion, the D&R Greenway – Green Acres Partnership chemistry, supporting a rich and varied Sourlands resisted settlement. Compared community of plants including many not with the easily cleared land in the valleys, In 2011, as Green Acres celebrates found in the wooded valleys below, and the bouldered ridges defied the early its 50th year of preserving land, D&R several state-listed threatened or endan- colonists’ efforts to tame them. That is Greenway and Green Acres are celebrating gered plants. not to say that the mountains remained a 20-year long partnership. The partner- In early spring, ephemeral wildflow- pristine wilderness. The Sourlands were ship literally began with the initial piece ers such as bloodroot, trout-lilies, and logged and homesteaded, and mills of what is now the Sourlands Ecosystem wood geraniums burst into bloom before sprang up alongside the swift streams, but Preserve. The first site in the Sourlands the trees leaf out, carpeting the forest in clearing occurred in a piecemeal pattern acquired by D&R Greenway was the hues of white, yellow and purple.