The Raritan River is a constantly changing feature of the landscape of New Jersey. As a tidal river, it changes daily. As a geologic feature, it changes its channel with erosion and accretion. The watershed that drains into the river continues to develop, changing the stormwater runoff that fuels the river as engineering simultaneously mitigates and worsens the impacts. Thinking of the Raritan as a static or fixed feature ignores its realities.
In this video clip, Rutgers Landscape Architecture Graduate School student Ana Maria Oliynyk works with AI to mine historic images of the Raritan River at New Brunswick, and engages AI to imagine the future for the Raritan.
2025 marks the LRWP’s 10th year as a non-profit. Our dedicated board has worked hard to implement a strategy to ensure we can continue watershed stewardship for the next 10 years. We look forward to sharing more on what our stewardship vision looks like in coming months. For now, we are pleased to share a snapshot of recent grant awards and partnerships we look forward to building on:
The Borough of Highland Park renewed our lease for the 101 Raritan Avenue Boat Shop through the end of December 2027. This extended lease lends certainty to program delivery, and we will soon revamp the space to accommodate a greater variety of activities.
Environmental Endowment of New Jersey granted $7,000 to support “Advancing Climate Vulnerability Assessments at Superfund Sites for the Lower Raritan Watershed.” This will allow us to improve Community Right To Know (CRTK) outreach regarding environmental hazards in our communities.
Mohawk Canoe Club granted $10,000 to support development of a Raritan River Access Guide and to expand our paddling program. In addition to FREE public paddles scheduled June 14, July 3, and August 30 we will host on-water events for Highland Park Summer Camp and “pop up” paddles on hot summer nights. Stay tuned!
New Jersey Department of Education granted $15,000 to support delivery of Professional Development for K-12 educators, focusing on place-based and case-based watershed curriculum. This grant, through the Climate Change Learning Collaborative, will allow us to share lessons in how to conduct eel and stream habitat assessments, water quality monitoring and more with teachers throughout New Jersey.
Arts Institute of Middlesex County granted $5,000 for EcoArts programming.
Arts Institute of Middlesex County granted $20,000 for “Heritage Hydrology Mapping & Research for the Lower Raritan Watershed.” This will support archive and annotate historic map sources that show streams/hydrology in six Middlesex County municipalities to better understand transportation and other infrastructure failure risk related to buried and culverted streams.
Co-hosting a June 2025 Conference for Mayors focused on the New Jersey State Development and Redevelopment Plan – in partnership with the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, the New Jersey State Planning Commission, and the New Jersey Conference of Mayors.
By Danielle Bongiovanni, LRWP 2025 Science Communication Intern
The Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership (LRWP) is overwhelmed with gratitude for everyone who helped raise over $3,500 at the “Run Off” 5k on Saturday, March 29 at Washington Memorial Park. Whether you were one of the 108 registered racers, bought tickets for the gift basket raffle, or simply came to learn the importance of keeping the Raritan Watershed clean, we were happy to have you there.
The “Run Off” would not have been possible without sponsorship from NJ American Water, Crunch Fitness of Green Book and the Borough of Dunellen. The Middlesex County Office of Emergency Management, Dunellen crossing guards, and volunteers from SEWA Central New Jersey and the LRWP ensured the event’s safety.
Grant funding was provided by the Middlesex County Board of County Commissioners through a grant award from the Middlesex County Cultural and Arts Trust Fund. For information on events, go to MiddlesexCountyCulture.com.
“The Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership has been a grantee of ours through our program grants for arts, history and culture for years, doing either an arts project or a history project and intersecting that with the environmental issues they work on through their nonprofit. They’re one of a few environmental groups that receive arts, history and culture funding, so we love getting involved with them,” said Manda Gorsegner, the Division Head of Visual and Performing Arts at the Arts Institute of Middlesex County.
The Institute assisted with event planning by rallying visual and performing artists to bring attention to conservation through creativity. Gorsegner said, “Using arts, history, and culture to engage the public in environmental and social issues is really impactful and a unique way to talk about these stories and the importance of how we all intersect culturally and socially.”
Such conversations abounded as attendees visited tables set up by event partners. Spectrum for Living, a non-profit serving people with developmental disabilities, provided googly eyes, fake feathers and colorful paper squares for decorating wood cutouts of green herons. Crafters took home a reminder of who else depends on clean watersheds.
Independent artists Kate Eggleston and Lisa Bagwell repurposed litter into art supplies. Eggleston created plates for collagraph printmaking, while Bagwell used it as filling for a sculpture of a glass eel, a juvenile stage of the American eel.
Bagwell was in her element. “I do a lot of cleanups on my own, so making a sculpture out of collected trash is what I do,” she said. The completed sculpture will be toured across schools by the Hudson River Foundation’s NY-NJ Harbor & Estuary Program to raise awareness of waterway pollution.
Music poured from the pavilion, courtesy of the talented New Jersey Brass Band, part of the New Brunswick Jazz Project, and by jazz vocalist Audra Mariel.
One performer took his music to the streets instead. Dave Seamon, better known as the Trash Troubadour, performed his song “Miracle Mile” as he led attendees favoring a slower pace on a “Trickle” from the park to the Green Brook. There, LRWP Board Member Anton Getz and LRWP Community Outreach Coordinator Dr. John Meyer discussed the litter trap and the eel monitoring program.
The litter trap, nicknamed Bandit, was installed in the Green Brook as part of the Cornell-Dubilier Electronics Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration (NRDAR) Restoration Plan. The Cornell-Dubilier NRDAR Plan is an example of how the nation’s strong Superfund Laws truly hold polluters accountable for environmental damages in our communities. Cornell-Dubilier Superfund Site Trustees include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. The location of the litter trap, almost exactly at the intersection of Union, Middlesex, and Somerset Counties, is a pertinent reminder of how polluted water flows without regard for man-made borders. When the Dunellen Department of Public Works empties Bandit, Dunellen is not the only community benefitting.
The beneficiaries are not limited to humans! Getz recalled discovering a three-foot-long American eel hiding inside a tire during a cleanup of the Green Brook. “Those chemicals are leaching into its water, leaching into its environment, so it needs to find a better hideaway,” he said.
Meyer assured attendees that the litter trap did not hinder migrating eels. Bandit’s buoyant arms catch floating trash, but fish can easily swim beneath.
Back at the park, Green Brook Middle School students presented posters created in collaboration with the LRWP and New Jersey Watershed Ambassador Brianna Casario. They shared facts about the American eel’s life cycle and discussed the importance of citizen science.
The event concluded with the winners of the gift basket raffle, whose prizes were generously donated by local businesses. Congratulations were also awarded to the fastest 5k runners. Dunellen residents took first in the male and female divisions, with Matthew Clemente recording a chip time of 21:27 and Lisa Shultz recording 27:16.
At the core of the “Run Off” 5k was the theme of connection. Attendees from across New Jersey supported conservation through the arts, sciences, and athletics. It proved how, regardless of your preferred discipline or your location, there is an opportunity for you to fight for healthy watersheds, and the LRWP would love to help you find it.
Warehousing, apartments, shipping centers, federal highways changed my world. It was a natural world I discovered that was available to everyone, with few takers, now lost to the ages. Whether warehousing or condos, both are poison pills being offered as a palatable option.
The end of my world began when President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Bill on June 29, 1956, three months short of 100 years after Henry David Thoreau left his footprints along the north shore of the lower Raritan River.
My world began at the end of my dead-end street and the Lehigh Valley Railroad tracks which bordered the vast abandoned clay banks, dotted with flooded clay excavations, swamps, streams and woods stretching to the Raritan River. The railroad tracks were my equivalent of the St Louis Gateway arch, a monument to the westward expansion of the United States into the unexplored territory stretching from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean.
Like the early days of frontier travel, the tracks and clay banks were said to be fraught with existential danger. Bums and hobos were the hostiles parents warned about, if that failed there was the quicksand and bottomless mud which would swallow a kid, never to be found. The real threat was from the ‘big kids’, defined as any kid who was bigger than you. Often, they would intimidate younger kids to extort any change they had, or otherwise physically intimidate them. So, the rule was, you saw a big kid, you ran away as fast as you could. And then there were the trains. The tracks stretched perfectly straight for a mile of more, so you could see it coming a long way off. Problem was if a kid was so occupied, the train could easily sneak up on him.
We learned that if you went deeper into the wilderness, there were rarely any human encounters, as the travel was difficult and muddy and held no specific area of interest. Forays into the wild were pure exploratory expeditions or in my case, a safe place to shoot my bow and arrow. High banks of soft clay let the wooden arrows live longer. The real beauty was the ability to draw back the bow and aim at the sky to see how far an arrow can fly. There was something about watching the arrow ‘escape the surly bonds of earth’, as you became the arrow. Surely some paleo bowman was inspired by his arrow’s high arc to imagine the possibility of human flight. Inspiration to fire the imagination was everywhere you looked.
Being a transition zone, many plants typically found in south Jersey could be identified, sheep laurel, green briar and odd oak species. Spotted turtles were quite common and gray fox dominated the area. There were American bittern, gallinules, night hawks, rose breasted grosbeak, indigo buntings, rufous sided towhees, brown thrashers, short eared owls and even a rare Boreal owl, native to the arctic regions was documented. The variety of colorful bird life brought my Golden Guide Book to Birds to life as the birds seemed to fly off the pages into the surrounding trees.
A short eared owl sits on a vent pipe in the area seen on the cover image. A boreal owl, native to the arctic region, was documented in the dame area. Its presence validates the importance of the Raritan River off ramp of the Atlantic Flyway.
The event of that June day in 1956 had no direct impact on my wilderness until the late 60s when flimsy tan stakes, flagged with orange ribbons, started to appear throughout my territorial claim.
The clay banks marked the reach of the ancient sea floor, characterized by sandy, clay soil, interspersed with smooth cobble, that stood in sharp contrast to the dark brown soil and New Brunswick shale found across the tracks and up-river. This land was caught between the terminus of glacial expansion and the reach of prehistoric seas.
The intersection of soils, blessed with a marriage of fresh and salt water, set along the Atlantic flyway, an ancient bird migration route, and the presence of a major inland river off ramp, makes this area one of the most environmentally diverse, along the east coast. The bay and river are a gathering place for migrating striped bass, shad and alewives, who have retained evolutionary migration patterns to conquer time and impediments, to fulfill their ancient upstream journey.
Before long, the significance of the flagged stakes driven into the heart of this unique parcel was realized, as machinery began to carve paths and straightaways to accommodate interstate 287. Eventually all that remained of the clay banks were a gulag of islands interspersed among the on and off ramps, dominated by sweet gum, pin oaks and green briar. An apartment complex replaced the small isolated cattail swamp which supported a population of black muskrat.
Aside from the overflowing natural treasures, are the memories of freedom and seemingly unrestricted travel and discovery which led to a lifetime of curiosity of all things wild. Even though the change was personally disruptive and unwelcome, the clay banks served their purpose to set a course through life that never wavered from the affiliation with the natural world. Good for me, sad for future generations who will never share that experience.
Author Joe Mish has been running wild in New Jersey since childhood when he found ways to escape his mother’s watchful eyes. He continues to trek the swamps, rivers and thickets seeking to share, with the residents and visitors, all of the state’s natural beauty hidden within full view. To read more of his writing and view more of his gorgeous photographs visit Winter Bear Rising, his wordpress blog. Joe’s series “Nature on the Raritan, Hidden in Plain View” runs monthly as part of the LRWP “Voices of the Watershed” series. Writing and photos used with permission from the author.
By Danielle Bongiovanni, LRWP 2025 Science Communication Intern
Without the hard work of volunteers and support from the borough of Highland Park, the Highland Park Native Plant Sanctuary (HPNPS) could not exist. Maintaining the HPNPS requires the endless mitigation of anthropogenic threats ranging from litter to voracious deer, but the ecosystem services and recreational opportunities are worth the work. On March 23, HPNPS leaders invited members of the Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership to tour the sanctuary and discover its ecological wonders.
The HPNPS is almost entirely managed by three long-term volunteers: Susan Edmunds, Andy Warren, and Vicky Kulikow. Kulikow is the main force behind the HPNPS website. Edmunds handles logistical issues such as pursuing sources of funding and collaboration. As the lead volunteer steward, Warren’s responsibilities include replacing invasive species with native counterparts, maintaining trails, cleaning up trash, and leading volunteers.
“We aren’t really an organization so much as several people who stepped up when there was a need,” Edmunds said.
The greatest time of need emerged in 2023 when Mary Denver, who held a leadership role with the HPNPS since the early 2000s, passed. As principal volunteer stewards, Denver and her daughter, Belinda Beetham, were known to work in the sanctuary nearly every day. A banner at the entrance dedicates the three-acre property as the “Mary Denver Native Plant Sanctuary,” and Edmunds is collaborating with the Borough and the Native Plant Society of New Jersey to install a larger memorial in the near future.
Meanwhile, there is always other work to be done. Progress is perpetually threatened by deer and invasive species. Unfortunately, solutions for one often enable the other.
Warren pointed out a recently-planted red twig dogwood (Cornus sericea) surrounded by a tree cage as an example. New Jersey’s overabundant white-tailed deer population devours native plants faster than they can regrow. The cage ensures the sapling grows beyond snacking height and is not killed or damaged by deer rubbing their antlers against its bark. Warren described how the protection comes at the cost of providing “scaffolding for honeysuckle and English ivy (Hedera helix)” that must be regularly removed, lest they strangle the sapling.
Removal alone is not enough, invasive species will return if space is available. Establishing populations of native plants strong enough to crowd them out and hinder their regrowth is difficult due to how much and how quickly deer eat them.
Warren has embraced a strategy of habitat succession planting. He mulches grassy expanses and scatters seeds collected from the area. The resulting “mosaic” of native species deters deer by hiding their favorite snacks. “It demonstrates how having these little diverse pockets helps protect plants that might not be able to grow if you only plant one,” Warren said.
Coupled with aggressive invasive species removal, this strategy has produced visible results. Warren recounted how a large area near the environmental education center was once impenetrable due to Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica) and honeysuckle bush (Ionicera maackii). Volunteer efforts made it accessible for public recreation. Warren said, “I love walking through in the summer and watching the native bees and flies swarming around germander (Teucrium canadense) flowers where there was once nothing but honeysuckle.”
Successfully established natives thus far include snakeroots (Ageratina altissima), asters (Eurybia spp.), and goldenrods (Solidago spp.). A recent grant enabled the HPNPS to obtain more plants, including nodding onion (Allium cernuum), little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), and rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium).
Funding to obtain plants and volunteer labor to install them are essential for the HPNPS to succeed. Perhaps unexpectedly, the latter can be the greater challenge. Most volunteers require training before they can help effectively, and the frequency at which volunteers are replaced means a lot of time and effort are dedicated to getting new faces up to speed. The HPNPS would benefit greatly from more pledges of long-term involvement. Volunteer opportunities include environmental stewardship, writing articles, and taking photos for the website.
“It’s really about finding people’s interests and abilities and working with them individually on that,” Warren said.
Raising awareness of how the sanctuary not only provides free public recreation, but also uplifts the health of the Raritan River, may encourage more people to join the HPNPS.
“They are cheek by jowl. The edge of the sanctuary is the river and vice versa,” Edmunds said. “Over the years we’re trying more and more to create a real soil there.”
A “real soil” depends on the strong root systems of native plants. By restoring the riparian ecosystem, the HPNPS helps more rainwater absorb into the ground instead of washing dirt and trash into the river and making it flood. Minimizing stormwater runoff reduces the amount of pollution in the Raritan River and the likelihood of flooding, benefitting all Highland Park residents.
Getting involved with the HPNPS is as easy as emailing highlandparknativeplants@gmail.com or attending an event. Warren will lead a “Walk-and-Talk Tour” on Saturday, May 10 at noon and is excited to welcome new faces into the fold.
Danielle Bongiovanni is a lifelong New Jersey resident who graduated with a B.S. in environmental science from Ramapo College in 2024. She is passionate about local journalism, ecosystem restoration, and her dog, Banjo.
A spring peeper, a diminutive frog with a big voice, joins in chorus to sound the promise of spring on cold rainy nights in scattered vernal ponds. This species, hyla crucifer, has a large brown cross on its back. Hyla the genus name, has both Greek and Latin origins. Hyla, a companion of Hercules, was drowned in a fountain amid cries for help from the crowd of onlookers. So the connection to the singing frogs.
The bright green blanket of spring is unfurled over the faded brown landscape, abandoned by winter’s hasty retreat. Tilting in deference to the sun, the earth leans over enough to help slowly roll the green cover northward.
The appearance of green, dotting the muted landscape, can be taken as a signature on an official document, declaring the end of winter and the reappearance of life from the state of dormancy. The vagaries of early spring weather may argue and protest in the form of an errant snow flurry or heavy frost, but their cold objection is dismissed by the next warm sunny day.
As in an organized event, where the drop of the green flag signals the start of a race, so does the emergence of greenery generate sparks of color as energy begins to infuse the terminal tree buds and early wetland ephemerals.
At a distance, wooded low land areas, whose soils support a variety of tree species, rival the fall brilliance with the emergence of colorful buds. Set against a background of intertwined pale brown branches, woven into a rough cloth, tree buds appear as countless points of colored light. Each kind of tree features different colored velvety buds and within a species color will vary. Reds, ranging from pink to scarlet, to maroon and plum, fading into bronze and autumn orange, are scattered across the tan canvas and seem to flicker like a thousand candle flames. The intersecting branches, tie the scene together as the colors appear to escape and scatter among the branches to confuse identification, as pale greens mix with pink and orange and maroon buds. Standing alone as a true spectacle of early spring is the native redbud tree with tiny round, intense magenta buds tightly clinging the length of its fine branches.
The first green messenger, aside from snowdrops and skunk cabbage, which bloom locally in midwinter, are the green lily pads protruding from the silty river bottom in the shallows. Like a cobra raising up and swaying to the sound of a flute, the gangly green plants swaying in the moving water rise to the influence of the growing intensity of spring sunlight.
Among the wet lands along the river, yellow trout lilies, purple trillium, white blood root, sky blue Virginia bluebells, yellow crocus, pink striped white petals of spring beauties dot the emerging green carpet.
A pixie face looks out from the center of the spring beauty, note her cupids bow lips and dark eyes.
The now washed-out monochrome tan pasture, bordering the river, appears to the eye as a sepia photograph. It is an empty canvas awaiting the hand of nature to apply the first swath of emerald paint.
On occasion, an itinerant floral traveler appears, an escapee from some orderly upstream garden, now on a downriver journey to enjoy the uncertain life of a vagabond. One self-transplant is a unique variety of daffodil, with ragged yellow flowers which has established a home along the river. Each year, it faithfully decorates the edge of the river shore. The original pant conveys the soul of a happy recluse offering a bit of joy to any passerby, even an unappreciative mink, whose tracks mark the soft soil in the shadow of the bright bouquet of yellow flowers.
Another floral journeyman who sailed downriver to find a new home and propagate, is the pale blue Virginia bluebells. Their origin appears to be somewhere upstream on the north branch of the Raritan, as the trail of flowers, follows that course to its confluence. Finding favorable conditions, its settlements expand to cover the ground en masse with its perfect pale blue carpet.
The sound of great horned owls and the occasional songfest of local coyotes, heard throughout the winter night, are now accompanied by the chorus of spring peepers. A vernal pool, a quarter mile away in the pasture, along the river, is the prime venue for this spring bacchanal. Like turning a radio dial to get the strongest broadcast signal, the northwest wind amplified the sounds of the diminutive frogs’ earnest efforts to attract a mate. The tiny thin-skinned frogs emerge from hibernation to sit immersed in ice cold water in the dark of night, confident in the promise of warmer weather. The faith exhibited by these delicate creatures, that winter has ended, gives hope to all who listen.
Flightless great horned owl among the maple buds in early spring.
Author Joe Mish has been running wild in New Jersey since childhood when he found ways to escape his mother’s watchful eyes. He continues to trek the swamps, rivers and thickets seeking to share, with the residents and visitors, all of the state’s natural beauty hidden within full view. To read more of his writing and view more of his gorgeous photographs visit Winter Bear Rising, his wordpress blog. Joe’s series “Nature on the Raritan, Hidden in Plain View” runs monthly as part of the LRWP “Voices of the Watershed” series. Writing and photos used with permission from the author.
Is New Jersey’s State Development & Redevelopment Plan the state’s Environmental Superpower?
By LRWP Board President Heather Fenyk, Ph.D., AICP/PP
New Jersey’s State Development and Redevelopment Plan – currently in cross-acceptance process across the state – is New Jersey’s first to recognize the importance of planning processes integrated at the watershed level. In the current political climate, the Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership sees the state plan as an excellent first step toward collaborative engagement around environmental protections for our forests, wetlands, waters and soils.
Within hours of returning to the oval office on January 20, 2025, President Trump unpacked the wrecking ball used during his first term to continue the process of dismantling US climate and environmental policies. With Executive Order “Unleashing America’s Energy,” Trump articulated an aggressive approach to encouraging energy exploration and production on Federal lands and waters, framing a new goal: to establish the US as the leading producer of nonfuel minerals. On February 25, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), part of the Executive Office of the President, published an “interim final” rule proposal in the Federal Register: “Removal of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Implementing Regulations.” Until now, under the coordination of the CEQ, NEPA has guided agencies responsible for oversight of federal transportation, energy and mining projects to consider: Is there a safer way? A smarter way? A way that doesn’t leave a mess for the next generation?
Rollback of these federal environmental laws is designed to put communities throughout the nation on the defensive. These federal actions pose a real threat to state and local efforts to limit planet-warming, asthma-inducing, carbon dioxide emissions. They make it harder for communities to effectively govern the pollutants discharged into local air, water and soils. And let’s not even talk about the impact of these rollbacks on ensuring protections for neighborhood forests and streams, or for the wetlands doing the lion’s share of holding stormwater during flood events, keeping it from entering our homes and streets.
Luckily in New Jersey, proactive thinking by the state Office of Planning Advocacy (OPA) and the State Planning Commission (SPC) means the state is well positioned for offense, not defense in terms of environmental protections. For the last several years these agencies have guided a series of public conversations around how to ensure safer, smarter planning and redevelopment in a way that is not only sensitive to environmental impacts, but also considers environmental restoration and enhancements, preserves special historic sites, and minimizes risks and hazards related to global climate change now and into the future. The result of these conversations is the Preliminary State Development and Redevelopment Plan (or Preliminary State Plan). Public Comment on NJ’s Preliminary State Plan is open until March 27, 2025, with public “Cross Acceptance” meetings scheduled in each County through the end of April.
Through the process of cross-acceptance, members of the public are invited to provide input into the Preliminary State Plan. This process helps bring attention to issues of local concern, and ensures that municipal, county, and regional initiatives are taken into consideration during the process. Final approval of the State Plan involves establishing regional agreements in areas of land use, transportation, housing, economic development and provision of public infrastructure. Strong collaborative planning efforts, like that offered through the State Plan Cross-Acceptance process, offer representation at multiple political scales. As a state-wide collaborative planning exercise, cross-acceptance facilitates local, county and state communication on development and redevelopment. More importantly, in Home Rule states like New Jersey, cross-acceptance helps facilitate planning collaboration across biophysical scales. Importantly in this regard, the 2024 Preliminary State Plan is New Jersey’s first to recognize the importance of planning processes integrated at the watershed level.
As an organization focused on watershed management, the Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership views New Jersey’s Preliminary State Plan as a step in the right direction. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Do we think New Jersey’s State Plan should at the outset be organized around watershed-based resource planning and permitting? YES. Do we think all land management should begin by considering ecological functions, and that New Jersey’s State Plan should provide guidance on how to integrate county and municipal land use planning with information on the carrying capacity of our natural systems? YES. Should New Jersey’s State Plan be specific about impacts to hydrologic systems? YES. Should the plan provide more detail regarding the how-tos of restoration, and introduce concepts like re-naturing and rewilding to guide collaborative landscape management? YES and YES. All that said, in the current political climate does the LRWP see the state plan as an excellent first step toward collaborative engagement around environmental protections for our forests, wetlands, waters and soils? YES, Absolutely.
New Jersey’s Preliminary State Development & Redevelopment Plan may do more than help New Jersey’s municipalities and counties work collaboratively to protect our air, water, land and special historic sites, and to minimize risks and hazards related to global climate change now and into the future. If New Jersey adopts the State Plan in the face of environmental rollbacks designed to put states on the defensive with respect to federal actions, it will demonstrate the certain superpower of a collaboratively defined and collectively held vision of environmental protections for now and into the future.
The fox caught the tail end of the crow’s conversation with the bear and the weasel, so had just enough time to grow a thick fluffy tail. The fox does its best to survive in a snow-covered landscape along the South Branch.
“Leave no trace,” sage advice from the earliest people who lived entirely off the land, is still a useful reminder for those who spend time out of doors. Today the words are meant as an environmental caution to leave the outdoors better than when you found it. Allow the next visitor to experience the pristine woods, water and landscape as if they were the first, and not the last to arrive on the scene.
Many organizations, including the boy scouts, promote a list of ethical behaviors under the banner of, ‘leave no trace’, consistent with keeping wild areas preserved in a natural state, and free of overuse damage.
The original intent of those words was passed down as a credo by which to live in harmony with nature and avoid conflict and increase chances for survival.
Competition for food often involved violating neighboring territory. Any footprints, damaged brush or broken branches would reveal a hunter or warriors’ presence to their enemy. Likewise game animals are alerted by any physical changes or scent. A bare patch of ground among leaf litter, or a trail of footsteps across a dew drenched meadow, will turn a fox inside out and cause a deer to stop in its tracks. I walked into the woods, well before sunrise, during a fall bowhunt. Two hours later a red fox walked by, and when he crossed the path I took, it sniffed the ground and ran off at full speed.
A broken branch is a visual sign and will retain the scent of who or whatever broke it. Any alteration to the natural order of the environment is a neon sign to man and animal that some interloper is about or a game animal is close.
Whitetail bucks will break a fine branch where it makes a scrape and leave the scent from his preorbital glands. That location becomes his post office which he checks daily. An astute hunter will know this is a good location to harvest a buck.
Want rabbit stew? Watch for fine branches close to the ground cut off at a forty-five degree angle, as if by razor. Find a number of fine broken branches, higher off the ground, with ragged ends, it is clear sign deer were browsing.
Trappers, whether paleo or current day, do their best to leave no footprints in the mud or disturb vegetation. They will always walk in the water, upstream, as the visibility is clear, and sign easily seen. Aware also, that the downstream water is muddy and an enemy or trap thief will be alerted to the trappers’ presence. Muddy water may betray the presence of game animals such as waterfowl or deer.
A subsistence hunter or trapper will look at the natural world through the eyes of the wildlife and realize the focus on a single species is a fools’ errand without considering the impact on the natural community in which it lives. Each life form causes ripples throughout the community and self-awareness is mandatory for good stewardship of the natural world. To leave no trace is to reduce unforeseen impact on the natural community, of which we are temporary tenants.
Winter throws a wet blanket of snow upon the world, which nullifies leave no trace. Though temporary, it can have existential consequence on wildlife. It is as if the vegetation made a covert agreement with winter, to provide a fluffy white blanket, to protect the plant life from the cold and hide it from hungry animals during the most critical period for survival. The bear and the weasel were given a heads up about the secret agreement from a talkative crow. They knew their survival was in jeopardy, so the weasel evolved to turn white in the winter, wearing a cloak of invisibility. The bear decided to likewise, disappear completely, though in a warm den, sound sleep under the heavy blanket of snow.
A layer of late winter snow provides a detailed account of wildlife activities. A set of fox tracks continue in a relatively straight line as the fox travels efficiently between points of interest. It is clear when scent or sight caught the attention of the fox as the distance between tracks change and a depression in the snow reflects where it sat down to listen or watch for food, a love interest, or danger. No matter the scenario, the daily travel plans of the fox are revealed in the snow as headline news to any interested subscriber.
Ruffed grouse will fly into deep snow, leaving only a small round entry hole, as if some invisible hand excavated a random cavity in the snow. Momentum takes them several feet from the point of entry where they hide under virgin snow, leaving no trace of their presence. When disturbed, the grouse will explode from under the trackless white cover, like a feathered missile, to create a shower of glistening snow, accompanied by the sound of wildly beating wings, gathering air for a vertical takeoff. The heartbeat of the passerby who disturbed the bird, matches the heart rate of the frightened grouse.
Snow is the nemesis of ‘leave no trace’ advocates, as it bears witness to the otherwise covert lives who live by leaving no trace.
Fleshy footed animals like skunk, opossum and this raccoon, will den up in very cold weather, snowy weather and appear to emerge enmass when the temps rise.
Author Joe Mish has been running wild in New Jersey since childhood when he found ways to escape his mother’s watchful eyes. He continues to trek the swamps, rivers and thickets seeking to share, with the residents and visitors, all of the state’s natural beauty hidden within full view. To read more of his writing and view more of his gorgeous photographs visit Winter Bear Rising, his wordpress blog. Joe’s series “Nature on the Raritan, Hidden in Plain View” runs monthly as part of the LRWP “Voices of the Watershed” series. Writing and photos used with permission from the author.
The LRWP and our amazing Borough of Dunellen, Middlesex County, New Jersey State Council on the Arts, New Jersey American Water, Crunch Fitness and other friends invite you to our first 5K “RUN OFF”!!
The morning will include a 1.5 mile walk/roll/stroll to the Green Brook to watch New Jersey’s first installed “litter trap” trash capture device in action, and to see an in-stream “artificial eel habitat” that is helping us learn about migratory freshwater eels in the waterway. Join us for hands-on EcoArts activities, environmental education, special performances by the New Brunswick Brass Band, Audra Mariel (performing as Martin Howth), and the LRWP’s very own Trash Troubadour David Seamon!
