Corporate Volunteers Contribute to Conservation Efforts

Harding Township, NJ — Great Swamp Watershed Association’s land management team has had a busy spring enhancing the organization’s Conservation Management Area, a 50-acre property in Harding Township owned and managed by GSWA for preservation and passive recreation.

In 2008, over 1,100 volunteer hours helped GSWA groom the 1.5 miles of trails, maintain the 23-acre deer exclosure and remove non-native invasive species from over five acres of this beautiful floodplain forest site.

“Over 90% of land management at the CMA, which surrounds Silver Brook, a tributary of Great Brook, is accomplished with the help of volunteers,” said Hazel England, Director of Outreach and Education for GSWA. “There is no way we could meet our ambitious land management goals without our many corporate and individual volunteers,” said England.

Both local and regional corporations have been involved with GSWA’s land stewardship efforts. So far this year, more than 560 volunteer hours have been logged through six corporate workdays; and there are still many more corporate team-building events planned before the year is out.

Recently, 25 employees of Verizon Corporation, based within the watershed boundaries in Basking Ridge, came out to the CMA with their families to help remove invasive multiflora rose, spruce up boardwalks, and replant native species along the 1,400 feet of Silver Brook. Johnson & Johnson Ethicon, Pfizer and Goldman Sachs, through their Community Teamworks Program, have also hosted corporate workdays at the CMA this year.

GSWA hopes to strengthen the link between its corporate neighbors and the stewardship efforts taking place at the CMA. Groups interested in a team-building event with GSWA should contact Hazel England, Director of Outreach and Education at hengland@greatswamp.org. To learn more, visit www.greatswamp.org.

 

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Founded in 1981, the Great Swamp Watershed Association is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and protecting the water and land of the 36,000-acre watershed region in Morris and Somerset counties. The organization works to maintain the beauty and health of open space, and to monitor and protect five streams: Loantaka Brook, Great Brook, Primrose Brook, Black Brook, and the Upper Passaic — which feed into the Passaic River and providing drinking water to more than a million people.
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