New Jersey: Three dozen hikers on trail of 500 year-old Bear Swamp giants

Down in the woods of Downe Township, some trees are nearly a
half-millennium old. On Sunday, about three dozen people ignored the
rain and hiked deep into the friendly confines of Bear Swamp to see
those ancient gum trees, but they took a different path than they have
in years past.

Get full text; support writer, producer of the words:
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/185/story/410147.html

The quickest road in now has new owners, and the new owners do not let
the public take that path. So the hikers took the long route into the
land preserved by the state of New Jersey and Natural Lands Trust. It
took them two hours, but they eventually reached the massive gum and
holly trees deep in the old-growth forest that some believe is the
oldest such forest in the northeastern U.S.

“These are big boys, really big boys,” said Steve Eisenhauer, the trust’s assistant director of land protection, as he stood before one of the gum trees. “You’re probably looking at a 400- or 500-year-old tree there.” Some
conservationists have concerns about the future this area, which is
home to bald eagles and other wildlife. About two years ago a group of
buyers, including Downe Township Mayor Renee Blizzard, swept in and
bought 2,000 acres of land in this area from sand-mining giant U.S.
Silica, which was closing down some of its mining operations and had
historically let hikers cross its land. NLT and the New Jersey Green
Acres Program had been negotiating to buy the land for conservation
purposes, but negotiations broke down, leading U.S. Silica to turn to
another buyer.

Blizzard and her group said they planned to “save it
for ratables” – in other words, potentially develop it. So far, they
have not. It remains forested, dotted by sand-mining pits and lakes
created when mines were filled with water. That means the 80-acre
patch of old-growth forest is still surrounded by forest.

That is important, conservationists say, because it creates the broad swaths of forest that make the Delaware Bayshore region one of the key stopover points for migratory birds on the Atlantic Flyway.

Get full text; support writer, producer of the words:
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/185/story/410147.html

Leave a comment

Your comment