“Wild New Jersey” author David Wheeler shares his adventures at Schiff, February 23rd at 7pm

Join us Wednesday, February 23rd at 7pm to learn about author David Wheeler’s adventures in the wilds of New Jersey!

Spokesperson Dana Patterson describes Wheeler’s exciting book here:

The fastest animal on earth dive-bombs him from the skies. A young black bear bounds up a mountain trail a few yards away. Poisonous snakes swirl at his feet. A thousand bats
careen past his head in a pitch-black roost. Pods of dolphins swim right past him by the scores. Who? Experienced naturalist David Wheeler. Where? In Wild New Jersey, of
course.

Wild New Jersey invites readers along Wheeler’s whirlwind year-long tour of the most ecologically diverse state for its size in America. Along with the expert guidance of
charismatic wildlife biologists and local conservationists, he explores mountains, valleys, beaches, pine barrens, caves, rivers, marshlands, and more—breathtaking landscapes and
the state’s Noah’s Ark of fascinating creatures.

This isn’t your ordinary ride on the Jersey Turnpike. Fasten your seatbelts and join Wheeler as he . . .

• Kayaks through the Meadowlands under the watchful eye of the Empire State Building,
• Pans for cretaceous fossils in a hidden brook once home to mastodons and giant sloths,
• Rides a fishing boat in the frigid snows of winter on a high-seas quest for Atlantic puffins,
• Trudges through the eerie darkness of a bog on a mysterious night hike,
• Dogsleds across the windswept alpine slopes in the haunts of the porcupine
and bobcat.

With Wheeler’s compelling narrative, in-depth background details, and eye for revealing the offbeat, you can count this as the first nature book to paint the extraordinary picture
of New Jersey’s unlikely wilderness in all its glory. Come along for all the adventure and insight in Wild New Jersey!

DAVID WHEELER is the director of operations for the nonprofit Edison Wetlands Association. He founded the nature blog, WildNewJersey.tv, and has written conservation
stories for The Star-Ledger and other media.

So join us tomorrow for what promises to be a real adventure! Call 973-543-6004, or visit us on the web at www.schiffnaturepreserve.org

News of a Change at Schiff

Last Thursday, Tanya Sulikowski, our Executive Director of nine years, announced her plans to step down this coming August. While we are very sad to see her go, we realize that this presents us with an opportunity to usher in a new, exciting era at Schiff. Read her letter to our friends and supporters below:

Dear Schiff Members and Special Friends,

I am writing to let you to know that just after the Summer Nature Program concludes in August of this year, I will be stepping down as the Executive Director of Schiff.

By June of 2011, I will have spent nine wonderful years at Schiff and I am now ready to explore some new challenges.  My plans are to pursue a masters degree in ecology and return to the classroom to inspire a new generation of young scientists to take an active role in improving our society.

My time here has been a gift.  I have had a unique opportunity to work closely with so many of you as partners and friends to build a strong community in a very special place. I have learned so much in my time at Schiff, especially about what a group of vibrant and passionate people can accomplish while working for a cause they are so deeply committed to. I am very proud of our work together.

This leadership transition provides the impetus for Schiff to take a fresh look at its vision, goals, funding strategies, and operations and then search for an Executive Director armed with this renewed perspective. Schiff will surely benefit from the energy and enlightenment that comes with new leadership.

The Board of Trustees and I have exciting plans for the year ahead: strategic planning to keep Schiff’s work as effective as possible in these changing times; continuing to build our educational programs; the addition of new preserved open space; stewardship of our growing properties and the nurturing of partnerships within our community.  I will be fully involved in this work and in the smooth transition of Schiff’s new Executive Director.

I would like to thank all of you and the Board of Trustees and staff for the wonderful support now and throughout my journey here at Schiff.  I am confident that the upcoming year will be our best yet.

I hope to see you on the trails or at a program very soon.

All my best,

Tanya

The Raritan Project Begins

There’s a lot to learn from a river. That’s what we intend to show you over the next few months, as our students in the Raritan River Watershed Project blog about their experiences on their learning excursions and in the monthly discussions with various experts. Our first post comes from Walker Finlay, a eighth grader from Mendham, giving us his impressions about the first learning excursion in which the participants traveled the length of the river, from its headwaters at Schiff to the Raritan Bay.

Johnson Park, New Brunswick. Photo by Walker Finlay

On November  20^th,  we took  a trip around the Raritan River watershed.We stopped in Gladstone first and visited Natirar (Raritan spelled backwards), which is the former estate of the King of Morocco. We conducted some tests on the river there, measured the flow rate, the temperature, and marked our GPS coordinates. The river there was pretty small and we learned that the water flows faster where the stream is narrower, and that the temperature is coldest at the bottom.

We then drove down to The American Cyanamid site in Bound Brook where we learned a little bit about water pollution from factories. After lunch at  Johnson Park near Rutgers University, we did more tests. The river was much wider there, so the flow rate was about half as fast as up at Natirar. We also recorded the elevation of our stops, because we learned that the water was flowing downwards due to gravitational force. We finished near Sandy Hook where the elevation was the lowest and we got a great view of Raritan Bay from the Twin Lights historic site.

Twin Lights, Sandy Hook. Photo by Walker Finlay

The Raritan River watershed has proven to be much more expansive than my impression of it before the trip. The biggest thing that stuck out to me was the size of the watershed, it is not just a backyard creek, but a huge river going all the way to the Atlantic Ocean! As a member of the Student Green Team at my school, the most interesting part for me was to learn about the pollution in the river.

I’m excited to learn more about the wildlife of the watershed in the future. I would really like to study more about the fish and birds that live in and around the water.

I live so close to the Raritan, and spend so much time in and around it, I’m looking forward to learning more about it. The most challenging part of this trip though, will be getting up in the morning! But seriously, the part that will challenge me is getting down and dirty to study the river. I usually do more fly fishing and swimming in my own part of the river, so I am really excited to continue the project and learn a lot more about the river that runs through my own backyard.

Raritan Bay. Photo by Walker Finlay

What would we do without you?

Rick Pressl shows our leaves who's boss.

As I was thinking about this post yesterday, there  were about fifteen elementary school students learning about musk turtles downstairs in the Nature Center. They had the day off from school, so they spent the morning out of the rain with Tanya and Rich and a couple of teen helpers.

Yesterday’s weather was a far cry from the brisk, sunny day we had for the Peapack-Gladstone Green Community Festival last Saturday.  I had the good fortune of having four volunteers help me out that day. My first arrival rearranged our table in a way I hadn’t thought of before; the second person arrived and immediately turned around to get something I’d forgotten at the Nature Center. She and my third helper seemed to know every other person walking by, and my fourth chatted happily with our visitors, handing out trail maps as the light faded and the day grew cold. He also helped us pack up all of our heavy boxes of gear.

Having people help out at these events always makes them more fun, but it also serves an even more important purpose–they all bring themselves to these events: their personalities, their talents, their connections to their community. All of that makes Schiff a dynamic, fun place to be. It draws people to us–new people–making it even more dynamic and fun. It’s a cycle that happily feeds on itself.

This good cheer isn’t limited to community festivals–it happens right here at Schiff, too. This past Monday, one of our volunteers came by and cleared leaves from the parking area, while two others helped out inside; yesterday, another volunteer cleaned up our native plant garden. Today, we have high school students helping out with the younger kids downstairs, and in a couple of weeks I’m going to be graced with the presence of a group of people who pretend not to mind stuffing envelopes. Some of our volunteer projects actually help the volunteers, too. They learn about themselves, discover talents they never explored, find themselves enjoying something  new and incorporating it into their daily lives.

The point is, we have fantastic volunteers here at Schiff. They help out in obvious ways, but they also help out in ways I didn’t even realize a person could be useful. They haul rocks, dig holes, file, lead hikes, rewire the lights, paint, discover new plants, teach yoga, sing songs, make signs, march in parades, stand out in the cold, and so much more. There’s also one more thing they all do a whole lot of–they laugh.  They laugh a lot. That’s probably their greatest talent, if you ask me. We can teach them the rest  if we need to.

Rachel Daley gets a hug from a grateful, well-fed corn snake.

We’re organizing a little potluck appreciation dinner for all of them later this month and the guest list is nearly 100 names long. That’s right: One hundred people. However, just because we have a volunteer crew that rivals the population of some small towns, we’d gladly welcome more. We always need more. We need their talent and their great ideas, their time and their good cheer. There is always something else to do around here, and we never turn down a good laugh.

The Raritan River Watershed Project

Schiff Nature Preserve is known mostly for its forests and meadows. When members and friends come here to hike, for educational programs, or to drop their children off for nature camp, they tend to think of trees. What the average person doesn’t realize about us is that this land sits in the Highlands, an essential part of New Jersey, in a place that feeds into the North Branch of the Raritan River, a river that provides the drinking water for millions of New Jersey residents all throughout the state, far from Schiff. What they may not realize is how Schiff contributes directly to the water supply in New Jersey. Because the quality and quantity of our drinking water is so important, and because of the vast amount of information that exists on that topic, we have developed a course that will begin on November 17th for teens to learn more about where their water comes from and the numerous issues that either threaten or support that supply.

We are fortunate to have a number of steadfast supporters in our local teens. Whether they know Schiff from our Summer Nature Program, a scout project, volunteering or painting our mural, it seems there are always a few teenagers around looking for ways to help. We’re lucky that way. We’re also very fortunate that kids of all ages in our area have such a sophisticated level of awareness about conservation issues. You can see it in our all our volunteers, but especially the younger ones. They’re engaged in what we do, whether they’re helping with younger children at a program, taking photographs, counting bluebirds, or helping us construct a new trail.

Regardless of their level of engagement, there’s one issue that’s hard to understand if we’re not directly involved with it: water. Throw out some terms and the average person doesn’t necessarily know what they mean or how they impact their lives. To tell a group of teenagers that they live in the Raritan River Watershed or that Schiff is located at the headwaters of that same river will receive a lot of blank looks. That’s why Schiff is launching the Raritan River Watershed Project, an eleven-month program for teens that will explore the river in its entirety, from its headwaters near Schiff all the way to where it spills into the Atlantic in Raritan Bay. Over the course of eleven months they will travel the entire length of the Raritan River, learning about its history,  ecology, and the various ways it is impacted by development, commerce and government. Students will take monthly field trips, and meet with experts in a number of fields. In the end, they will develop action plans that will evolve directly from what they have learned throughout the course of their time with us.

One of the phrases that comes up a lot around here is “community-based conservation.” The only way we can ensure that the community stays involved in caring for the land, the water, and the species that depend on a healthy ecosystem is to pass on as much information as we can to the people of this community. The other way we can ensure that is to make new connections and form partnerships with other organizations that share our concerns and pool resources. We have been very fortunate through this process to have partnered with the Edison Wetlands Association, a grassroots organization dedicated to conservation, education and cleanup of hazardous waste sites in New Jersey. Schiff also recently joined the Raritan River Collaborative whose members are working together to restore and preserve the River, and collectively we are changing the conversation about its future. We each have a lot to share with each other and can’t wait to get started on this project.

Teens aren’t the only people who have a hard time understanding where their water comes from and which issues they need to be aware of in order to protect their local water supply. It’s a huge issue that goes in a lot of different directions and touches many different areas. This one course, on this one river, will take us almost a year to complete. There’s a lot of information to take in. We could all learn from this project, and that’s exactly what we hope to do. We intend to ask the students themselves to share their experiences and what they learn right here on this blog (and on their own, if they have one), so we can all learn from this.

Today also happens to be Blog Action Day. This year’s topic is water. After you’ve checked out the resources above, we hope you’ll explore some of the other conversations that are happening all over the world today, because what happens here at Schiff has an impact that reaches far and wide and vice versa. Today, thousands of people all over the world are writing about water, to see what can happen if a whole lot of people are asked to think about this one topic for a day. How many ways can we spur people to take action toward protecting the earth’s most precious resource? This is Schiff’s small contribution to that effort.  We ask those of you reading this, in the spirit of our own efforts at community, to figure out what you can do to connect with someone new, share resources and information, and do your part to ensure your water is safe, clean and plentiful.

A Brief Quiet Time at Schiff

Things have been pretty quiet up here the last few days. The Summer Nature Program has ended, so we won’t hear any songs about slugs until next summer unless we want to sing them ourselves. We won’t hear any ooo-ing and aaah-ing over tie-dyes, either. (We could probably drum up something for that, too, but it wouldn’t be the same.)

Emma and friends are putting the finishing touches today on this beautiful mural. We have caterpillars and earthworms and cardinals and deer and flowers and mushrooms and grasses and fish, all just about ready for you to come and behold the amazing work she and her band of merry volunteers did this summer. I’m willing to bet the colors will make you giddy.

The Stew Crew has disbanded, too. Intern and “Crew Boss” Dan Mayer is headed back to Paul Smith’s College, and his fellow invasive plant eradicators/trench diggers/trail stewards are also going back to their respective schools.

We also had some masons working on historic site and wildlife biologists and other folks working hard around here too, in some more remote parts of the preserve. It’s been a busy place.

We’ve had a full house this summer, although quiet is the norm around here–it’s a nature preserve, after all. But after a summer like this, the quiet seems even more pronounced now that we’re each heading out to grab some time to ourselves for a few days before we reconvene after Labor Day and let the calendar heat up again. We need to get ready for our fall yoga classes, and our preschool Walkabouts. Not to mention our Farm Festival, the plans for which get more exciting every day…Put it on your calendar: Farm Fest, September 26th. In fact,  read up on it and buy a couple of tickets while you’re thinking of it.

Our whole calendar is pretty neat this fall. We have a birding class for families and a wildlife photography workshop and a wilderness first aid class, and that’s just for starters. Music in the Woods is coming back; the Base Camp Adventure folks will be doing a hiking basics class; Rick Pressl is leading another history hike right after Labor Day. We’re going to be busy. We need to get ready, so we can come back and meet up with you all again soon.

The time has come…to paint!

This morning, when we opened the mail, our fundraising goal for this mural ($2,000) had been met and surpassed. We have now raised $2,321!

And on Monday at 1pm, we finally get to start painting!  So far we have at had at least thirty people express interest in helping us, and a good number of those are Mendham High School teachers who will be on hand Tuesday afternoon.

We have been nothing short of amazed by the responses from our neighbors and friends on this project. We can only expect that this mural, once it is finished, will bring us even more.

If you are interested in helping us paint, please see our mural web page for more information: www.schiffnaturepreserve.org/mural.html

A few words from a fan

We think so too…

The transformation begins…

Emma has not only sketched out her design on our building, but she has started painting! (Don’t worry, there will still be plenty of painting to be done on August 7th.)

She’s off to take a summer writing course for a few weeks, and we are going to spend that time lining up the rest of our volunteers and donors! Help us out here!

Music in the Woods and Primer on our Walls

Schiff is a whole different place in the summer, especially this summer.

Since June 28th, Schiff has been filled with very busy kids making tie-dyes, playing Camouflage and Possum, learning about leaves and trees and dead stuff (okay, fine: “decomposers”, but “dead stuff” sounds like more fun), and this week, trying to hold on to their good humor in this incredible heat.

This Saturday evening we will celebrate the brief, predicted break in the heat wave by welcoming Tom Rice and Terry Hemmer to Schiff to play some rock, blues and soul in our Woodland Amphitheater for our first-ever Music in the Woods. If their performance does actually accompany some cooler temperatures, I, for one, am willing to give them all the credit.

Our latest developments on our mural project this week include  some energetic folks from Ron Boehm Painting of Warren who, yesterday, primed the front of our building at a very generous discount. (Rich, our environmental educator and resident soccer fan, was trying not to hear the scores of the World Cup game that they were listening to on their radio before he could go home and watch the game himself, but that’s a small price to pay for the fantastic job they did.)

We also want to thank this guy, Schiff member Buzz Grimm, and his company, Buzz Grimm Painting of Bernardsville, for donating scaffolding:

You read that right, we already have two painting businesses involved in this project.  As I said in our first post, we know not to pass up other people’s generosity.

Today, we’ re looking for some planks to put on that scaffolding so Emma can start sketching out her plans on the building itself. August 7th will be here before we know it! (Hopefully, it will be cooler than this.)