Home

News

Hot off the Presses...
New Emerson Woods Field Guide Available!

Featuring a revised route starting from the Lakeview Terrace information kiosk plus new artwork by talented nature artist Jane Eyre, the revised Emerson Woods trifold brochure is easy to follow and enjoyable to read. Call, email, or write us with your street address and we will send you a copy. Take an intriguing self-guided tour of the 19+ acre woodlands and wetlands while the summer days are long! Watch our postings and local newspapers for an announcement of an upcoming "inaugural" walk through the woods led by citizen naturalist Ken Hoffman and SWAN intern Kristin DeValue - coming soon...

ATTENTION VOLUNTEERS!

Do you know any civic-minded local businesses or artists who support the preservation of our watershed?

Help us recruit prizes for this fall's Bergen SWAN Online Auction Fundraiser!

Proceeds will go toward supporting our new Office/Resource Center in downtown Westwood!

Please call us if you can help out with calls or ideas.

Further details will be posted here as the event takes shape...

Flower

Two Rain Garden Open Houses!

The public is welcome to attend one or both sessions...

Location:
317 Massachusetts Avenue, Haworth, NJ

Sunday, May 18
11:30 AM - 1:00 PM
Master Gardener/Landscape Designer Chris Shankar

Sunday, June 8
11:30 AM - 1:00 PM
Rutgers Univ. Water Resources Program
Program Associate Greg Rusciano

Find all the details on our Happenings Page.

For more some great information on Rain Gardens visit the home page of the Native Plant Society of NJ at:

http://www.npsnj.org/

Battle of the Botanicals: Native vs. Invasive Plants - A Nature Walk & Talk -

This Weekend - Rain or Shine!

Sunday, April 27
1:00 PM

Join us and a stellar group of naturalists for two delightful and informative presentations and a guided walk - see the Happenings page for details!

SWAN to Help Four Towns Improve
Our Watershed

Bergen SWAN has won $4,000 in funding from the small grants program at Conservation Resources Inc. to fund our Watershed Stewardship Roundtable Series. This series is designed to assist several local municipalities in facing the triple threats of non-point source pollution, flooding, and erosion.

Through this project, we hope to:

Initiate a series of guided discussions and presentations to elected, employed, and hired municipal officials.
Develop and assemble educational materials on both structural and non-structural stormwater best management practices for area waterways. Assist towns in distributing and communicating this information through their newsletters, websites, libraries, and schools, and to the media.
Select appropriate sites for and plan/construct a demonstration rain garden.
Create engineering plans for a future structural BMP (best management practice) device that will address a significant stormwater control issue in the region.

We are currently seeking additional matching grant funds in order to make this project whole. We hope to begin work this January.

Bergen SWAN & Harrington Park Girl Scout Troop 702 Plan Nature Walk Trail Improvements for Beechwood Park

With help from Troop Leaders Lauri Scappi and Maryanne Schran-Pierson, naturalist Ken Hoffman, and Planner Michael Hakim, SWAN is preparing a GIS-based map of the 20 acre park, assisting in the creation of a new trail guide, and making preliminary plans to construct a trailhead kiosk. On Saturday, November 3, we led a group of approximately 10 scouts on an exploratory nature walk of the property. The girls have been regularly documenting their observations of the flora and fauna found in the woods. We look forward to partnering with them on this new venture.

Naturalist Ken Hoffman's Sheets on Emerson Woods' History, Flora and Fauna Now Posted in Resources Section!

Naturalist Ken Hoffman, a lifelong resident of Emerson, has familiarized himself extensively with Emerson Woods over the years. Ken has created one-page information sheets about flora and fauna that can be found in Emerson Woods, which may now be found as Adobe Acrobat files in the Resources section under “Emerson Woods Flora and Fauna.” The first sheet has a listing of the flora and fauna by month; the rest are in alphabetical order. Also in the Resources section, under “Emerson Woods Information,” you may find Microsoft Word files about the history of Emerson Woods as well as the birds, ferns, plants, shrubs, and wildflowers that may be seen there.

Intern Kristin DeValue to Photo-document Preserved Watershed Sites, Post on Website

Early last summer, Bergen SWAN hired Drew University undergraduate student Kristin DeValue to embark on an ambitious project to photograph, describe, and GPS survey the many separate parcels that we have helped preserve over the past 20 years. The majority of these properties were set aside as watershed protective buffer by our 1993 settlement with United Water New Jersey. Kristin has been doing fieldwork for many months now, familiarizing herself with the hundreds of wooded acres surrounding the Oradell, Lake Tappan, Woodcliff Lake, and Lake DeForest reservoirs in Bergen and Rockland counties. She will soon be posting the results of her research on a new web page. Stay tuned!

NOTE: find older news items on our RESOURCES page...

Welcome to Bergen SWAN… riveres

From our beginnings in 1988, Bergen SWAN has been aggressively pursuing the preservation of the watershed buffer forests around our drinking water reservoirs. To date, we have helped protect from development over 500 acres of woods and wetlands, and over 300 acres of golf courses.

The narrow, protective, forest buffers around our reservoirs represent some of the only unbroken stretches of woods in an intensely populated, increasingly urban area. These watershed buffers are a critical link to sound watershed management for the Upper Hackensack, helping to maintain safe drinking water quality for nearly 1 million Bergen and Hudson County residents in New Jersey and in Rockland County, New York.

Watershed buffers...

Filter and slow runoff, absorbing pollutants
Control erosion
Mitigate flooding
Provide habitat for wildlife
Provide a sanctuary for hiking and passive recreation

While we continue to fight for the permanent protection of the last remaining open spaces in our region, we are increasingly turning our focus to developing stewardship and educational programs that ensure the long-term sustainability of our watershed. These programs include:

Encouraging good streamkeeping by residents living alongside waterways
Installation of stormwater controls such as rain gardens
Phasing out the use of high phosphorus fertilizers
Promoting non-toxic, environmentally sound practices in public places and golf courses

The Nature Program Cooperative

Did you know... that there are over a dozen places and organizations in northeastern New Jersey that provide quality nature programs? Recently, several of them banded together to create the Nature Program Cooperative (NPC) – a pooling of knowledge and resources designed to offer the people of our region greater opportunities to explore and enjoy the region’s natural side.

How it works… Throughout the year, each of the different partners of the Co-op (listed on the right side of this page) will host an outdoor activity or indoor educational program at a nature center or other appropriate location to which all group members are invited. When applicable, member discounts will apply to all Co-op partner members and supporters. For example, if Tenafly Nature Center hosts an event, members of all other NPC groups pay the TNC member rate. (Non-members are also welcome to attend the event, but must pay the non-member rate.) All NPC events are advertised in each partner group’s newsletter.

For a list of upcoming NPC programs, please see our HAPPENINGS page, or visit the NPC site at:

http://www.natureprogram.org/

npc map