Old Growth Forest

Many land protection deals are complex, and can take months or years to complete. The protection of Bear Swamp West, which took 25 years, is one of the longest efforts Natural Lands Trust has undertaken. But it was well worth the effort.

Bear Swamp West first came to our attention in 1981, when Dr. Stevens Heckscher, NLT's ecologist, stumbled across a letter from a man who lived near Bear Swamp and recommended it for protection. After visiting the swamp, Dr. Heckscher recognized what an important piece of land it was, as it contained some of the last remaining old growth forests in the Mid-Atlantic region. Years of research and negotiating with the land owner and the state followed this "discovery", and in June of 2005, Natural Lands Trust finally closed on the purchase of Bear Swamp West.

Last Sunday, a group of Natural Lands Trust members got the chance to visit the old growth area with New Jersey Manager Steve Eisenhauer.  The edge of the forest is bordered by a lake created when groundwater filled in the pit created by the sand mining that once occurred in this area. From the edge of the lake, you can look towards the forest, and see the old growth trees towering above the rest of the forest, sometimes by as much as 30 to 50 feet. Some of these trees--mostly sour gum, sweet gum, and tulip poplar--seem small compared to the old growth redwoods of the west coast, but they are huge compared to other trees of their species, and are estimated to be more than 400 years old. (They can't be dated with certainty since most are hollow, rendering tree cores ineffective.) 

And as if it weren't exciting enough to see trees that pre-date the European arrival in the Americas, a number of Bald Eagles showed up as well! At one point we counted nine Eagles on the shoreline across the mining pit from us. The Eagles were too far away to photograph, so here's a picture of everyone on the hike lined up with binoculars to look at them!