State Legislators Are Considering New Regulations for Off Road Vehicles

Hundreds of acres of New Jersey state parks, forests, and wilderness areas are damaged each year by the illegal operation of motorized off road vehicles. The Department of Environmental Protection spends a small fortune repairing the damage done by these vehicles that are growing in popularity. Farmers have suffered crop damage, pristine wetland areas have been encroached upon creating deep ruts that destroy fragile wildlife habitat, and steep slope areas have been eroded, a threat to water quality. Violations continue without anyone being held accountable because these vehicles are not registered and cannot be positively identified.

Two bills are currently being considered, one in the state Assembly (A823), and one in the Senate (S2055) that would require tagging of off road vehicles in order to help law enforcement and citizens hold these riders accountable for their destruction. The bills would also increase fines for illegal riders, increase penalties for repeat offenders, and help establish a fund for the creation of additional ORV parks to support legal, responsible riders.

URWA supports this legislation. If you do, let your legislators know. A vote on these bills may be coming up as soon as early January.

Photo:  Damaged Meadow in Big Cypress National Preserve, Bear Island Unit, Matthew Schwartz, Sierra Club

Road Salt: Helpful to Drivers, Harmful to the Environment

Are you disturbed by the whitish-gray coating on shrubs along our roadsides each winter? Does it bother you to come across heaps of road salt hovering over a stream bank? The answers to these questions should be yes! Road salt, which is composed primarily of sodium chloride, degrades vegetation, aquatic ecosystems and, of biggest concern to URWA, water quality. You might ask why your community looks like this every winter and stay tuned into how responsibly your municipality’s road crew is maintaining roads.

There is no single solution to reducing road salt contamination of local waterways and groundwater. It will require a combination of approaches including:

• more efficient application of road salts using computerized trucks, driver training, and accurate weather information to more accurately time road salt applications
• better storage practices utilizing sheltered storage facilities with stormwater treatment and control
• management practices to reduce losses during transfers
• management of equipment washwater to minimize releases
• locating “snow dumps” away from rivers and groundwater recharge areas, and collecting and treating snow dump runoff
• use of environmentally friendly road salt alternatives, such as calcium magnesium acetate, in sensitive areas
• education of homeowners and business owners about the environmental impacts of road salt
• policy changes such as moving away from bare pavement policies for secondary roads
• lower speed limits on roadways immediately following snow storms
• renewed emphasis on plowing

Tips to Give More and Waste Less

Did You Know?
The holiday season is the time of year when Americans increase the amount of trash we throw away each week by 25%.

Tips to Give More and Waste Less

• Give your time. Offer to clean someone’s house, watch their children, help plant their garden or run their errands.
• Give your talents. Offer, for example, your talent at organizing closets, your landscaping skills or music lessons.
• Give entertainment... tickets to movies, plays, musical events, a botanical garden or museum.
• Give homemade. Bake cookies or candies. Sew or crochet a gift. Make something unique and useful.
• Give to a greater good. Make a charitable donation in someone’s name. Donate slightly used toys, decorations, sports equipment, books and furniture to a non-profit organization instead of throwing them away.
• Give a gift that keeps on giving... a battery charger, rain barrel, bird feeder or book (a field guide makes a great gift for people of any age)!

It's Time to Start Thinking About Feeding the Birds

My thermometer recorded a high temperature of 63 degrees this afternoon -- not bad for the last Sunday in November, but I've got a hunch we won't be seeing readings this high again any time soon.  Most of the birds that travel to more southern latitudes for the winter left this area as the insect populations they typically depend on dwindled down through the autumn months.  Now, as fall winds down and Mother Nature makes the transition into winter, non-migratory wild birds that have been successfully foraging for seeds in the woods, fields and suburban areas will begin to scout out locations where they’ll be able to find a source of food through the colder months.  If you enjoy attracting birds to your yard by putting out birdfeeders, now is the time to make sure that they are ready.

Before you set your feeders out, wash them thoroughly. It is important to start the season with clean feeders and to keep them uncontaminated by washing them every three weeks or so. This is because birds can get sick if they eat moldy or decomposing seeds and hulls that accumulate on feeder trays and in the base of tube feeders. In addition, bird droppings that land on feeders can spread infectious avian diseases. To clean your seed feeders, wash them in hot, soapy water and then soak or rinse them in a solution of one part white vinegar to nine parts water. Be sure to give them a final rinse and let them dry completely before you fill them with seeds!

As the bird feeding season progresses, be sure to clean the ground below your feeders each week. This will prevent uneaten seeds, hulls and other waste from accumulating and becoming moldy. Left on the ground, this debris is quite appealing to pets such as dogs, which can become ill if they consume it. The debris is also likely to attract unwanted rodents to the area.

With your bird feeders in place (try to spread them apart so the birds aren’t all crowded into one small space), you will see more and more birds using them as the weather cools down and their food sources diminish. If there is not a natural water source nearby (a pond or small stream), your feathered friends will appreciate a birdbath or other water feature that you keep clean and filled with fresh water throughout the winter.

We Are Going to Keep it Green!

The election is behind us and if nothing else, URWA is celebrating the passage of the open space ballot question that approved $400M in funding. The final count was 53% - 47%. Once again the voters have shown a commitment to the preservation and protection of our state’s land and water supplies. However, those numbers represent a pretty slim win and the message here is that it is time to find a stable source of funding for the Garden State Preservation Trust. We can no longer take it for granted that New Jersey’s citizens are going to continue providing stop-gap funding without a plan in place for the future. The good news is that the Keep it Green (KIG) folks are stepping up their work to advocate for stable funding. URWA will continue to support KIG and will work to hold our new Governor to his campaign promise, “In addition to providing a stable funding source, New Jersey will look to increase the number of acres annually preserved. We will look at environmentally sensitive and rural land that is available, especially in the Highlands and Pinelands.”

A Good Idea on Two Fronts

Operation Medicine Cabinet is an effort to halt the abuse of prescription and over-the-counter drugs.  Here in New Jersey, the Office of the Attorney General, the New Jersey Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration and The Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey have joined forces to address the problems associated with teenagers abusing medicines commonly found in homes.  It seems that while the use of street drugs has declined in recent years, teenagers are increasingly taking prescription and over-the-counter drugs to get high. 

This coming weekend, Operation Medicine Cabinet will collect expired and unused prescription and over-the-counter drugs at sites across the state.  Between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 14th, we'll all be able to drop off the medicines that we no longer want or need at designated sites.  Sites include community centers, police stations and government offices.  To find the site closest to your home, follow this link and click on the map: http://www.operationmedicinecabinetnj.com//index.htm.

We applaud the organizers of this effort not just because it will remove un-needed drugs from homes and thereby reduce the chances that the drugs will be abused. By collecting these drugs from consumers and disposing of them properly, Operation Medicine Cabinet personnel will also be reducing pollution in our local waterways. Pharmaceutical contamination of water is a serious problem. For decades, people have routinely flush unused medicines down toilets. Water treatment techniques remove bacteria, fecal matter, certain chemicals and many other contaminants, but traces of pharmaceuticals can remain in the water where they may have serious detrimental effects on aquatic life and on consumers of the water, including humans. While we don’t have a clear understanding of the problems, the potential for endocrine disruption is particularly troubling.

Until more research is done, we won't know how to completely avoid contaminating rivers, streams, lakes and aquifers with unused and unwanted medicines. For now, our best bet is to take them to collection events like the ones that will take place on Saturday. If you can't get your prescription and over-the-counter drugs to one of the sites this weekend, please follow the following federal guidelines (Office of National Drug Control Policy October 2009) for disposing them:

1. Take your prescription drugs out of their original containers.
2. Mix drugs with an undesirable substance, such as cat litter or used coffee grounds.
3. Put the mixture into a disposable container with a lid, such as an empty margarine tub, or into a sealable bag.
4. Conceal or remove any personal information, including Rx number, on the empty containers by covering it with black permanent marker or duct tape, or by scratching it off.
5. Place the sealed container with the mixture, and the empty drug containers, in the trash

Drug abuse and pollution of natural systems are two problems that our state faces every day.  It isn't every day that we have an opportunity to address them both in such an easy fashion -- we encourage all of our members and friends to take advantage of Operation Medicine Cabinet this weekend!

Keep It Green

November 3rd is Election Day in New Jersey. We may disagree on who the best candidates are for the various positions, but we at URWA hope we all agree that supporting “Public Question #1” is a good idea. By approving this question we will continue the work of the Garden State Preservation Trust. This $400 million bond authorization will continue protecting our water supply by acquiring open space, farms will be preserved helping to insure that we have land for local food production, historic sites will be protected for future generations to enjoy, and more parks will be created.

We all know what challenging financial times we are living through, yet this expense really pays its way. An acre of preserved land makes far fewer financial demands on municipal governments than that same acre with a house and family would necessitate. With land values at temporary low levels, this is the time to be buying land for preservation. The cost for all this preservation would be about $10 annually per household, based on a 20 year bond at 5% interest. Let’s work together and support the bond question.

Robert Reid, Land Projects Manager

We Are Being Invaded!

It began yesterday. I first noticed them when I was outside doing some of the annual chores to prepare my yard and home for winter – splitting and stacking firewood, cleaning window screens and raking leaves. All of a sudden, around noon, as the temperature warmed to about 60 degrees, great swarms of silent little creatures filled the air. I could see hundreds of them without even turning my head, and when I did turn it to look in a different direction, I saw MANY, MANY more of them.

After doing a bit of research, I learned that this seeming invasion of tan and orange Asian lady beetles (Harmonia axyridis) isn’t really an invasion. It is simply a massive relocation effort – each fall, adult beetles leave their summer feeding sites in yards, fields and forests in search of protected places to spend the winter. Swarms are heaviest on sunny days following a period of cooler weather (such as we experienced over the weekend) and most flight activity occurs in the afternoon. The intensity of swarms varies from one day to the next depending upon the weather.

As their name suggests, Asian lady beetles are not native to the United States. They were brought into this country in the 1960s by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to control agricultural pests on crops such as pecans and apples, and they have since established thriving populations that reach into Canada. In their native lands, Asian lady beetles live mainly in trees in forests and orchards. Here though, they take up residence in ornamental and agricultural crops as well as suburban areas. In the spring and summer, the larvae and adults feed mainly on aphids, consuming hundreds each day.

As they seek out winter homes, Asian lady beetles head for bright areas. They congregate on the southwestern exposures of buildings, and they are especially drawn to dwellings that have light and dark contrasting features i.e. dark shutters on a light background. The 200 year-old house at Fairview Farm that now serves as the office of the Upper Raritan Watershed Association is a textbook example of this phenomenon – the house is painted white, its shutters are dark green, and it is absolutely covered with beetles on its southern facing side! Once they land on buildings, the beetles begin a search for crevasses and cracks in which to crawl. They make their way into attics and wall cavities, where they remain until temperatures warm up again in the spring and they re-emerge to return to fields, forests and lawns. Unfortunately, their journeys can take them throughout the entire house – our office is literally crawling with them today.

Although they are a nuisance, Asian lady beetles generally don’t cause much damage or harm people. They do, however, emit an acrid odor and can stain surfaces with their yellowish secretions when they are disturbed (this is a defense mechanism they employ to deter predators), and they sometimes bite (speaking from experience, I can assure you that their bite isn’t ferocious – it feels like a small pinprick, at most, but it is rather startling).

If Asian lady beetles have found their way into your home and you don’t want to host them all winter long, your best move is to get out a vacuum cleaner. If you attempt to use a broom to sweep them back outside, you may have a significant clean-up in store to remove the yellow stains on your walls and floors. We do not recommend that you use an insecticide to eliminate Asian lady beetles from your home – too many other creatures may be killed. Instead, next spring or summer, seal up the cracks around windows, doors, soffits, fascia and other openings into your home. By doing this, you’ll create a barrier that will prevent Asian lady beetles and other pests from getting into your home. For now, get out the vacuum cleaner, and know that the cooler weather ahead will stop the swarming soon!

Susan Brookman, Membership Program Director
Photo courtesy of Iowa State University

URWA Urges Watershed Residents to Be Idle Free

Turn the key, be idle free! Tuck this catchy little phrase in the back of your mind and let it remind you to turn off the engine in your vehicle any time you are going to be stopped for more than a few moments. You’ll save fuel, protect your engine and reduce vehicle emissions which pollute our air and harm our water.

Idling gets you nowhere. While most of us are seeking ways to maximize our gas mileage for the sake of our wallets and our health, the fact that an idling vehicle gets ZERO miles per gallon has largely escaped our notice. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, if 145 million passenger vehicles idle for five minutes a day, approximately four million gallons of gasoline are consumed. That’s a lot of gas, and money, to waste!

An idling car does not perform at full capacity, which can lead to problems that require sometimes expensive repairs. The problems can include oil contamination due to residue build-up on the cylinders, corrosion caused by excessive condensation collected in the exhaust system and decreased peak engine operating temperature due to spark plug residue.

Diesel and gasoline exhaust contain nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. The negative health implications of exposure to vehicle emissions are well documented and have been shown to cause significant respiratory and cardiovascular health effects. Children are particularly vulnerable to air pollution, because they inhale more air per pound of body weight – think about this the next time you see a line of vehicles idling as drivers wait to drop off or pick up students near a school, and consider the fact that the noses of the youngest children are right above the level of all those tailpipes. How can they help but breathe in toxic air?

The microscopic particles from vehicle emissions can be carried by wind and settle on the ground and on the surface of water bodies such as lakes, ponds and streams. This can make lakes and streams acidic, change the delicate balance of nutrients in coastal waters and river basins, deplete soil nutrients and damage vegetative communities from forests to farm crops.

Here in New Jersey, it is illegal to idle for more than 3 minutes. Limited exceptions to N.J.A.C. 7:27-14 (diesel vehicles) and N.J.A.C. 7:27-15 (gasoline vehicles) exist. Sleeping in trucks with sleeper berths is currently allowed, although this exemption will be eliminated in 2010, and idling of emergency vehicles operating in emergency situations is allowed. The three minute limit is quite generous, and URWA encourages drivers across the Upper Raritan watershed to limit idling to ten seconds or less unless traffic conditions make stopping and starting your engine unsafe.

For more information about vehicle idling and the damage it can do to your health and our natural environment, please visit one or more of the following web sites:
· http://www.stopthesoot.org/ (the NJDEP’s Diesel Risk Reduction Program)
· www.cleanwateraction.org/feature/clean-air-idle-free-new-jersey (the Clean Water Action’s "Idle Free New Jersey" Campaign
· www.consumerenergycenter.org/myths/idling.html (the Consumer Energy Center of the California Energy Commission.

Many people believe several myths about idling their vehicles. Research by government and vehicle manufacturers has debunked these three common myths:

Idling Myth #1: The engine should be warmed up for long periods before driving.
Reality: Idling is not an effective way to warm up your vehicle, even in cold weather. The best way to do this is to drive the vehicle. With today’s modern engines, you need no more than 30 seconds of idling before starting to drive.

Idling Myth #2: Idling is good for your engine.
Reality: Excessive idling can damage your engine’s components, including cylinders, spark plugs and exhaust system.

Idling Myth #3: Shutting off and restarting your engine is hard on the engine and uses more gas than if you leave it running.
Reality: Frequent restarting has little impact on engine components such as the battery and starter motor. More than 10 seconds of idling uses more fuel than restarting the engine.

Have You Seen This Plant?

Jetbead (Rhodotypos scandens)

This member of the rose family is native to Japan. It is a deciduous shrub that grows about five feet high and seven feet wide in meadows and forests and along forest edges and roadsides. Jetbead prefers full sun and moist, well-drained soils, but it can grow in full shade.

Jetbead is not common in our watershed, but it has been sighted. If you see it in the springtime or in autumn, you'll recognize it easily because of its distinctive flowers and berries. In April and May, its beautiful four-petaled white flowers are attention getters, and at this time of year, its clusters of four black, single seeded fruits set it apart from other shrubs.

Although it is uncommon in our region, jetbead is a plant species that concerns us greatly. It can form thickets that displace native plants and prevent the growth of native trees, shrubs, and herbs. Our Central Jersey Invasive Species Strike Team has identified jetbead as one of the forest invasives that needs to be stopped in its tracks before it gains a foothold (roothold?) in this part of the state. If you see a plant that you think might be jetbead on your property, or on property that you walk or drive past, please let us know. Call (908) 234-1852 or email Melissa Almendinger, our Invasive Species Project Coordinator -- we'll help you confirm its identity and determine the best way to remove it.

For more information about exotic invasive plants and URWA's efforts to eliminate newly emerging species from our region, please visit our Central Jersey Invasive Species Strike Team web pages. You'll also find out how you can become involved in this important effort!

Photo: John Randall, The Nature Conservancy, Bugwood.org

Happy World Water Monitoring Day!

Each year since 2002, thousands of people across the globe have participated in World Water Monitoring Day. This important annual outreach invites citizens throughout the world to monitor the quality of local streams, rivers, lakes, ponds and other water resources. The official World Water Monitoring Day is being observed today, September 18th, but citizens can test water anytime between March 22 and December 31 and report the results to an international database.

You don't have to be an experienced water monitor to participate. An easy-to-use test kit will enable everyone regardless of age or experience to sample for a core set of water quality parameters including temperature, pH (acidity), turbidity (clarity) and dissolved oxygen (DO). Results can then be shared with participating communities around the globe through the World Water Monitoring Day Web site.

Here at URWA, we test the water in the pond at Fairview Farm as part of World Water Monitoring Day, and URWA volunteers conduct an extensive sampling program each spring and summer on the Rockaway Creak, Peapack Brook and North Branch of the Raritan River. Results of this year's sampling program will be posted on our web site soon.

We are going to start monitoring the Black (Lamington) River, and we invite all prospective river monitors to a training session on October 3rd:

Black River Volunteer Stream Monitoring Program Training
Saturday, October 3rd from 9:00 a.m. to Noon
Purnell School, Pottersville Road, Pottersville
There is no cost to attend. Please email LTheis@urwa.org or call (908) 234-1852, ext. 12 to register by Wednesday, September 30th

To learn more about World Water Monitoring Day or URWA's Stream Monitoring Program, contact URWA at (908) 234-1852

Susan Brookman, Membership Program Director

Looking Back on a Year as a Watershed Ambassador

Last month I finished my term of service for AmeriCorps here at URWA since then I have been filling in as their intern. The specific AmeriCorps program that I was involved in was the NJ Watershed Ambassadors Program (NJWAP). There are twenty Watershed Ambassadors throughout NJ designated to each of New Jersey’s Watershed Management Areas (WMA) and I was lucky enough to fill out my term of service in WMA 8 at URWA. This program will be celebrating its 10th year in existence and URWA has been the host agency for this program from the beginning.

For the NJWAP I performed 52 stream assessments, educated about 1050 people about their watershed through 41 different presentations, trained 100 volunteers to perform their own stream assessments, helped to organize a stream clean up run through the South Branch Watershed Association with over 300 volunteers participating, and helped Randolph Middle School to plant a rain garden at their school all within 9 months! Looking back at it I can’t believe how much I accomplished in such a short time! I have to say that I have to contribute my successful completion to all the wonderful people who I have worked with within this watershed including the fantastic staff at URWA. I only wish I could stay longer!

I am grateful for the opportunity to have served this watershed and this term of service is the beginning of a lifetime of service for me. My plan for the future is to go back to school and become certified as a secondary education teacher for New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I also hope to keep a relationship with URWA through volunteering activities.

If this is the first time you have heard about the NJWAP I encourage you to contact my successor at URWA. There is a variety of educational and stewardship programs that the next ambassador can help you out with.

Suzanne Skrzenski, Watershed Ambassador

Cicada Serenade

Late summer, for me, has always been about bumblebees, fireflies, and katydids. The heavy humid air just seems so full this time of year; full of buzzing, scratching, fluttering, squeaking. This year has seemed particularly loud though, not just at night when the katydids are singing to each other, but beginning early morning when I first arrive at Fairview Farm. A loud buzzing permeates the air and can be attributed to none other than the strange but beautiful Cicada! Large, flying, plant eating insects, Cicadas are related to Leafhoppers and live for years underground as juveniles, taking water and nutrients from tree roots. Annual Cicadas are around almost every year and spend only 2-8 years underground, but the larger broods of Periodical cicada populations live synchronized life cycles, emerging every 7-13 years. Entomologists have scheduled the next Periodical brood to emerge in 2013, but word is that the brood has emerged this summer, four years early!

Cicadas aren’t hard to find (just follow your ears) but they are hard to approach without causing them to fly higher up in a tree or across the yard. The best time to find one is early morning, just when it has emerged from its discarded nymph exoskeleton and is drying off its wings. If you’re lucky enough to find one in this state, notice its huge bulging eyes and green, iridescent wings. Since these sightings are few and far between, you might just look for the discarded nymph shell, stuck to a tree trunk or wooden fence post. Probably the easiest way to observe a Cicada, however, is just by listening to the males’ mating calls, made with organs called timbals underneath their abdomens.

Cicadas are native to many parts of the word, found in Europe, Australia and Asia. Their loud presence definitely makes an impact wherever they are found, and many cultures have based folklore on Cicadas. Probably the most familiar story is one of Aesop’s fables called The Cicada and the Ant: in it the cicada spends the summer singing while the ant stores away food, and finds herself hungry when the weather turns cold. Before the weather does turn cold, step outside and listen. For whatever reason Cicadas have emerged early, I think they’ve added to the charm of this cold, rainy and loud summer of 2009!

Photo Credit: http://www.learnnowonline.net/nucpan/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/cicada2.JPG

To see a great short video of a cicada molting, click this link.

Lauren Theis, Stewardship Program Manager

Preservation Funding is Again in the Hands of Voters

This week, on August 18th, Governor Corzine signed the legislation that places a $400 million bond measure on the November 3rd ballot to let voters decide whether to continue funding for the Green Acres, Blue Acres and Farmland Preservation programs, and the NJ Historic Trust.

Funds from the 1998 Garden State Preservation Trust (GSPT) and the 2007 $200m bond measure have all been appropriated for state, county, local and non-profit open space, farmland and historic preservation projects throughout the state, leaving coffers virtually empty for any new projects.

Without additional funds, New Jersey will suffer the first gap in funding for preservation efforts in over two decades, missing out on tremendous land conservation opportunities and reduced land values in the current real-estate market. A $400 million bond measure would continue preservation efforts for two years at current levels. A recent analysis by the state found that a two-year, $400m investment could protect 73,500 acres of land and yield $10 in economic value for every $1 invested, in the form of ecosystem services (such as water purification, waste treatment and flood mitigation), natural goods (such as fish and farm products), and eco-tourism revenue across the state. Jobs would also be created through historic restoration and park development projects. Issuing the bonds would cost $10 annually per household and would increase state debt by less than 2%.

If you love your hometown and want to weigh in with your opinion on the importance of things like open spaces, historic preservation and clean drinking water, be sure to head to the polls on November 3rd.

Field Trip!

August is a fairly quiet month around the URWA headquarters. Many of our staff members and volunteers take some time off for annual summer vacations, while the ones who remain in the area use the time to catch up on research articles we've been meaning to read, prepare work plans for the coming fiscal year and make repairs to nets, gps units and other equipment that gets used heavily during the not-quite-so-hot and muggy months of the year.

August is also a month that affords us the unique opportunity to close the office for an entire day so our staff can venture out together on a field trip to a place we've all been wanting to explore. That's just what we did a couple of days ago! Nine of us piled into two vehicles (both hybrids) and drove to Kutztown, Pennsylvania to tour the 333 acre organic certified farm owned and operated by the Rodale Institute.

The farm is devoted to research, education and certified organic production and is highly regarded for its Farming Systems Trial, the longest-running U.S. experiment specifically designed to compare organic and conventional farming practices. During our tour, we got to see many research and demonstration plots, and we were really impressed by all of them!

The people of the Rodale Institute believe that changing the way we farm (and the way we eat) could be the most important step the world can take to address climate change and to help end the horrific cycle of hunger that afflicts so many of the world's economically poor people. Their research in the critical fields of soil health, water supply/water storage and regenerative farming practices (among others) is providing farmers, consumers and policy makers across the globe with tremendously important information that we can use to achieve our common goals of creating healthy human populations and healthy natural systems.

We highly recommend a trip to the Rodale Institiute Farm to everyone in our watershed who is interested in seeing firsthand some of the cutting-edge research into farming practices that can give us all hope for a healthier future. The Institute offers guided tours, or you can take a self-guided tour. It also offers a variety of workshops and special activities throughout the year, including the upcoming Organic Apple Festival on September 12th. The farm is just over an hour away from most communities in our watershed.

August 4, 2009

Photo: Michael Hartnett

This is a busy week at the Fairview Farm Wildlife Preserve, URWA's headquarters at 2121 Larger Cross Road in Bedminster. In the next few days we'll conduct a campfire program for families, a nighttime astronomy program for grown ups and an open house for everyone in the community! We hope to have a good turn out for each of these activities -- they all promise to be lots of fun, and we hope you'll join us!

Summer Family Campfire
Friday, August 7th from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
$10 per family for members, $15 for non-members
Please register by calling URWA at (908) 234-1852, ext. 12 before Friday, August 7th
Gather around the campfire to roast hot dogs and marshmallows, listen to stories and enjoy the outdoors with other families at the beautiful Fairview Farm Wildlife Preserve.

Star Party
Friday, August 7th from 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
$10 per person for members, $15 for non-members,
Please register by calling URWA at (908) 234-1852, ext. 12 before Friday, August 7th
Leave the kids at home with a sitter and treat yourself to a warm summer evening with friends at the Fairview Farm Wildlife Preserve. Members of the Morris Museum Astronomical Society will share their telescopes and talk with us about the stars, planets and meteors visible in the nighttime sky. Tea and desserts will be served, along with a bit of folklore about summer constellations. Bring a blanket or lawn chair, and a bottle of wine, if you'd like.

Open House
Sunday, August 9th from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Free! No registration is required
The Upper Raritan Watershed Association’s Bird and Butterfly Garden at Fairview Farm Wildlife preserve is at its summer peak, so be sure to visit with your camera to take in the delightful sights, smells and sounds that await you there. URWA has just created a rain garden at the preserve, so you can see firsthand what is involved in planting one at your home and learn how to keep it watered with help from a home-made rain barrel.

Join the URWA

(July 19, 2009) The Upper Raritan Watershed Association is a natural geographic region defined by the drainage basin of the North Branch of the Raritan River and its tributaries. This 194-square-mile area contains 23 municipalities within Somerset, Hunterdon and Morris counties. The watershed provides clean drinking water for millions of New Jersey residents and offers areas of extraordinary natural beauty, wildlife habitat, agriculture, and notable historic and cultural resources.

Join us! Everyone who shares an interest in maintaining and improving the quality of the North Branch of the Raritan River and its watershed is invited to become a member of URWA. Call (908) 234-1852.