“Ninjas” and Nature Conservancy Team Up

Again this year, Blair Academy has entered the Green Schools Alliance Green Cup Challenge; independent schools on the east coast are involved in the challenge, including other MAPL schools. Blair Academy’s Sustainability Committee members help implement this program, including dining hall efforts to compost discarded food items. Students known as “green ninjas” rouse their fellow students’ involvement in this challenge, which is an opportunity to demonstrate leadership skills and do something positive for the environment and Blair.

At the January 26 Society of Skeptics program, the ninjas made an appearance along with guest speaker Eric Olsen, Skylands project manager for The Nature Conservancy, who spoke about land conservation in Northern New Jersey. Eric is the lead for all on-the-ground landscape scale conservation activities in northern New Jersey for the N.J. Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. Including managing the stewardship and volunteer programs, Eric is responsible for coordinating community outreach programs, which includes building lasting relationships with landowners, community leaders, governmental officials and conservation partners in the region. He holds a B.A. from Drew University and an associate of arts degree from Sussex County Community College.

The Nature Conservancy is working to protect ecologically important habitat in the Skylands to safeguard watershed values and functions for humans and species that rely on clean water. The organization’s Web site notes: In the Skylands, we’ve safeguarded nearly 5,740 acres at 13 nature preserves. These special places include the 485-acre Blair Creek Preserve, which helps form an uninterrupted greenway with the nearby 70,000 acre Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area; High Mountain Park Preserve, 1,260 acres of natural lands in suburban New Jersey and home to the Earth’s most viable population of Torrey’s mountain mint; and Johnsonburg Swamp Preserve, more than 800 acres of limestone forests and fields. Mashipacong Bogs Preserve, a 1,000-acre expanse of forest, was a gift from Doris Duke’s estate and is home to one of the few remaining boreal bogs in New Jersey. Minisink Valley Preserve, 75 acres in the heart of the Kittatinny Ridge and Valley Priority Conservation Area, contains two Category One streams as well as more than a half mile of the pristine Clove Brook.

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Posted 1/27/2010

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