Dear Friend:
I’m happy to report that, over the past year, Friends of Princeton Open Space has made very strong progress on current projects and future planning. Starting with our home at the Billy Johnson Mountain Lakes Nature Preserve, we’ve partnered with Princeton High School’s environmental science program to collect field data measuring the impact of our ecological restoration work, including tree inventory measurements, plant distributions, and macroinvertebrate lake surveys. The project will occur over six classes and engage over 150 students. We’ve had another successful year of native plant propagation from local seed, working with Partners for Plants volunteers from The Garden Club of Princeton. These plants will be planted this fall at the Preserve with the help of students from Princeton University and Princeton Day School, as well as members of the public and corporate groups. Our volunteer American Chestnut Care Team had the thrill of seeing the first fruiting chestnut tree in our forest restoration site. And we’ve begun the permitting process with NJDEP to expand our riparian restoration work at Mountain Lakes into wetlands areas.
Our 2024 interns enjoying themselves at the Fall Fest benefit on October 6th.
Our many citizen volunteers (1744 hours logged over the past year) were joined this summer by three college-level Land Steward Interns, two high school students who came to us through our collaboration with the Outdoor Equity Alliance, and two high school students who chose to work with FOPOS through Princeton’s Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP). This was our first year working with SYEP and we’ve been invited to participate again; we’re excited to be able to expand our internship program and reach out to more lower-income students to show them the rewards and opportunities of ecological conservation work. We continue to work with young people through Scouts programs, and a scout will be installing additional Bluebird nesting boxes this fall and giving a talk about the birds at the Preserve. Meanwhile, a small team, comprised mostly of hardworking trustees, totally rebuilt the decks and railings of two footbridges at Mountain Lakes that were unusable due to storm damage and general deterioration.
FOPOS board and community members spent 314 volunteer hours over the course of 19 work days to rebuild two damaged footbridges in the Preserve.
We’ve held many educational and fun events such as Foraging for Stewardship, which simultaneously removes invasive plants and teaches people about how they can incorporate them into their menus (e.g., garlic mustard pesto, mugwort twist donuts, wineberry jam); evening owl walks; forest bathing; and bird walks led by expert Winifred Spar. The bird counts show that avian biodiversity in the Mountain Lakes area is impressive and increasing, featuring Ospreys and Bald Eagles, Palm and Yellow-rumped Warblers, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Wood Thrushes, Baltimore Orioles, Great Blue and Green Herons and a clutch of Wood Ducks, among many other species.
On the land preservation front, we successfully obtained $390,000 in Green Acres grant funds that will be contributed to purchase the 90-acre Lanwin tract on Herrontown Road, which is expected to close by the end of the year. We also secured a private gift of $1 million to clinch the preservation of this important forested tract that links with Herrontown Woods Preserve and other public open space. In addition to the State, our partners in this project include Princeton, Mercer County, and three other non-profits. We look forward to working with Princeton’s Open Space Manager in 2025 to complete other critical linkages via acquisitions, easements and pathway connections.
We recognize the need to update our strategic plan, and started with a SOAR (strengths, opportunities, aspirations and results) session of the board in July. In October, we were notified of a grant from the Bunbury Fund at the Princeton Area Community Foundation to hire a professional consultant to help us complete the process in 2025. We intend to focus in the planning process on the staffing and administrative structure needed to continue FOPOS’s successful work long into the future.
With gratitude for your past support, we ask for your continued help with our work to preserve, steward and teach our community about open space.
Best regards,
Wendy L. Mager
President
We are grateful for the support of our members and hope you will continue to help us do this important work. Please renew your membership and recruit a friend to be a Friend!