Environmental Websites For Our Region. Only a few of the other environmental commissions of Middlesex County have web sites, but those that do are worth a look by Highland Parkers.

Cranbury Environmental Commission has a list of “Useful Internet Links” you can click onto.

East Brunswick Environmental Commission sponsors a “nature website” of countywide interest. This site has spectacular arrays of nature information, photographs, and maps. Their list of East Brunswick birds gives seasonal distribution data that would apply here, too. (Use it alongside our own month-by-month lists by clicking “Biodiversity” at the top of this page.) And would you believe that right in Highland Park’s backyard in East Brunswick is a rare migration site for spotted salamanders? It brings dozens of people (and salamanders!) out in the dark and rain each spring for a mass animal movement you find in just a few spots in New Jersey. Who’d suspect Middlesex County of having its own miniature Serengeti? 12/2005

Environmentally Healthy Home Presentation. The Board of Health and Environmental Commission have planned to cosponsor a Community Forum on “Keeping An Environmentally Healthy Home for Your Children.” Originally intended for December 15, 2005, in Borough Hall Council Chambers, it has been postponed. Dr. Mark Robson, PhD, MPH, ATS, Associate Dean of Student Affairs and Associate Professor and Chairman at the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the UMDNJ-School of Public Health has prepared an audio-visual presentation on making your home a healthy environment for your children. No advance reservations are necessary for this free event, but we do not yet have a substitute date to report. Keep watch here. For more information, call the Health Department at (732) 777-6013. 11/2005 rev. 1/2006

Environmental Center At Last!
Preliminary fencing and site staking began in November 2005 for construction of the Eugene Young Environmental Center at the Highland Park Native Plant Reserve on River Road (opposite Walter Street). Designed by architects Sage & Coombe, with advice from our own Working Group for Environmental Education Centers, the glass-walled building will provide space for environmental programs and will itself demonstrate energy-saving and “passive solar” techniques. Overall site design is by MKW & Associates, landscape architects. On River Road itself, Middlesex County will install pedestrian-activated crossing lights (flashing yellow) at three intersections in spring 2006 for safer pedestrian access to the center and reserve.

Arnold Henderson (your news writer) chairs our Working Group of representatives from the Environmental Commission and Shade Tree Advisory Committee. Members are: Ruth Bowers, Mike Rosenberg, and originally Eugene Young, who died during the planning stage and was replaced by Loren Muldowney. The center will be named for Eugene Young, who spent many years championing open space and environmental quality in Highland Park.

The first signs of work, as of mid-November, are the positioning of a construction trailer at the extreme south end of the project site (near the apartments and Route 27) and a construction fence surrounding most of the southern half of the Native Plant Reserve. The display beds in the northern half of the reserve remain outside the fence and available to visitors. Watch this site for updated news and photos as work progresses on the center. 11/2005 rev. 1/2006

Cool Cities Project Brings New Trees. The New Jersey Cool Cities project, which last year planted Japanese cherries along Woodbridge Avenue to reduce the urban “heat island” effect (photo), continued in Fall 2006. Highland Park’s planting areas for 2006 are 105 treeless sites along upper Raritan Avenue (Japanese cherry trees) and the Orchard Heights residential area (a mix of native and nonnative trees, including large shade trees where conditions allow). The project fits well with Highland Park’s Street Tree Master Plan (1998) and Community Forestry Management Plan (2001), which we developed well in advance of most towns and cities in the state. 11/2005

Meadows Trail Grant Won; Water Watch Helping.
The Borough has been awarded a $10,000 Recreational Trails Grant to improve the rough trails in The Meadows. These are the recovering woods and tidal wetland between Donaldson Park and the Edison border. The grant requires matching efforts by Borough employees and local volunteers. On November 6, the Water Watch volunteers from Livingston College, led by the new coordinator Emilie Rabbitt, once again stepped up to the job, with 11 volunteers working for three hours to haul out both heavy dumped trash and the numerous “floatable” bottles and Styrofoam trash that the river washes up each year. A trail cutoff (marked out earlier by Bill Bonner and Arnold Henderson of this web site) was created to bypass spots on the main trail that are too wet at the highest tides—the first trail re-routing planned under the grant. As we rested a moment afterward, a peregrine falcon perched above on the WCTC radio tower. 11/2005

Cyclocross Brings World-Class Biking To Donaldson Park.
On November 6, portions of Donaldson Park again became a web of yellow tapes marking out the complicated uphill/downhill track of Cyclocross, the biking competition held each year in Highland Park under regulations of the same organization that sponsors the Tour de France. Competitive bikers from various states of the U.S. came for the event. The Cyclocross concept arose in Belgium as a competition for top cyclists in the Tour’s off season and has spread widely. The two top scorers of the Highland Park event will soon be off to Europe for international competition. Between Cyclocross happening here annually and the East Coast Greenway (a biking/hiking trail from Florida to Maine) running through Highland Park (on River Road past the Environmental Center site), Highland Park is definitely on the biking map! 11/2005

State Offers List of Invasive Plant Species. Highland Park residents may be interested to see the list of invasive plant species posted on New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection web site. (You may be surprised how many are already in your own yard.)The list of invasive plant species is appended to last October’s Policy Directive 2004-02, which directs the department’s land managers to avoid introducing them to department lands and waters, but to prefer native alternatives (with exceptions allowed for botanical gardens, research, etc.). 11/2005

Gandhi Day Transforms Native Plant Reserve. The Association of Indians at Rutgers performs public service work each year in honor of Gandhi Day (October 1), and this year chose Highland Park’s Native Plant Reserve as one site. Around 40 students planted a half dozen small trees, weeded out shoulder-high mugwort, and laid wood-chip mulch. These weed-free surfaces around the plantings give the reserve a fresh, neater look in anticipation of the coming construction of the environmental center later this year or next. 10/2005

Raritan Dredging Begins.
A big red tug, barges, and crane with clamshell digger appeared in the Raritan River opposite Highland Park in mid-October, dredging for constructing a 24-berth floating dock at Boyd Park. Called "New Brunswick Landing," the dock (with some associated work) is meant to attract boaters to New Brunswick and its restaurants. To allow larger boats than now, a channel will be deepened along the river at points from Perth Amboy to New Brunswick in a Middlesex County project (with state grants) meant to make the river more “accessible.” 10/2005 rev. 11/2005

Meadows Trail Cleared by Water Watch. The Meadows is the roughest of Highland Park's open spaces, with a trail to the river that risks closing up from one year to the next as trailside vegetation burgeons. On August 20 and 21, a mixed group of Water Watch members, residents, and Environmental Commission members hacked away tangles of invasive Japanese wisteria and thorny wineberry that were edging into the trail on both sides. As a red-tailed hawk screamed overhead, they also carried out heavy metal trash from a branch trail and, from the river edge, many bags of "floatables"--bottles and light trash washed ashore by river tides and spring floods. Then the crew slipped out from the river edge just as a quickly rising tide was racing into the trail's lowest spots and giving shoes a good soak. 8/2005

They Came from Virginia to Pull Our Weeds!
Well, almost. The 3Chopt Church of Christ youth group of Richmond, Virginia (named for being on 3Chopt Road), was in NJ for a Vacation Bible Camp at the Chatham Church of Christ . They were looking for service projects and found us. Nearly 20 youth and adults came on 8 August to the Native Plant Reserve on River Road, pulling out invasive plants. They also covered many of the formerly weedy areas with mulch (wood chips over a layer of cardboard to smother weed regrowth). With the new environmental center to be built in a few months, this cleanup of the existing planting beds helps the existing beds look as sprightly as the new ones we expect. It also makes the educational message more clear, since now the native plants and their informational signs are better set off by the surrounding mulch and easier to examine. 8/2005

Valley Place Ravine Restoration Moves Ahead. Water Watch performed another pair of work days July 29 and 30, 2005, in its ongoing project to rehabilitate the Highland Park Valley Place Ravine. The goal is to reestablish native plants for habitat and erosion control in the Raritan River Watershed--and for enjoyment of nature by humans. The July days were for removing invasive plants that have taken over, such as various Eurasian honeysuckles, Norway maple saplings, and garlic mustard. This clears the way for planting of native shrubs in the fall, as was done last spring. The summer leaders Jessica Gentile and Michelle Huang are working through the Highland Park Environmental Commission. The event attracted several Highland Park residents, especially families living alongside the ravine. Water Watch also set up a special web site where you can see ongoing photos of the Valley Place Ravine Restoration. 7/2005

4H Families Meet the Red-Tail at Native Plant Reserve. On June 20, as 4H of Highland Park again spent time weeding display beds at the Native Plant Reserve, our local red-tailed hawk again perched on its favorite bare black willow tree. This gave Arnold Henderson of the Environmental Commission a chance to recount his most amazing bird story. And here it is: I followed along after a red-tailed hawk being pursued by a mob of blue jays. It flew from tree to tree for perhaps a quarter mile, but each time it perched the jays were right there swooping at it. It decided it had to do better. It would play dead. So, holding the bough with its feet, it swung over till it was hanging upside down, as if dead and just caught on the bough. Still not enough. It decided to look even deader. Slowly it let one wing slide out and down till it was dangling below in a most unlifelike posture. The blue jays knew better. At last the hawk again pulled itself back up and flew off across the woods, blue jays in pursuit. Peaceful possums you can understand playing dead (actually, they may just swoon from fear!), but a powerful predator consciously deciding to do it is something else. And fooled nobody. Aside from hearing such nature lore, the 4Hers managed to clear space around several new native species recently planted, and right now in bloom (late June and July): red cardinal flower, gaura, agastache, coreopsis, . . . . Come take a look. 7/2005

Environmental Center Heads for Construction. June 21, the summer solstice and longest day of the year, also brought with it the first tangible action toward construction of the Eugene Young Environmental Center at the Native Plant Reserve. As our resident red-tailed hawk watched from its favorite perch on the old willow tree, workers delivered the construction trailer that workers from Tomco will use while constructing the building. The building itself will be about opposite the foot of Walter Street. A concept sketch of the building, designed by Sage & Coombe, Architects, is on our home page. 6/2005

Picnic Tables Added at Native Plant Reserve.
Two picnic tables with benches have been added down at the Native Plant Reserve on River Road, opposite Harrison Ave. These were tables no longer needed by the Senior/Youth Center, now that that area is being refurbished with a new sensory garden. Synergy! 5/2005

Green Community Web Site Is Up. A new link from our site gives information on Highland Park's Green Community Working Group, headed by Mike Ambrosio and with representatives from the Environmental Commission and other groups. Graduate students in the Urban Planning program at the E.J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University, provide the site and are helping the borough develop environmentally friendly "sustainable" planning. Access the Green Community site to find reports on Highland Park; sources of environmental information; and guidance on what you can do as a resident, business owner, or municipal official. 5/2005

4H Helps Out at Native Plant Reserve.
Members of Highland Park's 4H Club were busily digging up weeds and preparing a planting bed at the Native Plant Reserve on Sunday, May 1. Along the way they found many an interesting creature living in the dirt, starring the "red-backed" salamander, but in its shiny black "lead-backed" form. Members of the Highland Park Shade Tree Advisory Committee worked alongside and then planted six dozen native wildflowers and a few native trees in the prepared bed.

Later this summer and into 2006 there will be two kinds of activity at this EPA-award-winning Native Plant Reserve. For volunteers, there will be more opportunities to help maintain and improve the existing display beds of native plants. Professional construction and planting crews, meanwhile, will be raising the long-awaited Eugene Young Environmental Center and laying down a wheelchair-friendly universal access path around the entire site. 5/2005

Help Us Plant Native Species, April 30 [May 1 Rain Date]. All are welcome to participate in planting native shrubs and wildflowers in Highland Park natural areas. Following two plantings at Valley Place Ravine (April 10 and 17), focus shifts to the Native Plant Reserve on April 30 [Rain Date May 1].

On Saturday, April 30, 10 a.m. to noon, there will be wildflower planting at the Native Plant Reserve on River Road opposite Harrison. Six dozen native wildflowers have been purchased by the Shade Tree Advisory Committee so plenty of help is needed to weed out spots for them in the display beds and then plant them. This is an easier site to walk in than Valley Place Ravine, so this is the best for bringing kids to help in plantings.

Highland Park Hawks Outnumber Pale Male & Lola. The March-April 2005 Audubon Magazine features Manhattan's local hero, the red-tailed hawk called Pale Male, who recently made news by returning with his current mate Lola to nest again on a building front at 927 Fifth Avenue at 74th Street. Thousands of bird protectors (including your web newswriter) wrote letters or demonstrated to have the nest site restored after the building owners removed it. We won. So how does Highland Park stack up against Manhattan with its movie star bird pair?

Highland Park, too, has red-tailed hawks--probably two pairs--nesting either right inside our borders or just outside but using our open space for hunting. One pair is said to have nested for years in the tall pines across from Donaldson Park's boat ramp. Probably another pair nests somewhere near the Native Plant Reserve, where a pair has been seen flying, and where one regularly perches. Watch for it on its favorite old black willow tree at the south end of the parking area. Even our printed Natural Resource Inventory has a red-tailed hawk on its cover. The consultants doing that 1992 inventory were being shown around our open space when the hawk burst from a treetop just ahead. They were so shocked and awed to see such a wild predator of open fields adapting to urban life in Highland Park that they drew one for the cover. That particular site is now the l'Ambiance condos, but the birds are around somewhere. Has anyone actually seen a nest of either of our probable two pairs of red-tailed hawks? Contact this site if so. 3/2005

Eel Brings Sargasso Sea to Highland Park. The March-April 2005 Audubon Magazine has an eye-opening story about one of Highland Park's least-visible native residents, the American eel, Anguilla rostrata. (Yes, we know we have them: the Corps of Engineers found them in Mill Brook during a flooding study, and our own Environmental Commission came across a dead one stuck in a pipe during a spring cleanup along Mill Brook. The eel apparently swam into the pipe during a storm flood and failed to get out again before the water receded.) But what the Audubon article does is take our local eel and move it to the class of world traveler (and a current nominee for endangered species).

It seems the "American" eel is not a local homebody but a great migrator. It does the opposite migration from such well-known anadromous fish as the salmon. Instead of spending most of its life at sea and swimming up rivers and tiny freshwater streams to spawn, the catadromous eel does the reverse, spawning out at sea--the Sargasso Sea, to be specific--and coming on currents to America in a tiny, youthful "glass eel" form. It then swims up estuaries like Raritan Bay, rivers like the Raritan, and smaller streams like Mill Brook, to spend most of its life with us. Thus our "American" eel is an American (and Highland Parker) by naturalization; it was born in the whirling Sargasso Sea of algae and plankton out in the central North Atlantic. When mature (and they sometimes live 40 years or more), it will return down streams to the sea to spawn. So the next time you see some lanky wriggling fish in our local streams, you'll now know you are seeing one end of one of the great migrations of our globe. 3/2005

300 Robins, 100 Starlings.
The chill and heavy snows of January and February froze the Raritan clear across and brought other effects you have to get out in the snow to see. Here's one.

Wanting to see how the snow might look, drifted under the "bamboo forest" at the Rutgers Arboretum, your intrepid content editor for this web site pulled into the Arboretum parking lot. The surrounding trees were thick with small black silhouettes of birds. Starlings? They often roost together this season. No, binoculars brought out the russet breasts of robins: 300, by estimate, in the one spot. The bounty of nature.

But the bamboo forest was the goal, and that was where the starlings proved to be. Dead. Frozen. More than 100, by actual count, fallen along the path. They lay in the hollows of the snow. Some spread frozen wings as if to fly. Some tucked wings to body as if for warmth. Some had been driven beak-first down into the snow as they fell like shaken icicles from the tips of the bamboo. Starlings, over 100. The indifference of nature. Bounty and indifference together, in the snowy trees, and the drifts under the bamboo. (Photo Arnold Henderson) 2/2005

Rehabilitation for Valley Place Ravine: April 10 & 17.
April 10th and 17th, 2005, saw a major cleanup and restoration planting effort at the Valley Place Ravine, sponsored by WaterWatch and the Highland Park Environmental Commission, 11 a.m. to dusk. The Rutgers/Livingston branch of WaterWatch, an Americorps program, has often helped clean Highland Park's streams and natural areas. Now, led by Erin Mannella, they are going a further step, adopting our Valley Place Ravine Green Acres site for a longer-term restoration and monitoring, with several events. Early in the process, opinions were gotten from Highland Park residents (in an initial meeting March 2 at the Reformed Church) as to how they would like to see this area restored to both beauty and natural ecological functioning. The first full workday, April 10, drew 45 people, including several neighbors. Sunday, April 17 drew 48 people, including Cub Scouts and Highland Park Juniors and again neighbors. They finished planting 30 native trees and shrubs donated by Barton Nursery, more shrubs and flowers transplanted from a STAC member's back yard native-plant nursery, and seedling white pine trees donated by the state's Community Forestry Program.

Earlier, on February 20, as fact-finding for rehabilitating the ravine and stream, stream monitoring was conducted, led by Watershed Ambassador Kara Van Blarcum. WaterWatch, Watershed Ambassador (also an Americorps program), and HP residents found five species of macroinvertebrates in the water. One species numbered over a hundred in a single net placement--despite frigid weather! It's not a high quality stream, but it's far from dead. See pictures of Valley Place Ravine in this web site's virtual tour. 2/2005 rev 5/2005

Public Hearing: The "Limo Lot"/Centennial Park. The borough held a public hearing for the Green Acres application for plantings at the old limo lot, newly named Centennial Park, on Tuesday, March 1, 2005, at 6 p.m. This is the small triangle of land between River Road and Lincoln Avenue that is the first bit of Highland Park seen by anyone crossing over the bridge from New Brunswick. Middlesex County recently purchased the property for Highland Park. Possibilities include trees, shrubs, and flowers to modify the pollution at this high-traffic intersection and give Highland Park an attractive entry portal. 2/2005 rev. 5/2005

Bill Bonner Nature Photos at the Library. Bill Bonner, a contributing photographer to this web site, is showing his digital nature photos during February and March, 2005, at the Highland Park Public Library, in the main hall display case. Most observers routinely miss or sidestep the objects Bonner unearths. Discarded sunflower shells, ice formations and other elements of nature are captured at intriguing new angles. In the photos that he calls abstractions the subjects can still be identified. Our web site has a different selection of Bill Bonner nature photos. 2/2005

Environmental Center Plans Are In.
Drawings have arrived at Borough Hall for the long-planned Eugene Young Environmental Center at the Native Plant Reserve on River Road. See them at Borough Hall and send comments to this web site. The project is funded entirely by grants and has benefited from the combined efforts of two Highland Park administrations, initiated by Mayor (now Freeholder) Polos and pursued by Mayor Frank. A large committee representing school, PTO, Environmental Commission, and Shade Tree Advisory Committee advised the Borough in the initial stages, later reduced to a smaller Environmental Centers Working Group chaired by Arnold Henderson and including Ruth Bowers, Mike Rosenberg, and Eugene Young. Thus the project predates both the proposed Green Community and redevelopment projects and is independent of them.

The scale of the center building has been kept deliberately small, suiting the narrow 3-acre site between River Road and the Raritan River and keeping costs lower than original estimates. The building makes no attempt to stand in for full-sized school classrooms and laboratories, but is more a gathering point and exhibition room (with roof plantings to demonstrate the 'green roof' concept). A restroom is included as well as a separate shade structure with solar demonstration. Additional grants obtained this past year allow adding such site improvements as a sculpture garden and path. It is fitting that Highland Park, in its centennial year of 2005, will see the start of construction for what is believed to be Middlesex County's first environmental center and the centerpiece of Highland Park's broad plan for natural areas along our entire Raritan River border. See further information and an Environmental
Center Sketch.

The Borough's consultants for the center are MKW + Associates, Landscape Architects; and Sage/Coombe Architects. 2/2005 rev. 1/2006

New Neighbors: Coyotes?! The natural range of the coyote was the West and did not originally include Cleveland Avenue. Yet in early January 2005 resident Karen Swaine heard coyotes howling in the wooded edge of the old Midland-Ross property close behind her house on Cleveland Avenue. Coyote range has been known to be creeping eastward for many years, and now it may be Highland Park's turn. (Of course there are coyotes down in the Johnson Park zoo, so you can go see what they look like, but these howls were not from there.) Are coyotes still in town? Along Mill Brook? The rail line? Rutgers Ecological Preserve? If your own sleep has been interrupted by late-night howls, let this web site know. 1/2005

Since the above paragraph appeared, this web site has been contacted by Joseph Smalley, a Rutgers student doing a photo-essay on the Rutgers Ecological Preserve. He has three times actually seen coyotes there. Keep watching, folks--but DON'T TRY TO FEED THEM OR APPROACH CLOSELY. While statistics may show them to be less dangerous to people than the family dog, it's their fear of humans that keeps them away. Don't change that. Smalley points us to a web site with information on the dangers of semi-tame coyotes and wolves. 1/2005

Further reports of coyotes push their presence here back to at least 7/2003, when a Piscataway resident recalls their howling in sympathy with fire sirens during the burning of the historic Metlar-Bodine House. A glimpsing of an unidentified wild canine by our Environmental Commission chair may push the presence of coyotes even somewhat earlier. But the earliest sighting reported to this web site is now by Vigen Baboghlian, who reported a brief staring contest with a yellowish canine with big ears back in 1984--now in hindsight clearly a coyote. 1/2005, rev. 3/2005

Snow Goose, Blue Goose. Seeing a snow goose in the Northeast is uncommon enough, given how much the Canada goose outnumbers them here, but a 13 January sighting in Donaldson Park found two--and neither with the all-white body that gives the species its name. The most unusual is the "blue goose." This is apparently a true genetic variant within the species, a color morph with all-dark body, but white head and neck, making it conspicuous from afar among the many Canadas. At the other end of the park was a second snow goose whose body was neither all dark nor all white, but generally white with dark mottling. This is the immature that will grow up to be the typical white-bodied snow goose. With both these dark-tinged snowies present at the same time, it's a good chance to go down and see for yourself the differences. 1/2005