The Hackensack Meadowlands Issue of - Field Notes, United States Fish and Wildlife Service, New Jersey Field Office, 927 North Main Street, Pleasantville 08232. December 2002. An Activity report of field operations by the New Jersey Field Office. Image shows logo for Department of the Interior and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with a small green map of the State of New Jersey.
It was a few minutes before 5:00 AM on a day in late May. The sun had not yet risen, but the sky was already a blue-grey as we prepared to head down river with Captain Bill Sheehan, the original Hackensack Riverkeeper himself, a towering personality and an indefatigable promoter for the Meadowlands, at the wheel of his brand-new pontoon boat, the Edward Abbey. For two of us, this was a photographic expedition, but for Carlo, the third member of our U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service team, it was a chance to observe a restoration site in the Meadowlands from the river's point of view. Later that afternoon, Bill was to take a group of Girl Scouts on one of his famous "Eco-Cruises." We had a good idea of what the scouts were in for. Riverkeeper's two boats ply the waters of the Meadowlands almost continuously, putting students and elected officials-anyone, in fact, with eyes to see and ears to hear-in immediate contact with the environment, pocked as the earth and water are with the open sores of centuries of abuse. Bill will not let you miss the yellowed stratum at the shoreline containing foul-smelling and lethal levels of chromium lying beneath the shell of the factory that once refined the metal. At another spot he points out garbage bags and other debris falling into the river as a former landfill slowly erodes its waste into the water. A Riverkeeper Eco-Cruise will jolt even the most apathetic out of their conservationist lethargy. The educational ploy is simple: let the Hackensack Meadowlands speak for itself. An osprey's abrupt dive to the water is exhilarating to see, while the sight of a still anchored barge that capsized one night, spilling many gallons of caustic lye into the waterways and killing hundreds of fish, is sobering.

Indeed, the Hackensack Meadowlands is a dynamic classroom for ecological education. Congressman Steven Rothman (NJ9th) joins a host of other notables when he predicts that the Meadowlands will become a model for land conservation worldwide. Certainly, amidst one of the most densely populated areas in the world, the Meadowlands' successful support for wildlife provides important insights for solving the problems of balancing urban impacts with environmental quality. The fact that the Meadowlands is literally in sight of the Manhattan skyline is also logistically advantageous: not only is it easily accessible to the major transport corridors of the world, it is also located for maximum media visibility. Furthermore, the Meadowlands provides a crucial buffer to pollutants that would otherwise pour into the Newark Bay and the waterways of the harbor estuary. It is thus an ideal laboratory-classroom for studying the crucial role that wetlands can play in urban environments.

Other concerns occupy scholars as well. For example, Jared Eudell, a recent graduate of Fairleigh-Dickinson University, studied how the direction of the current affects barnacle colonies in the Meadowlands. Jared researched the density and maximum height of the colonies as well as the diversity of species within them. Presently, Beth Ravet of Rutgers University is conducting her doctoral studies on the interaction between salt marsh vegetation in the Meadowlands and the microbial communities associated predominantly with plant roots. In 1998, the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission and Rutgers University initiated a partnership to create the Meadowlands Environmental Research Institute, whose mission is to build a plan for preserving and restoring the Meadowlands that is scientifically defensible. Research is essential for preparing such a plan.

At the other end of the educational spectrum, the Commission's Meadowlands Environment Center has focused since its founding in 1983 on primarily the elementary and middle school grades. Why is the Hackensack Meadowlands such a valuable educational tool? Because the Meadowlands is accessible enough to study easily, and lessons learned can be applied universally. Then too, in an increasingly populated world, first-hand knowledge of how to remediate and restore heavily degraded areas is an ever more valuable commodity. The Center offers a wide variety of field trips / courses for all grade levels. With such titles as "Trash Party" and "Worms Eat My Garbage," the curricula engage the interest and pique the curiosity of young learners. The Center also offers summer seminars for teachers and helps to prepare Education majors at two local colleges for State certification.

Fortunately, plans are developing to restore the Hackensack Meadowlands ecosystem as an oasis for wildlife and a buffer against flooding and contaminants in an urban setting. The Meadowlands has already proven to be an invaluable resource for ecological studies. Scholars from kindergarten to post-doctorate / practitioner levels will continue to learn much from this complex and diverse 8,400-acre coastal estuary.