WMA 5 Ambassador Update

The Insanity Continues

 

By Nicholas Vos-Wein

 

Well, my year as your watershed ambassador is winding down and I am nearing the completion of my objectives. To date I have worked more than 1,400 hours on a plethora of different projects. My partnership with the New Jersey Tree Foundation is complete (See Page 7) and I am looking forward to finishing the remainder of my fieldwork in the warm summer weather. Since the canoe and kayak livery reopened for 2004, I have been out on the water almost every weekend.

 

Biological and Visual Assessment Trainings

One of the best things about being a watershed ambassador is getting out and training people in volunteer stream monitoring techniques. I recently held three open Biological Assessment Trainings. The trainings were a trial run to see what kind of response I would get after I put a notice in the Riverkeeper’s email newsletter.

Two people attended the first open training at the Tenafly Nature Center: Barbara Wilkens of Leonia, and Dick Carlson, a former area resident who now lives in Malvern, PA. We spent about three hours collecting and identifying the macroinvertebrates from the East Brook, an intermittent brook that drains Pfisters pond and flows into the Overpeck Creek. It was a gloomy day, but the training went extremely well, and we found plenty of macroinvertebrates. However, the best part of the day was listening to Dick’s stories about growing up in the area and how he used to trap muskrats in the woods that are now the Tenafly Nature Center.

Nobody showed up to the second open training at the Flat Rock Brook Nature Center, probably due to poor planning on my part (the second training was the Saturday of Easter weekend). I used the free time to take a hike around the nature center and check out some of the vernal pools, looking for frogs and salamanders.

One volunteer, Ann Cavanaugh, a resident of Closter who happens to have a strong interest in plant biology and identification, attended the third open training at Van Saun County Park. She had recently conducted a botanical survey of Bergen County and was interested in learning more about the macroinvertebrates that live in freshwater streams. It is always great to work with volunteers who want to learn about the subject. We spent a couple of hours conducting an assessment and talking with passers by about what we were doing and why we were doing it. Ann shared some stories about her experience in conducting the botanical survey and recommended some locations that would be good for either conducting biological assessments or looking for vernal pools.

I am hoping to schedule another round of Open Biological Assessment Trainings for the summer, so keep your eyes peeled for announcements if you are interested in attending. I will also be organizing at least one Visual Assessment Training, which mainly involves assessing the impacts of land-use on nearby waterways. Please contact me if you are interested in learning more about either the biological or visual volunteer monitoring techniques.

 

Regional Training

On May 1, six Watershed Ambassadors and I held our Northern Regional Biological Assessment Training on the Peapack Brook, in the Upper Raritan Watershed. The training was not very well attended, possibly due to the extremely beautiful weather that day, a lack of publicity, and/or the time commitment involved for volunteers. However, the four volunteers that did attend were all very interested in learning about the macroinvertebrates. One of the volunteers had recently purchased a house with a pond a few miles from the location of the training. A tributary of the Peapack Brook flowed through his property. He came to the training so that he could teach his son more about the macroinvertebrates in the stream. He was also concerned about the stream bank erosion that was occurring on his property and was looking for possible ways of monitoring and addressing the problem. We did our best to work his interests into our presentation. At the end of the training I asked him if he enjoyed the day. He said it was a great time and that he was surprised that more people did not attend. He said that the information he received was invaluable and that he was looking forward to teaching his son more about the macroinvertebrates, as well as investigating methods of stabilizing the stream bank on his property.

 

Nick can be emailed at ambassador@hackensackriverkeeper.org