South Mountain Conservancy Springs Into the Reservation

The South Mountain Reservation group schedules hikes and work days to kick off the new season

It may not (yet) look like spring, but a certain sign of the season is the South Mountain Conservancy's Spring schedule. The events include free family hikes, an open meeting, and work days. See the full schedule below:  Annual Meeting, Thursday, April 4, 7 - 9:15 p.m. Maplewood Memorial Library, 51 Baker St., Maplewood.   Come and meet other community members concerned with the environment and restoring the Reservation at the Conservancy's Annual Public Meeting.   Hear about – and join – Conservancy programs for forest regeneration planting, building new trails, Trash Tacklers, Trailkeepers, new trails and  free hikes.  Featured speaker:  Michael Van Clef, Ph.D., Ecological Solutions,  Wide experience with NJ Parks to control invasive …

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Girl Scouts Clean Up South Mountain Reservation

Troop from Seth Boyden School tackles trash in the reservation.

  Junior GS Troop 20648 from Seth Boyden Demonstration School, led by Tracey Woods - Trash Tackler Coordinator for the South Mountain Conservancy- spent Saturday morning spring cleaning at the South Mountain reservation.  They worked for an hour and a half clearing garbage and debris from the entry drive off of South Orange Avenue.  In that time the girls collected about four cubic yards of trash.  The troop was amazed at the amount of garbage they were able to collect in such a short period of time.  Bottles, cans, plastic bags, wheels, boots and even a stereo system were removed from the side of the road.  Maura Donnelly remarked, "I can't believe people just throw this stuff out of their car windows". "Why don't people just throw their …

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Poll: Essex County Deer Hunt

Do you think the county should continue the annual hunt?

  The hunt has begun. The sixth year of Essex County's deer management program started Tuesday and will be held on Tuesdays and Thursdays until Feb. 7.  Hunting will take place at South Mountain Reservation in South Orange on Thursday, and Jan. 29 in the afternoon only. In addition, hunters will be allowed to track trails in the Hilltop Reservation and the old Essex County Hospital Center site in the mornings and afternoons on Jan 31, as well as on Feb. 5 and 7.  The hunt has been scaled back this year. The program has been reduced from 24 hunting sessions in 12 days in 2012 to nine sessions in six days this year.  Open/Closed During the deer hunt, the reservations and Fairview Avenue in Cedar Grove will be closed.  The following county …

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Essex County Scales Back Annual Deer Hunt

The county's deer management program is less than half last year's sessions; hunting will take place at South Mountain Reservation on Jan. 22, 24 and 29.

The sixth year of Essex County's deer management program —slated to begin Jan. 22 — has been scaled back from previous years, County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo Jr. said Tuesday.  The program has been reduced from last year's 24 hunting sessions in 12 days to nine sessions in six days. It will run from Jan. 22 to Feb. 7 on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Also this year, there will be no hunting in Eagle Rock Reservation. "This program, in my mind, is more of a maintenance program each and every year just to maintain what we have,"  DiVincenzo said. "The numbers speak for themselves." On county roadways, the number of deer carcases removed last year was down to 201, from 363 in 2011. Verona Township Manager Joseph Martin said he thought the deer …

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Reservation Roads Closed; Traffic Problems Throughout the Area

The "S" curves of South Orange Avenue are closed

Updated: S curves are now reopened.    With wet snow falling rapidly, traffic conditions have worsened this afternoon, officals said. Police have closed the "S" curves through the South Mountain Reservation, the stretch of South Orange Avenue between South Orange and into Millburn. The county road is closed both east and westbound as of 3:45 p.m. Readers report traffic snarls on many local streets, including Wyoming Avenue. Wyoming is reportedly crowded, possibly because South Orange Avenue is closed. Trains and buses are cross-honoring today.

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Volunteers Needed to Clean Up Reservation

This Saturday, join the "Chain Saw Gang" and others to remove trees from trails.

  The following announcement is from coordinators of the South Mountain Reservation "Chain Saw Gang": We have made a great start in clearing trails strewn with toppled trees from Superstorm Sandy. Over the last week, our Chain Saw Gang, Trailkeepers and more than two dozen stalwart volunteers have cleared more than 25 percent of the Reservation's trails and temporarily repaired fencing at several forest regeneration sites to keep deer out. We thank the community for this great showing, but there is more to do. To maintain this momentum, volunteers over 15 years of age with loppers, bow saws, and especially chain saws are urged to come out this Saturday to the Dog Park off Crest Drive at 9:00 a.m. This effort will be under the direction of …

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Plea to County: Continue Deer Culling in Reservations

The letter writers represent Hilltop and South Mountain reservations in Essex County.

The South Mountain and Hilltop Conservancies are mobilizing a petition drive for supporters of the Hilltop, South Mountain and Eagle Rock Reservations to counter a possible end to the County's deer management program.  After several years of culling deer densities in our area have been reduced somewhat, but are nowhere near the 10-per-square-mile number needed to allow the forests and their ecosystems to regenerate. We believe that stopping the culling, even for a year, is extremely ill-advised. With no natural predators in our area (wolves, mountain lions, black bears), deer populations will continue to expand unless the County actively reduces the herds.  We've set up an online petition for voting-age residents to tell Essex County …

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James Lawson

8:20 pm on Friday, September 14, 2012

The most affordable happens to be salt licks that have a large amount of birth control in them the only problems with these licks is that they also affect other animals that lick them. Some animals it works like it does with the deer, but it can be detrimental to other animals   more ›

15 Summer Things to Do Before School Begins

Are there some fun, relaxing things you planned to do this summer but never quite got around to?

  It’s amazing how quickly summer vacation flies by, isn’t it?  In mid-June, 10 unscheduled weeks sounds like forever.  Many of us have grandiose plans of how we will soak up the glorious sun, kick back and drink ice-cold lemonade, or finally get to visit friends, family and places that we can’t seem to fit into our winter schedules.  Newsflash: Schools and will be back in session before we know it.  And we still haven’t done half of what we planned to do this summer! Well, here is a list of things to do before those school bells ring.    1.  Go to the drive-in.  Believe it or not, there is still a Drive-In here in New Jersey—the Delsea Drive-In in Vineland.  It’s a nostalgic favorite -- with up-to-the-minute movies! 2.    Play mini golf…

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A Forest Amid the Suburbs: The South Mountain Reservation

A look at the Reservation, past and present, and how to get there

New Trails and Renovations at the Reservation

South Mountain Reservation gets five miles of upgrades and new trails.

Seventy percent of a $985,000 project has been completed, after over 300 hours of labor on the South Mountain Reservation, which has repaired two and a half miles of trails and added another two and a half, county officials said June 18.   The first part of the project was to repair two and a half miles of trails in an attempt to deal with the ongoing issue of erosion on the reservation.  "This stuff [the trails] hasn't been touched in over 110 years," a representative of the conservancy, Dennis Percher, said about the 2,000-acre reservation in West Orange, Millburn and Maplewood bordering South Orange.  Percher explained further that before the the trails were redone runners would come back from a run covered in mud because of the water …

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