Herrontown Woods in the News -- Salamanders and Wet Meadows

There have been some excellent recent writeups in local news media about the Friends of Herrontown Woods' work in the community, in Town Topics, TapInto Princeton, and the PPS District News.

The first was by Carolyn Jones in TapInto Princeton, entitled "How To Save the Salamanders? In Princeton a Volunteer Brigade Helps Out," about FOHW's Princeton Salamander Crossing Brigade--a group put together by FOHW board member Inge Regan that includes community volunteers, high school students, teachers, professors--all taking a keen interest in helping amphibians migrate safely across Herrontown Road in the spring on their way to vernal pools, where they lay their eggs. 

Soon thereafter came a student writeup in the Princeton Public Schools District News about FOHW's collaboration with PHS Environmental Science students and teacher Jim Smirk to turn a detention basin at the highschool into a native wet meadow. 

Don Gilpin followed up on that with a front page article in the Town Topics about our work at the high school. Along with collecting data in the basin, the students are weeding out invasive species and planting natives. Our "Iwo Jima" photo shows the students lifting a tool shed into place that will also collect rainwater for watering plants. The shed was built from scavenged materials by FOHW volunteer Robert Chong. The rainbarrels were donated by Jenny Ludmer of Sustainable Princeton. 

The outdoor learning the students are getting, ranging from applied analytical skills to plant identification, including how to safely and effectively use garden tools, will serve them well in life. Combining the physical and the intellectual, whether helping amphibians at Herrontown Woods or tending to a complex plant community at the high school, reflects the active stewardship Oswald and Elizabeth Veblen valued and hoped to encourage when they donated Herrontown Woods nearly 70 years ago.