County Honors Parks Volunteers

Some people take off a day from work. Some come the first Saturday of the month.

Some are teens earning community service hours while others, like Boy Scouts, need projects to advance in rank. And then there are the retired, who have the flexibility to turn out whenever the whim strikes.

But what they all share in common is a love for the outdoors and a deep concern for Union County's parks, whether it is ripping invasive plants out of Lenape Park in Cranford or repairing the trails that weave for miles through the 2,060-acre Watchung Reservation.

 "As a kid, I was up in the Reservation all the time," said Lawrence Russo, who grew up in Plainfield and now lives in Cranford.  "Now that I'm semi-retired, I can give back.  It's a beautiful  area and I want to maintain it."

Russo is just one of nearly 550 people who volunteered their time this past year to work in the county's parks. All totaled, they put in nearly 2,700 service hours, according to officials.

The volunteers are an indispensible part of maintaining the county's parks, said Alfred Faella, director of Parks and Community Renewal.

"These volunteers enable us to get to projects that we would never be able to get to because of limited resources and staff," Faella said.

Westfield resident Chris Ames has been working the trails for four years.  As a trail steward for a portion of the White Trail that runs along the north side of Lake Surprise, he's come to find that erosion is the biggest problem in that section.

"I'll usually check my trail at least once a month, but in the summer more so because the invasives(plants) start to cut into the trail," Ames said. "I like all of the trails in the reservation. You're out in the wild--or as much as you can get in Union County."

Recent Boy Scout projects have included the building of footbridges, kiosks and nesting boxes for birds in several parks. A fishing area on Lake Surprise was redesigned to be accessible to the disabled while in the Rahway River Parkway, a turtle crossing was created to increase protection for  the snapping and box turtles living near Munsee Pond.

A number of larger projects, such as the removal of invasive species and their replacement with native plants have been tackled on group days. While groups of volunteers have come from area churches and civic associations, a number of area corporations give their employees release time to work with a range of community service projects.

Recently, a group from LexisNexis in New Providence, spent the day planting in Lenape Park .

Lenape has had a huge problem combating Japanese Knotweed, so much so that the county requested the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to spray sections of the park for the past three years to bring it under control.  However, once an area has been cleared, then new plantings that include native species, must be planted in order to reclaim the area.

As  Surya Rao worked with his colleagues to plant nearly 600 saplings, the former Summit resident said he takes a great deal of pleasure in volunteering for the days of service in the parks.

 "I like it," said Surya Rao, noting that living in an apartment in Scotch Plains, he rarely has the opportunity to work outside.

"I like being in nature. And whatever we plant is going to stay for a long time," he said.  

Because the weather can turn pretty nasty over the coming winter months, the group projects will not resume until the spring.  However, many of those who turned out for the last trail day—Adopt A Trail work days are held the first Saturday of the month—will continue to volunteer through the winter, as trail stewards.

Assigned to various stretches of trail across the 2,000-acre Reservation, they check to see that the trails remain passable for hikers.

Some, like Bob Czaja, of Scotch Plains, went to special chain saw training classes.  Now the 72-year-old retiree from Merck he and his friend, Bill Wallis, which check their section of the Sierra Trail—a 10-mile loop around the reservation—and make sure their section of the trail is in good shape.

For so many of the volunteers, the parks have always held a special place in their hearts. Russo is now the steward for a section of trail near Seeley's Pond, on the western end of  the reservation.    

"My buddies and I would ice skate all the way up the Green Brook to Seeley's Pond and we would camp out there," said Russo. "It was illegal, but we were 10 years old." 

Freeholder Bette Jane Kowalski , the freeholder board's liaison to the parks, said the county would never be able to afford a staff to do the myriad of projects "the volunteers willingly take on."

"We owe them an immeasurable debt of thanks," Kowalski said.

Any individuals, corporations or community groups wishing to volunteer for the Adopt-A-Trail or Adopt-A-Park programs can sign up by calling the parks department at 908-789-3683.

Eighty-three year-old Mae Deas, of Scotch Plains is the oldest volunteer on the trails crews.  A member of the Union County Hiking Club, which she joined in 1975, she cares for a portion of the Yellow Trail, which goes west from the Trailside Nature and Science Center.

"We use the park a lot for our hiking so we thought we'd come out  and help. You give back a little bit," she said. When she leads hikes through the reservation, Deas confesses that she enjoys mixing the hike both with the marked trails and some of the unmarked paths that weave through the preserve.  And she keeps a healthy pace over those 4 1/2 mile jaunts.

"Sometimes I'm accused of walking too fast," she said.

Editor's Note: Courtesy of Union County Feature Services.