Turning the Tide

As the significance of wetlands became more apparent both individual states and the federal government began to enact laws that offered greater protection. Among the most notable was the Federal Clean Water Act of the 1970s. This Act recognized the value of wetlands at cleaning the nation's waters and established federal regulation of activities in these sensitive areas. Environmental legislation that developed over the next few decades strengthened the ability to fight pollution, clean up toxic waste sites and close landfills.

Legislation is an essential part of giving new life to urban wetlands, but just as important is the individual effort to change people’s attitudes and perceptions. This grassroots level of awareness building helps people to learn about the benefits of wetlands and to appreciate the wildlife that lives in these ecosystems. Greater understanding often evolves into greater action as volunteers join environmental commissions in their communities and help clean-up local wetlands.

Today, learning about the importance of urban wetlands is starting at an early age. Education programs are giving students in city school districts the chance to discover the natural world that exists near their hometowns. This scientific study is an exciting learning opportunity that many earlier generations never had the chance to experience.

While many people work to preserve wetlands, the threat to destroy them is ever present. It takes the coordinated efforts of government, local communities, non-profit groups and individuals to ensure that wetlands and their life-giving benefits will survive.

A Hackensack River Clean-up (5:50)
Captain Bill Sheehan of the Hackensack Riverkeeper talks about how the garbage found around the tidal wetlands of the Meadowlands today is more likely coming from individuals littering than the kind of large-scale, unregulated dumping that went on years ago. NJN followed Riverkeeper volunteers during a 2005 Clean-up of the Saw Mill area of the Hackensack River, where the Eastern spur of the New Jersey Turnpike passes Snake Hill. Then, aboard a Riverkeeper boat tour, Bill Sheehan explains his philosophy of looking at the Hackensack as a “resource in recovery.”

Appreciating Your Meadows by Boat
"I can’t ever think of a boat trip, taking people out, many of them having lived sixty, seventy years in the Meadowlands district, and those people going on a boat and just being absolutely awed and amazed at being in the meadows. Of course, we always said it’s an entirely different perspective when you’re in it than it is driving sixty miles an hour in a car, and it’s just flashing by you. And the visitors on the boat tour would get close to egrets and herons and see a muskrat swimming with a mouthful of food, and shrimp jumping out of the water and bigger fish chasing them, … all that at times on a nice clear afternoon or evening with the New York skyline right in the background – it was a definite contrast! But it made them appreciate it much more. And I always ended the boat trip by saying, I want to thank you for letting me show you YOUR meadows. And then they would get the point that this is theirs. It’s in public ownership, and they really appreciated the opportunity to get out there."
– Don Smith, Retired Senior Naturalist with the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission

A Sunset Tour of the Meadowlands (8:50)
Boat tours give people a great view of the Meadowlands and its wildlife.  Gabrielle Bennett-Meany, an Outreach Naturalist at the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission, describes the Commission's educational boat tour program.  In June 2005, the NJN crew took the sunset tour along with local residents.  Watch a few highlights not included in the film, as both Gabrielle and Senior Natural Resource Specialist Brett Bragin explain the value of tidal flow, the growth of spartina, and the gradual changes occurring in both Mill Creek and the Saw Mill Wildlife Management Area.

Education as a Way of Changing Attitudes
"I think one of the very first things that happened with school kids visiting the Hamilton-Trenton Marsh was in the early 1990s. I took a group of students for a friend who teaches at Trenton Central High School. There were a group of maybe a dozen students that came out to the marsh. I had them in hip boots and we were slogging through the mud, and these kids had never been out into anything like this and it really changed their attitude in one day about science. I just was really amazed because they loved getting into hip boots, getting out into the marsh, after they got through the preliminaries of getting stuck a little bit. Invariably somebody fell over. That first group just made me appreciate how important the marsh is as a resource, an educational resource, for teaching about science, about ecology and the value of wetlands."
– Dr. Mary Allessio Leck, Retired Professor of Biology at Rider University