SOLD OUT – 8/10: Drew Forest Hike

THIS HIKE IS SOLD OUT.

Please email NRago@GreatSwamp.org to be added to the waitlist.

Friends of the Drew Forest invite GSWA supporters on a special, guided tour. It’s an easy, mostly flat walk and takes just over an hour to complete. You’ll visit ponds and view wildlife. You will also learn how protecting this area from deer and invasive plant removal have brought back lost or diminished plant species, pollinators, food webs, and forest structure. We’ll be walking on unpaved paths that may be damp in spots, so wear appropriate shoes, long pants with socks and long sleeves or carry bug spray. There are no rest room facilities. If you have binoculars bring them along! It takes 10 minutes to walk from Drew’s visitor parking lot, so please arrive early.

The Drew University Forest Preserve, in Madison, is 53 acres of unusually contiguous natural forest, a biodiversity hotspot because of its diversity and extent, and because of 12 years of successful forest restoration, on much of the Preserve’s acreage. The Preserve is one of the only forests in the county with a native understory, where beech and sassafras seedlings thrive, where pollinators and other insects survive along with the birds that depend upon them. With its biodiversity and natural complexity, this intact woodland also serves as a major educational and research resource with great value to the entire community.

The mature, intact forests of the Preserve provides important benefits including:

– Protection and recharge zones for the Buried Valley Aquifer, Madison’s drinking water source;
– Carbon sequestration, heat modulation, and ecological climate resilience;
– Publicly accessible open space with forest, meadow, and pond ecosystems, trails, a self-guiding nature tour, benches, and environmental art displays.

Now at risk of being sold and developed, the Drew Forest should be protected.

Directions to the Drew University Forest Preserve’s Zuck Arboretum and Hepburn Woods (from Drew’s Website)
Enter Drew University from Main Street/Madison Ave. at the traffic light entrance, called Lancaster Road, and park in the first lot, the visitor lot, to the right of the guardhouse. From the visitor lot, just walk south away from Main Street along that entrance road (it curves slightly left and then right into the next parking lot). Continue through (or alongside) this long main parking lot (still going south), with ball fields on your right and campus buildings on your left. Where the lot ends at the large Forum/Athletic complex, turn right (west) to cross a road and a bit of lawn to reach a short sidewalk that curves around the baseball outfield. Go left on this sidewalk (south) to its end, to where there are woods and deer protection fences on both sides. Both trails begin here. Click here to see an area map of the location on Google Maps.