Registration is full: GSWA Members Only Hike @ Drew Forest

Registration is full for this hike. To be added to the waitlist, please email NRago@GreatSwamp.org or call 973-538-3500.

Visit Drew Forest for a special guided tour for GSWA members only. The tour is an easy, mostly flat walk where we will check out some pretty ponds and the local wildlife. Our guide will explain how the protection from deer and removal of invasive plants have brought back lost or diminished plant species, pollinators, food webs, and forest structure.

The Drew University Forest Preserve is 53 acres of unusually contiguous natural forest, a biodiversity hotspot thanks in part to 12 years of successful forest restoration. The Preserve is one of the only forests in the county with a native understory where beech and sassafras seedlings thrive and pollinators and other insects survive along with the birds that depend upon them. This intact woodland also serves as a major educational and research resource to the entire community.

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 earlier.

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Directions to the Drew University Forest Preserve’s Zuck Arboretum and Hepburn Woods
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.

Due to the limited number of people who may participate in this hike, please notify us if you are unable to attend this hike so we may call the next person on the wait list. If you are not feeling well on the day of the hike, we request that you stay home and join us on another day. Email NRago@GreatSwamp.org or call 973-538-3500.