Thanks Again to The Watershed Institute and The Nature Conservancy – GSWA Completes Major Wetlands Restoration along Silver Brook
June 30, 2019
At the end of June 2019, GSWA completed a major riparian restoration on the impaired stream banks of the Silver Brook. GSWA staff, volunteers and corporate workday partners, cleared 2.25 acres of invasive plants from the Silver Brook. GSWA replanted stream banks with an assortment of native trees and shrubs along this tributary of the Passaic River. The Silver Brook traverses one of the watershed’s most ecologically diverse areas, including a section of wetlands, mature forests, and meadows.
Stream bank cleared of invasive multiflora rose, privet and japanese barberry and replaced with natives.
The Watershed Institute in Pennington, NJ, through a partnership with The Nature Conservancy under its Roots for Rivers Reforestation Grant and Technology Assistance Program provided the $7,350 grant for this massive project. Through this funding, GSWA installed 1,000 native forest and wetland plants as stream buffers.
The Roots for Rivers Reforestation grants support municipalities, school districts and local non-profit, land conservation organizations’ efforts to undertake floodplain reforestation and education initiatives. Planting trees within degraded floodplain areas protects the lands and waters on which the citizens of our communities, and future generations depend and through these projects raise awareness about the importance of freshwater conservation.
From the more than 2,000 hours of work committed to the project from GSWA staff and volunteers, plus dozens of corporate workday volunteers, more than 80,000 square feet of stream bank (2.25 acres) along Silver Brook were cleared of invasive plants and replanted with native shrubs and trees. Among the native shrubs planted are; chokeberry, elderberry, highbush blueberry, viburnums, sweetgum, buttonbush, eastern red cedar, white oak, and black willow.
The replanting and reinforcing of these areas stabilizes the eroded banks of Silver Brook and maintains and improves water quality in the CMA and other sites downstream. Silver Brook is a headwater tributary of the Great Swamp Watershed’s Great Brook, which is a major tributary of the Passaic River. The Passaic is New Jersey’s longest river and major source of drinking water for two million people.
The CMA is a dog-friendly preserve free and open to the public for recreation.
For more information about our CMA, click here. For trail maps, click here.
Volunteer carrying cut multiflora rose from stream side
