We are excited to share that The Land Conservancy of New Jersey has been awarded the Land Ethics Award for Best Large Scale Project by the 24th Annual Land Ethics Symposium, hosted by Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve.
This award is given for the major restoration we completed at our Nancy Conger West Brook Preserve in West Milford. The nomination highlighted the 2023 bloom of 200 endangered American Featherfoil (Hottonia inflata) that appears to be the result of our organization’s restoration work. Fewer than five featherfoil blooms have been reported in New Jersey, and ours is the only reported occurrence in Passaic County. New Jersey is one of the 11 states where American featherfoil is critically imperiled.
This beautiful, feathery flowering plant has densely whorled leaves and floats on the water. New Jersey is one of the 11 states in which American featherfoil is critically imperiled, and we had never seen any in the years that we’ve been working at and observing the West Brook site. That is, until our land guru Sandy Urgo spotted the colony last year.
The appearance of this amazing and rare plant appears to be directly related to The Land Conservancy’s efforts to restore the West Brook headwaters’ ecology and hydrology. The restoration at Nancy Conger West Brook Preserve has been successful and gratifying on many levels, but the discovery of this rare and critically imperiled plant species is an outstanding and unforgettable culmination of years of hard work, for an organization whose mission is to preserve and restore critical conservation land in the state of New Jersey.
For a conservationist, it doesn’t get better than this! Our entire staff contributed to this effort, and we are all quite proud.