Our 2025 Annual Report
- Kate Munning
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
2025 was another year of Land Conservancy milestones, and they're all showcased in our annual report. We preserved a parcel in Fairfield’s Great Piece Meadows, which was our 30,000th acre! In total, we preserved 358 acres last year, including a highlight of a small but mighty property in Mahwah that now provides permanent public access to Split Rock Mountain—the most spiritually important property to the Ramapo Munsee tribe.
We helped develop and lobby for legislation that will establish a new acquisition program to preserve forest easements in partnership with the State Agriculture Development Committee (SADC), allowing TLCNJ to protect forest properties that are not adjacent to state and county parks. This is especially important since the amount of land being preserved in New Jersey has plummeted in recent years and is not enough to meet the challenges of protecting watersheds, greenways, wildlife habitat, and farms in the face of the relentless development.
We developed and funded a master plan to enhance educational opportunities and expand the ways the public can enjoy our South Branch Preserve. These new facilities will bolster our Outdoor Ambassador Program, which provided outdoor education to 175 children who do not have regular access to nature.
In 2025, our scholarship program awarded $70,000 in scholarships to seven college and graduate students, making this the largest environmental scholarship program in New Jersey. We have now awarded a total of 87 scholarships totaling $535,000 since the program began in 1984. We have continued to grow the program and awarded ten $10,000 scholarships in 2026.
The 30th year of our internship program was marked by hiring 11 interns to work with us and learn a wide variety of new skills to help them build their leadership credentials. We have now hired 175 interns and fellows since the program began in 1995. We were also very excited to have several donors make generous gifts to increase our Richard M. Sargent Intern endowment to help us pay for interns into the future.