Due to continuing cleanup efforts at Mill Creek Marsh, we are moving tomorrow's Third Tuesday walk to Laurel Hill County Park in Secaucus.

The event runs from 10 a.m. to noon. We'll all park near the ballfields "under" the cliffs. Directions are in the left-hand column of this blog.

A recent scouting trip yielded 16 Brant (above), three Red-tails, a Northern Harrier, plenty of gulls and Double-crested Cormorants, and a zillion Grackles and dark-eyed Juncos.

(We thank the Hudson County Parks Department for letting us use the park on short notice!)

Details follow.

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Chris Pedota on The Record posted a web gallery of 11 photos from today's cleanup.

Link is here.

The Meadowlands Commission and the Bergen County Audubon Society want to thank all the wonderful folks who participated in our first post-Sandy cleanup at Harrier Meadow today.

Some 40 of us removed an unbelievable amount and array of flotsam and jetsam from Harrier Meadow, a 70-acre natural area in North Arlington.

When we got to the end of the peninsula, it loked like the Mischief Night from hell.

When we left 2.5 hours later, it looked about as beautiful as a post-hurricane place can look.

We'll post more pix, including a future Tuesday Teaser or two, as time allows.

Our next volunteer-driven cleanup is Friday at 10 a.m. at Harrier. Stay tuned for details…  (We'd simply call it a "volunteer cleanup," but someone might think we are cleaning up volunteers.)

Above is a shot of a small fraction of the volunteers who spead out over the site. Below is a small part of the mess they cleaned.  Thank you!!!

The N.J. Meadowlands Commission’s thoughts go out to all who have been affected by Hurricane Sandy. DeKorte Park and other Meadowlands sites took a huge hit from Hurricane Sandy. Major cleanups are underway.

We understand that our parks are a major public resource for birders and non-birders alike, and we want to get them open again as soon as possible, butthe public's safety is our paramount concern.

An update on our parks and natural areas follows.

Continue reading →

In response to Superstorm Sandy, the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission and the Bergen County Audubon Society are sponsoring a series of cleanups in parks and natural areas in the region.

The first is scheduled for this Sunday (Nov. 18) from 10 a.m. to noon at Harrier Meadow in North Arlington.

We will be picking up trash and recyclables – glass bottles, metal cans and plastics — in this 70-acre natural area, where huge amounts of debris were deposited by the storm.

Important information — including two more scheduled cleanups — follows.

Continue reading →

You must sign a 2012 cleanup liability release to participate in our upcoming cleanups. You can download one here:

Download 2012-njmc-cleanup release

Sean Sullivan of nj.com just posted a story and slide show on the storm damage to Meadowlands Commission sites, including DeKorte Park, River Barge Park and Mill Creek Marsh.

The link is here.

To show folks some of the damage that Meadowlands parks and natural areas sustained from Hurricane Sandy, the Meadowlands Commission has put together this quick video. (This is the video shown at Wednesday night's BCAS program in the Meadowlands Environment Center.)

In the instance of DeKorte Park, we also showed some photos of the park after 400 tons of debris — largely dead Phragmites stalks, known as wrack — were removed. After these photos were taken, similar progress has been made in Harrier Meadow.

Once the "heavy lifting" is done and a park is deemed safe enough, we will begin volunteer cleanups. Scroll down for more info on how to volunteer.

To read Michael Copley's article in The Record today about the extent of the damage, click here.

Dennis Cheeseman photographed these Hooded Mergansers at the Clay Avenue wetlands in Lyndhurst this week. (Thanks, Dennis!)

As the Meadowlands Commission assesses all the damage from Hurricane Sandy and its unprecedented tidal surge, it is becoming clear that we will really need help from volunteers in our clean-up efforts.

In conjunction with the Bergen County Audubon Society, we hope to assemble a clean-up crew to work for a couple of hours on the Sunday morning after Thanksgiving, and down the road. We have 15 folks on our e-mail on-call list already.

[Update: A cleanup for Harrier Meadow is scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 18, from 10 a.m. to noon. Details are on a more-recent post on this blog, here.]

If you would like to participate, please e-mail Jim Wright by clicking "e-mail me" at the top of the left-hand column of this blog, and Jim will put you on an e-mail notification list.

We will also post the clean-ups on this blog. You'll need to wear heavy boots and work gloves.   Thank you!