Last month, Barbara and Michael Blumenthal donated 10 acres of land in the Princeton Ridge area – 10 acres teeming with migratory bird species and lush with native plants – to the New Jersey Conservation Foundation.
A Princeton couple has given an early holiday gift to their neighbors, and to Garden State residents in general. It's one that will keep on giving for generations to come.
Last month, Barbara and Michael Blumenthal donated 10 acres of land in the Princeton Ridge area - 10 acres teeming with migratory bird species and lush with native plants - to the New Jersey Conservation Foundation.
A photo of the 10-acre woods in Princeton donated by Barbara and Michael Blumenthal to the New Jersey Conservation Foundation in Nov. 2015. (Photo | New Jersey Conservation Foundation)Their generosity of spirit and their vision help assure that the environmentally sensitive area will not fall prey to development in the years ahead.
The foundation is a private nonprofit organization that since 1960 has protected 125,000 acres of open space, including farms, forests, and parks both urban and suburban.
In this, one of the densest states in the union, it's not easy to keep trees, streams and wildlife out of the path of the wrecking ball.
New Jersey has long been recognized as a national leader in these efforts. In 1999, then-Gov. Christine Todd Whitman signed the Garden State Preservation Trust Act, designed to allow the state to preserve 1 million acres in the ensuing decade.
"Today, there is universal agreement that our natural resources are valuable, not just for the economic prosperity they help create, but for what they add to our quality of life," said Whitman, who later went on to become director of the Environmental Protection Agency in the administration of George H.W. Bush.
Her words ring equally true today.
The wooded acres the Blumenthals donated are home to such threatened species as barred owls and wood turtles, as well as to such beauties as the wood thrush, scarlet tanager and several species of warblers.
"The last thing we wanted was for somebody to come and try to put a house in the middle of the woods," Barbara Blumenthal said, noting that many of her neighbors walk through those woods on a regular basis, and have developed trails to help others take pleasure in the unique wildlife flourishing there.
She hopes - and we do, too - that the Conversation Foundation will keep those trails in good working shape.
In the grand scheme of things, 10 acres might not seem all that enormous. But their significance is vast. Knowing that our children and their children's children will be able to appreciate the wild beauty contained in that landscape is priceless.