‘Great Swamp’ Is Haven From City Pressures

Just 25 miles from the flashing lights and honking horns of Times Square is a large oasis filled with the lovely sounds of silence.

The Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, surrounded by congested northern New Jersey, was declared a protected area in 1968 under the federal Wilderness Act.

Since then, it has attracted residents looking for a respite from urban pressures. David Franz, a biology professor at Brooklyn College, sometimes brings his students across the Hudson River to study “forest communities” and analyze vegetation at the refuge.

On his own time, he visits Great Swamp “just for the beauty of it all. Especially in the fall,” he said, “on a Sunday afternoon, I often see families stopping after church just to spend a few hours outside together.”

The refuge is open from dawn to dusk seven days a week, and Thomas McFadden, a recreation planner at Great Swamp, said it might never have opened at all.

In the late 1950s, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey proposed building a jetport at the site.

But local residents quickly organized to buy as much of the land as possible. Several years later, the New Jersey Conservation Foundation gave the federal government the deed to about 3,000 acres of prime, undeveloped land in the heart of Great Swamp, McFadden said.

The refuge keeps expanding, with almost 7,000 acres now protected and acquisition of a further 2,000 acres expected soon.

About 3,660 acres of the refuge are untouched, with seven miles of trails for nature lovers, McFadden said. The rest is a federal management area where grass is mowed, ponds dug and trees cut to improve the habitat for certain animals and plants, he said.

“It’s unusual to find a fairly large tract of uninhabited natural vegetation,” Franz said.

Even though planes pass overhead and neighboring towns edge closer, he said, “You have the feeling you are a long distance from mankind.”

More than 160,000 people--most from the New York metropolitan area--visit the Great Swamp each year, McFadden said.

Unfortunately, unwanted visitors also come, said Douglas Spencer, the refuge’s assistant property manager. By day, passing motorists litter the sides of the roads into the refuge, he said, and at night, illegal dumpers have done even worse.

Building nearby also has an impact. “It causes non-point pollution--runoff from septic systems and the streets,” Spencer said.

With each rainfall, pollutants such as roadway oils and treated sewage wash into the Passaic River watershed and eventually pass through the refuge, Spencer said.

“Great Swamp acts as a giant filter,” he said.