Governor’s School for the Environment

This year four groups from the Governor’s School spent three days each at the Sedge Island Natural Resource Education center. Our entire staff (two program directors and four interns) had an opportunity to work with one or more of these groups. As even though some of the teachers had never been to Sedge before we all had a super time. The paragraph below describes the experience as seen through the eyes of one of the interns.

When this group first stepped off the bus, Jim and I were worried as some of the students seemed to have a rather negative attitude toward their trip to Sedge. However after a couple hours with this group, our first impressions were completely changed. This was a great, enthusiastic bunch of kids from Governor’s School. We went kayaking, crabbing, fishing, claming, and birding. One girl from Jersey City with little outdoor experience had the opportunity to work a great deal with John Wnek, a research scientist from Drexel University. . She helped him tag Diamond Backed Terrapins and together they reburied the turtle eggs in special, protected plots. It was great to see this girl get involved! Also, while this group was on the Island, they got to see and experience a group called YERT. “YERT (Your Environmental Road Trip) is a year-long eco-expedition through all 50 United States. With video camera in hand and tongue in cheek, “we're exploring the landscape of America's unique approach to environmental sustainability.” (check out www.yert.com) Dinner time was especially fun with this group. We had quiet a feast. We ate crabs, clams, mussels, and blue fish (we caught all of this food). It was great to see everyone try everything.

Sedge Intern,
Samantha Tennick

Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey

June 21, 2007

The Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey's Board of Directors held their annual meeting at Sedge on a gorgeous day in June – the summer solstice. Several board members had spent the previous night and they greeted us at the dock with tales of catching bluefish early that morning. The first part of the day was spent dealing with the business part of the meeting. At lunch intern Ryan Ballou provided a special treat by serving six pounds of pan seared ocean scallops fresh from his Point Pleasant restaurant. Later Tom Virzi, former Assistant Program Director at Sedge, told the group about his research on American Oyster Catchers, calling particular attention to the need for protecting dredge island habitat of these beach-nesting birds.

Almost everyone wanted to go kayaking so we launched the boats and paddled out into the salt marsh. Tom gave the group a great show as he climbed into an osprey nest to bring down and band a three-week-old chick. We then paddled into some of the salt marsh channels closer to the Peregrine Falcon hacking tower. It was a pleasure to have this group checking out “our” peregrines and comparing them to “their” peregrines that can be seen so well on the peregrine cam web site.