Volunteer Opportunity: Taylor Wildlife Preserve

Posted by Taylor Wildlife Preserve on August 6, 2019

Taylor Wildlife Preserve, located on 85 acres along the Delaware River in Cinnaminson, NJ (only 30 minutes from Center City, Philadelphia) is looking for some student volunteers who might be interested in history or environmental/land management to help us with some interesting projects.

This 100+-acre protected reserve is home to bald eagles, osprey, and number of beavers — just minutes from Philadelphia. The land is deeply etched with history — pre-Lenni Lenape arrowheads and Revolutionary War-era bullets are commonly found on the site. It’s a beautiful oasis run by volunteers, open to the public with trials, lookout tower and a newly built boardwalk through the marsh. There are a variety of habitats within the Preserve, including 60 +acres of swamp and wetlands.

Student volunteers are needed for:

HISTORIC DOCUMENTATION
On one of the houses near the reserve is a room filled to the brim with historical artifacts. There are physical items: arrowheads, shards of pottery, and many more. There are books and writings from hundreds of years ago, when the original Quakers began building on the land. Quaker farmers have been working on this land for 12 generations.

For someone interested in history, this is a rare opportunity to carefully touch and handle primary source material — a true treasure search.

The needs are:

• help digitizing the materials to preserve them for the future;
• working with historical experts to help classify, collate, and identify what is there;
• reviewing and pulling out any interesting stories, snippets, meanings — especially searching for information that gives evidence of the impact of changing climate on the land.

LAND MANAGEMENT, ENDANGERED AND INVASIVE SPECIES PLANNING & CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS
The 85 acres is beautiful woods and marshland — a key resource to the township in flood mitigation. And it is being overgrown with an array of invasive species. At the moment, there is no plan for handling the invasive species. The student would help us identify what we have and research options for managing our land.

We are also aware of being a piece of land where we could tell the story of climate change. We have lists of identified animal, plant, and bird species from decades ago. And we have farmer notes from over 150 years ago. And we have regular bird walk identifications. But nobody has assembled the spread out information and knowledge in our community to tell a story of climate change in our area.

For someone interested in being out in wild lands, this is a special opportunity to be in beautiful woods working to help preserve them for future generations.

The needs are:

• identify invasive and endangered species and touch base with volunteers and other experts in land management to create a draft plan for handling invasive species and support endangered wildlife;
• find historical data and evidence (see above Historic Documentation), talk with neighbors to collect those lists and notes, and research climate change in the area to create a draft story of climate change in the area;
• support trail maintenance, where interested.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS OPPORTUNITY: Please contact DANIEL HUNTER at [email protected]