Apshawa Preserve

Monday, July 18. Today we went to the Apshawa Preserve, a trail part of the NJ conservation foundation. We met the SCA from Essex there as well as Rachel, some botanists, and sponsors of sca. After driving through traffic we finally arrived there and were introduced to the other crew and the adults. Then we started hiking the trail, where we mapped plants in designated areas and learned how to identify plant species to show how to deer are eating almost everything and destroying native species. The botanists taught us that there are about 10x more deer per square mile in the environment than it can sustain, so it is important to keep fences up to keep deer out. When we finished our project, we were given a delicious lunch AND sca water bottle and we ate be the reservoir. We then hiked out and got some more SCA swag before we packed up and left.