Gateway National Recreation Area

North of Spermaceti Cove on the bay side of Sandy Hook are Batteries Kingman and Mills. The good thing about Kingman and Mills was that there was much less poison ivy; however, the bad thing was that it had very dense stands of tree of heaven on a steep hillside. So it was very difficult to reach some of the trees, and the team was unable to finish the site. Yet they pulled through and were able to do a lot of work in such a confined, small area. Overall Gateway team performed cut stump treatment on 3,332 trees of heaven on less than two acres of land.

The Gateway team did research on various topics of interests related to Sandy Hook and presented them to SCA NPC and Agency staff. Mike McHale gave a presentation on the shifting coastline of Sandy Hook and offered his views on coastal property-shoreline management and restoration. Dennise Cupp developed a vegetation management/restoration plan for Sandy Hook, which included planting native plants and trees. Nick Casey talked about the New Jersey state-listed endangered black skimmers, which nested here at Sandy Hook this summer for the first time in 25years! Susan gave a different perspective on the invasive tree of heaven and looked at its beneficial properties and cultural significance in its native homeland of China. As a result, everyone was impressed and learned a lot more about Sandy Hook's "shifting sands" and coastline, endangered birds, and the invasive "heavenly" trees. The site already plans to incorporate some of Dennise's proposals in its future vegetation management plan. Overall, it will be great knowing that the Fall 2010 Gateway team is not only making its impact now but also in the future decision-making plans for the park.

We brought the cloudy, rainy weather from Washington State to Sandy Hook, NJ. So we did a lot of prep work. We used the tool sharpening and chainsaw maintenance skills we learned at CM training to prepare our chainsaws, loppers, and other tools for work. We also flagged invasive plants—tree of heaven, autumn olive, and curly grass—at Plum Island, Horseshoe Cove, and the beach. In the middle of the week, we went to the Cape May Plant Materials Center to get acquainted with native plants and learn about different research projects, such as carbon sequestration benefits of native plants, bee pollination research, native grasses for biofuel, seed cleaning technologies, etc. Overall, it was a week of preparation and education.

After a long journey of driving from their home states and tackling New Jersey traffic, Gateway corps members arrived safe and sound to Sandy Hook! They were welcomed with a feast of paella, South African yellow rice, baked chicken, tomato and goat cheese galette, peach cobbler, and melt-in-your-mouth chocolate cake!

I am from Pittsburgh, PA and in May of 2010 I graduated Chatham College for Women (also the school of Rachel Carson) with a BS degree in Environmental Science. My senior tutorial focused on the effects of increased Roundup exposure to the common earthworm and how it interfered with their normal burrowing depth. Exactly a week after graduation, I set out to Voyageurs National Park located in northern Minnesota for my first SCA experience as an intern for their exotic plant management crew. I was able to put to use my knowledge of herbicides and found that exotic plant eradication was strangely an enjoyable task in my daily activities. I am now a member of the SCA's Native Plant Corps and am happy to be doing work that I am excited to be a part of.

I went on a short self-guided tour of Fort Hancock today. Fort Hancock not only has the oldest operating lighthouse in the US but America's first mortar battery. Besides learning about some of the abandoned military homes and its history as a proofing (weapons testing) site, I learned about its birds and spotted some ospreys and woodchucks. I also got reacquainted with poison ivy!

For more information about Sandy Hook and Fort Hancock, here's the National Park Service's website for Gateway NRA at
http://www.nps.gov/gate/index.htm