Opinion By Susan Russell, Fair Haven
Schwenker’s Pond, where I live, is an unsung refuge alive with spectacular bird and wetland life. For the second time in 13 years, residents are mobilizing to save it.
Threatened black-crown night herons, stocky and charming birds resembling miniature penguins, sit on Schwenker’s banks, on dead tree limbs in the water, or perch high up in the trees. Bald eagles and endangered black skimmers and ospreys swoop low over the banks. Great blue herons and great egrets hunt from high hardwoods or rest on submerged tree branches just feet from the waterline. Mallards and geese rest and nest here. Owls hoot at night, the bullfrogs chorus annually and toads are everywhere. Turtles burrow in the mud and lay their eggs on the banks.
An unadvertised fact is that in 2007, due to the Homeric efforts of Fair Haven residents and New Jersey’s Nongame and Endangered Species Program, the state classified Schwenker’s Pond a wetland of “exceptional resource value,” with a standard 150-foot buffer adjacent to the wetlands. The night herons, part of New Jersey’s breeding population, use the site for foraging. Schwenker’s contains “suitable habitat conditions for breeding, resting, or foraging by the documented species.”
The owners of the Doremus estate sold the pond and acreage to a developer who planned to con- struct three houses. The backstory is fascinating, with a local runner sighting threatened species, photographing them and FedExing the reports to Trenton. The developer built two homes and, not wanting to care for the pond, off-loaded it, free, to Fair Haven. In 2016, the state imposed conservation restrictions and easements. The story should end there.
Segue to 2019. Inaccurately describing Schwenker’s as “little more than a breeding ground for insects,” a member of Fair Haven’s Environmental Commission told The Two River Times that he envisions built-up banks of stone and walking paths encircling the pond, draining the pond down to make it a “free flowing stream,” thus “preserving the wetlands.” But there are no studies or experts to sup- port this, and the pond could turn into reeds, bugs and mud.
Just as Nantucket owes it charm to years of isolation as mainland towns demolished old houses and erected strip malls, decades of private ownership and benign neglect contributed to the pond’s astonishing ecological value. Quiet, relatively undisturbed conditions and a natural shoreline support abundant wetland life and a phalanx of wary birds.
The pond eluded the 1950s concept of “green space” that eradicated natural shorelines and vegetation, encasing streams and ponds in built-up banks of rock, cement or wood pilings. Human recreation came first, last and in-between.
At Schwenker’s, exposed, “messy” tree roots and wood debris provide cover for fish to hide, basking areas for turtles and resting spots for water birds. Shorelines are barriers against weather and predators.
Built-up banks will obliterate the natural shoreline and the abundant life that it supports; freshwater species depend on each other to maintain their life cycles.
Any recreational walkway that penetrates deep into a small and exceptional wetland will bring more people, some boisterous, directly within reach of the same, previously secluded and quiet areas used by skittish and rare birds and other creatures.
Homeowners who live on the pond leave the banks alone. Federal studies show fishing as a primary source of disturbance to water birds; for decades, neighbors have picked up garbage and other detritus left behind. Discarded fishing line can and does entangle birds.
Pathways adjacent to ponds hard pack the soil, destroying vegetation. For proof, visit the dark, nearly dead retention pond at Fair Haven Fields. There is no walkway around McCarter’s Pond, where pilings, the situation, and human uses allow nowhere near the bird and wetland life supported by Schwenker’s.
Rumson and Fair Haven enjoy an embarrassment of riches when it comes to outdoor, walking and water-related recreation. Fair Haven Dock is for crabbing and fishing and McCarter Pond hosts fishing derbies and skating. Pocket parks dot the Navesink.
The pond needs help, with algae, with aeration, maybe with the spillway, with pollution. Near the dam, it smells of sewage.
There should be no Faustian deal, no false choices. A smaller neighborhood pond in Rumson has no public walkway and it is aerated. If some refuse to help the pond without a quid pro quo, we can raise the money for aeration and other needs through grants and foundations.
We can save this old beauty without wrecking its essential quiet and wild nature, this special home for rare and shy creatures. In a win-win for all, the borough can install benches and viewing areas with telescopes and interpretive boards with no skin off our collective backs. Residents can skate in the winter and fish from River Road.
Surviving damage and neglect, the pond has made it this far. Paying it forward, to future generations, and to nature, seems the right thing to do. If life were fair, and we all know it isn’t, the borough would designate Schwenker’s a refuge in perpetuity, and dedicate it to the runner who saved it – or tried to. The question is, is Fair Haven big enough, and graceful enough, to leave Schwenker’s Pond alone?
Susan Russell was campaign leader and lobbyist for New Jersey’s Wild Bird Law and statute banning steel-jaw leghold traps in the 1980s and ‘90s.
