SPARE America's Wildlands

The Highlands, New Jersey

Just 40 miles from Manhattan lies a densely forested greenbelt harboring lakes, reservoirs, trout streams, bobcats, river otters and soaring bald eagles. This is the Highlands, part of the great green sweep of the Appalachians that shadows the East Coast from Alabama to Maine. The area's rocky, rugged terrain has prevented urban development and made it the last bastion of wilderness in the New York metropolitan area.

Lumbering and agriculture have left their marks on the Highlands, but the wounds are healing: Over 400 black bears roam these hills, 4.5 million people get their drinking water from the area and 25 million people use its trails for recreation. Significant tracts, like 15,000 acres of Sterling Forest, are being permanently protected.

But developers are threatening to steal the forest from our kids and destroy it forever with strip malls, roads and scatter-shot residential development.

The State of New Jersey has appropriated over $1 billion to protect special places like the Highlands. The Sierra Club is urging Governor Christine Todd Whitman to use those funds to stop sprawl and acquire new public lands in critically threatened areas.

Photo courtesy Philip L'Hommidieu

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