From Our Executive Director

Legacy is an often used word in land conservation. After all, a core value of preserved open space and farmland is its benefit for future generations. With the recent passing of conservation pioneer Helen Fenske, it's not exaggerating to say that New Jersey would look vastly different today if not for her legacy.

Michele S. Byers Executive Director

It was 1959 when the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey proposed building a new international airport in the heart of New Jersey's Great Swamp. Sprawl had not yet come to this unique and massive freshwater wetland area. Helen and a small group of local citizens decided to stop the airport.

These days, we expect grassroots citizens groups to fight and often win. Not so in 1959; the Port Authority drew on vast governmental and financial resources. In fact, they had never lost a fight.

Enter Helen Fenske and her friends and the newly formed Great Swamp Committee of the North American Wildlife Foundation, which eventually evolved into NJCF, who began the work of saving the Swamp.

"When I think of Helen, the first word which comes to mind is 'energy'," recalls Sandy Millspaugh, the foundation's president when Helen served as executive director. "She had that unusual gift of persistence to the point of exasperation, but just stopping short of becoming antagonistic. As a result, she pushed and prodded people through her force of personality to accomplish results that turned the tide in stopping the destruction of the Great Swamp."

One of the many historic occasions in the life of Helen Fenske (center), the 1969 signing of legislation which enabled environmental commissions to be established by municipal governments in New Jersey. Pictured (from left) former Governor William Cahill; Assemblywoman Josephine Margetts; Margen Penick; Ian Walker, Executive Director of the Stony Brook - Millstone Watershed Association; Helen Fenske; David Moore, Executive Director of the North Jersey Conservation Foundation; Tom Kellers, Chief Naturalist for the Monmouth County Park System; and James Sayen. Both Penick and Sayen were founding members of the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions.

Helen and the Great Swamp Committee beat back the Port Authority and preserved the Great Swamp. In early 1964, the committee turned over 1,400 acres of land to the federal government, that later became the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge - New Jersey's first national refuge, and the first federally designated wilderness area east of the Mississippi. And today, the region still retains much of the rural character it had back then.

Helen had a hand in creating Patriot's Path and the Hudson River Walkway, and in saving Sunfish Pond near the Delaware Water Gap. She was a tireless advocate for the protection of the entire Farny Highlands region. She worked to win passage of New Jersey's first wetlands protections and the Green Acres program. For many years, if there was an environmental issue in New Jersey, you would find Helen unapologetically in the middle of it!

From 1960 to 1969, Helen served as executive director of what we now call the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, which evolved from the Great Swamp Committee. Helen was instrumental in the creation of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), where she later served as a special assistant to the first Commissioner, then as Assistant Commissioner for Natural Resources, and briefly, as Acting Commissioner.

As one of the many who followed in her footsteps, I can say with confidence that Helen Fenske's legacy will last for centuries, and may even outlast the few developments she wasn't able to stop. She'd like that.

Michele S. Byers
Executive Director