Teatown Lake Reservation - Conservation Outreach: Saving The Nature That Lies Between The Parks

Conservation Outreach: Saving The Nature That Lies Between The Parks

Teatown is rapidly developing a reputation as the foremost environmental organization in the Hudson Hills and Highlands, providing conservation leadership to this bioregion, which encompasses most of Westchester and Putnam Counties, and parts of Dutchess, Orange and Rockland Counties. Teatown takes an active role in state, county and community efforts to protect open space and natural areas.

Through sponsorship of the Hudson Hills and Highlands Environmental Leaders Learning Alliance (ELLA), Teatown provides assistance to civic leaders in crafting practical solutions to environmental issues and helps land owners and residents become more “nature friendly between the parks.” ELLA’s mission is to bring together town-appointed members of environmental commissions from across New York’s Hudson Hills and Highlands to strengthen environmental protection at a regional level, through environmental training, sharing lessons learned, and fostering collaboration. Launched in 2008 under a multiyear grant from New York's Department of Environmental Conservation, the Alliance has good representation from the several dozens towns and villages whose conservation advisory council members are the principal beneficiaries. At each ELLA workshop, citizens who serve on their town or village’s environmental review committees receive training and insight into specific local challenges such groups face each month. For example, ELLA workshop topics have included background of locally invasive species, and detecting and protecting vernal pools. ELLA members have access to a resource library.

In 2008, Teatown and the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference established a partnership on a new effort to provide assistance to local trail programs in Putnam and Westchester Counties. Launched in July 2008, the “Hudson Hills and Highlands Community Trail Program” is one part of the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference’s larger effort to expand its reach east of the Hudson River from New York City to Columbia County. For nearly 100 years, New York-New Jersey Trail Conference volunteers have helped public agencies provide safe and responsible access to open space from New York City west to the Delaware Water Gap and north to the Catskills.