[upbeat music] - [Male Narrator] It's a home and a rest stop for species large and small, some at risk, some back from the brink, the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.

- [Female] Well, there's a muskrat out there.

He's happy.

- [Male Narrator] With more than 7,700 acres permanently protected.

The wildlife is closer than many people know.

- The location is amazing.

We're about 26 miles from Times Square.

- [Male Narrator] Once targeted as a location for a jet board.

It's hard to imagine where the wild creatures would be without it.

- One of the few places in New Jersey that is wilder now than it was 50 years ago.

- [Male Narrator] Treasures of New Jersey, The Great Swamp.

[guitar music] Set in Northern New Jersey, surrounded by suburbs and highways.

This is a place preserved to protect a fragile ecosystem and all the species that call it home.

- One of the most enjoyable things about a refuge like this is you never know what you'll see.

- Over here on our right hand side, there are several ponds that are really great for looking for turtles.

- The wildlife, they're not disturbed at all.

They are just enjoying the space just like we are.

- [Male Narrator] It covers 12 square miles and while wildlife comes first, people are also welcome.

The miles of trails include boardwalks built to make it possible to hike across the watery ground and see wild creatures up close.

The Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge stretches across Southern Morris County from Chatham to Basking Ridge and is just 26 miles from New York City.

Even in late spring when temperatures are still chilly, you can see what draws visitors every day of the year.

- [Female Volunteer] We need two of this kind of shovel.

- [Male Narrator] What makes it a success is a combination of federal protection and volunteer devotion.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service manages the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge with a big assist from Friends of Great Swamp, a dedicated group of volunteers known to all as the Friends.

- When you visit a place like this, you may not know that some of the people you're seeing work for Fish and Wildlife Service, federal government and others are volunteers assisting and working side by side with them, complimenting what they do.

- [Male Narrator] Tom Gula is president of the Friends group.

- I remember first coming to what would become the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, probably when I was 10 or 12 years old.

Lived up in Northern Morris County.

There's something about swamps.

Some people like 'em some don't, but to me, they're so full of life, energy, interesting views of different kinds of plants and animals that I always came back.

- Well, right now we're actually on our, what we call our wildlife auto tour route.

So this is a chance for people to take their cars or if they want to they can walk and just see a variety of different habitats that we have here at the great swamp.

- [Male Narrator] As the wildlife refuge specialist, Jared Green works closely with the Friends to bring more people to the Great Swamp, a relatively new idea.

- I would say several decades ago, the philosophy was wildlife National wildlife refugees were a place that were kind of closed off.

They were meant strictly for wildlife protection.

So the thought was we don't want people going in there.

They may disturb the wildlife.

We've realized in recent years as the US Fish and Wildlife Service that we need to make people aware of our national wildlife refuges so that they can develop an appreciation for the refuges, come out and enjoy them in whichever way that they choose.

- Good morning, everyone on this cold, but somewhat windy day.

This group here assembled the White Oak Trail.

Over the years, they've put down stone dust and mulch.

- [Jared] The Friends group that we have here, they do all kinds of really fun trail work for us so that our visitors can come out here and explore all these different parts of the refuge.

- [Male Narrator] The Friends coordinate with other volunteer and corporate groups working to build and extend trails that allow people into and across the swamps often muddy terrain.

The trails are one of the Great Swamp's biggest volunteer projects.

[hammer banging] Part of a long history of volunteer action here.

Starting in 1959, environmentalists and community members raised $1 million to purchase 3000 acres to block development of an airport and give the land to the federal government.

In 1968, Congress designated the eastern half of the refuge as the first national wilderness area on Department of Interior lands.

The western half of the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge is carefully managed to create and maintain habitat that was vanishing.

[birds singing] - The management areas we try to make you know, as perfect for our sensitive species as possible because those are the ones that really need the assistance.

We have a lot of sensitive wildlife, at risk wildlife like bog turtles.

- [Male Narrator] The bog turtle is one of the Great Swamp's threatened species.

Often illegally captured for sale as pets.

- The bog turtles are a really special species.

They're such a small turtle that you're kind of surprised when you see an adult, how small it is.

I'm a big turtle person in general.

So getting to see them is always a real treat.

- [Male Narrator] Management here means helping people see and learn about wildlife without disturbing them.

When red fox dens appeared alongside a refuge road and under the Great Swamp's visitor center, the staff used yellow tape to keep people from interfering.

- Foxes are another animal that has really increased I think, with the creation of better fox habitat over the last 20 30 years.

I don't remember seeing in the seventies, very many red foxes, and now they've become very common.

- Two dens that we know of so far are actually right along the road.

So they've been kind of a high visibility dens, which is good, 'cause people can see them, but also it can be one of those challenging moments where people may get too close to 'em and disturb them a bit.

- [Male Narrator] Wildlife biologist Chelsea Utter is part of the team that protects and maintains this critical habitat.

- Great Swamp is a super important stopover area for our migratory birds, especially migratory waterfowl.

So ducks, we have black ducks, wood ducks, Mallards, and they utilize the Great Swamp as a stopover point and wintering habitat here in the wintertime.

Some species also breed here.

- [Male Narrator] The refuge was established in part to guarantee migratory birds a safe place.

It's a beacon for birds migrating North and South along the Atlantic flyway, in a sky filled with bright man-made lights.

- Pretend you're a bird migrating at night.

Great Swamp is kind of a big black hole.

There's a lot of lights surrounding us.

There's a lot of housing, cities, airports.

And when the birds migrate at night using the stars, they can actually see the Great Swamp Refuge and they will hone in on the darkness.

And they know that that spot is safe in the springtime on their way North to breed and then on their way South to winter over.

- [Male Narrator] Making sure migrating birds and many other species have a habitat that works for them means getting out onto the water for a firsthand look.

- [Chelsea] Yeah, I've seen a lot of perennials.

I'd like to see a little bit more annuals and it's still early in the spring.

I'm surprised to see as many shore birds.

Well there's a muskrat out there, swimming along.

He's happy.

- [Male Narrator] Water does rise and fall naturally in the Great Swamp's many basins and pools.

But, in the management area, water gets a helping hand.

- An impounded wetland, it's like a reservoir for wildlife.

So the water is surrounded by a dam.

And we have the ability, we have water control structures, and we can manipulate those water levels to coincide with the migration of the waterfowl.

- [Male Narrator] The wooden boards form dams that the refuge team monitors and adjusts to raise and lower water levels.

- So we're drawing down a little bit now for the shore birds and for the dabblers to get a little bit more vegetation.

Part of my job as a biologist is to pay attention to the seasons.

Just what's going on in the refuge itself and making sure that I'm timing my water-level draw downs, coinciding with what the birds are doing, what the weather's doing.

For example, if we have a big rain event coming or a hurricane, any flood event, I have to be able to take the flood water and be able to manipulate that so that we don't flood the refuge and so that when the ducks are coming and they're here to feed that the water levels don't get too high, that they can't feed.

It's not us thinking for what's best for the animal.

It's actually what nature would've done on its own, if we weren't here at all.

- [Male Narrator] Water is what makes this a swamp.

The basin it covers formed about 25,000 years ago as the Wisconsin glacier was melting.

It left behind the prehistoric Lake Passaic, which covered 300 square miles.

- One of the biggest arguments you can make for the preservation of swamps is the way they gather water from rainfall, from snowfall, et cetera.

And rather than run it quickly into a river, it soaks into the swamp land and eventually makes it's way to the river.

And so acts as natural flood control.

The ground here is, pretty flat in the swamp.

And the water, instead of soaking quickly into the ground, just tends to spread out, but then get slowly, slowly, I guess the term I'd use is percolate, down into the soil.

Eventually makes its way into several creeks, brooks, et cetera.

And then exit the swamp.

[water running] - [Male Narrator] Unlike the management area, in the wilderness part of the Great Swamp, no vehicles are allowed and trails are maintained without using power tools.

The goal is to allow nature to control what comes next here after centuries of human attempts at development.

- There's 568 national wildlife refuges across the entire country.

63 of those have a wilderness designation.

So it's pretty rare.

It's pretty unique.

And we wanna allow the visitors that come that opportunity to just you know, be in a space that's really untouched and is gonna be untouched forever.

I think until you get out here, you're not gonna be able to truly understand just by the name of the Great Swamp.

There were remnant structures and some infrastructure like roads.

And we actively took that out and just let nature take its course.

And really allow visitors in the public to come here and feel that sense of serenity and surreal that you may not get in other places.

- [Male Narrator] Anna Harris is deputy manager of the Lenape National Wildlife Refuge Complex, which includes the Great Swamp Refuge and three others.

- The Lenape tribe or Lenni Lenape.

They were seasonally traveling through this area.

They traveled all throughout Southern New York and Eastern Pennsylvania and through New Jersey.

And so I love that connection that we have with the land in our wildlife refuges and sort of honoring the people that came before us with the Lenape tribe and the fact that they were here first.

- [Male Narrator] The Lenape and their ancestors used the Great Swamp for hunting, fishing and to grow food, beginning at least 12,000 years ago.

At the historical society nearby Chatham Township, Patricia Wells helps maintain a collection of Lenape artifacts found on local farms.

- These are arrowheads and spear points that were collected on the dairy farm.

There were so many of them that every time they plowed or harvested, these got turned up in the field.

- [Male Narrator] Until European settlers forced them off their ancestral lands, the Lenape found life sustaining resources in the Great Swamp.

- Everything they needed was right there in the swamp.

The bark to make the hogans, the skins to make their clothing, clay to make their pottery, grasses to make their baskets, any kind of food you were looking for.

There were game birds.

There were frogs, turtles, deer.

When the colonists got here, they saw it as a huge resource as well.

Unfortunately, they didn't use it in a modified way, like they the Lenape did.

Now, the Lenape conserved things simply because they understood if you used it all up you wouldn't have it anymore.

The colonists did not see it that way.

They saw it as a resource, particularly for game and wood.

And they started using the wood to an extent.

By the early 1800s, they were beginning to denude the area.

This is all of the Great Swamp, all through here.

And right here you can see the most clearly that this has really been divided up into the wood lots.

So any house in town, or any farm nearby, would have its own wood lot.

And that was for individual households to harvest the wood for their fireplaces.

When coal came along, they no longer needed these wood lots.

They got sold off and drained for farmland.

And that's when we begin to see this whole area turned into farmland and the wood lots are pretty much gone.

- [Male Narrator] Farmers did drain some land, but the swamp remained a watery place most people avoided.

- The problem with swamps is they're not good habitat for humans.

They have lots of insects that bother you.

Crops don't grow well in general.

And when it came time to look for a place for a jet port, it was seen as useless land, to some degree.

Well situated in the middle of New Jersey.

And so it just made sense, to some people at the time.

- [Male Narrator] The Jet Port Plan, announced in 1959, generate a successful volunteer-led, Save the Swamp campaign that helped create the refuge, in the 1960s.

- It became a roadmap for citizens to rise up and say, no, you're not gonna do this to us.

So the public pushback to the jet port was also a lesson at the time.

This was kind of, you can tell government, no, you can't do this to us.

And it was a pattern for that too.

- [Male Narrator] From its formation as a federal wildlife refuge, the Great Swamp has depended on the work of volunteers.

Today, volunteers are often the first to greet people at the visitor center.

- This is our exhibit room.

So here we give you a little taste of the refuge, in all of the seasons.

- [Male Narrator] Friends of Great Swamp board member, Kathy Woodward, helps visitors understand the history and the hard work that saved the Great Swamp.

- This was in the part we're standing, was the original farmhouse that was on this land, just these first four rooms.

And then somebody bought it and remodeled it.

But when they left, it was sold to Fish and Wildlife Service and turned into the visitor center.

Which is kind of nifty, you know?

- [Woman Visitor] Yeah, it is very nifty.

- [Kathy] We're really proud of that.

- [Male Narrator] After decades volunteering here, she knows the swamp can still be a mystery for many.

- When the kids come, they're like, are there alligators here?

No, it's not that kind of swamp.

We have to back up.

The kids love this to be able to look at that black bear.

What I love to tell them is you know, what's his most powerful sense?

And they accurately say smell.

And you can see how like it's nostrils are almost as big as it's eyes.

So they really get to see that.

- [Male Narrator] To bring visitors closer to the protected animals and birds, Friends of Great Swamp volunteers also help maintain a mile and a half of boardwalks and a platform at the Refuge Wildlife Observation Center.

- These are the famous boardwalk trails that've been here forever.

You're gonna go about half a mile, you're gonna come to a platform, the Robbins Platform, which the Friends built in 2019, overlooks the Great Brook.

- [Male Narrator] The walkways are wheelchair accessible and easy for families and children to navigate.

A short walk leads to a raised platform, overlooking one of the Great Swamp's largest pools, where egrets stalk the shallows and turtles break the water's surface.

The platform also offers views of one of the Great Swamp's most popular residents, the bald eagles that nest in nearby trees.

- When I first began studying birds, mid 1970s, there was one pair of bald eagles in New Jersey.

A pair found its way to the Great Swamp several years ago.

And we've had a quite successful breeding pair here for years.

For people to see a bald eagle now is not necessarily a rare event.

- [Male Narrator] There are many success stories here.

One of Tom Gula's favorites is the resurgence of blue birds.

- Blue birds for hundreds of thousands of years had to find a hole in a dead tree in order to breed.

They couldn't make the hole themselves.

As the land use changed over time, more and more dead trees were disappearing, and more and bluebirds found it harder and harder to compete with some other hole nesting birds.

What we've done is help them out by putting artificial holes for them in bluebird boxes.

They're designed for bluebirds because of the size of this hole.

Inch and a half will keep, starlings will get in and evict the bluebirds from the box.

And this one here has a full nest of a, an Eastern bluebird.

You can see fills about half the box.

Made of typically straw.

And what we do is we come out once a week and we just do what I just did.

Open the box up, record if there's a nest in it, how many eggs there are, when they first show up and eventually, how many hatch out.

They don't mind you touching the nest or anything.

The idea if you touch a nest, the animals will the birds will abandon it, certainly is not true of bluebirds.

- [Male Narrator] A live video feed from a nest camera is a popular attraction in the visitor center when the tiny birds flit in and out.

But just as that invasive bird species, the European starling, threatens blue birds.

Invasive plants are an even bigger threat to the Great Swamp ecosystem.

To tackle invasive plants, Friends of Great Swamp volunteers set up specialized strike teams.

- The dogwood is a native plant and is co-evolved with our insects around here.

So that's what we want.

We have some nice native plants in here.

We have sensitive ferns in here.

We have some violets back here.

And so if we get this multiflora rose out, it allows those to come in.

- [Male Narrator] This team is one of many trying to make room for native plants being overrun by multiflora rose.

A thorny and aggressive invasive.

- [Kathy] It's actually probably brought here by the colonist.

Because it becomes so dense, they actually used it as cheap fencing.

It's like barbed wire.

Yeah, it is.

This group's called the Pervasive Invasive Plant Removal Group, because there are invasive plants that are throughout the refuge.

We'll never really get rid of them, sadly.

And we then try to do some restoration.

Plant some native plants that will have a chance to hopefully out compete the invasive plants.

- [Male Narrator] The plan is to establish a pollinator meadow in this cleared field to create a habitat for insects.

- Each butterfly has a host plant on which they deposit their eggs and their larvae grow from that.

If that plant's not here, we don't have that species of butterfly.

So in our pollinator meadow, we can get a variety.

Intentionally put in plants that are going to be hosts for that.

Also native bees that are here, pollinate more things than we know.

And so having those, we then have the diversity of insects that we have.

That leads to healthier bird populations who eat, and therefore up the line.

So that's why having an intentional pollinator matters.

- [Male Narrator] Battling invasive species is also on the top of the list for wildlife biologist Chelsea Utter.

- Invasives are a huge part of refuge management.

A lot of people see a beautiful field or a beautiful forest.

And to me, I see it through a different lens.

I see there's invasives encroaching.

If we don't do anything about it, this will take over, and then it's gonna be a wasteland.

- [Male Narrator] In addition to human efforts to keep invasives at bay and make room for native species, the swamp has naturally occurring features that protect some of nature's smallest creatures.

- Come on frogs.

- [Male Narrator] Rainwater and snow melt from vernal pools in small depression throughout the woodlands.

There are no fish, making it a safe spot for small amphibians to lay their eggs.

- [Chelsea] Little red-backed salamander.

Super cool little guy.

- [Male Narrator] Not everyone gets a chance to see what a wildlife biologist can find.

But preserving the Great Swamp does mean bringing new generations to this wild place.

Not only to see what's here, but to make it more accessible and available.

- There's a lot of talk about how wilderness created some sort of like elitist feeling.

Like only those who could afford to access the wilderness got that experience.

And so what we're trying to do is really connect the communities that through certain barriers were never able to come out and access the refuge.

And then we also bring a lot of youth out here to the refuge.

We teach them skills you know, and this wholesome environmental ethic for the land and the value that it has to offer.

- One of my favorite parts of my job is doing our environmental education and outreach work with urban youth.

We have a wonderful partnership with a group called Groundwork Elizabeth.

So they'll come out to the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, learn about conservation, learn how to identify invasive species.

And then they'll go back to their community of Elizabeth and be able to use those conservation skills in their own green spaces and educate members of their community.

- [Male Narrator] The refuge holds a unique place in New Jersey's densely populated map.

Suburban towns and busy roadways surround it and planes constantly crisscross the skies above.

- When I'm working out here, I always think back to what it could have been.

It could have been a jet port, all of this could have been under you know, tarmac or a terminal.

And it's kind of crazy when you think about that and you think about everything that would have been affected, all these animals that wouldn't have a home, these natural processes that wouldn't be able to happen.

- The location is amazing.

We live in the most densely populated state in the United States.

We're about 26 miles from Times Square, as the crow flies.

And speaking about the planes, and the plane noise flying overhead, when they do that, I often think now that I know the entire history of how there were plans to turn the Great Swamp into a jet port.

I think what would it be like to have these planes landing, not just flying overhead, but landing right here.

And all I can say is we're thankful that that didn't come to pass.

- This is a place, probably one of the few places in New Jersey, that is wilder now than it was 50 years ago.

- [Male Narrator] For decades, Friends of Great Swamp volunteers and US Fish and Wildlife Service staff have worked together to make the refuge a success.

And with the help of many environmental organizations, government funding, and landowners who donate or sell their properties, the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge will continue to be a place of safety and serenity.

- A refuge has been America's best kept secret.

And I think one thing we're working on is trying to you know, show the American public that we do have lands, we do have trails, we are accessible.

We want you to come out, enjoy the day.

But we always have that wildlife first mission and we really need to respect that.

[piano music] [upbeat music]