Gala honoree Bill Koch, GSWA Board Chairman Michael Dee, and GSWA staff member Kelly Martin pose for a photo during cocktail hour. Credit: C. Mezzacappa

If you're a sucker for exclamation points, you need to keep reading!

To all the guests, committee members, volunteers, staff, and everyone else who helped make the Great Swamp Watershed Association's 2014 Gala Celebration such an overwhelming success, we cannot thank you enough!

With your generous support, GSWA netted

more than $120,000 in support of our environmental stewardship, education, and advocacy programs.

We are speechless! You are amazing!

For the third year running, Pingry high school students could be found helping out Great Swamp Watershed Association (GSWA) staff on the last Friday in October. Over the years Pingry pupils have helped GSWA grapple with a variety of tasks as part of the school's Rufus Gunther Community Service Project. Those tasks have included the decoration of trails at GSWA's Conservation Management Area in preparation for our Halloween-themed night walks. They've put their creativity to the test positioning skeletons, witches, and many miles of spider webbing to scare our guests, and they've honed their artistic talents by carving some uniquely designed jack-o-lanterns.

Although our Halloween hike was on hiatus this year, the kids and their advisers returned to engage in not one, but two important service projects on our behalf.

One group joined GSWA volunteers and staff members to...

Closeup of a map demonstrating how many towns and neighborhoods would be disrupted by the construction of a major jetport in New Jersey's Great Swamp region.

On October 29, guests attending the Great Swamp Watershed Association's  2014 Gala Celebration were treated to an exclusive glimpse at the first trailer for an important new documentary about New Jersey's Great Swamp. Although the film is still in development, the final production will chronicle the grassroots movement that sprang to life in the 1950s and 60s as area residents sought to prevent the construction of a massive jetport on lands now occupied by the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.

As GSWA Executive Director Sally Rubin introduced the four-minute trailer, she noted that the creative spark for this new project was struck at...

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Rain gauge. Credit: iStockPhoto.com/Flanders

This past summer, I was walking to work through a nearby park. It was very early in the morning and I could see the first rays of sunlight peeking over the eastern ridge. I began to feel the warmth of those sun rays as I walked. Yes, another beautiful summer day was unfolding, and it was being greeted by a chorus of singing birds.

My eye followed the sound of the birds' songs, and I could see several nests in the tree above me. I notice one particular bird peering down at me from her hideaway. I don't know what prompted this, but I said hello to the bird. To my great surprise, she answered me, and began what would turn out to be an amazing conversation.

"I am an American robin," she said with pride.

"I will spend this day sitting in my nest, incubating three eggs ---- my third brood this summer!" she exclaimed.

"I can do this because my male robin friend forages food for me, but later I'll go out foraging myself."

"I'll need to sit here on these eggs for 12 to 14 days," she continued, "but once they hatch, they'll...

From Daily Record: Correspondent Susan Bloom chronicles all of the festivity and ceremony of the Great Swamp Watershed Association's 2014 Gala Celebration held on October 29 in Morristown. Highlights include a short interview with gala honoree Bill Koch and some thoughts from honorary gala chairman Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen.

From Bernardsville News: Staff writer Mike Condon talks with Harding Township Mayor Nicolas Platt about "the classic David and Goliath story" behind the grassroots movement to keep NJ's Great Swamp from becoming an international jetport in the 1950s and 60s. Platt is working with historian Larry Fast and filmmaker Scott Morris to develop his historical research on the topic into a documentary film.

6:30PM.  River's Journey, a new documentary film about the cleanup of the Whippany River, will have its Morris County premiere on Wed., November 12, at the Frelinghuysen Arboretum located at 353 East Hanover Ave. in Morris Township.