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The Nature Conservancy Celebrates 50 Years of Preservation at Tannersville Cranberry Bog

Community leaders toast bog anniversary, supporters on June 23

TANNERSVILLE, PA — June 23, 2007 — After 15,000 years in the making, The Nature Conservancy’s Tannersville Cranberry Bog had a party with a few community friends.  On June 23, the bog celebrated its 50th anniversary as a nature preserve.

Before a group of supporters, volunteers, and community leaders, local officials and The Nature Conservancy toasted the anniversary with a champagne-style cranberry toast to the bog and to all those who came together to protect this National Natural Landmark. It was

“Creation of this nature preserve is an amazing story of people from all walks of life sharing a vision to preserve a unique place as a living museum filled with unusual vegetation, like insect eating plants, and beautiful animals,” said Ralph ‘Bud’ Cook, manager of the Nature Conservancy’s Northeast Pennsylvania Program. “Over the years, the community, the preserve volunteers, the Conservancy and the Monroe County Conservation District worked with more than 14 landowners to grow the original 63 acres into a 900-acre preserve visited by thousands of people, including every fourth grader in the county.”

The anniversary celebration included a brief oral history of the bog, which was formed by the melting of the Wisconsin Glacier about 15,000 years ago. The glacial lake that remained was eventually covered by a mat of sphagnum moss that allowed plants to take root.  The ecosystem that developed was a low-oxygen, low-nutrient lake that filled with decaying plants and glacial silt. The harsh conditions attracted vegetation more commonly found much further north and in higher elevations.

The preserve is open for guided tours, led by the Monroe County Conservation District, along the 1,650-foot floating boardwalk. The walkway, built by Boy Scouts, volunteers, staff and students of the Monroe County Vo-Tech School, and Nature Conservancy volunteers, connects the parking lot to Cranberry Creek and enables visitors to observe the preserve’s rare species without damaging the bog’s fragile surface. Self-guided hikes and cross-country skiing are permitted on the public access trails that wind through the oak-hickory-pine forests surrounding the bog.

Cook explained that this Monroe County destination started off as the vision of Pocono native and conservationist Dr. William A. Niering, who was concerned about the destruction of bogs harvested for peat moss and commercial ice.  Niering took steps to raise $2,000 from 145 contributors to help The Nature Conservancy purchase the first 62 acres of the Tannersville Bog in 1957. Local landowners, The Nature Conservancy, Pocono Township, and Monroe County continued Niering’s work to protect the Bog – an effort that has resulted in the expansion of the nature preserve to 900 acres.

“Since its formation 15,000 years ago, the bog has helped protect the area from flooding and maintained water flows when other areas were experiencing droughts,” said Monroe County Environmental Educator Roger Spotts of the bog’s economic impact on the community. “It’s also an outstanding outdoor lab and living example of nature at work that really gets people excited about conservation and protecting natural treasures.”

The Monroe County Conservation District offers guided tours of the Bog for the public. These tours along the floating boardwalk enable visitors to enjoy hands-on, feet-dry excursions into the heart of the bog. Along the tour, carnivorous plants, orchids, and cranberries can be seen. For guided tours, contact the Monroe County Conservation District at 570-629-3061.

The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at www.nature.org.